After our ambush of the goblins we were no longer hounded by their pack of tracking dogs, nor did any goblins seem to be interested in following after us. So for hours we walked onward, as I used the position of the moon and stars in order to triangulate the position of the portal. As always on a nest it would be found in the exact same place, a feature that allowed for the race that lived there to expand and control their territory properly.

With the sun about to rise I called out for a halt in our march, a move that drew a confused look from Kuzu. "The goblins can't see well in at night," I told her, as I motioned toward a couple of larger rocks nestled near the bottom of a hill. "We should wait until night, rest up, and then check on the portal."

Kuzu stood there, awkwardly, as she looked around as though uncertain on what to do. I motioned toward one of the boulders close by, a large rock that easily reached my waist. "Hunker down, relax, get some sleep," I told her, perhaps a bit more brusquely than I needed to.

"Oh," she flashed what could only be called a horrible attempt at a smile to me, then she walked over to the other side of the boulder and sat down.

For a blissful short while there was silence, and I closed my eyes and embraced it. Though I'd gotten some rest once recently I was still fatigued, the burden of the magic I'd used not easily washed away. My current body was inferior to what I needed, and it would potentially prove lethal if I didn't make some changes soon.

"Hey...Fenix?" Kuzu sudden spoke up from her side of the boulder we shared. "Why can you do magic? Is it an Elf thing?"

That was a question I hadn't expected, and I couldn't stop the chuckle that came from the absurdity of what she thought. "Everyone can do magic," I lifted my arm up, the one that I had shoved the gem shard into. "Don't you remember me taking the magic crystal and putting it in my arm?"

"Didn't that hurt though?"

"Dying hurts more," I told her, speaking from experience. "Besides, without magic or science you can't even dream of reaching the higher floors."

"Science?" Kuzu's voice made it clear she had absolutely no idea what that word meant.

"Ah, how to explain it," I looked over my shoulder at the side of Kuzu's head. "If magic is using thought and belief, science is using your hands and knowledge. Science is what lets us make antidotes and medicine, understand why we can start fires using flint and steel."

"That sounds like something the Guild knows about."

That comment put a piece of the puzzle into place. "The return crystal and that tracker are from the Guild aren't they?"

"Yea. So could you teach me science then?"

"That's not possible, I'd need years to even cover the basics."

Her ears visibly sagged at that comment, before they suddenly perked back up. "What about magic! You said anyone can do it! Just give me some of that gem you used."

"I already used it," I responded at first before I realized that there's no way she'd understand why that mattered. "The core of the gem holds the power, the shards left over are garbage."

"Oh," she sagged against the boulder, as her ears wilted once more.

I turned my attention from her once again, instead looking out at the horizon. The sun had risen fully and the beams colored the wasteland in a dull red hue. No goblins had shown up, and since we were in the middle of nowhere it was doubtful they ever would.

"Fenix?" Kuzu suddenly called out.

"Yes?"

"Why did you bring me along? I mean, you could have left me, I'm really not all that helpful."

It was a valid question, one I hadn't expected at all and all I could do was sit there for a few minutes. In truth I had only brought her along because I knew she'd die otherwise, and no matter how useless she was I couldn't leave someone to die a pointless death. Even if I didn't care much for someone, abandoning them out of laziness was an act that would only haunt me.

"Get some sleep," I told Kuzu, before I closed my eyes.

☗ ☗ ☗ ☗ ☗

When we finally reached the vicinity of the portal we took up a spot distant enough that no goblin could hope to see us. Though it was night, the goblins kept the portal area well lit and so I could easily study their fortified base.

The white sphere was nestled inside a circular wall, which in turn had tents and hounds littered everywhere. Goblins sat near fire pits, their interactions much like what you'd see from any other race. A pathway wound up toward the wall that blocked off the portal. The pathway itself started on the other side of a stone wall that had been setup in a half-circle, as the entire goblin encampment was based on the cusp of a canyon.

It was a well designed, heavily fortified spot that would probably prove near impossible for the divers like Ivan and Alexia. Even with a group of ten or twenty men the assault would result in a lot of lost life and possibly end up lasting for hours.

"What are we going to do?" Kuzu asked, as her tail wagged back and forth.

"I was kind of hoping we'd find some magic crystals before we got here, that way we could simply blast our way through."

"I don't think that'd work," Kuzu muttered to me.

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"It did last time," I quietly murmured, so quiet I believed Kuzu wouldn't be able to hear it.

"What are we going to do?" Kuzu asked me again.

All I responded with was a wicked grin.

☗ ☗ ☗ ☗ ☗

"I HATE YOU!" Kuzu yelled at me while the winds roared past us.

The noise of rocks as they fell, and the feeling of dirt as it crumbled away with each touch seemed to have put her on edge. The suicidal and impossible to climb cliff that was the dumbest way to approach the portal was of course the way I had opted to go. The initial part of the climb, which required finding a good spot to climb down at outside of goblin view, wasn't too hard. The long climb toward the direction of the portal, using daggers and our hands and feet, was the part that took the most time.

We had already gone more than halfway to where I wanted to go, a small hole in the cliff wall that had been there in the past. The climb had been slow, the unstable cliff face a consistent danger, but every movement I made was assured. I had climbed many a cliffs in my previous life, and this was by far not the worst one I'd dealt with.

Kuzu was not taking it well, she clung desperately to the daggers that I had stabbed into the rocks. She watched how I managed to climb without usage of any tools, before she yelled once more. "This is suicide! You're going to get killed!"

"Don't worry, this is nothing compared to floor thirty-eight!" I responded, before I leapt up to grab onto a rock that jutted out from the loose soil. My right hand grabbed hold of it, while my left snared onto some dirt which crumbled beneath the touch. My right foot kicked into the soil even as with my left I reached up grabbed a small solid stone.

For Kuzu I had given my daggers, and I had told her to use them as handholds. At first she had been incredulous at the idea, but she began to show promise the further into the climb we went. From my pouch I pulled out a fresh dagger and stabbed it in above the rock.

A moment later and I surged up again, driving my left hand into a crevice between two flat rocks, before I stepped up onto the dagger which moments before I had buried into the cliff. My blood was pumping and for the first time in a while I felt happy to be back in the labyrinth, there was something about approaching the floor in a different way that made it all the more refreshing.

The last time that my party had hit the eighth floor our means of clearing it was brutal, straight forward and in some aspects cheap. We simply walked in and used our magic to blast a line straight through all the fortifications and goblins in our way. To the other divers of the time it had been awe inspiring, but to me it was simply the easiest way to achieve the task at hand.

Not before long we came upon the cave that I had aimed for, a small little alcove that barely had any room for the both of us. I pulled myself up into it, arms aching from the climb, and reached down to help Kuzu up as well. For a few seconds she hesitated in taking my hand, that odd look of fear on her face once more, before she accepted my help.

"I can't believe you're having us do this," she muttered to me, her hands covered in dirt and her hair altogether a mess. Even her usually clean, sleek tail was snarled and in desperate need of attention, attention she started to give it immediately.

"If I wasn't still so new to the magic in me I could've had the stamina needed to take down their small army," I let her know, as I offered the waterskin. "Right now I can probably do it, but lightning magic doesn't work so well against stone fortifications."

"Why don't you just use fireballs or something?" she asked while she started to drink from the waterskin.

I began to pick through one of the goblin pouches I had, eating some of the nuts and berries that they'd most likely farmed from the sixth floor. "Each crystal holds a specific element in it, and whatever one you implant and absorb is the element you have access to. I really need to get my hands on an energy crystal though."

"You can have more than one crystal in you?" Kuzu exclaimed while her green eyes went wide in surprise. She also began to pick through one of the pouches I'd given her, nibbling at the dark green berries hesitatingly.

"Only a couple," I casually tossed some of the more dubious food items out of the alcove. "Your body will start to reject the gems if you can't absorb anymore. Usually you can only handle two or three at most."

"Rejects?" Kuzu wondered aloud, as she sniffed at a piece of what should have been jerky.

"It builds up in your blood and ends up coming out when you," I paused at that, as I struggled to find the best way to put it. It was then that I noticed she was about to eat the goblin jerky and I lifted up a hand toward her. "Don't!"

Kuzu's hand stopped a few inches from her mouth. "What? What's the matter?"

"Never eat meat that belonged to a goblin."

"Oh, why?" Kuzu threw the mystery jerky outside.

"Don't," I said, not really wishing to ruin her mind with the nightmares I'd seen in the goblin cooking pits. "Please, just don't."

Kuzu went quiet at that, her eyes studying my face for whatever reason she had. I, in turn, huddled up against the wall of the cave and tried to rest a little more. Depending on what happened next I would need the full potential of my magic at hand.

Outside the wind continued to roar past us, the darkness of the night sky furthered by a cloud cover that blotted out the moon. My ears could barely pick out the sound of the goblins above, but as the night was still fresh they hadn’t quite calmed down yet.

The cave we had found temporary refuge in was a cold one, and the flimsy little cloak I had barely warded off the inherent coolness of the floor. As I fell asleep it was probably that cold sensation mixed with the noise of wind which brought on the nightmare I had.

Wind blasted past me with such speed that it threatened to tear away at the heavy armor I wore. A one-handed sword was grasped in my right hand, while in my left a long and overly complicated rifle was barely held. It was a firearm designed to shoot slugs at an accelerated rate capable of moving so fast that not even the Architects could react.

Across my face was a visor which allowed me to see information that was normally beyond the hope of a regular human to understand, knowledge that was all the more capable of increasing my efficiency in a fight. Every indicator on it screamed all types of warnings about what lay ahead of me, and the fact that I shouldn’t try to fight against it.

The source of the wind was a miniaturized hurricane that floated above the left hand of a beautiful woman. Her eight silver wings spread out behind her, she floated freely in the air without any visual effort. A golden halo floated above her head, while a massive sword was held in her free hand.

"Why can't you just live with me!" I cried out to her, my voice nearly robbed away by the gusts that constantly hammered at my body. "Why can't we turn our backs on everything and simply live!"

The face that looked down at me only turned into one of infinite sadness, it was a face that spoke of the tragedies it had witnessed. The woman's voice came, so beautiful that no matter when it was heard it always made me feel warm. "You know I can’t fight it, you know why I told you to stop getting stronger."

To call the fight that happened easy to follow would be a lie, the movements that both of us made accelerated almost to the point of breaking our bodies into pieces. Magic infused boosts that tossed me left, right and forward, backward away from attacks while inward at the openings. Nothing in the entire labyrinth could even hope to follow our movements in that moment.

Her sword strikes rippled reality, tore apart the ground and created miniature canyons. The landscape around us became nothing more than a hellish place of destruction, the beautiful garden that had been so painstakingly crafted by a tender touch scarred via brutality and senseless conflict.

Across the whole of an entire world that was naught more than flowers, trees and grass we battled. We went from deep canyons to fields of hybrid roses, past volcanoes that raged and forests that shattered with our passing. By the time we finally came to a stop most of the planet had been forever ruined, but the last place would prove to be one of the least touched.

My sword had once more found the heart, in a moment that I could have sworn she allowed to happen. A flicker of control over those automated impulses within her, a gap in the flawless defense that only an idiot would’ve missed. A sacrificial move, or a suicidal one?

"Theodore!" came the loud voice of Kuzu as she shook me, her small hands on my shoulders. Her eyes showed how concerned she was, while the ears on her head were slumped down against her hair.

I could only blink my eyes in response, and then clear my throat. It’d been a long time since anyone had touched me in my sleep, not since my wife before I’d instigated the change. I could only suspect it was because of how close we’d already been to begin with, or because I’d begun to trust Kuzu to not stab me in my sleep.

“What’s the matter?” I studied the very tiny alcove, and then peered outside. The night sky was still visible, but above the sound of the goblins had grown dim.

"You were having a nightmare again," Kuzu told me, before she seemed to realize she still held my shoulders and lifted her hands away.

A deep inhalation, a slight sniffle, and I realized my face was wet. With the back of my left arm I wiped away the tears that had fallen, while I grumbled a few words of thanks toward Kuzu. Once again I took those feelings of regret and loss and shoved them back into the dark recesses where they’d oozed out from. I could cry after I buried my wife.

"Who's Lute?" she asked. Her tail curled around her waist, and her ears flattened fully against her head, almost as though she feared my reaction.

The name sent a tingle across my skin, nobody alive would know who she was and yet hearing someone else mention her made the memories more real. "Someone I lost," I murmured to her, while I flexed my muscles to test them. "Forget about it. Are you rested now?"

She nodded, while her ears began to return to their default relaxed state. The tail began to unfurl away from her body once more, up until I motioned toward the exit. "Not again," she half-cried in response.

Once again the only reply she received was a smile.