“Bad news,” Beryl says, glancing from the pot she’s stirring to the Jorrian symbol we placed at her side. She tosses some herbs into the stew and a bubble pops, splashing drops of liquid across the metal plate. “Bad omen. Where did you find this?”
Mirzayael relays the details of the wolf attack, the two of us seated in Beryl’s hut as she continues to work on her brew. Mirzayael’s legs are all tucked up around her torso, and I’m briefly given the impression of a cat with its paws hidden away and folded beneath its chest.
Granted, a very large, spindly, seven-legged cat.
Beryl lets out a long sigh once Mirzayael has finished. “Well. I suppose I knew it would happen sooner or later. Actually, I thought they’d find us decades ago. When your parents’ scouting party left and never returned, I always suspected the Jorrians would arrive in their absence.”
I give a start, looking at Mirzayael. “Your parents?”
Mirzayael pointedly does not return my look.
God, no wonder she’d been so insistent that the last scouting party wouldn’t have abandoned the Fyrethians for greener pastures. No wonder she believes so fiercely that nothing save an ambush would have stopped them from returning.
“Regardless,” Mirzayael says, addressing Beryl rather than me, “the Jorrians have found us, now.”
And they were able to get inside because of me.
“Is it possible the attack wasn’t deliberate?” I hesitantly ask, desperately hoping for the best. “They were a pack of wolves, perhaps trained to hunt animals. That doesn’t necessarily imply the Fyrethians were the target.”
Mirzayael scoffs. “Foolish question. Of course they were targeting us.”
“These people—the Jorrians—they betrayed Fyreneth hundreds and hundreds of years ago,” I say. “It’s a different generation of people who live there today. They don’t bear the sins of their ancestors any more than you should be persecuted for yours. What if they can be reasoned with? If they do show up at our doorstep—be it in search of us or their wolves—shouldn’t we at least attempt to speak with them?”
Mirzayael looks at me in disgust. “Never have I heard such naivety, Outsider. You do not know our history, our suffering, as we do. You don’t understand what it means to be forsaken by the gods. What it means to be given a task by the gods. What weight this holds, and what consequences would meet anyone who would defy them.”
I grimace. “You’re right: I don’t know your culture, histories, or religions. But we did have religion on my world. Many varying beliefs in gods. Sometimes, myth can be distorted by the passage of time. What if this acrimony is a misunderstanding, perhaps driven by centuries of superstition?”
Mirzayael looks like I’ve slapped her. “I never expected you of all people to spew such ignorance. Our history is not superstition. The extermination and persecution of our ancestors is very much real—”
“Of course,” I hurriedly say. “That’s not what I—”
“But you have the audacity to suggest we’re merely naive zealots, too afraid of a myth to venture from our caves? That we choose to waste away here out of nothing more than ignorance?”
“No, not at all,” I object, horrified at how quickly this conversation had taken a turn for the awful. Before I can try to rectify things, Beryl sets a mug down on the table, hard, causing both me and Mirzayael to jump.
“Hush,” she says. “You’re being too loud.”
Mirzayael angrily snaps her mouth shut. I wisely do the same.
“For your shoulder,” Beryl tells me, steam still rising from the mug. “To prevent infection and encourage healing. Drink the whole cup.” She sets another one down in front of Mirzayael.
“I’m healthy,” she says tightly.
“Then it will help you stay that way.”
I pull the mug over, muttering my thanks.
The silence in the room grows tight as Mirzayael stiffly looks down at her drink. I glance into my own mug, my reflection swimming distorted on the surface. The new me: not the reflection I’d grown used to over a previous lifetime.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Mirzayael. “All that was wrong of me. It got me in trouble in my last life, too. Drove wedges between myself and others. To question things is baked into my nature. I doubt that will ever change about me, nor do I think it is something I should necessarily change. But sometimes I default to it, challenging ideas for the sake of objectiveness, without taking into account how very subjective and personal a subject might be.”
I think of her parents. How their loss must have shaped her. How me challenging her perception of the Jorrians also challenged her view of her parents’ deaths.
“So again, I am sorry,” I say. “And also, I want to extend my thanks. You’ve taken me in and shown me immense hospitality. More than I deserve, perhaps. While adjusting to this world has been easier than I expected, the real challenge has been in shaking off ingrained assumptions from growing up in a world very different from this one. I don’t know that I can make myself think differently overnight. But I can try to be more open minded going forward.”
Mirzayael presses her mouth into a line, but does not respond with any biting remarks. Instead, she returns to her drink, and I do the same.
To be honest, I’d already forgotten about my injury. I Check my HP out of habit: 97/100. I know I took more than three damage in that fight. The passive healing must be helping me out, which means this potion isn’t strictly necessary. Still, I’m not about to argue with Beryl—especially not after I just picked a fight with Mirzayael, however unintentional that might have been. Best to keep the peace.
I take a sip, and the moment the salty, bitter concoction hits my tongue, my stomach is thrown into revolt, roiling threateningly. I steal a glance toward Mirzayael, and notice her face has gone stoically unreadable. Like she’s spending every atom of willpower available on smoothing her face muscles into an impassable mask. I’d laugh if I wasn’t worried I might hurl.
I open my mouth, stop breathing through my nose, and gulp down the mug in four painful chugs. Mirzayael’s eight eyes blink at me in surprise.
[HP Restored.]
“Tomorrow I’m going back to the glacier,” I gasp, coughing to cover up a gag. “It’s time to carve a path through and see what’s waiting on the other side.”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“I thought you couldn’t get the Dungeon Core to store enough mana needed to eat away the ice,” Mirzayael says, her still-full mug clasped between her hands.
“Perhaps not,” I say. “But I don’t need to rely on it for everything. Besides, I’ve had the power needed to cut through ice this whole time at my fingertips.” I raise a hand, summoning a fire to my palm.
I might not be able to control the sociopolitical situation between the Fyrethians and Jorrians, but this is something I can control. Helping these people, bringing warmth to the residents, restoring their original city—these are things within my power. And if we really are about to be under siege, as Mirzayael is implying, then gaining access to every resource this cave system has available might become a dire and imminent need.
The hints of a smile threaten to overtake Mirzayael’s face once more. “Good. I look forward to seeing what you uncover.” She tips her head back and downs the brew, then chokes halfway through and spits a mouthful of the potion back into her cup. “Blazing Abyss, Beryl. What the fuck did you put in this?”
The dwarf cackles.
----------------------------------------
I check the Map Interface once more. At least from the perspective of a disembodied entity that can only see rocks, the entire castle is now mapped out. That is, all of it except for the south side, where the glacier has bisected a portion of the city, slowly cutting away whatever structures had been there previous.
“The glacier also intersects this corner of Ollie’s cave,” I say, dismissing the mental interface to focus on the wall of ice before me. We’re halfway up one of the staircases, where half the wall appears to shift from stone to ice. “Since his cavern is slightly lower than the base level of the rest of the city, this should provide the easiest access point to bore through the glacier.” And given the spring that runs beneath Ollie’s cave, and the city’s pipes that likewise are buried in the nearby walls, now severed by the glacier, I know we’re close to the spring’s source.
His cavern is currently empty, save for Mirzayael, me, Nek, and a couple of her young guards who have come to watch. Just as well that the boy is out enjoying the sunlight. This operation might be delicate.
“And what makes you certain that reaching this lost portion of the city is so significant?” Mirzayael asks.
“I’m not certain,” I admit. “Call it an engineer’s intuition.” Some of the circuit-like stone in this corner of the fortress have also been cut off. I have a hunch about what might power it, but first I need to complete the circuit. Which means melting the ice away, locating the severed section of the city, and rejoining it to the main body.
“Ready?” I ask the others, summoning a fireball to my hand. “It’s about to get warm in here.”
[Blaze spell activated.]
“Ready,” Mirzayael says.
The others take a step back.
I mentally tap at the Dungeon Core as well, getting its attention. I’ll need your help, too, I tell it. I’d appreciate it if you could rough up the floor for me. Digest it, I mean. I recall the way it had cubed the stone up into bits of sand, sending it this memory to emphasize what I mean. Cutting up the material seems to consume significantly less mana than eating entire blocks of it.
The Dungeon Core regards the ice with extreme suspicion, clearly still scarred from my last encounter with the thermal springs. I allow it to chip away at the ice, and it takes the tiniest sample available, like a kid suspiciously nibbling at a vegetable. After a moment, it reluctantly agrees this water might taste better than the stuff before. Still not as good as rocks, though.
“Great,” I say, holding out my hands. “Then let’s get started.”
My fire flares, but instead of allowing it to grow, I mentally compress it down, focusing the energy into a smaller area while still pushing mana into the flames. The fire grows blindingly bright, a white sphere of shimmering heat that burns itself into my vision. I step toward the wall of ice, and the glacier melts away before me.
I aim my path on a very faint upward trajectory, so the melting ice runs back out the hole and down into the lowest point of Ollie’s cave, draining into the thermal spring. The Dungeon Core starts chewing at the ice beneath my feet, roughing up the path enough to create friction.
After only a half hour of such work, my mana begins to dwindle. From the Map Interface, I can tell we’re nowhere close to the end of the glacier.
I snuff out my fire, and the cave goes dark. Surrounded by ice, the world feels close and silent. Water drips from the ceiling, quietly adding to the faint breaths of the others who shuffle in behind me.
“Does anyone have a light?” I ask the others. Not that I need to see, as I can navigate by the Map Interface instead; it’s more for the others’ comfort than my own. “I need to conserve my mana.”
“Here.” Mirzayael steps forward, the tip of her spear glowing a soft blue. Our ice cave flickers uncertainly in the dim light. I close my eyes, handing a few points of mana over to the Core to expand our awareness into the surrounding ice.
The missing corner of the Catacombs is further away than I expected. There must have been a crack in the rock that the glacier expanded into, slowly migrating the missing stone away from its source over the last several hundred years. It’s far enough away I won’t be able to melt through the ice and get the Dungeon Core to manipulate the giant slab of rock back in place with the scant amount of mana I currently have. In fact, it will likely take several days operating on a full mana tank just to make it to the other side. If I could get the Core to absorb more of the spring water, this could go much quicker. But in this moment, with what I currently have, what are my options?
As I’m pondering this, I notice something else. Beneath the wall of ice that separates the two parts of the kingdom, there’s a pocket of air, and then more stone, far beneath that. But the properties of this stone don’t automatically populate into the Dungeon Core’s Map Interface as soon as the Core senses it: that means we haven’t encountered this type of rock, yet. This is something new.
“Interesting.”
“What is it?” Mirzayael asks.
“There’s something beneath us,” I say. “Stone we haven’t encountered before. And that’s rare given how much we’ve explored. I think this is important.”
“You can’t melt a path straight down?” Nek asks.
“Not with my current mana,” I say.
“Should we head back then?” Mirzayael asks. “We can return tomorrow when you’ve more magic at your disposal.”
Which would mean another day burned and little to show for it. I’d rather not waste such time. If Mirzayael and Beryl are right—if the Jorrians really do pose a threat—then I have to do something to help ensure these people are protected. Because it’s my fault they were exposed in the first place.
“Let me think,” I say, crouching down to run a hand over the cool, wet floor of the glacier. I might not have enough mana to burn my way down there, or enough for the Core to eat its way down, but I do have enough to bring some material out of the Dungeon Core’s inventory. What’s more, I can change the properties of whatever I summon, similar to how I was able to change the thermal capacity of the stone in the dracid chamber. But even then, what could that achieve?
I could fashion a tool of some sort. A stone drill, perhaps. Though without leverage or a way to power it, that seems impractical. What else could help me carve a path through this glacier? What will get me through the ice?
Ice.
“Aha.”
It’s been a long time since chemistry class, but I’m very used to salting my walk when it gets icy in the winter. Sodium chloride. I know there are elements that are more reactive to water than sodium, but off the top of my head I can’t recall which those were—and without a periodic table, it probably wouldn’t be wise to experiment. Besides, I’m limited to whatever elements the Dungeon Core has consumed, and it’s certainly eaten up a good amount of salt compounds.
Can I separate out just the sodium? I wonder, sorting through the Core’s chemical interface.
[Affirmative,] Echo says. [Although altering items within the Dungeon Core Catalog will incur a mana cost.]
I’d figured as much; it had been the same when I’d altered the thermal capacity of the stones in the dracid chamber. I pull up a mineral rich with sodium, and mentally picture sorting the stone’s elements so all of the sodium is to one side. How much mana would this cost me?
[1 mana,] Echo says.
I blink. That’s practically nothing! Then again, this is only a few small grams of sodium. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to start with just a handful and see how effective it is.
Alright, Core, I say, showing it what I intend and handing over a few points of mana. Let’s make some salt.
The Dungeon Core finds this activity very interesting, and happily obliges. It strips out the sodium with an almost practiced ease, flicking the rest of the minerals back into its catalog. Then, before I have a chance to specify what to do next, it summons the sodium.
Right in the air in front of me.
I have a brief moment to note that, curiously, the element doesn’t look like the handful of white crystals as I was expecting it to. Instead, it appears to be a tiny cube of metal.
It falls to the ground before me.
Immediately the cube begins to hiss and spark, tiny flames spitting off of the sodium. I jump to my feet, vaguely recalling similar demonstrations in undergrad chemistry classes decades ago.
“Everyone back!” I say, backpedaling myself. “Watch o—”
The sodium explodes.