Cyn caught a brief glimpse of Hex rushing towards her as her whole body snapped backwards, but he had clearly not followed her closely on entering the arena and was too far away to make it in time. The Rogue’s movement speed might be crossing into superhuman, but it was still too slow against whatever had grabbed ahold of her.

She put her palms against what had grabbed her around the waist, distantly categorizing it as a vine based off the thorns that pierced the skin of her hands and through her tabard in some places, and started venting mana in an attempt to destroy it. Cyn shaped the mana into tiny shards, similar to what she had almost used on Hex, and for a single heartbeat she felt like it was working. The shards pierced the vine, doing damage and causing it to spasm, before she found herself plunged into the pool of blood with it still wrapped around her midsection.

In almost any other situation, she probably would have been too disgusted to function if this had happened. Blood didn’t bother her generally, but Cyn sure as hell didn’t want to be drowning in a pool of it. However, despite the lukewarm, viscous liquid that surrounded her, she was a little too preoccupied to think about it. Primarily because her venting mana had abruptly shut off, as if a dam had formed at the end of her mana veins. The build-up of mana inside her fingers burned while she tried to forcibly push past the blockage.

When that did not work, the dam holding firm, and the pressure started to feel dangerous, she instead tried to push the mana into a use of Restoration. She didn’t need to be healed yet, but Cyn needed to put the mana somewhere before something, likely her, broke from it.

The skill didn’t activate.

Neither would Mana Ball nor Purify. Cyn guessed the pool must produce some kind of ‘silence’ effect, preventing activated skill usage, though that explanation did not include why her Freeform Mana Casting was partly working. She had stopped pushing mana out from her mana pool, but the ‘veins’ that lead to her hands felt so blown out by the build-up a trickle continued to leak out of her mana pool and increase the pressure. She was also still being dragged down through the pool, and was holding her breath, but those things seemed unimportant compared to the fact she couldn’t use her mana.

Why was the mana only going one way? Shouldn’t it just flow back towards her core, her mana pool, in this case? It didn’t make any sense that pressure would keep building up, or that mana would continue to drain into a pressurized system after she stopped willing it to.

Since pushing it out was a futile effort, Cyn instead tried to will it back to her mana pool. The pressure just moved from her hands to her chest. She didn’t know how to put it back in. Getting desperate to equalize the mounting pressure so she could focus on other things, Cyn rapidly improvised an internal circuit for the built-up mana to spread out and travel inside of her. Crossing through all four limbs, it made crude use of the mana veins she had already created from previous uses of Freeform Mana Casting before using newer veins that would connect them together in Cyn’s chest. It was far from a perfect solution, since she was still leaking from her mana pool into her damaged hand channels, but it would buy her some time before the pressure became overwhelming again.

Mentally pushing the mana through her circuit took only a little bit of mental effort, and was easy to put on autopilot in the back of her mind. Now she could actually pay attention to what was happening outside of her body. On the plus side, at least her health did not feel too low, and she didn’t yet feel the need to breathe. Cyn found she wasn’t moving anymore, but not because the vine holding onto her wasn’t trying to move her. Now that she had returned to being aware of her situation, she found it was slowly and very painfully attempting to bisect her.

The original vine that had grabbed her was pulling one way on her waist, while another felt like it had grabbed onto her left leg at the knee was pulling the opposite way. Moving surprisingly quickly through the liquid, Cyn drew Blooddrinker and tried to cut away at the vine around her waist first. It snapped almost immediately under the blade, and while part of it was still wrapped tightly around her midsection at least it was no longer pulling her apart.

She tried to reach for the vine wrapped around her leg to do the same, but now that it was pulling her freely it was significantly more difficult to get ahold of. It took multiple tries before she could get ahold of it, Blooddrinker making quick work of the second vine as well. Now she just had to get out.

Cyn was a decent swimmer, in water at least, and thankfully she felt strong enough to move through the thicker blood without issue. The problem now came from not knowing what direction was up, and the lurking threat of being grabbed again. Not to mention, it was impossible to see anything even if she opened her eyes. She first tried to ‘sense’ Spam or either of her party members' health she knew was above, but only found that the blood she was swimming in created a rather intense interference. Attempting to feel her familiar resulted in a feeling akin to static filling her head, Hex gave her no results, while Sam felt like he was both everywhere and nowhere at once.

Most likely, she reasoned, this was because at least some of what she was floating in belonged to the Warrior. It was just a little surprising the blood still carried his…essence? Signature? It felt like it belonged to him still, and she found that strange. It also didn’t give her any information on him, and ultimately it was not helpful for Cyn’s current situation since she couldn’t use any skills to try and interact with the connection to Sam.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

In the precious seconds she was trying to figure out what to do, Cyn was also aware of the pressure building from her mana. It was starting to burn something fierce, and somehow that pain was significantly worse than the physical damage she had received from the vines. Or at the very least, harder to ignore. Aware of the timer she was on, and that her party was probably also in trouble, Cyn just started swimming in one direction.

It didn’t take her long to find either the stone wall or floor, and while she did not know for sure what part of the pool it belonged to, Cyn kept herself aligned with it before finally breaking the surface. She took a few lungfuls of air while wiping blood away from her eyes, then took stock of her surroundings.

The amount of liquid was not enough for Cyn to see over the rim of the hole she was in, but she now had a better view of what had likely grabbed her from behind. It was more vines, significantly thicker than the ones that had been wrapped around the Warrior, and they appeared to be growing directly from the pool of blood. A half dozen had snaked their way up the sides and out, and from the squirming motions she could guess the vines were attacking her party.

But they could also provide a way out for Cyn.

She still wasn’t able to vent mana, so time was of the essence. Sheathing her dagger and swimming along the wall to the nearest of the vines, Cyn didn’t hesitate to wrap an arm around the plant and start to pull herself up and out of the pool. While the squirming definitely made it more difficult than it needed to be, she was able to rather easily climb out.

Upon reaching the rim of the hole, and pulling herself up, Cyn first took Blooddrinker to the vine, severing it. Both sections of vine continued to writhe, but at least it wouldn’t be pulling more victims into the blood pool anytime soon. Her eyes were first drawn to Sam, who appeared to have been freed from the smaller vines previously holding him down. The Warrior was grappling with a pair of the larger vines, one of which she had just cut in half, and while his health did feel improved, Cyn could still sense Sam was significantly weakened.

Cyn didn’t see Hex or Spam, but could feel the familiar somewhere behind her now. She didn’t turn around, trusting that they would both be alright without help for a few moments, and sprinted towards the Warrior to assist him and hopefully get the burning mana out of her veins before it reached a critical mass.

It didn’t cross her mind to wonder why she had no trouble running across the smooth stone, when objectively Cyn should have been slipping and sliding around on all the blood. Instead she ran with laser focus alongside the second of the vines Sam was fighting and, when it raised itself high enough to easily reach, she sliced up with the dagger. The malicious flora cleanly snapped, with one half sliding back towards its origin and the other writhing more violently in an attempt to warp around the Warrior.

Not bothering to try and untangle Sam when she reached him, Cyn dodged the loose end of the vine she had severed to get close enough to touch her party member. Once they made contact, she immediately used Restoration and attempted to Overload the skill with all the pent-up mana she had been circulating. It worked even better than she expected, the Warrior’s wounds rapidly healing and health pool spiking well back into a safe range.

Finally letting out all the scorching mana was an instant relief, at least for a few heartbeats. Before Cyn even had time to pull away from Sam and the vines he was fighting, a wave of weakness fell over her. Stumbling and barely dodging one of the vines attacks, now partly aimed at her, Cyn did a mental check of her resources. Both her health and mana were fine, at the very least over halfway full. A check of her menu, done in a mere blink of an eye, confirmed her stamina was probably down to about a quarter of its maximum. Low, but not low enough to make me this weak, surely?

A lack of clear reason didn’t make the weakness vanish, unfortunately, so Cyn was going to just have to deal with it. She wasn’t a physical fighter, usually, making the main effect a slowed reaction speed. Cyn quickly slid away from Sam, needing to put some distance between her and the writhing vines, and nearly lost her balance in the process.

For fucks sake… Shaking her head, Cyn spread her feet in a mediocre attempt to keep her balance while also looking for Hex and Spam. Hex was pretty hard to miss, as he was across the central hole with a mass comprised of three intertwined vines. The Rogue was on the run, easily leading the twisting mass in circles and occasionally tossing out his throwing dagger.

Hex was pretty bad at aiming.

Regardless, while the Rogue wasn’t making progress in destroying the vines, he also didn’t seem to be in any trouble. Finding the small, pink frog was more difficult. Before she could track the familiar down one end of the vines the Warrior was struggling with whipped out and wrapped around Cyn’s arm. It pulled her off balance, but not quite enough to fall. Instead, she ended up sliding towards Sam again as the vine contracted to bring them together.

Getting steadily more annoyed at this whole situation, she quickly sawed the offending plant apart. Clearly the ease at which she had been slicing the vines in half had not been wholly about Blooddrinker being sharp. At least it only took a few seconds to mostly free herself, leaving just a small portion tightly wrapped around one arm. Sam was slowly getting the upper hand in his fight, so Cyn wasn’t concerned about helping him more as she frantically searched for Spam.

Finally finding her familiar did not make her feel any better.