Jeremy watched in horror as the water that now had electricity arcing toward it splashed towards their feet. He reacted instinctively, throwing up a low barrier around their feet in a circle. The water sloshed against it, held at bay for the moment at least.
On the bright side, the water did not seem to be an endless deluge like the water that had poured from the lake into the chambers that had housed the old god and the complex spell that started all of this. It seemingly spilled straight through the ceiling, which Jeremy had not really taken a close look at until this exact moment.
Like most older cellars, it seemed to be constructed of roughly hewn logs supporting wooden panels. The water seeped from between the cracks in these wooden panels at a fast enough rate that there was already an inch or so in the chamber with them. But the water was also flowing down the hallways as it filled the chamber, so that inch did not rise quickly. The leak was also localized to the center of the chamber, unfortunately between them and the exit.”
“Shit, that was dumb,” Jeremy muttered to himself, looking up from his little circle barrier toward the lightning elementals. He should have put a barrier over each of the hallway entrances to block them from electrifying the water, then they could have sprinted for the exit.
“Shit,” he said again, “Can you guys throw barriers up to stop their lightning from hitting the water while we make a run for it?”
They immediately tossed up regular mana barriers that they could continually feed mana to in order to keep them up. Jeremy’s eyes widened as he looked at the kaleidoscopic threads of mana twisting through the air from them to the barriers. He was not sure exactly what he was seeing when he looked at the mana, but he knew that there was far more flowing to the barriers now than there had been from Zanie to her lightning barrier earlier. This made sense, given that the mana barriers were not as resistant to lightning damage.
He gave it a couple of seconds, then dropped his barrier and shouted, “Run!”
The couple of inches of water flowed into the dry space around their feet, and thankfully, they were not immediately electrocuted. Unfortunately, as soon as they began stumbling backward toward the original hallway, the seams of water dripping from above did become a true deluge, a waterfall cascading down in the center of the room. But, instead of normal water, what spilled out of the ceiling above them was what appeared to be a water elemental.
It glopped down in a final spill that lifted the water levels to their ankles. Instead of hovering in the air like the lightning elementals, it rose out of the water in an amorphous, swirling blob.
“It’s got a core!” Caleb screamed. There was indeed a center to the being, but Caleb could not slice it while he was still casting the barrier to protect their submerged ankles from the lightning elementals. Barriers that would quickly drain him and Zanie of their mana if they did not drop them soon.
Jeremy reached over his back to bring the M4 around and lifted it to aim for the core. The bullets did not work on the lightning elementals because they melted and veered off before reaching the core. But bullets could go through water. It was only a few feet away, but it was something. He aimed and fired.
The bullets splashed into the water elemental and raced toward the core in lines of crisp bubbles cutting through its form. They slowed to a stop just before the core and drifted downward in the water. All except one, which knicked the core. The elemental reacted like a reflex, its form clenching and swirling violently.
Jeremy let out a frustrated yell and emptied his entire magazine into the creature’s core. It continued to squinch up and whirl around, tendrils of water lifting in what might have been the beginnings of an attack or a defense, except enough of the bullets hit its core to finally shatter it. The animated water suddenly released onto the floor with a splash.
Jeremy grabbed the backs of Caleb and Zanie’s shirts and hauled them across the chamber toward the exit hallways. As soon as the three of them were in the hallway, he threw up his own mana barrier over the doorway to the chamber. They dropped their barriers with twin sighs of relief. Zanie leaned heavily against the wall, and Caleb put his hands on his hips and huffed out a harsh breath toward the ceiling.
“Okay. Alright.” Jeremy blinked rapidly, trying to sort out his thoughts. The lightning had begun to arc into the chamber, reaching past the center now since the two elementals were about halfway down their respective hallways. “Caleb, do you think you have enough for two more of your little slicing spells?”
He scrubbed his hands over his eyes. “Yeah, but not too much more than that. Are you able to hold the barrier long enough for them to get closer?”
Jeremy glanced down at the flow of mana from his hands to the barrier and grimaced. “Not too long, but at least until they are out of the hallways at least.”
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“Cool.” He flexed his hands in front of his chest and tilted his head from side to side.
“Zanie, how are you doing over there?” Jeremy asked. She was slumped against the wall, head hanging down low with one hand over her face.
“Fine,” she said, “Dizzy but not quite on the verge of passing out yet, I think.”
“Can you make your way toward the exit?” Jeremy asked her. Mostly so that if she did pass out, they would not have to carry her as far if things did not go well with Caleb killing the final two lightning elementals. Or, at least, Jeremy hoped they were the final two lightning elementals. He kind of assumed this was the boss fight.
Zanie made a sound of affirmation and then began stumbling down the hallway, using the wall for support. Caleb got as close to the mana barrier as he dared, feet sloshing through the water. He held his hands at the ready.
As soon as the lightning elementals drifted into the central chamber, they filled it with bright bolts of electricity slamming into the walls, the ceiling, and the water. Caleb clenched his jaw and cast the spell, and one of them exploded into a brilliant flash of light and sparks. He recentered himself, bracing his legs a little further apart and blowing out a breath. Then he cast the second spell.
Jeremy sighed in relief as the second elemental exploded into sparks as well, it’s core shattering and raining down into the water in a series of little splashes. Caleb stumbled back into the wall and ran a hand down his face. He grinned at Jeremy, who grinned back.
“Glad you practiced your aim so much,” Jeremy told him. He nodded tiredly, and Jeremy gave the barrier a couple more seconds before letting it dissipate. Then he spun around to check on Zanie.
“Hey, I think we’re good, Zanie!” He called down the hallway toward her. She paused at the entrance to the chamber with the dungeon entrance and held her thumb up over her shoulder.
“You said they normally start to collapse once you clear them, right?” Caleb asked, pushing off the wall and looking around with wide eyes like he was not sure if he would rather fight more lightning elementals or have the walls start crumbling around him.
“Well,” Jeremy thought back to the first dungeon, “It might not be until after you get the reward at the end. I think in both the other dungeons, they did not start crumbling until someone picked it up.”
They both looked around for something. It had been pretty obvious the previous two times. As they seconds ticked by, Jeremy started to get nervous that they had not actually cleared the dungeon. If that was the case, they needed to get the hell out because they were not in any shape to keep fighting. He was not quite on the verge of collapse yet, but both Caleb and Zanie were.
“We should go either way.” He said.
“Don’t have to tell me that twice.” Caleb shrugged his shoulders to fix the straps of his backpack and began splashing down the hallway after Zanie. Then the dungeon shook. The stone walls rattled, sending a cascade of mortar dust down onto the jumping, rippling water. It splashed against the walls and back on itself.
Caleb promptly lost his mind. He sprinted down the rest of the hallway the best he could, grabbing Zanies's arm and trying to tug her along more quickly. When he glanced over his shoulder with wild eyes, and saw that Jeremy was still trudging along at a slightly quicker pace, his expression morphed into one of disbelief.
“Why aren’t you running?” He shouted, looping one of Zanie’s arms over his shoulder. She seemed grateful for the support, leaning against him as heavily as he had the wall.
Jeremy glanced over his shoulder, too, back at the central chamber, and frowned. He could not figure out if they missed the reward or if maybe there was not always one.
“Jeremy!” Caleb hollered.
“Calm down, the dungeons seem to collapse from the opposite end toward the exit. It’s okay.” He turned back around and saw that Caleb had made it to about the center of the low chamber, only a couple of feet away from the exit, but was waiting for him. As he stepped into the chamber with them, he saw one of the clusters of crystals that sprouted out of the ceiling just above where they stood crack.
“Move,” he waved his hands desperately. The cracks spread across the crystals quickly with the vibrations that were making the walls ripple and water jump. Zanie’s brows pinched and she looked up to see what Jeremy was looking at, but Caleb knew Jeremy well enough to simply listen. He stepped to the side in several long strides, pulling Zanie with him. They moved just in time to avoid the cluster as it shattered to the ground with a violent splash.
It did not simply plop into the water, it actually shattered into a bunch of little pieces, one of which lay in the center of the shards, glowing more brightly than others as the water closed over them. Jeremy snapped his fingers and surged forward to pick it up. The crystal thrummed in his palm. It was about the size of his pinkie finger and had an iridescent shimmer to it that he assumed was due to some amount of mana contained within it.
“Is that the reward?” Zanie shouted.
“I guess.” Jeremy curled his fingers securely around it, then gestured for them to go through the portal. Caleb wasted no time ducking back out from under Zanie’s arm and giving her a little push through the swirling blue energy. He followed right after. Jeremy looked over his shoulder one last time and saw the central chamber collapsing in on itself and the final hallway spilling down with it.
He followed Zanie and Caleb through the portal. On the other side, it was raining. Zanie stood a couple of feet away with her hands braced on the small of her back and her face tilted toward the sky. Caleb was laughing and wiping his hair out of his face as the rain tried to drag it into his eyes. Jeremy took a few steps toward them, then turned to watch the dungeon entrance.
The rain soaked into his clothes and plastered his hair against his forehead. But he stood there waiting, hoping. Then, the entrance collapsed in on itself, just as quickly and quietly as the one in Mrs. Jenning’s basement had. The blue glow it had cast across the asphalt blinked out, leaving behind only dark gloom beneath the rainclouds.
He copied Zanie, lifting his face to grin up into the rain. Thank goodness. That had been a bitch of a dungeon right up until the end. It did not even want to give them the reward without a little extra challenge.