Reverse Chronicles

The Eye of Xinfonia

The ruins of an entire city are inside the forest. Debris that are battered and broken surround the ruin. Every structure in sight is either moss-covered or reduced to debris, except for a tower that stands at the center of the ruined structures.

The afternoon sun shines brightly on the ruins revealing a once bustling city. Not a single sound could be heard from inside, not even the howls and roars of monsters from inside the Chrallian forest reached. It was dead silent, except for our sloppy footsteps caused by running for a great distance.

As we approach the ruin, the minotaur horde appeared from our rear. We run as fast as we could towards the run-down moss-covered walls. A road made the sprint easy, but the rocks and debris on the road slowed us down. Syrena pauses for a moment and creates a wall of rock behind us. However, it was all for naught as the rampaging horde rammed their way through.

“There is no stopping them,” Syrena shouts.

“They won’t be able to get through the city walls,” I shout in reply as I point to a narrow passage to the city which I noticed on the way. “There is a hole in that wall, they won’t be able to get through there!”

Syrena and two soldiers follow me as I approach the wall. We all jump inside as a voice shout from behind.

“No, don’t go there!” Mark’s voice resonates throughout as we make it inside the passage.

The narrow passage leads to a steep road, which we slid down. The road is suspiciously smooth and slippery, like it was designed to make things slide down.

“Where are we headed?” Syrena asks from behind me. She pats my shoulder as she consoles the two soldiers who jumped with us.

“I don’t know,” I reply as I keep my eyes peeled for our destination.

“Mark said that we shouldn’t even be here,” Syrena replies. “Are you sure that this is the right way?”

“I don’t know.”

The slippery slope continues underground down to a tunnel. The slope gradually decreases as our speed eventually becomes sluggish. The slide ended in a dark narrow tunnel. Screeches resonated throughout the tunnel as we reoriented ourselves.

“Where are we?” Syrena looks around casting a light spell that provided visibility.

“This must be the underground tunnels,” one of the soldiers with us reply. “I heard that the capital is modeled after Chralle, including the underground tunnels.”

“Do you know a way to get out of here?” I ask the soldier, who seems to be a Knight.

“There should be a central stairway that leads to the dungeons inside the castle, if we find it we may be able to get out,” the Knight answers.

“From where we are, I guess we are at the edge of the tunnels,” Syrena adds looking back at the slope. “But I think we can always go back using Lev…” the tunnel behind us suddenly collapse. “What was that? I just wanted to say Levitate, but the tunnel collapsed!”

“That slippery road looked like it was supposed to keep something in,” I say looking at the rubble behind us. “We better get going.”

 We journey through the tunnels. The air is humid and warm. Scratches and splotches are numerous on the walls and the ceiling. Occasionally, we would stumble on a puddle of slime that looked like a zombie’s vomit. Despite the icky condition, there is no revolting smell.

“Syrena,” I ask her from behind. “Did Zenneif…Did General Zenneif tell you anything about the item that we are supposed to retrieve?”

“Unfortunately, no. The general just told me to participate in this quest. He did not share any information,” she replies.

“The Eye of Xinfonia,” the other soldier, who appears to be an archer, answers. “Lieutenant Linda told us on our briefing that we are to retrieve the Eye of Xinfonia.”

“The Eye of Xinfonia!” Syrena’s eyebrows kiss as she turns to the archer.

“What is this Eye of Xinfonia?”

“Remember the forgotten tale of the three Divines?” Syrena answers. “The founder of Xinfonia was said to be Marina and she was given a part of the seal that supposedly keeps the Progenitor of doom sealed. In another tale, it is said that the three Divines turned those seals into weapons. Marina’s seal became Mairnsleaf, a beautiful sword with a jewel in the middle of its hilt. That jewel is called the Eye of Xinfonia.”

Syrena’s story continued until revenants appear. They all look different from the revenants that I fought in the Academy’s dungeon. Their eyes were haunting green and pus and slime oozed out of their crippled skin.

I rush in and use Horizontal Smile to attack two monsters at once. However, the two at the front jumps back as my attack sliced through. The archer shoots an arrow at one revenant, but it was able to dodge. I retreat back as Syrena casts Fireball, which revenants are weak to. However, the slime that oozed out of their skin doused the spell.

“Impossible,” Syrena says in surprise. “They are immune to fire and they are smart enough to dodge our attacks. What is happening here?”

“They are just stronger than the usual revenants,” I try to console her as I charge in. “That means we just have to fight fiercer.” I move in and use the Feint Attack and Time s***h combination.our foes took damage.

They are stronger than the usual revenants, but that doesn’t mean that they are invincible.

“Eat this!” Syrena casts Ice Bolt and freezes them in place. “Quick, destroy them before they can get out!”

The other two soldiers and I move in and destroy the frozen revenants as quickly as we could. There are about 12 of them, but they were nothing in the face of our teamwork.

“Those are strange revenants,” the Knight remarks as the battle ended.

“They are immune to fire, but weak to ice,” Syrena adds in.

“They also dodged most of our physical attacks,” the archer says.

“Aren’t there monsters of different species?” I ask.

“There have been no record of revenants having a different species. The undead simply do not have diversity of species,” Syrena replies. “Something else must be doing this.”

We continue on our way. The tunnel remained straight until the path turned right. The path begins forking with three separate roads. All three roads looked endless at the intersection.

“Where should we go?” the archer asks.

“If we assume that we went on a straight line then turned right, we should go to the left path,” Syrena suggests lighting the left path with light spheres.

We agree with her suggestion and went through the left road. Deeper in the tunnels, more monsters appeared. There was a crimson red-skinned minotaur which was larger than most of the minotaurs that chased us. There were scocreeps that were larger and had metallic claws. All the monsters that we encountered are stronger than their counterparts inside the Academy dungeon.

Memory strikes me back as we encounter lizardmen with wings and axes. However, because of the tunnel’s narrow dimensions, they were not able to fly making them easy targets.

“Not just a different species, those lizardmen looked like different monsters,” I tell them.

“They are,” Syrena answers. “It seems we have to get to the bottom of this.”

The left road lead to a large cylindrical room. Beside the tunnel are countless other tunnels that all seemed to lead to this very room that we are in. Syrena creates more light spheres and spread them throughout the room illuminating the entire concourse. In the middle of the cylindrical room, are three spiraling stairs that led directly way up.

Our instincts told us to make a run for it. However, Syrena’s illumination gathers the attention of every monster inside. Before we knew it, we were surrounded. On air, lizardmen flew around and above brandishing their axes ready to strike at any time. On the ground, revenants, scocreeps, and minotaurs cornered us on the wall screeching horrifying sounds that made my entire being shiver.

“Guys, hang on!” Syrena shouts as she casts Levitate. “I’m getting us out of here.” We levitate and fly directly to the spiraling stairwell.

Strangely, the monsters did not pursue us. Not even the winged lizardmen attempted to stop us in our path. They all just looked as we ascended the spiraling stairwell, where the dungeons await.

“I thought we were done for,” the archer vomits as we make it up the stairs.

“Still, it was pretty strange.” I reply. “The monster did not even try to stop us. Not one attacked as we flew past them. Could there be something here?”

Because of the cracks through the walls and the ceiling, a considerable amount of light is able to penetrate inside the dungeon. It was a very large dungeon that had cells filled with the skeletons of its prisoners.

“Alan!” Syrena calls my attention as she points to a dead decaying dragon at the corner of the room.