Chapter 55

A sharp sensation awoke me, and I reflexively sat up, eyes blearily searching my surroundings for whatever had attacked me. A second attack came a moment later, but this time my reflexes were sufficient to intercept it, my hand reaching up and grabbing… an acorn?

I looked past it, down the trajectory it had taken, and saw Cenna sitting on one of the overstuffed couches, curled up neatly in place like a cat. Lyrella sat next to her, sprawling over the rest of the couch, one arm wrapped in bandages smeared with some kind of healing paste that probably could’ve been used as smelling salts, given how much of it I could smell even across the room. A frowning Alex sat on one of the other chairs nearby, a small end table pulled up in front of them with a surprisingly compact alchemy kit meticulously arranged atop it. Dima sat on another chair pulled up close to it, the two of them deep in discussion. For a moment, I sank back in relief at seeing how many of us had made it; as soon as my head tipped back, however, another acorn struck me, this time right on the point of my chin.

Cenna’s sudden squeal of laughter and Ella’s full-throated cackle left no doubt as to where it had come from, and I pulled myself sitting with an agonized groan. I looked down at myself, and saw that most of my wounds had been tended; small, neat patches of gauze had been applied to the many cuts I’d accrued during the fighting. The patches smelled terrible and itched the skin beneath with a sensation like mint, but I was grateful to see that I hadn’t bled out in my sleep.

“Thank you, Alex,” I said, guessing who was responsible for my tending.

“Don’t thank me. I was going to leave you on the floor but Cenna said we needed you.”

Dima laughed at that, his deep-chested chuckle somehow more insulting than Alex’s offhanded words.

I turned my gaze to Cenna, who grinned back at me like the cat who’d gotten the cream. “We’ve been waiting forever for you to wake up. I was almost out of acorns.”

I squinted at her and glanced around, seeing a couple of dozen that were arrayed around me at various points, and rolled my eyes. “Then you can have this one back.” I flicked it back at her, and she yelped even as she snatched it out of the air, laughing.

“Thank you!” She called back, her cheeriness a hard force to fight, even if I’d just woken up after sleeping on a stone floor; at least it had a patchwork of rugs covering it, so it wasn’t too cold.

I took stock of the room once more, noticing a significant absence. “Where’s Marcus?” I asked them, my tone low and concerned.

Ella snorted and rolled her eyes, shaking her head. “He went on ahead.” She drew in a deep breath and affected a husky tone, passably imitating the giant blacksmith. “My path is mine alone to walk. It would bear no others upon it.” She ended with a loud harrumph , and this time we all laughed in response.

“Yeah, alright,” I answered, pulling myself to my feet. “I had started on my own but only made it a few floors before I… couldn’t proceed anymore.

“Well, good!” Cenna grinned at me. “Then you have no excuse not to go with our party!”

Alex added on, a moment afterward, “Yeah. Without Marcus, we need a new meatshield.”

The room erupted in laughter again, and I almost decided to walk back through the door right then and there, rolling my eyes at them. “Okay. Right then. Let’s go?”

I glanced around, and noticed that suddenly the alchemy set – and the end table it had been sitting on – had vanished. Dima offered Alex a hand, and the androgynous healer accepted, standing almost daintily. Cenna slid off the couch, Ella reluctantly pulling herself up a moment afterward. “We’ve just been waiting on you anyway,” the savage woman growled playfully, “You needed your beauty sleep. A lot of it.”

Ignoring their various teasing, I stepped toward the doorway, and moved to push it open. Instead of opening easily, the door resisted my touch.

Do you wish to abandon your progress in your personal instance and enter the Tower as a group? (Five members detected: Maximum threshold met.)

Entering as a group will greatly increase the difficulty and complexity of your ascent.

Judging by the way everyone frowned and glanced at the air in front of them, I imagined everyone had gotten the same system message. I lingered for several moments, staring at the message and considering the effort it had taken to ascend even as far as I had; taking on even more difficulty and having to restart? For a moment, I considered pushing on ahead and going back in alone. I dismissed the idea after a moment, mentally confirming the prompt and then pushing my way through the now-unlocked door.

I stepped into a now-familiar twisting system of caves, though their layout was immediately different, two paths branching instead of several, though I could see far enough down the tunnel to see at least one split somewhere off in the dimness. I drew in a deep breath against the chill, and summoned a small candleflame in my hand. I waited as the Greenwarden spoke, watching the flame for any sign of which passage to take. I was so intent on staring at the most minute motions of the flame that it took me a moment to realize it was reflecting off of something; a dozen or so pinprick eyes, intent on the flame, set into two long parallel rows leading up the face of-

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

One of the crocodile-spider hybrids. Great. I drew back a hand to attack it, and it unfolded from the wall, lunging toward me with a snap of its’ immense jaws. I threw myself flat to the ground and it passed over me, drawing startled yells from my party members, who were so intent on the Greenwarden’s message that they at first hadn’t noticed the ambush; not that I’d helped much, given I hadn’t said a word before I tried to attack it. It simply trampled over me, lunging after the next nearest person – Alex – with a startling hiss. Before the jaws could snap shut, Ella stepped in with a fierce punch to its’ chin, knocking its’ head upward. She drilled a series of punches into its’ chest, moving forward underneath it and forcing it up against the cave’s ceiling. Cenna started from a different angle, darting inward to cut at the spider-like legs that anchored it to the stone, causing it to lose its’ grip and begin falling forward.

With it now off-balance and unanchored, Ella grabbed onto its’ broad tail, tucking her shoulder beneath it, and twisted, throwing the monster backward with enough force to break off a couple of stalagmites as it tumbled by. I charged up a powerful firebolt for a half-second or so, and then threw it like a javelin, piercing its’ broad back and through to its’ stomach. A moment later, a throwing knife buried itself between the rows of eyes, and a bolt of lightning struck the hilt of the dagger an instant after that.

The corpse twitched violently for a couple of seconds, and then lay still. Cenna retrieved her knife, wiping it clean and stowing it away as they regarded the body.

“That’s new,” I told them after a moment, blinking to get the after-image of the lightning bolt to clear. “Last time I was in here, it was empty. Lots of exploration, but no fighting.”

“Well, it did say that things would be more difficult as a group,” Ella replied, hands chafing her bare midriff for a moment. “Hey, torchbug. It’s really cold in here. Can you do something about that? Don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe while you keep us warm!” There was something vicious in her grin, though I simply ignored it and rolled my eyes.

“I’m not a space heater.”

“Oh, okay. Then are you a scout like Cenna? Because if we just need to find our way while fighting some occasional… Really creepy critters, then it sounds to me like your job is to keep us warm while we do all the hard work.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but she was right. Before I could speak, Cenna asked me, nicely, “Would you please use your magic to heat up the area so it won’t be so cold? I’d really appreciate it.”

Even Ella’s derisive snort couldn’t dent the sincerity of Cenna’s tone, and I sighed. Before I could answer, Dima added, “It is very cold. I will make light, you will make heat?” He offered, helpfully.

“Fine, fine. I’ll keep you all warm.”

“Thank you Torchbug!” Cenna gave me a quick hug, and then moved on down one of the two tunnels with certainty in her step.

I stood still for a few moments, looking inward to focus on a thread of my mental energy, scooping out a handful of my core energy and wrapped it up carefully in thoughts, trying to frame how I wanted it to work. At first, I spread the heat into the air around us to try and warm the whole area, but it diffused too quickly, being simply absorbed into the overwhelming cold while barely raising the temperature at all.

Next I tried making a bubble of heat around myself, but the ‘container’ wasn’t strong enough to keep the heat from leeching out, and my energy drained into the ability like water from a sieve, spilling out into nothingness at an unsustainable rate.

My next attempt was a little more focused – I reached out to the others with strings of my energy, tying us all together to hopefully mirror the same effect within each of us… and then I reached into myself, and triggered Haste , giving myself just a small boost. I felt the heat within my skin, a burning just at the edge of uncomfortable. It put a little spring in my step and chased the chill from my bones, the familiar sensation of my inner forges firing up bringing a smile to my face.

My companions, however, reacted rather differently.

“Oh, ow, what the hell!” Cenna cried out, twisting as if trying to pat out a fire on her own body.

Dima was also checking himself over, though he seemed more concerned that it might be his robes on fire rather than some kind of magical attack. Lyrella’s disgruntled look and Alex’s tight-lipped frown told me that they, too, felt it.

“Oh, uhm. Sorry. Is it working? Are you warmer now?”

Cenna groaned with irritation, but sighed after a moment. “…yes. Yes I am warm now. Thank you… David.”

After a few steps, she paused and glanced back, frowning. “What… is it actually doing? I feel like I’m moving differently.”

“Oh, I call it ‘Haste’. Basically supercharging your cells so they burn hotter and faster, to give you an extra boost of energy.”

The party stopped at that. Ella scoffed, Alex looked at me inquisitively, and Dima seemed to be flipping a small metal coin as quickly as he could, snatching it out of the air each time, and grinning. Cenna was already moving along down the tunnel, her steps quicker and surer than before, and she even took little detours to run a few steps up the walls on either side to enjoy the extra burst of speed.

“This is AWESOME!” She called back, and added a moment afterward. “Oh uh, croco-spider!”

The loud hiss of it answered an instant later, and we all ran forward to help.