It took Ryan a moment to get past the treasure chest and understand what had Micah so worried. It was Fall. Summer was over and the tunnels were dimming before them at an alarming rate.
“It’s the water,” Micah explained, “and the stone, I think. They conduct the light subtly from the outside. Essence, not actual light. That’s why we didn’t notice right away. No shadows. I think it might only be the stone and there’s traces of it in the water, or the water bleached and coated the stone? Air moisture? I’m not sure. I could test it with [Condense Water], but—”
“Micah,” Ryan interrupted. “Focus. Not the time. How long do we have?”
“Right. Not as long as a true sunset. The chasm’s angle is cutting off the light, so it depends on how long the tunnels keep it. It’s already losing some, here. Guessing by that, anywhere from less than an hour to … minutes.”
That was their cue to leave. They grabbed their things and headed into the treasure room. Micah grabbed the handle of the chest and Ryan frowned at him. “What are you doing?”
“Getting the chest.”
He shook his head and opened the lid. “It’s too dangerous. We grab the contents and leave.”
“But the wood—”
He cut him off with a glare. “What does Ms. Jo always say about priorities?”
He bit his lip. “ … Doesn’t matter if you’re dead.”
“Exactly. I’ve got space. Do you want to take anything?” Ryan checked the chest and frowned. “Uh, assessment on the ‘goo’?”
“It’s dead slime, I think,” Micah said like it was no big deal. Somewhere, his sense of normality must have gotten turned around. Not that Ryan hadn’t known that from the start. It just wasn’t in the way he had hoped. And not that he could complain. That would be like coal calling the sun black.
“Or at least, a non-living product of a slime. Uhm, so either like hair or leather? Sorry, not the best analogy. It’s fine, I’ll take it.” He stuffed the net of assorted fruit into his backpack, bruising the jelly-like substance into cube fractures.
Ryan took everything else. He was glad the earthenware jug felt sturdy. He was a little worried about the glass, though. Hopefully, it would be enchanted. He didn’t want to waste a potion from the sixth floor, even if he didn’t know what it did. If this even was the sixth floor.
Lastly, Micah took the baseball bat and Ryan got out the light crystal from earlier. He led them to the dimming tunnels on the other end of the golem’s room. To the unknown.
“Try to find out what that does,” Ryan told Micah, nodding at the bat. “But don’t let it distract you.”
“Got it.”
They performed the same cautious corner check they had down three dozen times today, and Ryan hoped there would be a portal right around the corner. But of course, there wasn’t.
They had three options. Straight ahead and left were dry. Right was soon submerged in water, but left also smelled like it. No silver light or sign of stairs. He turned to Micah. “Clear?”
He slowly checked each tunnel and then their rear before he nodded. “Clear.”
They took the right path. North. It had been the plan to head deeper in and the water gave them more light than the other two options. As their boots submerged, the tunnel lit up around them like day, while everything else experienced a quick sunset. A strange dissonance.
About ten meters in, they had another three options and checked left and right before heading straight on.
Ryan kept an ear out for trouble and heard … something. Fighting in the distance? For a second, he had hoped it might be a person, another climber or group who could help them. He thought of the whistle in his pocket. But then he heard the shrieks and the gurgled echoes and knew. Of course, now that the sun set, they would come out of hiding.
“The fish-rats and the normal rats don’t like each other,” he told Micah, tapping his ear.
The other guy nodded without looking, distracted by the weapon after all.
He felt antsy. They were rushing this, in the dark, in the unfamiliar section of an unfamiliar floor, with a few drops of middle-grade healing potion left and a weapon they knew nothing about.
This was how mistakes happened.
But what else were they supposed to do? They backtracked and checked tunnels they had passed, kept an eye out for silver light. He missed Lisa. She would have known what to do right now, could have given them more light, security, directions. Her lizards could have scouted ahead.
But no, it was just him here as the floor around them fell into true darkness. He didn’t know a spell that could give them light. Not light or even fire, not that he could have cast that even if it were necessary.
He glanced down at Micah’s glove. Even if he was wearing the ring underneath, Ryan wasn’t trained. And fears ran deeper than that, he knew. Better than most. Or else, they wouldn’t be fears.
They were four bends in, one to the West when the bat’s cry made him crash into the wall, hands over his ears. The sound was deep. Low. It reverberated half a dozen times a second. Above it, a high-pitched tick came, and below, a subtle buzzing, almost like a cricket.
Ryan had heard bats before, but not like this, and never this loud. They were high-pitched, reminiscent of insects and mice. This thing’s main cry was guttural and hoarse, almost a cacophony on its own.
Even if things were high or loud, they shouldn’t have hurt his ears so much. Ryan knew his enhanced senses were based on animals’, but he could handle whistles to a degree, even dog whistles. It didn’t hurt.
This did.
Which part of its cry was it? The deep roar, the buzzing, or the high-pitched ticks? All of them?
“—yan. Ryan.” Micah was shaking him, trying to help him up, worry clear on his face.
“Bats,” he managed to say, to reassure him. The bats couldn’t get in here. They were safe.
“I know!”
No, not trying to help him up. Micah was trying to drag him away.
Ryan looked down the tunnel and saw a black and blue horror loping toward them through the water. Its long limbs threw up the water, but the splashes disappeared into a storm surrounding it. Impossibly long fingers like veins bent back at its sides. Where were its wings?
Its mouth was large and wide, skin loose on the sides with fangs pointing out straight in each corner. The back of its throat glowed a muted red instead of blue. Almost purple or pink. When it closed its mouth, it looked something like a man without a chin. A cross of toad and bat.
It immediately opened its mouth again to cry.
Ryan shoved Micah into a run and followed after. He tried not to focus on it. Focus on anything other than the sound and the pain that came with it, but still stumbled. Micah helped him stand.
A glance back confirmed how hunched over the beast was, but how the hell did it fit in these tunnels? They should have been safe. It was too fast. They both knew it. They would have to fight.
The next crossroads they passed, they turned around to face it. Micah hefted his club and Ryan raised spear and shield, the light crystal in his left hand. It threw a shadow, rays of light extending to the side behind the wood, pools of light extended from water and stone where they landed.
Stab its throat, he told himself. Maybe he could silence it. But when the beast stepped within reach, it lurched to a halt as something smacked against stone. Broad shoulders too wide for the tunnels had slammed into the corners of the crossroads, making the beast grunt in pain.
Where had those come from?
Ryan didn’t look for an answer. He just grabbed Micah’s arm and ran for it. It might find a way to squeeze through, but it would be painful and slow as it scraped along the tunnel walls. Now was their chance.
It cried after them, and he grit his teeth against the pain. They only got so far as the next intersection when Micah wrenched his hand free and spun around again. Water splashed up behind them. It had caught up already. How?
Ryan turned around to face it and caught a glimpse of leathery wings. One of those massive shoulders appeared again and slammed into the wall to the left. The beast tilted to the right as it tried to snap at them.
Ryan struck the reaching right arm down with his shield, the limb suddenly twice the size it had been before. He set his boot in the water, hoped his enhanced traction would give him the stability he needed, and it put pressure his bruised leg.
He would have followed up to stab it, but Micah leaned into him and snatched the light crystal out of his hands. He held it forward to illuminate the entire beast.
The storm cloud was gone. As were the spindly limbs, and bone and skin body that was definitely not shaped like it a bat’s. Its flesh flowed into one another, more like a kite than a mouse with wings attached.
Except now, the beast was the massive hulking figure they had spotted on the chasm walls. It was that mass that made it too broad to fit into the tunnels, too broad to even pull itself back out.
“Light makes it corporeal!” Micah shouted and brought his bat down across its head. Corporeal? First slimes, now half-ghosts or what?
The beast seemed unfazed by the strike. It just opened its toad-like mouth again and cried right at them. Even Micah stumbled back at the sound. The light of the crystal wavered and then disappeared, plunging them into darkness.
Ryan couldn’t see what was happening. A streak of blue. A swirling darkness. Where was Micah? Had he dropped the crystal? No, then it should have shone. His eyes were so slow to adjust. He raised his shield up to cover his head in case the beast attacked him, and spotted more blue and red. Blood? The beast’s organs were glowing from the inside.
The light made him shiver and he instinctively pushed up [Hot Skin] to keep warm. In the same motion, he pushed forward. Even if he couldn’t see and his leg hurt like hell, he had to help.
A blinding white light stopped him and the beast went riged as three parts of its body hit stone. Wood smacked against flesh. It cried out again, in pain. A second later, everything was pitch black.
Micah was fighting it, somehow, using the light crystal. Ryan caught a glimpse of a figure slipping past a corner and the bat swiveling its head after. It knew where he was.
Ryan shoved his spear into the side of its throat and drew a trickle of glowing, red smoke, but the spear didn’t push entirely into its thick skin. On his second strike, red and blue light swiveled toward him, angry. A red throat opened up above as the bat snapped at him, mouth large enough to take off his head in one go.
He would have blocked, but the snap cut off halfway as a sickening crunch made the beast wince. It lashed out wildly, flailing and turning its hunched form to attack Micah, wherever he was.
An arm swiped out and the guy revealed the crystal for a second. The added mass made its arm scrape along the wall. The bat put more force into it and Micah just let the crystal fall back into his glove. He slipped beneath the beast’s arm, where leathery wings and muscles would have caught him a second ago. The added momentum of the strike put the bat off-balance and he brought the club down.
That crunch came again, of broken bones. Far too much hurt for Micah to be dealing out, even with two hands. Some kind of force enchantment? The bat slammed his body in his direction, but Micah had already put a leg against the wall behind him and pressed off to roll over its thin form.
It raised itself up to swivel on him where he landed, that tick and buzzing telling the beast constantly where they were. Micah flashed the light crystal at it when it did and its back slammed into the ceiling.
Ryan stabbed it again, over and over to distract it. The little amount of damage his spear did only served to irritate the beast as it tried to catch Micah, but the boy was far too nimble to be caught, and every little bit would help.
An arm swiped out and a flash of light a second after added mass, but no force to the swipe, slowing it down. Then the crystal was tucked away to barely avoid the strike of the thinner arm.
It was lithe but fragile in the dark, and slow but strong in the light. At least, in these tunnels. Micah used that interaction against it, using the crystal at the right moments to make it slow and fragile instead.
Another crunch from a two-handed strike and the beast cried out much longer than before, whimpering.
The next time Micah revealed it in its entirety, its movements were slow. Its muscles might have made it stronger, but its bones were still broken beneath the skin. It had troubles standing.
Then darkness. Ryan was used to it now and brought his shield up as the beast shifted. It wasn’t even trying to hit him, it was just following Micah as best it could, rearing itself up.
The guy brought the baseball bat in low and knocked its leg out from under it. He didn’t light the crystal again when he climbed onto its back. One of the beast’s shoulders was still broad from the light leaking out of its wounds, but the other was gangly. It hunched toward the ground.
Micah was half its height and maybe a fifth its size, but he had methodologically taken the beast apart with one weakness alone. Ryan didn’t know if it was just him or all of them, but that was the difference between a combat Path and none, he thought, what he had to strive for with hard work.
There was no expression on Micah’s face excerpt exertion when he brought his weapon down to break its head in. With three of its limbs broken and the other virtually flayed by spear strikes, it couldn’t defend itself. On the third hit, it burst into a cloud of smoke and Micah fell.
Ryan rushed through to help him up from where he’d landed with one knee in the water, heaving. “You alright?”
A barely perceptible nod. He leaned over for a red and blue crystal and Ryan picked it up for him. It was cold to the touch, like the bat’s light had been. “We need to get out of here before more come. Those things hunt.”
Micah nodded and caught his breath to say, “But we can fight them.”
“No.” Ryan shook his head. “We can’t. You’re clearly exhausted. Just because you beat one, that isn’t a guarantee it will always work. And what if two of those things attack us at the same time?”
“What do we do then?”
“We have to fall back.”
Micah looked at him. “Where?”
Ryan thought it over and they only really had one option, “The treasure room.”
There were fish-rats waiting for them when they got back, and killing them was much more exhausting than Ryan remembered. If they had found a portal out, he would have fallen asleep in seconds back at school. Instead, he got to take his knife to the walls of the room and shear off large carpets of moss, which they stacked against the treasure room’s entrance.
He could only imagine how tired Micah had to feel. The other guy cut holes into the moss and they layered some stones on it where it folded over the ground to secure it. If rats attacked them, they could escape through folds near the ceiling, which they wouldn’t be able to reach.
That just left the question of the bats, toads, and wandering golems, though they had only seen two of those. They hadn’t encountered any toads since it got dark, but Ryan wasn’t willing to risk it. He looped some rope around the top portion of the moss and pulled it taut into the treasure room. That would allow them to get out, but it would make squeezing in from the outside difficult.
Golems … They didn’t have any way of defending against them. At least, none that wouldn’t backfire. The more defenses they prepared, the higher the chance that monsters would try to knock them down. There were two ways to camp in the Tower: Avoid notice, or be strong enough to defend your camp. They clearly needed to do the former. And even if they wanted to prepare defenses, they had few options. They would just have to keep an ear out for the golem’s heavy steps and adjust.
Then there were the bats.
“If we light up the crossroads leading into here,” Micah said, “they’ll at least have to squeeze through. That’ll give us time to respond, right? Or kill them?”
Ryan agreed, but there were issues. “We’ll have to light up the crossroads in a way that can’t be removed, and even if we do it with the light crystals”—he held the one they had up—”we only have one.”
Micah frowned and chewed his lip, clearly thinking. Hopefully, he would have a good solution. All Ryan could think of was somehow fixing the crystals to the ceiling with a net, out of reach of the bat’s. How far was their reach?
“I could make something, I think,” he sounded unsure, “for the water. Not sure how long it’d last. Two hours at best, maybe half an hour at worst, so we’d have to reapply it when it runs out, but I would need more light crystals. The more the better.”
“A potion?”
“Yeah. To put in the water. That can’t be removed, right?”
Great. That was great, but it also meant they would have to go out hunting for supply closets. He nodded, trying to seem confident.
“Do you know what the enchantment does, yet?” He nudged his head at the baseball bat as he shrugged off his pack. He could leave some of its contents here, cut down on the weight. “I saw you strike the bat. Force enchantment?”
Micah started copying him but froze at the words and slowly shook his head. “Not force. Weight. When I put mana into it, it gets heavier and sturdier. Although it’s already plenty sturdy. I can see earth essence layering over it. Multiple layers. And when I’m holding it, those layers stay and dirt and rock stick to the wood.”
He let it slip through his hands to show Ryan the tip. Small pebbles and dirt clung there, forming the beginnings of an outer layer. Wouldn’t that just deform the bat when it struck, though?
Micah frowned. “It’s not all at once. I mean, not everything sticks to it right away. It’s a slow build-up. I think I’m doing something wrong.”
Ryan shook his head. It wasn’t like they had a good way of figuring it out. But the description sounded familiar enough. “I think it might be a stone skin enchantment. Or at least, something similar. The added weight and actual shell could be separate additions. Still, it’s good to know. Enhancement and controlled weight are great. Do you want to keep using it?”
Micah looked at the bat with second appreciation and turned to slip it back around. He nodded, hesitant. “I— Yeah? Please?”
“Sure. Ready?”
Micah nodded and quickly turned around to toss the sacks he had brought with over their small pile of belongings, to hide them and the glow of the potion they had found. Then he said, “Ready.”
They squeezed through the side of the moss carpet and out of the golem’s room, into familiar tunnels. Getting to the nearest closet was easy enough—they had mapped out the area before—but doing so in the dark and in their exhaustion took twice as long. Still, no toads. Not nocturnal?
Daylight greeted them at the supply closet, out of place in the darkness. It lit up the tunnels for a few meters in every direction from the door, and they hid their crystals away to remain unnoticed.
Halfway in the doorway was a large pile of Sewer Rats. A literal pile, as they huddled close, some scurrying around in circles or climbing up the debris into the hole in the ceiling. Their hairless tails were the last thing to slip from view. At least, now they knew what they might encounter in those.
It seemed like they were hiding for the night, in their own way. Ryan didn’t know if they could fight that. There were at least five rats huddled together and any number of more could appear at a moment’s notice. One disappeared for two more to show up. He glanced back at Micah to confer. “Should we check on another supply closet? Maybe we’ll have better luck.”
He shook his head. “They’ll all be similar, I bet. Or worse. There aren’t any tiny rats here, see?”
No. There weren’t. But those could hide in cracks in the wall, he bet. They might spill out at any time.
“Maybe … maybe we don’t have to fight them,” Micah said. “They’re here because of the light. What if we take that away?”
“How?”
Micah glanced at his shield and then held up a hand and sort of gestured with two fingers, making them walk.
“No.”
“C’mon—”
“We’d have better chances of charging them head-on.”
“We will,” Micah insisted and shoved the bat at him. “Here, give this a few swings. Charge, knock that pile to the winds. I duck in and grab the crystal, we duck out again and run for it.”
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Ryan frowned, but let the guy switch his spear out his hand and place the bat there. He tested his grip and its weight and swung it around. It was pretty nice. Still, he asked, “What’s to stop them from just running after us to get back in the light?”
He pointed. “The fact that they keep on ducking into that hole in the ceiling and out again? Plus, we’ll hide it. There won’t be any light to run after. Strike from the dark, plunge them into the dark, leave. Simple.”
Ryan glanced down the tunnel again. “There might be more hiding in there. Reinforcements.”
“There’s definitely more hiding in there, but however many they are, the tunnel has to lead somewhere safe because not more than one or two can squeeze through at a time and I’ve spotted at least three different rats coming and going. No idea why they can’t stay in one place, though.”
Ryan’s frown deepened. “You can tell them apart?”
Micah hesitated and shrugged.
Ryan checked again and he was right. There really were different rats coming and going. He could tell because he was used to watching animals. He’d spent half his time “training” doing it in the hopes of mimicking them.
Micah … Ryan suspected he could tell them apart for an entirely different reason.
He focussed on the bat and gave it a good swing. Light, like an actual baseball bat, but more durable because of the enchantment. Its proportions were slightly off from what he was used to. On his second swing, he forced a trickle of mana into it. Pure mana. Not the other kind. The bat immediately became heavier and almost swung out of his control. He had to adjust his stance.
He tried a third and fourth time. The more mana he pushed in, the heavier it got. Up to a cap? He wasn’t used to using a lot, though. Still, he could make it work. He looked at Micah and considered for a moment before he gave him a curt nod.
They struck from darkness, sprinting at the supply closet with their light crystal hidden. The rats reacted just in time for Ryan’s bat to take them in the side. He put his all into the swing and caught three of them; launched them into the doorframe, the tunnel, and the wall of the closet.
The weight put a strain on his elbow and he grit his teeth. The bone and wood held fast.
Micah slipped past him, almost skidding in the water. He placed a hand on the doorframe to push off, a foot on the rubble of secure ground, and reached up to snatch the crystal from its cradle. It immediately disappeared in his pack and the room dimmed but didn’t go dark.
Shit. It still kept the light.
The rats screeched and surging around them. Ryan brought his bat down on one’s head and pushed mana in again. The weapon struck through and bounced off the ground. The crushed rat burst in one strike.
Ryan’s eyes went wide. Okay, he was starting to like this.
Meanwhile, Micah hadn’t stopped. He put one foot against the wall next to the cradle and pushed off to turn around his momentum, and tagged past Ryan, who slapped one more rat away before he ran after.
Glancing back, he saw that some had taken up the chase but the others were panicking as the room got darker and darker around them. Micah had been right, they rushed for the hole in the ceiling to escape.
A second later, the first of the fish-rats escaped from the hole in the ground and started fighting with the rats that hadn’t been so quick to escape from the darkness. A perfect diversion.
Micah’s plan had worked, so they did it two more times with similar degrees of success. They had to fight a roving band of fish-rats on their way back, and Ryan reluctantly gave the bat back so Micah would have a weapon with some range. He was better with his spear anyway.
He was pleasantly surprised to find their lair untouched. Micah smiled tiredly as he dropped down and got to work on the potion. He plucked gravel from the baseball bat and dropped it in the water along with the broken light crystals, stuffing it all in as tight as he could.
“I thought you needed more water than ingredients?” Ryan asked, standing next to the peephole to keep an eye and ear out.
He shook his head. “Not with crystals. Or rather, essence. I can just do it over and over to charge up as much as the mana can handle. It would be better with a pattern or something to tether it, but I’m hoping the rocks will do that.”
“Why not just toss some grass inside?”
“It might help. Or it might ruin everything,” he said. “It has to fit. And anyway, this works.”
He shook the bottle and it lit up with the brilliant white light of four light crystals combined. Ryan squinted and held a hand out to block the light, blinded.
“Oh, sorry! Sorry.”
The moment he could see, they snuck out and poured a bit in either tunnel, relying on eye measurements. The water lit up like daylight next them but diminished further in until it looked like dye snaking down a river.
The did the same with the other exit and checked to see if they could see the right one from the peephole. Only barely. When it stopped glowing, they would have to hurry to repeat the effect or those bats would be able to come in here. Those were the greatest threat. For now.
“Now we …” Micah started and faltered. “I was going to say count and see how long it lasts, but—No watch.” He held his arms up helplessly, shrugged them, and let them fall again.
Ryan took a deep breath and stifled a groan. “As soon as we get out of here, we’re buying watches, no matter how much they cost.”
Micah nodded, but didn’t look happy it about.
“Can you tell what the potion does?” He nudged his head at the blue bottle lying in their pile. They should pack that together again in case they had to leave abruptly … in a moment. His leg really didn’t want him moving right now.
Micah frowned and shook his head. “Doesn’t have a pattern. Doesn’t have an … anything.”
“How do other [Alchemists] know what Tower potions do, then? And [Mages] or [Explorers]?”
“Appraisals spells and Skills, I guess.”
“Ah.” Ryan smiled and shook his head. He’d known that. “As soon as we get out of here, I’m making you learn an appraisal spell, then.” Knowing what that potion could do could make all the difference.
Micah groaned a little and closed his eye for a second. “Sure.” The second stretched on and he swayed a little on his feet. Even though they had slept in this morning, seven or more hours of this was tiring.
“You can sleep, you know?” Ryan told him. “We won’t be doing anything until sunrise except renew those potions.”
Micah’s eyes shot open. “Yeah, so I have to stay awake for that.”
“No.” He shook his head. “We take shifts. That’s how this works. I watch for a few hours, wake you. You watch for a few hours, wake me … We can’t tell hours in here, but I can measure it with how long the glow lasts. If it’s long, I’ll wake you. If not, I’ll reapply it a few time—”
“On your own?” Micah interrupted him and shook his head once, curt. “No. We both go.”
Ryan really wanted Micah to get some good sleep for tomorrow. “And waking you up just to have you follow me there half-asleep will be dangerous, too. You won’t be awake. Alert.”
He frowned and looked through his peephole in the moss. “Let’s wait until the glow stops working and then decide?”
Ryan sighed. “You might as well sleep until then, right? Or rest?”
Micah thought it over for a moment until he conceded and shifted the sacks he had brought over to cushion the ground, used his backpack for the wall, and leaned against the wall of moss a little, knees drawn halfway up.
“Just going to rest a little.”
“Right.”
“You could do it, too?”
“Need to keep watch.” He nudged his head at the peephole.
“You could cut another, lower?”
“Would weaken the wall. It’s fine. I can stand. I have more endurance than you, remember?”
“Fine. But warn me if you see anything?”
“Sure.”
It took a while. Ryan would have thought Micah would fall asleep in seconds, but then he started shivering instead. He huddled closer and tried to keep warm, but was clearly struggling to fall asleep.
Dried mud all over, half-dried mud, wet boots, the tunnels were getting colder now that it was dark. The stone he leaned against probably was cold already. Micah sniffled and Ryan cursed. “Take those boots off.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll get sick. Didn’t you say there’s disease in all the water?”
“Yeah, but I barely touched it. And my boots”—He frowned down at them and looked back up. “I need to be ready to fight.”
“Micah—” Ryan started but didn’t finish. He was right, in a way. If he took his boots off, it would take forever to get them back on. The ground out there was dry. He might be able to walk around with socks if it came to a fight, but it would be risky. Fighting a golem with boots was already dangerous, but barefoot? One wrong step and his foot would be crushed. What if they had to flee?
They needed another solution. For the cold, too. His eyes wandered back to the empty treasure chest near the back and Micah followed his look. Realization followed, “No.”
“We need a fire.”
“But— Not the treasure chest.”
“What else are we supposed to burn?”
“The moss—”
“Smokes too much. We’ll have to cut a hole in it either way, or we’ll suffocate in here. But we need to dry our things and keep warm or we’ll shiver all night and get sick by morning.”
“Then, what about these sacks?” He dragged one of the ones he was sitting on up a little.
“Won’t burn long.”
“Ryan.”
“It’s just a treasure chest,” he insisted. “Look, it probably doesn’t have any cool properties anyway. We need a fire. And we were going to leave it behind anyway, right? We have the real treasure.”
“Yeah, but we don’t know what it does,” he sulked.
Ryan headed back to grab the chest, already pulling his knife from his shield. His arm groaned at the idea of cutting it into burnable parts, but he ignored it. “Keep an eye out? And give the smoke somewhere to clear to?”
“Fine,” he grumbled.
Ryan tried for a good five minutes to get his knife in edgewise and break the chest into parts before he gave up. He managed to cut it, sure, but it felt like he was trying to saw into a tree trunk. Okay, maybe it was a little more durable than normal wood. He walked back to the moss, where Micah had cut closable windows into the wall and complimented him, “Smart.”
He got a shrug in response.
Ryan listened for another few minutes to make sure the coast was clear before he took the bat to the chest. Pushing as much mana into it as he could, he brought it down with a deafening crash and flinched together at the noise.
Micah jumped next to the moss. “Ryan?!”
“Sorry. That was louder than I thought.”
A bat’s cry echoed in the distance and they huddle up next to the moss, switching the weapons around again so they would be ready to fight. A minute later, there was the thump of flesh against stone and another cry that made his ears feel like they would pop. How were they not bleeding?
But then he heard splashes. Rather than force its way into their room, the bat had decided to leave. Thankfully.
He sighed and gave Micah the all-clear.
They still needed rocks for the fire, so they ducked out for a moment to gather some before he went back to breaking the broken chest into smaller parts. He stacked those up in a mini-bonfire like he had seen the other [Scouts] do during the camping trip. The last part was the most difficult. He managed to whittle one piece down to an almost stick-like shape and spun it over the shavings and a piece of wood in the hopes of starting a fire, but— Nothing happened.
He kept on spinning the stick until he felt like he’d get blisters through his gloves, then tried with his bare hands to see if that would help. Nope.
This had worked for the other scouts, Ryan knew. He even had [Hot Skin] pushed all the way up to warm it a little, if that helped. What was he doing wrong?
He tried for a few minutes before he got frustrated and took a break. He rearranged the shavings a little, whittled the stick a little thinner, and did a bunch of other things he knew wouldn’t have an impact. They shouldn’t have to have an impact. It was supposed to be working.
He tried again, but it didn’t.
Micah was huddled close to the moss wall and keeping an eye on things, obviously trying not to shiver and swallowing all the time like he had a stuffy nose. He really would get sick.
Ryan had another option, but he had never learned anything formal. What if he did something wrong? He still didn’t want Micah to know. It wasn’t like he wanted to learn spellcraft.
Spells … he looked over and hesitated for a moment before he asked, “Micah?” There was a third option.
“What?”
Ryan took a deep breath and swallowed his pride. “It’s not working. I think … it might have something to do with the wood? But, I was thinking that— Maybe you could do something?”
Micah blinked. “What?”
“[Candle]?”
His eyes went wide and he shook his head. “No.”
“Hey, just try it?”
“I can’t.”
“You can. You still have the Skill. It’s just in your head, like that woman— Lisa’s friend said. You just need to—” Micah was still shaking his head, so Ryan switched tactics. “You have that fire resistance ring now, right? You’re wearing it?”
He paused and fiddled with his head.
“So just try? Please?”
He needed a moment before he looked at the shavings stacked on the board. Ryan glanced down, but he couldn’t see anything happening. He waited a little while before he hesitantly asked, “Micah—”
“I’m trying,” he said. “It’s not that easy, okay?”
Not easy?
“Just say the word. You have the Skill.”
“That doesn’t work either.”
“Just try it? Say it? How hard can it be?”
“It won’t work.”
“It’s casting. Of course, it’ll work.”
“[Candle],” he snapped, looking at the shavings. “[Candle], [Candle], [Candle], [Candle]— Do you see the freaking problem? If I tell you, it’s not working. Listen to me.”
“Sorry! Alright? I’m just trying to start a fire so you don’t freeze to death or get sick before we can find a way out here.”
“You want a stupid fire?” Micah asked and stomped over to the where his little workstation. “Here, I’ll make you a stupid fire.”
He grabbed the spindle out of his hands and considered it before snatching his knife away, too, and whittled it down another third of its size. He grabbed another stick and whittled that one down as well, then looked around until he pulled out one of the smaller ropes from the sacks. He looped that around the one stick and pulled it taut to tie a bow around the other, put a block on top, then pushed that on the board with the shavings. He pushed and pulled the bow to get the stick in the middle to spin back and forth over the shavings. Ryan stared, dumbfounded.
A trickle of smoke came a short minute later. Then the crackling of flames and an ember.
“Feed them,” Micah whispered.
Ryan did. In a few moments, they had a tiny fire going. He took over from there. since he knew the rest. But how had Micah? “How did you know how to do that?”
“How did you not know how to do that?” Micah asked back. “You spent two weeks in a scout trip just a little while ago.”
“Yeah, but I never joined any of the fire starting lessons,” he said, defensive.
“Well then what else were you doing?” Micah snapped.
Ryan glared at him. He hadn’t joined any of those because of Micah. And now he was getting flak for it? And oh-so-scared-of-fire Micah knew one of the more complicated fire starting methods?
“Screw you.” He fed some tinder to the flames. “I got a strength aura Skill and a new Class. What were you doing aside from annoying my parents? You needed months to learn a single spell.”
“I didn’t freaking annoy them.”
“Yeah? You think they wouldn’t have liked two weeks to themselves? No, instead they had to take care of you.”
“I did a bunch of chores for them. I was barely around. I made things easier. You were off on a vacation on your own. Plus, they have all the time in the world to themselves, now.”
All their time in the world to themselves and his replacement. Whatever remark Ryan would have given died on his lips when he thought of that.
“I didn’t annoy them,” Micah repeated. He sounded like he was convincing himself. Because of course everything always had to be about him.
“I know,” Ryan snapped. “They love you. Shut up.” He could stack on the larger planks in a minute. He jerked his head at the moss and grumbled, “Go keep watch. You can dry your boots in a moment.”
He stared at Ryan for a moment before he shook his head like he wasn’t worth it and stormed off. That headshake alone wanted Ryan to continue arguing. Fuck him. He wanted out of here. He really wished they had found a portal by now. But he was trapped in this room and all he could do was feed the flames while Micah huddled as close to the moss from them as he could. What was even up with that?
“You are wearing the fire resistance ring, right?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Then it should have been fine. Ryan shoved some larger planks on the fire to give it fuel and pointed. “Dry off. I’ll keep watch.”
They switched positions and Micah sat down close enough to the flames that his boots might dry, but not so close that it would actually warm him. Not yet, at least. He was shivering. Why didn’t he just scoot closer?
Eventually, Ryan couldn’t handle it anymore and snatched up one of the sacks, held it up, and turned it around to see if there was any way he could use it as a blanket. Maybe if he cut the sides?
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to make a blanket.”
“For you?”
“For you.”
“Fuck off. I’m fine.”
Ryan ignored him. He started trying to get his knife in to cut it when Micah snapped, “Stop that. Don’t break my stuff.”
“Then scoot closer to the fire.”
“No. Stop or I’ll make you, Ryan.”
That was an empty threat, and they both knew it. “Just scoot closer. What’s the big deal?”
“I don’t want to, okay? Now let go.”
“I will, as soon as you—”
Micah yanked his glove off, twisted off the ring and threw it across the room.
“What the—”
“Screw that! It’s not the fire, okay?” he snapped. “It’s the freaking memories of the fire. I don’t care if I know I’m safe. I still hate it. Haven’t you ever heard a groan at night and known it was the house but still laid awake? Or seen a dog sniff you and know they were friendly, but there’s that voice at the back of your mind that says, Hey, it could bite you. Look, its teeth are right there. Maybe you should take a step back? Haven’t you ever walked across the bridge to Watertown and taken a step inward away from the edge?” He scooted away from the fire entirely. “I know I’m safe. I don’t care if I am. It has nothing to do with that. It’s not just a voice saying, Oh, hey. It’s everything screaming at me to get the fuck away from it.”
Every one of his words was like a knife twisting in Ryan’s gut and he tried not to let it show. He dropped the sack. “You’ll catch a cold.”
“I’ll get better.”
“You might not be able to fight.”
“Then I’ll hide. Like we did in the beginning?”
“Instead of just scooting closer right now?”
“Yes.”
But, why? He was so freaking stubborn.
Micah still kept away and looked intent on saying nothing. And there was nothing Ryan could argue to make him change his mind. He was helpless. And anything he said would only ring hollow.
He trudged over and put another chunk in the fire for him since he obviously wouldn’t do it. As long as it burned fiercely enough, it would still warm up this room. Walking around to avoid the smoke flowing through the moss-windows, Ryan then sat down and rubbed his eyes in exhaustion. He was tired. He wished he had a bed to sleep in instead of stone. Maybe they should have pressed on after all.
After a minute, Micah hesitantly asked, “What about keeping watch?”
He tapped his ear without looking. He only really had to listen for the sound of moving water. The toads didn’t seem to be around and they could handle the rats, even if they surprised them.
“Oh.”
Shouldn’t he have guessed that? Ryan wondered how they could be so in sync outside of the Tower but have to discuss and plan everything in it. They acted differently. They had to touch base. Was that a good or a bad thing?
Another few minutes passed until Micah asked, “Scoot closer?”
Ryan looked over. “What?”
“I mean, if you’re so afraid of catching a cold you could just … scoot closer?” He must have seen the look on Ryan’s face because he quickly added, “I mean, I know you hate touching people, but even just a little closer and you could push up [Hot Skin] and I’d be warm?”
Ryan balked at most of what he had just said, but especially, “I hate touching people?”
“Yeah,” he said, rubbing his arm warm a little. “You avoid body contact like the plague?”
Ryan tried to think over, but no matter how much he thought about it—
“That’s just not true,” he said. “What the fuck do you mean, I don’t like touching people? Sure, we haven’t sparred, but—”
“That’s different,” Micah said. “I mean, sure there’s gestures and horsing around, but, like, when we sit next to each other in class or at home, you’ll try to stay as far away from me as possible and jerk away when I get to close. So I guess, you just like your personal space?”
He looked unsure.
Oh. Now Ryan got it. “No, I just—” He sighed. “Pushing down [Hot Skin] all the time is exhausting, okay? I don’t want to bother you.”
“Bother me?”
“We just argued because you don’t want to scoot a few inches closer to a fire,” he said, gesturing at it. And he was pretty sure they were arguing right now.
“Yeah, and?”
“So, I’m not going to scoot closer to you.”
“Wait, do you— Ryan. Fire and warm stuff or two different things. You’re warm. You’re not burning. Hell, we hang out in the bathhouse half the time and the water there is hot.”
Ryan shook his head. “We switched to the colder baths a few months ago and haven’t switched back.”
“Because I thought you like it. And, like, who likes the warmest baths anyway? They’re practically boiling.”
He made a face. “I don’t care, either way. But you also said you don’t like to swim in the river, and—”
Micah huddled closer into himself when he mentioned that. He didn’t even seem to notice.
Ryan broke off. What was up with that? He hesitated and then just asked, “Why don’t you like to swim?”
He shrugged. His voice was quiet. “I had to swim in the Tower, back then.”
The fire crackled and tiny plumes of sparks shot out every now and then. Smoke layered the air, as most but not all of it escaped through the windows in the moss. Ryan frowned and tried to remember everything Micah had told him, in the bathhouse back then. Salamander’s Den. Rubble. Wolves’ Den. When would he have had to swim? There was no water anywhere.
Had he not … told the entire truth? Or was he lying right now? No, Micah was so stuck-up about lies because of the mistakes he’d made, he wouldn’t start up again, right? Ryan didn’t like the possibility of it, even if the thought alone made him a hypocrite. “When?” he asked.
“I don’t remember. I— Nevermind, okay? It’s just,” Micah sighed and was silent for a moment before he gave him a wavering smile, the smallest of olive branches. “I’m afraid of fire, Ryan, not of you.” He scooted closer himself then and stretched his toes down, closer to the flames.
Ryan froze at the cold contact but didn’t move away. Instead, he mumbled, “You should be.”
He frowned. “What?”
Ryan had hung back after mana manipulation class on Monday. He’d gone to their teacher to ask about the effect with the wristband, and similar light enchantments, and got an obvious answer.
You’re saying the items are the same, but the output is different? Mrs. Burke had asked with a smile on her lips. The answer should be pretty obvious, then. If it isn’t output, it’s—
Input. A quick meditation session had confirmed it the same day and Ryan didn’t know what to do.
He sighed and confessed, “I got a new Skill, Micah. From my Path last Monday. [Lesser Fire Affinity]. It’d help me learn and cast fire spells. It could be a way to further my Path, but … it would definitely have consequences on how I level, which Skills I get and …” He let it hanging.
It could change a lot.
Micah stared at him for a long moment before he mumbled, “Oh.”
Ryan hadn’t even wanted to say it out loud. He’d wanted to scrounge the library for other options, other Paths he could pursue. What did [Blue Mages] do? He might have been able to copy them. But Lisa hadn’t been as wrong as he had thought back then. The Skills he created himself didn’t sacrifice Capacity. They sacrificed purity. The largest of which he’d sacrificed already was for fire.
It was something he had to keep in mind for the future. If he used [Mimic Beast] to get all his Skills. A drawback.
“Ryan?” Micah asked.
“Yeah?”
“You’re an idiot.”
He looked over. “Huh?”
“So what if you learn fire spells? I have—” He broke off and looked around for his fire resistance ring, somewhat frantically. It lay near the corner, completely fine as far as Ryan could see, but neither of them went to fetch it. “I mean, I know you’ll use them responsibly, right? I won’t have to worry.”
“No. Of course, not—”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “So then you’re an idiot, right?”
He hung his head. “Yeah.”
After another moment, the other guy asked, “Which spells do you want to learn first? Oh, do you want to try casting something now? You could try to start a fire. Wait, you could have started a fire!”