The rest of the group came to join him in the main room, and were briefly startled when the doorway appeared to be gone. Like Karl had, Alice stepped back through and found that she had no resistance, it was just an illusion, and touching the other side had broken it.
The real question was whether the one who made it was trying to keep something out, or to keep something in. It hid the only way out of the tunnel complex, so it could be either.
“Should we see what set a fire in the room on this level, or should we see what’s below us first?” Alice asked Corbin and Larry, conferring between the three strongest fighters to see what they felt was safest.
“Go with what we know could be a threat first. The room with fire.” Corbin suggested.
Nobody else had an objection to that, and they wouldn’t want to leave it unchecked when they went down, in case the tunnels were a dead end and whatever was in there either blocked them or did something like vent poisonous gas down them.
Karl moved to lead the way, but Corbin stopped him.
“If we’re going into an unknown room, I should go first. I might be a Spellblade, but I’m also a Royal Rank Mage, and my barriers are much stronger than yours are.” He whispered.
So, Karl and Rae moved to the second and third position, ready to flank Corbin once the door was open, and the others followed them down the narrow corridor to the decrepit wooden door.
The coarse yellow sandstone had been crudely hacked at to create the doorway, and the fitment was terrible, suggesting that whoever made it was no skilled craftsman, but when Karl peeked through the gaps, he didn’t see anyone inside, only a few flaming braziers near the walls.
He shrugged at Corbin, indicating that he couldn’t see anything, and the Prince kicked the door open, rushing inside with Karl right behind him.
Only to find that the room was empty.
Five metres on each side, with two braziers lit, and one door on the far side.
The others followed them inside as Karl scanned the room for hidden traps, and the moment that Larry entered and everyone was inside, the door slammed shut and a set of runes appeared on the wall.
“Shit, we triggered a magical trap. How did I not notice that?” Corbin muttered, trying desperately to decipher the writing.
[Trial begins in ten seconds.] He read out loud.
Then, in front of Karl’s watchful gaze, half the group disappeared.
He was left with Rae, Tessa and Lotus. Everyone else had vanished.
“Ascended.” Lotus informed them, pointing at the wall.
“It says Ascended. The trap split us up by Rank.”
That should mean that Dana was with Darryl and Rose, while Alice was with Larry, but Corbin might be trapped alone in a trial.
The room wasn’t comfortably large enough for Thor or Hawk to be called out, even Rae was enough to make it a bit cramped in here, so the Awakened Group, with Dana’s two Golems, would be similarly crowded.
Then, the room surged with magic, and a whole battlefield appeared around them, an open, snow-covered field, with the bodies of slain soldiers and Yeti Warriors scattered all around them. One last group was approaching, and Karl hesitantly called out Thor and Hawk, unsure how the magic worked.
Hawk soared into the sky, confirming that inside this trial, there was actual room to fight.
[Tribesmen, embrace the curse of the beast. Drive these interlopers from our lands and return the eternal snow.] The leader of the group, a massive warrior with a scar that ran from the left side of his chest to his right hip, was shouting.
That was new. The Yeti couldn’t speak.
Once his encouragement was over, the warriors surged with power, and Thor activated [Circle of Protection] as he prepared to meet their charge.
Tessa climbed onto his back, while Lotus moved to stand behind Karl and Rae summoned her Golems.
They still had the numbers advantage, but these warriors were all on the low side of Ascended, other than their leader.
Lotus spoke softly to the group. “Attack in 3,2,1.”
Vines shot up from the ground, tripping the warriors when they were ten metres away, close enough for Shred to make it to them in a split second, right before the spider Golems were on them and Hawk’s fireballs began to bombard the leader of the group.
It wasn’t enough to kill them, but the beasts were heavily wounded by the time that they fought their way free of the entanglement, and then Thor’s charge reached the left side of their lines, impaling two and holding them in place for Tessa’s chain mace to crush their skulls.
Thor kept moving, circling back for another charge as the ice magic began to swirl around the warriors, forming the early stages of a blizzard.
Karl drew his sword and charged, hacking deep into the chest of one target, then parrying the blade of another as the blizzard faded before it was even formed.
These yetis were terrible combatants, they lacked fighting instinct and experience. In half a minute, it was all over, and the beasts rejoined Karl and the clerics.
Nobody said anything, not wanting to jinx their chances of getting out of here, but it looked like their odds weren’t that good to begin with.
There was more writing, this time appearing on the snow in front of them.
[Stage Complete] Lotus read.
“Now what do we do?” Karl asked, as Tessa rubbed Thor’s scales, getting him psyched up for another fight.
The words vanished, and new words replaced them.
[Rewards earned. Beginning Stage Two.]
Karl wasn’t certain what he got as a reward, but he did know that there were now two of those groups, with five low Ascended and one high Ascended fighter between them.
If the other groups were facing these odds at their own power levels, this might be a nasty fight, and Karl hoped that they were going to get everyone back in one piece.
“Thor and Rae, take left, I will take right with Hawk.” Karl instructed.
Their opponents were weak to fire, and they hesitated as they saw Karl’s body burst into flames, coating the lightning and melting the surrounding snow.
Then the barrage of fireballs came down from the sky, and they charged, knowing that in order to focus on their ranged attacks, they were going to have to deal with Karl first.
In the back, the leader was attacking Hawk, but between one spell caster and a very agile bird, none of the attacks were even getting close to hitting.
Tessa was chanting some sort of enhancement spell as they fought, and Lotus had trapped the leader’s feet with vines on Karl’s side, preventing him from avoiding the barrage of fireballs that Hawk sent his way.
Karl hacked into the bodies of the warriors, using his overwhelming strength to overpower the beasts which were at the bottom of Ascended, while he was near the top.
It could hardly even be called a fair fight when he had so many magical items on his side, and two clerics granting him buffs and restraining the enemies.
The fight was quickly ended, and the group gathered to make a plan as for how to deal with the third trial.
Tessa considered the likely outcome of a third stage. Three groups, the same as the first. “That’s going to be a lot of incoming enemies, and three of us isn’t enough to cover every side, unless we have Rae and the Spider Golems split up, which leaves me and Thor short on damage dealers.”
[Bah, send more of them, I’ll give them an extra dose of Find Out.] Hawk muttered in Karl’s mind, getting annoyed by the constant ice attacks.
Ice was just the evil cousin of the water family, and he was about done with their nonsense.
[This would be more fun if the lights were off.] Rae agreed as she waited for the next development to take place. Even if there were more, it wouldn’t be difficult to sneak up on them if it wasn’t the middle of the day.
Though, it was rather pleasant mixing all these whites and greys of armoured bodies and snow with the blood-red when she adapted her coloration to match the battlefield. As far as settings went, this was about the most pleasant one she had seen that wasn’t filled with trees.