Summoned by Monster Girls

Entering the room that appeared to be an ancient version of a surgical or dissection suite set all the hairs on my body doing a jig at the eerie feeling in the air.

I lead the way, with the girls following close behind me. The door was barred from the side of the observation room with a spinning wheel that threw a bar inside the door. It protested loudly at being used, with a scraping of ancient metal long past the point any grease would have dried.

When the door dividing the observation room from the surgery theater opened, I half expected to smell the rank scent of old blood. The whole exploration had taken a turn from ‘ancient mystery’ back to ‘horror movie’ with the discovery of the surgery theater. However, the air on the other side of the door had no trace of the scent of blood. Only the same ancient and dusty scent that had permeated the rest of the ruins was here.

Besides the table set in the middle of the room, there was nothing else to break up the monotony of the space. No trays holding tools or sample jars, mobile stands of lights to bring in closer illumination, or even a surface to hold writing materials for someone taking notes while others worked.

“This is really creepy,” Kassandra muttered, shuffling her serpentine tail so that she could press back against my hip while the three of us surveyed the room.

“Agreed.” Rieka’s one-word reply pulled my attention to the wolf-eared woman, and I turned her way to check on Rieka.

The fur on Rieka’s ears and tail was fluffed up, nerves clearly showing in their poofy look. Her tail hung limply behind her while her ears flicked back and forth on top of her head, nervously scanning the room. As I watched, she checked, then re-checked the ceiling to ensure nothing was lurking there. The ceiling of the room was relatively low, only going to around ten feet off the floor, and studded with a dozen of the light-panels that cast brilliant illumination down on us. But she still checked it, and I was proud of her for keeping track of our surroundings.

“Well then, nothing here. Do we check through that door,” I indicated the still sealed doorway set into the back wall that led out of the surgery theater, “or head back into the main hall and check the door at the end that is damaged?” I hiked a thumb over my shoulder, back the way we had come.

The girls shared a silent look before Kassandra shrugged and made a wafting gesture towards Rieka, apparently turning the decision over to her.

Rieka worried at her bottom lip with her teeth for a long moment before sighing and looking at the securely locked door.

“I’d rather go clear the hallway. Given the number of things that have jumped out at us, I don’t like leaving an open door at our rear that we haven’t confirmed is safe. But there is also no way of knowing if the door before us has a latch on the other side.” Rieka huffed cutely through her nose and scowled at the door. I was about to offer to flip a coin to help her decide when she shook her head, which sent her wolf-ears flopping in that adorable fashion they did, and straightened up. “We are already here. Let us check this door.”

“You got it, Rieka. Kass, keep an eye at our backs just in case, okay? Rieka raised a good point, and I wouldn’t be surprised if more of those shadow thingies are running around. Having a section of bright light, like the surgery theater here, will act as a barrier to them. But, if we have more golems or something that doesn’t care about the light, then we might have issues.” I got a smirk and a sloppy salute from my redheaded lover before I led our trio past the table and across the expanse of the empty stone room.

The only thing that stood out the entire trip was the gaping opening in the floor right below where the table drains would empty. The opening had the same dark stains as the stone table. Clearly, this was where the blood or other fluids of whatever unfortunate were strapped into the table would drain away. I was again thankful that I could not smell anything. I doubt I could have put on as stoic a look if the whole place stank of blood.

Unlatching the doorway in the back of the room took another effort of strength. The ancient mechanisms still protested being forced to work, despite whatever magic was preserving them from the ravages of time in this strange space. Rieka kept close to me, covering my front while I focused on the doorway, and Kassandra kept watch at our back.

The door finally opened with another loud shriek of metal on metal, revealing a small antechamber that held shelves of tools as well as racks to hang clothing on.

I did my absolute best to not look at the saws, blades, levers, and other implements of dubious medical purpose that lined shelves here.

One corner of the room had a section of different tiles and a metal trough that looked like a wash basin. I only stepped close enough to confirm nothing was hiding in it.

Another door led out on the far side of the room and the girls crowded in close with me as we crossed. Both it and the door that we had come through to enter this small room were larger than the other single doors we had encountered. They were still just a single door each, but were a good four to five feet wide and almost eight tall.

I checked on my girls with a glance and the stoic expressions on both told me to push on. The other door let out a quieter squeal than the first two at being forced to operate, and I let out a sigh of relief. The shriek of metal on metal was grating on my nerves, and I was glad to not have to deal with it at close proximity more than I was absolutely required to.

When the door opened far enough to get into the other room, I winced and immediately wished that the worst I’d had to deal with was the squealing door when I got a view of what lay on the other side of the portal.

Cages.

There were easily two dozen cages made of flat bars of iron scattered about the room. They were arranged mostly against the walls with at least three feet of distance between each of them, but four larger cages sat in the middle of the room. Chains dangled from the center of the ceiling of each of the cages, clearly meant to restrain whatever was occupying them. The door we came through led to an open lane with the tiled floor clearly marked to denote where it was ‘safe’ to pass amongst the cages.

The smaller cages were maybe eight feet square, while the larger ones in the center of the wide room were about fifteen feet square. Each of the cages had a locking door of the same metal lattice, though there was a short slot at the bottom of the door to slide food dishes through. Other than the dangling chains and a couple of ancient dishes marked by dessicated stains to show their long-dried remnants, the cages were without decoration or comfort.

The presence of the cages, and the clinical arrangement of them, made the bodies that lay in them even more horrifying, though.

Within the center of the room, three of the four larger cages were empty. One held the ancient remains of some large quadruped.

The body was the size of an African lion, but without a mane and bearing two heads. It stirred weakly, and the bone-rattling groan told me that the only reason this corpse was still present was due to whatever power was animating the dead in this place. The dangling chain linked to a metal collar set around the throat of the left head.

The cages against the walls held other bodies, but these were bipedal. Only about half of the outer cages had an occupant, and all of them were restrained with the chain linking to a thick collar around their neck, save for two bodies in a cell in the corner. These unrestrained bodies were also the only ones that appeared to be human. They were dressed in the time-worn rags of what looked to be long, pale-blue surgical garments.

All around the room, the dead contained in the cages began to stir and moan, struggling to rise on damaged limbs or shift bodies that had not moved in centuries.

“Merciful heavens,” Kassandra breathed as she stared in disgust at the trapped undead. A raspy roar from the twin-headed lion in the central cage broke her from her staring and she flinched.

“We have to put them down,” Rieka’s words were full of iron, and she stepped up to my back while brandishing her spell rod. I held her back with one arm and caught a glare because of it.

“I can do it. It’ll be easy enough to get a shifted limb through the bars. You two watch my back.” Rieka stared at me for a moment before her features softened and she nodded.

Taking a moment to study the cages, I found that each had a clearly denoted door in the front with an elaborate lock built into the metal cage and the door itself. The keyhole was deeply recessed and looked complicated, even with the type of construction we’d seen so far. I doubted I’d have been able to get inside the cage without a key unless I beat the doors down. This was a benefit, though, as none of the undead could escape to harm us.

I dealt with the lion-thing first, as it was the loudest of the undead with its raspy roars.

A pair of blows from the heavily armored version of my scorpion tail/arm was enough to send it ashing away into dust when the magic animating it fled. Being as close as I was to it, I noted the fact that the two heads appeared to be a natural state of the creature, rather than some kind of bizarre experiment that had been done on it.

Kassandra and Rieka again kept watch, having followed me out into the lane marked ‘safe’ by the tiles. Rieka was focused entirely on the contents of the cages, while Kassandra swapped her gaze between the door leading back the way we had come, and another set of double doors in the right-hand wall that hung closed at the moment.

With the lion-thing dealt with, the groaning of the other undead was the only noise in here besides our own rapid breathing.

“You sure that I should put these down? They aren’t a threat in the cages,” I started to ask, wondering if the girls would want to study the undead at all. I got a furious nod from both my girls.

“Some undead still retain memories of their life. It depends on what it was that reanimated them, if it bound the soul to the body once more. On the off chance that these poor unfortunates are like that, we have to bring them peace,” Rieka said firmly. I nodded before making a circuit of the outer cages.

The chains in the cages actually kept the trapped undead from even reaching the bars, as it barely had the slack for the creatures to lay down. I saw several different species in the cages, some that I recognized and others that I did not.

One cage held an obviously dwarven man from his stocky build. Another held an elven woman, her pointed ears dried and cracking as the undead struggled with mindless hate at the warmth of the living. A third cage held a large woman, easily seven feet tall, with skin the color of granite and a mouth full of sharp teeth. This one strained at its chain so hard that the collar was actually breaking skin and would have likely killed the undead if I left it be, now that it was riled up.

All the cages with only one occupant held the remains of those who were obviously not human. I recognized the race of less than a third of them. And none of the cages held repeats of the same species, except for the sole cage that held humans in it. This was also the only cage that did not have the chain restraining the occupants, so I left it for last.

The two mummified humans were up against the bars, thrusting dessicated arms through the bars in an attempt to get a hold of me. I had to aim carefully to get a blow through the narrow gap in the bars to pulp their heads. It felt somewhat unfair to end them while they were still in cages, but I swallowed that feeling because I knew it was infinitely safer for the girls this way. I wasn’t about to worry about fighting fair with the undead.

Being up close to those humans let me study their bodies a bit before I sent them back into dust, and I relayed what I found to the girls when I rejoined them.

“Those two in the corner cage. I think they actually locked themselves in.” Rieka and Kassandra both stared at me in surprise at the statement.

“What makes you say that?” Rieka was the first to formulate a question as I led the girls to the set of double doors to continue our inspection.

“The stains on their robes, the type of clothing they were wearing, and the fact they weren’t chained up,” I answered quietly. “Their robes were speckled with bloodstains and not slashed or damaged like the other undead we’ve found. That implies blood-spray, since there are no injuries. They weren’t chained up, either. I have the sneaking suspicion that, whatever it was that killed the other humans and damaged or destroyed the war-golems, chased them in here and they hid inside the cage. Probably starved there.”

“That’s… bleak,” murmured Kassandra, and I felt my serpentine lover snuggle into my side for a moment of comfort. I dropped my arm around her shoulders to pull her close as well, and she sighed quietly.

“I want to find out what happened here. No, I need to know. This is… far more disturbing than anything I’ve read about,” Rieka said at last, glancing around the room.

“Agreed. We have a duty to document all that we can find here.” Kassandra straightened up as she spoke before shooting me a pained glance. “I’m sorry, Liam. This sort of space isn’t going to paint ancient humans in a positive light…”

“Oh, that is obvious, nugget,” I reassured her with a small smile and her pet name before I bent to press a kiss to her forehead. “I don’t care. These aren’t my people. Even if they were, there are monsters in every race.”

Nodding silently, Kassandra wrapped her arms around my neck before I could straighten and pulled me down into a more serious kiss. When she finally released me, I was promptly grabbed and turned around to look at Rieka.

Expecting a rebuke, I was surprised when my wolf-eared companion also pressed a kiss to my lips.

Given that Rieka was taller than Kassandra, I didn’t have to bend nearly as far down to meet her lips. Rieka actually pressed herself to my chest during the kiss and I again cursed my armor for stealing the sensation of her leaning into me.

I need to improve Shape-Shifting so I can disregard armor in the future. If I could just shift scales or the like into place, then I could shift it away to enjoy these moments when the girls need comfort. I couldn’t help the irritated thought that crossed my mind, but I did keep it off my face as I enjoyed the sweet kiss of reassurance.

Rieka released me a moment later, leaning her head against my chest for a moment and not saying anything before she too stepped away. The three of us stood in silence for a few more heartbeats, readying ourselves for what new surprises might come and taking comfort in the presence of companions.

“Okay,” I said with a sigh and shook myself. “Double doors next.”

<><><>

The double doors for the cage room lead into another long hallway that I was pretty sure ran parallel with the main hall. The floor, like in the cage room, had a clearly marked pathway worked into the tile that denoted the center three or so feet of the hall and we followed it carefully.

Set into the left-hand wall were eight doorways that had solid iron doors blocking them. At the furthest end of the hallway was another set of double doors that were distorted and damaged, like the set in the main hall, but these were not missing a door at least.

Claw marks in the stone of the walls were the only decoration besides the tiles in this hallway. Clear gouges in the floor where chunks of tiles had been pried up in what had to have been a tremendous fight broke the path up ahead of us as well. In all, it gave the hallway a much more tattered feeling to the clean stone of the surgery we had left.

The first door had a brass plaque set in the center of the door that had the blocky, runic writing that I had seen on the copper map. It took a minute for the translation ability of being a Traveler to kick in, but it did.

“It says ‘Ritual Supply - Restricted’.” I read out to the girls and both stopped to inspect the door. An oddly shaped keyhole sat above the bar handle and when I tugged on it, the door didn’t budge. The girls and I shared a glance before all three of us looked back towards the cage-room.

Doubling back, I sifted through the dusty piles from the two human zombies, but came up with nothing. I’d hoped that one of them had the key, but no such luck. We were about to abandon it when Rieka spotted a gnarled, iron key hanging from one of several hooks above a desk by the door to the surgery theater. I took it down and hefted it in my hand. A quick test on an empty cage confirmed that it didn’t work for them, so I took it back to the supply closet.

Returning to the hallway, I inserted the key into the lock and gave it a twist. The tumblers shifted with a gritty sound of protest before I tugged the door open.

On the far side of the door was a small room, a closet really, that held a number of tools. There were small iron braziers stacked on the ground under the lowest shelves. Several shelves had a waxy residue on them that led me to believe they once held candles, but time had claimed those. Smaller jars held lumps of the resin incense that we’d found in the larger storeroom below and there was a crate of charcoal blocks for burning that incense. On another shelf was a slotted wooden rack that held sticks of the heavy chalk that the girls had claimed.

The real treasure was tucked into a rack on the side of the room, though.

Four glass containers roughly the size of a mason jar with a sealing lid were about two-thirds full of vibrating crystals. Blue, red, pale yellow, and deep brown crystals that I recognized immediately as the elemental mana crystals. Another jar, set slightly to one side and back, held three crystals roughly the size of my pinky nail that were clear, but glowed with the iridescent light of the mana infused coins.

“Are those…?” Rieka breathed in surprise, staring at the three smaller crystals.

“Pretty sure they are,” Kassandra said while alternately peeking into the supply room and down the tunnel as she kept watch.

“Care to fill me in, girls?” I asked, exasperated.

“Pure mana crystals. Unaspected mana in crystalline form,” Rieka explained sheepishly, her tail wagging slightly.

“Well then, that’s gotta be useful. Let’s secure these and keep looking.” I began lifting down the jars and worked to secure them in the dimensional pouch that Rieka carried.

She took a moment to rearrange a blanket as well to pad the jars, just to be on the safe side. The jar with the pure crystals in it, Rieka actually kept out. She hefted it for a moment thoughtfully before glancing at Kassandra, who just smiled and nodded to her friend.

Before I could ask, Rieka twisted the lid and opened the jar carefully. I felt the mana hit me like a punch in the chest as soon as the jar opened, so I had to guess that it was somehow shielding the contents.

“Here, Liam. These are yours.” Rieka gave me a shy smile as she offered the open jar to me.

“Wha? Why?” I asked intelligently. Rieka rolled her eyes with an amused smile before she elaborated.

“You said before that your mana is naturally unaspected. It’s only when you filter it through Manipulate Element that it changes to earth mana. That is why you can use the earth crystals to power it. Do you remember what we talked about before with supplements and how summoners normally empower their companions through gifts?”

I nodded slowly as I reached back into my memory for that. I remembered something that Cariad had said about being careful not to sway my natural mana by taking elementally aligned supplements, but time was still feeling weird. I couldn’t remember if it was last week or a month ago that I had the conversation with Cariad.

“So what should I do with these? It feels like a waste to use them to power Manipulate Elements when you already said I could use the earth ones and those aren’t nearly as rare as these pure ones seem to be.” I stared into the open mouth of the jar at the glimmering stones curiously.

“You eat them, Liam. At least that is what other summoned creatures do,” Kassandra interjected. “They consume the crystals, and that is supposed to fuel their natural powers. Don’t know if it works for Travelers the same, but for other summoned creatures, it does.”

Not really knowing what else to do with them, and with the girls staring at me expectantly, I reached into the jar to fish out the shimmering crystals.

As soon as my hand touched one of them, a golden flash outlined my vision and text the color of a purple neon sign scrolled into my vision.

The Traveler has encountered a source of pure, unrefined mana.

This pure mana can either be exchanged directly for SP, or used to boost the mastery of powers that have not reached one-hundred percent mastery.

Do you wish to absorb this source?

Yes/No

“Huh?”