In pain, Kiresula did what she had trained to do: She cast [Sunlight] while stumbling back, feeling miserable. The sound of screaming goblins was audible. Kiresula used the sort of colourful language, father Kanvin would slap her for.

“What the hay is that!” shouted Makit.

“A modified light spell. It keeps the greenskins off off me.” she said.

Makit made an annoyed noise: “Should’ve told me!”

Kiresula nodded: “Sorry!” She moved backwards into the tunnel.

Makit went through with the rest of the group and a few sword slashes later, the goblins were dispatched. Kiresula got a minor contribution for blinding them, but the [System] didn’t award any experience. Obviously not, as the System showed her as level 255. And the second system had not as of yet showed anything similar to levels.

The next room was more difficult to navigate as it was a cavernous room full of stalactites, stalagmites and rock foundations. The ground was so uneven and difficult that movement was difficult. Tamijet immediately rushed forward drawing the attention of the goblins on herself. The goblins, in singleminded rage, ran towards her. Only to run into her [Firewall] spell and to be swarmed by the rest of the group. Burned from the front and slashed from the back, they fell quickly, but more took their ranks. Soon Tamijet and the group were standing back to back, fighting the onslaught. Kiresula had hid near the entrance, but now once again cast [Sunlight] in the centre of the group, blinding the goblins facing it but not the group with their backs to it.

“Yikes! You need a licence for this spell!” Makit said as he slayed a blinded goblin with terrifying ease.

“I can stop if you want,” Kiresula offered.

Tamijet had started to use a dagger against the goblins, either because her [Fire Mage] spells were not effective in a group of allies or because she was flat out of magic. “Don’t you dare! Picking off blinded greenskins is so much easier! Aren’t you picking them off for experience?”

Kiresula shook her head: “I still don’t know just how hampered I am from being a glitchling. I am not fighting if I can avoid… oh sh…ame!” she heard a noise close to her, a step, a goblin. She did the obvious and ran, casting [Freedom of Movement] as she did so. She had read that this spell made moving over difficult territory easy, but this had been the first time she had tried it. It worked better than expected. She moved over the uneven ground as if it was a even and as flat as a pancake. She hid behind a larger rock formation and reached for her dagger. Mayana had put an enchantment into it, that basically would be illegal anywhere as it was such a temporary drain on physical stats (apart from endurance) that in the wrong hands, it could even put people into a stat drain induced coma. She had secured it with a switch requiring a bit of synthic magic to start that function. She channelled the tiniest amount of magic into the dagger and felt an insane amount of power seep into her, taking her from her glitchling-related state of weakness to a state of almost adequacy.

With bated breath, she waited, hoped that the goblin had scurried off, or potentially that it approached. She heard the footsteps approaching and didn’t dare to glance at how distant it was. She knew that these were the fast, light, unshod steps of the goblin, or were they? Did the group use some kind of stealth or speed perk. These worries were dispelled when the tiny creature tried to round the corner. She slashed at the goblin and was surprised as it collapsed as if she had used some high-level abilities on it. For a breath’s length, she just stood there, unable to believe what happened. Then she saw movement behind the goblin, high enough in order not to be another of them. Makit grinned: “I came just in time, didn’t I?”

“Just in time. Though I might have given the thing a close shave!” she grinned, then switched off the dagger’s enchantment and put it into her holster. Immediately, she felt weak and slow. The world seemed to have sped up a bit again.

“Wow, is that the dagger that Mayana forbid me from even looking at too closely? I didn’t know it is for you!” Makit sounded impressed, “It sounded like a super-secret commission, or something like that.”

“It is for me. And the secrecy is mostly for its nasty enchantments. She didn’t want you to be affected by it. I can use it because certain things work different on glitchlings, but basically, the thing is so nasty that Mayana didn’t even like touching it. And she set up the safeguards, so she knew it was supposed to be quite safe.” Kiresula explained.

“Eeek! So if Tamijet has an accident, I know what happened.” Makit made an attempt at a joke. A slightly snide one as he knew that she didn’t like his affair partner all that much.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Unless she nabs it and uses it in an area with broken magic, there should be no accident. Unless of course she pokes her eye out or something that could happen with any dagger.” Kiresula explained.

Makit nodded: “I see. So, what would the accident be?”

Kiresula explained laconically: “Massive debuffs.”

Makit asked: “They debuff whoever is stabbed?”

Kiresula shook her head: “No, whoever is holding it.”

Makit opened his eyes widely: “Why would someone make something like that?” he paused for a moment: “Oh, because debuffs work weirdly on glitchlings, right?”

Kiresula nodded: “Exactly!”

Makit shook his head: “I see. That’s hella scary an item to exist!”

Kiresula shook her head: “You need to activate it with s… with broken magic. So randomly touching it is harmless.” She looked around in an attempt to change the topic: “Are all of the greenskins gone?”

Makit nodded. “Now they are. We were looking for you to make sure the coast is clear and then saw that you attracted one of these menaces.”

She moved to the rest of the group, still under the effect of [Freedom of movement], checked the exits and dispelled [Sunlight]. The exits were free of broken magic which was good in so far as the others had no risk, but for Kiresula, it had the unfortunate effect of not allowing her to recover her magic. She was on the last 5 Seren and not happy about that.

The next room had the bridge theme, the dungeon was named after. In this case, an aqueduct, that had been dammed by goblins. The goal was to defeat the goblins, destroy the dam and float on its wreckage to the next, lower layer. All without falling into the abyss below. In addition, there were whisps of broken magic floating around. Kiresula cursed. She didn’t want to go up against a dozen of greenskins. “Can you shield me while I move forward? I need to clean the area of broken magic.”

“Wouldn’t we then run headfirst into it?” Tamijet asked.

Kiresula responded: “I would attempt to keep it off you, but I don’t want to get turned into a sieve by goblin arrows.”

One of the smaller people in the group, Sankar, looked angry: “Is this your plan to turn you into a Glitchling?”

Kiresula shook her head: “I don’t want to, no. I doubt that there is enough magic here for a glitchling conversion. It is spread pretty thin, so I should be able to reclaim it without affecting you all. Can I test it with someone? Just the tiniest bit?”

Makit made a displeased noise.

Tamijet shook her head and the other ones also used gestures of displeasure.

After a pause, the youngest one, Kedsel, stepped forward. “I guess that leaves me. Please be careful!”

Kedsel was tall, but in a way as if someone with a skewed sense of proportions drew her. Her arms and legs being slightly disproportionately tall compared to her head and body. Kiresula knew that her class was something martial related. She was carrying a sword and a large shield.

Kiresula led Kedsel by her shoulders out of the hallway onto the aqueduct, instructed her to stop at a particular point and to keep the greenskin’s rocks and arrows off herself. Kiresula started murmuring to herself: “Kedsel has negligible accumulation of broken magic, good, so, I am using Serenity magic reclamation…” Sheheld her hands out over Kedsel’s shoulders and counted to twenty. “Back at 13 Seren, that looks good so far, now for Kedsel,...!” Kiresula cursed loudly.

“What in the green hills of Ikisanda happened?” Kedsel asked.

Kiresula plucked an arrow out of the ground, that had just lodged itself there. “This happened!”

“What about the broken magic?” Kedsel wanted to know.

“It looks unchanged.” Kiresula squinted, even though sensing magic was not really a visual sense.

“Are you sure?” Kedsel asked nervously.

“Reasonably so. I saw the broken magic get to my hands and I gained about as much as I expected. If I estimated that there was a certain amount out there and I reclaimed only half, I would have known something is very much at odds.”

“How do you do the reclaiming?” Kedsel asked.

“With a regular magical reclamation technique. I used something called Placidity, which, when adjusted for broken magic is called Serenity. You know, because broken magic is measured in Seren.”

Kedsel shook her head: “Magicians and their puns… Can we try again? If we can clear out broken magic, this would be amazing for our church.”

Kiresula suddenly felt an icy grasp of fear on her neck: “You said ‘our church’. You’re a [cleric]?”

“Nah, you can’t get me to learn all the theology even if you beat me. I am a [Holy guard]. But yeah, working for the church here in Memleket.” She smiled happily.

Kiresula steered Kedsel to another area of broken magic while saying: “I am surprised that the church had not worked with glitchlings on that.”

Kedsel responded: “The big tenet if the church is development. Glitchlings literally have nowhere to go, in terms of development. At least that is the official stance.” The last words sounded quite critical for a member of the church.

Kiresula motioned her to wait and reclaimed another few Seren of magic. “Hmmm,” she had not considered this.

Kedsel asked: “Something wrong?”

The glitchling grunted, as she realised how this would have had to be misunderstood: “Not with the reclamation. I just never heard that reason. It gives me something to think about.”

In that moment, she saw a spark of broken magic, bright and shining.