Voidcall Ch. 01

This is my first attempt at writing any sort of long form story. I do not know how often it will be updated. There is no sex in this chapter, as it's just to "set the tone", i think i would say. Advice is very appreciated in the comments, and I really hope that despite the current word length you still enjoy it.

"So... what the hell are we actually meant to be doing here? Give me a straight answer this time or I'm gonna leave your sorry ass here to fend for yourself."

Jona turned to face her. "Fine. Look, don't kill me but I wanted to come here to look for the jar. I know it's just a folk tale or whatever, but I swear I got some solid evidence this time!" He squeaked, already preparing for Samarra to punch his shoulder hard enough to bruise it. He opened his eyes when the punch did not come after a few moments to see that she was instead pinching the bridge of her nose while her other arm hung limp in disbelief.

"You're fucking kidding me. You dragged me out here for fucking-"now the punching started. "-Pharagoth's-" the punching continued. "-jar!?" The punching stopped, leaving his arm feeling dead and him with the certainty that his whole shoulder would just be one giant bruise tomorrow.

"If I could find it, you wouldn't need to protect both me and Ida! Isn't that worth the inconvenience of going through one dungeon?" Jona pleaded, rubbing his shoulder to try and return some semblance of feeling into it as he spoke.

"Alright, fuck it, fine. You get one more fucking chance. If the jar isn't here, no more wild goose chases, you actually commit to learning how to swing a sword like everyone else." Samarra capitulated, already stomping forward and hefting her two-handed Warhammer, ready to cave in the skull of any further insects in the dungeon. Jona quickly scurried behind, using the bit of magic that he did know to look for traps as they made their way through. Even though Samarra ended up getting shot by a hidden crossbow once, he managed to find and disarm the rest of the traps while Samarra took care of making sure anything in the vicinity that wasn't them and was alive, was made not alive.

The ruin had originally been built by dwarves before it was abandoned, and it had since become the nest of a colony of giant ants. Luckily due to the law of conservation of ninjutsu, because each ant was the size of a great dane there weren't a lot of them. A nest of millions of dog-sized ants was the stuff of nightmares.

Eventually they entered what appeared to be the final chamber of the dungeon. It was noticeably more ornate than the rest of the rooms in the labyrinthine structure even though the blocky, art deco-esque design stayed the same. The chamber appeared to have been constructed as a throne room of sorts with a high cathedral ceiling and the barely-recognisable remnants of cloth from where banners might once have hung. At the other end of the hall was a large yet simple throne, which seemed to have been carved out of stone in a very blocky, uncomfortable-looking manner.

That being said, one dwarf apparently found the throne comfortable enough that it had become his final resting place. A few small wisps of almost ghostly hair protruded from around and through a crown so covered with dust that its colour was indiscernible. In his lap sat the remains of what was originally a shining suit of armour, now a heap of rusted metal, the connective leather pieces and cloth that was worn under it having long since fallen apart.

"I know they're usually supposed to have armour and whatever, but that guy's totally gonna come to life and attack us when we get close." Samarra whispered and Jona nodded in response. They crept forward, Jona quietly whispering a spell to make sure that the throne room wasn't trapped, as unlikely as that was.

They made it halfway across the room before Jona started to get uneasy. Well, more uneasy than he already was. He began looking around for any sort of hidden alcove that something might be hiding in. "Sam, this might be a tr-" he was cut off halfway through as Sam's next step hit a loose piece of flooring which fell away underneath her, trapping her leg. She wasn't trapped for long though as the rest of the floor around her quickly fell too, sending both her and Jona tumbling down a dust-clogged shaft! "If we die, I blame you for this!" Samarra yelled before everything went black.

Jona awoke groggily, lifting himself up and looking around. He immediately sneezed as dust that had finally been disturbed after who knows how long went right into his nose. Taking in his surroundings, he saw nothing. It was dark, and the spell they had been using for light had gone out. He quickly recast it and looked again, seeing that he was now in some sort of tunnel. Not a tunnel like the ones in the ruin above but a naturally formed tunnel that continued ahead of him before curving to the right and out of sight.

He mentally checked himself over to find that he miraculously only had some bruises, considering that- when he looked up -he saw that the two of them had fallen probably about 130 feet. He stood up to try and look for Samarra only to immediately realise no, he did not in fact have only bruises. When he tried to put weight on his left foot, the ankle twisted to the side in a sickening display, sending immense pain up his leg and causing him to crash to the ground again, this time on something soft.

He looked down this time to see the unconscious form of Samarra, and immediately his finger went to her neck. He breathed a sigh of relief as he felt her pulse under his fingertip, and quickly checked her over for any wounds. She had fared worse than him, possibly even cushioning his fall though he couldn't be sure. Her leg was broken and she had a cracked rib, as well as possibly a concussion judging by the lump on the back of her head though he couldn't be sure.

He wasn't a particularly good magician but he surmised he could probably heal her to mostly-working order, though he wouldn't be able to heal himself if he did so and she'd have to be careful with her injured bits. Who was he kidding, she wouldn't be careful regardless of what he told her.

So he got to work fixing his friend, gingerly making sure that her leg bone was in the right spot before he placed his palm on the injury and murmured "Aluthara." Heat burned between their skin and the injury was fixed with little observable change. He repeated the process with her ribs but once he was done with that, he sagged with effort, breathing heavily. "Sorry Sam, I think you might have to wait for that one," he groaned as he lowered himself to the side to lie next to her and wait. Eventually she woke up, immediately reaching up to her head and groaning as well.

"Fuck man, you couldn't have done something about my head? Feels like my brain's throbbing," Samarra complained, looking around before finding him.

"You don't have much brain in the first place so that's probably not an issue, and you can thank me for you not having cracked ribs and a broken leg," Jona shot back with a tired grin. Samarra rolled her eyes but couldn't keep a smile off her face, so she settled for just punching Jona in the arm again.

"Thanks Jona." She got up.

"Anytime. Hey, you wouldn't mind carrying me would you? I can't exactly walk with a broken ankle," he responded as he pointed to his foot facing the wrong direction.

"Oh, you healed me over that! I, uh... sorry, you didn't deserve that punch. Sure I'll carry you but I might have to drop you if we find anything to fight," Samarra said as she hooked her arms under him, carrying him bridal-style. "At least I won't develop an ego," he murmured to himself.

"What was that?"

"Nothing!"

They continued down the tunnel like that after Samarra got her warhammer back, the grey stone walls eventually being dotted with very faintly-glowing purple lichen. Samarra glanced at the lichen and asked, "have you ever seen that stuff before? I'm getting a weird feeling about it..."

Jona looked at it too but it didn't look like any plants he knew. "Maybe we could take some, Ida might have seen it. You know how he is with brewing and herbology and the like."

Samarra put him down gently, groaning "ugh, sure," as she did so. She used her fingernails to scrape off a few big handfuls of the stuff and fill two small cloth bags with it, which she hung from her belt. She picked Jona back up and they continued on, the purple lichen getting more and more prevalent until eventually the whole tunnel was covered with softly glowing algae-fungus (look it up).

While Samarra had said that the lichen had given her a weird feeling, Jona actually felt the opposite. It felt familiar, welcoming, even personal. Like it knew him and was saying hello after a long parting.

After what felt like a half-hour of walking, the next bend in the tunnel seemed to glow brighter than the rest. The two of them shared a wordless look and Samarra gently set Jona down again, drawing her warhammer and leaping round the corner with a roar! A few moments later she returned with an inscrutable expression on her face. She picked up Jona and loudly whispered, "you've got to see this."

She carried him around the corner and he saw that he had, in fact, needed to see this. A few feet ahead of them, the tunnel opened up into a large cavern with a layer of pinkish-purple mist blanketing the floor. As opposed to the simple lichen that had coated the tunnel, there was a jungle of different, alien-looking plants in the cave in front of him. Purple, white, pink and black seemed to be the predominant colours, in that order. In the middle of the cavern he could see a set of white stone stairs leading to a knee-high pedestal of the same material, and on top of that pedestal was a jar.

About the size you would expect a cauldron to be and made of disarmingly simple brown pottery, the jar itself did not seem very unique in appearance. What made it unique, however, was that the mist that was up to Samarra's thighs was emanating from the jar. Bubbling over the rim as though the jar were a witch's cauldron brewing some foul concoction. That feeling of recognition that Jona had been getting was even stronger here, and he felt a strong compulsion to see what was in the jar.

"I need to see what's in there," he told Samarra. His eyes never left the jar.

"Hey," she replied, physically turning his head to face her, "Are you sure? This could turn out really bad."

Jona didn't understand why he felt differently about the situation to what Sam did, but that compulsion didn't go away. Instead it only got stronger, starting to make his head pound with its intensity. "Yes, take me to it," He replied with extreme conviction.

"Alright..." Samarra started to walk towards the jar. "Y'know, I never expected to feel like this when i found the thing, i expected to be more like 'woah, i'm gonna be so rich now woohoo!' Not 'eeughh, my tummy says bad things will happen,'" Samarra rambled, but Jona wasn't listening. He craned his neck to see inside the jar as Samarra mounted the steps. He gasped as soon as he saw what was inside the jar, as did Samarra who held him closer protectively.

Inside the jar was a gigantic, reddish-purple eye with a golden iris. It was so large that it was physically impossible that the jar contained the entire eye, made all the more disturbing when the eye moved to lock gazes with Jona. "Woah, what the fuck is tha-" Samarra was the one who was cut off this time as Jona felt himself yanked forward, toppling headfirst into the jar. The last thing he heard was Samarra's furious screams as he fell further and further away.