Chapter 136: The seal- 4
The cavern was quiet once more. Rhys stood there, breathing heavily, his body aching from the strain of the fight.
He looked at the massive pile of rubble that had once been the cavern’s roof. He had won, but it had been a desperate, costly victory.
He walked over to Emma. She was leaning against the one remaining solid wall of the hollowed-out skull, her face pale, a thin trickle of blood coming from her nose.
She had used a massive amount of her mental energy to create the single, crucial distraction he needed.
"We did it," she whispered, a look of disbelief on her face.
"Yes," he said. He looked towards the east, in the direction of the faint light coming from the new hole the Behemoth had smashed in the skull.
That was their path forward, towards the distant promise of the Whispering Mire. "But the desert is not finished with us yet."
They did not rest for long. Every moment they stayed in one place, they were giving their unseen enemy time to find them, to send its next creation after them.
Rhys took out his last two stamina pills. He gave one to Emma and took the other himself. The cool, refreshing energy spread through their tired bodies, a temporary fix, but it was enough.
They climbed out of the ruined skull and back into the harsh, white light of the Boneyard Desert. The world was quiet again.
There were no more thumping footsteps, no more screeching Harriers in the sky. But the silence was not peaceful. It was the silence of a hunter holding its breath, waiting.
They began to walk east. The journey was a slow, grueling march. The adrenaline from the fight had faded, leaving behind a deep, bone-weary exhaustion.
Every step in the fine, hot sand was an effort. The landscape was a monotonous, shimmering expanse of white sand and giant bones.
They were two small, insignificant figures in a world that was actively hostile to them.
For a full day, they walked. They saw nothing. The desert seemed to have forgotten about them. But Rhys knew better. The entity that controlled this land was not a mindless beast. It was intelligent.
It had tested them with scouts, then with aerial hunters, then with a brute-force siege engine. Each attack had been different. Each had failed. The next attack would be smarter. It would be a trap.
On the morning of the second day after the battle with the Behemoth, they saw it. The landscape began to change. The flat, open dunes gave way to a vast, chaotic jumble of colossal skeletons. It was not a simple boneyard like the one they had used for cover.
This was a forest of bone. Massive ribcages formed a dense, interlocking canopy over their heads. Giant vertebrae were stacked on top of each other like strange, organic towers.
The ground was a maze of shattered skulls and massive leg bones.
Emma consulted her mother’s book. "This is the ’Spinal Maze’," she said, her voice a low murmur.
"The ancient texts say it is a place where the bones of the old gods are so dense that the very landscape is unstable. It is the final barrier before the Whispering Mire."
"Unstable?" Rhys asked, his senses on high alert.
As if to answer his question, the ground beneath their feet began to tremble. A low, grinding sound, the sound of ancient bone moving against bone, echoed all around them.
A massive pelvic bone, half-buried in the sand in front of them, slowly began to rise, blocking their path. Behind them, a wall of interlocking vertebrae shifted, closing the way they had come.
The landscape was rearranging itself.
"It’s a trap," Rhys said, his voice grim. The maze was alive. It was herding them.
"The book says there is a path," Emma said, her voice tight with concentration as she scanned the pages.
"A single, true path through the maze. But it changes. We have to follow the signs."
She became their guide. She would point to a specific pattern in the cracks of a giant skull, or a particular alignment of fossilised horns, and they would follow.
The maze was a constant, shifting puzzle. They would walk down a long corridor made from the spine of some great beast, only to have the path behind them seal shut.
They would climb over a mountain of shattered ribs, and the landscape on the other side would be completely different from what they had seen just minutes before.
They were rats in a cage, and the walls were constantly moving.
Rhys was the muscle. When a path was blocked by a wall of bone too large to climb, he would use his Spark Fist to blast a hole through it.
When a chasm opened up in the ground, he would find a loose rib bone and use it to create a makeshift bridge.
They worked as a team, her mind and his power, a single unit moving through an impossible, living labyrinth.
For hours, they navigated the shifting maze. They were getting deeper, closer to the center. Rhys could feel the presence of their enemy growing stronger.
This was not just a random trap. This was a hunting ground. And they were being led to the hunter.
Finally, they saw it. They emerged from a narrow tunnel of bone and into a vast, open, circular arena.
The arena was surrounded on all sides by a high, impassable wall of interlocking, giant skulls. In the center of the arena, sitting on a throne made of polished, white vertebrae, was the master of the maze.
It was not a giant beast like the Behemoth. It was a humanoid figure, about seven feet tall. Its body was made of a smooth, polished, and perfectly white bone, its form slender and elegant.
It had no flesh, no skin, just the pristine, beautiful structure of a perfect skeleton.
It wore a long, flowing cloak made of the same black, sinewy tissue as the Ossian Stalkers, and in its hand, it held a long, twisted scepter made from the spinal column of some unknown creature.
Its head was a smooth, featureless skull, but in its empty eye sockets, two points of a cold, intelligent red light burned with a malevolent power.
This was a Marrow Lord, a high-level commander of the entity behind the Seal. It was not a mindless brute. It was an officer. A general.
The Marrow Lord did not move from its throne. It simply watched them with its burning red eyes as they entered the arena.
The entrance to the tunnel they had just come through sealed shut behind them with a final, grinding sound. They were trapped.
The Marrow Lord slowly raised its spinal scepter. It did not speak. It did not need to. The ground around them began to tremble.
From the white, sandy floor of the arena, dozens of skeletal hands erupted. They were followed by arms, then torsos, then skulls.
In seconds, they were surrounded by an army of over a hundred skeletal warriors, their bones a dirty, yellowish-brown, their eyes glowing with the same red light as their master.
"Stay back," Rhys commanded Emma, pushing her behind him.
The skeletal army charged. They were not clumsy or slow like the undead in Silverwood. They were fast and skilled, their movements coordinated. They fought with a silent, disciplined fury.
Rhys met their charge. His Twilight Edge blades were useless against so many opponents. He relied on his Spark Fist.
He was a whirlwind of red, explosive fire. He punched and kicked, every blow shattering a skeleton into a shower of bone fragments. But for every one he destroyed, two more would rise from the ground to take its place.
He was being worn down. He was fighting a war of attrition against an enemy with an endless supply of soldiers. He needed to get to the true enemy. He needed to kill the Marrow Lord.
He saw an opening. He unleashed a massive, wide-arc Spark Fist explosion, a wave of fire that cleared a small, temporary path through the skeletal army.
He used Low-distance Jump, his body appearing directly in front of the bone throne.
The Marrow Lord finally stood up. It was incredibly fast. It met his charge, its spinal scepter a blur of motion. It was not a brute. It was a skilled warrior.
They fought. It was a true duel. Rhys’s fists against the Marrow Lord’s scepter. The sound of their blows echoed in the arena, a rapid-fire series of sharp cracks and booms.
The Marrow Lord was strong, its polished bone body as hard as steel. It could also fire bolts of red, necrotic energy from its scepter.
Rhys was faster, more skilled, but the Marrow Lord had the advantage of the terrain. It could control the very ground they fought on, summoning bone spikes and walls to trap him.
The fight was a stalemate. Rhys knew he could not win like this. He was just a Tier 3 cultivator in their eyes.
He needed to end this, and he needed to do it in a way that would not reveal the true, monstrous nature of his power.
He found his chance. The Marrow Lord raised its scepter, gathering energy for a powerful attack. In that moment of concentration, Rhys acted.
He raised his own hand. He did not form a Spark Fist. He formed a Twilight Edge blade.
The Marrow Lord, being a high-level creature of necrotic energy, was not immune to the light, but it was highly resistant. The shadow blade shot forward and struck it in the chest.
Flash.
The brilliant, white light erupted. The Marrow Lord let out a silent, psychic screech of pain and surprise.
The holy light did not destroy it, but it did something else. It disrupted its connection to its master, the entity behind the Seal.
For a single, crucial second, its movements became stiff and uncoordinated.
It was the opening Rhys had been waiting for.
He used his simple iron sword. He poured all of his Qi into a single, perfect thrust. The blade, glowing with a faint white light, shot forward.
It did not aim for the Marrow Lord’s hard, bony body. It aimed for the single, polished, human-like skull that was set in the center of its chest, the core that powered its entire being.
The sword struck true. There was a loud, sharp crack. The skull shattered into a hundred pieces. The red light in the Marrow Lord’s eye sockets flickered and died.
Its polished, white bone body crumbled into a pile of fine, white dust.
The moment the Marrow Lord died, the entire maze let out a final, shuddering groan. The skeletal army in the arena collapsed into lifeless piles of bone.
The massive skull walls that surrounded them began to sink back into the sand.
The trap was broken. The path to the east was clear.
Rhys stood there, breathing heavily, his body aching from the long, difficult fight. He walked over to the pile of dust that had been the Marrow Lord. In the center of the dust was a single, shard of a black crystal.
It was a piece of its core, and it hummed with a powerful, necrotic energy.
Emma ran up to him, her face pale but her eyes shining with relief. She looked at the crystal in his hand. On its surface was a single, strange rune that she recognized from her mother’s book.
"That symbol," she whispered. "It means ’Conductor’. A leader."
They looked at each other. This was not just a random monster. It was an officer, a general in an army of darkness.
Rhys looked towards the east. The oppressive, malevolent presence of the desert had lessened. The air felt cleaner, lighter.
In the far distance, he could see a faint, dark line on the horizon. It was not the familiar shape of mountains or the shimmer of a river. It was the deep, dark green of a forest.
The Whispering Mire. They had finally crossed the Boneyard Desert. They had survived.
But their journey was far from over.