Micah lay half-asleep in a memory wreath and kept an eye on the room outside. Ryan slept near the wall behind him, next to their packs full of loot and the remains of the campfire. He couldn’t help but smile at the sight, but his smile wavered. It was Monday, technically. School would start in eight or so hours and he was in the Tower.
He was skipping class.
Sure, Vanessa had told him not to worry too much about it, but he couldn’t help but feel like he was in trouble. What would the school think? Ms. Denner? Ryan’s parents? His dad.
He knew it wasn’t his fault. Well, it kind of was his fault. He actually wasn’t sure if it was his fault they were stuck in here. If he hadn’t invited Ryan in the first place … Either way, he felt guilty. He felt happy—
They were finally doing something, pushing themselves, camping out in the Tower, experimenting. He’d made his first poison. Ryan had leveled. He felt it in his fingertips, the anticipation. If he had to stay in the Tower for the rest of his life to keep that feeling, a part of him wanted to.
—and he felt twice as guilty because he felt happy. The Tower was gone, the city was probably panicking, and he was camping out here with Ryan, fighting golems to collect their hearts and looking for bowls to make leather.
Climb, the message had read. If the Dwarf wanted it, who were they to disobey? It was easier to do that than think about other things …
He sighed, and a small smile rose and fell on his lips like a tired breath. He was lying to himself again, wasn’t he? They would have to find an exit soon, if only so they wouldn’t miss all the organizational beats of the last day.
And for everything else. They couldn’t bet on Walter and his team to get back before them and tell everyone they were safe. It wouldn’t do to worry people like he’d worried his family, back then.
Plus, he wanted to show off Clay to Lisa. They’d have two awesome bludgeoning weapons. They only needed a third for Ryan, so Micah would get to keep this one. Then they’d have a team theme.
He suppressed a yawn and shifted to get up. It was probably time to replace the light potions soon, so none of those coldlight bats could get in. Not that he knew for sure. He hadn’t managed to bring himself to ask Nessa or Walter for a watch, not after everything else they’d done for them.
Ryan and he raided a bunch of supply closets for light crystals anyway, so they could afford to be wasteful.
He was about to get up when he noticed something moving in the dark and leaned back. Hm?
Through the hole in the moss, he saw a … a man? A thing was crawling into the room from the right entrance, the one leading to the chasm. It wasn’t something he had seen on this floor before. It sniffed, like it was searching for something.
Micah quickly grabbed the sacks and threw them over their light potions and the remains of the campfire, just to be safe. He hoped the flower wreath would also help mask their smell.
He went back to look. When it moved, its entire body shifted with the movement, muscles rolling into one another like a wave. Something about that seemed off to him. It had the body of a man, but it moved like an animal. Not like it was imitating one, but like this was natural to it.
What even was it? Its face was much too long to be human. It sniffed—the only sound Micah could hear it make. He saw thick and filthy claws tap against the ground, stones shift, and dirt scuff, but none of those things produced any noise. Some kind of muting-effect?
If it was a night monster … an assassin?
It headed for the dead rat in the center of the room and Micah relaxed. Was it hungry? It looked too large to nibble on the meat, so it might eat the entire thing. It would get a full dose of poison. On the other hand, it might leave with the body. Would they have to chase it? Fight it? Micah wondered if he could ambush a sneaky monster when it had its back turned to them. If he woke Ryan and—
No.
He froze and his heartbeat quickened. What? His breathing followed suit in almost … fear? It was just a— a rat-man-thing. It moved like a method actor portraying an animal. It didn’t even have any clothes or weapons beyond the roughed-up shorts it wore around its waist.
It was just another humanoid monster like the Kobolds. So why was he afraid?
They should have been able to defeat it. Hell, Micah should have been able to beat it on its own. But when he asked himself the question, Can I beat it—
As if reading his mind, the rat-thing glanced at their treasure room and his breathing stopped.
It met his eye. It knew he was here. It looked away and the answer came as an inevitability, the certainty of a universal truth, You wouldn’t be given the chance.
What? But—
Micah remembered the sensation, the answer coming from nowhere like a Guidance Skill. [Open Level]. It must have had something similar. When he had asked himself that question about Garen, the freaking Dragonslayer, he’d been told there was a chance. So why?
Wait! He almost smiled. Back then, he had been thinking of poisoning Garen. Being underhanded. Of course. He had a pretty potent poison lying around here, what if he tried using—
No.
Okay. So, no poison. He doubted he would be able to get it to drink it anyway. Well, what if he stabbed it in the nec—
No.
Cut its heels—
No.
He could make an alchemical. Something … He might even be able to use the golem hearts to turn it to stone or—
The effect wouldn’t last long enough. It wouldn’t be strong enough. You couldn’t run fast enough to escape.
Then lure it off the cliff, throw it off—
A cliff is but a climb.
Use the bat to collapse the ceiling on it?!
No matter what Micah thought of, the answer was the same: No. Fighting it meant death.
He realized he was breathing much too quickly. It had to have heard him. That thing was sniffing around outside, it knew it was here, and if he drew attention to himself, it could kill him. He didn’t— What was he supposed to do?
He tried to calm down, to breathe, but he didn’t understand. This had to be some kind of trick, right? Some kind of intimidation Skill messing with him? He’d heard far too many discussions about the immorality of those growing up to let himself be affected by one now.
Ryan. He didn’t know what to do, but Ryan would.
He gulped and slowly shifted over, careful not to make any noise as he stepped through the maze of their camp. He leaned closer to shake him awake, then thought better of it and pressed a hand over his mouth, just to be safe.
He tried not to look too frightened. How embarrassing would it be if he wussed out because of a simple fear effect? Ryan would … probably let him live it down. He was nice like that.
It had to be a simple fear effect, though. His hand was trembling. Please, he thought as he came to. Tell me you know what to do.
His friend woke and tried to make a sound.
----------------------------------------
What the hell was that thing?
“Micah, we have to leave,” Ryan hissed.
“I know.”
He folded the flower wreath one more time and something slipped. Another stretch of green spilled out of nowhere and bundled up on the floor. He cursed and folded it up, carpet of green growing longer in his hand even as he did.
“Micah, you don’t know how to undo the effect.”
“I know.”
He gripped his arm and pulled. “So leave it.”
“No!” Micah wrenched his arm free and went back to folding. If he just stuffed it tight enough …
It smelled nice. It was a magic item he didn’t understand. It had been a gift. He didn’t want to have to leave something of his behind just because there was something out there that might take it from him.
He wrapped the rope around to make it a large parcel of chaotic knots and picked that up. There. Some of it hung out a little, it was gangly, but that was fine. As long as he could tie it to his backpack.
“You can’t run with that,” Ryan told him.
“Sure, I can.” He paced out of the treasure room. The crumbling carpet of moss had been pushed the side, and the room emptied of everything they needed, leaving their trash behind.
His back felt heavy and he doubted he could do any gymnastics like this, but Micah already felt off-balance from the lack of sleep. It didn’t matter. He was taking it with him and that was final.
Ryan shook his head. “Whatever. Let’s just go.”
Gladly. To find a way out of here, Micah wanted nothing less. He missed home, wherever that was.
They headed deeper in, away from the chasm and past the lake. If they pushed further, they were bound to find an exit. They just had to be quick. Micah kept an eye out for toads. Ryan kept his ears out for dangers. They got four bends in without an incident before they found it.
The rat lay there, the one he had poisoned last evening, on the right-hand side. Or what was left of it, at least. It hadn’t brought them breakfast and free crystals after all. It had been undone like a child might undo its toy-box seeking something at the very bottom. Here, not wood but bone.
Four red lines led away from the others, deeper into the tunnels. At the end, a broken golem lay propped up against the wall, a hole in its chest where its crystal might have been. The rest of it was untouched.
Micah took it all in and asked, “South?”
“South.”
The thing had come from the East and headed West. These tracks led North. South was their best bet, and the direction they had explored the least.
They passed cracked walls where they had fought golems, took big steps through spilled mud, and walked by an empty alcove where a bowl had once been. They’d given it to Nessa.
The rubble in the supply closet was missing, as was its light crystal. One bend down, the roots and plants growing from the wall had all been trimmed. Some of those were in his backpack.
Seven bends in and they still hadn’t encountered a monster. The only sounds were their sloshing steps through water and the gentle murmur of its flow. Not even insects chimed. The spiderwebs were empty.
Ryan was silent as he listened for danger, but didn’t stop them.
Twelve bends in, Micah saw a trickle of red in the water and wondered if a blueberry bush was close.
Fifteen bends in, they finally found a toad hiding near the ceiling and almost sighed in relief. He painted it green and Ryan guy sunk his spear in it from the distance. The moment he did, Micah charged. The spear struck it from the wall and he finished the beast off before it could cry out a second time. He held a hand over his own mouth to avoid coughing in the smoke.
Sixteen bends in, both paths were clear and he stopped. He glanced at Ryan and hesitated. Did he want to know? No, he needed to. He twirled his finger around to make a circle and arched an eyebrow at him. A question.
Is it … around?
Ryan gulped and nodded once, curt.
Right. Of course, there hadn’t been a blueberry brush around. Of course, they’d barely encountered any monsters. No signs of combat or dead bodies … something was scaring them off right now, just like Mave had back then.
He kept his breathing calm and had a sudden panic. Would its breathing even make noise, or was that only its sniffing? Would they even know if it came for them? He glanced over his shoulder and saw nothing.
What did they do? He glanced at Ryan and the guy rose his feet in the water, made gentle sloshing sounds. They needed to get to dry land. Right. The problem was—the dry tunnels were far South and North, or center East-to-West. The water ran like twin streams to the chasm.
West was closer.
He closed his eyes and ran his mind over the map they’d made yesterday, took a right. They knew the quickest route westward, to get the furthest in, and where the least golems would force them to dodge. Mostly, because they had killed those themselves.
At the end of the tunnel, he checked with him. Last chance. Ryan gave the okay and he led them down another right, back the way they’d came. Hopefully, this would work out. Hopefully, it wouldn’t notice them. Hopefully, they would find a portal soon. If they didn’t, Micah didn’t know what else to do.
Their map brought them past one of the jungles in the distance—destroyed. The earth had been thrown up and the plants torn to shreds. Some lay flattened. Cuts ran along the walls, and whatever had lived there was gone.
They carefully stepped through the green and checked left and right, but found no exit there. A part of Micah wanted to explore anyway, simply because they hadn’t been able to yesterday. The more sensible part of his mind doubled back. Exits became scarcer in higher floors. They had to head further in.
They found an alcove that had collapsed, where claw marks dug into the wall with a passion, and a collapsed ceiling where the rat’s tunnels had once led. Had it been searching for something?
Around a bend, Ryan’s face shifted into a grimace. He tilted his face slightly toward the flower wreath, unconscious or not. A few steps later, Micah gulped as the smell hit him as well.
Glue and wet grit. He knew both from days spent collecting crystals, and weeks searching for Ryan’s lost wristband. He guessed they would never find it, now. It was gone forever. Micah hated that. He hated losing things.
The source of the smell was a wall of green flesh that blocked a left bend from floor to almost ceiling. A massive frog with brown shells growing on its skin lay there, dead. The supply closet before it had collapsed inward. Its entrance was distorted, broken from the inside out. Water trickled out beside it.
Micah stared. Had that been one of the traps? A giant frog? If they had come here yesterday …
He wanted to head on, but Ryan shushed him and looked around. He gripped his bat tighter and mouthed back, What?
His friend stepped closer to the frog. He looked up and gripped one of its growths to pull himself up, used a few fingers of his other hand to hold the next. He climbed it, the oily corpse, using its skin as handholds like a rock wall. Soon enough, he disappeared underneath the ceiling.
Micah had no choice but to follow him. He pushed Clay ahead and pulled himself up. His backpack and flower wreath pressed against the ceiling—and him closer to the smell. He almost cursed, convinced Ryan had done this on purpose.
The other guy saw his predicament and sighed before he pulled him through by his hands.
The water on the other side of it was bloody and rose above his ankles. The giant frog had been torn open. A handful of small rats and insects nibbled on its insides, crawling out of cracks in the walls. Its crystal was missing.
On the far wall, the letters EBAHERAL were written in blood. He didn’t recognize the word despite being written in their letters. Was it Dwarfish? What kind of humanoid monster wrote in blood?
Ryan frowned at the letters and glanced back. He nodded to himself and lead them further in with a hand over his nose. The next two tunnels left and right were submerged, but right quickly thinned as the water flowed in that direction. Its stones didn’t look as weathered as the others.
They took that way and reached another lake, vaster than the last. No gate barred its entrance. Pillars held the ceiling, some broken or crumbling. They were overgrown with moss and snaking green.
There was no well in the ceiling, but large crystals burned in cradles to the sides. Water trickled out of pipes below and light also came from a tunnel opposite them, across the lake.
A dark hole gaped directly below them and a small island overgrown with ferns rose out of the water to the side. The hole led back the way they’d came. It showed signs of travel. To the supply closet?
The lake wasn’t pure anymore, now that the toad had dammed the flow. Blood and disease essence spilled inside.
Ryan still pointed at the water. Micah opened his mouth to ask, but the guy quickly pressed a finger to his own lips in the signal for silence, then yanked it away again, gagging at the smell of the oil-soaked leather.
Micah almost smiled. What?
Fish, Ryan mouthed back with a grimace.
He eyed the water. It was harder to see because the lake was dimmer and there was a cloud of murk near the bottom, but there were fish in the water. Their ice caught the light when they swam close to the crystals, or distorted in the mud. He thought he also saw some regular fish and frogs.
Ser-pant?
That was harder to see, but Micah squinted and searched the pipes, the ground, the rubble in the water until he saw a dark green shape with hints of blue slithering through the rocks. He held up a finger and searched for a moment longer, held up a second one, made a third wiggle.
Two, maybe three.
Ryan nodded to himself and eyed the distance. Did he want to swim through? It was further than the last lake, even if there were broken pillars and the tiny island to offer some rest.
Well, unless something lived on the island. Which, of course, something did.
Micah wanted to ask, but Ryan apparently didn’t want to speak. Why? Was he worried the rat-thing would hear them?
They were making other sounds as they walked through the water. Louder sounds. He tapped the guy on the shoulder to get his attention and pointed away, to himself, tapped his ear, and pointed down.
It—them—listening—now?
The other guy nodded again once, curt. He didn’t look quite as worried as he had before, though. He tapped his ears—Listening?
—shook his head—Can’t hear?
—and pointed at the ground. He raised a boot to make the water slosh, then pointed away.
Can’t hear—water sounds—it?
Oh. The dry tunnels they had come here for. Ryan couldn’t hear it on them anymore, making them just as blind as it was. Or would have been, had they stuck to the dry tunnels.
His friend pointed at the ground, the lake, all around themselves and made sloshing sounds again, then pointed away and tapped his ear. He wanted to use the water to hear it again?
Not a good idea. Micah pushed a finger to his own lips and wrinkled his nose at the frog’s oil, but the message was still clear: We need to stay quiet.
Ryan shook his head and looked worried. He pointed out and back to themselves—it to them.
—tapped his ear—Listening.
—and pointed down while looking at him, the same as Micah had down, just more insistently.
Now? No. Right now.
It took Micah a few moments to understand.
It—them—listening—right now.
It knew where they were. That was why he didn’t want to speak, to avoid drawing its attention, or … He stepped back to glance at the writing on the wall in their letters. Did he think it could understand the words they spoke, too? Spirits could understand speech to a degree, but this?
If it was true, it was frightening. If not, it seemed paranoid. They were wasting time, standing here playing charades.
So Ryan wanted to use the water to even the playing field? Micah took his arm and shook his head again. He pressed his finger to his lips in the universal sign for silence. They did not want to draw its attention.
Ryan just smiled tiredly and tapped his nose. Micah wasn’t sure about that one, but he could guess. I have an idea? He looked at Micah with an open expression, almost like the puppy-dog eyes he used on Prisha. Trust.
He didn’t look confident. Micah nodded anyway.
Ryan led them back and helped him over the dead frog onto damp ground. Instead of walking away, he found a patch of earth to draw a map of the nearest tunnels, including the lake.
He pointed at it a few times, but crossed it through with lines extending out of its box as if it weren’t an option, then made a line in the direction past the toad, where they were facing right now.
He wanted to go that way? Why not just point?
Micah nodded, and he looked up and frowned, clearly thinking through the rest of whatever this plan was. He looked at Micah and mimed holding his breath, then broke out into fake gasping sounds. Mute. He shook his head, gave Micah a questioning look.
What the hell?
He did it again, then a third time, but didn’t gasp afterward then. He waved his hands as if telling Micah to … copy him? Not copy it? Oh, if they held their breaths, he wasn’t supposed to do it so long he broke out in gasping breaths?
Easy enough.
Finally, Ryan cocked his head for a moment before he leaned closer to speak, despite all their charades. “We’re going to have to run. A lot. Follow me. Remember fire and fog. We head South.”
He pointed at the map.
“Got it.”
Then they started jogging back the way they’d came, his heart pounding. This seemed like a bad idea, whatever it was. They hadn’t communicated enough. He barely understood what Ryan wanted to do, couldn’t see the big picture. What was the point of it all? Shouldn’t they just be running West as quickly as they could until they found a portal out?
He heard a stone fall in the distance and almost jumped. Everywhere he looked, his eyes tricked him into thinking the rat-thing was watching them. Every corner they rounded, he worried they would find it.
They got all the way back to where they had fought the toad and Ryan slowed down to repeat, “Trust me. Keep up. Run—”
A distortion crawled onto the far ceiling ahead of them. He pointed and warned him, but Ryan just dodged aside as he broke into a sprint. The tongue missed him by an inch and he bashed it aside, but kept on running.
Micah followed and realized they were going to ignore it. With a backward glance, he saw it was coming after them. Of course.
Around the corner, Ryan took a deep breath and started shouting at the top of his lungs. They ran straight toward a maze-patterned wall, but he didn’t stop. He just slowed down to glance back.
Micah caught the meaning and threw his weight into it. They sprinted past.
The golem burst out of the wall behind them, he ducked at the noise, and Ryan started slinging insults. They were two-thirds to the end of the tunnel when it crashed into the corner and took up the chase.
Toads, golems, Sewer Rats, normal rats; Ryan sprinted ahead and baited them all into chasing after them. Micah did his best avoid the barbed tongues that shot out at him, but still had to run fast enough that if one did catch him, he could cut it off before the horde caught up.
Around a bend. A supply closet ahead. Ryan threw his back into it and sprinted to get there before Micah did. He snatched the crystal from its cradle and ducked back just as he ran by.
Micah glanced back, but no fish-rats came out. Too bright?
A moment later, the ground shook as a massive green foot broke free and slapped down in the doorway. Its toes were webbed, murky water spilled off them, and its ears pushed free from the depths.
Micah heard the loudest croak he had ever heard in his life. It echoed in his chest like the thunder from a storm.
Another giant frog.
Ryan actually smiled at that and kept on running. Had he gone insane?
In a few short tunnels, there was a practical horde behind them that crushed itself at each corner. Some broke off into self-contained fights. Others ducked into different tunnels to try and cut them off.
Micah had to dodge barbed tongues, charging golems, and boars as he passed crossroads, and run from a river of sticky fluid the ceiling-high frog vomited into a tunnel like a flash flood.
They made an unholy amount of noise behind them, so much so Micah felt fine with calling Ryan’s name and asking him what the hell his plan was.
“Don’t you get it?” he called back, huffing.
“NO!”
“AN ARMY!”
He blinked. Oh.
How was he going to get them to fight each other, though? He thought of how he would do it when he rounded a corner and smacked right into Ryan, making them tumble to the floor.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
His friend had slowed to a standstill. At the end of the tunnel, Micah caught a glimpse of pink. A massive butterfly fanned its wings on the wall. It looked like liquid oil swirling on stained glass. The air glittered around it. Below, crystalline caterpillars that looked like the Eye Slugs of the old Tower wiggled about.
And like the Eye Slugs, they gave Micah a headache, like he was looking at an optical illusion and failing to figure it out.
Ryan, on the other hand, was staring at them like he hadn’t slept in three days.
RIBBIT.
The ground shook as the horde approached. Micah’s heart raced in his throat. He got up and hissed, “Ryan,” tugging on his arm to get him up. His friend didn’t respond. He just slowly stumbled toward the butterfly.
They didn’t have time for this. Micah cast [Condense Water] and made it as cold as he could, drenching his friend from head to toe, but that didn’t work. So he apologized before he slapped him as hard as he could.
Ryan winced and clutched his wet cheek with clear anger. “Micah? What the hell was that for?”
He took his arm and dragged him away. “The horde! We have to go. The butterfly—”
Ryan frowned and glanced over. Micah was too slow to cover his eyes or stop him. He caught another glimpse of the butterfly and his expression started easing up. Again.
No. This couldn’t be happening. Micah got desperate. What was so damn alluring about that thing?
He looked and saw rivers of color streaming from it through the air. They formed walls and roads leading deeper in, arcs growing larger as they moved overhead. Swirling colors like clouds. Glass windows formed out of fractures. Micah felt like he was moving without taking a single step.
He could have gotten lost in there and wandered for years. He could have—
Could have—
Could.
He already had a dominion. He had no need of getting lost in another’s.
Can you not?
Micah threw his dagger and it broke into the butterfly, like glass. It made the most inhuman screech he had ever heard. Like windows shattering a dozen times over, layered onto a bumblebee’s buzzing wings.
Ryan slapped his hands over his ears and Micah cried as his bones shook, but the screech did the trick. His friend no longer looked at it like a drugged-out fool. He looked disgusted.
Damn right, you should be. Second-rate illusions like that, charming, duplicity, they were disgusting.
Just then, the first golem slammed into the wall two yards behind them and a stone nicked him across the nose, making the bone feel as is he had been punched. Something wrapped around his arm before he could recover or run. The horde was on them.
Micah moved to slash the tongue off, but he didn’t have his knife anymore. The bat— He’d dropped Clay.
The rats poured around the corner.
Ryan lobbed the tongue off for him, dropping his spear in the process. They ducked down and scooped both weapons up before they sprinted for all they were worth, dodging a golem’s hug.
Ryan was faster. He slowed down in front of him, but Micah shouted, “GO! GO! RUN!”
They took a right, back North again. They couldn’t keep on running South if it meant encountering more of those butterflies and caterpillars. The army behind them would have to do.
A third of the horde met them halfway there as they ducked into a tunnel they had come from, and Ryan struck down what he could while Micah slipped past him and took the lead. For a few seconds. Then his friend sprinted past with his longer legs like it was nothing. A good thing, in Micah’s books.
They reached a submerged tunnel and Ryan paused with one hand extended toward the water. “Fire and fog!”
Micah caught his meaning and stumbled to a stop. He fidgeted on his feet as he waited for the water to heat beneath him, needing [Personalized Alchemy] to tell him when. This was taking too long.
Now.
With the start, Micah kicked a splash up into the air and cast, “[Dissettle].” He shoved as much mana into the spell as he could and the water burst into a cloud of fog that blocked their vision.
Ryan dragged him along. He led them to the corpse of the giant frog and Micah almost ran past him before he slapped into his arm around his midsection to hold him back.
“What—”
Ryan slapped a hand over his mouth and heaved him up. What about the map? He had said to go South. Still, Micah grabbed the handholds and crawled over, Ryan on his heels to push him through.
On the other side, Ryan leaped down next to him and pushed him back into the open wounds before joining him. He squirmed around inside the corpse to cover himself in blood, and with a start, Micah understood what was going on.
Why would a monster that knew where they were and was strong enough to kill them not do so right away? It was stalking them, which led to hounding them, which led to hunting them down.
Ryan was trying to shake it off on the first step. Micah agreed with the plan. Out of eye, out of mind, hopefully.
Blood-soaked, his friend rushed to the left-side tunnel. He nudged his head at it and Micah repeated his spell to shroud it in fog.
Instead of going through there, he headed back and started snatching the small rats from the frog’s wounds. He shoved some of them toward Micah to hold. They squirmed in his grip and bit at his glove.
The giant frog shifted as something impacted with it on the other side, and more water spilled out of the cracks. The horde was raging now, just a meter off from them, and he hoped they couldn’t tell where they were.
Rats and frogs cried out and burst into smoke. It sounded more like they were decimating each other. Another shriek made his ears hurt and Ryan stumble into the wall. Even the butterfly had followed?
One of the rats slipped away and fled swimming through the water with a trail of blood. Micah leaned down to get it, but Ryan grabbed his arm and shook his head. He wanted to let it go?
They collected the rest and Ryan chucked them through the fog on the left, where they splashed into the water. When Micah wanted to mimic him, he stopped him and made him hand the rest over.
They ran to the lake and Ryan urged, kicked, and threw the rest of the rats into the water there. Things inside immediately swarmed them and threw up the water as they thrashed below the surface.
Ryan took a step back and dove into the lake.
Micah sighed and followed him. If Ryan was going to jump into a lake, he had no choice but to do the same.
The water hit him like a wake-up call and washed the blood from his clothes in a cloud of red. Cold seeped into his skin and weighed him down. He moved forward to clear his eyes to found Ryan swimming ahead, toward one of the collapsed pillars. He hurried to catch up, but his bulky backpack and soaked flower wreath slowed him down. He was swimming with one arm, too. The other held his bat.
Distortions swam toward them from the distance, where the rats were only clouds of brown dye and red blood.
He was just short of the broken pillar when he felt his leg sting and cold water seep into a wound. Another sting came from his ankle, his arm, and shoulder when he pushed into a stroke. He could feel something biting his boot. It felt like the sting of a nettle at first, or like an insect was biting him.
Then it got worse.
Ice fish, all around him, were trying to rip him apart.
He slapped a hand one stone to pull himself up. Ryan grabbed him by the shoulders to haul him onto the tiny space, water streaming off his form in buckets.
All around them, distortions swam tinted in red. One even had a rat marble floating inside it. Two blue glows over green bodies coiled around their pillar, waiting for the moment to strike.
Ryan crouched and held both hands in different directions. He must have been gushing fire mana, because Micah could see his body cool while the water around them became more and more bleached, as if the two spaces were bleeding into one another from two rivers.
An illusion, he reminded himself.
In just a few seconds, it was more than enough.
Micah shoved mana toward his hands, held it there, and pushed more into it up against his skin. He pressed until it felt like his fingers would pop. Only then did he cast, “[Dissolve],” and put as much mana into the spell as he could. It all flowed out as one at the largest school of fish.
They shattered and went still in the water, trickles of cold flowing off of them. Their kin bumped into them in passing, and one broke apart like a thin sheet of ice in a puddle and melted.
Ryan brought his backpack around to pull one of the sacks out, spilling the leftover rope, crystals, and jars of leather they had collected back inside to tumble around freely. One or two items tumbled into the lake, but Micah couldn’t care less right now. Why did he need an empty sack for?
He hopped into the water and began scooping up the stunned fish with it. With his other hand, he pressed a dazed serpent halfway out of the water against the stone and Micah shoved mana into Clay before he brought it down.
The serpent burst into smoke. He wobbled on his feet for a moment from the exertion and almost slipped off the pillar.
Another surged in an attempt to coil around Ryan, and he brought the bat in low to smack it away. Water splashed and it went flying—in the end, more of its own volition than the force of it. Ryan didn’t even seem to notice. He pointed at the tunnel on the other side of the lake, then pushed off the pillar to swim.
Micah dove after him.
More and more fish took bites out of him on the way there, but he weathered the stings. The serpent was a bigger problem, but Ryan turned around to smack it with the butt of his spear.
When he reached the shore, his friend hauled him out again, both of them bloody this time. He slapped the sack full of fish against the wall and the cloth bulged each time a fish inside it burst.
Micah got out his healing potion to wash away the wounds and blood. It looked more like the fish had been trying to eat his skin, flay him alive, than bite his actual flesh. He tried healing Ryan, but he was too busy, so he caught his arm and passed the bottle over before finishing off the rest.
A meter in, the tunnel split left and right. Ryan threw a pair of blood-soaked marbles down the left way before taking the right. They splashed through watery tunnels for three bends before they found one that was dry. A quick check found another one connected to it, and then another.
Ryan almost pumped a fist.
They ran for two more before they ducked behind a corner, stayed there, and held still.
Ryan cocked his head to listen. After a minute, he held his breath and Micah mimicked him like they had planned. He stopped before he would end up gasping. They did it again.
After a third time, Ryan heaved with a smile and put a finger over his lips in the universal sign of silence, but threw his arm out as if throwing a ball. It’s far off, or, It went the other way. He couldn’t tell.
Either way, Micah raised his eyebrows in awe and waved. It’s gone?
His friend nodded again. Yep.
Micah could have hugged him, but settled for a wide grin as he shot up and paced around. Yes!
Ryan smiled himself, but cut his celebration short. He leaned closer and whispered, “That thing can hear better than me, I’m sure. It will find us sooner or later, if it’s looking for us, so we need to hurry. If it finds us this time, I doubt it will wait around the fringes.”
Micah nodded. That was a sobering thought. They had bought themselves some time alone now, but not time in general.
He looked around at their surroundings and noticed the shade. Not just here, but compared to a minute earlier, the tunnels seemed darker. This far West, it made sense the light didn’t travel as far from the chasm. Night would fall sooner. But then why was there so much green?
Everywhere he looked, he saw, moss, roots, and even grass growing in places. Ferns grew in corners, flowers spotted others, all subdued in a dark grey cast like a rainy day. It didn’t make sense. Unless there was a second light source? He couldn’t help but think of silver light.
They stepped around a corner and Ryan suddenly dragged him back and up against the wall. The stomps told Micah all he needed to know. A roving golem walked down the tunnel parallel to theirs and disappeared in the distance.
The first monsters they could fight that they encountered was a group of three camouflaged toads waiting together. Easy enough. Except, Micah didn’t really have any colors to work with. He only managed to paint two in subdued greens before they caught on and ran at them.
Ryan side-stepped into the tunnel and took the first down with his spear. Micah got to use his dagger to try and hit the third. He nicked it, drawing blood he could use to color it red.
They couldn’t block from three directions at once, so they sprinted and Ryan rolled while Micah skid with the pack on his back. He smacked the second one with his bat hard enough to draw light.
His friend finished off the other, and the third smacked him in the jaw with a barbed tongue. The second one used Micah’s momentary distraction to tackle him. They didn’t live long, but they got some hits in before they died. The handful of rats that showed up in the middle of the fight ran away.
As they treated their wounds, Ryan suddenly dragged Micah back and behind a corner again. He almost dropped his healing potion. Another roving golem walked past in the distance.
He noticed a pattern. There were more and more plants growing along the walls and fewer maze-patterns. Where Stone Boars’ were, nothing grew for an inch around them. Instead, those golems patrolled slowly.
Did they maybe not want to hurt the plant life?
With Ryan’s help, they avoided them. He took the most direct route he could find, even if it meant putting them in the middle of half a dozen roaming golems. They needed to find an exit. Nothing else mattered.
Two tunnels further, they peeked into a left bend and Micah almost screamed. He slapped a hand over his mouth to keep still, hiding his grin. Above, Ryan almost stumbled into him as he took an involuntary step forward.
In the middle of the tunnel on the right-hand side, the first step of silver stone poked out. Stairs. They led up, but he didn’t mind. Geb had warned them to avoid stairs up at all costs, but if they got them away from here, it could only be a good thing. And if they led to a portal …
The problem was the stone golem that sat on its bottom steps, feet in the tunnel. It was of the larger kind, like the one that had protected the treasure chest. Its arms rested over his knees and its head was tilted up as it looked at the ceiling. Vines grew there and covered a maze-patterned arch above, but nothing else.
What was it looking at?
Something about the sight made Micah frown. He almost felt like he remembered it from somewhere, but he didn’t know from where. Deja vu?
The golem let its head fall and he almost jumped, but it was just looking at its fingers and moving them a bit. Being idle. Oh, good. The gesture was strangely human. Micah sighed and glanced at Ryan.
“What do we do?”
He shrugged and started taking off his shield. “The same as we did yesterday. Fight it, take its crystal, and then go up those stairs out of here.”
That was a plan he could get behind.
Micah steeped around the bend with just the shield and without his pack. He approached the golem.
It looked at him and stopped moving its fingers, but didn’t stand.
Seeing it sit there peacefully, he almost didn’t want to insult it. But he needed to get past it and this was the best way. He knew just how destructive these golems could be in a fight and how easily they could be provoked, so he said, “I’d make a ‘your mom’ joke about how she must look like, seeing you. Example A, and all that. But then I remembered—spirit. Duh. No mom. I guess this is just in your nature.”
He hid his nerves behind a smile.
The yellow light in its slit-like eyes seemed to wink out for a second, almost as if it had blinked. It still didn’t get up.
Micah gestured over his shoulder. “So, you know, if you want to go jogging with me to improve that, I’d be sure to run extra slow—”
It looked away and hung its head for a moment, before it slowly dragged its arms over its legs to push itself up against its knees. It stood, took a step into the corridor, and looked at him.
“ …you can keep up,” Micah finished lamely. His heart wasn’t really in it, insulting golems.
It still didn’t move any further.
“Your design is subpar?” he tried.
It nodded and moved its leg into a first step.
Micah ran.
Behind him, the ground shook as the golem charged. He turned the corner, dodged behind Ryan, and heard the air rush as he swung Clay. There was an almighty crash and he spun on his heel to hold his shield out and block the debris. Stone hit his legs. Ryan ducked behind him, holding his wrist with a grimace.
The golem was stuck in the ruined wall. Its one leg bent almost the wrong way, just like the first one they had fought this way. It pulled its head out to look down and the dirt almost seemed to stick to its cheek before it fell away. It acted like mud for a second, glowing yellow, before it reverted to dry dirt.
That was all the evidence Micah needed to know it could shape earth. He told Ryan as much.
“Got it.” The guy ducked around his shield and stepped forward.
The golem was slowly turning around and reaching for its leg. Ryan smacked the bat into its chest and made a dent. The weapon bounced off and he regained control to bring it down a second time.
The golem swiped at him like an annoying fly and Micah rushed forward to block the blow. He got thrown toward the wall for his efforts and hit it rolling, glad he had his helmet. His arm still protested loudly and the wood creaked. That had been a stupid idea. He should have tackled Ryan.
With its other arm, the golem gripped its own leg and ripped it off.
Micah blinked. What?
It threw the leg at them and he had to throw himself out of the way. The limb crashed into the ground behind him.
His friend brought the bat back down toward its chest, aiming for its heart, but it blocked him with its arm and the bat bounced off with a tiny dent. Had he forgotten to put mana into the swing? No. Shimmering in the air, Micah could see a buckler of yellow light. He didn’t know if Ryan could see it, so he called it.
Another shimmer of light formed where its leg had been and it “moved” it through the wall where it still stood. Earth flowed out like water to form a prosthetic limb covered in lines. Even as Micah watched, more earth flowed over the new limb to form armor, beginning with a knee pad.
Two legs under it, the golem stepped out of the wall and brushed its arm through it next.
Ryan used that chance to get another hit in, denting its chest deeper. He ducked below a swipe and dodged back.
A buckler had formed on its arm now, too.
If it could make armor like that, Micah wasn’t sure they could beat this. He pulled a bottle off his belt, opened it, and threw it at the golem’s head. It was water infused with as many toad crystals as he could spare.
The bottle bounced off its head. Some of it spilled over its body and some into the cracks between its neck and shoulder. A splash hit its eyes. Hopefully, it would spill down to its heart for maximum effect. The rest of it just hit the ground where it glugged out into a puddle.
Micah grabbed their packs and fled, leaving Ryan to fight it behind him. He had a shield—cracked, from one hit—and a knife. The stone man was too tall for him to reach its head. It stood with its back to the wall, so climbing it was also out of the question. Best he let the guy how could actually damage it deal with it for now while he checked the stairs for a way out, in which case they could abandon the fight, or a treasure chest. There might be something inside they could use.
A glance back showed the golem’s movements a little erratic, it was shaking its head as if confused, but could still aim after Ryan. Blurry vision? Micah would take it.
He reached the steps and heaved the packs down to look up. He didn’t see an exit. Not because there wasn’t one, but because the stairs were so long and the ceiling so low, he couldn’t see where they ended.
Light streamed down, tinted slightly yellow. It reminded him of the golem. Either daylight or something else, then.
“Micah!” Ryan called out behind him.
No treasure chest. Micah put his packs down, fished out two more toad crystals, and ran back.
Ryan was ducking and dodging the golem’s strikes, hands empty. Light glowed from its cracked chest, but it wasn’t wide enough to reach in. Its buckler had a hole from the top down and its knees and hip were a little dented. It was beginning to grow armor to cover those, but not its chest.
Clay lay behind it, halfway sunk in the ground. Had it stomped on it? It was out of Ryan’s reach.
Micah sprinted back to retrieve it for him and lurched as he found it stuck. He tried again, and shoving mana into it on a third try. That did the trick. He yanked it out of the ground.
“Watch out!”
The golem had noticed what he was doing and was stomping toward him, now. Micah searched frantically for a way around it, but it was broader than the last and it had that buckler. He didn’t want to get close.
Instead, he feigned throwing the bat and lobbed a crystal with his other hand. It took the bait and struck it down with his hand, making a cloud of essence. Micah threw the bat past its leg, then.
It even tried to tackle the wall to stop it, but it was too slow.
Ryan scooped the bat up, ran at the wall, and pushed himself off to strike the golem’s head against the wall, denting it in. If that had been a person, they would have been very dead right now. It just looked irritated.
But instead of retreating, Ryan grabbed its shoulder and tossed the bat over to Micah. He blocked instinctively and fumbled to catch it from the air. When he looked up, Ryan had a hand at the opening he had widened between its neck and shoulder and was pouring flames in, with fits and bursts. It looked more like sparks shooting off a campfire or broken fireworks than an offense spell.
He seemed to notice it himself because he pushed himself into a roll before the golem could squash him against the wall.
At least, he’d tried.
Micah slammed the bat into the golem’s intact knee and copied Ryan’s roll as it tried to kick him. It swiveled around to chase after them and he handed his friend the bat back, got a, “Thanks,” in reply.
The golem took one more step and wobbled. It slammed a hand into the wall, literally, to steady itself and glared at them. It stood somewhat hunched, almost tired like it couldn’t keep up with them.
Micah wanted to smile, but he tensed instead. It hadn’t even seemed angry all this time, unlike other golems. Would it get angry, now? If so, it might change up its tactics to be more aggressive.
Instead, it rose its intact leg high and slammed it into the ground. Like a ripple in the pond, a yellow pulse and something pushed through the air, the stone, and the nearby tunnels around, making the ground shake.
And with a start, Micah remembered where he knew its sitting pose from. The painting of the Kobold from the entrance exam. It sat on the ground, with the back to its treasure chest, arms over its knees, and staff resting in the nook of its arm against its shoulder. Its head was tilted upward slightly as it looked at the ceiling, above the viewpoint of the painter.
He’d wondered what it was looking for there, as well.
This pulse was the same as the one after it had bitten into the soap bubble.
“It just called reinforcements,” Micah realized.
And the only reinforcements around here were the dozen or so golems they had snuck past instead of killing.
Ryan stared at him in horror before he looked back. “[Surge].” He sprinted at the enemy. It tried to hit him, shearing stone out of the wall with its strike, but he slipped past it and slammed the bat into its wounded knee. Its prosthetic leg came apart and it crashed into the ground, overbalanced.
Seemingly satisfied, Ryan jogged back to Micah and said, “Stairs. Now.”
“On it.”
They stepped into the tunnel and froze in their tracks when an old and raspy voice called throughout the floor. “Eh-ba-hare-al!”
The rumbling. The rat-thing had heard it, too. And a second later, another sound came as the first of the golems running to their location was taken down, far off enough that they barely heard it. But they did hear it.
They ran.
Micah slipped his pack on and was ten steps up the staircase when Ryan called after him from the base of it.
“Micah!”
He caught a glimpse of a distortion in the distance, like milky glass, and glanced back down to see Ryan at the other side of the staircase. Twelve hemispherical indents were placed in the wall there.
Just like everything else in this new Tower, the exit required a toll. His mind was already thinking back to how many full marbles they had as he scrambled back down. He slipped off his pack and found his pouch. He stuffed them in one by one, letting some of the empty ones fall away.
It wasn’t enough. They had ten slots filled. He stuffed two more that were almost full into the others and jogged back up, but that murky distortion was still in the air. A barrier halfway up the stairs.
Another crash came as the thing got closer.
Micah turned around and sprinted back the way they’d came. He left his pack where it was, but snatched up the baseball bat. He took the two almost-full marbles from the indents and left the rest where they were, leaped over where the golem was crawling back toward them.
Three steps in, he paused in front of its severed leg and glanced back. He almost smacked himself in the forehead, and smacked down on it four times before he got a crack in its torso instead. A large crystal was there, for their standards, but no marbles. Shit. Plan A, then.
Ryan had already repacked their belongings and joined him, without them.
When he got there, Micah took a different bend than the last time and saw them, a group of three distortions sitting around. He took the first down in one mana-infused strike and painted another for Ryan to deal with, then tackled the last.
It tried to bite and claw at him, and the latter succeeded, but he dropped the bat and slipped the knife out to shiv it. When it tried to tackle him, he kicked it back down. When it tried to hit him with its tongue, he pressed that against the wall with his shield and lobbed it off.
It cried out and he couldn’t help but think, Not loud enough, so he kicked it in the stomach and shouted, “Louder!”
It cried out again and he heard the first squeaks coming. The stomps also came and Ryan picked the bat off the ground next to him. Behind it all, he heard the thing speak in their language, “Eh-ba-hare-al, I can hear you squeaking.”
It could speak?
They didn’t have time. Micah stomped as many rats to death as he needed, finished the toad off, and checked the marbles. One more rat and they were both full. He tapped Ryan and ran, slipping past a golem that had just crashed into the bend. He saw another in the distance.
A figure smacked into it and it disappeared down a bend.
It was here.
Micah sprinted the rest of the distance and scrambled to put the marbles in their sockets. The stone and maze-patterned arc around him lit up yellow, thankfully, and he slipped on his pack.
“Micah—” Ryan called out a warning. Too late. Something impacted his back and threw him down the tunnel.
He hit the ground hard and scraped up his chin.
“Found you,” someone hissed into his ear, crouching on him. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. It was too heavy. It sniffed at him and took a deep breath, then snarled, “Where is it? Where did you put it?”
He had no idea what it was talking about.
“Where. Is. My. Home?”
He heard Ryan shout behind him and the weight lifted. Wood smacked against flesh. He turned around to see an older man with leathery skin and rat features crouched over him, the bat in its hand.
By Ryan’s expression, he knew it had caught it. Easily, too. Before he could pull it away, the man snarled and yanked it out of its grip. Micah stood up to tackle it, but it brought Clay over its knee and broke the weapon in two like an old twig.
A cloud of stone essence exploded from the wood, smacking Ryan away and Micah into the wall. His head rocked in his helmet. He fell toward Ryan and managed to grab some roots to hold onto, then pulled himself up.
The rat-thing was coughing, spitting, and snarling, like it had gotten a handful of stones in its mouth. Had it somehow swallowed it? It didn’t matter. Another step and Micah almost tripped over his flower wreath. A long cut had torn into it and the rope, and spilled it from his back.
Micah cut the rest free and grabbed one corner. He slipped the knife back inside the shield and grabbed Ryan’s arm to drag him up the stairs. Behind him, moss, flowers, green limbs, and leaves spilled out of nowhere and filled the stone steps with a thin curtain. Micah shoved the wreath at Ryan to hold and used both hands to cast and hold, “[Condense Water].”
He flooded the entire stairs with a thin layer of water behind him, hopefully making it slippery.
“Shield,” Ryan said and reached out as they ran up the stairs. “I need something to block it. You run, do you hear me?”
Micah let him unstrap the shield from his arm, still holding the spell, but agreed to nothing. He glanced up. Instead of a silver portal, there was a curtain of golden light at the top of the stairs. He thought he could make out shapes behind it and felt his heart sink.
If it wasn’t a portal out, they were dead.
Below, he caught a glimpse of the rat-thing crawling along the wall and a golem smacking it down. It struck out and tore into its chest. Then it was running up the stairs, but it did slip on the green and snarled after them. On its next step, its claws tore through the water, wreath, and into the stone.
Not good.
It went down on all fours and loped at them. In a second, it had almost caught up.
Ryan threw the flower wreath at it in alarm. Micah broke off his spell and fell over. He scrambled to push him off the stone and higher up the stairs. The thing simply dodged the wreath and crawled along the wall instead.
They reached the top. It threw himself at him and Ryan intercepted with the shield and tried to stab it. The three of them tumbled into a heap and crashed through the exit. Golden light shattered around them. In the distance, a fanfare sounded like a breeze.
Then Micah was on duff and grass, body aching all over. Ryan and the thing tumbled down a dark forest hill without him, grunting and snarling. A small valley surrounded by stone walls and an overcast sky lay beyond the stairs. A river flowed somewhere close by and the first raindrops fell.
He saw his mother’s hunting knife and picked it up. Ryan must have dropped it. Then he crawled down the hill, tumbled, and rolled into a stand as he ran after him. The two had disappeared past brush and trees. But a moment later, Ryan was running toward him, calling, “Go! Run!”
Micah caught a tree to slow himself down and pushed the other way, to the left and toward the river. He had no idea where he was going.
He heard trees shifting but felt no wind, tripped over a rock, and went tumbling again, through grass, stone, and thorns. The ground smacking into his head. Everything was spinning. Ryan was calling his name, somewhere. Micah could barely see. A pickaxe struck stone and the crowns of trees shifted, though there was no wind.
He looked up.
A woman was looking at him, overhead. The head of a woman, at least. Behind it, the head of a bobcat and the head of a stag had been stretched back like hoodies. Finally, a faceless insect head five times as wide as its human one hung in the air, feelers hanging off like hair.
The front eight of its thousand legs hung strangely still, bent slightly toward each other as if unsure what to do with him. They were supported by the rest of its body, colorful organs visible underneath and yellow, glowing scales extending like a river into the distance.
Two human arms slipped out of holes to either side of its head and wrung their hands.
Micah stayed completely still.
Then it grabbed him. He tried to slip away, but it was too fast. Its antlers spun in slow circles, pulling its hoodies up, slipping its bobcat head over its human one like a second skin. It was pulling him toward it and he cried out, tried to kick himself free, bite, wrench, stab at it—anything to get away.
He was yelling incoherently.
His knife drew blood and one of its legs strong enough to pierce stone smacked it away, making two of his fingers bend the wrong way. He could barely feel anyway.
The bobcat sniffed at him and went still.
For a second, Micah prayed it might let him go. Instead, its antlers twisted back the other way to reveal the woman again. She screeched with a wide mouth and black teeth, and the titanic centipede ran, him in its grasp.
Through the forest and past the tree branches, the wind rushed by him so quickly he couldn’t hear a thing. It barely broke anything, where it could have run through trees like they weren’t there. It barely made a sound.
Micah still screamed.
With a lurch, they stopped and he was weightless. He saw its anguished face growing more and more distance. The sound of rushing water came closer and closer and then he hit the river.
Raging currents dragged him to its bed and he slammed into a rock. The strap of his backpack caught and the water tore him along. The cloth ripped open, contents spilling out around him, crystals going dim in the dark water.
Micah was gasping for breath. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t know where was up. All around him, the waved pushed at him. They burned so much. They seared his skin, reached deeper.
Swim or drown.
He tried to move, but his arm hit another rock and he pulled it back, broken fingers brushing against stone on the way. A fall brought his head to the air for a split second. Not long enough to catch his breath. Only long enough to cough and sputter.
Then he was under again.
Swim or drown.
The waves were tearing at him, pulling away chunks of his charred flesh, making his eyes sting. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t see anything. He was blind.
Everything was black but for the wisp of yellow in the far-off distance. Closer were the memories of the flames. Micah couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do anything. Not again. It hurt too much to think of it. He tried to shut out the memories as he let the raging stream carry him downriver and chose.
Drown.
“Micah!” Finn called with his boyish smile and waved. “Get in the water. We’re having a race!”
The water felt cool on his legs as he dangled them in the river. It eased the heat of the sunlight and the itchy feeling of the sweat and dye on his skin. That was part of the summer festival, though, so he didn’t mind too much. It was part of the experience.
He took one look at the river and shook his head.
“No, thanks!”
He kept on dangling his legs idly, feeling awkward. The dye looked too awesome to wash off anyway.
“C’mon Micah,” Mandy called, “Afraid you’re going to lose?”
“No?”
He would have wanted to win.
“Then what’s the problem?”
Micah laughed. “I just don’t swim.”
Not anymore. He’d used to love to swim.
He would have loved to do it right now with his new friends. To win against them. Finally, he had friends and he couldn’t even do that, couldn’t show them that he wasn’t entirely lame. They were giving him a chance and he was ruining it. They probably thought he was annoying. They probably hated him.
Micah slipped forward an inch, ready to change his mind, and felt the current press against his calf. The cool water suddenly felt hot.
He pulled back.
“Don’t or can’t?”
Both.
Micah kept still.
In the end, Ryan needed to come save him. Again. It wouldn’t be too long until he got tired of that, Micah knew. It wouldn’t be too long until he hated himself for it. He needed to be better.
He should have been studying right now for the exam.
“Don’t you owe it to yourself to let your enjoyment be more important to you than the … memories?”
With a start, Micah opened his eyes and scrambled upward. Ryan was still out there, with the rat-thing and the titanic centipede. He couldn’t leave him alone, couldn’t make him be the one to have to save him.
Swim or drown.
He’d choose swim. If he had to, if it was to save his friend, he would always choose swim.
Water shifted as he pushed up. He burst through the surface and coughed his lungs out, holding his throat. The river smacked him into another stone and he scrambled to wrap his arms around it, clung to it with his life.
As soon as he could, he breathed. His throat felt ragged, his nose hurt, he shivered, coughed, and sputtered, but he breathed.
Where was he? Where was Ryan? He needed to get out of this river. Crystals and screw-cap bottles flowed past him, and he grabbed as many as he could out of reflex and winced. His hand wouldn’t close properly around one of them. When he looked down, he saw his broken fingers.
Beyond them, two blue slimes tumbled around within. Stretched above, a pale face was reflected in the glass.
Micah looked up. The woman was still hovering above him, close enough that her black hair almost touched his face.
She blinked.
He let go and drifted. Her massive body shifted to let her follow, her head unnaturally still as the rest of her supported it. Her arms hung limp, blood dripping off her skin. A finger twitched. Micah broke eye contact to turn and flee.
With a scream, it pushed him right back in.