“That pulsating thing doesn’t seem right. Be careful.” Jianmen frowned as he went closer to the edge of the broken pathway and looked down with caution: “The whole space is completely demolished, seemingly from bottom up, but strangely there was very little traces of energy signatures left.”
“The obvious explanation is that whatever the thing is, it has blended into the environment very well, that its energy signature is basically the same as the environment’s.” Glenda Grimes shook her head.
“Or, it could be the other way around, its power is so strong, and it has polluted the environment so much that the energy signature of the environment is actually its.” Josephine Wong gently scraped some dirt from the broken walls on the side: “Too bad, the signal became too weak to pick up.”
“I think that might be it.” Glenda Grimes looked around at the empty space in front of them, then pointed at a specific position slightly above them on the other side of the empty space, and a little bit to the right.
Jianmen looked over at the spot at which Glenda Grimes was pointing, it was a spot with a lot more dents and cracks than other spots, where there was a torn up metal gate with what looked like a Hellinger family insignia carved on it. Judging from the way it was torn, it looked like something forced its way through it.
“Great find.” Jianmen nodded: “Now we just gotta figure out how to get there.”
“We need a cloak.” Josephine Wong conjured a tiny purple dagger and peeled off a small piece from the wall: “Now, I am going to try to mimic this energy signature, Glenda, Jianmen, can you help me conceal my energy signature when I craft the spell?”
“No problem.” “Of course.”
With Glenda Grimes and Jianmen standing beside her to help her conceal the energy signature when she cast the spell, Josephine Wong pulled out a piece of parchment and started drawing an array. With less than five minutes, she completed the array with the small piece of wall placed at the center.
“Okay, get ready.” Josephine Wong took a deep breath and placed her right hand on the array, then started slowly infusing her power into the parchment. When the array was fully activated, a soft layer of transparent light purple energy shroud surrounded all three of them, and to everything else, they now display a similar energy signature as the walls and floorboards of this very castle.
Next, all three of them flew towards the torn metal gate, and with Jianmen leading the way, they went into the tunnel behind it.
The tunnel initially went somewhere horizontal and had an exit to somewhere seemingly on the same level, then it went downwards and even went below the ground level. The deeper they went, the rougher and more damaged the interior of the tunnel became. When they got to the final exit, they found themselves in an underground hall with a dome. There was a foul smell in this hall, and there were splashes of thick liquid all over the ground and the broken walls. In some spots, the thick and almost solidified liquid pools were actually so thick that they looked like stumps of broken pillars or altars from far away.
“Some kind of fight happened here.” Jianmen took a look around and said: “But there are no bodies around, so I can’t say for sure …”
“Crack!” Just this moment, some of the dried up and solidified pools of thick liquid cracked up, and there seemed to be some creatures being cocooned inside trying to get out.
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“There’s a door there.” Jianmen pointed forward with his jaw at a metal door with a lot of dents and cracks on it, while holding his meat cleaver and his broom in his hands: “Go and check it out. If you can’t open it without resorting to force, then we should probably leave right away.”
While Josephine Wong and Glenda Grimes rushed to the metal door, Jianmen examined those dried up and solidified pools of thick liquid and tried to take a peek at the things that were buried underneath.
These were not corporeal creatures, instead, they were shadows of people, possibly the members of the Hellinger family that were long gone. And not just any kind of shadows made of energy, but shadows that Jianmen recognized to be the kind that usually come with the replay of memory, only more concrete, and more lively.
“The glory of Hellinger…” a wizard with a gruesome scar on his face said to Jianmen, when “he” found that Jianmen was looking at him: “... the glory of Hellinger … shall never fade…”
“What do you mean?” Jianmen retracted his meat cleaver, and extended his hand at the shadow of the shadow wizard’s forehead: “It faded a long time ago.”
“The glory of Hellinger …” the shadow struggled and spoke through his teeth: “shall NEVER fade!”
When Jianmen’s fingers came into contact with the shadow wizard’s forehead, a small piece of information flashed before his eyes.
The last stand of the Hellingers, the less than twenty of the remaining members of the Hellinger family that were in the castle, who locked themselves inside a small chamber with fortified walls with no escape. Out of desperation and insanity, they cast a horrible experimental spell on themselves. And from this
“Holy fucking shit, cursing yourselves and binding your souls to the bloodline?” Jianmen shook his head: “How conceited about your own bloodline were you?”
“This door’s blocked from behind, we can’t open it. ” Josephine Wong told Jianmen: “But I just picked up some more signals, they went through this door.”
“Wait.” Jianmen stood up: “Test your blood. See if anything’s changed or different, or weird.”
“What?”
“Just do it. ” Jianmen dripped a droplet of his blood in the air: “The Hellingers - before they fell completely, the last remaining ones here cast a curse using nothing but themselves, binding their souls to the very concept of Hellinger bloodline. If I understood it correctly, anyone who’s not a Hellinger will be affected by this curse should they dare step into this place.”
“No.” “Nothing weird to me.”