Chapter Nineteen

It was dark, but Petra liked it better that way. Chesi did not, but could remedy the situation. She took a small orb out of her bag; it had been enchanted it to hover beside her while providing light to their travels.
Petra hated the little thing, it was one of Chesi's early eperimentations with alchemy. She'd written it a personality and even given it quirks; she'd even named it Fey. It bounced around as they walked, doing spins and generally expressing an air of perkiness and optimism. The intent was to lighten not only the room, but the mood as well. Petra's only pleasure in the thing was the hurt whimper it gave off whenever she batted it away.

The maze was wide, tall, and empty. The entrance had been occupied by several skeletons, but the rest of the halls were untouched. Petra was quick to point out that this was likely because of the number of bodies in the first room, and lack of traps since then. Chesi chose to take it as a good sign that nothing particularly dangerous was in the maze.

It surprised neither when she was wrong. Petra was actually quite relieved to see the large golem at the end of the vaulted chamber. He was stone, etched with runes and sygils akin to those on the door. He resmbled a Nielda, or human at the least; so whoever created the place had likely been themselves humanoid. He was armed with a mace and a shield, but did not attempt to enage them.
"Maybe it's just a statue."
"A runed statue? It's a golem Chesi. Do you want to kill it or should I?"
"Couldn't you just rewrite it like you did the door?"
"I'm a necromancer, not an alchemist. I don't know the first thing about golems. I could only rewrite the door because I recognized where the password was and happened to know the rune for 'reaper'."
"If you imobilized it I could probably rewrite it."

Petra stretched out her hand again. Fey retrated into the bag as the shadows swelled under her influence. The room grew dark as they converged on the golem, locking him into place. Chesi jogged up to it and began examining it.
"I was right! It really is just a statue."
The walls receded into the floor. Just beyond the columns that remained in their absence were hundreds of golems; all a perfect but functioning match for the statue Petra had needlessly bound to the floor.
"Those aren't."

Fire erupted in the vacant sockets of the stone company aroud them. The golems shuddered to life. Petra could see bones piled against the walls behind them. shattered swords and rusted armor were crushed underfoot as the golems began to enter the room's inner ring.

"Chesi, watch my back."
Petra called upon the shadow again. It responded to her influence more slowly this time. She faced a victorious army, but she would face them with an age of their victims at her side. She felt it like a second skin, the shadow bent to her will. She lost track of her own senses through the crawling of its power; feeling through the room with dark tendrils. She found what she was looking for, the walls and their skeletal companions. She let her power flow through them, her will was their life's blood.
"Have your revenge."

It wasn't a fair fight in the least. Stone and enchanted steel against bleached bone and rusted iron, While her armies were greater in number and skill they would have no victory. The sound of Chesi's hammer against the ancient wariors was alone the cry of sucess. They were surrounded at last; nineteen remained against her. Chesi was weary, she fought hard but her stamina was lacking. Petra raised her scythe and readied it for a blow against the igneous horde. The first one charged, Chesi tried to stop it but was knocked aside unconcious. Petra swung, connected but only scratched its rune-laden skin.

Then the chamber erupted with a power not her own. She knew them, from her first day of school when they'd made her famous and feared. Tentacles, wide and rough, burst through the boundaries of the universe and lashed out at her attackers. The golems became ensnared in the web of netherworldly power. She watched as all were torn apart and their sygils and runes desecrated by the writhing foe.

She slumped to the ground beside her friend. It was one thing to fight demons, but when they came to your aid it was another thing entirely.