Huyn Soon’s body did not know what to do. Neither did the rest of him, but he and his mana were both so tense that he could hear nothing but the rush of his own blood in his ears. For what felt like a painfully long time, he simply couldn’t move. It was as though he were frozen by the flames before him. The fires were dying now but the tension remained in his muscles. Beside him, taut like a bowstring, Xiaomei was having the same problem.
A footstep was all it took to return the energy.
The dwarf, Grier, took a staggered step forward and stumbled to his knees. Before his brain could react, Hyun was already between the kneeling dwarf and his downed allies. Xiaomei had rushed to their side once he moved, but there was nothing she could do for the pair. Once it was clear that the dwarf was not making aggressive moves but instead seemed to be in some form of reverence, Hyun focused on the demon instead.
Endun was a bad match for Fa Lian, who could keep his long arms at bay with the dragon bo and it’s intense temperature. Hyun Soon fought with his fists, so the majaal would have an easy time stabbing him if he wanted to. The daggers were dropped to the floor though and their leader Shazaar was nowhere to be seen. The battle seemed to have ended without much of a fight. Hyun clenched a fist and winced.
Well, I got hit pretty hard. Hyun was giving both of the remaining Ashes dirty looks when Xiaomei shouted for him.
“Hyun! Help!” Xiaomei’s cry was terrifying. The sound of the fear inside her voice was like ice straight into his spine. He couldn’t look away from the danger before him. The thought of seeing what had caused such pain in her voice was locking Hyun in place. Even as Grier started to rise, Hyun could not move a muscle.
The dwarf passed by Hyun’s unmoving form, finally breaking the spell. “W-wait!” He managed to splutter the words but they had no effect. Walking forwards with his hands before him like a blind man, Grier was approaching a scene that Hyun was still unwilling to look at. He felt like a coward as he looked back to Endun, making sure the demon was staying where he was. After a moment of confused eye contact, Hyun finally moved. Feeling sick, he bounded forward after the hobbling dwarf and grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Let me help, lad.” Grier didn’t turn himself, so Hyun threw the shoulder he held and spun him around. The dwarf had tears running down his craggan face. Hyun had spent time talking to the man days ago and had forgotten how old he looked. His beard was a mix of grey and light brown, or maybe an orange that Hyun had never seen in hair before. His skin was slightly greyed, which Hyun had heard came from mining certain material deep underground.
Right now, the cliffside that was Grier’s face was flowing with waterfalls. Absolute rivers of tears fell down the dwarf’s face and Hyun let him go in both confusion and disgust. “Let me help.” He repeated, the emotion thick in his voice. After waiting a few seconds but receiving no response from Hyun, he moved again. Xiaomei was wailing for Hyun even as Grier reached her and Hyun’s head snapped over to her, regretting it quickly.
He had looked.
What had become of Dan this time? Where was his hair? Was he breathing? Did his front look any better than the shrunken back that Hyun could see? All he could make out from here was blackened skin and that was more than he could stand already. From the bottom of his heart he apologised to Xiaomei for not being the first one there.
Instead of saying it aloud, he instead moved to her. She had been stunned as Grier casually walked up to Dan’s smouldering form and Hyun held her before she could interrupt the dwarf. She screamed at him to let her go, that he was killing Dan and a slew of other things that lowered in volume until eventually she was simply sobbing quietly into his chest. His own tears had begun flowing as soon as she started her tirade.
On the floor, her skin unmarked, was Fa Lian. Hyun couldn’t keep his face from turning into a scowl. Of course she would be unmarred while Dan ended up scorched and destroyed. That was becoming a common enough occurrence to be a pattern at this point.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“What you doing?” Endun’s clicking voice was clearly irate. “We still kill them? No, Grier?” Hyun released Xiaomei, standing over Dan and getting ready to attack if he needed to. He stretched his mana, as he had practised with Dan, and the armguard became like two large shields instead.
“No. Absolutely not.” Grier started moving his arms around wildly. Gibberish flowed from his lips, as far as Hyun Soon could tell, but then the hallway started to feel different. The light within the stone of the labyrinth walls seemed to be getting sucked out, right into the hands of the dwarf. A silver glow covered his fingers, growing in intensity as the hallway continued to darken.
“What are you doing?” Hyun asked the dwarf. He had to ask again, shouting this time, because his voice seemed to be dampened like the light. The dwarf gave him no answer, his own voice clear and loud as he continued weaving his spell. Hyun had never seen a spellcaster at work, so the process was alien to him. Although Hyun would call what he did magic, as did all practitioners, there was something more mystical about what Grier was doing.
Endun spat a curse in some language and slumped to the ground. Without direction, it seemed, he did not know what to do with himself. Hyun sympathised, though he didn’t let his guard down. Xiaomei moved Fa Lian from her place next to Ah Dan and set her still unconscious body down further up the hallway.
Grier’s chanting continued, the gloom continued to gather in the room and his hands continued to light up more and more. The more he spoke, the more his random sounds started to have more melody until Hyun felt he knew the song that he was singing, like a lullaby from his youth though that was impossible.
The singing reached a fever pitch and did not let up once it reached the peak. The shine from Grier’s hands was illuminating a wide area but most of all himself and Dan. In the silver spotlight, the skin which looked black was now shown as awful charred purple and black. His silver eyes reflected the light, the lids burned away in the heat from Fa Lian’s staff and her rage. His lips moved so slightly that Hyun wasn’t sure it was a trick of the light, but he seemed to be saying something which couldn’t be heard.
All at once, the silver light disappeared. Sound did not return, nor did the light which had faded. There was a horrible, lurching half second as Hyun Soon was instantly certain that he was going to be attacked from the darkness, but the attack never came. Instead the light returned, brighter than ever and now coming only from Ah Dan himself. Grier fell back, managing to catch himself on his now glow-less hands after his rear hit the floor.
The illumination within Dan continued to grow. His cracked skin started to shine from the inside, the light seeming to leak out of the many fissures. Hyun had tried so hard not to see what he looked like before but now he could hardly take his eyes away from the spectacle in front of him. Hyun Soon watched, entranced, as follicles reappeared on Dan’s fingernails and his hair began to fuzz again.
Dan stopped mumbling as the magic began to leak from his mouth even, the white light falling out of his mouth like Dan had swallowed a cloud. Hyun hadn’t noticed originally because he hadn’t looked close enough but he now saw that Dan’s ears had been burned away, but were now reforming. His nails grew from where the heat had popped them off.
A year’s worth of rest in a minute. That was what Hyun Soon would describe it as when asked later, he knew. As though with each breath, a whole slew of remedies and ointments were being applied, Ah Dan healed quickly. The charcoal fell away. Ah Dan didn’t grow, or anything like that, but the dead, cooked skin fell away leaving fresh flesh.
As the light faded and Hyun saw pink skin he realised that Dan was unclothed, his robes from the Guan family burned to cinders, and so Hyun threw his shirt over his friend’s netherregions. Xiaomei had joined him to stand at his side while the process took place. Her presence always stopped Hyun from worrying so much. Fa Lian lay on the hard floor a little ways away, getting an undeserved rest as far as Hyun was concerned.
“Healing spell.” Grier had turned to look at Hyun now, answering his question from earlier. He looked much paler than before he had cast his spell. “Am better at them than fighting magic. Oi. Endun?” There was no reply from the demon. The red skinned majaal had his head held in his hands and did not react. “Useless, but without Shazaar he always was.”
“Why did you help us?” Xiaomei voiced the question that Hyun wanted to ask. It didn’t make any sense, if anything it would have been much easier to take their items or lives now.
“It was the music.” Grier answered with an air of sincerity, which only made him sound insane. There had only been the sound of battle, and eventually the roar of the flames. “The music is so pure.”
“What music?” Hyun was sure that the dwarf was going mad.
“Ah, you all have the wrong kind of ears. We dverg hear the magic.”
Hyun wasn’t looking for a lesson in how dwarves worked. He remembered that Raffyal had said a similar thing. “Yeah, okay, you hear the noises of magical items. So? Why did that stop you from stealing it?”
“Not the staff, no. That thing is whimpering now. It’s the boy.” Grier looked over to Dan, who was now breathing the heavy breaths of someone deep in sleep. “He sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard. I’ve never heard of a person making mana sounds before.”
“What are you saying? Dan doesn’t have any magic items.” Hyun was tired of this. Xiaomei tugged his sleeve and, as usual, he relaxed. She encouraged him to calm and he couldn’t help himself even in the face of danger. He allowed himself to listen.
“I don’t know,” the dwarf said while shaking his head, “but it would kill me if that music stopped. I’m sorry, kids. For the Ashes and for everything.”
So it was that Xiaomei, Hyun Soon and Grier were in an uneasy alliance when the light around them returned in full, the labyrinth came back to life. Waiting for their energy back, or for Fa Lian or Ah Dan to awaken, they were still exhausted by the time that the others found them.