Elysium's Multiverse

Chapter 36

As Riven moved back to the metal cage where Athela and the young man were still waiting with excitement in their eyes, they began to urge him on to be faster. Athela’s face lit up with laughter while Riven produced the set of keys and came around to the front to try the lock, and he gave his minion the equivalent of a fist bump to one of her outstretched limbs while cursing under his breath amid the screams of battle.

“You did so well!” Athela said with a chittering guffaw. “I can’t believe you came back for me! You know, you could have just summoned another minion if I died… What you did was stupid. But you came for me!”

Riven stopped what he was doing only briefly to give her a flat look. “I’d never leave you behind after what you did for me, Athela. You’re my partner now, and I’m going to see you out and alive.”

He started working on the lock again, cursing as he tried key after key. However, he did notice the abrupt change in his minion just a second later.

Athela had started crying tears of previously suppressed emotion. She’d stopped shaking, though she was still in obvious pain due to her wounds. Riven had never seen a spider cry, and it took him aback, not having expected it at all. Her face was pushed against the metal bars as Riven worked. “You’re a maniac! But I suppose I am a princess, after all, so I can understand why you came to save me. I take back all those things I said about you being a useless warlock or a smelly human! Good job!”

“You said those things?!”

“Possibly.”

Riven rolled his eyes at his minion while shaking his head and began fumbling with the metal pieces in his hands. Riven tried another key without success before cursing and moving on. The ground shook as the overconfident lurker demon was finally taken down with an air-shattering roar of pain, and a backward glance told him that it was being eaten alive with horrible wailing sounds and continued thrashing while dozens upon dozens of ghouls raced over their numerous defeated comrades to pile over it.

Karma was a bitch.

“Fuck!” His curse came out as a whisper, but he managed to get the second key into the lock as the two occupants of the cage silently watched him—helpless to do anything themselves.

The lock clicked a second later, though, and the cage door swung open, with Riven giving himself a silent congratulations.

“Let’s go.”

The new guy didn’t hesitate and pushed past Riven, lurching out of the cage and over to where two large linen bags were sitting next to a crate. He tried picking both of them up, but the combined load was obviously far too heavy for him to lift. So he turned around and frantically motioned to the second bag while he picked up the first. “One of you, help me take these!”

Riven immediately grew angry at the suggestion. Athela was in no way able to pick up a bag that size in her current condition, and he was already occupying himself as he gingerly picked up the injured minion and cradled her in his arms. “Get fucked and leave it!”

“No! We take it with us!”

Riven scowled even more deeply, feeling anger simmer up in his face as he turned and tried to balance the spider in his grasp along with the staff he carried. He had no idea what was in those two bags, but it was obviously important enough that Jalel chose to stop in the midst of a battle with an oncoming swarm of enemies to get them.

Meanwhile, Athela’s sparkling ruby eyes gazed up into his face unwaveringly—mesmerized and shaking slightly in her master’s arms.

With a grunt of irritation, Riven rushed forward toward the exit and completely ignored the silver-haired man, shoving past the sack Jalel tried to give him. “I told you to get fucked. I’m not carrying that—it should be obvious I have my hands full!”

“Leave the spider and take this instead!” the man hissed with anger evident in his eyes. “She’s a fucking demon, and she even said you could summon another one if she died! Leave her! This stuff is valuable back in the core systems!”

Core systems?

Riven had half a mind to kill the man right there for suggesting Riven leave Athela behind, and his grip around Athela tightened ever so slightly.

What a prick.

The bag in Jalel’s grasp clinked together with the sound of metal on metal of some sort, and he was obviously struggling just to carry the other one alone, but Riven couldn’t care less. He gave Jalel a final glare along with a middle finger, rushed right on past, and didn’t say a word while he made his way for the door.

Then he felt a small spider foot repeatedly jab his shoulder at lightning speed, and he looked down at the minion, who was eagerly pointing off to their right with enthusiasm unbecoming of her injured state. “HURRY AND GRAB THAT STONE!”

She pointed to something behind him, and he whirled, half expecting to see an enemy lunging at them by the way she seemed so frantic.

That’s when he spotted what she had been pointing at. Not even twenty feet away, over the spot where those Jabob demons had been conjuring something from a summoned pentagram, was a glowing red orb. It hovered over the stone tile, sparking with occasional bursts of bright-crimson light and displayed another pentagram on its surface. Demonic runes were etched into the edges of the orb surrounding the pentagram as well—and a feeling of uneasiness overcame him as he stared it down.

“GET IT! GO, GO, GO!” Athela screamed over the din of battle, starting to slam her little spider legs into his shoulder again, and then she began to wriggle when she thought he was going to ignore her and take her out the door anyways. “WE NEED THAT SHINY THING!”

They were beginning to draw attention from the remaining combatants not far off…but Riven didn’t have to be told a third time. With a sideways glance at the battling demons and undead, Riven rushed toward the altar. His heart pounded hard, echoing in his eardrums as one of the bearded combatants finally noticed him and let out a hate-filled scream.

“THAT IS MINE, HUMAN SCUM!” the last living Jabob sneered, turning to raise a hand in Riven’s direction only to have his arm batted away by one of the ghouls he’d been fighting a second before.

The apelike red demon roared and went down under the ghoul’s weight, quickly forgetting Riven. Meanwhile, the warlock came to a stop right in front of the floating red orb. A quick look over the thing at close range gave him the heebie-jeebies, and he could literally feel heat radiating off it.

Riven hesitated just a moment, seriously reconsidering touching that glowing, floating orb etched with demonic symbols after remembering what’d happened when he’d tried picking up the wooden ring or the claymore just a day ago. This item, whatever it was, was surely far beyond his current level—and one try identifying it clarified his thoughts.

“Riven! Hurry!”

He snapped out of his trance and snatched the stone out of the air a second later. Turning heel, he handed the orb to Athela, who placed it between her mandibles, and he began running as fast as his legs could carry him amid the nearby screams of battle.

Jalel gave Riven a loud groan of complaint when Riven passed him by, not wanting to leave the other bag behind—but he picked up his own sack and took off with what he could carry. Not long after, all three of them were through the metal door leading into the building, and another minute had passed by the time they were running down an adjacent hallway to put distance between them and the battle they’d so narrowly escaped.

The first crimson lights of this dungeon’s version of dawn began trickling in through the open window of the ancient, musty tower they’d set up residence in. The lidless, flaming eye was back, and it was glaring down upon their floating island of the abyss with mindless scrutiny. The one entrance leading down from the highest level they now rested in was closed and deadbolted shut in five different places, and although it’d made him feel somewhat secure, it also made Riven question what this barren room had been used for in the past. The red mist was still somewhat present, obscuring the ruined gothic city that sprawled out for miles in all directions, but the dulled rays of the flaming eye overhead were still a warm welcome compared to the dark night.

Riven was still groggy, exhausted, and uncomfortable on the stone floor, but he was happy to be alive. Turning his head, he saw that Athela had nestled up against him and was fidgeting with that stone again. He grinned at the spider and remembered with fondness the notification that’d appeared when he’d taken her suppression collar off last night.

The suppression collar itself had shattered when he’d taken it off, the collar not recognizing him as its bonded owner even though he’d used the key for it. They must act like Riven’s totems did…or at least similar to them—the totems bound to him as their specific owner, too. Either way, Athela had explained that those suppression collars each had nullification abilities that would stop someone from using abilities of any sort, and oftentimes they weakened the captive physically. After Athela had gotten into a fight with some kind of werewolf, she’d been injured and easy pickings for the cultists to clean up—which was how she’d gotten into that situation in the first place.

The other guy—Jalel—was still asleep, but Riven gave Athela a wave when he rubbed his eyes to clear the sleepiness away.

“Morning, Athela!”

She beamed up at him, chittering lightly and pushing her face up against his own to rub against him. “Good morning! Feeling blessed?”

Blessed? What the hell was Athela talking about? Riven felt anything but blessed, and it was an odd question to ask considering she was a demon. Then again, considering he had an Unholy blessing himself, he could assume blessed didn’t necessarily mean holy or what have you.

He pushed himself up to his knees and then to his feet, extending a hand over to his minion, and paused as he got a better look at the stone she was carrying in her spider paws. The glowing red orb with the demonic symbols etched into its sides was pulsing slightly. She rubbed it with her newly regenerated legs—regeneration being a perk of the contract between minion and master—and Riven’s eyes narrowed.

“Ready to try again?” Athela asked, pushing the bauble into his lap and lightly tapping it with a red-and-black foot. “I’m so excited!”

“Are you now? Just how good is a ‘B-grade’ demon, anyways?”

Athela shrugged. “Decently good. Not anything super special or overpowered, but for a beginner warlock? I’d say it’s a pretty decent boon. I’m a C-grade type demon myself, if that puts things into perspective. The thing is, you weren’t supposed to be able to bind another demon until we left the tutorial, but this?!”

She indicated the miracle stone with one pointed foot. “This will circumvent that problem and allow you to get another familiar now instead of needing to wait!”

Riven’s face fell, and he sighed. He’d tried using it last night three separate times at her urging but had failed to get ahold of whatever demon was kept inside there. Apparently Hellscape Brutalisks were pretty solid choices for tank-type demons, and the chance to get another minion was definitely a nice find.

He glanced up again to meet her eyes, and she gave him a mischievous cackle.

“I don’t think it’ll work,” Riven stated with a frown, rolling the bauble in his hands and feeling the warmth enter his body. “I already tried three times, Athela. It isn’t responding to me.”

She flippantly waved a foot his way, and her arachnid abdomen bobbed up and down in excitement. “Then try again! Maybe he or she was just having a bad day.”