“Landslide!” Axion shouted outside, one of the few that vocalized something other than panicked screaming. The crash was gradual as tiny rocks pelted the ground and heralding the larger ones that would soon come loose. From what I could tell, the whole Labyrinth was shaking.
Everyone rushed out of their tents, attempting to stay mobile and avoid the rocks. Panicked, Barbara held me against her chest as she too ran like a beheaded chicken. Dust and debris fell from the top of the ginormous tunnel as the tremors continued. Visibility became null and the cloud of dust threatened to choke them. The waves of divine energy kept going and I wondered which deities were fighting each other. The signatures felt awfully familiar, but I had no context. It was at the tip of my pages but...
I wanted to let mom take over, but I had already spent the daily use. What I could do was try and keep the expedition safe. With an effort of will, my cover was thrown open as a few of my pages unfolded repeatedly. Barbara struggled and fumbled to hold me, then screeched as she dodged the runaway pages.
Detaching from my body, they kept expanding and unfolding, then bending and taking shape until the [Deployable Canvas] formed a sturdy platform supported by pillars over the camp. I slanted it toward the back of the dead-end so the debris would slide off it and wouldn’t block our way out. Feeling a bout of inspiration, I made the roof double-layered with a honeycomb pattern filling the space between both surfaces. I hoped the honeycomb structure would make it stronger but I was no engineer.
Only the dull thuds of the rocks against the magically reinforced cardboard remained. The pastel color of the paper diffused the light back, allowing us to see... pretty much nothing. The dust cloud was taking over the camp. I kept an eye on the durability of the canvas, ready to deploy another one should this fail. I heard Hamilton and the girls coughing and remembered to cast an improvised Air spell around Barbara to keep the dust away from her.
"Nethe!" She cried as her legs lost strength and she fell on her butt forming a W on the ground. I slid off her hands and ended open with my covers against the ground.
The canvas wouldn't hold. It was too spread out and I didn't have enough material for supports. With the rocks coming down on us, it wouldn't matter even if I did. It was paper, for crying out loud. My answer was more paper. Stronger paper. I felt the pages ripping off me as I summoned a battalion of origami ogres. My Energy reserves plummeted and I had to tap into an outside source for more.
Resting at the depths of Snowdrop's Dungeon far to the east of this continent, Kel'Caldor's phylactery had fifty million MP available for use. The immobile indestructible artifact waited thousands of years for this moment.
Like Atlas, the ogres growled and grunted as they flexed their flattened origami arms and legs to brace the roof. Like Atlas, they had to hold the weight of the world but alas, they were not strong enough. The unknown deities were still fighting and the world still shook. More rocks fell on the others above us, adding to the weight.
Then a huge rock thumped on the others below and I heard the sharp should of paper ripping.
But the girl was still on the ground, crying and whimpering and shaking in fright. She wasn't a larger-than-life reincarnate or like my many previous versions, whose accumulated wisdom I lacked. Or at least she wasn't aware she was.
The paper ogres, unable to hold the weight, faltered. In dozens they were crushed by the very canvas they were pushing up. Then the people they were protecting. I felt my cover wrinkle and shake as a wave of fear washed over me and was quickly quelled by {Mental Mastery}. In hindsight, I am sure I would be utterly paralyzed by panic if I hadn't the System aiding me.
It all happened like in slow motion, my enhanced perception capturing the grim details of the events. I felt powerless and weak, small like a book as it happened. Two of the schoolgirls and several of the satyr women were utterly crushed by a section of the canvas that failed and was violently pushed down by the boulders over it. Axion was violently pushed by a swiveling section that ripped on its far end and bowled a perfect spare against a group of ogres, ending in a heap of horse rump and folded paper as the sound of bones crunching rang faintly under the din of rocks grinding and the bass of the tremors.
Then the canvas above Barbara and I parted in twain, like a sinister eyelid opening. A boulder with two stalactites stuck to it at odd angles came down through it straight at us. She shrieked and covered her head with her hands.
My dust cover warbled, and two blue streaks came out of it on their own. The streaks arced brightly around the halfling girl, and a dome of force popped instantly. The stalactites shattered as they struck the powerful Force barrier. Mom's magic. I remembered reading about these shields in the book. They were made to fight hordes of dragons and keep the hidden princesses safe. Barbara being the reincarnation of one of them, which one forever clouded from me.
Mom must've placed the shields in my storage during her stay with Bit earlier today. Did she know anything I didn't? All she left me was a note to buy the Perk {Charge}. Which I hadn't yet.
Then I heard Isaac howling in pain. As I extended my perception, I found him with his legs crushed under a boulder. The only ones unscathed were Mrs. Blatherwick and two of the satyr women. They had the luck to end in a space between two boulders. I sensed Isaac and two other female students still alive although gravely wounded.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The tremors continued, nonetheless. The waves of divine power washing over the Labyrinth became ever more violent, as if the distant fight was reaching a climax. I couldn't pinpoint whose energies were those, but I was sure it wasn't Bit's fault. Although they felt familiar, they weren't his.
The faint lighting that illuminated long swathes of the dust cloud that filled every open space was a courtesy of Mrs. Blatherwick. She called for her students but none responded. They were unable to make use of their wits currently.
In a state of shock, Barbara whimpered and cried. The few origami ogres who survived the crash were useless and I dismissed them, causing a few rocks to tumble down to fill the space occupied by them. I stopped paying the maintenance cost for the canvas, which would disappear after its duration expired.
I felt like trash. I was sure mom would've heroically saved everyone without a single scratch, maybe by sending all rocks to her item box before they could reach us. It was one of her favorite tactics but I had no access to that Perk, unless I used {Suppress Curse}. That's why Netherbane did not claim to be her. Although we shared the same soul, I was not her. Her tales resonated with me but they were still tales I read on a book. Better yet, a letter from a dear friend.
The bubble remained strong, a testament to the enchantment on the shields. They floated next to Barbara's shoulders on each side, rather large for a halfling. With the catastrophe past us, I focused on the waves of divine power.
They came from afar but the Labyrinth carried it all the way here, for some reason. One was violent and explosive, the other cold and meticulous. I felt I knew whom at the tip of my ribbon bookmarks, the equivalent of tongues for the flesh-people.
I should curse the rocks. My evolved nature told me they would crumble to fine silt but that wouldn't help the people even if it would vent my anger. I should ask if Barbara was fine but it was patent she wasn't, at least emotionally. Her body had nigh a scratch on it although her spirit and feelings were shattered. Just a look at those swollen red eyes and the tears that shook with each sob and hiccup was enough of a tell. Our empathic bond notwithstanding.
Everything happened too fast but now all we could do was wait and hope for freedom. And wait we did.
As the tremors died down and sepulchral silence fell on the cave that might become our tomb, reality struck. This was a silence of the soul as for sound we had plenty. The wailing of the wounded and the weeping of the living. But our souls withdrew on themselves, dim frightened candles out in a windstorm, afraid of the unavoidable end which before blazed like bonfires of joy and wonder at the mysteries of this labyrinthine underworld.
I reached with a ribbon and touched Barbara damp cheek. I was afraid she would swat it away but she tenderly caressed the silk tendril.
She pursed her lips and stared at my open pages on the ground before her. Then she took notice of the shields, looking at them with bewilderment. Although she said nothing about them, I could sense she felt the familiarity with the defensive objects. Barbara let go of the ribbon and picked me up. She gently closed my cover and wrapped the ribbon around her left hand fingers.
"I'm not woun..." she opened her mouth to protest then changed her mind as she nodded. "I'm sorry too."
Still sobbing involuntarily, Barbara fished inside her for a mote of resolve. She gripped my cover hard and looked around her. the rocks above the shield pressed against the magical barrier but didn't cross it. It was a sort of stalemate.
"I can feel it, Nethe. The stone," she whispered with eyes closed. "The crystals inside the rocks. Now that the magic of the Labyrinth let go of them, I... can help. No, I have to."
She tried to get up but her legs didn't get the memo. Instead, she held me on her left hand and tugged the tiny staff pendant around her neck. it grew and the shields pushed to make room for the diamond implement. She looked at the staff held at an angle inside the bubble, then back at me.
"Help me, Nethe. I need to get this spell right."
I could sense her intent. No reply came from me as I just let my mind join hers as we talked without words through our bond. She moved the staff in precise patterns, the crystal drawing on thin air with her magic. The outer circle was drawn horizontal with the ground. The it was filled with glyphs as she moved the staff, glyphs we decided based on her intent.
Growth. Control. Hardening. Crystal. The symbols for these concepts were added to the circle, as the many rays of a star with too many points crisscrossed the magical diagram.
Several minutes of meticulous design and drawing later, the spell was ready. She tapped the reservoir's metaphorical spigot open and a torrent flew through the staff. The circle shone brightly, eclipsing the faint magical lights Mrs. Blatherwick spread around.
The tiny crystals inside the rocks started to devour the stone as they grew. Like stars with too many points, shaped akin to snowflakes but in three dimensions, they grew and consumed the rock. As they met one another, they fused. Such was Barbara's intent. The rocks would become one massive crystal lattice, avoiding organic matter, and bonding the boulders together where they laid, all the while shrinking their volume at the same time.
Mom remarked in her memoir that magic didn't defy the "laws of thermodynamics" as she called them. Instead, magic expanded on those. If these laws made provisions for movement only back and forth, magic pulled stuff sideways, across a dimension that apparently didn't exist in her home world. The heavy voluminous boulders were replaced by lean but dense, pure crystal. Mass was shunted "sideways" as the spell worked, opening a lot of gaps, and forming bubbles around the survivors as well as the corpses of the dead.
It was also "crystal"-clear crystal. As they broke out of the stone cover and consumed almost all the grayish rock, the horror of the landslide was laid bare before us. Barbara gasped and retched, almost losing control over the spell. A stern burst from my mind wrapped in the gravitas of the task kept her focused. She tugged at the ribbon wrapped around her fingers and scratched my dust cover, replying with feelings of gratitude.
maybe by design, the rock over her was the last to be consumed. As the pressure vanished, so did the bubble from the floating shields, causing a small plume of dust and fine debris to fall on us. I used a spell of my own to shove them away from us but we still got another layer of silt stuck on our damp surfaces.
"Go, Nethe. I have these to keep me company," she nodded at the shields.
As I skittered over dozens of ribbon-legs, I could swear the two floating items preened at the acknowledgement of our shared mistress. Living silk, especially ancient living silk, seemed to have a mind of its own.