Turns out, Dryfu’s mission was perfecting resting grump face. There’s always a cost for shortcuts.
Tim was halfway through his spliff and unsure if he meant the medication or their mission at large. Either way, Chris’s medicinal relief proved substantial enough to continue enjoying it. The burning behind his ear had plateaued, sometimes even letting him forget it. Tim stood, carefully stretching his spine into place, arching through sore knots of aura fatigue throughout his back. Each breath provided more energy than the last.
I don’t care how your ears feel. If they lop off your head, that’ll be a moot advantage. We need your mind sharp, too.
I’m sharp, Tim thought, sharply. “Chris, are you trying to dumb me down before a key mission? Your line of work didn’t make you freaky, did it?”
Chris gave a weak laugh. The light of fire in his eyes strained to keep bright while sending his roots deeper into the soil. “It would be dumb not to accept this inner lining of protection this herb uses to fight the rift’s poison. I have not had a lot of time, but I’m working on increasing the drawing effects to help his fatigue more efficiently. Not all of us have natural immunity to rift poison like you, stykiller.”
“Is that why the Dutchy used you for a guide?” Tim asked Dryfu.
“My protective exoskeleton has numerous benefits. Good looks are surprisingly also not the top reason.”
“You got that right, lady killer,” Chris said, flicking some ash to the floor. “I’m glad you, your good looks, and your many shining attributes could join us. My new blend will help Tim with his many aura-based skills, while keeping him sharp enough on his feet, even in the dark.”
Dryfu continued to glare at Chris.
“There is a slight hit to Intelligence and Dexterity,” Chris admitted, “that’ll wear off within an hour. Or as soon as he has to run for his life,” he said to Tim with a wink and a clack of tongue on teeth. “Meanwhile, he’ll enjoy the higher boost to Constitution and slightly less to Wisdom. The mind and body are better for it. I’d say trust me, but.” Chris shrugged and Dryfu didn’t comment.
Sylve had asked Tim the same, and if he could. He’d also mentioned a brother, but little else about him.
“What’s the news from the front?” Tim asked, choosing his battles and another time for that one.
Dryfu didn’t have much beyond the expected answer. He tried reiterating Tim’s need to wait, but Chris’s argument about needing to get closer to spread his roots combined with their plan to work together helped Tim escape the waiting area with only a little of Dryfu’s fatherly scorn.
“Besides,” Tim said, “I have a route to meet up with Frahnk before they reach silo 19. It’s walled off in artisan enchantments and should be empty.”
Dryfu conceded and the group of vagabonds cheered. Loud enough to draw attention from travelers far enough in the dark to not see faces. Dryfu rounded on them in a lassoed shut the hell up.
Then it was back to business. Tim riding his donkey to battle, his brother and new friends at his side. And another day where who knows what could happen.
Are you gonna sing us a song again? Dryfu asked.
“On the road again,” Tim sang in that ol country drawl.
Chris twirled his staff and a wisp of green dust spiraled up into the shape of a maraca. He shook it to the beat while Tim hummed the guitar. “This band of gypsies’ on the road again,” Chris sang in tune, shaking his maraca and dancing.
As they enjoyed remixing the Willie Nelson classic, Tim couldn’t help watching the aura flowing from Chris’s staff, and even the pink mist from Murphy, all of it reacted to the archaic black rock as though repulsed at the narrowest margins. So close someone else might not notice, maybe not visible to the naked eye, but Tim’s were no longer naked even when they were. He saw the reflective shield at the microscopic level.
Still, Chris’s moss weed spread through cracks into the dungeon, out of sight, and he hoped, making the progress Chris described as a bread crumb system in case they get lost. Its need to grow and tunnel through softer crevices was another reason for their delay.
After they finished their song, Tim asked Dryfu if there were any issues with him trying Dragon Heads to see how well it passed through the stone.
You’re fine to try. Deeper, a well of rift gas could have combustible effects on aura concentrated spells like that.
He prepared a stance facing a less imposing section of rubble amidst a dumping area off their path. The spell required cycling MP and AF into a Dragon Egg as the first stage. Within that shell forming at his palm, he carefully released the mold of aura holding it in. The fire born serpent grew out of his fist into a head with emerald green scales and teal fur lining mohawk patch between its batlike ears. The heat ridden pain made his arm shake. He held on, testing the burbling power to know its limits, wanting to see the neck grow a little more before—
A seam burst in the rear.
Tim lost his grip on the mold. The Dragon Head split by mitosis and roared on a rocket of aura propulsion. The fire blazing arrow zipped with blazing speed from Tim’s fingers, eating at the air around it and skipping on its tail with tertiary boosts of exhaust power. The burst seam set the spell on a trajectory missing his intended mark by three feet. It hit the air millimeters from the rock and ricocheted with exponentially faster speed into the girth of the gravel. It hissed deep into the pyramid and sank a good chunk off the height as the gravel settled around the new channel.
XP filtered into his spell cast and a large chunk of MP fell off the height of his total.
“You about done?” Chris asked. “I about had a heart attack. If that had skipped back at us? Psh.”
A secondary reason for casting Surion’s spell was to see if it would expose any new memories. Tim held a finger up to silence his brother. The spell awoke Surion’s memories of high-level skills enabling a chosen few to enchant and mold the stone. Their highest miners had to create expensive drills that wore out so quickly the cost was greater than the difficulty in engineering the drill. Communication was another X factor, namely the lack thereof. These walls did more than block message spells, they contorted and redirected voices.
“We can go now. Thank you.”
“Oh, well, you’re welcome, your highness.” Chris’s attitude kept on the safe side, but Tim could tell his patience had been tested.
“I wouldn’t have shot you by accident. If we get there, I’ll earn my pound of flesh.”
“Boy I can’t wait for that!”
Tim tucked him in with a side hug. Sometimes brothers didn’t need to speak to explain, and they carried on like that, water under the bridge.
While on their way, Tim spent time in Surion’s memories of honing that skill. Tim couldn’t have a seam bursting like that in battle, when accuracy mattered.
Thankfully, the artisan passageways kept them isolated from the outside vagabonds. And something else, something greater than a thousand warriors lying in wait.
Dimensional, or rift gas tainted the air with a jet fuel smell so pungent, and awkward, not only did it leave him with incessant chills, it left an unsettling accompaniment resembling sentience.
Every breath felt like an invitation to a legion of the undead. If he had to live here, that movie might end with a noose and a short note.
Tim resisted the urge to activate Danger Sense, even when the burn in his ear disappeared, and another twenty minutes, at least, after that when his limp was most manageable.
“It’s been twelve minutes,” Dryfu said, breaking the shuffling passage of boots on rock and temporary flooring laid with plywood planks. “And you’re still walking like an outpatient.”
“Aww, I think he’s cute,” Chris said.
Tim focused extra effort on his core as he crossed a pothole uncovered by planks. The ground had cracks spreading from black masses resembling the cheap tar used for quick patches on blacktop.
He paused at a map on a wall, ignoring their teamwork jabs. “You didn’t think my Dragon Head was cute.”
“As long as you keep it pointed in the right direction, I think it’s super cute,” Chris said.
Tim might not be ready for a Peel or a jump kick, but he was still ready for a fight whenever. They saw his spell. His regen built it back up to send another couple if needed.
Tim studied the map’s network of tunnels reflected in distant memories through Surion’s spirit until he saw the way to Silo 19 and down its central stairs to a connecting path to the tomb. “This is it,” he said and tapped the brittle dry paper. It split in a small pressure point above the room indicating their position.
“We can exit here,” Tim said, pointing to the flat edge and a sigil. A pattern arose in his mind on how to unlock the door from the inside.
Why would they need it locked from the inside?
At the doorway, he signaled Chris and cycled life into his mana channels. “Time to work. You want to throw some new bread crumbs?”
“Sure do.” Chris tossed some dust and a seed or two at the base of the doorway. Roots tilled the rocky floor and tightened like barbed wire. The ground broke apart and absorbed into the green roots growing before his eyes.
Tim cast Battleground at the floor, soaking it up into Chris and softening the ground for easier root growth.
Rayv emerged at his other side, riding on Murphy, drawing aura in the bond between full spirit and the aura-generating donkey.
Tim put his hand on the ridge of Murphy’s brows and cast Brother’s Keeper, weaving in Protection and cycling mana through Murphy to boost the donkey’s aura regen.
Tim queued Danger Sense when a jolt of frigid magic seized his veins. His body spasmed into a cramp so central it took Tim to the ground.
“White Fuego, huh?” The voice owned Tim’s mind before it spoke. Now he graced Tim with announcing himself through a nickname.
If you know who I am, you know I can dance with the devil. Spirit or otherwise.
“Oh, you’ll be fun. I wanted to thank you for ridding me of that petulant, spineless president. You’ll do just fine as a replacement, Priest of the Wind.”
Re--Tim’s neck locked. Blood spiked and pooled in his frontal lobe. The force holding him still, even to be unable to blink or breathe, prevented him from refusal. Replacement to what, he had no idea.
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“I am Hist p’Kal, god of the dark. Riftlord, if you please.”
A figure coalesced from the murky depths. White fire flared from the center of disturbance. Shadows bled off cliff faces and died off into a haze of light wafting from gusts of aura so potent it could drown a galaxy.
Or two. I sense a spark of strength in you.” The mountain swayed on giant’s legs, shingled like stairs in some dream where the bad guy was much worse than some goblins and David Bowie in spandex. A bipedal with two arms and a hunchback so vast behind it, Tim couldn’t guess how far it stretched. Tim’s view of this mental chamber held him in weightless to come and go as he pleased.
Above the white haze hung diamond hard arms segmented in armor and spike by equal measure. They swayed with his slow stride, budding hot to a red white sheen at the claws.
Its waist had hooks of rock like shoulders to a pair of gaseous red eyes staring through Tim, though somehow separate from the voice he tracked to the other major source of power and light.
Above the face hidden in shadow was another pair of eyes, open holes in a humanoid skull flattened high and cut off at the top row of its mouth.
“That’s right,” Hist said, and the light flashed again, revealing nightmares and dreamscapes of cosmic horror within its glowing fire eyes. The skull bobbed inside a cave entrance offering a peak at the neckless mountain behind it, set like another ridgeline of shoulders capable of felling continents.
The cave mouth inset with this Freddy’s worst nightmare skull glowed orange as lava shaped aura dripped off its fangs.
Black dots coalesced in the crags of the pink glowing ribcage climbing into another cavern between Red-eyes and Skulltopia. The pepper expanded from this gorge into black rivers spilling up the stone staircase somehow rising from its arm as a bridge to the realm between them.
“My spawn are everywhere,” Hist said.
Tim didn’t doubt that. Wherever he was held no connection to the former realm beyond his memory. I have minions… Indi, get your handsome magic hunting butt out here.
Tim summoned the friendly, and a crisp pop of pink and yellow smoke blossomed into the four-inch threat. Indi landed in a crouch with whip and curved gotr sword—a miniature of Farji. A side note read this as a perk from the original sword that his familiars with thumbs also gain a replica.
Isn’t that special.
“I agree!” Indi raised the tip to his brim in a grateful salute.
“Frahnk refused to deal. Now he and his unit are annihilated,” Hist said, patiently, while spawns clawing rock charged the bridge to nowhere. “I could order the same on your unit and let you watch.”
Tim’s Negotiation skill was the only thing keeping him from cursing the false god for what he was. Many of the spirits within Tim raged at the loved ones lost to his mutations, called Ricken in this land.
Danger Sense cycled in the queue of this strange hold Hist had over Tim. He cast Magic Hunt on Indi and hurled him at the monster’s dome.
Indi disappeared into the distance, enlarging Hist’s stature in comparison.
Regardless of their difference in stature, Tim trusted in Indi to find a weakness. Everyone created has a weakness.
Indi landed on the cliff face, tucked on a rock where the glue stretched to Red Eyes’ shoulder rock arches. Above Indi, an eyeball shifted its pupil to stare down at the intruder. Indi snapped his whip to a slender ridge above the armpit creature looking thing and swung around the glue to hop off out of sight.
Hist’s spawn redirected a company to hunt the hunter. As they neared where he sensed Indi, the familiar ducked and hid, drawing more MP from Tim to conceal himself behind a crevice deep enough to dive in.
A whoosh of… cloud, spirits, evil—worse than the Goldfinger kind… more like syrupy, stick to your soul evil—gusted by while Indi hid. The dark demons flew over his hole, pressing him down with oppressive strength.
Indi recognized that Venomous power from the basement in Chilltown. Darkness Rising possessed that legion within; and now it was free and on the hunt.
“Gotta say: not exactly what I signed up for,” Indi mumbled between them.
Snap one of them with your whip.
“You’re kidding.”
I’m not. As soon as you do, I’ll cast Light Burn.
“How is that gonna work. Is your boss around?”
Tim already had the spell charging. Somehow the victory in landing a spy inside the enemy’s chest pushed some of that momentum to his side of the aura stream. The saturation of Venom prevented him from casting the spell, and he fought in the queue stage to overpower the blockade.
Indi snapped the whip. “I said, Get!”
Aura Leather with a terrific backhand slapped one unlucky demon spawn into an unforgiving corner in its master’s rocky interior. Momentum shifted Tim’s aura through the cracks in their defense, and he cast Light Burn like a mutha catter.
Heat cracked cabling once surging frigid pain through his body, allowing him to mow it over by a greater flex. Kicking the bad guy in the balls, Priestly Style. Yeah, they call me fresh Willy. Wait, no.
Surion’s memories cast a spotlight on the tunnel where Hist’s bridge connected Tim with Hist’s Enclave. Inside, creatures emerged with horns and pounding steps thrusting wicked incarnate toward the defense of their lord.
Tim? Dryfu called in the back of his mind. Come back to us. Hist took you into the Darkfold. How’d you get out?
Tim shook it out, like a little bit of this…
Tim traced bridge passage and two levels of circular stairs down Silo 19. Magic Hunt found the secret tunnel there into Hist’s chamber and the Venom empowering his minions.
Nowhere would be more dangerous.
I sense stupid nearby. Is that you? Are you dancing? Get up.
I saw, through Indi and the Darkfold, where he sends his spawns, his Ricken, to our realm. We could try to blockade, or…
“Tim!” Chris shouted, distantly. Then close, shaking Tim with chest pounding palpitations.
He won’t suspect it, Tim thought, trying to impress the idea into a long-term queue to replay later. A new fear swept in as he realized, Hist appeared like this only by proximity. His minions are already here.
Honey, we’re in it. Would you wake up already?
The murky depths parted like a dark cloud to reveal those monsters in waiting.
Lava red eyes bore down from dog faced predators with sharp teeth, hunched over five legs of hard exoskeleton. Two arms long and pointed like swords poised for defense.
Galvanize. Tim ignited Light Burn and squeezed on this demon-faced boil. “I’m right here!”
The ricken slashed Tim across the chest and kicked him in the gut before stampeding back into the dark.
Tim’s HP plummeted and he trembled under a cold poison dancing on ignited nerves. A surge of equally hot relief collided with the pain and rocked him off the explosion of impact. Boom! Tim woke in the doorway of the artisan passage, wheezing, bleeding all over Chris’s hands, which had vines plugged into Tim’s cavernous chest wound. Black ichor dripped from melted flesh off the slash and kick wounds.
Tim looked away from the purple flesh outside the scooped out nothing from what used to be abs. He swallowed stomach acid and coughed. “Let’s light one up!” he said wearily.
“We got you,” Chris said and gave him a Murphy biscuit. “Eat one of these. You scared off their scout, but more are coming.”
Murphy lowered his head to get Tim onto his seat.
Looking right, the wall ended, and their tunnel expanded by magic light flashes, the ricken from his vision charging this way.
Their claw strikes drove shot fissures across the floor in neon blue-green aura, empowering quicker steps and mighty strides.
Chris lifted a ball of wet soil, hovering over his lit staff, then in a discharge of bright white light, launched it at the lead ricken.
The creatures’ forms resembled a cross between face huggers and rhinos, with too much agility to call it a fair fight and appendages built for merciless slaughter.
Chris’s ball of mud sailed. If this plan failed and they somehow survived, Tim would not let him hear the end of that bright idea. A mud ball? This thing looked like it could snap Spawn’s neck with its dick and still get home for TGIF.
The Mud Ball Express splat across the Alpha’s leg and hooked his foot out from under him. Chris swung his staff to cast a blaze of pyrotonics into white fire, melting the front leg to its chest and throat scorching progress upward.
Two more filled the gap and closed the distance in frightening speed.
“Do it again!” Tim shouted. He couldn’t move with Chris’s healing vines strapping him to Murphy’s back.
Tonda sprinted on four legs of terror, rearing for trouble, and Rayv, Huann bless his wraith cold heart, was not long after.
“We have to help,” Tim said.
“You’re in no shape,” Dryfu argued from his pocket.
“They’re helping us,” Murphy added.
Stupid donkey always taking the stykiller’s side. “You know it’s weirder when you talk then when the grasshopper pipes up.”
Meanwhile, one of the ricken struck the floor, sending a fissure of streaking light at Tonda’s path. She sprang for a bend in the ceiling and ricochetted at her target with Eye Poke activated.
Oh, you gonna get it now.
The ricken sliced a claw at Tonda’s throat.
Rayv threw his bill. The spear flew fast. The ricken’s arc was tighter, but in the face of urgency, altered his path. The claw sliced through Tonda’s chest and off her shoulder before the spear plunged through the ricken’s exoskeleton. All momentum threw the ricken off Tonda and into the one flying up behind it.
Tonda kept going to finish what she started. She rotated midair and swiped her other front claw at the nearest ricken. Her claw dug into the eye socket. The ricken recoiled and stumbled off balance. Pop.
The beast roared and ripped its own flesh through Rayv’s bill to get free. Tonda’s feet blazed with aura as she leapt. Her downward slash caught the ricken’s snout, then ripped its neck the wrong way. Its fight ended and Chris’s next mud ball caught enough of the other’s face to forest fire that nasty bugger back to the stone age.
Tim rested his head against Murphy, inhaling the restoring aura he needed to care for them and said, “Take me to them.”
He removed the healing vines once within reach of Tonda and Chris, then wrapped his arms around both and cast Healing.
A figure posed over a rifle aimed in his direction pulled the trigger before Tim could react.
Surprise filled him as the magic bullet traced past him. Its aura rippled like a slow-motion film in high def, contrasted with the blazing fast cylinder spinning through the smoke.
Tim turned to see its end splash damage through the upper arm of a second sniper in the dark. Blue light flashed out from the wound to illumine a mutated goblin in an enchanted emerald robe marked by Hist’s cultivation.
That’s it, Tim thought. He’s a cultivator like me.
Analyze returned: Human; Warlock; and Kwan before the spell fizzled in a wave of Venom.
The rifleman on his side chambered another bullet into his World War One era sniper rifle.
Sheriff Lank closed an eye and exhaled. He set the pistol with a foot long barrel on his bracing arm and lined the shot.
Tim held the shaking Tonda and turned away.
Lank’s shot boomed, rattling heavy enough rocks from the ceiling to get Tim scanning for cracks and prepping a spell. Thankfully, the ceiling held, and the warlock, Kwan took the shot square in his back.
“Yeah,” Lank said and waved Kari and their other deputy to follow. “Let’s get him.”
Murphy nudged his head and an aurthecary like paste he’d formed on his brow into Tonda’s compound fracture. Tim held her through the shuddering agony to get the bone reset.
Kari passed with a curt nod and a gesture to stay while they went ahead. As she left, he noticed her lightning bolt earrings that matched her belt buckle and bore a purple enchantment to their polished silver.
Last Tim knew about Kari, she’d been paid well by the president of Wachamia, assumingly to assist in Rooster’s explosion that buried Lank. Now they’re together? Tim obviously lacked the whole story. He wasn’t ready to share what he knew yet, either.
“He’s gone!” Lank punched a dent into the wall, retracting the ramrod gloves now encrusted at the knuckles with four spikes.
“How many bullets you got, Ling Win?” Kari asked.
“Two. You?”
“One.”
“I’m out,” Lank finished. Then To Tim: “Take care of that jexin, we’ll need her.”
Tim held her against his chest in a fatherly embrace, annoyed that Lank thought he had to tell him that. I’d let her eat your foot if she asked, he thought.
Indi popped onto his forearm. “Demons ambushed Frahnk’s unit at Silo 18.” He collapsed with arms spread out in exhaustion. “We should go now. Wait. Am I dead?”
“Treasure Hunter?” Kari said with a cooing voice.
Indi whipped around. “I’m alive!”
Tim raised a healing hand over his friend and helped him into his preferred pocket high up on Tonda’s saddle to see.
“Mi amore!” Indi called out with as deep a voice as he could while carrying from his tiny lungs. Then on a distant second thought, he caught a glance of Tonda’s wound and startled backward. “Whoa, girl. What happened?”
Murphy brayed and adjusted his head to a better angle on Tonda’s shoulder blade, now past mending bone to sewing sinew. Tim guessed her marrow and strength, likely even her elasticity and the height on her jumps would take much longer if ever, to recover.
“Ricken hit Frahnk’s group, too, but the demons were the worst part. I’m sorry, Tonder Yonder,” Indi said and scratched her neck lovingly.
“Demons you said?” Tim asked.
“Yeah, went toe to toe with Frahnk’s void-shade elemental approach, and their numbers overwhelmed.”
Oh no. Tim grieved the potential loss of one among many fallen warriors. “Did any survive?”
“I don’t know.”
Tonda stretched into the pain, leaking a soft moan. Tim stroked the blood-matted fur across an ear. Throbbing heat pulsed through her fur. Tim passed a new wave of Healing to soothe the tension and throbbing he felt through her warm skull. “Easy girl.” He exaggerated slower breathing. “You don’t have to fight for me or anyone. Thank you for everything.”
Tonda bared her teeth slowly, eyeballing him. An aura flare lit a smooth white sheen over her pupils, then faded into her skull.
She closed her eyes, moaned and rolled away. Tim let go and Murphy carefully backed up, guiding her until she found her footing. Her front right absorbed some of the pain, then righted and she shook it out with a shimmy.
He didn’t think she could; that was a lie. Tim smiled and watched Tonda trot to a fissure broken up by the ricken’s lightning strike. She measured with a paw, testing the right spot. For what, Tim had no idea. Her eyes flashed light blue into white. She pounded her front right paw into the ground. A crackle of lightning zig-zagged up her leg and powered her leap. Indi wailed in excitement as she scaled to the ceiling twenty feet high. Claw met bats in a nasty one-two swat. Cracked bones echoed in the enclosed space. Pat. Pat.
Tonda picked up her booty, chomped the snacksize head off one and sauntered back.
“I think Tonda’s challenging for Treasure Hunter in this group.” Tim stood and brushed off the pools of Tonda’s blood from his clothes. “If she’s ready…” He smiled at Lank and Kari, then to Murphy, “Come on, donkey.”
God of the dark. Surion’s memories suspected it to be a god-ranked tier from another dimension playing to a people who believe in the God of the Wind, a God of the Sea, and so many tens of thousands more. His offering was immortality and glory beyond the powers of a jewel barely anyone could afford to use much anyway.
Hist was no god. He could be defeated. Even if his tier remained a mystery. Tim was sure of it.
Well, I’m glad you’re convinced.