Mayana and Kju ran with increased speed. Kiresula tried to catch up but could not. Kju looked at Kiresula with disappointment and shame. He shouted: "Sorry, Kiresula, I thought that this would work for all of us!"
"Run ahead! Keep Mayana safe!" Kiresula shouted.
Kju made an affirmative noise as he and Mayana ran in an insane speed towards the central hexagon that now sticks out into the sky.
Kiresula could not catch up. She saw hexagons closer and closer to her fall. She tried to speed up as fast as she could. Panic made her speed up. Her sides hurt as she tried to run faster and faster. She realised that she would not be able to get to the spire in time. There were only three rows of hexagons behind her. Then she reached the next one so for a moment, it increased to four. Only to swiftly return to three as hexagons fell. And to dwindle to two as the next hexagons dropped before she could make it to the next one. Spherical vision was utterly scary in this moment but Kiresula kept it up because it kept her running faster. It also reduced the risk of her running into something. She tried to keep on running at high speed despite the pain in her sides and despite being almost out of breath. Eventually, she saw that Mayana and Kju reached the spire. While keeping running, she saw Mayana cast something in regular magic (as she didn’t see any fluctuations of synthic magic) and then, a door opened in the hexagon and they entered. Just as the door closed, a piece of cloth was wedged into it to keep it open. Kiresula smiled in her heart because they must think that she will make it despite there being only one row behind her. Then that one also collapsed. She saw the ground shake around her (while Freedom of Movement kept her footing sturdy) and while mentally cussing, Kiresula jumped to the next one. A few, quick breaths later, the hexagon she was previously standing on went down. Kiresula had to try to be faster than that. She tried to quicken her pace desperately, but it was not possible, she was as fast as she could go. There were 20 hexagons ahead of her. With her speed, she was not going to make it. Even as she ran as fast as she could. As the ground was shaking again, Kiresula screamed. She was not far enough to make it to the next shape. Then, she used [Wind Step], hoping beyond hope that it would get her closer to that darn spire.
Luck was not on her side though. The spire moved away from her and left her in the middle of absolutely nothing.
Kiresula did several [Wind Step]s when she realised that she was dropping, hoping to get anywhere survivable. Eventually, she ran out of magic and crashed to the floor.
She felt surprisingly alive when she opened her eyes. She was in a heap and her body was in several forms of pain. Trying to stumble to her feet was arduous. She checked herself and noticed how miserable she looked: She was dirty, bloody and had no way to disinfect her injuries. But she could walk, albeit slowly. Every step felt miserable, but it was required. Her breath took a while to steady itself after all the running. She used Serenity while walking towards the Spire both to keep her mind off the pain and to restore her magic. She saw the corpse of the snake in the distance and was just happy that her [Wind Step]s seemed to have decreased her momentum to the point that she was injured, not a mess of snake meat, bones, and guts. The spire was still visible among a wall of the still standing hexagons. But those methodically dropped as she approached. Eventually, they all fell. And much later, she reached the spire.
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Its outside looked as if it was made of compacted soil, which seemed unlikely. It probably was based on this dungeon’s idea of how physics were supposed to work. Dragging herself around it showed no way to enter.
She sighed in frustration, then thought about the situation and used [Move Soil] to try to force an entrance as before it had looked as if the Spire was hollow. Unfortunately, the soil was only a layer about the size of a hand, behind which there was actual stone that was impervious to the spell. Kiresula first checked around the spire for any other texture and then sighed, looked upwards with a defeated expression and then used the spell to make handholds and footholds for climbing.
The process of actually climbing was long, arduous and filled with cussing. Kiresula could barely keep on the wall, and reaching higher and pulling herself up felt terribly on every muscle. Occasionally, she screamed because it was too painful to keep on moving. But yet, she continued, trying to move continuously as the handholds were quite precarious. Kiresula kept on moving through the pain, through the misery, through the exhaustion. She made the mistake of looking down and realised that she would likely not survive the fall.
Not while her magic was spent making sure that she could climb the wall.
She had to stop occasionally in order to restore her magic points using Serenity, which she hated, because her sweaty hands could wet the compacted, dry soil, as such she only waited just as long as she could raise her magic over the threshold. Every move made her wish that she was back in Memleket, in a bed, with Mayana. Moving upwards felt like her arms and legs were on fire. The only thing that kept her moving forward was imagining seeing Mayana again. And have some words with Kju about the spell and why it didn’t affect her.
The dungeon had no day/night cycle and she didn’t want to spend any magic on [Grains of Time], but to her, it felt like an extremely long time spent climbing upwards. She didn’t look up in order not to feel hopeless, she didn’t look down in order not to be scared, she just concentrated on the next move. She tried not to think of anything else, but her mind kept returning to her wife and how she was doing.
Eventually, something strange got into her field of vision and it took a moment to realise that it was a piece of cloth. She had reached her goal.