Ashley watched Lynn and her adoptive mother's faces as both slumped to the ground and stared at the wonderful gardens about them with blank eyes.
Ash passed her gaze between them for a moment before frowning and settling to her knees. She sat back on her heels before studying the cavern, her hands resting in her lap.
When no easy solutions presented themselves, she pulled out the heavy amulet that Chess and Lynn had given her to run her fingers over the gems. Sticking a hard fingernail into the crack on the gem to feel at the edges before using a clean hem to buff them until they sparkled. She spent time just staring at them winking in the light cast by the surrounding mushrooms.
She brought up its window again to refresh her memory of its requirements. That’s going to take years, she lamented, mentally poking at the connection she’d formed with the item. The feeling of belonging it gave off when she wore it now still left her queasy; the result of a new binding Lynn had said.
For some reason, the idea that it would take years to use gave her hope, and she turned her gaze to the beautiful bracers Chess had made her, tracing the cat’s head with a thumb. So pretty, mom would’ve loved these, she thought, admiring Chess’s work before losing ground to the vast pit in her heart. A few tears snuck out to roll down her cheeks, and she brushed them away with the back of her hand.
Freya didn’t save me for us to die down here, she decided, enclosing the amulet in a tight fist and looking about with new eyes. There has to be a way out.
Her eyes fell on her improved spear, and she caressed its handle as well before slipping her new chain over her head, and tucking it under her blouse. Its new weight was reassuring against her heart. She used her spear to leverage herself to her feet before brushing its window away.
Keen Ironwood and Steel Spear
Good Condition.
Keen: Stays sharp as long as the condition doesn’t fall too poor.
She began pacing the edge of the slimy and pungent pool; four steps, turn, four steps, turn… Chess’s eyes started to follow her; her head craned back to see.
“There has to be a way out.” Ashley finally told her adoptive mother, forcing a steady voice.
“Yeah, I just can’t think of it right now,” Chess grumbled in reply and let out a deep sigh. “I’m hungry and can’t think straight,” she added.
“Maybe we can climb to that other balcony,” Chess said under her breath and Ashley tilted her head, unsure how that would be possible; it had looked far away and the stone of the cavern was wet.
“We can’t waste the food we have. Drink some of your water,” Lynn cautioned Chess.
Chess grumbled but nodded, opening her vault and pulling out a waterskin, taking a sip before passing it to Ash, who took a grateful gulp before passing it to Lynn and returned to her restless pacing.
“We need food,” Ashley muttered in agreement, her belly tightened with a different, older pang at Chess’s mention of food. She knew they had little food and could wait; she’d known hunger before when she and her mother had a lean winter after the tax collector had taken more than they could afford when her father was away on duty. The distinct taste of old boot leather touched her tongue, and she looked at Chess, trying to dismiss the vivid memory. Things will be better now, she reassured herself.
“Isn’t there something you can do with your magic?” Ashley asked, waving at the glowing garden around them.
“Maybe?” Chess said, studying nearby mushrooms and moss. She picked one of the mushrooms and brought it to her nose to sniff.
“I wouldn’t eat those,” Ashley warned, her stomach dropping when Chess looked like she was about to lick one of the mushrooms. “I’m pretty sure those glowing dots aren’t a good sign.”
“Duh,” Chess said, rolling her large golden eyes before dropping the mushroom into her lap and laying back again.
Ashley shook her head, keeping her thoughts to herself. I’m starting to think she grew up without any women; she lacks something feminine most of the time and she can be so crude. She's never mentioned her mother, just her dead sister. At least she is nice, unlike most noble ladies I've heard of, she thought, glancing at her bracers again, her thumb toying with the design.
It was still surreal to her that the woman had called Freya to administer the adoption in person. Ashley's mouth twitched in a half-smile at the memory of meeting the silly goddess. She liked the cute cat form Freya had taken. A proper fickle Goddess.
She stopped pacing to look at Chess.
“Can you play that song again, the one you played when we summoned Freya? It was nice,” Ashley asked, pleased with the idea. The torpor they'd all fallen into was disheartening.
“I’ll do you one better. How about a different song? Something happier," Chess said, shifting around where she lay before propping herself against a stalagmite and summoning her instrument. Guitar? Ashley thought the word was. Chess spent some time murmuring in her strange language before she snapped her fingers and said, “I have an idea.”
Chess set her guitar aside and pulled Ashley’s old spearhead and some wood scraps from her vault and started forming something in her lap. Chess created a flat wooden circle with paired holes spaced most of the way around before she started making little flat discs from the spearhead and fitting them in the opening. Her magic is amazing, I don't think she knows how rare it is. Right, she’s not from this world, Ashley thought, fighting not to frown.
“Swords to plowshares,” Chess muttered with a soft laugh as she worked.
“What is it?” Ashley finally asked, unable to withhold her curiosity when Chess appeared near done.
“A tambourine,” Chess said with a small smile before handing the finished instrument to Ashley who turned it about in her hands for a moment before handing it back.
Chess smiled and said, “You use it like this.” She demonstrated by holding it at a slight angle and shaking it then hitting it against her palm every second shake. Producing a sound not too dissimilar to a bunch of small bells she'd seen on a noble's carriage horses once.
“Tambourine?” Lynn tried the foreign word.
Chess handed it back to her and took up her guitar saying, “Okay, I’ll start off. When I nod you hit it against your palm then shake it once, then repeat. I’ll nod until you get the timing right.”
Ashley nodded, nervous energy settling in her belly. She held the tambourine before her as Chess had demonstrated while waiting for the signal.
“Ho, Hey, Ho, Hey,” Chess sang, nodding with each word, encouraging Ashley to get the timing. Shortly after Ashley figured she’d gotten it, Chess paused again and frowned at Lynn.
“You do the 'Ho, Hey.' Just keep the same timing as Ash. I’ll tell you when to stop with a head shake. Keep going even when I start to sing, until my headshake,” Chess said, an enthusiastic smile turning her aristocratic features from beautiful to stunning. She's much too pretty, even her rat's nest hair adds to her charm, at least she has a mage class, Ashley thought proudly but with a hint of worry for the future.
Lynn hesitated but started them out with an eye roll. “Ho, Hey, Ho Hey,” she sang without much emotion and Ashley matched her timing with a frown for the kin woman.
Then Chess started singing, and Ashley almost lost the beat in her shocked delight as the song came together.
“I been trying to do it right, I been living a lonely life,” Chess sang with her full and wonderful voice.
By the end of the song, even Lynn had a silly grin.
“Again!” Ashley begged, bouncing with excitement; her tail wagging so hard her backside shifted to and fro with it.
Chess gave her an even wider smile and a nod. “Go ahead then, start us off,” Chess said. This time Ashley sang along with first Lynn then Chess and was beaming with joy by the time they finished.
Skills gained: instrument percussion +1, singing +1
Ashley smiled even wider at the prompt.
“And here I thought all your songs were sad ones,” Lynn observed, sitting back to study Chess frankly.
"No? I just connect better with sad songs," Chess said after a pause for thought. Ashley's smile fell, and she tilted her head. She's in as much pain as I am, she thought. Feeling, not for the first time, that Chess was a true kindred spirit.
Not wanting the mood to sour Ashley clapped the tambourine against her palm to distract them.
"Let's do it one more time, I want to know if others playing along helps my magic," Chess suggested after a vigorous headshake before she shifted her instrument in her lap and scooted around to look at some nearby plants.
"Okay," Chess said, giving Ashley a nod and they started the song over. Ashley watched as the nearby mushrooms started to multiply then grow to monstrous sizes before turning dull and withering only for new ones to take form on their shriveled husks.
This happened over and over as they played the song a few more times at Chess's encouragement. Eventually, they were all singing along and Ashley noticed she didn't have to think about her timing with the tambourine; the song seemingly carried her along on its own. This let her watch in growing fascination as the mushrooms started to change, becoming something different.
Instead of translucent heads with glowing blue dots, they became glowing blue heads on clear trunks that gave off a lot more light. The blue light even gave way to reddish-yellow. A yellow close to the color of the summer sun.
"Fucking A!" Chess crowed, standing and dancing back and forth while funnily wiggling her butt.
"What? How...how did you change them like that?" Lynn asked her eyes nearly ready to pop from her head.
Ashley choked on a laugh seeing her face but was equally baffled. Her Gem must be more powerful than she said. Ashley felt a small spike of fear at the danger such power could lead to, people like that Graventy would stop at nothing to have it if they knew. She'd seen families fall apart over the chance at a better Pyth. Cores and Gems were worse; some people went bad after getting them, or so the stories told.
Chess smiled in delight, her eyes twinkling in the mushroom light. "They… huh, you don't have a word for #^%(&^?,” Chess muttered then sighed, grabbing the top of her head and pulling her hair up and down with her fingertips.
"How do I explain it? Okay, so plants can change over time. They usually do this to adapt to their environment and spread or become poisonous so they aren't eaten. That sort of thing," she said, dropping her hand before shrugging.
"With the mushrooms, I used my magic to encourage each generation to produce more light then later to change the color they gave off. I only managed eight generations, but I chose the brightest and then the one nearest the color I wanted then used its spores for the next batch," Chess explained. "By the way, you two helping with the song did indeed help speed the process up but not by much; maybe an eighth?" she added.
"If that's the case, can't you just make them edible?” Lynn asked, gesturing at the mushrooms before leaning forwards to pick one. Its light dimmed over a few seconds until it resembled its original cousins.
“Any boost to an ability is worth exploring as far as possible. A boost is a rare thing outside some common examples. Usually, it's similar classes with the same skill like most soldiers and their overlapping shield skills," Lynn continued, dropping the mushroom and dusting her hands off.
"Maybe? They may be edible already but I have a hard time trusting mushrooms. Many of them are poisonous in some way, and I have no way to know when I've succeeded without eating one," Chess said. "I think we can leave off testing my abilities until we are somewhere safer."
Lynn gave her a nod of acceptance, and Ashley felt relief that they weren't trying to eat them. "Why make them brighter? Other than it's pretty?" Ash asked her adoptive mother.
Chess smiled and opened her vault, retrieving and holding out the small root-covered twigs left from her bramble cloak. "I figure if we can get some soil, or find a way to compost the mushrooms and moss quickly we could grow berries," Chess said, tapping her chin. "Or perhaps we could use our shit and strain some of the algae from the pool,” she gestured over her shoulder with a thumb.
"You want to collect our poop?" Ashley asked and wrinkled her nose. I hate shoveling manure.
"Yup, it's not like there is much for soil down here just some mulch from mushrooms and moss. Both of which are good, but we need everything we can get!" Chess insisted.
"You may be overthinking it," Lynn observed. "We should check the bottom of the pool; it's most likely mud. Those weeds grow in there."
"Of course!" Chess smacked herself on the forehead. "But if we filter some algae and collect some of this other stuff to compost with our shit, it will be better. Dead moss is good at least."
"We could crush some of the bones too, they are good for fruit bushes," Ashley added, pointing to the dwarven skeleton. Chess nodded reluctantly.
Lynn gave the pool a hesitant look before letting out a suffering sigh and removing her shift. "Can you make me something to scoop it out with?"
Chess agreed and pulled some wood from the top of her skull wall making a small pail and a dense shovel before giving them to Lynn.
"Here," Chess said, tying a length of string to the pail. "Fill it if you can and we'll pull it up," she said.
Ashley studied the colorful mushrooms while Lynn disappeared below. It was only moments later that the Kin woman resurfaced grinning and indicating they should pull up the load.
While Ashley spread the fourth pailful out where Chess indicted with a new shovel, Chess gasped falling to her knees and dug in the muck. She stood with a smile cleaning something small off with a small rag before holding out a tarnished silver ring to Ashley.
Silver ring of Trickster's Luck
Fair Condition.
+1 Luck
“Ha, lucky find. It’s almost like it wanted to be found,” Chess chuckled then dropped it in Ashley's palm. “Here, it's made for someone with smaller fingers than mine,” she said, waving her digits at Ash.
Ashley clutched it tightly for a moment giddy with yet another gift from her new mother before she wrapped her arms around Chess in a crushing hug. “Thanks!” she said letting go before trying it on each finger finding it would only fit on her pinkies.
Lynn had surfaced catching the end of their exchange and warned, “Remember you can only wear one enchanted ring for each limb unless you have someone verify the enchantments won’t interact badly.” The kin woman looked like some sort of water monster with the slime running down her furry head and shoulders.
Ashley nodded, fighting an eye roll herself. Everyone knows that! she groaned before glancing once more to Chess who looked thoughtful. Well almost everyone.
Lynn and Chess had both stopped to look down at the pool with matching frowns.
“What is it?” Ashley asked.
“No,” Chess groaned with a look of disgust and relief.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Yes,” Lynn countered. “Look,” she added, pointing to a series of white lines that ran along the edge of the pool's small depression one every few inches down until the water's surface.
“What?” Ashley asked again, looking at each of her companions.
“It’s still a pretty big space even if it's been drained that much already,” Chess complained but acknowledged Lynn’s point.
Ashley studied the chalky line they had pointed out trying to figure out what they could be talking about. “What is it!?” she demanded.
“High water lines, the pool used to be deeper, we didn’t look for it before. This means… many of the delvers likely died in the pool or shortly after getting out from the helium. The ring seems to confirm it,” Chess explained before turning back to Lynn.
“Even one spacial item could provide everything we need to progress, without breaking delver tradition. We should look,” Lynn stated with an eager glint in her eyes.
Chess had stopped to tilt her head at Lynn, her mouth open like a fish for a moment before she shut it with a snap and gave Lynn a grudging nod. Ashley had a bad feeling about what they had planned. Chess’s next words confirmed her trepidations.
“What happens if I open my vault underwater?” Chess asked after a moment of thought.
“It will fill the free space with water,” Lynn said.
Chess nodded and let out one of the put-upon sighs that Ashley had come to realize were a part of Chess’s everyday mannerisms before she started to pull everything out of her vault, stacking it behind her skull wall. The woman sighed a lot.
“What are we doing with the water? Won’t it flow back in here?” Lynn asked.
“The fact that there is breathable air here indicates that there has to be another way for the helium to escape higher up. It’s lighter than air. I’m secretly hoping that if we get enough water out of the pool the air pressure from the other side will help push some of the helium higher giving us a way out,” Chess said, meeting the kin woman’s eye.
“You want to drain the pool?” Ashley asked in baffled awe.
“Partially, so there is air above it,” Lynn reasoned out, dubious of Chess’s new idea. “Well it depends on what we find, it may be worth draining it entirely at some point to ease the search for enchanted items and coins from the dead delvers. I just wanted a way to surface in the middle,” she added.
“Okay so we need to find somewhere to put the water, the other side would take a long time. It's a good hour’s walk to the waterfall,” Chess reasoned, looking about with a frown.
“You could run it now that we know it's empty,” Lynn suggested.
“Why don’t we look around here? You said the bad air was getting out somewhere right?” Ashley asked tentatively.
“The air is bad,” Lynn said, enunciating each word.
“Well, I could try holding my breath?” Ashley suggested in almost a whisper.
“The mouths of babes... it's so obvious,” Chess slapped herself on the forehead and Ashley giggled once at the gesture, pleased with the response.
“Okay, it won't kill you if you’re forced to take a breath up there but many more than that and you could faint which is as good as dead with that much helium in the air,” Chess explained to Ashley. Pulling her down to sit beside her.
With horror, Ash realized she’d volunteered herself to do the scouting, and her heart started beating harder in her chest.
“Come all the way back down here before you take a deep breath again,” Lynn added, squatting nearby.
“Here eat this before we do this,” Lynn said, handing her one of the last hard biscuits. Ashley didn’t want to eat it; her belly was on the verge of rebelling at the coming danger.
Chess noticed her growing distress and quirked an eyebrow, then smiled. “You don’t have to do it, you know. I can do it,” Chess offered.
“No! No… I want to,” Ashley found herself saying despite herself but then set her spine and met her new mother's eye, her tail stiff behind her. I need to pay you back for all that you’ve done for me so far, she thought.
“Okay,” Chess said. “But don’t go too far, just to the top to look around then come back down.”
Ashley decided to dismiss her remaining armor and stood taking a few long deep breaths through her nose on Chess’s recommendation before she set herself to sprint up the short steep incline to the top of the nearest ridge only several dozen strides away. She dug her thumbnail into the new scar on her thigh to combat the ache that still hadn’t left it before she gave Chess a final nod, inhaled, held it, and ran.
By the time she reached the summit, her head was already pounding, and it took considerable willpower not to gasp for breath. She looked about quickly, noticing the downward curve of the small hillock she was on but not seeing any clear exits. She only spent a few seconds looking around before her chest started to ache and she fled back down in search of better air.
She came to a stop in front of the others gasping for breath like a beached fish. They gave her a moment before she finally said, “I didn’t think about the uphill running; that was hard,” before telling them what she’d seen.
After some more encouragement, Ashley made a few more trips coming back to report. There were a few spots she thought might hold exits but otherwise, the cavern was much the same as they could see from their bowl. Stalagmites and stalactites all covered in glowing fungus and mosses.
“I want to see what happens if I drop a pail of water over that top ridge. I wonder if it will flow back into the pool even if we dump it over the top,” Chess said, bending to scoop up a pailful.
Lynn agreed but put up a hand to forestall Chess. “If we crawl up carefully, we can see when the bad air starts,” she said, suiting the action to her words. We should've done that before I ran up there, Ashley thought.
Lynn got low about halfway up the slope and crawled forwards until she was only a few feet below the lip before turning to lay on her back. Her tail flared out between her legs. Ashley could hear her mumbling to herself the whole way and only in the last few feet did her voice change to the high pitch that the bad air created. Ash would’ve laughed at the effect if she wasn’t aware of the danger it posed.
“So, it’s just this bowl we are in that has good air right now,” Chess observed as the kin-woman rejoined them.
“It does mean we can go most of the way up before holding our breath though,” Ashley said, proud of the look of approval Chess turned her way after the comment.
“Okay time to see how this water flows,” Chess said, hefting the bucket and making her way to the top to dump it over. Ashley waited for the water to come back down, but it never showed, and she let out her breath at the same time Lynn did.
“I hope it works like she thinks it will,” Lynn said looking at Ash.
Ashley furrowed her brow at the Kin woman.
“She seems to think good air will level out like water in a water level,” Lynn explained and this time Ashley understood.
“Is that right?” Ashley asked.
“Right now? I hope so. Elves generally know more about the natural sciences, so I’m willing to let her try,” Lynn explained with an expansive shrug, watching Chess make her way back down to stand at the pool's edge.
“Shit,” Chess said with a frown. “I have to get into the water to open my vault underwater don’t I?” She asked. Ashley almost laughed at Chess’s look of distaste, but she couldn’t blame her. It was everything Ash could do to ignore the cloying stench of the pool and the drying slime still clinging to her skin and fur.
Chess stripped down to her underthings and bracers before gritting her teeth against the cold. “This is gonna suck. If I freeze to death, I’m haunting you both till the end of time,” she griped, before sinking into the pool up to her neck.
Ashley felt a spike of betrayed fear at Chess’s promise before realizing it’d been a joke.
“You shouldn’t say such things, even in jest,” Lynn admonished Chess once she’d completed her spell and climbed back out with a hand up from Lynn.
Chess stared blankly at Lynn for a second before looking at Ash who hadn’t taken the hurt look from her face.
“Oh… sorry,” Chess said, a ruddy shade forming on her high cheeks, despite the cold. Ashley felt better seeing it.
Chess made her way to the top of the hill in chastised silence to empty her vault for the first time, carrying only her mace before returning and giving the pair another, “Sorry,” before pausing at her wall to collect a pair of the skull blocks. She proceeded to break part of the wall down and sink the blocks in at the edge of the pool to act as an impromptu stairway.
Ashley and Lynn spent time getting their gear back on and restacking Chess’s stuff as they watched the all-but-naked Chess trudge up and down the slope, her chest heaving with the effort.
“I’ve never seen a human or elf woman so comfortable showing that much skin, even to other women, outside their body servants,” Lynn observed in a near whisper, once, when Chess was at the top emptying her inventory and out of earshot.
Ashley opened her mouth then shut it before saying, “I don’t think she was raised with any women.” Not seeing any harm in the observation.
“What could her family be thinking? Makes you wonder who she is. There are too many secrets and too much strangeness surrounding her,” Lynn replied, the white fur of her forehead crinkling in thought.
“Her last name is Stewart, which is Steward in her language. I asked after she adopted me,” Ashley added, not wanting to tell the woman anything important.
“Likely someone important, with a name like that,” Lynn said and pinched her brow, keeping further thoughts to herself. Ashley thought Chess’s importance had more to do with her Goddess, Freya, but kept that to herself.
They watched as the water level fell faster than she had thought possible as Chess toiled up and down the slope.
Ashley and Lynn took turns resting and keeping watch as Chess worked. After a couple dozen trips the level had already fallen several inches.
It was during one such watch that Ashley thought she heard a light thud and felt a slight tremor in the ground below her resting tail and some small rocks rattling lightly nearby. She looked up and around seeing Chess taking the final few slow steps to the top of the ridge again before turning to look down at the lounging Ashley and Lynn.
“Lynn,” Ashley said, getting the woman's attention with a nudge. “Did you feel that?” she asked. Lynn met her eye and shook her head but sat up shaking out her limbs.
Chess had returned and headed back up before Ashley felt it again. This time it was louder, a distinct thump followed by the shaking of the loose scree around them. Then it came again, this time with a whiff of what had become a familiar dread that attacked her stomach, tossing it ass for teakettle.
“Lynn!” Ashley hissed a breathless warning as she watched Chess take the final couple steps to the top. The terror spiked hard, her head swimming in the sudden dread followed by a solid thump and a clattering ramble like a frantic horse's hooves. She fought the urge to turn and run, her teeth clenched tight. Bloody skeletons, I'm not afraid of your magic anymore!
Lynn rolled to her feet muttering under her breath with annoyance. “I’m sick of these bloody undead.”
“OH! FUCK ME SIDEWAYS!” Ashley heard Chess yell in angry fear before her new mother turned and bolted towards them, long legs eating the distance down the incline.
Chess's defiant yell helped to blunt Ashley’s new fears, and she scrambled to her feet, bending to grab her mace and shield from the ground.
She heard a sharp meaty thump then felt something heavy pass only inches over her head quickly followed by a loud slap of something large hitting the surface of the pool.
When she looked up Chess was gone and her heart missed a few beats at the terrifying sight before her.
A huge feline skeleton bore down on her and Lynn, its lithe boney limbs scrambling against the stony ground to launch itself forward at a breakneck speed. Huge glowing red eyes framed a massive boney jaw filled with razor-sharp teeth followed by a graceful boney body. Ashley quailed.
“Stand your ground! There is nothing you can do for her until this is over,” Lynn yelled at Ashley, her voice going up two octaves with her fright.
Lynn put her shoulder into Ashley’s back, keeping her square to the horror when Ash tried to turn to look back to the pool for Chess.
The bone horror flew down the bank towards them in an uncontrolled slide, ramming its shoulder into Chess's short wall, knocking water droplets from the supporting stalagmites before gathering itself and vaulting the barrier with ease and crouching to pounce on her and Lynn.
The world seemed to slow as the huge skeleton launched itself the last few feet and Ashley croaked out, “Shield” through a fear-tightened throat. She barely got her round shield between her and the beast catching the weight of its heavy skull in the center. The blow still knocked her and Lynn both backward to slam into the pool head and shoulders first.
Ashley hadn’t had time to draw a breath before she was submerged and lost the little air she did have when she hit the water. She quickly lost her bearings in the dark waters, dropping her shield and mace so she could claw her way out. She spun for a bit before she found the glow of the mushroom cave above and flailed desperately toward them.
She was faintly surprised that her armor didn’t weigh her down as she surfaced gasping for breath and looking about frantically for the others and the horror that had attacked them.
Lynn had beaten her from the pool and now stood waist-deep on Chess’s small stairs beating futilely at the submerged bone horror with her spear, only taking small flakes from its head and shoulder bones. Trails of blood and slime streamed down the sides of Lynn’s matted face. The bone horror scrambled at the slimy sides of the pool seeking purchase to launch an attack at the kin woman. Each attempt breaking up chunks of the shale with a grinding and popping crunch.
Lynn snarled in defiance when it found its grip and lunged toward her before landing another vicious two-handed blow on its broad skull with her spear, knocking it back into the pool and foiling the attack. The beast shook its massive head and opened its jaws in a silent roar at Lynn.
Chess was nowhere in sight, and Ashley’s throat tightened further than the creature's aura had managed thus far.
“Don’t just stand there!” the kin-woman growled at Ashley once she’d climbed back onto shore and stood, shivering from the cold and shock while gasping for breath.
Ashley quailed again but clenched her jaw and bent to lift Chess’s shield and her spear from the ground and advanced once more towards the horror. She made it a few steps before she noticed that she didn’t hurt any more than she did before the blow and found a fierce smile splitting her face as she drew back to thrust toward the horrors glowing eye.
Ashley's blow missed, skating off the brow ridge and only taking a small chip out of the bone and she slipped from her perch, landing awkwardly with one leg sunk in the pool again. The horror pulled its head back before it caught its footing and lunged at Ashley, catching her left shoulder and shield between its vice-like jaws and dragging her forwards into the pool with a sharp tug.
“Motherfucker!” came Chess’s voice from the far edge of the pool as she was dragged under.
This time she caught a half breath before being submerged. Her chest ached with her terror and the need for more air than she had. The beast released her, and she scrambled at the water to get out, dropping her shield and spear but wasn’t quick enough and the beast’s paw settled on her chest pushing her into the muck at the bottom.
Her eyes bulged and she used both hands to plug her nose and mouth desperate to keep the air she still had in her lungs. A few terrible and agonizingly long seconds later the horror shifted its weight from her, backing up. Its boney claws left long furrows in her breastplate and greaves drawing amber furrows from her upper chest to her lower legs that made her lose the last of her air in an agonized scream, her mouth quickly filling with the acrid and slimy waters when the claws punctured her armor on her thighs leaving small welling holes.
A strong hand gripped her hair and tugged her free of the muck and up into the air just before darkness narrowed her vision completely. She let out a sputtering coughing gagging groan as she surfaced with the painful loss of a clump of hair. She spat bile and slime from her mouth desperate to get a good, filling breath. She remained on her hands and knees, coughing and gasping for a few long moments.
On her third full breath, she realized she heard singing and blinked before spotting Chess treading water near the back of the pool, her gaze focused on the frothing center of the pool. Ashley's heart surged with relief and joy.
It took only moments for the surface of the pool to calm down. Ashley’s heart refused to settle with the calm, and it was still all she could hear over the pounding in her skull and a constant need to flee.
“She may contain the urge to run away. But hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks,” Chess sang her voice filling the now quiet bowl before echoing back at them.
Ashley vaguely remembered Chess playing the strange song a few days before. Strands of glowing blue-white seaweed were flowing up and over to cover the skeleton’s frame.
“Got you, you assfucking bastard, break free of THAT!” Chess spat venom on their foe as she swam wide around the edge of the pool to where she and Lynn stood after she’d finished her song.
Only the head of the terror remained above the surface of the green pool, its vicious jaw cinched shut with bands of the lightly glowing swamp weed.
Freya but her magic is terrifying at times, Ashley thought with a surge of pride only to be muddled as her head swam again, and she lost the small biscuit she’d eaten earlier to the floor. She still struggled for breath against its terrifying aura and her time in the pool.
She felt a hand on her foot and looked down then up to where Lynn crouched beside her. The woman’s face was a discordant rictus of blood and green slime, and Ashley raised her hand, bringing her new spell to her mind. Lynn brushed her hand off and frowned at her.
“I'm fine, only a pressure cut. You better use your spell on yourself now dear, there isn’t much stitching will do for these small holes and your scalp should be fine. I only uprooted a few hairs. Sorry,” Lynn said pitching her voice low and calm, wincing when she mentioned Ashley's hair.
Ashley nodded mutely and dismissed her greaves before willing sap to cover her wounds with shaking hands than using lay-on-hands. Willing it to flow into her own body as she held them closed.
Immediately she felt waves of relief flow through her easing her aching head and legs like a gently lapping wave against the shore until the worst had passed leaving a deep gnawing hunger in her belly. She bent forward over the new ache until Lynn pressed one of their remaining biscuits and a waterskin into her hands and she eagerly ate and drank with relish. It was the best thing she could ever remember eating.
Ashley lost a moment watching her armor flow to fill in the long rents left across her breastplate, the healed areas stark amber-gold next to the grimy green old before she could focus on what Chess and Lynn were saying. That’s…
“I should've tripped to the idea that skeletons don’t need to breathe. Stupid!” Lynn said in self-mockery sitting beside Chess. The kin woman was busy scraping slime from her fur with the heels of her hands.
“No, we were both stupid. I should’ve taken my shield, not just my mace. I got lazy; I didn’t want to lug it up and down with me. Not to mention my armor. I’m destined to learn everything the hard way it seems,” Chess countered equally winded with pain in her voice. She had wrapped a fur around her still mostly naked form and sat with her back against her wall. "I don't think the wall was any use," she added, hitting it with an elbow for emphasis.
"No, it slowed it. If not for that, Ash and I would've likely had broken bones instead of light bruises," Lynn tempered while flinging mud at the pool.
There was a long pause as they thought and caught their wind. Chess gingerly climbed to her feet favoring her right leg and arm to shuffle to the edge of the pool and peer in at the skeleton she’d trapped, the fur dragging in the muck of their earlier labors.
“Ashley, can you bind undead with your Pyth? This thing is awesome. I always thought cat skeletons were cool, I swear this thing is almost twice the size of those greenwood lions we fought,” Chess asked a hint of excitement in her voice.
Has she lost her freaking mind? Ashley thought. No, she’s just this weird.
“Have you lost your wits?” Lynn asked, mirroring Ashley’s thoughts.
“Well? You didn’t answer my question,” Chess asked tilting her head at them.
“Have some respect. It was likely one of the delver's bound creatures,” Lynn said crossing her arms.
“Still doesn’t answer the question,” Chess pointed out, a finger raised towards the kin-woman.
“It depends on her willpower, its willpower, and the rank of her Binding Pyth,” Lynn answered with a sigh through tight lips. She got another handful of goop from her fur and flung it with disgust into the pool.
Ashley dug a dirty shirt out of the pile of Chess’s stuff and mechanically started to dry herself off and scrape off the slime from her armor as they argued before she got the bright idea to dismiss it, saving herself a lot of effort.
“Well? What does she need?” Chess asked, and Ashley had to admit she was curious about the answer.
Lynn eyed the creature thoughtfully for a moment before shrugging. “Rank 5 and 16 Willpower?” she hedged.
Chess let out a disappointed sigh and returned to sit beside Ashley laying one wing of her fur over her shoulder. Chess leaned in and whispered in Ashley’s ear. “Are you alright?” she asked with worry tightening her voice.
Ashley nodded vigorously despite her hammering heart and forced a smile for her new mother. Chess wrapped an arm around her and drew her closer, and Ashley sunk into the comfort and warmth offered, her body on the edge of shivering. The closeness helped a lot to ease her desire to run created by the creature's aura.
“Don’t worry, I’ll finish it off,” an exasperated Lynn offered and turned to face their trapped foe, grabbing Chess’s dropped mace as she advanced into the pool.
She swam over then climbed up onto the back of the skeletal cat and shuffled forward to its neck. She straddled its back and raised the mace in a two-handed grip before bringing it down on the base of the neck. A few blows later and the aura stopped and Lynn reached forward to pry the large soul-stones from the eye sockets. The beast hadn’t moved, still stuck fast by Chess’s plants.
Lynn let herself slip from its back to the pool and climbed back up to join the resting pair.
Stat increase: +1 Willpower
Ashley goggled at the prompt, Maybe it won’t take years, after all, she thought with new hope. The sudden lack of fear made her body ache with a bone-deep weariness, and she stifled a sudden yawn brought on by the growing warmth from her mother and the fur. She was too tired to cry, so she snuggled in closer to Chess, and a rumbling started to build in her chest.
“Hey, I didn't know you could purr,” Chess said shortly before Ashley lost herself to a world filled with cavorting squirrels.