Below them in the ravine, the glowing rocks flickered like campfires. Miles thought it was something to do with whatever chemical reaction was causing the glow at first, but when he watched one of them, he saw dark silhouettes passing in front of it.

“Who’re we missing?” Fran asked, looking around at them. “Rolian. Saw him get done for myself. What about Sailish?”

“Sailish is dead,” Lanet said. They were sitting on the stone floor, their legs crossed, staring at their clasped hands. At some point, something had hit their head, making a deep gash that had quickly clotted into a purple scab. “Stupid fools. Why did you treat every challenge as something you could cut your way through?”

“I’m sorry for that,” Fran said, crouching by Lanet. “I don’t think there was anything we could have done for them. Sometimes, down here, you run up against something you can’t fight, and that’s just that. You run, or you find out.”

“That was always their fault,” Lanet said. “Sailish longed for glory. Rolian was always desperate to prove himself. I’ve seen them charge in headlong a hundred times. I think I always believed it would come to this.”

“There are things down there in the ravine,” Miles said, crawling up to the two of them.

“Yeah. I caught a glimpse. They look like cobolts,” Fran said.

“And those are?” Miles said.

He’d started feeling twitchy in the city, and that had turned to full panic when the giant appeared. Now, the adrenaline was fading leaving him trembling. And annoyed.

“Tech critters. Old friends, next to that thing upstairs.”

Miles glanced back to the edge of the ledge. He could vaguely make out small shapes moving in the near-darkness below. They didn’t look bigger than one or two feet tall, with reflective metal plates that occasionally shone with the dim red light of the rocks.

He turned to look at Lanet.

“Do you want me to heal that?” he asked, indicating the head wound.

Lanet put a hand to the injury on their forehead. “Yes. Please.”

“Thanks, Miley,” Fran said. “Saves me the seln on a scar patch.”

Miles shuffled over to Lanet. He briefly fell into Eyes of the Altruist, checking them over for any less obvious injuries. He did the same for Fran and Task. Miraculously, they’d avoided getting too badly hurt in the fall or from the falling debris.

Putting his hand over Lanet’s head injury, he fell into the litany for Close Wound. His core had already started spinning when he remembered he could do better. He pulled out his index, looking for the upgraded healing spell.

Name: Miles Asher | Traditions: Harmonizer | Index Value: δ#1,2#0##

Fundamental Properties:

Strength (0)

Durability (8/1)

Speed (0)

Reactions (0)

Will (0)

Authority (3)

Authority (0.19)

Spells

Seal Wounds (Grasping)

A weft of harmonizing energy brings together the free edges of a target's wounds, sealing closed a specific tear, or working to seal all tears.

Temporary Enhancement (Seeking)

A temporary matrix of harmonizing energy alters one of a being’s fundamental properties by an amount in accordance with the weaver’s authority.

Hasten Renewal (Grasping)

A weft of harmonizing energy spreads from the weaver to their target, greatly speeding the being’s natural recovery by an amount multiplicative with the weaver’s authority.

Strike the Disharmonious (Adept)

With a weft of harmonizing energy, the weaver rips the authority from a disharmonious target, degrading its existence and claiming the confiscated authority for themself. While held ready, discordant presences will ring loudly in the weaver’s awareness.

Purify (Grasping)

A temporary weave of harmonizing energy takes up residence in the target, degrading objects and substances inimical to the target’s existence over time.

Core Effects

Eyes of the Emigre

Embeds a matrix of harmonizing energy within the being’s mind which will reveal to them the meaning of any plain text or spoken language.

Eyes of the Altruist

Embeds a matrix of harmonizing energy within the being’s mind which reveal to them the health and ailments of a witnessed being.

He’d only meant to skim the unrelated information, but he stopped when he saw his Durability.

His Strength was back to listing as zero, which made sense, since he’d let his own Temporary Enhancement fade, but why did he have enhanced Durability?

He thought back to the long fall down the shaft, and how the door and stones had hit him. The door was still on the ledge with them now, undamaged even after the fall. It was clearly made of the same strong, incredibly heavy metal as the planks Fran had salvaged.

He’d come out of those collisions surprisingly well, considering the weight of the metal that the door was made of. Maybe the increased Durability explained why, but where had it come from?

The spell Task had cast?

He looked at the apprentice. The word he’d used above had made it sound like a defensive spell, and Miles’ index was apparently able to detect the change even from the spell of an unsupported tradition, he just hadn’t thought Task was so versatile.

The other mage had been underselling himself when suggesting he might be able to make himself useful on dives.

Focusing on his job, Miles put his hand over their injury, then with his free hand he index-cast his new Seal Wounds spell.

His magical core, already spinning, ramped up to a whirring flywheel of crackling energy.

The tear is an aberration. In a harmonious world, the many are one. The damage should revert. Such should it be.

Heat flashed out of Miles’ hand with a burst of yellow light and an audible crackling, a yellow-white flame flickering across the cut on Lanet’s head, dissolving the purple scab and leaving unblemished skin behind.

Behind him, Fran made an appreciative whuffling sound that didn’t translate, before saying, “You sure Tier 1’s right for you, Miley?”

Miles shook his hand out, flexing until the new pins-and-needles feeling faded. He didn’t answer Fran. He really wasn’t focusing on his career, right then. He’d be delighted if he just got out of this cave alive.

Miles turned and went to sit in front of Task, next.

“Hey, Task. Are you okay?”

The other mage didn’t look okay. He was sucking his tusks, his hands clasped around his knees, eyes wide and looking off into space to his right.

“What was that creature on the level above us?” he asked. His eyes didn’t move from the wall.

Miles considered how to answer.

‘I don’t know’ seemed like the exact opposite of the answer Task needed right then.

The apprentice wasn’t doing okay, and while Miles was also in over his head, he was the reason the other mage was even here.

Task needed solidity, reassurance, and to feel like he hadn’t just barely escaped from an abject horror. Maybe he could take a page out of Trin’s book.

“It’s called a Honk Boss,” Miles said, seriously. “They’re impossible to fight, but they broadcast their location, so it’s easy to get away. The others needed to run with us. As long as you run from them, you’re fine.”

Task finally turned to look at him. He seemed skeptical. Miles sensed that Fran was paying attention as well, but she didn’t contradict him.

“Apologies. Honk… boss? Is that a translation fault?” Task asked.

“No, that’s their real name,” Miles insisted. “They’re totally normal and totally well understood. There’s nothing strange about them at all.”

Task cocked his head to the side, and his expression changed from paralyzed tension to something closer to exasperation.

They were interrupted by a sound like a drop of water hitting a hot skillet, and a patch of rock above Miles’ head exploded into dust. More hisses followed, puffs of powdered stone flying up from the corner of the ledge and raining down on them from the wall above.

It took Miles a second to realize they were being shot at.

“Everyone down,” Fran said, following her own advice as she dived to the floor.

Miles went down with Task, pulling the mage to the ground beside him. He spent a few seconds with his cheek against the gritty stone, before raising his head to try and see what was happening.

Fran was reaching into a pocket of her trench coat. After a moment of rummaging, she pulled out a small star-shaped device, tapped it twice on the ground, then tossed it over the edge.

The firing continued for a few seconds, then a loud explosion cracked out from below them. The shooting abruptly stopped.

“Okay, quick tac rundown,” Fran said, speaking quickly and quietly while spread across the floor. “Cobolts are little guys. Tech life. They’re angry and they want your gear. They got inside the dungeon forty or more iterations ago and they’ve been making more of themselves ever since. Their armor’s not great, their guns are hot strikers, and they break like twigs if you can get a hit on them. They’re about as smart as a hurrim, and while they are tech, you can scare them if you drop something flashy. That’s why the shooting stopped. They didn’t like the big bang.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Miles didn’t know what a hurrim was, and he only had a guess about the hot striker. When he focused on the unfamiliar Eppan word, his Eyes of the Emigre gave him the impression of some kind of predatory four-legged ground bird, closer to a fox than a hawk.

“If one of you can get me cover from their guns, I can pick off their snipers,” Fran added, looking toward the ledge.

Miles turned to Task.

“Task, you cast a spell to protect us, didn’t you?”

“Apologies, yes,” Task said. The fall through the darkness had turned the apprentice into a shuddering mess, but he seemed a lot more composed after their talk, even if they were under fire.

“Don’t apologize, I think you saved me from a broken shoulder,” Miles said, then went on. “Is it a strong enough protection that it can stop those weapons?”

“I don’t know,” Task said.

He thought for a second, then rolled over and unbuckled his stomach plate. He held it up, positioned so that it was above the line of the ledge to the ravine below.

He held it there for about ten seconds before one of the cobolt snipers took the opportunity and shot at it.

A puff of smoke went up from the metal plate, and when Task brought it back down, there was a finger-sized hole through the center of a heat-warped circle.

“No. I think the spell will help bone stop the shots, but flesh will still be torn and burned.”

Miles looked around. His robe might block the weapons, especially with its new foil lining, but he didn’t have any face protection. Fran probably wasn’t lacking for body armor herself, if that had been the issue. Her trench coat looked to be made of similar stuff.

He wistfully remembered the shield he’d turned down in the Ishel marketplace.

Searching the ledge, his eyes fell on the door that had fallen with them. It had landed on its front, the rear side showing a fixed horizontal bar that was presumably used as the handle. If he could get it upright, it would work as cover.

He started crawling over to it.

Fran was moving in the other direction, dragging herself to the edge, but as soon as she peeked out, another shot went off near her, turning the stone near where she was sheltering into a burst powder.

Reaching the door, Miles grabbed the crossbar and tried to lift it. He managed to bring it up a couple of inches before the strain was too much and he was forced to drop it back down. The angle was wrong, and even if he had the strength, he didn’t have the leverage.

Maybe the levitation unit.

Miles spotted the device he’d used to survive the fall sitting forgotten a few feet away. He grabbed it, attached the clamp to the door’s crossbar, and switched it on.

It hummed to life, the indicator light showing it was active.

Grabbing the unit’s handle, Miles pulled as hard as he could and the door lifted off the ground.

It wasn’t effortless. Even with the levitation tech, it still felt like moving a few kilograms of bricks around from the inertia alone, but he was able to position it vertically, giving himself enough cover to stand up behind it.

“Good,” Fran said, sliding away from the edge and coming up to stand with him.

It was a narrow fit, the door was only about three feet wide, but Fran seemed happy to stand in his shadow as he edged toward the precipice.

He felt the impacts of the cobolt weapons when he stepped out above the cover of the ledge, tiny shocks of impact that rang mutely on the door, but none of them came close to penetrating it.

Fran tilted her head, peering around the door before letting off a shot from her sleek pistol. The beam of light flashed into the ravine below, and a second later there was a muted popping sound. Given how the weapon had worked against the Orbellius ghouls, her target had probably exploded.

Over the next few minutes, weapons fire continued to splatter against Miles’ improvised shield, while Fran continued leaning out and firing precise shots at the harassing cobolts.

Miles was worried about the longevity of her gun’s power cell, but Fran apparently wasn’t. It was only a matter of time before Fran’s precision and Miles’ cover won it for them. A final weapon discharge hit the door, Fran returned fire, and after that the cobolt attacks stopped.

It still seemed like there were cobolts down there. Miles could see shapes moving in the dark, but there were no more hissing lasers.

Miles waited a minute, then experimentally stuck his arm out from behind the door. When nothing tried to shoot him around the edge of the metal plate, he gently lowered it.

“That’ll be all their ranged folk gone. We’ll still have their scrappers to get through,” Fran said. She started operating her wrist scanner, checking several different screens before she spoke again. “Lucky. There’s a door a little walk down this gully. We dropped straight down from three, so there’s probably less than six rooms between us and the crater. I told you I’ve done this before. We’ll be out with time to spare.”

Fran’s reassurances fell a little flat with Miles. He knew logically that she wasn’t responsible for what they’d faced in the level above, and even with her greater experience, she wouldn’t have led them into that place if she’d known or suspected what might be there.

On an emotional level, he was finding it hard not to blame her.

Miles knew from experience that this kind of irrational grudge, blaming someone for a tragedy they weren’t directly responsible for, would only fade with time, safety, and distance.

“I’ll go down first,” Fran said. She stepped up to the ledge “Anything left will group around me, and I’ll try and take them down before the rest of you get there. All right. The rest of you all, follow me at your convenience.”

She gripped the levitation unit she’d salvaged in her left hand, her pistol in her right, and jumped off the ledge.

Miles quickly looked between Task and Lanet. “Are you two okay to follow?”

Lanet had just suffered the loss of two friends, lifelong friends from what Miles had heard. Task might have been experiencing mortal danger for the first time in his life, and he was now either suppressing his fear to look like he was handling it, or he’d gone numb enough that he actually was handling it. Without knowing enough about Hurc psychology, neither seemed healthy to Miles.

Below in the ravine, he could hear the wuffles and grunts of Fran fighting, interspersed with the crunching of crushed metal and the sharp sparking of energy discharges.

“I’m ready,” Task said. “Apologies. This is very upsetting. I don’t think this is my future career.”

“I’m ready to fight as well,” Lanet said. “I’ll scream at the sky tomorrow. For today, let’s get to safety.”

This time when they descended, Lanet took Task, supporting him with the spell they'd used to descend from the third level. From the way they both crunched into the ground at high speed, Lanet standing up unharmed a moment later, it must have been some kind of defensive spell repurposed to defend against the fall.

Miles stepped up to the edge of the cliff next. He grabbed the handle of his levitation unit with both hands, peered over the side with a sinking feeling, and leaped off the edge, holding the door above his head.

The fall was slower than it had been with Task, no faster than a brisk walking pace.

He drifted down, his arms straining, before finally touching down on the floor of the ravine. He landed with the same force he’d expect from hopping a fence, his boots slapping the ground as he bent his knees to absorb the impact.

Seconds after he landed, he saw Task sprawled nearby, a small four-legged robotic humanoid standing over him with a cleaver-like blade.

Miles drew his striker without thinking and fired off a shot at it.

The weapon was set to its lowest level for safety, but it was still enough to blast the cobolt back. The metallic creature smacked into the nearest stone wall and slid to the ground, where it didn’t get back up.

Nearby, Fran was still fighting. A seemingly endless number of the tech units were scampering toward them down the ravine.

At the bottom of the surrounding cliffs, the ground was relatively flat. A channel about fifteen meters wide, interrupted by occasional steps where the ravine changed elevation, lit dimly by the red glow of rocks Miles hoped weren’t radioactive.

Each cobolt was about two feet tall, with a head that wasn’t much more than a cluster of wires and cameras. They had single-jointed mechanical arms attached to a short armored torso, with clamp hands that gripped knives, clubs, and spikes made from repurposed scrap. Some of them ran on two legs with a very human gait, while others had four legs, turning them into tiny tech centaurs.

The bodies of the snipers that Fran had picked off lay scattered around, some seeming like they’d been in the process of trying to get to cover when the beam of her pistol had detonated their heads. It looked like they had been using hand-held weapons, rather than integrated guns, since short white plastic rifles lay scattered around close to the bodies.

Fran was wrecking them with every kick and punch, and none of them were getting close enough to hurt her, but there seemed like there were still a lot bearing down on them.

Miles started firing off his striker at the approaching robots. The small scrappers didn’t even try to evade, going down from a single shot almost anywhere on their body.

At one point, a larger, more armored unit made it to Miles, and he had to fend it off with his makeshift shield while he dialed the power up on his striker. The next shot took its head off completely, leaving it to sag to the ground.

Nearby, Lanet was fighting using a blade of glowing energy that seemed to emerge from their hand. The blade was barely visible even in the low light, but every time they swung it at an opponent, a cobolt body fell into pieces.

Miles was starting to get the impression that this was the kind of challenge they should have been facing so close to the surface. The cobolts were a threat, but their snipers could be neutralized through strategy, and they’d only be dangerous close-up to people without equipment, or who let themselves get swarmed.

On his first trip to the dungeon with Brisk, they’d fought similar fights on level seven, though with a higher number of more complicated opponents.

The encounters on his second trip to the first level had been artificially difficult due to the repurposed diver equipment the Orbellius ghouls had been using, but they were still something his team could have survived on their own.

Whatever the giant had been on the level above, it stood out as a clear aberration.

The Ymn city monster had seemed like it was literally impossible to fight, and whatever Miles had told Task to make the apprentice feel better, their getting away had been luck as much as judgment.

After a few seconds, Task got to his feet. He picked up one of the dropped cobolt rifles and slowly turned it over in his hands. The thing was so small it looked like a pistol next to him.

He aimed it into the ravine ahead and fired it experimentally. A puff of smoke went up from the ground in front of one of the advancing robots, causing it to stop and start fleeing in the opposite direction.

About the time when the piles of small metallic bodies were starting to become inconvenient, the cobolts stopped advancing so aggressively. The attackers thinned out, and even more started running away.

Miles got the impression that they’d collectively decided the attack was a loss and were backing off.

Fran was breathing heavily, and Lanet’s white skin had turned faintly blue. Miles checked them over with Eyes of the Altruist, before scanning the rest of the ravine with the magic.

Interestingly, some of the motionless cobolts were registering glowing shapes, angular and boxy components, packed densely within their bodies. The magic was obviously interpreting them as alive. Miles briefly worried whether he should try to finish them off, but they seemed like if they had been able to move at all, they’d be running away.

Fran and Lanet were both untouched. Miles might have been injured if he hadn’t had the door-shield, but he’d got through the battle without a scratch. Task had been hurt, however. There were cuts on his arms from where he’d tried to protect himself from blade-wielding cobolts, and a bruise around one eye that Miles hadn’t seen happen.

Miles hadn’t felt any magic coming from the other mage during the fight, but then Miles hadn’t tried his attack spell either. Strike the Disharmonious took a couple of seconds to cast, and against the number of cobolts they’d been facing it hadn’t seemed worth it. If Task’s offensive magic also took a moment to cast, maybe he’d found the cobolt weapon more convenient.

“Task, can I touch you?”

“What?” Task asked, looking shocked.

Miles put it down to shock from the battle. The apprentice didn’t seem like much of a fighter, after all.

“Can I heal you?”

Task let out a breath, looking around at the robotic carnage. “Yes.”

Miles stepped forward, using Seal Wounds to treat all of the Hurc’s cuts and scrapes at once, then Hasten Renewal to help treat the bruise. The mottled patch on Task’s face hadn’t faded completely by the time Miles was done, but it had changed color, which Miles assumed was a good thing.

Fran was looking around at their small battlefield. She seemed tired.

“Some of this is salvage. Let’s get it cleaned up, and get out of here.”

Looking around at the scattered cobolt weapons, Miles pulled off his backpack and removed the sturdy plastic sack.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever be coming back into the dungeon again, not after seeing the kind of nightmares it could throw at him, but at least he wouldn’t be leaving empty-handed.