Chapter 15: Under the Pile
The cave seemed to hum with crushing echoes around them. Rocks rolled and crashed down the ground, walls shaking as if they were about to come off. They weaved through the throng while Nomad refused to utter a word and kept sneaking glances from the ceiling.
Valens let Nomad drag him onward. The air had a different quality about it here. The sort that didn’t feel quite right. Above, through the jumble of tangled frequencies, he could hear hundreds of different tunes all carrying a hint of consciousness.
A nervous sensation crept around his chest.
They were getting closer to the exit. He felt the wind now more than ever. The draft almost pushed him further, beckoned him slowly toward the world above. Still, Nomad’s sudden change and the green fog weighed on his mind. It was still rolling off Nomad’s shoulders like a cape.
“Can you at least tell me what’s going on?” he said as Light Feet allowed him to keep pace with Nomad. “You look surprised just then. Disturbed. Why?”
“They must’ve found the Necromancer.” Nomad glanced at him, voice unnaturally stiff, emerald eyes carrying the remnants of the greenish fog. “It's the Everfog of Lord Zahul. He wouldn’t have crossed over the Pact without a good reason.”
“Everfog?” Valens asked. It looked like the same kind of fog that strangled a dozen Skeletons down below. The kind that seemed hostile against the bodies roused by the Necromancer.
Nomad did not answer. He was keeping to himself instead of paying Valens any heed, jaw moving soundlessly under the helmet.
They rounded a corner and came to a stop when the cavern forked into three different paths up ahead.
“Time to choose, Valens,” he said, giving him a look over the shoulder. He pointed a finger at the left-most entrance. “That’ll get you into another cave. You’ll see a bunch of Skeletons, but nothing more. Once you deal with them, you can then wait until the Quest is completed. The Keystone will get everyone of you back to Haven’s Reach once it's done.”
Valens moved over to the side and regarded the paths with his sound vision. He caught a set of frequencies thrumming under the mossy ground, most of them coming from the middle path. Steps and thumps of strong beats. The left-most path was steeper with a stronger draft through the incline. The right-most path, instead, sloped downward.
“You’re thinking of picking that one,” Valens said with a nudge of his head toward the middle path. “It’s crowded there. Chaotic, too.”