A Path of Bone and Poison 104 The Inverted Tower 7

Our group discussed what we had been told by Yuri, before going to examine the gravestone ourselves. We could see a total of four lines that were written on the tombstone. The first and last lines were gibberish, nothing that we could make out. The middle lines however told us that the left passage led to life, while the right passage led to death. There was no mention of the middle passage which Yuri tried to lead us down. Our party discussed it and the consensus was to go down the left passage.

The only person to disagree was Bailey. She did not even hesitate to walk down the middle passage. It seemed she had developed a king of blind faith in Yuri. I could not say I really blamed her, before I had officially joined the church, I had blind faith in her as well. But things had happened between then and now. I had learned things. Things that made me doubt the woman who I loved.

The Necromancer King was so much worse than I had imagined. He was a fallen god. He had joined the dark pantheon and waged war on the light. The war lasted for years, and almost ended with the destruction of Kaos. His name was all but stripped from the records, only those with a close connection to a god or goddess would know of his name. When he fell during his fight with the God of Archery he was not slain. His power had been split into several pieces. A total of 10, if ever all ten were gathered into one place they would combine into a single entity, bringing back together the fallen Necromancer King.

What Yuri did not know, what she must not know, was that she was not the only heir. There was a total of five of them. The other four heirs had long since risen to power in different nations. The five different heirs would be combined into a single massive soul, using the darkest arts of necromancy. The soul would belong to none other than the Necromancer King himself, the five heirs had only been used as food for his soul, fuel for his own dark magic. This would be the end that awaited Yuri if she were not careful.

The real threat of the Necromancer King to her was not a direct one. Not now. The threat was that she would become addicted to the power, and if she learned of the other 8 books, she would go to gather them. She would grow stronger than she could ever imagine, but each additional book would put a larger strain on her soul. When she gathered all of them the Necromancer King would come for her, and she would be unable to resist. Her soul would be absorbed, and her body be taken over, and she would cease to exist.

This did not mean she could remain idle, if she did not actively seek to get stronger than the other heirs would come for her as well. The power was addictive to all of them. Therefore, she needed to train. She needed to train her heart as well as her soul. She needed to find a different path to walk, one that would not be so convoluted. But she was too bullheaded to listen. The more she used that power the more her personality began to change. The more she craved the power.

I sighed as a I thought about this. There would be no end until she was set straight. But as of now the only person she would listen to was herself, and possibly Bailey. I considered talking to her about all of this, trying to persuade her to keep Yuri in check but decided against it. Bailey was absurdly loyal to her. The relationship between the two had developed rather fast, just as it had with us. With Yuri's insanely high charisma combined with her [insatiable] trait and the spell her mother had given her… Needless to say that if there was any sort of attraction it would quickly develop into much more.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sight before me. We had been walking as I was lost in thought and had come across another room. This one did not have a tombstone; it did not have much of anything except a giant portal. The portal was a purplish hue, and honestly looked a lot like the flower of a girl. I only looked at it for a moment before I noticed that the portal had reacted to our presence.

The lady flower portal seemed to be in the process of pushing something out of it. If I had to say it looked much like it was giving birth. But the children it produced were not something I would have ever wanted to see. A total of 10 large jellyfish like creatures appeared before us. Their bodies were clear but gave off a bright light. Strangely they did not move quietly, even though they moved through the air. Their tentacles moved like whips, causing sonic booms in the air.

The sudden intense sound sent us to the ground screaming. Blood began to fall from all my orifices. Unfortunately, it seemed that the pink liquid had not completely run its course. The wounds we experienced healed almost instantly, only to be reopened by another sonic boom.

The jelly fish seemed to have no interest in us, and simply floated through the air, swishing their tentacles as they pleased. We needed to act quickly, if we did not get out of here before the pink liquid in our bodies had completely dissipated then we were as good as dead. My mind was too shaky to even activate my telepathy, I could only roughly gesture for the others to follow me as I crawled towards the exit of the room.

The distance between us and the door was only around ten feet. But it felt like a thousand miles. We could only move a few inches at a time, before being struck again by one of the sonic booms caused by the jellyfish. The movements seemed to get more frequent as we moved closer to the door, our wounds were not even given time to heal before they were forcefully reopened.

When we finally got to the door the pink fluid must have been already used up out of our bodies. They wound in our ears did not heal, and blood continued to pour from them. The loss of hearing sent out bodies into an unbalanced state, making walking difficult. I could see the irony in our situation. We had just been nearly defeated due to these sonic attacks, and here we were once again barely surviving after another attack. It seemed noise was a common theme in this instance, and unfortunately it was not something we could defend against.

Thankfully because of my telepathy we could still communicate. After deliberating for a total of 30 seconds we all agreed that Yuri had more than likely given us the correct option. It was then I remembered her unique talent [Gift of Tongues]. The words that had been gibberish to us were easily understood by her. If this floor had taught me anything was that our teamwork needed a lot of work.

Chapter end