My lungs screamed in pain, my ribs were more like rubs, and more than a bit of a panic flooded my body. A part of me, the part of me that was super okay with dying, was calmly observing that I was being an idiot, that there was no way that the Monster I had just taken out at the knees could do anything to truly harm me long term. That whatever it was doing, whatever spell it was casting, it would, at worst, hurt a whole lot and that my main priority was keeping the queen who was crawling through my hair alive.
The part of me that lost its cool wanted me to live at any cost and had gotten carried away enough to tear into a dead Gremlin with my teeth, could only stand in horrified awe at the spell being cast. The working was giant. The biggest spell I had, measured in terms of the size of its channels of it, was [Status] and its counterpart [Analyze], the channels of which needed to wrap around a target to work.
Now, compared to the rest of the spells I knew, it was huge, like a person-sized egg.
The spell it was casting was starting to approach the size of Anna's bedroom and took up shy of a sixth of the room. It was made of a messy, tangled rats nest of sometimes jagged, sometimes looping strands of black oozing tenebral clouds, feeding in and in on itself in an ever denser, ineffable pattern that made my skin crawl.
It was, quite possibly, the greatest horrifying thing I had ever seen, and it made me all too aware that this thing was capable of potent spellcasting.
I wasn’t in good condition, but that didn’t matter all that much. Neither did the queen's condition. I had no idea what her condition was, but it didn’t matter. Any offensive spell like that was no doubt strong enough to not care if she was in perfect condition, getting hit with it would probably just kill the both of us.
Getting into cover was a necessity, he couldn’t target me if I were behind cover, at least not directly. But the more powerful the spell got, the more likely I thought it wouldn’t be directly targeting me, so much as targeted towards me.
The problem with that was I had no idea how those spells worked.
A spell cast on a person worked like [Status], and a spell cast at a person worked like [Inspect], but I had no idea how a spell like [Fireball] worked.
If I had to guess, it fired like [Inspect] did but then exploded. The problem was, this spell didn’t give me the impression that the effect would do that, it didn’t look like it could even be fired through a door.
Which left me in a predicament. I could try and kill it again to stop the spell with the disadvantage that it no longer wanted me alive, take cover from it and come back out after it went off with the possibility it didn’t work like I thought it did, or to cut my losses, and get the hell out of here.
And I needed to do it in under fifteen seconds.
My brain started to feel swollen as I went through the ideas, my head rapidly compiling the pros and cons of each option.
Fighting would be worthwhile if I could do it fast enough, pro I would be right here to free the souls con I would mess it all up if I didn’t kill it fast enough. Hiding in a room left me safer than no cover for its pro, for the con a [Fireball] would still hit me.
Running away, pro, I got out with everything I came for, and the con was the remaining lanterns would remain here.
The idea of it was a sour pill to swallow, leaving them here felt more than wrong, it felt tragic. It felt like I would be abandoning them, it felt like a failure.
While I could come back, the fact was that I probably couldn’t today. The Gremlins outside were the ones setting up whatever ritual they were attempting to do. There were a lot of them, and they had pet undead following along or cornering me. I could probably get around them long enough to escape in the wide open space of the ritual room, but they would chase me into the tunnels if I ran, where they could pack the cramped confines wall to wall with the bodies of the undead.
Based on the relative size, it was bigger than the one in here with the souls that could have likely powered it.
The ritual, where is the thing moving the fabric? If I could deal with that, I would be willing to leave.
Oh gods, what in the hells is wrong with me? Damn it, that is fucked up, trading away people for a setback? When did I get given the right to choose? The right to throw people away like… like objects? trash? Things to be traded.
Like…
Like the lords of the valley.
That would be a greater setback than a few lights and a few souls lost or saved, I can't do it because it would be positive or easy for me, I can’t do it because it would look like a good exchange in a ledger. There is plenty of good I could do by breaking it, I don’t, no, I can't let that be a reason for why I do something.
I could break it and save, at least temporarily, anyone who dies within the area of effect from the torture of this pit. But I could do that and do something similar back home if I can figure it out, then I could bring any loose souls to me and send them to the afterlife.
Could I…
I didn’t hesitate and burned more time; it must have been at least 4 seconds, and my head was already trembling from overthinking things.
I was a doer, so I did.
I cast [Cantrip] and attempted to toss the shards of shattered rock left from the thing smashing into the wall. At the same time, I turned my attention to my senses, including [Marked by the Long Road], trying to pick up any connection as to why the fabric, the veil, between life and death was bent.
The pool was the first obvious contender, the bend was centered on the pool after all, but after carefully checking, there didn’t seem to be a connection, the lines didn’t line up with the dip, nor were they symmetrical with them, not evenly distanced.
I checked the pool as tiny rocks got picked up and tossed, [Cantrip] weakly tossing a stone, weaker than me tossing the stone from my hand. On a scale of Neahhh, to Ughh. It was an eh. Very week.
But a rock was still a rock. It still carried weight enough to snap some spindly bones and collapse the thin, sinewy walls of the spirit-powered lanterns.
They flickered as the rock hit, not from my effort but from the thinning power.
I had no time to pick them up, no time as I rushed around the room to the exit, but I could break them, free them of the lamp and the terrible existence I had shared with them. I had lived it for less than a minute, walked three steps in their sandals, and knew I couldn’t stand it.
If I couldn’t save them in time, I would release them from that.
I cast [Cantrip] like an smith hammered, totally by feel and without needing to think about it, I just lined up the shots and magically hucked the tiny stones while I analyzed the-
[Inspect]. Can I [Inspect] the spells? It is fast, but is it fast enough? Am I fast enough? What the hell should I try?
Thinking it and doing it was practically one and the same. I didn’t even know how cantrip could be cast with one hand or what the pattern was to cast it, but I knew I could cast [Inspect] with one hand. My hand, its fingers weak from my encounter with the arrows, my fingers good the simple action of griping my shovel, felt fat and slow for casting spells.
My mind, trembling, clamped down as I started to burn my wisdom. It felt like I was trying to give myself a headache as I tried to work out how to cast the spell fast enough to get information in time to act on it.
I needed to shape the mana faster, like Anna could. The movement of fingers wasn’t needed, they were just ways to manipulate mana in the air, a way to form a spells shape from thin air without needing to use mana to do it. It was a necessary step for someone without a skill to manipulate mana, but it could be done using mana, couldn’t it?
I focused down, trying to flex [Magi], visualizing the shape of the spell and willing the mana to move to form channes as my fingers moved through the air. It improved it, but it wasn’t enough.
I reached out with [Cantrip], a spell that literally manipulated mana, and it still wouldn’t be enough. The channels were just too bulky to shape quickly.
Did Anna use channels? That was the wrong question. Did Anna use channels like this?
I hadn’t sensed her casting that quick spell of her’s like this. It had been more like… Like shaping the mana of the spell into the shape the channel left.
With a thought, I spoke the spell before I had finished.
Speaking, “[Inspect],” aloud the spell cast, pulling up the mana in the reflexive way one could when they knew the spell like a skill, and in a perfect moment of clarity, as the spell began, the idea of using the mana of the spell expanded. A spell didn’t just pour out into the world if you had no channels, it would still cast if there was enough mana.
The channels weren’t necessary to cast the spell, they were there to constrain the mana, so you didn’t have to pay an astronomical amount of mana to cast it, so you could let the mana shape into the spell without spilling out into the air.
Like painting a picture, you could pour paint on a canvas and waste tons of precious pigment to try and get a painting, or you could delicately brush it on and use as little as possible.
I had just failed to cast the spell like that hadn’t connected those dots. Anna had told me that I could use [Magi] to skip steps, I just hadn’t put that into practice.
The mana from my reserve snaked out, loosening from the passive effect of [Tenebral Bane], though this time, the amount to exit my reserve was just right.
Instead of just using the channels, I stopped manipulating the channels with [Magi] and [Cantrip] and instead focused on guiding the mana the spell needed through the pattern I knew, keeping it hemmed in when it tried to leak out.
Without focusing entirely on the channels, I could simply let the spell come to completion.
Mana burned through the air, sucking in on itself. The power lit a small light, and the spell snapped forward into the depression in the fabric, a whisp of light returning to me.
The whole process took but a moment that felt like it was long enough to have lunch with Anna. It was incredibly fast casting normally, pushing it along squeezed it out stupidly fast. My head hurt, but I knew it would be all worth it as the blue panel popped up in front of me, and I read.
Stone.
This stone, primarily sedimentary rock, contains a small quantity of minerals. The stone was carved approximately 6000 years ago by a level 57 [Cave Carver].
I had not accounted for the spell not contacting the fabric between life and death, but my mind still burned with wisdom. My headache started pounding, slowly but surely beginning to feel more like an aneurysm, like the blood in my brain was trying to explode.
The landscape was not causing the point, it was magic, I just aimed my spell wrong, that had to be it.
I had already deduced it wasn’t the spell circle, and it wasn’t in the pool. A stray thought entered my head, a phrase Skip and Kindly used, all be it used differently.
As above, so below.
I had likened it to a bed sheet weighed down. But I doubted something on the other side would be weighing it down.
So it had to be above.
I looked up as I threw a rock at another lantern, leaving me with only three remaining and eight or so seconds remaining.
I looked up at the ceiling, at the arching room that reminded me of one of the old manor home places I had seen. They had an open common area to let the light in and give some fresh air. If I were totally honest, the room was more than similar, but what I hadn’t expected was what was above the pool.
Where there would be an open area, the roof was instead extra high to imitate it, domed for stability above me, not cathedral high, but higher up than the rest of the roof. Trailing from the tippy top of the dome was what I could only describe as a profane implement.
It was a thing made similar to the lanterns but with spurs and bands of black metal. The bone was so bleached white it could have been marble, the sinewy covering seemed to have spots, a smidge or smudge here and there to give the illusion of a face. There were symbols similar to those both outside in the monolith room and to those on the sword and the magical tools the [Cultist] held emblazoned on the exterior.
It held no soul that I could sense, instead, it held a darkness in it, deep enough that it made my senses feel funny. Its darkness was to the Tenebra in the room as the Tenebra was to the mana. It was like staring into the darkness between the stars on a moonless night. It was not a place where it was just too dark to see; instead, it looked like there was no mana at all.
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A yawning hole in the world. I had never seen a profane object before, but I could tell that was what it was, just like I could tell the being behind me was a monster and that water was wet. It was the kind of soul-deep something I was becoming increasingly aware of every time I came in contact with Necromancy or dark magic as a whole. Every screaming skeleton and soul pit that made the abstract part of me I could not see but knew was there shiver like a newborn.
I didn’t reach for [Tenebral Bane] beyond its passive effects, but for more rocks, pulling on them with [Cantrip] and throwing forward a volley of stones, first pulling some towards me, then up at it, cancelling the [Inspect] before I finished it.
I didn’t want to know what it was or what it represented.
And with that volley thrown, I put everything into reaching the door.
The spell behind me clarified to my senses, manifesting physically as a hissing noise in the air, the sensation of it interacting with my bane skill was like nails on a slate. I slapped my ears down reflexively, but it was, unfortunately, not possible for my less mundane senses to shrug it off.
I got to the doorway, just a few feet from passing through the threshold and out into the room with the monolith. I could see the Gremlins, one part panicking and fearful, and one part ready to fight, blades drawn and the undead readying themselves as meat shields do defend their diminutive masters.
Then the spell was cast, a surge of magical power slamming through the channels in the air fast enough that the feeling was tangible across the room.
It spoke up then, a fury in its voice as it cryed out from across the room.
“I gave you a chance to serve in life. Die apostate! Ey’you will serve our mistress soon. [Ankraids Cyclone of Malice]!”
The air in the room came to life, the stale air whipping into a cyclone in a moment. The wind dragged at my hair and tunic, and I had to slap my hand down over the queen to keep her from flying off into the vortex that spun up behind me. I peeked over at the spell and found my fears about it founded.
The stone was smoking. Not melting from flame and fire, but from whatever horrifying power the magic had called into existence. It was a spell the likes of which I had never seen.
I had simple spells compared to that, even using [Cantrip] to throw rocks, something that I had felt good over was dust in my mouth.
The spell was not manipulating the world around me, it was not moving rock or fire, the Monster had called whatever the cyclone was made out of from nothing but magical power and its own hatred.
The air hung heavy with a miasma that made the stone it touched wither like grapes on the vine. It came with the smell of decay, a sour rot in the air, like tainted pickled food and the must of mildew.
The stone seemed to roil like boiling water as it passed toward me, and come towards me it did.
It ate up ground towards me, twenty feet every second, every foot an affront to my senses, and every moment compounded that as it flew at me like a bird of prey.
My legs got moving before I even realized I had stopped, the part of me that needed to survive getting my feet moving while I watched the cyclone.
The cyclone and the rocks I had thrown as they sizzled and burned rapidly reduced to so much vapour. The only chance to remove the pit is gone in a moment.
I turned my eye from it as it spread out behind me, a cloud, a wall of dark fog that would eat through me easier than the stone. Sure, as the day was bright, that would be my body’s unmaking.
I had never been disintegrated, and while I trusted my body to heal from just about anything, I had no idea what would happen if it was just gone. For all I knew, I would become a ghost, bound to this side of death for all time, unable to converse with people like Anna.
Even my logical mind could not accept that, and it, too, finally got back to conversing with survival brain and got on board with the plan.
My plan, incredibly complex for the part of me that demanded survival, was to take the better part of valour, and run the hells away.
I ran into the prayer room towards the wall of the undead and pulled my new shovel from my belt.
I aimed for the thinnest part of the wall of undead and punched through. The undead, unlike before, were commanded to fight. Clumsy they might be, but they flailed and bit at me like feral animals, I could feel the potency of the gaping jaws and decided to take punches over bites.
I used the shovel to take off a few heads but mostly to push through, stumbling the puppeted corpses out of my way and towards the shaking line of Gremlins.
The unsure Gremlins began to chitter, shouting, only for the great big monster Gremlin behind me to shout back, furry and fire, making some of the runners stop and look at me. A room of beady little eyes swivelled to me, and many began running. Running up to the escape tunnel, running towards me, running to the walls, one span and ran around in circles before falling on his face.
I didn’t stop, I just kept running my ass off.
I shoved my way free in time to escape the vortex of annihilation, the vortex of dark mana, uncaring of the doorway, moved on through, and panic began to win out for the Gremlins, some beginning to run while others froze up, unable to do whatever they were planning to do.
I hit the stairs and hewed an ankle out from under an undead, short of breath from pushing through tens of times my body weight, and my head screaming in agony was beginning to make my head fuzzy.
I ran up the curved stairs, and as I did, the spell's effect and how tenebra spells became clear in my periphery. It was growing, feeding on the environment from the room's plentiful dark magic. It sucked it up, and the mana comprising it lightened, finally able to release its stored energy, and as it did, it expelled its load and sucked up fresh pools of fuel, no, not expelling it, exchanging it.
The more active it became, the more the area was affecting its surroundings, with more smoking melting stone. There was more bubbling as it drained the dark and replaced it with a new mana type, mostly air. The new mana bonded to the earth and went from pockets of air trapped in the malleable stone to earth mana of its own.
It was terrible.
It was overwhelming.
It was what I had expected magic to be like.
Love it or hate it, I had not expected magic to be like more of the same, but with mana instead of… dirt.
Holy shit. Did I have an epiphany about mana by comparing it to dirt? I need time away from ditch-digging. I need time away from a shovel.
Tomorrow, I’m going to get stuff for Anna, or go out with Anna, or anything but dig.
I wouldn’t mind going out with Anna, We could make a day of it if she’s not busy. That sounds nice.
I had kept moving and gotten to the top. The hostile spell had, by the sound of it, torn through multiple of the Gremlins. I kept going; the spell had grown in height and girth, and it was close enough to the top of the room that I did not want to stay in its path.
I kept running off into the dark, the queen of sprites, speechless on my head as I coughed and wheezed. I ran even when I started to hear shouting coming from the thing I had fought, echoing off the walls. The pounding of footsteps just pushed me harder.
I almost missed the path up, but I caught the fresh scent of Humans, and I followed it up the ribbed stone passage.
Making it to the surface blinded me, my head span, and my body felt numb and distant. I kind of just stood there for a moment, blinking stupidly like I didn’t understand what the light was before more shouting erupted from the camp.
I made my way to the hole, chased by tiny scabbed and furred bodies out to the dam and almost panicked when I saw movement ahead of me. only for a bunch of humans to pile out of the bushes towards the dam.
I watched them, confused.
“Huh. They're going the same way I’m going,” I said drunkenly.
“We were waiting on you for soo long, you twiggy, pointy-eared, glowy-eyed, shovel-wielding buffoon. What took you so long?” A voice shouted from nowhere.
I blinked at that.
“That was rude, weird voice in my head. S’not my fault there was a big monster down there.”
“I’m not in your head, you daft idiot. I’m on your head.”
“No, your not, I would feel it, my head is a great big bruise,” I rebutted.
“We don’t have time for this, get to the dam and do your thing so we can get out of here.”
“Ohh. Yeh, we need to get on the dam. I remember that. What is that racket? Who is that yelling?”
That’s the… Whatever that thing is, good gods, is that a pickaxe? Run long leg, you're outmatched by an even longer leg!”
I, not caring for her talk, ran to the dam gayly and hopped on. The humans were there too. I looked at them questioningly.
“Are you ready to go down the river?” I asked them.
“I thought we were going across the river. What do you mean go down it?”
The voice in my head was panicking, and I decided it had to be for a good reason, so instead of answering them, I stuck my shovel down into the water and spluttered something like, ‘Hold on,’ or maybe, ‘Hol dawn.’
My head was too fuzzy to remember what I said, so I did what I did best. I moved a bunch of dirt, a whole hell of dirt.
The dam listed, and I paid attention as it tilted forward and revealed its longer side. I balanced, then fell into it as it came free, the sound of shattering wood and splashing water smashed my ears as the dam stopped being a dam, and became a raft instead, the sides smashing apart as we were pushed by a veritable flood of pent up water and thrown down the river.
I almost fell in, managing to instead fall on my ass.
I started laughing, but I didn’t know why, and honestly, I didn’t care. I was free! A free bird.
Birdbold.
I started snickering even harder.
I felt a tiny impact on my shoulder and turned my head towards it, blinking at the tiny forms of two sprites.
There were skinny, malnourished people huddling on a makeshift barge, but they were background, so I ignored them as they freaked out a bit, holding some skeletons with them.
Selly and her queen were what I focused on, we were safe, and the humans would be fine. Selly was fawning over her queen, who was slightly larger than her, maybe an inch and a half high. And fawn she was, she was buzzing around her asking her queen. Her queen seemed more normal than she was and if anything, was slightly exasperated, sounding more tired than relieved.
Selly had whacked into me in her excitement.
“Wait, Selly-iban,” I quickly corrected myself, “Your not going to believe this. There was a voice in my head that sounded just like you.”
She looked at me in an expression I couldn’t parse.
“Selliban, calm down. I think you're bugging your queen,” I told her.
Selly looked at me and then looked at her queen with big eyes. She looked like someone had killed a puppy. Although I had a feeling if she had one, it was likely to eat her by accident. Maybe they had mice as pets, but even then, it would be like having a horse as a pet.
She had said they kept bees, maybe a bee? A wasp was right out. They were just plain evil, but a bee was a relatively gentile creature. Maybe a moth? They were relatively moth-like already. The Queen had fluffy wings and whatnot. The [Sprite Queen], who hadn’t shared her name, was a bit different from Selly and a closer glance.
Se had a bit more Chitin, including a little white plate that covered her face, a thicker bottom that I supposed made male sprites go wild but kind of just looked like a thorax, she had bigger feelers on her head with a ring of tinny fluffy feeler like things ringing her head like a crown. She had an extra third set of half-wings.
Besides that, it was normal, two legs with four arms, chitin plates like tiny sets of armour covering parts of her body. She had clothing-like folds around her, little silken flaps that covered her otherwise fuzzy, chitinous body.
She was reminiscent of Selly, but I supposed she was a sprite queen; she was related. A queen was the mother of all her sprites sprites.
Something clicked in my tired, empty head then.
She was Selly's mother.
I had been looking at it from the idea of a [Queen] and her [Lady] for the most part, not from the point of view of a mother being exhausted by her kid. She was an adult, as far as I could tell, but it was still a little more touching.
This whole thing had been, in a way, Selly saving her mom.
I stifled a tear while she wasn’t looking and decided to reenact my plot from before. Get back at her for her earlier annoyingness, embarrass her a little.
“Hello, Your Majesty,” I told her, bobbing my head slightly in deference.
She turned to face up to me after making a gesture that I couldn’t read at Selly.
“Hello, Tall Friend, you have done my folk a great service this day. I believe a Dept is owed to you, though I do not know how me and my people can repay you for your service, but if it is within our power to do so, we shall.”
She spoke it with a weight and sincerity I was not expecting. She also put extra emphasis on some words. Tall Friend and Dept were spoken like they had a greater meaning than I thought they did. They had an importance I couldn’t cudgel my brain into piecing together at the moment.
Selly gasped, and not a tiny one either.
“My Queen. By the Ancestors. Are ye calling this a life debt? Say it ain't so. Proclaiming the long leg a Tall Friend is boon enough, surely.”
“Selliban Citritan Titania, to call our dept anything less than a life dept would be a lie and a stain upon my honour as a Queen. Tis a dept beyond bestowing a simple Title as repayment, and twas’ justly earned, you too will be given honours dear Selliban, do not let covetousness cloud your heart and mind, of the good deeds of others.” She told her, both a lecture-in tone and a soft, roundabout comment.
“Mo- My Queen,” she whined in childish embarrassment. She even scratched the back of her head, wrapping her arms around her stomach and hiding her face.
I didn’t know if she blushed, but I imagined that it was possible. She certainly smelled different, a funny, tingly smell to my nose.
It didn’t smell like a human scent I knew; it just made my nose tingle. I turned and breathed out of my nose and into my mouth to get the tingling sensation out before I sneezed.
“What do you say, Tall Friend, of a boon for your work and struggle.” She asked, forcing me to turn back towards her, my nose crinkling in an almost sneeze.
“Snn, Thank you, your Highness, I- Ah- Acho.”
“Bless you.”
“Please don’t,” I asked her before rubbing my nose, “I can only say that I couldn’t have done it without Selliban, I am, very literally, only standing because of her. I accept, even if I do not know what I could ask for from you,” I told her.
“My queen, she seems denser than normal. Should I accompany her back?” She asked her queen.
“Selliban, she’s right there, and of course. What kind of boon would it be should we not even escort her back to her home.” She chided.
“Thank you, your majesty, your magnanimity is rivalled only by your weight, unlike Selliban here, who attacked me on sight,” I told her.
They gasped, both of them looking up at me. Selly even pointed at me, aghast. I had been waiting to get in a jab at Selly, and complimenting her queen seemed like a great way of doing it. I couldn’t not smile at her.
I felt like I was being petty, but Selly had caused me quite some stress, been kind of pissy about it, and, more importantly for me, done that to Anna. And I wasn’t going to let that stand, so I would get her in a bit of trouble, and by the look on her face, she knew it.
After all, what were friends for if not calling out one another?
“Are you calling my queen fat long leg? Are you calling my queen fat!” Selly asked in a dangerous tone.
That whipped the smug look right off my face.
Did I misunderstand earlier?
“Wait, what? But when I said earlier-”
“That will get you a grudge, long leg. The nerve of-”
“I’m not insulting your queen, you hypersensitive gnat, earlier you -”
“Selliban, it’s fine, stop that...” She said in a tone that sounded, to my horror, embarrassed.
Oh gods, what have I done, I can’t tell if I insulted her or complimented her. Oh no, the tingling is back.
“Your flattery is kind, Tall Friend, but base flattery does not become you. Thank you for your kindness. Do not be concerned about Selliban.” She continued to me, bringing her hands up to cup her head, standing with her legs crossed and hugging her hips.
OH NO, that wasn’t supposed to be flirting, I didn’t want to do that. I was trying to mess with Selly, not this.
“Mother, no! Don-” She cried, cut off only when the queen’s wing flapped over her face to cut her off.
“Do tell me, what do you mean, however, by attacked?” she asked in a tone I remembered well.
Her ability to swap between flattered and the tone only a mother could speak in was almost instantaneous. And it was the angry mother voice, too, one who was angry but didn’t want to show off her anger, that was building it up.
It chilled me more than the cursed blade on my hip, which felt like it was sucking the heat from my entire back, the one imbued with literal dark magic that made my soul tingle just by being near its fell magic.
“I can explain. I can explain!” Selly said, haste the prevalent tone of her voice.
“Huh, I totally forgot I took that,” I mumbled more to myself than the others.
***
Selly did while we floated down the river, and by the time we reached the point where there was a dock close to New Moarn, it was dark. I pushed us next to the dock with my shovel, and we left the hazardous raft there, I was sure that whoever found it could use a bunch of free wood.
I let the other prisoners go wherever they were going on their own. They were [Hunters], and I was sure they could get some food from the nearby guild hall. They managed to kill me before, I certainly wasn’t going to cut them slack because they got captured, and my conscience told me to save them.
We were free, they could find their own way.
Instead, I made my way back home, the two sprites on my shoulder talking and Selly chiming in every once in a while as I made my way in the dark.
The moon wasn’t full, but I managed to get back without killing myself by tripping into a sharp stick or whatever.
I wound my way up to the door, and after depositing the dirty shovel at the door, I opened it up.
“I’m back. Sorry for being late, Anna, I was…”
I stared at the table.
Anna, Strause, a girl I had never met, and a little elven girl were all eating from a veritable potluck, or at least they had been eating until I walked it.
Anna gasped, Strause looked at me with a strained expression under his fake grin, the girl was deadpan, and the elf gagged a little.
I looked down.
Oh yeh.
I was literally coated in blood.
“Sorry, I’ll go wash myself off.”