Ryan searched the mud for crystals while Micah lifted the veins inside the golem into a jar with its heart. He had dragged it a few steps closer to the mound and tilted its body up to shine the light inside, but that only revealed the damage he had dealt.

A few of the grooves where veins should have been were empty or damaged. A few of the “major” arteries around the cradle of the heart were broken. That was a shame, but it gave Micah a little confidence. He had broken its arm … well, either him or the rats he’d stuffed inside its body.

Either way, he’d done something useful.

Its crystal was stone essence, but not any he had ever seen. It wasn’t much denser than a Stone Boar’s crystal—and thus, breakable—but seemed almost alive.

Ryan told him stone golems’ crystals could be used to make skin potions and their lesser variations much more easily than through other means, but that it was considered a bit of a waste depending on how expensive they were. Prices varied with type and as climbers killed them.

Their common use—or rather, golem hearts’ common use—was by [Mages]. Tack one onto a staff and it would help with spells for a while, before it broke. Work one into ink and it could help with writing a spellbook.

Ryan couldn’t comment on the quality of it, though. Neither could Micah. If they were in the upper floors, they could sell it for a nice sum, but guessing by how easy it had been to kill the golem, his friend doubted it.

Six, was his current guess. Micah trusted his judgment. Sixth floor … they could handle that, right?

A shadow blocked his vision for a moment as Ryan climbed through the hole and down again, holding another tan marble in his hand. Micah brought his own one out of his pocket to compare.

That made three.

“And you’re sure they’re rat crystals?”

He nodded. “I killed one and this fell out of the smoke. Just, it only had a single tan line in it, like a curved hair. And whenever I killed other rats, it would glow a little and the strand would grow wider.”

That matched what Micah had witnessed when he’d picked his up. Were they linked, somehow? “So it’s not like Field Boars, then,” he said. “We didn’t just get lucky and find loot in three of them?”

“We might have,” Ryan corrected him. “Look.”

He held his marble into the light and revealed two silvery-green threads and yellow one woven in as well, the last one glowing a little brighter. The golem’s veins were dead now that the spirit had left, but these were clear matches—two toads and a golem.

“Wow.” He stretched up to get a better look. “So they’re like magic essence catchers, then?”

“Maybe. But, you don’t find loot this easily from Field Boars,” Ryan said. “And I doubt we should from rats either. There’s a chance we got lucky, but more likely— I mean, I think there is one crystal for the entire swarm, and they just catch a bit of essence from whatever monster’s nearby when it dies. ‘Cause the threads are the same, right? Or can you see a difference?”

Micah was a little surprised by how much thought Ryan was putting into this. He had always seemed a little more book smart to him than, well … “actual” smart. It was an asshole thing and he put it out of his mind for good. He peered into the marble and shook his head to confirm. “They look the same to me.”

“Right. So guessing by these, we fought … three swarms?” He considered the sash. “Or rather, about two and a half.”

Two of the marbles were identical, but the sash with the mixed lines was about half-sized. “The ones that ran away?”

“Probably.”

“How many rats did we fight? Thirty?”

Ryan squinted, seeming to think it over. “Thereabouts. Maybe somewhere around a dozen a marble, then? I’m a little more curious about the purpose, though. Why do the monsters have them?”

“Uhm, the traditional purpose of crystals is, you know, to keep monsters alive?” Micah explained. “They act sort of like a hair tie for their, uhm, patterns. You know patterns right?”

Ryan nodded, taking it in stride. “Unmade are patterns with essence-constructed bodies held together by a crystal, and they suck in bits from the world around themselves to become flesh.”

Micah hesitated. “Yeah. Exactly.” Had Ryan paid attention during every conversation he’d had with Lisa over this? He didn’t know if he had ever explained it that concisely. “Uhm, so …” He had to find his train-of-thought again.

“What about Field Boars?” Ryan asked.

He nodded. “Right. They work differently. I don’t know how. They have lots of teeny-tiny crystals inside of them that scatter and dissipate when they’re killed, so there’s nothing left over to claim.”

He furrowed his brow a little. “Maybe like glue?”

“Yeah, uhm, that could work.” Micah frowned. He hadn’t ever put a lot of thought into it, but that actually seemed like it could work.

“And like with glue,” Ryan went on, keeping an eye on the tunnel, “when you have too much in one place you get, like, a knot of the stuff. Maybe that’s what happens when they drop crystallized parts?”

Micah winced. “Please, stop talking.”

His eyes shot over, surprised. “What?”

“It’s just … my ego can’t handle it.”

His friend made a face halfway between a scowl and amusement, showing he’d taken it both as a compliment and a joke, before looking away. It might have been the former, but Micah was definitely feeling a little self-conscious right now.

He smiled along nervously, hoping the other guy wouldn’t notice, and made a note to himself, Ryan pays attention.

“So what about these rats?” the guy asked, in a little better mood, “How can they exist?”

“Maybe like Field Boars,” Micah said. “Maybe someway else. I didn’t get a good enough look at them during the chaos to notice. I didn’t even notice any of them drop marbles, but—they need something to hold their patterns together or they would just fall apart.”

Ryan seemed to think about that for another moment before he let it be and tucked the marble in Micah’s pouch. “I was just looking for an insight,” he explained. “Maybe something we can use.”

Micah nodded. “I agree with that. But the toads and the golem were still the same, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Switch?” Micah held the knife and jar up and they switched places. Ryan scraped the rest of the Golem’s insides into the jar while he kept an eye out for any camouflaged monsters.

When he was almost done, Micah bit his lip and mentioned, “I was thinking … I mean, we have an opportunity now, right? I really want to get some of those plants from the chasm.”

Ryan’s eyes shot up, but he didn’t reject the idea right away. “You mean the walkway, right?”

“Yeah,” he assured him. “Of course. The grass and plants, maybe the beetle. All of that.” He nodded along and trailed off for a moment. “So … is the centipede, you know … around?”

“I’m not sure.”

That seemed like a half-truth to Micah, at best. But he accepted the sentiment behind it. “Maybe just around the entrance, then?”

Ryan thought about it for a moment before he sighed and said, “But we have to be really quiet.”

“Definitely.”

At the edge of the tunnel, the water was somewhat cleaner. Still murked by their fight, but not muddy. They poked their heads around and checked for monsters other than the centipede.

Micah did see something, in the far off distance. A dark-grey lump, fleshy, that hung off the chasm wall half-hidden in the shadows. It was roughly oval shaped like an egg cut top to bottom and the barest of trembles made him think of breathing. In the middle, a bit of blue glow escaped from a crack.

Layers? Or maybe … folded wings?

Whatever it was, it was too far away and too large to fit in the tunnels. Guessing by school track, he would have said it was two hundred meters in the distance and … tall. Three meters, at least? That was harder to guess. He didn’t know if Ryan could see the glow or beast.

There were also support beams spotted between the railings of the walkway in the distance, crumbling away in places or entirely. Those could have hidden any kind of monster, but again, the first of them was far.

Micah gave a thumbs-up for the all-clear on camouflage and, when Ryan didn’t bail, started digging out plants and cutting off those growing from the crevices. He put them in the cylinder boxes he had bought for the occasion.

Even with his gloved hands, he was careful around the prickly plants. Many had such fine hairs, he suspected they could pass through gloves. At least, he wasn’t willing to risk losing a finger to the test.

Ryan helped a little but mostly glanced at the chasm as if the centipede was about to show up at any moment. It simultaneously reassured Micah and put him on edge. He suspected it was the same for Ryan when he glanced back and at the walkway in case of toads.

Dandelions, prickly grass, plate-like mushrooms growing from the walls he had to be wary of because of spores, normal mushrooms, some with red caps and white dots that wiggled a little because of their essence—poisonous?—some thick roots sticking out of the wall, vines, three stalks that grew a pyramid of flower cups stacking up, with a little bit of glistening fluid resting inside them, which he poured into a bottle; some flowers that looked like purple dandelions, but in their seed-ball shape …

The beetle flew off when he got too close. Some of the other insects and ants he let go because, well, insects. He didn’t have the equipment to catch or keep them and they didn’t look all too special.

Micah gathered everything else as quickly as he could and regretted the damage he was inflicting on the ecosystem. When collecting mushrooms, you weren’t supposed to take everything at once. Only a little for the day’s consumption or there would soon be no mushrooms anymore.

But he didn’t know if he could grow these plants outside the Tower or if their roots were valuable yet, so he took everything. Greedy.

He pulled out another stalk by its roots and was about to stuff it in his box when he noticed a small, crystal blue blob glued to one of the roots and froze. He held it a little closer, with his other hand ready to cover his eyes if need be.

The blob was almost see-through and slightly amorphous but didn’t have any other interesting features aside from its pattern. Not a crystal then. Maybe a tiny, magic potato or something similar?

Then the blob wiggled and started to climb up the roots again and his eyes went wide.

Below, another popped out of the soil where the roots had been and started climbing up the pile of upended dirt. Micah looked up from it and, in the distance, saw another squeeze out of a crevice and plop into the water. It swam half-submerged on the surface, making tiny waves.

Micah’s slapped Ryan on the arm as hard as he could without making any noise, eyes wide in excitement, then gripped his arm and tugged instead, even though Ryan had spun around right away.

The first blob had reached the leaves of the plant now and was squiggling around on it. Was it … eating something?

It definitely wasn’t eating the leaf. But where it moved, there was less essence than before. Light and tiny bits dew mostly. A little bit of the general “glow” of the plants. The one swimming through the water left a trail of cleaner water, where there was less disease essence than before.

“What?” Ryan hissed, barely a whisper. The tone conveyed that his heart was pounding.

Micah smiled to show him there wasn’t any actual danger and pointed, so Ryan leaned over his shoulder to get a look at the tiny being on the plant stalk and froze. “That’s a slime.”

Micah nodded.

“That’s a tiny blue slime.”

He nodded again.

His voice was dripping with confusion when he spoke, “But slimes aren’t supposed to be … What?”

“They’re only supposed to be in Lighthouse, right?”

“Well, not only, but predominantly,” Ryan said. “You can find them in the outer edges of some floors, but they’re like … you don’t just find three, four— five tiny slimes going around nibbling on … swimming? What are they doing?”

Micah glanced up and two more slimes had squeezed out of crevices to go swimming. Or drinking?

“I think it’s eating things on the plant,” he said, “cleaning it a bit in the process. But this one was also suckling on its roots, so maybe they’re like, uh, nice parasites? What are those called again?”

“No idea. Are they dangerous?”

“I don’t know. But they’re cute.”

“Mhm.”

“And they can be used in potions,” Micah added. “Some of them. My alchemy teacher always complains about that, Lighthouse having a monopoly. But Hadica has more flora to use in potions, so there’s that. Evens things out.” He squinted at the slime with a hidden smile. “Now we have slimes of our own.”

“Do you know how to use them?” Ryan asked.

“Uhm …”

“No, then.”

“They’re watery. They’re really clean. Like, those just came from underground and there’s not a spot on them.”

They were so blobby, they should have been muddy or flecked with bits of dirt but they weren’t.

“So detergent, then?” Ryan guessed his thoughts.

Micah ducked his head down, abashed about the lame first idea. “Or maybe for adding purifying features to other things, like healing? But I wouldn’t want to risk it if I’m not a hundred percent sure.”

“Great.” He sounded unimpressed. “They’re running away, by the way.”

“What?” Micah held his stalk down a little, but two of the slimes had—

They had eyes, all the sudden. White ovals like fire elementals. The other three didn’t, but the two that had spotted Ryan and him—giants, in their vision—were running for it.

Wait a minute. He squinted at one of them and his eyes widened. He pointed. “Thief! Damn spirits! Again!”

“Hush,” Ryan said. “Don’t malign spirits.”

“They’re stealing my slimes!” he whispered.

“Your slimes?”

Micah ignored him and got one of his ink bottles out. He placed the opening over the blobs and turned it around to collect them one by one.

One squinted at him through the glass and suddenly, its eyes vanished. A blue zip shot out that after a centimeter, Micah couldn’t see anymore. A moment later, the furthest slime grew eyes and started swimming away, back to its crevice. The spirit had switched bodies!

He was about to run after it, but the first splash he made in the water made him freeze. Ryan placed a hand on his shoulder half a second later and they waited, anxious that something might have heard.

Micah settled for the closer slimes. Four of them. He filled some water and stuffed some leaves inside the bottle, then screwed the lid shut. Now he had tiny slimes of his own in a mini-habitat.

He stared at them in awe. “They don’t need air, right?”

“I doubt it.”

“Awesome.”

“But they might die outside the Tower,” Ryan added.

“Less awesome.”

No crystals inside them either, though he could see hints of their strange patterns. It was simple in that they didn’t have a lot of breadth, but they had lots of depth. Still, how did they exist?

They waited around for a few more minutes in case any more popped out, but there were none. So with their boxes filled, they then had no more excuse not to turn around and … head further in.

Micah sighed. Damnit.

Three steps through water. Wall. Dirt. Jump. Micah tumbled in through the hole in the mound of earth and got his hands on the dry. He skid into the mud with his boots and raised his shield to the corner, at any potential enemies he hadn’t been able to see from Ryan’s shoulders.

There were none. “Clear.”

Ryan threw his spear through and Micah caught it, emerald green pouch drawn tight on top.

Three steps and he mimicked Micah’s move, a little rough around the … everything. He brushed past the dirt and almost slipped in the mud, steadying himself against the wall to stay standing.

It was impressive that he had been able to do it on his first try at all, but still, Micah smiled. “[Lesser Agi—”

“I hate you,” Ryan cut him off and snatched the spear out of his hands. “Give me my stuff back.”

They approached the first crossroads in a similarly careful fashion, with Ryan ahead and close to the left wall, his shield at the ready while Micah peered around and make sure the coast was clear.

It wasn’t. Ten meters at the end of the tunnel, a stone golem walked past and they shot back behind cover. It felt like minutes until it had taken three heavy steps and disappeared Northwestward. They waited a few more minutes after that, Ryan’s head cocked a little.

“Clear,” he whispered.

Micah sighed in relief. Without a toad crystal, he would not want to fight a golem even if he could damage it.

They stepped around the bend and found three things, two of which on the right-hand side—a sign on the wall in a language he couldn’t read, words closer to symbols than letters in his mind, and a doorless supply closet.

The second light source was inside—a light crystal mounted in a low stone basket on the far wall. Along with the basket, everything inside was made of brittle stone that had long ago crumbled. The individual planks of the shelves had fallen through. Whatever furniture had stood in the middle was now just a pile of rocks.

He couldn’t see any “supplies,” though. Its size and shelves just reminded him of the supply closets at school or the bathhouse.

Further down the tunnel was an alcove with similar rubble littered inside. A single remaining hinge made him think of a cupboard that had been built into the wall. Its doors must not have lasted.

Ryan pointed his spear at the mound of rubble and mumbled, “Trap.”

“What?”

The spearhead went up to the light crystal, then gestured at the sign next to the doorway, and the tunnel.

“Something around here, if you do it wrong, you’ll trigger the trap and that rubble will shift. Something crawls out from a hidden hole beneath it, letting the stones fall or pushing them away if it’s strong enough. Guessing by how its submerged in water, it’ll be something that can survive underneath, like a fish or golem.” He frowned. “Or an actual, dangerous slime.”

Micah frowned and squinted at the mound. He leaned left a little to get a look underneath it, but couldn’t see a thing. “Are you sure?”

“Reasonably. Could be nothing, of course. But I missed those maze patterns on the wall and it has me thinking of every trap I’ve ever heard of. I remember something similar to this.”

“What’s the trigger?”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

He shrugged. “No idea. It could be the crystal, stepping into the room, or just past the room. It could be that sign. Or the sign could be a warning with the trigger on it. There might be an actual trigger somewhere around here, like a tripwire or pressure plate that alerts the monsters or activates something.”

Micah started searching the floor at that. A thin thread hidden in this water? He doubted he could notice it. Especially not if it was magic or magical, like the toad’s camouflage.

“The point is,” Ryan said. “We already saw a golem walking past the North end. We’re definitely not going that way.”

Mica nodded. “East-West, right?”

“Right.”

He glanced back at the sign and light crystal one last time before they left, thinking of their value. But no, a single light crystal wasn’t worth springing a trap. And though the sign might have had value to a collector, it would just be dead weight on their way out. But what about …?

He hesitated. “Could a treasure chest be hidden beneath?”

Ryan stopped in his tracks and chewed his lip. “Could.”

“Do we … you know, check?”

They could really use a treasure chest right about now, both on this floor and outside the Tower.

The other guy seemed to think about it for a moment before he shook his head. “No. The number one priority is getting out of here. We can look for treasure chests on safer floors afterward, rather than fighting golems for it.” He looked back, checking with him on it. “Right?”

Micah nodded. “Right.”

The end of the tunnel split off left and right. South and North. The Northern path had another section of bare earth with a maze pattern at its end, this one only about hip high and smaller.

Either whatever golem was in there would crawl out sideways or it was another kind of trap. A Stone Boar, maybe? Either way, it suited them just fine. They took the Southern route.

It didn’t go on for much longer than a few meters before it curved right, with a pile of mud-turned-island gathering in the corner. Moss like grass grew there. It reminded Micah of the light. It was still too bright in here. By all means, it should have been darkest in that corner but instead, plants grew.

And a marble lay on its bank.

Micah trapped Ryan to make him stop and pointed. “Trap?”

“Uh …”

It lay between a bunch of soggy, rotting leaves and other dirt—flotsam washed ashore by the gentle flow. The debris on the tip of the mound suggested the water rose higher than it currently stood, like this was an actual sewer system for … something. As did the layered lines of algae and shades of green-brown on the walls. He didn’t like how high those layers reached.

“Washed up?”

Ryan nodded. “Probably.”

They did their corner-check to be safe and spotted an enemy—a single toad on the right-side ceiling this time. After a minute of deliberation, Ryan walked out with his shield on his right arm, held casually close to his chest. Micah walked a few steps behind him with his spear.

They acted as if they hadn’t noticed it, going at a good pace. A few steps before they got into range, Micah painted it green for all to see. Thankfully, the beast took the bait before it noticed.

Barbed tongue shot out and Ryan struck it down against the wall with his shield, held it there by force. He drew his knife and a second before he thrust it in, Micah slipped past him and stuck the pointy end at the toad.

Both drew light.

The toad hit the water flailing and tried to escape. Micah fumbled to stab it again but wasn’t used to holding a spear. He missed. Its tongue pulled back along the wall next to him, missing a good chunk of flesh that leaked light, and Ryan stepped up to take control. He guided the spear into its leg, then it the back of its head, bursting it into smoke.

Micah let go and breathed. Easy.

“I’ll have to teach you how to use a spear sometime,” Ryan mumbled as he went to fetch the crystal.

His smile fell. “Hey. Was that comment really necessary?”

He shrugged. “Just saying.”

“Fine.”

He collected the marble from the bank but was disappointed to see only one tan line inside. Not even a second, green one. Had it not been in range to gather anything from the toad? Then he remembered the ones he had on him and fetched the third out of his pocket. Another green line had joined the rest. Oh. Awesome.

They stuck to the same routine as they went down the next few tunnels, battling as many easy fights as they could to clear up the way for potential retreat and prevent ambushes, and avoiding anything that seemed dangerous.

Railing to the side with a miniature waterfall? Micah got to cut some of the vines, but then they walked on. Patch of wall with a maze pattern? No golems. Suspicious amount of mud? No, thank you. Mound of rubble from a collapsed ceiling with a stone sword sticking out of it?

Micah hesitated.

“Probably broken in half anyway,” Ryan told him.

“Aw, really?” That seemed cruel.

Most often, the tunnels only branched off twice, but there were a lot of corners. It reminded Micah of the maze-like patterns on the walls and golems. Just, sticking to one side wouldn’t work here.

In every curve, things gathered. Rarely, it would be an empty marble. More often than not, the piles of debris had balls of fruit-flies hovering over them or spiderwebs. Ryan suggested avoiding even those.

They passed some more supply closets with light crystals and spotted rats scurrying along the sides of tunnels, but let them be. It wasn’t worth chasing after them to get one-twelfth of a flesh crystal each.

The water level of tunnels leading South-North was lower than the others flowing West. They also had slight ledges to the sides. Just a jagged line of rock a few centimeters wide. The ground leading up to it was worn and curved, as if the water had sanded it down over the years.

Supply closets were only in those tunnels, it seemed. And often, Micah spotted broken-off nubs near them that reminded him of fixtures for ladders. Above those nubs, the ceiling was either caved in or there was a hole too high and too dangerous to climb. And anyway, up was dangerous.

Some tunnels had holes in the ground, too, submerged in darkness. One supply closet they passed had one and a hole in the ceiling with broken pipes that lead up. No light crystal.

They passed by a tunnel that was overgrown with green, top to bottom—grass, ferns, vines, roots; plants that blocked the view. Something shifted in there with a growl and they fled.

They always took the safest route.

It made Micah feel in part like he was being herded and in part like he was missing out on so many questions he could have answered. Scurrying around like this, only fighting battles they could win, they were no better than rats.

When they squeezed through a short North-to-South tunnel with their backs to the wall, he spotted a supply closet, nubs on the wall, hole overhead, and an alcove in the wall with a cylinder bowl and some other broken tools. This looked almost like it had been a workstation, once.

He tapped Ryan on the arm and whispered, “Are we just going to walk by everything?”

Some of this stuff might be actual treasure, in more ways than one.

“Yes,” he insisted. “Because all of this could be a trap that sics a golem on us or causes the ceiling to collapse or the tunnel to flood. No sense in taking needless risks, right?”

Micah pointed. “That’s a bowl.”

He nodded. “Obviously a trap.”

They were eleven bends in and had fought monsters four times with no sign of a portal or even a path leading down. They walked as if every single step could spring death, as if every corner could hide the titanic centipede. They avoided everything that was anything.

Micah was beginning to run out of patience. Humor could only shove down the anxiety so long, and then there was brimming curiosity, irrational boredom, and another wave of anxiety waiting in the wings.

How long would it be to find a portal? They were supposed to be scarcer in the higher floors, yeah, but what if there wasn’t a portal out? Or what if they did walk around a bend and come face-to-face with something bad?

He rolled his eyes. “Obviously, the bowl is a trap. It’ll probably grow teeth and bite my hand off if I stick it inside.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “So don’t stick your hand inside. C’mon.”

Micah did. He just felt like they were being a little too careful. Avoiding all the golems, nothing had threatened their lives yet.

They turned the corner a little too quickly this time and stumbled upon two Sewer Rats eating blueberries off a bush growing in a collapsed wall. The beasts were twice as big as the ones Micah knew and hated. Below, a handful of regular rats snacked on the leftovers.

Their steps in the water were too loud to sneak back. One of the Sewer Rats spun to stare at them and the rest followed. It screeched, and there were too few rats around to account for the tiny squeaks that answered.

“Shit.”

“Watch for toads!” Ryan snapped as he stepped forward with shield and spear raised at the ready.

Micah followed his command and snapped around to check behind them—the tunnel got darker, for some reason—then in front. He couldn’t see any toads, but he wasn’t a hundred percent sure.

The first Sewer Rat ran into Ryan’s spear like a charging dog and got stuck on its bar, then kept on pushing. Blood welled out instead of a light and it put on more and more pressure.

The other squeezed past it and Ryan pushed it into the wall with his shield, but holding two dog-sized rats back in water on slick ground, he slipped inch by inch, leaning forward centimeter by centimeter. Any moment, he would slip entirely and fall into their waiting maws.

Micah stepped forward and thrust his knife at the one wedged against the wall. It snapped at him. He pulled back just in time to avoid losing a finger and kicked it in the throat, then tried again.

Ryan noticed and shifted his weight against it at the same time. His knife pushed between its eyes. The guy’s control on the first rat failed him and the hand on his spear slipped almost to the tip at it charged.

Micah stumbled over the shivved rat to tackle it off-course.

Ryan followed up with a knee to the side of its throat and they had it pinned against the opposite wall, now.

The normal rats were streaming around corners and out of cracks in spades. They jumped or swarmed their legs as they had earlier, began gnawing where the last swarms had left off.

They weren’t an immediate threat, but seeing them ruin their armor like that, they were the next best thing in his mind. His knife was still lodged in the other rat’s skull, so he started smacking them off with his armguard.

Ryan’s spear was in the wrong position to be useful. He dropped it and switched for the knife on the inside of his shield. He was about to shove it in the rat when a barbed tongue smacked it out of his grip and drew blood.

He cursed in pain, but when the tongue pulled back, it wrapped around his arm like a lasso and dragged him back, pulling him right into Micah. They stumbled over one another into the water. A growing boot to the face kept the Sewer Rat at bay, but the little ones had an easier time swarming them now.

The second one with Micah’s knife stuck in its forehead was twitching—not dead yet. He risked getting bitten as he grabbed the knife and turned around, belly to the water to snatch the toad’s tongue.

The moment it saw him going for it though, it made its flesh go slack, then pulled it back as quick as it came, freeing Ryan’s arm. It was too fast for Micah to snatch out of the air. The upside was that Ryan could defend himself.

His eyes glanced down the tunnel as he pressed his feet into the Sewer Rat, searching wildly for the toad. He glanced at Micah in confusion and insisted, “Color it.”

Oh. Right. Micah didn’t have much to work with so he snatched a handful of berries and slingshot them at the beast, then colored it purple when they pattered off its skin.

A rat bit him in the ankle and another at a place he could barely count as his waist and he cursed and turned around to drown them both in the water. One just scurried around and started gnawing at his boots.

This was ridiculous. He freaking hated Tower rats.

Micah got up out of the wet and stomped the rat to death. He stabbed the first Sewer one twice more in the head to be safe, marched over to turn the second one’s throat into a pin cushion, and whirled to throw the knife into the purple toad before Ryan could busy himself with it.

It splashed into the water at the same time as Micah grabbed the first dead rat by the scruff of its neck and dragged it over.

When it tried to jump him, he threw his luggage like a meat shield and kicked the toad a few times to make sure it would stay down. Its tongue shot out at him and Micah blocked his face with his arms. The barbed flesh wrapped around of them on its way back and drew him closer to its jagged teeth.

Micah used the momentum to smack a boot past its jaw and a knee into the side of its head. He groped around with his free arm to find his knife and finished the job. The burst of smoke make him cough, but he was used to that by now.

Finally.

He stomped a few more rats into a stupor on his way back to help Ryan out of the water, who was still cradling his wounded hand.

“You okay?”

He felt a little embarrassed by how he had lashed out against the monsters, but Ryan seemed too distracted to have noticed. Thankfully. Then he had a second thought. “Do you feel any poison? Let me see.”

“No, I’m fine,” Ryan insisted as Micah pulled his hand away to see the wound. It had cut right through his glove. How strong were these toads? He nodded at Micah’s arm. “You’re bleeding, too.”

“Huh? Oh.” It was just an ugly cut, an inch off from the bracer and armor. Unlucky. “It’s nothing. We should probably treat them, though. Because of the water?”

“Right.” Ryan nodded and leaned against the mound of the collapsed wall as Micah patched him up, fending off the last handful of rats that were bothering them like the pests they were.

Their equipment was fraying and falling apart in places. Ryan might be better off, but his feet were soaked from holes in his boots. His pants were, too, and shredded near the hems. Micah knew he was going to have to patch them when they got out of here or he could throw them out. Great. Because he just owned so many pants.

Stupid freaking rats.

The dried mud that made him feel itchy and the bite wound on his … waist didn’t help his mood.

“Are these blueberries?” Ryan asked.

“Huh?” Micah glanced up from his toes. “Uhm, no. They’re just— Yes, they’re blueberries, but not like wild ones. They’re, like, perfect.”

Ryan frowned. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen better blueberries than these.”

“No, I mean—” How did Micah put this into words for him? “They’re very neat. They’re stuffed to the brim with essence and their patterns are tidy. See how perfectly round they are? Even if they aren’t the largest. So, yeah. They’re perfect. You can probably eat some if you want to.”

Come to think of it … Micah looked around and frowned at the blood-tinted water, dead Sewer rats soaking. “They were eating them.”

Ryan’s lips and fingers were a little blue as he nodded. He had taken off one of his gloves and picked them off the central branches. Good thing Micah hadn’t needed to warn him about that. Had he learned it during his scouting trip? “Some fully-formed monsters eat. It’s rare, but they do it.”

“Yeah, but the little rats were also eating.” And those had burst into smoke. Micah saw a marble lying on the bank of the earth and was too lazy to bend over and pick it up right now.

Ryan paused in stuffing his face for a moment. “Oh. Right. Do you have an explanation?”

Micah tried to think about it for a moment and just gave up. He could probably find an explanation if he racked his head, but his head wasn’t in the mood to think at all. He got out his water instead and took a long sip.

When he put it down with a refreshed sigh, Ryan was holding a blueberry out for him and Micah ate it. It did taste good. At least one good thing in here.

The guy yanked his hand away as if he had bitten him, though he hadn’t. “Hey. You were supposed to—” He scowled and shook his head. “Nevermind.”

Micah gave him a bemused look as the heat essence around him shrunk. When it was clear Ryan wouldn’t feed him, he finished patching himself up and collected as many blueberries he could into another ink bottle, snacking on some every now and then. They were good.

The tunnels were clear when he checked before they left. That left options. “Where do we go?”

The left path darkened for no reason Micah could see. The right one was where the oversized Sewer Rats had come from. It was tinted a little red from their blood, but his feet were soaked anyway. Sewer Rats over a dark tunnel and mutated Archertoads seemed like a good idea.

They collected any crystals they could find and took a right, their method of scurrying around starting all over again. A new emotion stepped into the wings then and Micah put it in line. Not when Ryan was around.

Two bends in from the blueberry brush, they found a tunnel that rose up a bit and wasn’t submerged in water. Stone grates at the sides acted as funnels for any spillover, but the dry stone was a welcome sight. Maybe it would lead out of here?

They headed in and halfway through the tunnel, a bend led East toward the chasm. For some reason, it was much darker. Almost as if the water itself lit up these ways.

They got to the first crossroads in here with four options and Ryan listened to check that the coast was clear before they continued on straight ahead, the stone around them getting darker and the tunnel wider.

Light ahead revealed a room like a balcony cut into the cliff side. There was furniture, or what had once been furniture. Something that might have been a stove in the right-side corner, a pile of rubble that might have been a table, a metal rod lying in front of the “windows” that might have held curtains, once. It was rusted now and littered with holes. A shame.

The windows themselves were just gaps between ornate pillars overgrown with vines. They let in light and wind and made the rancid smell of filth and feces spread from piles.

Ryan had a hand over his nose and mouth.

There was surprisingly little flora in the room, but that, the scuff-marks and ceiling told them all they needed to know. It was a roost for whatever winged beast he had seen in the chasm earlier.

The tunnels behind them were probably large enough for it to squeeze around, this close to the chasm.

“Leave,” Micah hissed at Ryan and they hightailed it out of there as quickly as they could. Around the first bend, they heard a cry that reverberated through the tunnels and sent Ryan stumbling with his hands over his ears.

“What is it?”

“Bats,” he groaned.

Micah helped him up and they rushed to get back to the lighter tunnels, to the water where they couldn’t be followed. When his boot splashed into it, he felt relief. At least, now they knew what the scavengers of the centipede were.

They started avoiding tunnels leading East.

Another supply closet tunnel. This time with all features again. The flora seemed to become more rampant the further West they headed, with more tunnels having collapsed sections that offered dirt for them to grow. Roots snaked along depressions in the stone toward the water and grew leaves.

More and more tunnels had maze-patterned sections on their walls, in these parts. Golems. They hadn’t encountered any roaming anymore, but their options were getting slimmer. Sometimes, they had to backtrack a few bends to find a better path or choose the one they thought least-dangerous.

The sole of one of Micah’s boots hung free after the latest swarm and he was seriously concerned about losing it before they got out of here. If they got out of here. How deep were they even in? He had lost track of the exact number. He bet Ryan knew, but he didn’t ask.

Eventually, they found another path that was free of water and tensed up, but still checked it since this one led North, not East. The elevated stone gave way to loosely paved earth and grass. They found a circular room that reminded Micah of the actual, first-floor Sewers in the Tower.

A golem two heads larger than the one they had fought stood with its back to them inside and was building a wall. It shaped dry dirt like clay and packing it denser, leaving maze patterns where its stone fingers came away, its own grooves and the dirt glowing with a yellow light.

Ryan dragged Micah away the moment they spotted it, but he looked back as he did. Why was it building a wall? Through the hole, he caught a glimpse of a chest. Multi-colored in earthy tones and flower-like accents, larger than the wolf chest he had found.

The golem was building the wall to hide it. Not only that—Micah saw the golem step into the free space left before Ryan dragged him away entirely. It would guard the chest as well. How many of those maze patterns they had seen in the wall guarded treasure chests, then?

“Why’d you resist?” Ryan asked as they backtracked the way they had come. Another dead-end.

“There was a chest,” he whispered.

“I know.”

“It was huge.”

“I know.” His voice sounded strained.

He wanted the treasure, too, Micah knew. They should have fought it. Sure, it might have been dangerous, but why else were they climbers?

When they walked by yet another alcove with a cylinder bowl in it, he couldn’t help himself anymore. He dragged Ryan to a stop. “I want to touch it,” he demanded and pointed at the alcove. “The bowl. Tip it over, or inspect, or smash it. Fill it up with water and see what happens for all I care. I don’t care. I just want to do something.”

No more hiding.

“No,” Ryan hissed. “Fuck no. That’s a stupid idea.”

“But we’ve been in here for hours and we haven’t even gotten a glimpse of a path leading down that isn’t submerged in water,” Micah hissed back. “How far are we in? Twenty bends? More? Less? Do you even know?”

It all spilled out at once. “There’s a golem pattern in every other tunnel now and the toads only show up in pairs, at the least, with us getting ambushed every single damn fight. Those tongues are so freaking annoying, I want to roast one and eat it while its owner watches. Every path leads to danger.” He raised his foot. “My shoe is—falling off, Ryan. I’m hungry. I’m thirsty and casting [Condense Water] is giving me a headache, but all the water we’re sloshing through that soaks our feet is tinted with disease essence and mud, we can’t even drink it.

We’ve barely seen any traps and this is, like, the fifth of those bowls we’ve seen by now. If they repeat that often, they have to have some kind of significance, right? Maybe they’re like sewer grates or something? Why else haven’t they crumbled like everything else in here?”

After he’d said his piece, Ryan waited a moment to answer, as if to make sure he was done. “Oh, just because nothing has happened, springing a trap on purpose is supposed to be a smart idea?” he demanded.

“No!” Micah said. “Yes. I don’t know. We’re lost, Ryan. We need to do something. What if— What if the bowls are enchanted, or they fill up with water to drink. I mean, venting aside, I’m actually pretty thirsty. What if those closets you’re so afraid of have ladders leading down underneath the rubble, huh? Or a treasure chest with something useful? We could have found a way down hours ago!”

He’d started shouting in a whisper, letting all the frustration out on his friend because he needed to let it out on something and he sure as hell wasn’t going to do it against the monsters in a fight. Ryan would think even less of him if he did that.

But Ryan didn’t seem mad at all. He face looked considering all the sudden and it caught Micah off guard.

“What?” Frustration vented a little, he was having second-doubts about everything he’d just said. The look on Ryan’s face worried him.

He just shook his head a little and got his own bottle out, telling Micah, “Drink.”

“Uh, no, it’s fine. I can cast—”

“Drink,” he insisted. “Save your mana for when we need it.”

Micah drank.

When Ryan finally answered, he said, “You might be right. About the piles of rubble, I mean. They could hide a way down.”

“Oh.” Micah blinked and leaned back a little, feeling awkward. He turned and pointed at the supply closet that had prompted his outburst. “So do we just … poke that one, or …?”

Ryan shook his head. “Not here. It’s too dangerous here. We can backtrack to an earlier supply closet where it’s safer. Where there are fewer monsters around.”

“Well, okay then …”

So they backtracked, and they scouted around, and killed as many monsters in the nearby tunnels as they could, then established a fight or flight plan if something went wrong. Micah tied some bandages around his boot to get it to stop flopping around and they collected a pile of large stones.

Ryan shuffled into the supply closet. When nothing happened, they collected a second pile and stacked it up high next to the one that was already there. The golems weren’t the only ones that could build traps.

Preparation done, with a nudge of his speartip, Ryan knocked the light crystal out of its cradle and stretched forward to catch it. The bottom of his palm blocked its light, casting shadows over the room that rippled with the water.

A tense moment later, the mound shifted as something pressed up against it and Ryan hissed, “Steady.”

Micah stayed near the doorway for another moment until they knew what they were up against. The first stone tumbled down, but the rest fell inward to reveal a black hole beneath. Water. No ladder down.

Then a disgusting version of the Sewer Rats half-swam, half-climbed out of the hole toward them. Its fur was glossy and almost see-through, it had gills, and murky white eyes. It had webbed feet and gurgled squeaks, half-fish in places.

All the same to Ryan. He stabbed it in the head and shoved back in its hole. Two more crawled out of the dark and a third in the other direction as the last of the rubble fell away.

Micah shoved the mound of rocks on them. Its weight smacked them all back into their hole, wisps of light lost to the dark water. Then he danced back to his second pile beyond the door and hefted two large rocks, glancing left and right for the toads that were bound to show up.

Freaking toads.

Ryan continued to stab the fish-rats and shove them back in. He aimed his rocks at the ones climbing out the opposite direction to avoid hitting his spear.

Shadows shifted with the slightest of his friend’s movements, light crystal half-covered, making hitting them worse. But whenever the rats saw the light, they would shriek in either pain or fear. Not blind then, but sensitive to light?

That was the trap. The crystal had kept them away.

Ryan realized it himself and used the crystal to blind them as they crawled out, making his job ten times easier. Soon, he simply had to stab and shove the single rats that climbed out back while Micah kept an eye out for toads, feeling impotent.

When they were sure no more rats would show up, Ryan raked the few crystals that had fallen inside the closet closer to the doorway, picked them up, and handed them to Micah along with the light one.

The threads the rats had left in their marbles were murky, slightly off-putting, in that they were almost like splotches maring them. There was nothing Micah could do about it, so he put them away and took a step closer to peer into the dark from a safe distance instead.

He considered the crystal in his hand and mused out loud, “Now I kind of want to drop it inside, to see how deep it goes.”

“We might have to,” Ryan surprised him. When he noticed, he explained, “That was the whole point to this, right? To find out more? Maybe that is a path down and we’ll have to swim.”

Micah looked back at the darkness. “Oh.”

He dropped the stone into the water with a plop and it sunk, revealing shifting waves of black, stone, and detritus but nothing else. It sunk deeper, revealing some crystals and half-dead fish-rats still floating around. It sunk, and sunk, and sunk until it was out of sight and that answered their question.

“Oh,” Ryan echoed him.

Micah glanced back in case a toad ambushed them, but mostly wanted to have something other to do than dwelling on the thought of, What if? Ryan didn’t look so sure himself, so he shoved anxiety into the wings and looked up to ask, “Wanna’ go poke the bowls?”

The other guy hesitated before he put on an equally fake smile and shrugged, saying, “Sure.”

They could keep on scurrying around afterward.