“So…what does this elixir do?” Jace said, swirling the vial of blue liquid. His arm tingled and trembled, and a faint warmth coursed through it in veins as the stim shot did its work. According to Kinfild, it’d repair his body in a matter of hours, urging his skin and damaged muscles to slide back together and seal up.

But aside from its healing properties—which apparently worked on everyone—it didn’t provide any other value.

Jace was more interested in the elixir he’d claimed from the…well, grave.

Like Lessa said, the thousand-year old corpse wasn’t using it.

“That elixir is a simple Aes-infusing fluid,” said Kinfild. “As a condensed whisper of the Split itself, it will provide you a touch of Aes—and that should aid your advancement progress. By the looks of it, it’s not high-tier, but it’s better than nothing.”

[Pure Sapphire-Essence Elixir — Forty (40) Aes Units] read the tag above it. It didn’t really tell him much, and he didn’t know how elixirs were rated.

“The weakest elixirs are emerald, then you have sapphires, then opal, then ruby—the strongest,” Kinfild provided. He leaned forward, holding his hands over the fire they’d made and rubbing his fingers together. It wasn’t particularly cold, and they would’ve been just fine without the fire, but Kinfild, being a fire mage, must’ve been used to higher heats.

“Do I just…drink it?” Jace asked. Drinking something so old didn’t seem like the best idea, but it was magical. There was no algae inside it, and now debris whatsoever. Just a dark blue liquid.

“Yes,” Kinfild said. “Drink it, and use your Ten-Claw Inlet Cycle, and you should integrate it into your spirit well enough.”

Jace plucked the stopper out of the vial and hesitantly poured the liquid into his mouth without touching his lips to the glass. The outside wasn’t clean, he could guarantee that.

The blue liquid was bland, if not a little bitter, like he’d bitten into a medicine pill instead of swallowing it. He forced himself to swallow, and it trickled down his throat, tingling like a soft drink before hitting his stomach.

It emerged in his perception as well, the deep blue liquid sending icy pulses of energy out. It swirled aimlessly around his core, and he’d need to cycle it around a little to use it. He began the cycling pattern, shutting his eyes and letting his breaths do the work for him.

Slowly but surely, the energy seeped off the elixir and bled out through his stomach, crossing the boundary between the known and the unknown.

“It will take a few hours,” Kinfild said.

Jace opened his eyes, but he didn’t stop cycling. “I’ll take the first watch, then. When…when you guys do decide to go to sleep.”

Lessa leaned back on her hands, inching away from the flames. “I’m just about ready…” She’d rolled up the sleeves of the underlayer of her armour up to her shoulders.

“Do candlefolk get…warm?” Jace asked, unsure how to phrase the question. “I mean, you’ve got a flame on your tail, and you’re only sitting a few feet away from the flame.”

Lessa shrugged. “A little warm. We don’t really experience heat as much as other races. Our fleshwax is meant to melt in time with our lifeflame, not with actual flame. Otherwise we wouldn’t have lasted long.”

“What if you…like, hiked a few kilometers?” Jace asked. “Would you get warm?”

Lessa shrugged. “What’s a kilometer?”

Jace glanced at Kinfild, then back at Lessa. “You…guys don’t have the metric system? A kilometer is a thousand meters? A meter is like…three and a bit feet.”

“We have the Standard Artanor Imperial measurements,” Kinfild said. “Inches, feet, yards, miles, which you also see familiar with.”

“And you use them interchangeably,” Lessa commented. “You mean to tell me that, in your world, you just have a bunch of extra measurements?”

“Well…” Jace scratched the back of his head. “Where I come from, there are two systems. Metric and Imperial. Problem is, the place I came from kinda just used them both.” He let off a nervous chuckle. “Kinda just habit. Speed? It’s metric. Talking about our height or weight? Imperial. Temperature? Metric. Short distances…well, most default to Imperial, but long distances are metric…”

Both Lessa and Kinfild stared at him with blank expressions.

“It’s…it’s not important. I’ll just try to use Imperial.”

“Your home sounds weird,” Lessa said.

“It kinda was.” He tilted his head toward her tail, then shrugged. “But I’m also talking with a living candle and a space wizard in the middle of a kobold dungeon, so I’m not sure if this is really the time to be judging. I’ve seen some weird things in this past…uh, week or so.”

Lessa smirked, then laid back on the ground and curled onto her side. “Take it in, take it in. And you better get used to it.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Oh, I’m trying.”

“I’ll get used to you staring.”

Jace rolled his eyes. “Just go to sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s your turn to keep watch.”

He wasn’t sure how long it’d be, but when he finished integrating the elixir, it’d probably be time.

image [https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f3a882_796dc4ba52ca470e87e727995bf487fb~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_400,h_332,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/hyperh%20logo.png]

When Jace woke up, the stim shot had mostly repaired his shoulder, leaving only a few weeping red lines where the kobold’s teeth had dragged along his skin.

With the help of the elixir, he’d reached seventy-eight percent advancement progress, and he was at level eleven. Almost there.

Kinfild had taken the last watch, and he was already standing by the time Jace and Lessa were up. Jace plucked up his backpack and tied the torn strap back in place, then hoisted it onto his shoulders. “We’re almost there,” he said. “Or, at least, I am. Unless you guys wanna keep hunting for treasures.”

Neither of them would receive an influx of Aes for destroying beasts, but there might be some treasures that they could make use of, and he didn’t want the both of them to leave empty-handed.

And it had been a few days. Chances were, the blast doors would be open and they could escape.

“I don’t suppose there’s much good loot up so high up in the dungeon anymore,” Kinfild said. “And if we head any deeper, we’re only going to face tougher opponents, who we won’t fare nearly so well against. There’s punching above your weight, and there’s suicide, and delving too much deeper would be the latter.”

“But you guys aren’t getting anything out of this,” Jace said.

“Consider it a favour,” said Kinfild.

“But is it?” Jace scrunched his eyebrows. “Why are you actually here, Kinfild, helping me and such? It can’t just be your duty, right? Not when everyone here seems motivated by getting something out of a relationship. Everything seems like a transaction with you people. With the magic system itself.”

Kinfild sighed, and his expression reeked of concession. “Helping you would improve my standing with Crimson Table, Jace. The sect’s main purpose was aiding the worldjumpers, and to have a chance to aid one is an incredible honour. They may make me an elder, and I would receive a great many accolades. They might grant me professorships at the arcane academies or simply put me in a comfortable, high administration role to live out my old years.”

Lessa looked on with earnesty, staring at the two of them but saying nothing.

Jace tilted his head, but kept staring at Kinfild. “Why you, then? You were sent to Lyavarion to pick me up, right? Why not send a different, proper elder, like Stenol? He seemed pretty desperate to have me as an apprentice.”

Kinfild chuckled. “That’s what he says now, but no one believed me when I told them that a Worldjumper was arriving.”

“How did you know, then?”

“I…felt it. There was a different tingle in Fate, like something was about to change, or go horribly awry. And so I travelled to Lyvarion, hoping to claim you. No one else believed me.”

Jace nodded.

“I’m just here for the adventure, by the way,” Lessa added after a few moments of silence. “Now, I wouldn’t say no to treasure, but I did get a new dress out of the deal.” She crossed her arms. “I say that like I had any nice clothes before this…”

“Alright, then,” Jace said. “We head back up, and we deal with any kobolds we encounter on the way.” That would be enough to push him over the edge.

He pulled open his backpack and withdrew the pauldron that Lessa had been engraving on the back of it. He handed it to her and said, “Care to guide us back?”

“He speaks as if I don’t remember the way,” Kinfild grumbled, marching on ahead and prowling out in front of the two of them.

They all took barely ten steps before the floor started rumbling.

“Sounds about right,” Jace muttered. “What is it?” A presence settled on him, an immense spiritual pressure wafting out from behind them, and his stomach churned in warning. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

Maybe it was just his imagination, but the shadows seemed to grow thicker, longer, and the lights seemed less effective. The dark vines swayed overhead in an invisible wind, flitting in the opposite direction of the spiritual pressure.

“Should we…run?” Jace whispered.

“Hold our course until it reaches us,” said Kinfild. “And then we will see if it’s a threat.”

Jace drew the Whistling Blade just in case. It was a threat, no way it wasn’t.

They increased their pace to a mild jog, winding through the hallways back toward a staircase. The steps were a little too tall and a little too awkwardly long to take them two at a time, but they ascended anyway.

The floor kept shuddering, and the spiritual pressure remained. A deep growl sounded behind them, almost like wood creaking. When it reached the point of splintering, it crackled with a faint chittering.

Some kind of kobold.

“It’s possible that we strayed too close to their queen-core,” Kinfild said as they climbed the stairs.

“Pardon?” Jace was the first to the top of the stairs, and he almost didn’t notice the level nine basic kobold waiting for him. He stepped to the side, dodging its claws. Lessa fired a blast of plasma, catching it across the shoulder and sending it staggering back. Jace slashed through its chest with a neat swipe.

“The queen-core, the source of their dark-aspect Aes and the ruler of their hive,” Kinfild arrived at the top of the stairs. “I don’t know much about them, but the core should not have been so high out of the hive. And there should have been vastly more kobolds close to it.”

“So…it’s chasing after us?”

“The queen core can’t move on its own.”

“Unless Stenol is trying to move the hive,” Lessa pointed out.

“So—”

Before Jace could finish, the vines started swaying the opposite direction. The spiritual pressure bubbled up from beneath him, then in front of him. “Get back!” he yelled, then took a few steps down the stairs.

The floor ahead of him, right at the top of the stairway, burst apart, and a beast leapt out, only a silhouette in the cloud of dust.

A golden tag shone through, though: [Level 29 Evolved Guardian Kobold].