CHAPTER 188

The healers and mages stepped forward to butcher the Monkey Crawlers’ carcasses and prepare them for the auction house. The frontline fighters, meanwhile, spread out to keep watch in case extra enemies had been attracted to the fight. Their added vigilance probably wasn’t required because the underground was a violent place. There were battles continually breaking out down here and curiosity killed off the monster lines attracted to the sound of combat, so to speak. Descending upon fights was not the recipe for a long existence. Sometimes fights would be between equals and then you could ambush the survivors, but usually these engagements were one sided and all you would achieve by checking them out would be to sacrifice your existence to bring additional morsels to the cave floor for whichever dominant creature had won.

Nevertheless, they assumed nothing, with their four melee fighters standing ready for anything that appeared. The remains of the creatures that had attacked were piled and sent through to the auction house.

The clean up had taken less than a minute.

“We go that way.” Keikain said immediately and pointed in the same direction as the arrow Everlyn had constructed by drawing in one of the rare patches of dirt as opposed to the stone that was everywhere else.

The arrow was unnecessary. Tom within seconds had worked out which way the circular eco-system rotated and there were no circumstances where anyone who knew anything about the underground would wilfully travel against the flow.

It had been simple to deduce the patterns. Nearly everything travelled in the same direction. Luckily for his plans the arrow aligned with the team’s needs. Travel far enough and they would reach the kingdoms they were setting out toward. Given how the canyon shifted and turned who knew whether it would sustain the direction they needed or if it would double back, but for now the simple path would get them closer to their destination.

Tom ignored Keikain and watched the birds, bats, and lizards for longer. Examining their movements and checking to see that there were no threats his assessment so far had failed to spot. The bulk of the animals were moving north-east like the arrow pointed. Not all of them, but ninety percent of them. It was clear even the insignificant base creatures down here were part of the migration.

“It’s trippy,” Sven said next to him. He pointed southwest, in the direction very few of the base monsters were moving toward. “If I think about heading that way it feels wrong.”

“It’s the fauna.” Tom agreed. “The beasts,” he corrected. “Everything heads that way, so subconsciously you want to follow, even the wind.” He observed in surprise. He had expected that to go the other way of the migration because then predators could be permanently chasing the scent of their prey. Potentially, the driver in this place was not hunting but fear. You ran from the monsters you could smell coming up behind you.

“Everything?”

“Most,” Tom said with a laugh and elbowing Sven. “They all need to move. Some defensive creatures might stay. Especially if they can create burrows in the walls, but even for them, that’s risky. It doesn’t matter if they are stronger than average, holding your ground here is dangerous. Eventually, a direct counter for their strengths and vulnerabilities will come around. In circular ecosystems, to stay still is to die.”

“I know,” Sven said. “I read extensively on the underground because it was fascinating.”

“Most of us did.” Michael agreed. “But how many of us spent time down here?”

“I was an earth mage.” Keikain said quietly. “The underground countered my chief strength, so I declined quests to go down there.”

“Me too,” Thor said immediately. “Not the earth mage thing. I just disliked being underground.”

“Same,” Toni agreed.

“I did five years.” Clare shuddered. “I got trapped.”

Everyone frowned at that.

“Tom, can you beat that?” Michael asked curiously. “In total, I reached… it was probably four years’ down here.”

He shrugged in response to the healer’s question. “I don’t know. It’s not something I ever tracked. I spent most of my time outside, but quests brought me down here regularly. Could it have been five years?… Maybe. Rahmat?”

The spear wielder shook his head. “It wasn’t for me. I like to feel the actual sun on my face.”

“Wow, we actually have four newbies.” Michael whistled appreciatively.

Tom was surprised by the revelation. He had sort of assumed that everyone had been in and out of the underground like he had. The idea of turning down a quest because you liked to feel the sun on your skin or you were claustrophobic felt alien to him.

“This…” Thor said quietly. “Is this normal?”

“What?” Tom asked.

Thor waved at what they could see.

“The size?” Tom clarified curiously.

The other man nodded.

“Yes, it is.” Clare told him and shivered. “Come on, let’s move. We need to…” She stopped talking, her face went red…

You could almost hear the unspoken words... we need to find some sacrifices.

“Keep going.” She recovered. “We’re on the clock.”

The underground was better to hike through than the surface because there was both less broken terrain and less wildlife to contend with. There were large sections of hard-packed rock that were easier to walk through. To the surprise of the newbies all the experienced fighters led them away from the cliffs till they were walking through the centre.

It might be a circular eco-system, but ambush predators that lived in walls were a genuine threat.

They were able to march for almost an hour in relative safety. They went right down the middle, but their passage did not go unmarked. They were targeted by monsters three times. Twice by Monkey Crawler packs, one five strong and the other four. Those battles went how Tom expected. Now that they knew how to fight them, the contest was ridiculously easy. Tom would tank while the others would focus on burning down an enemy one at a time. Then, within a minute, they would start making mistakes and then the rest would be finished quickly.

The third battle was more troublesome though the chance of dying was paradoxically lower. It was a rank twenty territorial bird that took exception to them. It wasn’t even a monster just an animal enraged by their trespass on some sort of unspoken rule. They were forced into a running battle, hoping to escape its attention. It never fully engaged. Instead, it chose to fly beyond the range they could knock it out of the sky and then every now and again launched magical feathers at them.

They were like homing missiles and contained a nasty spell payload. The wound would start rotting and poisonous lines would spread out from them. Michael’s new abilities allowed him to heal each attack quickly, and his mana regeneration was more than enough to outpace the damage.

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It was still annoying, and they were relieved when ten minutes later it gave up, with it having thrown almost twenty of the deadly projectiles at them. They had only successfully dodged two of them, with Tom being the reason both times. A perfectly timed teleport countered the homing nature of the attacks. It reminded Tom of the dragon and showed how teleports could counter such magic.

“Damn bird.” Michael glared back to where it now rested on the tree, pretending it hadn’t spent ten minutes annoying them.

“It was only rank twenty and we couldn’t do a thing against it.” Clare reminded them. “It wasn’t even going all out to kill us. You can tell looking at it that if you were actually likely to hurt it, then it could launch like fifty of the feathers at you, all at once.”

“Agreed, but if it went all out, then it would have left itself vulnerable to us killing it, so it just harassed us.”

“Quiet Michael.” Tom ordered, having spotted a change in behaviour. Something was off with the area ahead of them. The pattern of the critters spreading out had been changed. “Something’s off.”

“It’s me.” Everlyn said quietly and then she emerged from behind a rock on one of the hills fifty metres away. She waved. “The boars are catching up. We need to hide.”

She immediately headed for the wall and the rest of them followed. It took them almost five minutes to reach the stone cliff face, and there was a small hole, barely large enough to fit, waiting there.

“It’s safe.” Everlyn waved her hands to encourage them to go through. “Sven first in case something has moved in since I scouted then the squishiest.”

When it was Tom’s turn, he discovered he needed to crawl almost ten metres before he emerged into an unofficial safe zone. It was barely large enough for them to sit comfortably in. There wasn’t going to be sufficient room for them to sleep here, but for an hour it was manageable.

Everlyn had followed him. “I estimate you’ll be waiting here for about forty minutes. The plan is to wait for the herd of boars to pass and let them get ten minutes ahead of us and then follow in their wake. Jingyi has already dropped back to track the Bat Gliders, which are following behind the boars.”

“Bat Gliders?” Michael asked.

“Don’t know. I was only told the name.”

“How do you know so much?” Tom asked.

“Jingyi has a one-way communication artefact that can be used every half an hour to pass ten words.” She shrugged. “The latest message was. Fifteen, fast, ten, Bat Gliders, rank nineteen, thousand, forty-five.”

“That makes no sense.” Michael said.

“We have an agreed order of information. Boars are fifteen minutes away but moving fast and forty-five minutes behind them are a thousand, rank nineteen bat gliders.”

“Oh, that makes more sense.” Michael agreed.

“Providing the bat gliders don’t speed up we’ll be safe in the gap that separates the massive pack and flock. Now I need to do my job and monitor the boars.”

Everlyn, with an apologetic smile left to keep watch on the migration of monsters through the canyon. Tom, by sitting right next to the crawling tunnel on sentry duty could maintain a link to her.

“Are you safe out there?”

Everlyn chuckled for a moment. “Mostly. There’s so many places to hide and none of the creatures we’ve seen so far have high perception skills. Jingyi and I are almost untouchable, out here at least from my observations of the threats. For the rest of you…” she hesitated. “You’d be exposed for now. You know it’s a pity if you committed to growing stronger here it would be nearly perfect. Hunt the base creatures and avoided the major wandering threats… We could do that safely. A week of battles and we’d catch up in ranks and get parity with the base monsters. Then, even if you screwed up and got attacked by one of the larger threats, you’d probably survive. Another week and we’d be able to take all but the strongest of the circulating boss type monsters. Three weeks and we’d leave here strong enough to face what is coming.”

The unspoken accusation hung in the air between them, and Tom regretted the decision to recruit them. It had been impulsive and with their baggage they might not have been the best acquisition. Everlyn was right, they were currently a negative. If they had time to grind here their later fights would become easier. “Are you really okay with them?”

“With them no. Especially Sven.”

“What Sven? He is the best of them. You know he almost committed suicide out of guilt.”

“It doesn’t improve things. He killed Gita, and he knew her and Jin. There is nothing that can wash away the stain on his soul. It might be okay to tell kids that saying sorry will make things better, but that lesson doesn’t apply to adults. Some things can’t be so easily fixed.”

They stopped talking.

“You shouldn’t have brought them into this.”

“There were no good answers.” Tom defended himself helplessly.

“Maybe, but welcoming them with open hands was a bad one.”

“I didn’t.”

She laughed. “Admit it. You stuffed up.”

“In hindsight, maybe.”

“No hindsight should have been required. I warned you multiple times not to try this.”

“Evie!”

“What!”

“You’re being too judgemental.”

“I told you what I needed, and you did nothing.”

“What are you talking about?” He remembered the previous conversation. “I was exhausted.”

“You don’t get it. You’re too…” She paused. “You’re too you… blinkered, focused… whatever the right term is. I can’t deal with it.”

“Where does that leave us?” Tom finally asked the question that he knew needed to be aired. There was a long silence.

“Everlyn?”

“Yes. I’m here. I’m considering the best way to phrase things.”

“That’s…”

“Just give me a moment please, Tom. It’s hard.”

“You’re breaking up with me.”

“No.” She hesitated. “I’m at fault here. I know I agreed. I know I didn’t say no, but I can’t stop myself from thinking about how wrong it is that you saved them.”

“It’s more than that Evie. These weren’t from Legen’s posse or the council. These were our friends.”

“No, they weren’t.” She snapped back. “We were friends with their masks, their disguises, not with them. They are murdering scumbags.”

“I don’t think…”

“Why are you doing this? Why are you treating them like people.”

“Because they are.”

“People don’t do what they did.”

“It might be because I saw some of Keikain’s thoughts.”

“As I said, it’s my fault but… us… I’m not saying it’s over, but we need space from each other for a while.”

“How long?” Tom asked with a pit forming in his stomach.

Her voice softened. “However long it takes.”

“So it is a breakup.”

“Not precisely. We’re just going to take it slow for a while.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tom felt like tearing his hair out. “I don’t understand.”

“I know.” She said sadly. “And I’m being incredibly unfair to you, especially since I know what you have been through to get here, but I just can’t…”

“Because? Because I did what was needed for humanity?”

“No, because you willingly overlooked a heinous crime, because doing so suited your aims.”

“Evie, this is a silly thing to break up over.”

“Tom, how many breakups have you been through?”

“I had three girlfriends.”

“But did you break up with any of them. Was there any real emotion at the end?”

Tom shook his head, and then realised she couldn’t see. “No.”

“I like you Tom. I really do. But I need time to reconcile the person I was falling in love with and the one that chats with murderers like they committed no crimes.”

“They chose what they did because of Oracle answers.”

“I know Tom.” She was speaking far quieter now. “And that’s the problem. Making the choice due to Oracle questions does not absolve them of guilt, and you don’t seem to get that.”

“No, I understand the problem.”

“I do want to have a relationship with you. I enjoy spending time with you and the… umm… The private time was fantastic. But whenever I’m looking at you I’m seeing them. That’s the problem. And it’s a big one.”

“This is bullshit.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“And you think it’s okay to break up when we’re in the underground?”

“That’s unfair Tom. You know this wasn’t working.”

“We’re in the underground… couldn’t you.”

“No, there isn’t a better time. There was always going to be something critical. I need space and I would prefer to have a conversation about it rather than ignoring the problems.”

“So we’re over.”

“Yes.”

“Fuck.” Tom hit the ground beside him.

There was silence on the other end of the line. Tom glanced behind him, but no one was looking at him. They were all waiting patiently while he stood guard outside the camp stone protection so he could hear anyone if they got closer.

“Tom?”

“What!”

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Why would…” he stopped talking. It felt like his heart was being massaged by a monster. It wasn’t as bad as when Pinkwing died. “I’ve felt worse. I think I’ll be fine.”

There was a long silence. “I still care…”

“Don’t,” he interrupted harshly. “It won’t help. You made your views clear and I’ll respect your space.”

There was silence after that. Another five minutes passed.

“Okay, Tom it’s time.”

He jumped slightly.

“I’m about to leave the range. The gliders are past now. You need to all follow in ten minutes.”

“Roger.”