Matt froze. Brett’s group had spotted him, they’d land attacks any moment and he freaking couldn’t move. He pushed his hands into the hard-packed dirt beside the fallen tree where they crouched. Kurtis was on his left, Fallyn and Val on his right. A thin layer of green gravemist crept between his splayed fingers. It curled over gnarled roots and embedded rocks.
Matt teetered forward and clenched his jaw. He tried again. Then he was up. Matt pulled his swords from his inventory and bent his knees, assuming a ready stance. He faced towards the chatter.
Where are they? Matt thought, searching the ridge above in a panic. Dead branches, gray sky—he couldn't see them yet. He clenched and unclenched his hands, adjusting his grip.
Then the sound of metal-on-metal rang out through the trees.
“Now!” someone yelled.
A scream.
Matt felt a tap against his leg.
Fallyn mouthed, ‘Get down.’ Her eyes were cold and she pointed to the ground.
Val kicked at Matt’s shin three times. She had Wiggles in a bear hug and the beaver was starting to squirm.
Matt dove for his spot against the tree, and instantly regretted his trajectory. He bit back a groan, scrunching his face. His elbow had collided with a rock. He caught Fallyn’s stare, a command to stay silent. Matt’s heartbeat thudded in his chest. He let out a slow breath, watching the skeletal, leafless canopy.
He waited there, tensed for several minutes, pressed into the cool ground and rough bark of the fallen tree. Kurtis was twisted around at Matt’s left, orange ears poking through his colander hat, flared and intently listening. The cat-man leaned into the rough bark with his leather apron and quilted blue oven mitts.
“Let’s go,” Kurtis whispered, uncoiling. “This way.”
The party wove through the dead forest at a speed walker’s pace, focused more on putting distance between themselves and the gankers than their quest.
Matt stumbled over a tree root, caught himself on a scaly gray trunk, then reached up to adjust his glasses, which weren’t there. Bark sloughed from the tree. He’d skinned his palm.
“You okay?” Fallyn whispered, leaning into her staff. She’d gotten a new one from the tower, porcelain white with a bulbous nub at the top like a bone.
“Yeah,” Matt said and started Rapid Regeneration.
They pushed on for another fifteen minutes before Matt paused to check his map. Then the group veered north towards the area marked with blue for their quest. About ten minutes later, leaves finally began to appear on trees. The gravemist no longer coated the land; the only neon green on the ground was Matt’s Crocks.
Matt approached a maple tree. This time, when he brought up his hand, a vial of maple sap formed, then zipped away to his inventory. The group worked their way from tree-to-tree approaching a familiar cottage.
The improbably giant bee was inside, as before, and Val was on duty exchanging flattery for the servings of honey they needed. Unfortunately, the NPC remembered their previous attempts, so she wasn’t able to use the winning ‘bee-utiful’ again. Val tried complimenting her cottage and then likened the yellow on her body to flowers and sunshine.
The bee was unimpressed until Val moved on to her antennae. “Your antennae are the longest I’ve ever seen, big and black…”
“Size matters?” Kurtis mumbled.
“That’s what she said,” Matt added. He couldn’t help it.
Fallyn rolled her eyes and Val acted like she didn’t hear it. “The largest, most luxurious…”
Matt stifled a laugh. Fallyn elbowed him.
Jars of honey in their inventories, they headed for the stream northeast of the abbey. Visiting these locations that the nuns had sent them was convenient, but they also made Matt extra nervous. His heart had stopped pounding but there was something else—an anxious energy—swirling in his chest. He jumped in surprise and reached for his glasses again when a stick cracked under Val’s foot.
Fallyn shot Matt a concerned glance. He forced his mouth into a smile.
Get pure water, then grave dust, then get out of here, he told himself. One, two, done.
Grave dust was the only item on the list that he wasn’t sure about. The blue area on the map extended beyond the cottage and down the river, where Matt assumed there were more maple trees. He figured they’d just have to sweep the area and see what they found. He really hoped it wasn’t more people.
The wind picked up as they followed the top of a ravine. Leaves rushed overhead and a coolness flowed over Matt’s face. He wondered if it would blow in some sunshine.
Wiggles proudly carried a branch at Val’s side, green maple leaves dragging at one end. Its rustling noise made Matt nervous, but he shoved that feeling down, adding it to the ball of energy coiling through his chest.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
The group made quick work of gathering water when they reached the narrow stream. It was only a few feet wide and Matt could see the bottom. He dipped a hand in gently, trying not to disturb the sediment. The water felt warmer than the air and a minnow investigated his fingers, tickling as it nibbled. He withdrew the hand with a C-shaped, open grip and a glass vial materialized within it.
It made no sense to Matt how glass vials could just appear out of nature. His list of things that didn’t make sense was getting too long to keep track of. Matt looted ten vials from the clear water. Then he splashed his face. He rubbed the drips from his chin with his furry arm guard. Then he blew out with regret, feeling hair on his tongue. He tried to wipe it off with his palm.
Val watched him, eyebrows raised. “I didn’t say anything,” she said innocently, then smiled.
Matt blew out again, noisily. Wiggles stared up at him and brushed a tiny hand over his nose as if imitating.
“Not you too,” Matt said.
“Wu,” said the beaver, dropping back to all fours.
The group followed the stream to the end of the blue-marked area where it narrowed and slowed to a trickle. On their right, the trees gave way to an open glade rimmed with spikes of waist-high iron. Rows of wooden crosses filled the area, and an angel statue towered in its center. The stone figure seemed to be weeping and sheltering the crosses with her wings.
Matt supposed a graveyard made sense for grave dust. He walked the perimeter, looking for an entrance. The short metal fence leaned forward near the base of a tree, possibly eroded by its roots. Matt scrambled over; the fence rebounded slightly when he stepped down. The others followed and they had to lift Wiggles part of the way. That beaver was damn heavy.
“Sorry, dead people,” Val said, bending to loot at the base of a cross.
Matt approached the nearest cross himself. He reached down like he had with the water, and then a tiny Ziploc bag appeared in his hand. It was filled with what looked like gray dirt or ash. Matt whisked it off to his inventory.
Approaching the next cross, he caught Fallyn standing at the angel out of the corner of his eye. He started turning away.
“Warning,” Fallyn cheerfully called. Then the flash from her book tore through the glade.
“Eee!” said Wiggles.
I’ll never get used to that. Matt opened his eyes, blinking rapidly.
“Hope no one saw that,” Kurtis said with a swish of his tail.
Shit. Matt hadn’t even considered that.
“Sorry,” Fallyn apologized.
“Let’s hurry,” Kurtis said.
“I think we need to head to the abbey after this,” Fallyn advised.
“What?” Matt blurted. Panic rose in his chest. “I mean…”
“Look at the time,” Fallyn said.
###
Matt barely breathed until he was back in the tower the next morning. It was odd to think that the Leaning Tower with all its monsters was somehow safe, and yet he was breathing more easily. His heart rate had slowed. Despite skeletons below and the goos above, the monsters seemed to play by certain rules and the lines between good and evil were clear.
Matt watched the purple glow from the interior wall fade. They were safe from any gankers for now. His party cautiously proceeded to the stairwell, then up to the second-floor lab where they’d battled Frank Stein.
Val gave Matt an encouraging smile. With a silent prayer that they wouldn’t have to fight the monster again, Matt cast Rapid Regeneration and opened the door.
“Oh, thank God,” Kurtis blurted.
The room was empty, save for the furniture and the caged drooling man. Matt breathed out and stowed his swords. As he proceeded to the back of the lab, he noticed that the animals they’d released were gone. He absently reached out to one of the stainless steel slabs, then recoiled as it gave him a tiny shock. He was pretty sure the alchemy table they needed was the one with the beakers, back left.
Kurtis beat him to it and adopted that far-off menu reading look. There was his answer. Matt hustled to the cat-man’s side. When he’d approached the table before, nothing had happened, but this time something felt different.
There was that sense again—the one he’d started getting about inventory items and the intuition he’d had about the first-floor wall. It didn’t feel wholly his own. It freaked him out. Matt placed one hand on the black rubbery tabletop. The lab around him blurred.
Now what? Matt waited for a prompt, a window, any sort of instruction. Nothing happened. Crap.
Matt opened his inventory and pulled the quest ingredients to the table. They appeared in front of him in neat rows: jars, baggies, tubes. The vials materialized with a wire rack that held them upright. Matt stared at the assortment, hoping for some sort of guidance. None came.
Here goes nothing. Matt grabbed a large glass beaker from the back corner of the table. He dumped one of each ingredient inside.
Ffff! Black smoke puffed from the top of the container right into Matt’s face. He staggered back, blinking, and groaned.
When Matt re-approached the table, wiping his eyes, he saw that the beaker had transformed into a set of four cork-stoppered vials, set into another metal stand. Matt carefully lifted one of the new items and turned it to the side. Its bright blue contents seemed viscous and slightly sparkly.
“Huh,” he remarked out loud.
Matt looted the vials and then repeated the process nine more times, jumping back preemptively each time he added the final ingredient. When he finished, he tried a series of commands: close menu, close table, exit table. The last one worked.
The blur receded to reveal his friends with soot-stained faces. They looked at each other and laughed while the white text floated up and away. Instead of confirming XP for the quest, it said, ‘Profession gained: alchemy.’
“Neat,” Kurtis said. “I was kinda hoping that would happen.”
Matt used his old ‘And all I got was this t-shirt’ t-shirt to wipe the black off his face and underside of his ball cap. He offered the fabric to Fallyn and then opened his Skills Menu to see if there were any changes. He flipped through the tabs and saw nothing but a reminder of the Skill Point he’d reserved for his taunt, which he would hopefully unlock soon.
“Uh… Yeah, try Professions Menu,” advised Kurtis, scratching underneath his colander.
Professions Menu, Matt thought, and sure enough a black window similar to the Skills Menu appeared. It had one tab marked with an icon of a flask. It looked like he had recipes for a few basic potions and—
“Raaaaaaaaaaah!”
The cage rattled violently on the opposite side of the room. The drooling man let out animalistic yells and screams. Neon green streaked his limbs and face. Val was standing near him, looking guilty. She sidestepped and pressed her lips in on each other. The man glowed green, then blue, furiously tugging at the metal.
“It said we had to test it,” Val said.
“Raaaaaaaaaaah!” the man continued yelling and pulling. Adjacent cages shook.
The glow hovered on his sweat-slick skin, oscillating between green and blue, green and blue. Then the man slumped, light extinguished.
Matt let out a breath. He didn’t realize he’d been holding it.
“Did it work?” Val asked quietly.
‘715,000 XP’ floated up and away in answer.
The man in the cage slowly lifted his blond mop of a head.