Chapter Thirteen

Ding!

Objective: Solve the puzzles.

Moira treaded water as she read through the notification. It wasn’t over. She was still in the dungeon. She narrowed her eyes and looked around.

The water looked completely different from the pool she just came from. It was clear but ruby red, hauntingly similar to the color of blood. She looked down, searching for the tunnel where she’d just swam from. The water was clear all the way down; the floor littered with smooth red stones. However, the tunnel was gone. Thirty feet in front of her was a crimson beach. She slowly swam to the beach, crawling onto the soft sand and collapsing to the ground.  

Moira shivered, grief threatening to overwhelm her. The water—why did it have to be red? She could see the blood pouring out of Duke, feel the warm liquid slip between her fingers.

Why? Why had she been brought here? This world took everything from her; family, friends, and now it had taken her last connection to Earth. Her best friend. She couldn’t breathe. The world felt like it was closing in on her.

No. She wouldn’t let this beat her. She couldn’t give up now. Duke’s sacrifice couldn’t go to waste. Moira closed her eyes and counted down from ten.

Ten. Flashes of the battle flew through her mind. Blood dripping down her fingers.

Nine. Duke helpless in her arms. Exhaling for the last time.

Eight. Feeling his body go cold in her arms.

Seven. Duke pushing her aside, sacrificing himself to save her.

Six. Watching him run through the forest, tongue lolling.

Five. Sleeping next to him by the fire.

Four. Duke fetching his favorite green ball.

Three. The two of them together, training in the park.

Two. Moving into her first apartment together.

One. Holding him in her arms for the first time and seeing that look in his eyes.

With each number, she pushed down her emotions and built up a wall. A wall made of bricks. Each one held a memory. She could do this. She had to do this.

Feeling cold and numb, Moira took another deep breath and pushed to her feet. It was time to get moving. She examined the beach carefully, looking for any potential danger. Nothing stood out to her. The beach was quiet. She could see for miles each way, and there wasn’t a monster in sight.

  But just because she couldn’t see any danger didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Moira took out her bow and quiver. She squeezed her eyes shut as another flash of the fight came to the forefront. The monster diving towards her as she reached back toward an empty quiver.

The quiver was supposed to refill though—why didn’t it? It’d never been empty before, but she’d started with around fifty arrows. Moira thought back to her conversation with Cyrus about the bow and quiver.

“He said it was refillable with the injection of mana. But how do I inject it with mana?”

Moira focused on the quiver, pushing the word refill at it. Nothing happened. How was she supposed to access her Mana? She had the Creeping Vines spell, but she hadn’t attempted to use it yet.

She squeezed her eyes shut. This should be easy. All she needed to do was refill the quiver. She focused internally, searching for whatever housed her mana. She felt something light up in her core. Moira poked at it mentally, trying to tease it out. It resisted, and she felt pressure building within her chest. She focused harder, yanking at the tendril of light. Light shot out of her hand with such force that it blew her back into the water. The sand in front of her exploded up into the air. 

Ding! 

New Skill! ERROR skill cannot be held by the Ranger class. System Override. ERROR Resolved.

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New Skill: Mana Blast lvl 1 

Moira looked at the new deep scar in the sand and then back at the notification. Another error message, it must just be because she was an Outworlder, the system or the gods or whoever let her break the rules.

She looked again at the sand. Real magic. It’d been more powerful than she thought and not at all what she’d intended, but she’d take the new skill.

Back to the arrows. If she could create a blast like that, she should be able to inject mana into the quiver and make some arrows. It had to be about control.

She turned back to the mana inside her, and this time gently pulled, directing the mana out of her arm and into the quiver. This time it worked, and fifty new arrows appeared in the quiver. She smiled halfheartedly at her accomplishment. If only she’d figured that out sooner. Instead of returning the bow and arrow to her Inventory, she held onto them. Keeping the bow upright in her arms, ready to reach back to grab an arrow.  

Moira never wanted to be in a position where she was weaponless again. She’d been sloppy in her time in the woods, always storing her weapons in her inventory or leaving them lying around their camp. This place was dangerous, and it was time to treat it like it was.

She thought she’d learned that when the rabbit attacked and then again after the eel. But this time, the message was clear. If only it hadn’t taken Duke’s death to make her truly see this world for what it was. It may be her destiny to be there, but she wanted some revenge for sending her in unprepared.  

#

Moira trudged forward on the beach, dragging her feet through the red sand. She kept her bow up with an arrow notched and ready. After several minutes of walking, Moira noticed something was wrong. With each step forward, it was harder to lift her feet up out of the sand. She stopped for a moment and stared down at the sand. Her feet sank down, the sand almost reaching her mid-calf.

She struggled to pull her legs out, but with each movement, she sank deeper into the sand. Moira’s face turned red, and her palms started sweating. Her eyes darted back and forth, searching for anything that could pull her out. The sand crept further up her body, going from her knees to her hips. Moira pried her fingertips from the sand’s clutches and clawed at the ground, desperately trying to free herself.

She sank deeper into the sand. Moira froze. This was quicksand. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. What did she know about quicksand? As a kid, she’d been freaked out by it. Her dad had let her watch a certain adventure movie where the hero had walked into quicksand and gotten stuck. Afterward, she’d been afraid to step on sand.

She could remember going on a family vacation shortly after. They were in California. She could smell salt and seaweed through the wind coming off the ocean. She was sitting on the dirt path, her arms crossed, mouth pinched into a line, refusing to move. Her mom had long since given up trying to coax her onto the beach. But her dad sat next to her on the ground, rubbing her back.

“Why are you so scared, Peanut? It’s just sand.”

“But—but what if I get stuck?”

“Why would you get stuck?”

“Like the movie—what if I get stuck and sink down forever and ever?”

“The movie? You mean quicksand? You’re afraid to fall in quicksand?”

She nodded, hugging her knees and hiding her face. Her dad pulled her into a hug.

“Peanut quicksand is really rare. I don’t think you need to worry about it,” she whimpered against her dad’s large frame. “Okay, okay—let’s talk about it then. What can you do if you get stuck in quicksand? First things first, don’t panic.”

Moira’s eyes lurched open. Don’t panic. If she panicked, she’d only sink further into the sand. She needed to stay relaxed. The more she moved, the worse it would get. Now, what else did she remember?

She returned to that memory, her dad’s voice still in her head.

“Second, distribute your weight against the surface. That way, your weight won’t drag you down.”

“But what if I’m already stuck, Daddy?”

“If you’re already stuck, take a deep breath, and lean back. It’ll help distribute your weight. If you’re still stuck, use a stick, and push it behind you, and it’ll help lift your feet free of the sand.”

That was it. She needed to distribute her weight across the surface of the quicksand. Moira took a deep breath and fought the urge to flail against the sand. She closed her eyes and leaned back, letting her shoulders hit the sand. She could feel her legs rise through the sand. But it wasn’t enough. Her feet were still stuck in the folds of the red sand.

She needed a stick. With her head pressed against the sand, she carefully turned it and looked for anything she could use to brace underneath her. There was nothing. Just miles and miles of sandy landscape in either direction.

Moira closed her eyes, thinking. Did she have anything in her inventory that she could use? She pulled it up and ran through the various items; her bow and quiver, dried meat, a bar of soap, the sword, and her makeshift spear. There, that was it, the spear.

She focused on the spear, and it appeared in her hand. She lifted it above her head and brought it behind her, trailing the back of her body. Leaning back against it, she watched as her feet slowly lifted from the sand.

Moira breathed a sigh of relief, and carefully crab crawled backward, away from the sandy pit. When her hands stopped sinking into the sand, she stood up. She looked down at the ground and could see the edges of the quicksand pit. The crimson sand wavered slightly in the wind.

Moira cautiously moved around it and stepped forward. The ground dropped out from under her.

Down she fell, straight through the sand, until she hit the ground, hard. It knocked the air from her lungs as her head hit the stone floor with a thunk, and everything went black.