<~> CHAPTER 63 - ARIA

I tripped... and unfortunately, like every other time I've come through this floor, I was going to have to navigate it on my own again. At least this floor has never been as bad for me as it has been for everyone else I've ever come through with. This place always just looked like the alleys of my hometown with some faceless bullies that used to pick on me. I stood still and waited for the walls to go dark and change like they always did. At least this time I would have guiding rods to get through here, the one time I had to navigate through this floor without one was a huge pain.

When the walls lit back up they didn't... look the same. Rather than the course stone and brick walls I was used to in the city... they were the mangled metal walls of the bloody halls with thick green roots broken through them. The floor also had given way to grass and above the walls was the canopy of trees from the fourteenth floor with the gentle sunlight streaming through them. I had never heard of this floor changing for someone...

I lit up a guiding rod and frowned at the sparks that flew in the opposite direction I was facing. I sighed and turned around. I was sick of the dungeon's bullshit. I slipped the guiding rod into my belt and pulled out a pair of my new daggers. I loved the feel of them and their weight in my hands. They were even more comfortable than the normal ones I had gathered from that floor in the past. I was considering saving up for a forged pair in the city before this delve, but with what I would probably have to pay to Maxwell for bringing me back up, I didn't like my chances of affording a new set anymore. I was much happier with the ones made from the strange blue metal rather than a pair of the cheaper forged ones I had seen in the city anyway. Let's just hope I can convince his group to let me keep them. Not to mention the bow.

When I first took a step I realized something odd about the grass. Unlike the soft and healthy green grass of the fourteenth floor, most of the grass here was dead and crunchy. It would be much more difficult to walk quietly through this stuff. The enemies had never been especially difficult for me but it was something that stood out to me after all the scouting I've done. I continued on, following the trails of sparks as they led me through the strange mix of outside hallways. I knew from my first experience with this place that the open sky above me was an illusion. After seeing the buildings of my hometown repurposed into a maze, my first thought was to climb them of course. The walls stopped only a little higher up than the white walls had originally been and the ceiling was just an illusion. A very convincing one, but an illusion all the same. I knew these wouldn't be any different and much more annoying to climb.

I walked with some caution but I didn't spend any time moving quietly. It would slow me down way too much with the way the grass has changed. Right now my concerns had more to do with the life of the three guiding rods Maxwell gave me and not with the enemies I might run into. Briskly, I followed the twists and turns of the maze and quickly confirmed that I'd have been completely lost had it not been for the guiding rod. It was borderline obnoxious how many turns I was forced to make. It was with this somewhat relaxed atmosphere that I ran into... him.

"Rodrick?" I gaped.

I knew it wasn't him... it wouldn't be, not on this floor, but...

"Ariaaaaa, you left me to DIE!" A desiccated husk of my former human teammate lunged at me with his bent rapier, vines were crawling under his skin and blood poured out of his missing eyes. Impossible amounts of blood, just like the corpses on the back of that spider monster we killed on the thirteenth floor.

I dodged his lunge, the husk of my friend stumbled, completely unlike the nimble duelist Rodrick had been. Gripping my dagger tightly in my hand I was about to go for a backstab but... I couldn't. It was Rodrick! It wasn't but...

Gritting my teeth, I ran. Rodrick was still alive, he had to be. Maybe not Tirbeck or Dylan, but surely Rodrick. He was always the smartest of our group, the safest. I still didn't remember what happened but I wouldn't leave them to die and Rodrick would surely get out of anything. I looked up to him, there was no way he would have died to a plant. We must have gotten separated in the forest, they wouldn't have left me and I would never have left them... Right?

"ARIAAAAA"

I leapt out of the way of the bolt of fire that had been thrown perpendicular to the hallway I had been running through. That had to be Tirbeck.

"YOU KILLED US!" the monster screamed after me with Tirbeck's voice.

I glanced behind me and now two of them were shambling after me. I'd normally be able to outrun them but their legs were pulsing with disgusting vines that made their legs look unnaturally long. The two of them were moving faster than either of them had ever run, not even Rodrick had been as fast as I was. In the quick glance I had behind me, I could see Tirbeck's blood-covered blue robes were torn and shredded leaving grotesque rotten flesh below it. The beastkin's canine ears had been torn off and plants were growing from his bared skull. Like Rodrick, it looked like he had been killed by the plants growing from his body. I heard the telltale crackle of another firebolt being cast and I dodged to the side, only narrowly avoiding being caught on the rusty walls. The grass in front of me was caught ablaze but without any other choice, I covered my face and dashed through the fire. It was weak. The fire magic was a poor imitation of Tirbeck. I knew they weren't real but... I can't.

Sliding on the dead grass, I sharply turned a corner after the golden sparks that were leading the way for me. After turning the corner, I turned another corner. It wasn't the right direction but it would break line of sight. I hopped through the grass, doing my best to avoid the dead crunchy stuff that would give me away, and crouched after turning another corner. I caught my breath and perked my ears. My hearing wasn't as good as the umber hound's was but it should be good enough for this.

I waited and held my breath when I heard them coming. They ran right past where I was hiding. They didn't stop to consider the hallway I had darted into. Once I heard their loud steps fade around another corner, I quietly retraced my steps back to the correct path. I didn't stop moving even as my first guiding rod died. I slipped the dead rod into my bag before pulling out another and pushing my paltry mana into it. When the new one came to life, I slipped it into my belt where the other one had been.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I'm on rod two of three. As much as I'd love to take this slow I didn't have time for that, I had to get out before I ran out of these things. I wiped the tears out of my eyes and the sweat off my brow before continuing down the path in a fast walk. I needed to go at a decent pace but I couldn't spend all my energy in case I had to run again.

"Aria," a voice whispered behind me.

I spun around just in time to take a fist to my gut that threw me off my feet and onto my back. I looked up at Dylan. I always thought he was huge, but looking up at him like this made him feel even bigger. We had always joked that the human had some bear-blood in him because the monk could wrestle down even the largest beastkin to the ground. Now the gentle giant was the most frightening of the three.

"It's your fault," the monk whispered. The accusation made me freeze but I managed to roll away before the giant of a man could split my head with a kick. I scrambled to my feet and dodged another attack from the man. From Dylan. But he was slow. Normally his fists would move so fast it would take everything I had to stay out of his range but now it was like he was moving like molasses. The only reason he had been able to hit me at all was because he had gotten the drop on me and his punch didn't even hurt as much as it should have.

I turned and ran and only made it a short distance away before Rodrick and Tirbeck turned the corner in front of me. I grit my teeth and shoved the mage into the rusty metal wall before running past them in the small gap I made. I sobbed as I heard Tirbeck's anguished scream wail out behind me.

"YOU KILLED US!" Tirbeck accused again through his anguished cries.

I turned corner after corner, following the sparks of the guiding rod. I just need to get out of here. They're illusions, they aren't real, I didn't kill them. I wouldn't! I didn't!

"YOU LEFT ME!" the FALSE Rodrick cried out as he lunged at me from around a blind corner.

"YOU'RE NOT REAL!" I cried out, shoving Rodrick away from me.

The once nimble duelist fell face-first into the rusty metal wall and slid down it screaming. When it stood up again it shrieked its accusations after me, "YOU'RE HURTING ME! YOU'RE DOING IT AGAIN! WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME?"

I wiped the tears out of my eyes as best I could, I was crying so much it was hard to even see anymore. My hands were covered in the blood that had been pouring off of them from the brief moments I had touched the two and now the blood was smeared all over my face. I heard the sizzle of a firebolt again and dove to the ground before scrambling back up. I don't even know where exactly this one had come from, I just blindly dodged it and kept moving.

This is too much. I can't take this.

My heart sank when I ended up in a dead end. No, worse. I was in a circular room identical to the boss room I had helped fight the spider in. The only way out was a door that was wired shut in front of me, or back the way I had just come. Dylan was already here, stoically waiting for me like I had seen him do a thousand times. He slowly took a fighting stance as I numbly stared at him in front of me. Moments later the other two caught up to me from behind.

Both were covered in even more blood now. Rodrick's face and upper torso were mangled, only barely recognizable after the rusty walls had sloughed off most of his mummified flesh. He held out his bent rapier and screeched. Tirbeck threw another firebolt at me and I was forced to dodge toward Dylan. That normally would have been a death sentence against someone like him but he was so slow that I had no trouble dodging past his uncharacteristic and graceless swing.

I wept as I finally accepted what I would have to do. I dashed right at Rodrick. I would never win in a regular fight against him but this husk was also slower than he should be. I deflected his rapier far easier than I should have been able to and planted my dagger straight through his bloody eye socket. With a twist, I pulled off his skull and contorted my way out of the path of another firebolt cast by Tirbeck. In the time I had been traveling with Luna, I came to appreciate her slower but more devastating attacks. Tirbeck, while a much faster caster, lacked the large area of effect spells that Luna used in nearly every fight. Perhaps it would be different if I was fighting the real Tirbeck.

With a sweep of his legs the monster that looked like my friend crashed face-first into the dirt, revealing his shredded back from when I threw him into the wall earlier. I practically fell on him and stabbed my dagger through the back of his skull and once again I twisted his head off. I didn't know what had become of my friends but monsters nearly universally needed a head to live, even the undead abominations these... things resembled.

Dylan attempted to hit me with a spinning kick but I had seen this attack a hundred times before, and it was pathetically slow, a shadow of his true strength. I hamstrung him with a flash of my blade. He would be too hard to kill outright like the others, he was just too big for that. He was so much taller than me that I would need more than a short opening to kill him, I would need to completely disable the martial artist first. Normally impossible, but with how slow this thing is moving, it wasn't even a challenge. Even with the support of the vines moving underneath his skin, I was able to break down his legs one slash at a time until he was lying on his back disabled and swinging wildly at me. This thing didn't have any of the grace my former friend had. I screamed as I plunged my dagger through his eye and twisted Dylan's head off. With a thump, the head fell to the ground and rolled away.

I was a complete wreck and absolutely soaked in blood when I finally made it to the door. I spent the next few minutes twisting the wire blocking the door out of the metal frame, not made easier by the tears that wouldn't stop. I had expected the three corpses of my friends to get back up at any time so I kept a wary eye on them, but they never did.

Stumbling into the white room with the stairway up I fell to my knees and cried. They were all dead and it was my fault. I didn't remember anything but I was afraid this was the truth. Would the dungeon torment me with lies? I didn't know.

I fell on my side, curled up into a ball, and sobbed. What if I killed them? What if it WAS my fault?