"Okay, I’ll go first." Cassian announced.
He tightened his grip on his sword and slowly went up the stairs.
"There’s nothing her-"
He was interrupted by a blade narrowly missing his throat - he managed to step back at the last second, but he tripped and tumbled down.
"Are you alright Cass? What happened?" Calen looked at the dark opening in the ceiling but couldn’t make out anything.
"I’m fine, but I think we underestimated our enemies."
They could hear angry hissing from the floor above, the monsters were clearly displeased with missing.
Then the creatures moved closer to the entrance and the group could finally see them - their orange eyes were glowing in the dark, and each of the five little reptiles was holding a very primitive spear.
"They can use weapons?"
"Apparently." Alfred exhaled sharply. "If they’re smart enough to do that then I’m worried how many evolved individuals they have."
For some reason the monsters didn’t attack any further, they just hissed at them and made vague threatening motions with their rudimentary weapons.
Calen wasn’t going to ponder the reason they were so strangely passive - with a wave of his hand he sent a golden fan of flames forward, instantly incinerating the creatures.
What he didn’t expect was that the hissing didn’t stop - in fact it got louder and angrier - it seemed like there were many, many more monsters in the chamber above.
"I think you made them angry." Isara commented.
"I’m sorry, was I supposed to kill them in a polite way?" Calen looked at her with a deadpan expression. "I’m going to blast the room with everything I’ve got, we’ll clean up the ones that remain afterwards."
He started gathering flame in his palm, but this time he didn’t stopped when it got too large - instead he compressed the flames to the initial size and continued to feed it more power. He repeated this process three times before he was out of energy.
As a result he was holding a fireball resembling a miniature sun, although from the way it was pulsating it was quite clear the power inside wasn’t entirely stable, and would explode the moment it was released.
"You might want to close your eyes, the flame won’t hurt us but I can’t do anything about the light."
When all his companions looked away he ascend half of the staircase, and simply threw the flame into the space above - it flew a couple metres into the air and then exploded.
There was no sound - but there was light, a lot of it.
Even though Calen managed close his eyes in time, he could still see the intensity of it through his eyelids.
Once the light subsided he opened his eyes and yelled:
He and his companions finally entered the next floor, only to see that it was engulfed in absolute chaos.
It was difficult to tell how many Krakee died in the initial explosion, but the two dozen that remained were all on fire, running around the chamber in a desperate attempt to extinguish the flames.
"Damn it, that’s one hell of an attack." Alfred whistled. "Can you do that again?"
"Not any time soon, the more power I use in a single attack the longer it takes for it to recharge." Calen shook his head.
"Guys, I don’t think the attack killed everything!" Isara warned them, pointing at something in the far end of the room.
She was right, every monster that was on fire died, but one of them was spared from the flames - and the reason why was obvious.
The creature was almost twice as big as the rest of its brethren, and instead of a primitive spear it was holding a genuine, if slightly rusty, sword. Another big difference was its armour - or the fact that it has one at all - a few pieces of bent and partial destroyed plate attached to its body with a substance similar to the mucus they saw a floor below.
That said, the monster was still wounded heavily - all of it exposed flesh was scorched, even charred in some areas, and it was barely able to stand upright.
"That sword..." Alfred’s eyes widened.
In a split second he was next to the beast and beheaded it with a single strike.
When Calen saw him reach for the sword he tried to warn him:
It was too late, Alfred already burned his hand on the metal, and let out a string of curses so long that it was almost impressive.
"The entire room was on fire, what were you expecting?" Elira huffed, walked up to him and started rummaging in her pouch. "Hand."
Alfred obediently extended his palm, and a few moments later it was covered in cooling paste and perfectly bandaged.
"It should be healed by tomorrow, but for now you’re out of combat I’m afraid." She studied the sword lying on the ground. "You recognise it?"
"I wasn’t sure at first, but yes - it’s a sword forged by the Order, one given to every initiate who goes on their battle trial. It’s not that unusual to find one here, since it’s technically Order’s hunting grounds." Despite his words he was still frowning.
"So what’s the issue then?" Cassian questioned.
"This blade’s state is too good - it’s rusty yes, but that’s from lack of maintenance - there are no signs of actually usage, which means that the initiate wielding it either died before they had a chance to defend themselves..."
"...or they discarded it because they found a better weapon." Calen finished. "You don’t think this is Arthur’s original sword, do you?"
"It’s a possibility, but a very slim one." Alfred eyed the blade. "Unfortunately some initiates simply die during their trial, and if one were to find this temple they would surely perish."
"Well then, as gruesome as it sounds we should probably look for any other evidence of a young knight dying here."
"Good idea." The knight nodded. "I think the altar is on the next floor, if we’re lucky we’ll be able to avoid fighting the most powerful monsters."
Calen didn’t like that sentence - it sounded like a jinx.