The enchantment exploded and thousands of sand-sized grains of slate shattered and when flying like a frag grenade. I was doing something very dangerous, trying to create my own enchantments, I’d learned hundreds of new runes from studying the enchantment array. Now I was trying to create something new, I was taking some precautions since I’d been warned of the dangers of enchanting.

Using telekinesis, I was carving the runes with my new chisels onto flat stones while I sat in a trench. Thanks to Foresight I could tell when it was about to explode and ducked down avoiding the deadly shrapnel as the mana violently exploded. The granite walls around me looked like drywall that had been used as target practice by a ten-year-old with a BB-gun.

I mentally marked off that combination of runes and went back to engraving. We’d been here for three days resting; I’d explored all I could but hadn’t found anything else of interest. Now I was working on improving my skill in enchanting and trying to find more complex and interesting enchantments to apply.

After about twenty minutes I had a new enchantment made. I held my breath, but it didn’t explode. Slowly I levitated it over to where I was sitting and looked it over. I saw the runes glowing, but they were pulsing rapidly with color in a way that didn’t look at all stable. A crack formed along one of the runes and I tossed it to the side and ducked down. The explosion came again, and I popped my head up again.

My mutations had made it so my ear canal could close instantly to keep from being deafened by loud noises. When they unblocked themselves, I heard the heavy tread of Guinevere in her armor.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Are you ready to head out?” she asked.

“I’ve been waiting on you all,” I said.

“What’s with the explosions we’ve been hearing?” Guinevere asked. “You’ve been blowing up things in this tunnel for two days so far.”

“Just working on trying new enchantments,” I said.

Guinevere raised an eyebrow. “You’re an enchanter?”

“I know some enchantments,” I said. “It’s pretty easy for me to learn since I’m fluent with runes.”

“Just as long as you aren’t casting spells,” Guinevere said.

“What’s wrong with spells?” I asked.

“They’re heretical,” Guinevere said flatly. “But by your tone I’m guessing you can cast some.”

“Sure,” I said. “I got a tome from a dungeon.”

Guinevere sighed. “How does someone like you get access to so many dungeons.”

“Someone like me?” I asked indignantly.

“Not a noble,” Guinevere said. “Dungeons are a prized resource you can’t just use them whenever you want.”

“Then find new dungeons,” I said with a shrug. “Or sneak into them; if people want to hoard power than that’s fine just as long as they are able to.”

“You don’t follow any laws, do you?” Guinevere asked.

“I follow the Law of Strength,” I said with a shrug.

Guinevere sighed again but said nothing. “We’ll meet you at the tunnel entrance.

We set off again five minutes later. Following the thread of magic, I wasn’t lost in the many twists and turns. I took the straightest path I could every time, we had to backtrack a few times when we ran into dead ends but overall, we were doing very well. We stopped near an underground stream after around seven to eight hours of marching. I could have gone faster but that would have meant leaving the others behind. Spearing some blind fish from the stream I started roasting them on a pan. This pan was the only successful result of my enchanting.

Taking the runes, I knew for adding fire damage to a weapon I’d added some new runes I’d learned. If you were to say the runes aloud as a sentence it would have read.

Constant heat applied at moderate degree for five minutes where minutes equals mana input sixty consumed at a rate of ten mana per minute.

It turned out enchantments were less fun magic, and more boring math. After frying the fish, I lay back and took a nap. Around six or seven hours later we set off again. The others only had my word that we were actually going along a path, but we did seem to be making progress with the air in the caves changing so I didn’t have to deal with too much complaining this time.

We had to still deal with the hordes of monsters and the tunnels were getting narrower which made it both easier and harder to fight them. The tight confines made swinging our weapons harder but also limited how many we had to fight at any one moment.

My clubs were a blur, but I struck the wall so hard one of them nearly flew from my hands. Only Setules Palms kept it from going off down the tunnel. Growing in frustration I dropped the club and drew one of my spearheads using it like a dagger. It was less devastating in its damage, but I could wield it more freely. The ground around us trembled and shook.

Stumbling my face slammed into a wall as I lost my footing. The monsters at least seemed equally surprised and panicked, tearing into each other. I drove my improvised daggers under one’s jaw and ripped open another’s throat spraying me with black blood. The horde of monsters only had a dozen or so left so I pushed past the piles of corpses cramming the tunnels. The remaining shadow cats, wolves and goblins rushed me, and I accepted the wounds they dealt me as I crushed skulls and slit open throats.

With them all dead I turned back to the party I was protecting. The ground lurched again, and I placed a hand against the wall feeling it tremble. My Foresight warned me of the impending danger, and I dove forwards tacking Guinevere’s party to the side as a massive, scaled worm tunneled through the rock where they had been. They pushed me off them and I looked at the massive circular hole through the rock. The stone began to crack overhead, and it was obvious that following it would be a good way to be trapped and buried alive.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The ground around us was no longer stable either. It shifted and cracked. A large crack formed, and I rolled to the side dragging the mage and healer with me as the crack widened into a dark abyss. Guinevere wasn’t fast enough. She shoved the tank to the side but in the process of saving him slipped and fell. I heard her armor hitting the sides as she fell down. Her sounds faded and I frowned.

The space down there was not stable I was sure and would probably close on me if I tried to follow after her.

“Screw it,” I said.

“I’m finding you someplace to hide than I’m going after Guinevere,” I said.

“You heard how far she fell,” Kira protested. “There is no way she survived.”

“For your sake you had better hope she did.” I continued for about five minutes until I found a dead end tunnel. “Stay here.”

Turning around I returned to where the crack had opened up. It was still there and as dark and forbidding as ever.

I jumped and plunged down the shaft. I spread out my arms and legs dragging against the sides of the chasm to slow my descent. It took around a minute to reach the bottom like that. I looked around what appeared to be another set of tunnels but there was no bioluminescent fungi here. There had always been some light, however meager, but this place was entirely dark.

There was the sound of sniffles and I turned seeing Guinevere leaned up against the wall one leg laid out awkwardly in front of her badly mangled.

“Whose there?” Guinevere.

“Its me Mor… Ishmael,” I caught myself as I approached her. “You look pretty messed up.”

“How can you see anything?” Guinevere asked.

“You can’t, see?” I asked.

“Of course, not there isn’t any light,” Guinevere hissed in irritation and pain.

“What about your mutations?” I asked squatting down beside her.

“They are focused on spotting small movements more easily and viewing things over far distances,” she said. “It take it you can, see?”

“Yeah,” I said laying my hand on her leg.

She screamed in as much fear as pain.

“Sorry about that didn’t mean to startle you,” I said.

She was completely terrified before you came along, Voidra informed me.

“I don’t think a healing potion is going to fix this,” I said. “You have any passive self-healing abilities?”

“No,” Guinevere answered through the pain her teeth clenched tight.

“I’m going to try and straighten your leg out,” I said. “So don’t be scared when I touch you again.”

“Ok,” Guinevere agreed.

“I’m going to need to remove some of your armor,” I said.

The leg armor on her right leg was twisted by the fall and I had to cut the straps rather than unbuckle them. Guinevere bit back a scream but I could still hear her whimper. The leg was bad, part of her shin bone was sticking through her skin. Gritting my teeth, I used what little I learned of first aid and tied a tourniquet around her thigh. What I did next no doctor would have approved of, but they also didn’t have access to healing potions.

Grabbing her leg, I yanked the bone back into place. Guinevere reflexively hit me across the face as she screamed in agony, and I felt my jaw dislocate from the force of her punch. Ignoring the hit, I maintained my grip on her leg and forced the bones to align properly. Next, I poured a healing potion over the injury and made Guinevere drink another.

Red yarrow wouldn’t mend the bones, but it would repair the torn muscle and skin. I took out two pieces of long wood and lashed them on either side of her leg.

“That’ll have to do for now,” I said.

“Thanks….” Guinevere said panting as she recovered from the pain. “For…. coming…down for me.”

“You would have done the same for me,” I said.

“I’m not sure I would have,” Guinevere said with a dry humorless chuckle.

“You’re afraid of the dark,” I said. “But you also care for others, you wouldn’t let even your enemy suffer your worst fear.”

“You seem to think highly of me,” Guinevere said.

“I’ve gotten to know you decently well,” I said. “You have a sense of duty and commitment to others I’ve never encountered in others. You wound up down here because you were trying to save one of your party members at your own personal risk.”

“I’m not sure I’d do it again,” Guinevere said recovered mostly from my harsh ministrations.

“You would have,” I said putting an arm around her and lifting her up. “As dumb as the action might have been, you would still do it.”

“I can walk,” Guinevere protested.

“If you insist,” I said setting her down.

Guinevere hobbled for a few steps before giving up. “I can’t,” she admitted.

“Princess carry it is,” I said picking her up again.

“How are you going to climb back up while carrying me?” Guinevere asked.

“I’ve got a plan don’t worry,” I said.

Kicking off my boots I bent down and picked them up one handed putting them in my storage pouch. Removing my socks, I looked up the chasm we’d gone down. I’d have teleported up but I couldn’t do so while touching another living creature. So instead, I ran straight at the wall. Jumping nearly thirty feet up my feet hit the stone surface and gripped with the microscopic hairs there as Setules Palms picked in.

Guinevere wasn’t that heavy even in all her armor and I barely wore any armor, so I just had my body weight to deal with, but it was still close. I could feel my grip loosening each time I placed my feet down, but I pushed up and made it another ten feet with each jump. It was exhausting and I felt my stamina plumet as I chewed through it. I might have thousands of mana, but my stamina pool was still normal for my rank. Pushing forward I powered through my Heightened Speed dipping into my mana instead of stamina as I neared the top.

Tumbling over the edge I rolled so I wouldn’t land on top of Guinevere and injure her leg more. My chest heaved as I struggled to drag in air. The climb had been intense and reminded me of my first days on this world when using Heightened Speed and doubling my speed with my boots nearly gave me a heart attack. Closing my eyes, I drew in a deep breath over and over again.

--

Guinevere scooted up, still unable to stand without assistance. She looked down on Ishmael as he recovered from his astonishing physical feat. She backed away from the edge of the hole feeling a momentary surge of irrational fear as if the darkness would reach up and drag her back in.

Ishmael sat up and opened his eyes. She flinched when she saw them. There was something primal inside them and the twin pupils and irises in each of his eyes was an unusual mutation.

“Why are your eyes like that?” she asked.

“What?” he asked.

“Split like that, its… it’s a little disconcerting,” she said.

“You’ve seen mutations from advancing attributes before, right?” he asked, seeming confused. “What’s so strange about my eyes.”

“They aren’t human,” Guinevere said. “There is a theory that our abilities and mutations we get are based on how we see ourselves as much as they are based on the monsters and items we absorb.”

“Is there any basis to the theory?” he asked. “You’ve got a lot of ice themed powers would you describe yourself as a cold person or do you view yourself as a personification of winter?”

“Many others do view me as cold,” Guinevere said.

“Not an answer to how you view yourself but whatever,” Ishmael said shrugging as he sat up and leaned his back against the wall his legs still trembling as he regained control of his body.

Ishmael studied her and their eyes met as they stared each other down each trying to decipher something from the other. Ishmael took out one of his clubs and examined it.

“I made this from the bones and claws of a monster I killed,” he said.

Guinevere nodded though she didn’t understand his point yet.

“I view myself as human, but I revere and admire monsters if you can understand that,” he said. “They are stronger, faster, and can endure pain better than a man.”

“They also tend to enjoy killing humans for fun,” Guinevere pointed out. “They aren’t animals its why we call them monsters, they are creatures meant to hunt, devour and torture humanoids.”

“You can’t understand the world by just thinking of the good and righteousness in others,” Ishmael said. “You need to search within yourself and others for that dark place where mankind’s own monster hides. When you find that monster then you really begin to understand who you are.”

“and have you found the monster?” Guinevere asked.

“The problem is once you find it, it doesn’t want to stay in the darkness anymore,” he said.

A cold moment of silence fell between them. Finally, he stood and extended a hand out to her. “Come on we should get to your party before they get themselves killed.”