By the time Kylie and Seran had logged back in to the dungeon, Heather was already there, looking smugly satisfied. “Is wimp boy back and good to go again?” She teased.
“Me no wimp! Me man!” Seran thumped his chest and shook his hammer savagely.
“Not you,” Heather sighed. “Kylie.”
“Kylie not man,” Seran declared. “Not wimpy or otherwise. Kylie got boobs! Her woman, silly Heather!”
“Oh… Whatever!” Heather snorted and started walking out of the small alcove they’d been using as their “base” for now. “Let’s go kill something. Let’s see what secrets this Idiot’s Paradise holds.”
“Me ready! Me hunt!” Seran thumped his chest and stomped to the exit leading out into the hall, stopping only long enough to grab Heather by the shoulders, lift her up, and sit her to the side out of his path. “Silly Heather. Man goes first. Weak little finger wiggling women follow behind man.”
Laughing lightly, Kylie rushed past her to catch up behind Seran. “And us sweet little healers stay in the middle so if anything sneaks up on us we don’t die. Wizards are expendable, healers aren’t.”
“Suits me just fine,” Heather agreed, as she moved forward to reach and smack Kylie lightly across the butt. “I don’t mind standing back here and watching the goodies wiggle and waggle so tantalizingly in front of me.”
“Hey!” Kylie half jumped, and then turned to glare back. “I’m warning you too. Anything you do to me in here, I’m going to get even and do to you, in my dreams. Don’t act surprised when it happens; I’ve warned you here first.”
“Oh ho ho! I don’t think so,” Heather snorted, glaring. “I’d end up making use of what I learned earlier from Seran; if you get my meaning.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” Kyle stopped walking and turned, hands on her hips, to glare back.
“Just try me.”
Kylie and Heather were both intensively staring at the other, neither one the least bit willing to back down, when a loud manly roar echoed down the tunnels. “RRRAAAHHHRRRRGG!!!” Seran charged forward, dropped his hammer on the ground, and proceeded to kick something down the passage.
“Home run!” He yelled and put his hand up to his eyes to watch whatever it was bounce against the ceiling and roll several spans deeper into the darkness. “Three points!” As he lifted his arms in the air to signal the goal was good, several large spiders came skittering out of the darkness and swarming.
“Watch out, dufus!” Kylie yelled, as she moved up to close the distance between her and Seran. “And it’s a field goal worth three points, not a home run.”
“Where me come from, it home run,” Seran said defiantly as a large spider jumped on his leg and bit. The color of his health bar changed to a sickly green, indicating he’d been poisoned. “No neuter Seran! Make Kylie cry. Her like me snake!” Reaching with both hands, Seran grabbed the spider firmly and ripped it from his leg, before drawing it back and throwing to down the hallway.
“You jerkwads are in the way!” Heather screamed. “I can’t blast them without blasting you too. Give me some room, dammit!”
Kylie struck out at one spider, squashing it off the ceiling with the end of her staff, and Seran simply crossed his arms and waited. “Seran not move. Seran man! Spider not move man!”
“Jerkface!” Heather yelled at his back, while trying to get as far to the right side as possible in an attempt to blast something along that side, since Kylie was lashing out at anything she could reach with her staff on Seran’s left. Several more spiders were now scurrying up the passage, and Seran simply stood his ground; a stoic wall between the women and the beasts.
Suffering several bites over the next few minutes of Seran-obstructed battle, Kylie and Heather had to fight around him as he stubbornly refused to give ground. The green gauge indicating Seran’s heath continued to grow a deeper, more intense shade of green with each bite, and Kylie found herself being forced to throw her heals more and more frequently before the battle was over.
Once the last spider had died, Heather stomped up, pulled on the back of Seran’s hair to force him to turn to face her, and then slapped him. “Just what the hell was you doing?” She screamed in frustration at him. “I could’ve blasted the whole tunnel, if you’d just moved out of the way! And why the hell didn’t you squash them with that big ass hammer of yours?”
“Hammer too big for little tunnel,” Seran said simply, “but tunnel right size for Seran. Me not able swing at spider, but me not let spider get women until them beat me first. And if them beat Seran, then them all be in tight group and easy pray for Heather.”
“Well… Did we ever say we wanted you for a shield?” Heather snorted, a little softer this time.
“Not matter what woman want,” Seran answered. “Only matter what Seran want. Seran not want puny wiggle-finger women hurt; Seran not let puny wiggle-women get hurt. Seran not care if woman not like what Seran does. Seran man! Man do what man want do!”
“Yeah, that might be so,” Kylie agreed, simply because she knew there wasn’t any reason to argue otherwise, “but man needs a second tool for these smaller tunnels. Just standing there and waiting to die, isn’t really the most help you know. I’ve got to work myself to death, just to keep you alive! Even now, you’re a drain on my mana, as I’m having to constantly keep working on healing you until the poison wears off.”
“Not me problem.” Seran snorted. “Healer heal me, or me die. Me not care which. Me just come back if me die.”
“Well I care, dammit!” Kylie said, stomping her foot lightly on the ground. “Consider it my pride as a healer, if you have to. Try not to just stand there and get chewed on so much, or poisoned so many times!”
“HA!” Seran laughed and grabbed up his hammer, slinging it across his shoulder. “Me tell you – ‘Not me problem’. Healer not like me be poisoned, then healer not fuss at me. Healer just learn cure. Make poison go away, easier than make Seran change mind!”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“It’s not that simple!” Kylie yelled. “Do you think spells just appear out of thin air. Wishing for them doesn’t make them appear, you know.”
“Why?” Seran asked, quietly.
“Why? Why what?” Kylie repeated.
“Why wishing not make spell? How make skill?”
“How do you make a skill?” Kylie repeated, again. “You simply keep trying it over and over, until you get it right enough times to learn it. Fail at several hundred attempts at crafting, and you can get a crafting skill of one.”
“Then why not fail hundred times at remove poison? Kylie not do it, cause Kylie not even try it!” Seran was smiling broadly now, having finally made his point.
“This start dungeon. These weak enemies. Seran not care if them bite him to death many, many, many times here. Seran improve ‘Physical Resistance’. Seran improve ‘Poison Resistance’. Seran not got room swing hammer, learn fight better, but Seran able improve how resistant and durable Seran is. When leave little dungeon, Seran be better prepared for longer, harder fight in deeper dungeon.
“No run from weak poison,” Seran declared boldly. “No hide! Seran embrace weak poison, trust healer, and improve tolerance. When meet scorpion later, Seran go, ‘HA! You call that single-step kill-all poison. That tickle!’ Not Seran fault if Healer not take chance to fail, fail, fail, until succeed! Not Seran fault if puny wizard not learn control magic to go around Seran. Seran learn! Seran grow! Others whine and stay weak if they want. Not me problem.”
Striding on down the hallway, ignoring the loot left behind, Seran boldly moved forward to the next intersection to look left and right for any sign of trouble. Kylie took a moment to stare thoughtfully at Heather, who seemed lost in her own thoughts as well. “He might be a jerkface as a man,” Kylie finally muttered, “but he also might be right. You learn skills through practice and failures. I was always assuming that you’d learn magic from books, scrolls, or a trainer – but I don’t see why simple self-practice and self-research wouldn’t work, from what we’ve seen so far.”
“But is it possible to alter how magic performs?” Heather asked, quietly. “Could I possibly make a ball of fire arc, change course, go around him – or around a corner even?”
“Damned if I know,” Kylie admitted, “but he’s right about one thing – we haven’t even tried yet. It took me several hundred failed attempts at Identify before I got a skill in it, but I managed to get it just by trying it over and over. I don’t have a clue how the hell to work a Cure Poison spell, but as long as I have the mana and he has the health not to be in serious danger of dying; from now on, I’m going to be trying everything I can think of to make it happen. It might take a thousand failures, but only one success will make it worthwhile in the end.”
“Fine,” Heather agreed, softly. “I’ll see if I can make my magic do more as well. Just watch jerkwad’s health a little more. I might fail in arcing something around him and set him on fire instead.”
“As long as it’s accidently, I don’t mind,” Kylie warned. “I’ll watch closer.”
“It’ll be accidental, if it happens,” Heather promised. “I don’t think that idiot would care anyway. He’d probably thank me for helping him practice his ‘Fire Resistance’. The only person I’d end up hurting would be myself, and my chance to improve my magic.”
“Then I guess we’ll try ‘Winter’s Tale – Seran’s Way’ for a while,” Kylie giggled. “No need to think. No need to plan. Simply charge in, say ‘to hell with it, if it kills me, it’ll just make me stronger’, and focus on improving anything we can for the long term rather than a short term gain.”
“So in other words, we just pretend we’re guys?” Heather laughed. “We’d better grab this loot up and catch up to dufus up there. Who knows how long he’ll stay in one spot and let us chat?”
“I think he’s letting us rest and get a little mana back,” Kylie stated. “But, you’re right; trouble might come up any of those tunnels at any time. Let’s grab what we can and catch up with him.”
“What’d we get from spiders, anyway?” Heather asked.
Identifying the different items around, Kylie finally answered, “Spider ichor and Spider Silk. Both can be used in crafting, though I don’t have a clue how we’d gather and keep the ichor. Maybe in the waterskin?” Kylie wrinkled her nose, looking down at the green viscid liquid puddled atop the dirt floor.
“As long as we don’t try and drink it,” Heather warned. “Who knows how rare the stuff is in other places. Not everyone is going to be a nutcase and want to fight things that poison you and keep damaging you even after the fight is over, like Seran.”
“That’s probably true!” Kylie laughed. “If it was just me, I think I’d avoid something that could poison me to death, even after I beat it. In fact…” She laughed again and then waved down the hall. “Hey Seran! We have a job for you! It’s something only a real man could do!”
“Me man! What me do?” Seran yelled back, completely heedless about who or what might hear him in the dungeon, and slowly started walking back to the others.
“Just scoop that green glop up and put it in the waterskin there for us,” Kylie laughed, as she tossed her waterskin over to him. “It’ll probably poison you, since we don’t have any real tools for gathering it with, so it’s something only a real man would do.”
“Me man! Me not scared of poison! Me put goo in bottle!” Seran thumped his chest several times and then knelt down to start gathering the green ichor.
Kylie laughed lightly, shrugged at Heather, and then started experimenting with her magics to see if she could cure the poison that Seran was constantly exposing himself to by scooping it up from the ground and slowly draining it into the wineskin.