Silence descended upon the cavern. Where once the sound of combat raged and echoed throughout the space, now only Ril’s rough breathing could be heard. The boss lay dead. Its lifeblood created a reflective pool, which created garish reflection from the ruddy flashing lights.

Ril stood blankly, unconsciously dismissing the text that celebrated his betrayal. He stared at the corpse. The corpse of the being that had granted him his first skill. His first powerful skill no less. Pulse pounding in his ears. Nausea rose in his throat. His dripping silver dagger tumbled from his nerveless fingers.

What have I done...

Ril’s injuries came back to him as his adrenaline faded away. With a gasp he fell to the ground. Trembling as his body screamed at him for the abuse that he had put it through. He was covered from head to toe in bruises. His palms were scraped and raw. The cut on his forehead stung as he scrunched his face. The mage vestments hadn’t ripped overly much, but Ril could tell that they had not protected him very well from bruising.

Eventually, Ril calmed down. The pain faded and was replaced by the urgency of their situation. Evelyn was still injured and unconscious. Groaning, he rolled over, and slowly got to his feet. He hobbled over to Evelyn’s slumped form. Kneeling beside her, he saw that she was still out cold. The back of her head was a mess of matted blood, but at least it didn’t seem to be bleeding much anymore.

Gently leaning her down. Ril took off his jacket and made a makeshift pillow for her. Leaning her head sideways to avoid irritating the wound. Once that was done, he paused, unsure of what else he could do for her. He did not really know how to heal people. The extent of his knowledge being cleaning and wrapping the wound and hoping for the best.

Let’s hope she wakes up soon

With a sigh, Ril rose painfully from his position at Evelyn’s side. The constant flashing of the lights were giving him a headache. With not much else to do while he waited for Evelyn to recover, he started collecting the silver dust that was intermixed with the black sand of the cavern floor.

Once Ril had collected all the easily accessible dust he straightened. Feeling the weight of the partially full bag of silver dust, he glanced at the dead powder beast. Then fearfully towards Evelyn’s still unconscious form.

We should never have come here. Not worth it

Strapping the bag of silver dust to his belt, Ril approached Evelyn. The back of her head really looked bad. In the poor lighting of the cavern, her normally pale blue hair looked almost black.

Gemma will be able to heal her

He stood there for a moment, contemplating on how he could lift her. Then he bent over and lifted Evelyn in a bridal carry. Before he had even managed to straighten up all the way, Ril knew that there was no way that he could carry Evelyn all the way to Gemma’s cottage like this. Evelyn wasn’t particularly heavy, but she was tall, and completely limp. All of her weight on Ril’s forearms were making them burn after only a few seconds.

With a groan, Ril placed Evelyn back down as gently as he could. Without another option, Ril attempted to lever her limp form onto his back. It took nearly twenty minutes of struggling. Eventually he managed with the help of Telekinesis. With one last forlorn look at the dead beast, Ril left the frozen cavern and entered the forest.

* * *

Pain.

Ril struggled past his exhaustion, and forced his bruised legs to keep walking. Luckily the sun was still in the sky so navigating back to the clearing was not an issue. The distance, however, was. Twice already, Ril had stumbled over a root and nearly dropped his precious cargo. Each time, he had barely stopped himself from falling. The scrapes on his palms had reopened from his clumsy attempts at stabilization using the rough bark of the surrounding trees as support.

Catching his breath, Ril leaned up against a tree. Based on the sun he had been walking for an hour already. When they had been walking to the dungeon, Evelyn and Ril had made good time. Not being injured, the uneven forest floor had not posed much of a problem. On the return journey, however, Ril was starting to think that the trees were lifting their roots, intentionally trying to trip him.

Ril set down Evelyn on the forest floor. She was still out of it. The ice chunk must have hit her pretty hard. Ril took a small sip from his water skin, then gently poured some into Evelyn’s mouth. Most of it the water dribbled out, but Ril managed to get her to swallow by holding her nose closed for a bit.

Tired, Ril sat down. The back of his shirt was slightly damp with sticky blood from Evelyn’s stomach wound. He had tried bandaging it but the shoulder carry was preventing the wound from closing properly. Eventually he had ignored it. The cut was shallow, and looked nowhere near as bad as the back of her head.

Suddenly a hissing growl sounded from in front of him. Ril’s head snapped up immediately. His heart rate spiked, as adrenaline and fear coursed through his veins.

In front of him, a small four legged animal was hissing, slowly stalking towards him aggressively. It looked vaguely like a badger with black fur and a white underbelly. The animal was about a foot tall but nearly five feet from tail to snout. Its thin snout was pulled back, revealing many sharp, definitely carnivorous teeth. Although its fur was black, it clearly was not a powder beast. The fur was glossy rather than the matte powdery texture that powder beasts seemed to attain upon their transformation.

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Ril jumped to his feet, scrabbling awkwardly at his sheathed short sword which he had recovered.

“Stay back!” Ril shouted, pointing his blade towards the aggressive “Back off!”

The small beast froze for a brief moment, then redoubled its snarling. In a blink of an eye it charged at Ril. Surprised by the speed of the small mammal, Ril stumbled back swinging his sword randomly.

The beast easily dodged Ril’s imprecise blows. It leapt onto Ril’s leg and started mauling him. Ril screamed as tiny teeth buried themselves into his overworked muscles. With more rage, than grace, Ril brought the pommel of his sword mightily down onto the rabid creature. He missed the head, but did manage to bludgeon the back of the creature. With a yelp, it released him, retreating several steps.

“Vile, worthless, carrion eater.” Ril panted. Then with resolve he cast Telekinesis. The small creature squirmed as it was lifted clear off the ground. The speed of the little beast was shocking to Ril, but he didn’t spend much time worrying about that. Instead he readied his sword with both hands and swung at the immobilized creature, chopping it nearly in two with one blow.

Barely ten seconds after the beast had attacked, the battle was over. With a wet squelch, Ril released the dying beast. For the second time that day, Ril stood frozen over the corpse of his enemy. Then when the smell of entrails hit him, he stumbled and vomited onto the loamy soil.

“What the. What the hell.” Ril mumbled. “Why did it attack me all of a sudden.”

Unwilling to remain near the putrid corpse, Ril slung Evelyn over his back and resumed his limping journey home, this time leaving bloody footprints with every other step.

* * *

Twice more Ril was attacked. The second time, a dog looking creature that was bigger than the badger charged him forcing him to drop Evelyn roughly. Telekinesis was not enough to lift the creature completely off the ground, so Ril was forced to resort to blinding the creature with sparks and stabbing repeatedly while running around the semi-immobilized opponent.

After that Ril summoned his clone, getting it to scout in front of him. Focusing on putting one step in front of the other, Ril barely managed to sustain the spell. Oftentimes, the clone didn’t so much as walk as float in front of Ril, clipping unnaturally with the ground and trees. If he was paying attention he would have realized that the ability’s range seemed to have improved from when he had tested it for the first time.

While exhausting and difficult, the clone ended up being worth it. On the third hour of his stumbling journey, Ril’s clone suddenly disappeared. Realizing that this meant that the clone was attacked, Ril immediately put Evelyn down and resummoned the clone, a determined look on his face.

When another badger-like creature came charging out of the forest, hissing and spitting, Ril was ready. With telekinesis and his sword he swiftly dispatched the creature.

At long last, Ril fell out of the trees and into Gemma’s clearing. The last of his strength leaving him as the sight of the cottage came into view. He collapsed face first onto the grass, long since abandoning his attempts at being gentle with Evelyn.

The cottage was unchanged, peacefully resting in the clearing as if nothing had happened. A small stream of smoke rose from the chimney. Gemma was in her usual spot, rocking gently on the front porch knitting her never ending scarf. The view reassured Ril. The fact that the cottage seemed to be unaffected and disparate from the dungeon and the horrendous return journey was nice. It was comforting. Safe.

Upon seeing Ril stumble out of the forest and collapse, Gemma rushed over.

“Oh my. What happened.” Gemma said. She immediately rolled Evelyn off of Ril, and waved her hands over the back of her head. Motes of light appeared and softly absorbed into the injury. Before his eyes, the blood dried and flaked away, leaving only slightly dirty pale blue hair in its place.

“The dungeon boss. Was tough.” Ril managed to get out.

“What did I tell you about delving too deep?” Gemma scolded, moving on to heal Evelyn’s other injuries. The motes of light fell steadily from her palms as she repaired the damage.

“We didn’t intentionally fight it. We killed everything in the first chamber, and collected the dust. We were planning on leaving after that but the boss ambushed us.”

“Bosses never leave the final chamber.” Gemma said skeptically.

“Tell that to this boss.” Ril groaned, rolling over so that his face wasn’t mashed into the dirt. In the relative safety of Gemma’s cottage, the adrenaline that had been coursing through his veins was starting to fade. The pain and exhaustion that was only barely bearable before sharpened.

“It was a giant cat, with two bludgeoning tentacles on its back. It was strong. Fast too. We wanted to retreat and just leave it, but we couldn’t disengage. Evelyn ended up using this big blizzard spell to hold it up. She got all pale after that.” Ril continued, clenching his teeth to hold in another groan.

“Oh you know that you shouldn’t cast that spell, sweety,” Gemma murmured to Evelyn’s sleeping form. Then she turned back to Ril. “You said ‘was’? You killed it?”

“Yeah, after we retreated, we ended up in the boss chamber where I killed it.”

“Impressive. How did Evelyn hit her head?”

“The blizzard she summoned had all these chunks of ice in it. One of the chunks hit her.” Ril said with an exhausted shrug. “After she summoned it I dragged her into the bosses chamber.”

“Why didn’t you just leave the dungeon while the cat was distracted by the blizzard?”

“Well, uhm,” Ril hesitated.

Could we have just left? Ril thought to himself, mortified.

“Doesn’t matter now.” Gemma snorted, completing her ministrations on Evelyn, who looked right as rain not counting her bloody clothes. “The boss was already behaving strangely, there is no saying that it wouldn’t have followed you out of the dungeon. Close your eyes Ril, I’ll fix you up.”

With that. Ril closed his eyes. He felt as Gemma feathered her hands over his various bruises and cuts. Then a warm feeling began to spread through him. The aches and pains slowly faded away. For the first time in hours, Ril let the tension and fear drain out of him.

I’m safe.