Wyn peered around the corner, only a couple dozen yards from the entrance to the second floor. There, seemingly standing guard, was a cabal of various monsters. Some from the first floor, some from the second, and even some he didn’t recognize, they must’ve been from further below. Not for the first time, he wondered, and cursed, whatever phenomenon was causing this change in behavior. Either way, he didn’t have a choice in what to do about it.
After catching his breath, he wiped the sweat off his hand and drew a firestone from its protective pouch. The red, jagged crystal fit comfortably in his palm, no larger than a cherry. So much power in such a small package…
Holding his sword in his left hand, Wyn turned the corner and charged, winging the stone towards the crowd of monsters. Just before the stone landed, he squeezed his eyes shut as a blinding flash and resounding boom thundered through the dark tunnels.
When his eyes opened, the damage was obvious, several of the monsters closest to the center of the blast had been turned to ash, and those further away had been gravely injured. Nonetheless, the sheer number of them demanded that some would remain unscathed further back in the room.
With a yell, Wyn jumped towards the nearest monster, one of the black metal skeletons, and kicked it with enough force to send it hurtling into the wall behind it. In that moment, an ossein spider leapt towards Wyn with a piercing, bone on bone screech. He severed its head from its body without so much as a glance.
Within moments, Wyn was swept into the battle. The cramped tunnels made it possible for him to fight such a large number of beasts, but even still he was pressed back by the sheer mass of all of them. His sword flashed through the air as he killed and killed. This past week had pushed him harder than any other time in his life, and he’d grown much stronger for it. If he’d been this capable back on the third floor the first time… He shoved the thought aside, now wasn’t the time for—
Wyn’s foot slipped in a pool of mud-like blood, cursing the distraction as he tumbled backwards into a roll, standing just before a blow caught him on the side, launching him into the wall. Despite the ringing in his skull, he hardly took a moment to breathe before kicking off the stone, back into the fray.
His teeth grit as he cut a path through the crowd. He couldn’t afford to stop moving, even for a second. The cavern ahead would give him an opportunity to create some distance if he could just make it there. He was so close, maybe closer than he’d ever gotten before. A few more yards and he’d be through.
The gaps began to close, more monsters spilling out of the deeper tunnels to push him back.
“NO!” Wyn roared, swinging harder, pushing himself even further, he had to make it back. Slowly though, his progress began to grind to a halt. Razor sharp talons drove into his side, twisting claws cut a gash across his back.
Brow slick with sweat, Wyn held his ground. The tunnel was piled with so many corpses it was hard to move, the air was so thick with death it choked his lungs, but the bodies just kept coming, like mindless drones, the monsters kept striking at him. Soon, he was overwhelmed, and he lost ground, his feet slipping as he was pushed back. Even as he kept fighting, he felt his stamina draining, his sword growing heavier in his hand. Since the beginning of this battle, there had been no reprieve.
Fight!
Teeth tore into his leg.
Win!
He slammed into the ground. Desperately, he raised his sword to catch a blow on his blade, forcing his body to stand.
I have to save him!
Wyn stumbled backwards, tripping on the corpse of a monster. The sword slipped out of his hand. It was over.
A cry of despair escaped Wyn’s lips as he lurched back down the tunnel the way he’d come. As always, the monsters didn’t follow him, moving back, deeper into the tunnel where they stood guard, their mysterious mission a success. And his, a failure.
Wyn smashed his hand against the wall of the tunnel, breathing heavily as he bled from his knuckles. “Damn it!” He’d been rebuffed again. Ever since the day Corrin had fallen into the chasm, Wyn had been trying to make it back to the third floor.
Something had changed. Before, the monsters had roamed the dungeon aimlessly, or at least if they had some goal, it was inscrutable to Wyn. But after that day, they’d become… organized, for lack of a better term. Brought together with what seemed to be a desire to prevent Wyn from regrouping with Corrin.
After ensuring they were gone, Wyn returned to grab his sword, using it like a crutch as he staggered, awkwardly, slowly, agonizingly, back towards the entrance.
No monsters remained on the first floor to threaten him, just as there hadn’t been any that morning. It was as if all the creatures in the dungeon had gathered to prevent him from advancing. Even so, Wyn found some solace in it. In his mind, if the dungeon itself wanted to keep him from going further in, then Corrin must still be alive. The two were linked somehow, even if he didn’t know how or why.
The walk back to Straetum was a long one. The once tranquil landscape of the mountains now felt like the calm of death, a silent blanket of dread slowly wrapping around him and choking the air from his lungs. How many times would he have to tell his mother he’d failed?
Wyn limped back into town just before sunset. He’d need to get his leg treated soon, but he couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment, instead opting to meander towards the library. He’d always been quite bookish, and it was a quiet space which helped him to think more clearly.
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What he failed to account for was the staff.
As he stumbled through the door to the library—apparently now bleeding from multiple places—Khaeli gasped in shock, the broom in her hands slipping to the floor with an audible smack.
“Spirits, Wyn! What happened?” she exclaimed, rushing over towards him.
“I’m fine—” He slipped, almost falling before he caught himself on a desk. “Ok maybe I’m not in top form. But it’s fine.”
“You look like you were chewed up by a gladewolf!” Khaeli floundered for several moments, clearly unsure what to do before running off into the library calling for her mentor. Wyn had just sat down when she returned moments later with a sheet of cloth and began wrapping it around his leg wound.
The initial panic seemed to have faded as she worked, but a distinct sense of melancholy hung in the air. “So… still nothing?” she asked.
“No.”
“Do you think he’s ok?” Khaeli asked quietly.
“Of course. It’s Corrin after all, he’s probably on his way up right now.” Wyn tried to sound more confident than he felt, forcing a smile onto his face.
“Yeah… you’re right.”
A sharp voice rang out, shattering the awkward tension in the air, “How could you come in here and bleed all over my library? Stupid boy! I should go have a talk with your mother!”
The librarian of Straetum, Jinrah Ornum, was an elderly woman with grayed hair tied up into a tight bun. She was much shorter than Wyn and even Khaeli, but they both flinched as she marched towards them with the inevitability of a storm.
“Miss Ornum, I’m sorry for coming here in such a—” Wyn’s desperate plea was interrupted by a swift slap to the side of his head. A second smacking noise indicated he wasn’t the only one being reprimanded.
“No excuses! If you’re in such a sorry state, the first place you should’ve gone was to the surgeon to get your wounds checked out!”
Wyn bowed, “Of course Ma’am, but I thought—” smack.
“If you thought that this was somehow a good idea, then you need to get your brain checked out as well! Now shoo, shoo!” She practically pushed him out the door, and as the large wooden door slowly closed, he could clearly hear her beginning to lay into Khaeli as well.
Nonetheless, something about the interaction had improved his mood, even if only slightly, so he walked to the surgeon without a moment's further delay.
As he made his way to the building where the doctor resided, he realized a storm had begun to brew above Straetum, the skies darkening as the wind slowly began to pick up. The location of the town usually meant that they only received gentle storms and light rain, but the mass of swirling darkness above almost certainly meant this would be a larger one.
The door to Doctor Rylin’s house—a wing of which was sectioned off for his practice—opened with the ring of a bell. It was early enough in the day that he would still be potentially expecting customers, and guardians of the tomb were considered high priority. Thus, as soon as Wyn entered, Jeth, the surgeon’s son, a boy only a few years older than Wyn, quickly had him move over to a table and began to briefly assess his injuries.
“So, this one was a bite wound?” Jeth asked, holding a small blue spell stone to Wyn’s leg.
“Yeah, and the cuts on my side and back were claws.” Wyn took off his shirt after a quick order from Jeth. Though he wasn’t fully trained yet, he’d still been named an official apprentice, with medicine as his chosen calling. He’d been working with his father almost as long as Wyn and Corrin had trained with the sword, and his opinion would be worth more than almost anyone else in Straetum.
“That doesn’t make any sense…” Jeth mumbled.
“What doesn’t?”
“These marks here,” He pointed to a pair of two puncture wounds right next to each other on Wyn’s leg. “Marks like these usually indicate a venomous creature. If I had to guess, I’d say it was probably a rock viper, almost certainly a snake or spider of some kind.”
Wyn frowned, “Yeah, those are venomous. They’re a second-floor monster that sometimes roams up to the first. We have to be careful when fighting them, but can’t you just give me an anti-venom?”
“That’s the thing… you’re not showing any signs of venom injection. Usually, rock vipers leave some necrosis around the entry point as the venom kills the tissues in the area… but you’re perfectly fine. You don’t have any traditional symptoms of the bite either. It’s not a very lethal venom, but you should have a quickened heart rate, trouble breathing, something.”
“Maybe it was something else?” Wyn suggested.
“Maybe. I’ll give you a small dose of antivenom just in case, and you can come back if you start to notice any symptoms, but as far as I can tell, you’re fine.”
After looking over the wounds, Jeth stepped back and moved to a counter, mixing some herbs together in a pestle. “I’m going to need to stitch up your leg, but the back and side can probably just be cleaned and bandaged.”
Wyn raised an eyebrow. “Probably?”
“Neither is particularly deep. If something changes, or if it gets worse, we can consider more extensive treatment,” Jeth said.
“Will I be able to walk on the leg?”
“I’ll give you some crutches for today while they set, just to be safe. But it’s not that bad. Here, swallow this.”
Jeth handed Wyn a small white pill as he finished mixing the herbs, Wyn happily obliged. Only recently had pills become more popular in medicine apparently, and Wyn much preferred them to the much more bitter liquids that were prevalent, especially when he was younger.
“So…” Jeth started, applying an ointment from the pestle onto Wyn’s wound. It grew slightly numb. “Are the rumors about Corrin true? Did he really die in the tomb?”
Wyn’s grip tightened on the table. “No, he’s alive. I just have to get to him.”
Jeth nodded. He hadn’t been close with either of them, and sometimes growing up it had been the exact opposite, but their similar ages meant they had grown up around each other. It hadn’t seemed to matter much when they were younger, but at some point, that had changed, Wyn wasn’t sure when.
“I see, well try not to push yourself too hard. I’d rather not see you in here again, especially not with worse injuries.”
Wyn cracked a grin, “Yeah, it must irk you to use such valuable medicine on people who don’t have to pay.”
“The money goes straight down the drain,” Jeth nodded sagely.
“Poor thing, I’ll make sure to waste plenty of it.”
Jeth clicked his tongue and handed Wyn a small leather strap. “You’ll probably want to bite down on that.”
Wyn bit down just as Jeth started stitching his leg. His hand clenched at the sharp pain, but it wasn’t the first time Wyn had gotten stitches, and he’d received more injuries in his life than he could count. Thanks to that, he held still, watching as Jeth expertly wove the stitches into his skin. Wyn couldn’t help but be impressed with the speed at which he worked, though he supposed there was a reason the surgeon was well respected in town, just as much as the tomb guards.
“All done,” Jeth announced.
“Thank you.”
“Yeah yeah, you’d better not be back anytime soon, I thought the two of you were supposed to be invincible…” He grumbled.
Wyn smiled, “If only.”
Wyn was able to leave shortly after, heading back towards the library. The wind had picked up even further, and thunder had begun to rumble overhead.
It seemed Straetum would be in for a storm like they hadn’t seen in years.