He's walking in the dark. He's had this dream before. Water seeps around him, black and shimmering like the night. He sees two eyes open, yellow lines becoming crescents becoming circles, the size of everything. Like a moon the eyelid moves from pure black to glowing hot white and blue. He's standing on a plane of water reflecting her form, her pale features too bright to make out, except her eyes in a glowing white face. Her hair falls down, the grays and blues and sandy yellows threaded with evergreen. She emerges from the water, looking down at him but somehow eye level. Even though she could crush him, he feels safe. Loved.
In a moment she's with him, taking his hand. He first sees Cascadia, but it looks, smaller? Less impressive. Then things blur, and he's standing in a plaza. There's a castle on a rocky hill, and a village all around it. A mantis with four arms and two spears like his bows to him.
“Fantastic! I couldn't hit you until the end!” it says in a clipped voice. “I wish I could get everyone to work as hard as you do.”
Thanks Mantis. You are not so bad for a monster.
His guide tugs him. Her hair has grown gray, her dress fading from stars to paint dripping a thousand neon colors. Her eyes turn from gold to green.
“You have to remember. You have to find me...”
He blinks. There's searing pain.
He wants to stay, to ask her more, but he's waking up.
[93.8%]
Corvayne woke to a headache. Popping an eye open, he sees it's morning somewhere above him. Moving even a little sets his closed eye hurting like a bolt of lightning was trying to get out. Oh yeah, he lost it.
Wick was laying against him, and looking at her face he could tell she had been crying. He gingerly tried to take in his surroundings as he recalled the events that lead to getting skewered, then lifted a hand and gingerly felt a bandage wrapped around his head. His sides ached too, but someone had removed the spines and stitched him up. Nyxion was sitting by the fire, looking miserable while balancing a paper plate on his knee.
Corvayne pushed himself up and moved closer to the low flames.
“Hey Nyxion... did she make it?”
The noise startled the noble enough that he dropped his plate onto the dirt by the fire and for a moment looked like he was about to come over and throttle Corvayne. The moment passed as Nyx took a deep breath. “For gods sake man, that scared the shit out of me... Yes she's alive. We gave her a healing potion. She lost a lot of blood... You as well.”
“Wasteful. I wasn't in serious condition.”
“You lost an eye. We were worried Grunt had taken your optic nerve with the quill when you stopped moving.” Nyx looked down.
“It's okay. It will grow back.” Corvayne shrugged. It hurt and itched and he dug his fingers into his leg to stop from trying to touch it.
“Eyes don't grow back.” Nyx gave him a look.
Corvayne laughed which turned out to be a terrible idea, as it sent waves of pain through his eye. “My eye will grow back. Why do you think I had Grunt pull the spine out?”
Nyxion stomped one of his nice boots on the ground. “You two are nimrods! Mister Icariii nearly killed him for that! You don't just pull things out of wounds until you can... are you fucking with me?”
“Nyx... if I was messing around do you know what I would have said?” He felt his voice croak. Too dry. He furrowed his brow, which hurt, then looked for his pack and reached into it for his canteen, taking a sip. Nyx waited for him to do all this slowly, and watched him put it back before he finally got frustrated with Corvayne.
“Well, what would you say?”
“Oh. Use protection when having sex.”
“Bloody fucking idiot.” Nyx put his hand on his head. “So, can you fight one eye'd? Or did I just cost us our best fighter?”
“Grunt is way more dangerous. I just am flashy.” Corvayne shook his head. “Don't worry. It's my fourth eye.”
“Fourth eye?” He looked confused, then looked back at the fire and grabbed another piece of firewood, tossing it on. Thin wisps of embers joined the misty morning.
Corvayne sat on one of the other logs placed by the fire “I've lost an eye already once, and two at once. I lost an arm one time. I've broken a femur on a hunt. That was the worst. They set it then just left me on a table for a few days for it to get better.” Corvayne patted his leg. Which was dumb, his sides started aching.
“That's absurd. You would be crippled for months if you broke your Femur.” Nyx sat back and stared at him, eyes widening. “... you're not joking are you? You're like Goule.”
“Weaver-of-Men told me I was too stupid to die.” Corvayne thought of the woman just shaking her head and leaving him to lay on a bed in the medical building. Spears and Diamonds looking annoyed as they took turns feeding him. He had jumped on a sandbull and managed to wedge a spear into it's brain before it could trample over Two-Moons-Sapphire. Everyone called him stupid for nearly getting two people killed. Spears and Diamonds of course said that Two-Moons would have been fine since she wasn't weak. Well, miss MOON was on the GROUND. He was pretty sure if the thing broke his femur when it fell over sideways, the full weight of it's foot would have killed her. No thanks of course from Moon. 'I had that without your help.'
“There is nothing stupid in trying to be better then we are.” Nyx said, breaking Corvayne out of his reverie. “It's my fault... unlike you I can't get away with just having a quick fuck in the tower.”
“Nyx... I block or lock the doors because of what just happened. Or stay in camp and just try to be quiet." He hissed as shifting his head wrong lanced pain through him. Nyx was about to stand but Corvayne held a hand up, and turned it into a thumbs up. "Lesson learned. Seru might live, but she probably won't sit on your face again.” Corvayne felt it was a good place to smile, so he smiled.
Nyx smiled back. “I would not be cracking jokes with a man who cost me an eye.”
“I'm happy you protected her. I don't like her that much, but... I was kind of worried when you two went off.”
Nyx nodded. “I had half a mind to scare her into more sense then to have a dalliance with a man who has pointed out her dying would solve a few problems. But no, she's not evil. Just clueless. I fear some of her remaining child-like trust in the world being kind to her has been left on the forest floor. As was a sizable amount of her blood.” He pulled down a white silk undershirt with his family crest on it, stained dark. “Yes. She's the reason you got stabbed, but is a bystander in... whatever this tower is.”
“As long as I get her out of here alive, I've done what I set out to do. I'm not a warrior or killer. I want to be someone who protects.” Corvayne said as he looked at his hands and legs. He was wearing a clean shirt and pants, but felt blood on his cheek where they failed to clean it all off.
He glanced back up and saw that Nyxion was frowning. He looked worried perhaps? “Corvayne some day, likely very soon, you'll need to hurt people who have done nothing to you save picked the wrong side. That or accept that Wick will never be safe. Seru isn't a person who needs to die, but there will be a guard, or a hostage pulled into being a shield, or some dumb hick who's just spots us at the wrong time. If it costs us lives to fight The Collective, then remember that weight behind you when you must take lives to save those who matter to you.”
He smiled. “You saw her naked once and she moved into the second category. You trying to tell me that, or yourself Nyx?”
Nyx just nodded at him.
Corvayne felt an arm touch his shoulder, and followed it to see Wick. She hugged him, which made his side twitch from being pulled. “Easy Wick that hurts.”
She just squeezed harder. “What did I tell you about putting yourself in reckless danger?”
“It was that or we lose two people.” Corvayne put an arm around her and squeezed back.
“I brought my belt. It might have held through another dozen barrages.” Nyx smiled.
Wick nodded. “I already yelled at you, and once Seru feels better I'll give her a damn lecture too about wandering off in the fucking dark. Our whole day is going to be shot as we can't move Seru, Mister I is exhausted, Lady and Grunt are also too tired from taking watch, and you're going to be dog meat as well since you've been up since they fell asleep. I need more rest too.”
Corvayne blinked his good eye. “Ok. I'm going to go climb a tree.” He got up.
Wick grabbed his arm as if he was about to fly off. “Oh no you don't. We gotta see if healing potions fix eyes.”
“Or I pick up a new hobby.” He reached into his pack and pulled out one of the treasures he'd re-acquired on the third floor. A book of Alchemy. He smiled and showed it off.
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“You think you can just brew an eye back?” Wick said.
“You didn't hear me argue with Nyx just now? It will grow back. It's the fourth time I've lost an eye. Maybe a week's time it will be good as new. Back when I got injured they wouldn't lift a finger for me aside from force me to rest in bed. Healing potions might speed it up.” Corvayne opened the small leather-bound book and looked for a table of contents. He smiled. The book included a list of plant ingredients with a densely written section that had clear pen illustrations with faint coloring on page after page of magical and mundane plants.
She saw what he was looking at. “Oh no you don't. What the hell is the difference between you running off alone to pick daisies and them going off to perform a nearly fatal sex act?”
Corvayne flipped a page. “I have a non-stupid reason to do so, I'm ten times tougher, and I can actually run away now instead of doing perhaps the most aggressive possible action I could take to stop them from hitting our nearly naked allies. But relax, right now I'm reading this, and I won't be wandering the woods aimlessly. I have one tree I'm going to climb.”
Wick relented, but only after Grunt woke up. She followed Corvayne's relaxed pace to the massive tree with a stream pouring down it. His side hurt a little, but walking no longer made it much better or worse. It was only a minute and a half walk from where they camped, and they needed to get water anyway. Looking up, the huge tree was maybe a few hundred feet tall. No big deal.
Wick looked between him, the tree, then back at him again and asked “Why? The actual why, as well as 'why do you think this is a sane idea even if you were fit, and the 'why are you fucking doing this instead of resting?'”
Corvayne smiled and wiggled his fingers in the stream flowing down the tree. “I want to know where the water comes from.”
She folded her arms. “If you fall you're breaking every bone in your body on the way down.”
“I bet there's a treasure chest wherever the water comes from.” He smiled. “They have healing potions what, like thirty percent of the time?” He stepped up to the tree on the opposite side of the waterfall pouring down it, felt for hand-holds, and then let his shadowy hands also find grips. He then had them help push him up as he climbed. Using the arms was a little draining, but the improved hands were a tremendous help. He couldn't quite use them to just drag him upwards as the four had about twenty or thirty pounds of sustained pull, but combined that was enough to make climbing the tree relaxing enough that it let him forget about his eye for a stretches where it wasn't throbbing.
Corvayne had not climbed a tree with branches before, but it wasn't too much different from rock climbing with extra ledges. He ended up zig-zagging around the back of the tree and saw that it was taller then he had expected. Maybe a thousand feet tall. Most of the other trees on the needle had fallen away, letting him see the mist was more of a cloud that had been hovering at the level he was at. There were more clouds above him, but off to the side he got half of a good look at hundreds of needles shaped floating islands, connected by delicate lines, as well getting a commanding view of dozens of other super tall trees. Or probably super tall trees, as his depth perception wasn't what it was yesterday. After a moment of letting himself take in the sights he continued to climb until he found a hole with water flowing out of it. There was enough room for him to climb next to the gap and crouch and swing his foot into the tree, then duck inside. The wood interior was shaped like a flat floored dome, with a spring flowing out of a door or portal that stood in the middle of the hollowed out tree.
He took a moment to examine it, noticing quickly the door was non-euclidean in nature. The back was solid stone, but the front showed him a tunnel to what was clearly another world that contained the spring. From this side of the door he could make out blue dirt, some crystals growing out of the pond, and a dark pinkish sky with purple clouds. A flash suggested lightning from the realm beyond the door.
He didn't think it was a floor stairway, nor was he interested in trying the portal out. It posed a reasonable risk of stranding him, and there wasn't any good way to bring his friends up to come with him.
A wood ledge ran around the pool, and of course there was a discolored oaken stump with hinges to open the top, like a chest, was waiting behind the door. This would be tricky if it was trapped. He decided to settle into the water and use his shadow hands to reach around the doorway. A click but no gas, spikes, lasers, or mimics. What was Seru saying? Dungeon, please provide.
With the heavy lid open, he saw three potions, a painting, and a silver ring shaped like a delicate branch woven around itself. Without magic it would be too fragile to wear, but he was pretty sure it wasn't mundane. His phone had survived being nearly impaled, so he took a picture of the painting of pine trees parting to view a rocky beach and part of an island. It reminded him of the inlet. One potion was a weird gray and seemed to have flakes of stuff in it, but there were two bright red healing potions. Bottoms up! He drank one there and then, and felt his eye itch and his sides shuffle. He could feel the ruined orb start to reform under the bandages. He tucked the rest of his loot away.
Just before leaving he spotted something on wall to the side of the door. The wood pattern of lines in the tree had formed a square of empty space. Someone had written in what looked like yellow paint, perhaps mimicking the signs around the park – 'Time weaves a twisted path. - Sage of Skills.' He took a picture of it too. Was it someone else moving through the dungeon leaving graffiti? A quote they liked? Or the start of some mind bending puzzle? Not his problem.
Corvayne marshaled his shadow limbs and started descending. As he stopped a moment on a huge branch, he felt something like another shadowy limb trying to move. Pushing on it, for a moment he felt something pulling him onto the branch. He stopped it and felt normal. Oh right. He had something that stated Gravity 1 on his sheet. He tried pulling himself upwards, and felt a more pronounced drain while also feeling lighter. Perhaps if he was in pristine condition and a little more depressed he'd be tempted to test the power by flinging himself off the tree. There was a certain type of hero who tried to baby-bird new powers into existence. He was not that type of person to try to see if he could slow his fall by pure will. Instead, he maintained the pull upwards as he lowered himself down. It didn't make the climb easier as he was getting tired faster, but it seemed he could cut a chunk of his weight off with the gravity ability. Another thing to practice.
At the bottom he saw Wick and Grunt both were keeping an eye out for porcupines. He cleared his throat and made a little extra noise as he descended the last fifty feet as to not startle them.
“More potions, a ring, and a portal to another floor. But not a stairway so... I'm not messing with it. It makes me miss Hari on the tactical side of things even more.” He didn't want to burden Wick with blurting out that watching her die had filled him with regrets, nor the worry that she'd not come back.
Wick nodded. “I want to find a portal, but I think our goal here is to get out...” She looked him in the eye and smiled. “I miss Hari too. You're happier with her cheering you on.”
Corvayne tried to look nonchalant. “It's not as good as Wick time.”
Grunt shook his head rolling his eyes: You two.
Corvayne lead them around the woods near camp, trying to spot which plants were ones that the book said they could use, and reading how to harvest them and preserve them. As it turned out, the cooler was the correct solution for the plants they could use. The woods were thick with Arrowspite and Criers root: Arrowspite without any other processing could chewed to speed up healing or put in a salad. Criers root was a different ingredient that grew under thin tall ferns with a slightly blue color that was also another ingredient in two variations of healing potion. It also could be used to brew various ailment healing potions. There were Viper-Cat plants: bushes named for scaled bark and cat-eye patterns on the leaves. The berries were an ingredient in mana potions and a slew of other things he'd need to process in what sounded like a workshop's worth of materials. He found one patch of Claywood Bramble which was used to make a barkskin potion. The trees had regular moss with no use but a few patches of Bloodbind moss. To find it, he had to poke moss until he found a patch that bled red sap. It was a pretty potent if made into a paste and applied to wounds, but also had innate healing properties if chewed... as long as someone chewing didn't mind that it tasted like triple strength mint. The only outlier in rarity he found was a plant called an obsidian orchid. He saw it danging from a branch while he was climbing a few feet up to test a big patch of moss. The thing looked like a glittering black cup. The book said it was used in a few potions that offered permanent boosts. He wasn't about to go full alchemy lab or cultivator pill maker, but he had a feeling Mosh or Mister I might.
Back at camp Mister I was up, though looking tired. He, being a resourceful man, had dried a bunch of porcupine meat in between checking up on Seru.
“How is she?” Corvayne said, setting down a cooler now full of herbs next to the Monk.
“She woke up. In pain, and while I removed the spines and did surgery and mended and used potions... I cannot be sure how long she'll take to recover. It seems that being healed by magic has a price the body pays... I've been feeding her as best as I can to hopefully restore her spirit.” Mister I sighed and sipped from a tea cup he had.
“How about salad?” Corvayne tapped the cooler.
“No!” The Monk shouted in horror, then calmed down. “Wait, what's in there?”
“Herbs. The natural treasures talk made me think about things we were not using. Including that book of alchemy.”
He showed Mister I some of the things he had seen, as well as the book entries. “Well! I bet I can make something that will help her pain. And perhaps yours, since you seem to be driven to what, ascend the heavens while your sides are taped together?” Mister I poked his ribs and Corvayne used a lot of willpower not to spasm at the uncomfortable feeling it produced.
The rest of the day was spent helping Mister I make healing paste and sometimes wandering out of camp in threes to gather more of something. Seru lay on a cot in the tent, drifting in and out of being lucid as Mister I applied gels and forced her to drink teas he brewed out of various plants. Corvayne tried a cup of red tea made out of Bloodbind moss and found the overpowering mint flavor haunted him many hours past reaching the bottom of one small cup. By dinner Seru could come out of the tent and eat with everyone. She looked a little shocked still, which wasn't too surprising. Everyone dealt with their first brush with death differently. Corvayne took first watch with Wick, then fell asleep pretty much the moment his head hit the pillow.
Wick woke him up before it got light by slipping into his bedroll and while they were quiet, he was pretty sure he heard a an amused snort from Grunt, who very pointedly had his back perfectly lined up with his sleeping bag to act as a visual barrier to the tent.
That morning they were ready to move. Grunt had whittled Seru a walking stick to help with her being wobbly. She could go at a steady pace, but Corvayne decided to risk the platform with the wire rather then having her walk along treacherous railing. The cart had a crank that could be used to roll it up the wire, with a release for letting the cart slide back down. The whole contraption was about six feet by six feet.
Wick complicated everything by noting that it probably had a maximum weight. “We might all fit in that thing but no WAY am I going to trust it won't break under all that weight! We need to take two trips.”
As much as splitting the party seemed like a bad idea, Corvayne agreed to have him, Grunt, and Lady Blood claw go first, then ride with the cart back down to ferry the other members.
Grunt took care of winding the rotating lever to wind the cart up the wire. It was ten minutes but the big man didn't show any sign of tiring as the platform gently bumped into place on another overgrown platform hanging off the back of the next needle-shaped island. The platform's metal steps connected to what looked like raised concrete walkways over a carpet of ferns. Lady Blood Claw quickly dismounted, looking visibly relived to be off the platform. Grunt was more leisurely, and did a sweep of the surroundings. He gave a thumbs up to Corvayne: There are no obvious threats either on the walkway nor down the steps to the forest floor.
Corvayne hit the lever that released the gear and with cranking noises the cart made steady progress back down the line, hitting the platform below with a much louder bump.
Corvayne found himself nervous the entire time he was taking the other four up with him, partially because he was thinking about weight limits. Wick picked up on this and reminded him that Grunt alone was probably more then any three of them combined, which did take some of the worry of falling out of his head.
Seru did apologize to him and for the third time he explained his eye would grow back. “I was more worried about you. You almost died there.” He said while using his shoulders to push his arms forward like a piston, cranking the cart upwards. Grunt had made it look so easy...
“I was at three health. I was going to bleed out.” Seru said quietly.
“Well you didn't, and you'll get tougher, and you have your jacket on now to help protect you. It was a matter of time before we had an attack while encamped, I'm just glad we didn't lose anyone.” Corvayne tried to be encouraging.
“I was trying to make you jealous!” She blurted suddenly.
Nyx laughed. “That and you were horny.”
Seru turned away, pouting. “Sleeping with him once only made it worse.”
Wick looked at Corvanye, concerned. She leaned over to him and whispered “Do I need to worry?”
“I didn't think I was mind blowing or anything. I was tired and sort of annoyed with her... not putting in my best work at all.” He admitted.
“Sometime I'd like to see what it's like when you're angry at me.” Wick mused.
He turned back to Seru to try not to get too sidetracked on Wick. “You need to focus on yourself. Your goal is to be a journalist right? Excuse me, an investigative journalist. Maybe put me off to the side and look at what you need to do to make your own dreams come true.”
“Okay but doing one thing doesn't mean I don't want to do another thing.” Seru said, gesturing at Corvayne. “I'm not that easy to shake off.”
Mister I was looking over the edge of the cart into foggy yellow nothingness. “Let's not shake anything off! I can probably look down to see Mount Tai!”
Wick ignored Mister I and kept her gaze on Seru, folding her arms as she asked, “Why are you so fixated on Corvayne?”
Seru thought about it. “Oh. He saved my life, he's really hot when he's fighting with a freaking spear like some sort of real life gladiator, he looks weirdly sexy when he's covered in blood and glaring at things, and really, really hot when he's doing stuff like coming back to camp with meat and cooking it. He also makes you want to tease him.”
There was something familiar about that list. Wick was biting her lip “Why the HELL can't she be this sharp when it comes to stopping herself from doing something stupid!?”
The next pack of Spine monsters was off the raised path midway across the next needle. They could possibly just walk over and past them but Corvayne didn't want them to leave things at their back. Grunt and Nyx charged into the fray and Mister I and Wick picked monsters off. It was a safe strategy except for Grunt, who took a hell of a beating. The man seemed fine with it and he did a pretty good job of protecting his face every time he ran in, baseball bat swinging wildly. Nyx on the other hand was clearly angry, battering the last monster left to the point of it being unrecognizable.
The staircase up was in a concrete tower they saw at the highest point of the needle. There structure looked sort of like either an air traffic control tower or fire watch building to Corvayne. The interior had a mundane stairwell that actually lead up to the top floor as well as a door that opened up into the blue cave-like stairs to the next floor.
“See, this would have been a fine place to camp.” Nyxion said while patting the door.
“Next time we camp somewhere fine, you can be on top so whatever is trying to kill me hits you first.” Seru said, catching her breath. Mister I had her chew on some more Arrowspite.
The noble nodded. “Fair enough.”
There wasn't a full chest at the ruined office up the stairs, but there was a first aid kit with another healing potion and what looked like a blue-metal needle. Mister I took it and the rest of the kit, given that every other object with blue metal seemed to be magical and often times things from the tower just were better. In one of the drawers in a desk there were a few silver coins.
Once they had taken a moment to drink water and catch their breath, Wick gestured to Corvayne to take the lead up the stair, which he did. He'd had more then enough of the floor and getting shot at by monsters. He stepped into the blue light of the tunnel and made his way up the stairs to the 8th floor.