As we headed back for the door, Zu took point, and Airsidh was behind, followed by me, and then lastly my father… Keigan.
“Everyone ready?” he asked from the back, and we all sounded off.
He softened his voice “How’s your arrow wound, is it holding together well?”
I felt his hand rest on my back, making my whole body shudder as I flinched forward “Don't touch me!” I yelled, spinning around to swat his hand away. He froze still, but I continued backing up until everyone began to move forward again. “It opened up more than once while I was fighting, but it’s fine now. I’m pretty sure the water healed all my wounds.”
My brother cleared his throat, slowing down the pace so that he’d be closer to me. “Perhaps it would be better if we switched positions. I can take the rear.”
Keigan thought about it for a moment before he let out a heavy sigh. “No, I’m the largest by far, so in this case, it would be best for me to be in the back.”
‘I’d love to hear why… But I doubt you’ll explain that either…’
Zu stopped and once again everyone was standing still. “Wait, why though? Wouldn’t that be a reason for you to be in front?” He asked.
Keigan rolled his eyes as he stepped past us. “I’ll stay behind Zu so I can continue teaching him.” He grumbled.
Airsidh winked at me as he passed by. “Thanks” ‘At least I won’t feel like I have to watch my back now.’
At first, I thought it might have been a stretch that he would actually hurt me, thinking it would just make me less nervous if I could see him. Then I started to think about it a little more though…
Realistically, since I had gone into the dungeon, he had pushed me into a group of skeletons, thrown me at ice wraiths, gave me a false sense that he would help, and left me behind to a hoard of zombies… As far as I was concerned, he was just as much a threat as the monsters themselves. Oh, he almost drowned me too…
I kept an eye on him as we continued on our way and he explained his reasoning to Zu. “In narrow passages, if I was in front no one in the back could see anything, it’s also better for the largest to be in the rear in case you end up getting pincered. In that instance there are almost always fewer enemies behind, so the largest man can then more effectively lead a charge to get back to an open space where it’s safer, or at least easier to fight.”
I wanted to just be glad that he actually explained something for once, and the reasoning wasn’t as awful as it usually was either. I couldn’t though, it pissed me off. It almost felt like nothing else he did made me feel quite as dejected as that. After all, I wasn’t the one he was explaining it to… Feeling that way only made me feel narcissistic though, and eventually, it all just devolved until the only way I could describe it was that I felt bad.
‘Eventually, my feet will carry me out of this place. Eventually, this will all be over…’ I smirked, glancing back at Airsidh for a moment as we continued walking forward. ‘I still have to live long enough that I can start worrying about how cute I am.’
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Just when I was finally starting to lift my head up we ran into a corpse adder…
My father ducked down, keeping his head low as he held Zu back from going any further. “This is what I was talking about. Stay low and quiet. They don't usually attack, but when they have grown large from eating so much they become greedy, and begin to hunt live prey.”
It was a pretty ugly monster with four extremely long legs and a short back. Each leg had 2 shorter forelimbs with hooves, giving it 8 points of contact with the ground and it had a freakish tongue coming out of its ant-eater-like snout.
In a way, it reminded me of a giant fleshy mosquito, only with a sack under its chin, probably for the acid it was spitting out to melt the corpses before sucking them up like slushies ‘I want to vomit again…’
It was getting easier to hold it back though. I had gotten used to seeing things like that down there… Well… Maybe not that specifically. I suddenly felt gentle on my shoulder, and when I turned I saw my brother looking at me with cold, serious eyes. “Siya… Don’t look down alright…”
‘Well, now I want to…’
“Let's just move slowly. It will probably ignore us. No use in risking our gear getting melted fighting it.”
“Right,” Zu responded. I just hugged the wall and slowly followed behind them. As we got closer the smell got worse, it felt like I was choking on it. We made it past though. And as we went up the staircase to the next floor the scent began to fade.
“Air… If there are really so many of these things… Then how are there zombies still in this dungeon? Shouldn't they all be skeletons… Or just food, by now?”
“Siya…” He looked down at me holding the torch high. His face was still uncharacteristically cold as if he was telling a horror story and trying to get me to jump. “There are some things you're better off not knowing…” It was sweet he was concerned, but I also felt like I was being patronized. It might have just been my messed-up sense of humor, but it was funny in a way. Although if I was being honest… ‘If I had looked down… Just what would I have seen? The footing felt normal…’ No matter how mature I felt I was, the thought terrified me so much that it actually overcame my curiosity, and I never brought myself to look back. There was only one moment when I got close, but my brother placed a hand on top of my head, and his grip was strong enough to keep me from turning any farther.
“If you vomit you’ll attract monsters.” He whispered, his voice returning to normal.
‘Is it strange that I want to see even more now? I guess we're past it anyway.’ “What was it that was so bad?”
He slowly shook his head as I turned forward again. “After you guys brought me to a place where I was mauled by rotting corpses, and haunted by a wraith. I nearly froze to death in a cursed lake, and even now I'm just ‘barely’ holding it together… Somehow after all of that, telling me this one thing isn't ok?”
It just made me more curious. But the more I thought about it… The less I actually thought I wanted to know. After all, if I had been through all that and he didn't think it was a good idea to tell me… “You know what… You’re right… Even if I ask later… Just… Don’t tell me…”
“Deal.”
We managed to make it all the way back down to the floor where I fought with the ghoul. The corpses were all gone, but I could see the pattern left in the ground from where I was forced to the dirt. My fingers still hurt from clawing at it, and I could still see some of it underneath my nails. “Siya… Is everything alright?”
A part of me wanted to curl up again… but of course, I didn't, I just kept moving forward. “Y-yea… it's nothing…”
We continued on, climbing each floor slowly but surely, my father taking time to properly teach Zu about each monster, and more subtle things like party formations, and how to work together in a fight as they took out some weaker monsters. The more it went on the more it made me sick. It wasn’t that I was jealous, at least it didn’t feel like it. I was more just… disappointed, as weird as that may sound.
As for myself, I fell into what I could only describe as a trance, just walking, and waiting, and walking. My feet carried me for miles on end until they began to sting and ache.
I closed my eyes, letting out a long groan as my stomach began to hurt from the hunger. ‘It shouldn’t be that much longer. At this pace, we should be home… Soon… If I think about it like that then I’ll make it through.
“Right, we should be out in about four more hours, then we will be mostly safe. We can camp outside through the night and return to the castle in the morning.”
‘Four hours…’ I found myself wanting to complain but I held back, not out of maturity or anything, I just felt too tired to talk. ‘Four hours is another 11 miles of walking at our pace, give or take.’ The thought of going that much farther made my stomach only grumble louder, making me more annoyed.
I didn’t necessarily feel weak, not physically at least, but I certainly didn’t feel good either.