Chapter Sixty-Two: Entrance Chamber

3 0 0
                                        

Time had flown before anyone had realized. Joint training, planning, disaster scenarios, and optimal pairings when it came to splitting up. Scenarios involving two, three, and four-person teams whizzed by in a flash. The last little bit of their training that was missing to make them a cohesive army of twelve completed in the blink of an eye. All that was left was the execution.

All twelve of them stood in front of the entrance to the guild's headquarters. The Alchemist's Tower held no outward signs of malice or inherent evil, but the atmosphere hung thick with the presence of vile energies. Each of the Prodigies felt it, even if they didn't know exactly what it was.

Garvhoz and Core looked towards each other. They nodded to each other before looking behind them. Right behind them were Seilan, Svetra. Nano hung close by middle of the soldier duo. Behind him were Tora, Noromac, Celesta in a neat row with Celesta being in the middle. The rest of the party, Ellondra, Jasper, Voleria, and Alegna, were in the back. They had practiced their formation countless times within the past few weeks to get their cohesion down.  It was all at the feverish behest of Celesta.

Ever since that message from The Mothers she hadn't been the same. It wasn't until just before this moment that Nano and Tora both had the same look in their eyes. She was convinced it was the same look she carried. A mixture of determination and fear.

Core and Garvhoz stood just mere feet in front of the entrance, once Celesta's spell that was cloaking the party fell the two powerhouses burst the doors down and rushed in. Nano threw up some barriers in front of the party and waited to feel some sort of resistance as the dust and debris cleared up, but he couldn't feel a thing through the insignificant seconds it took for the Prodigies to enter the room. In fact, the only feeling he could get was how slick the floor felt. His shoes found little to bite into, but he had managed to keep his ground.

It wasn't until everything settled that they all found out what it was.

Blood smeared the floor and walls of what looked like the lobby. There were various limbs and indistinguishable body parts strewn across the entirety of the large chamber. Immediately upon recognizing the sight before them, Seilan and Tora vomitted, and then, just moments later, the smell had hit everyone. Ellondra's nose burned the most from the wretched smells that entered it. The rest of them were stunned by both the sight and putridity of the entire thing. The only ones unbothered were Voleria and Alegna. Voleria could hardly contain itself and quickly burst all across the room to feed for the rest of the day ahead. Alegna followed suit and quickly spread throughout the room to collect what they could.

"Who could have done this?" groaned Ellondra.

Nano was the quickest to recover and moved towards the large structure in the middle of the room. It seemed like it connected to various parts of the entire building. All inside of it there were notes, leaflets, books, and various sheets of paper all addressed to the multitude of different rooms, halls, chambers, basements, stairwells, and even dungeons in the Tower.

With the help of Noromac and Seilan, Nano was able to piece together a rough map from some of what they found. It wasn't perfect, as not all of the information alluded to the relation between other spots very well, but they had a general gist of the outline of the tower which was apparently much larger inside than it looked outside.

They concluded that there were just a few major parts to the tower. Resources, The Keep, Testing, and Housing. Some of the sub-sections in those were Human Progress, Fungal Storage, Helio-thematic Conduct Chamber, and Prime Wards. Some of those subsections had smaller components of their own like 5th Quarter, and Helio-Projection. They had concluded that they would waste a lot of time if they didn't manage their resources correctly.

After a bit of thinking they concluded who was grouped with who. Celesta and Garvhoz were the only two-man squad. The three-man squads were Tora, Seilan, and Alegna, and Noromac, Nano, and Ellondra. The four-man squad consisted of Core, Svetra, Voleria, and Jasper. Each team had some sort of crowd control at their disposal, long range engagement covered, and close combat secured along with at least one sufficiently strong magic user.

They didn't know what they were going up against, but they needed to go through as much of the Tower as quickly as possible and sabotage the entirety of the guild's efforts and plans. If this were a normal tower it would have been best to go with the entire year-group punching through every single floor and destroying the entire thing. Yet, as it turns out, the Tower is everything but a tower from the inside.

"If it was easy, it wouldn't be fun. Now would it?" Jasper never could read the room. If he could, he didn't care.

"Remember. This isn't supposed to be a massacre. Just a sabotage. Disarm and immobilize any that resist. If continued threat and execution of force persist you are free to do as you want." Garvhoz looked at the entire year-group one by one to make sure that each of them understood. Especially so at the ones who've already killed before.

"Sounds like a plan to me. And if we need to call on assistance?" Seilan looked at Svetra, Jasper, and Ellondra.

"Me, Tora, Nano, and Core can talk to each other fairly easily if we must." Tora nodded in response to Celesta. It had taken her some time compared to the rest of the magic that Celesta taught her, but she got the hang of telepathy pretty well.

"Sufficient. If retreat is in order, what procedures do we adhere to?" Alegna hadn't ever thought of retreat until they fought the Quillian. They never knew something could surprise and frighten it.

"There's a bigger problem if we need to retreat for any reason, but I'd imagine we're all capable of punching a hole through as many walls as we need to get outside if we have to. If we must we can take the entirety of the building down. We still need to do at least some investigation before that to know what their means were."  Noromac was quick to an answer and everyone seemed in agreement with him.

"Lets go." Garvhoz could feel the nods of agreement before they went their separate ways.

The Prodigies: The Return of EquinoxWhere stories live. Discover now