Brynn
We stepped out of the cave-like dungeon into the larger Thrask cavern system. My Abyss Walker Boots crunched on round stones that made a beach-like landing before the slow-flowing waters of the cave river. I couldn’t help taking in a deep breath, admiring the new smells and the comparatively open air.
Lyria emerged behind me. “Where is everyone?” she asked.
It was a good question. There were a handful of adventurers waiting by the water for the next boat, but the girl named Belle from the Adventurer’s Guild, the grumpy naidu with the dimensional box chained to his ankle, and the merchant who had sold goods out of the upturned boat were all gone.
“Good question,” I muttered, looking around dumbly, as if I would spot them hiding behind a rocky outcropping somewhere.
When we were all out of the dungeon, I was struck by how unfair this was for Zahra, Ramzi, Thorn, and Sylara. The four of them looked grim and resolved as we stood wordlessly, as if we were all waiting for somebody to speak about the uncomfortable truth hanging over us.
“I was just feeling relieved to be out,” I finally admitted. “But it’s more dangerous for you guys up here, isn’t it?”
Zahra gave a sad nod. “In some ways, yes. People traveling with slaves is common enough, though. It’s how we were able to get in the dungeon in the first place.”
“They agreed to that?” I asked.
“Well,” Thorn said, rubbing the back of his neck. “They weren’t hurt.”
“So where would you all go now?” Lyria asked. “We would be happy to help however we can. If you think we can get you to an Arcanery or your personal spaces, we can definitely try.”
They all exchanged a long look, then nodded one by one.
“Okay, good,” I said. “So you’ll pretend to be our slaves a little while longer. If anybody figures it out and tries to get you, Lyria and I will cause chaos somehow. That’ll be your signal to run, alright?”
“No,” Ramzi said. “You would be held as a criminal for aiding our escape. The punishment is too severe. If we’re caught, we’re caught. We all know the risks.”
I thought about arguing, but if he was right, sacrificing myself for the four of them would be a hollow, short-sighted kind of nobility. I had to believe my real mission here on Eros was about saving more than four people. I’d do whatever I could to save and help people along the way, but I always needed to keep perspective on what mattered most.
Even if it irked me at times like this…
“There’s something else,” I said. “Vitus spoke to me in private before we reached the entrance chamber. If I trust him at his word, Vitus sympathizes with slaves and knows a man named Massian Rahma who could help you get transport if you needed it.”
“Massian Rahma?” Thorn said. “We know the name, but not where to find him. Did he say?”
“A tavern by the docks called the On The Ropes. Vitus told me I should hide you all when we arrive and take you straight to him. You’re sure you want to risk coming into the city for the Arcanery and your personal spaces?”
“We need power,” Thorn said. “Thanks to you, we undoubtedly earned ourselves something back there. We entered Beastden with almost no equipment except what we could snatch during our escape or since. A few powerful items could take us from helpless to hopeful. We need to take the risk, because we must head to another dungeon as soon as possible.”
The grim but determined looks on Ramzi, Zahra, and Sylara’s faces told me they agreed with his words.
“Alright,” I said. “So we’ll sneak you in. Do you want to risk talking to this Massian guy?”
“Yes,” Thorn said. “We will do our best to catch wind of any other dungeons suitable for Woods. He can help us reach it.”
I was a little sad at the thought of them all shipping off, never to be seen again. I felt guilty that I couldn’t do more to help them. I supposed I could figure out the comm card thing and give them mine or collect theirs when we were in town, though. Even if it hadn’t felt like I was still in touch with the others, it was only because I had been away from my personal space for so long. If I could keep in touch, I could circle back and try to help them when I had the means.
Another group of adventurers emerged beside us, cutting off our conversation.
“Excuse me,” Lyria said, catching a middle-aged woman wearing tattered robes with bags under her eyes.
“Yes?” she said, leaning heavily on a metal staff that was scratched to hell.
“Why have the merchant, guild rep, and naidu left?”
“The first runner Vitus sent was told to send them back to Thrask. When dungeons are in danger of being overrun, the staff is sent back to the city. It’s protocol.”
“Oh,” Lyria said. “Thank you.”
The woman smiled tightly, but I noticed the way her eyes shifted to our “slaves”.
From the way people reacted to us having them, I gathered it was about as taboo as not picking up your dog’s poop when somebody was watching you. Eventually, someone was probably going to call us on it, and we’d have to hope they didn’t want to escalate the issue with authorities. Thankfully, I didn’t think it would be frowned upon once we were outside the dungeon.
My best guess for why slaves weren’t supposed to be in dungeons was regarding loot. Bringing slaves to help you fight in a dungeon would mean exposing them to both experience and potential accomplishments. A slave could theoretically stash a bunch of accomplishments, and all they’d need to do was slip off to an Arcanery somehow or a dungeon naidu, get their tokens, and turn them in. With the boost in power, they would be a bigger problem for whoever wanted to control them.
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It made sense. But it also didn’t seem like it was really a huge threat to the slavers, which was probably why the rule wasn’t strictly enforced. It was likely just that people who saw slaves as possessions didn’t like the idea of them getting experience and accomplishments.
Wonderful people, those were.
“We should go wait for a boat, too,” I said.
We all walked downhill toward the river and waited in the small group of people, none of whom spoke. They all just watched the dark green waters flowing by, sometimes turning their heads to look for approaching boats.
A boat large enough for all of us arrived. The boatmaster was a hunched old woman who looked like she might fall off the flat-bottomed boat if a stiff wind blew. We all took seats beside oars and were instructed to row if we wanted to reach the city.
I fell into a rhythm, letting the oar dip into the water, planting my feet, and tugging.
After the bloody chaos in Beastden, the cool, damp cave air and the slosh of water felt like medicine for a bruised mind.
I closed my eyes, prodding my senses to my core, where I found the familiar dark touch of mana there. So far, the power had gotten the best of me, but not before helping me accomplish what I needed.
Maybe it was arrogant, but I felt confident I would find a way to master it. My best guess was that properly using dark mana would mean figuring out how much I could tolerate in my system without negative effect. If I was lucky, I would be able to tolerate enough to keep my bedroll fully fed each night, or at least fed enough to buy me weeks or months before I would be forced into dungeons to seek out more food for it.
I also knew things like my Elemental Body passive could possibly boost my resistance to dark mana, assuming it was an element. I also had my “Warden of Shadows” Iron boon, which specifically raised my ability to resist the dark mana. If I was able to tier up boons or earn higher ranks of them when reaching Silver, that one would definitely grow stronger, considering I’d be exposing myself to dark mana every single day to feed my bedroll.
I found my thoughts shifting to happier things as our boat continued to quietly slip through the dark passage.
We had done it, after all. Eros threw a constant barrage of shit our way, and we had overcome it all, coming out stronger every time. Surviving the briarwraith and the carapax alone had already proven to be a massive boost in my power. If the dungeon diver tokens were anywhere near as useful as regular tokens, I expected I was only hours from finding out what form my next spike in power would take.
At the rate I was growing, I couldn’t help thinking about the lich back near Riverwell. If Circa had only temporarily killed it or sent it back to its phylactery, it would be back. When I was strong enough, I knew I needed to go back and take care of her, even if the memory of that terrible magic in the ruins still made my stomach cold.
If I could kill the lich in combat, I knew I could use my divine ability to destroy her phylactery.
I wondered if the Adventurer’s Guild had unique rewards for things like killing a Forsaken. Hell, I had killed an Eclipsed already… It wasn’t so far-fetched to think I might find a way to take her down eventually.
There was also the matter of the other prestiged gods, along with Ithariel himself.
So far, I thought I had crossed paths with two potential prestiged gods. There was the ash-covered girl back in Riverwell, who had been escorted into a House of Azmeria carriage by two Golds. There was a faint chance I had remembered wrong, but I was almost certain I recognized her from the vision I had of the Crystal Court.
The other was the burned man. There were a few possibilities when it came to him, and I wasn’t sure if I particularly liked any of them. I knew about Forsaken and Eclipsed individuals. But I had seen mention of something called Soul Burn from my bedroll and my Iron boon. Each time, it was included as if it was somehow related. Whatever it was, the logical conclusion seemed to be that the “soul burn” effect could create some kind of twisted avatar, just like corrupt and dark mana could.
But I wasn’t sure if that theory was a reach. He looked burned, yes, but the power he seemed to exist within was dark mana. While it probably wasn’t impossible, my intuition had me leaning away from the soul burn explanation. Considering my intuition was now slightly enhanced by yet another Iron boon, I gave my hunch a little more weight than I normally would.
Whether he was soul burned or not, though, he had absolutely wanted me to believe he was a prestiged god. The issue there was how he had mentioned the name Matthew Walsh and kept acting as if he knew my sister.
On the surface, it implied there was something deeply wrong with how I understood what had happened here. If he was who he said he was on both counts—being Matthew Walsh and also one of the nine prestiged gods—it was… almost impossible.
It would mean two out of nine gods of Eros were people from the same city and the same social circles back on Earth. And he was talking about my sister as if she was here and he knew her. That shouldn’t be possible, either, considering the events I remembered on Earth were at least 300 years ago, and it was far more likely that all happened thousands of years ago.
If he knew my sister, and if she was here…
I gave the oar a harder tug and shook my head slightly. That was too crazy.
No, the far more likely possibility was the one I didn’t enjoy thinking about.
The burned man knew who Matthew Walsh was because he was some demented hallucination I had created. Or maybe the dark mana created it. It could be some kind of amalgamation of my fears or my worries or just a hand-crafted manipulation device by some greater force.
Whatever it was, I wouldn’t let it get the kind of hold on me where my control was threatened again. I’d tame it, master it, and wield it. All I needed was time to practice and train.
Our boat finally rounded a corner and brought Thrask in all of its glory into view. I saw the gaping hole thousands of feet above and the bright blue skies beyond. Water poured down in a rushing torrent, surrounding the palace on the highest tier of the city in a sheet of magic-imbued liquid.
I smelled the vaguely unpleasant odor of the city, saw the rushing people on every level of the multi-tiered city, and watched as we were steered toward the docks.
We all dismounted from the boat, thanked the boatmaster with some small coins from each of us, and gathered on the dock.
“What’s the plan, Brynn?” Lyria asked.
I put my hands on my hips and turned to face the city with a smile. “I’m going to need to borrow your bathtub before anything else.”
That earned me raised eyebrows from Zahra and Ramzi. “He uses her bathtub?” Ramzi said. “This is what humans call a ‘power move’, yes?”
Lyria’s cheeks went red. “He used it like one time. And it was only because I was tired of smelling him.”
“She also insisted on staying in the room,” I noted.
Lyria whirled on me with a glare.
I held up my hands defensively. “Anyway,” I said. “Bath, food that isn’t dried out and tasteless, hit the Arcanery, have a loot party, visit Grimbo if I get any personal space upgrades, sell what I can, buy what I can, and then I train.”
“That’s all?” Lyria asked with a half smile.
I stared upward at the palace, feeling the power already coursing through my new Iron Rank body. I wanted more. I wanted to crash through whatever the people here thought were barriers of advancement. I wanted to fix the things they didn’t believe could be fixed and save the ones they didn’t think could be saved. I wanted to see every corner of a new world I had only just begun to scratch the surface of.
Of course, I also wanted badass titles, awesome trophies, and cool little embellishments for my guild badge.
“Yeah,” I said, smiling a little to myself. “That’s all.”
And it was only just the beginning.