Gun Girl from Another World

Lava

"Remmi! What are you doing?!"

I'm crouched down on the edge of the granite clearing we landed on. My left hand is stretched out over the angry soup. I'm tentatively lowering the limb down toward it.

Of course, I pause when Ayre's panicked near-screech splits the air and look back at the elf, whose fists are clenched before his chest and knees are clasped.

"I'm checking how hot it is," I state like it's the most normal thing in the world.

There's a moment of dumbstruck silence on Ayre's mien, then, "Remmi, it's lava!"

"No, it's not."

There's that dumbstruck look again. "What do you mean, it's not?! It's obviously lava!"

"It looks like lava," I correct my friend, "but there's no way it's the real thing."

"Not the real thing?!" Ayre repeats. "Can't you feel how hot it is in here?!"

"Exactly," I point to the elf. "It's not nearly hot enough for being surrounded by lava in an enclosed space! The laws of thermodynamics should be baking us alive right now, and it's only uncomfortably hot! And then there are the fumes!"

"What fumes?!"

"There aren't any!" I swing my arms out toward the lake around us. "Lava gives off all sorts of nasty gasses, like sulphur dioxide and hydrochloric acid! Not to mention absurd quantities of carbon dioxide! We shouldn't be able to breathe down here if this were really lava!"

It's Korrigan who speaks up this time. "But … we can breathe just fine. And we're not baking."

"Which means it's not real lava," I conclude dramatically. "It's just a lava-like substance conjured by the dungeon as an environmental hazard!"

Ayre crosses his arms under his chest, frowning as he juts one hip. "Alright, it's only pretend lava. Why does that mean you have to stick your hand in it?"

"Because we need to know how hot it is." Now I feel like I'm repeating myself. "We need to know if it's going to kill us if we slip, or if it's something we can survive a brief dip in!"

"I don't feel like you're thinking this through as well as you think you are," Ayre counters. "What if it is lethal?"

"Then all I'll lose is my hand, and my healing bullets can regenerate it." I hold up my pistol with my right hand. "I've already got them loaded!"

"I don't think you have a suitable sense of self-preservation, Remmi …"

Leuke takes a few steps toward where I am. "No, she's got a point. We do need to know how much we can risk." He begins unfastening his gauntlet. "But let me do it. You may not be able to aim straight if you're in pain, right? It'll be easier for you to heal someone else."

I nod and step back to make room for him. "Yeah, good thinking, Leuke!"

Behind us, Ayre groans, rubbing his forehead. "Oh, Essence, we're actually doing this, aren't we?"

"Okay, Leuke," I coach him as he kneels down next to the liquid, "try to keep your hand in for as long as you can bear it. If that's only a moment, that's fine. If you suddenly lose sensation, though, pull out immediately!"

He wiggles his fingers a moment, building up his determination, then plunges his hand into the drink. Immediately, expressions of pain flood his face, but he manages to keep it under for several seconds before he finally breaks and yanks it back out again.

"Oh, oh, oh, it burns, it burns!" He's grasping his wrist with his other hand and waving the afflicted hand around, occasionally attempting to blow on it.

"Hold still, let me see it," I insist as I grab the limb and pull it in close to my face. I can feel the heat coming off of it. The fingers are red, swollen and angry, there's blisters and places where I can even see cooked meat underneath, but the hand is fundamentally intact.

"Come on, heal it, already," Leuke begs. "I think it's actually worse in the open air!"

"Just take it easy, healing's coming," I assure him, careful not to call him a big baby since it probably really is quite painful. Honestly, I'm glad it's not me.

I place the barrel against his wrist and pull the trigger. He immediately yelps and the recoil throws the limb away from me. Still, I'm able to ping it two more times even as the momentum sends it flinging about. It's like moving target practice!

"Ow, ouch!" Leuke is waving his wrist out even as his skin and nails regenerate on his hand above it. "Those things are the most painful healing I've ever received! Are you sure they don't do damage?!"

"If they do," I say as I holster my gun, "it's far less than the healing they provide." I pick up his gauntlet and help the big man to his feet. "Good news is, the lava-substitute isn't as deadly as the real thing. It's just really, really scalding. We can stumble into it a bit and be fine so long as we don't go full in." I hand Leuke his gauntlet and slap him on the back. "You in particular need to stay out. You'll sink like a rock, and your armor will hold all the fluid in instead of letting it drain away from you even if we get you out."

"... Noted," he replies as he wiggles his fingers again before sliding the gauntlet back over them. "Don't worry, I'm not looking to do that again."

I think I hear Ayre muttering something about doing it in the first place, but when he speaks up, he's saying something else. "I guess it's good to know it's not going to kill us outright, but is there anything else you want to examine, or can we get moving?"

I change my rounds back to my overpressure default and holster the pistol again. "Right, ready whenever you are, Ayre!"

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

The elf just gives me a flat look, like he's trying to decide if that deserves an answer or not, then he just turns toward the same split hallway we took upstairs and leads the way into the second floor Main Hall.

… It … is not the familiar one from the first floor we passed through so many times. It's probably about the same massive size, but the lava is pervasive here. There's scattered granite platforms, broken bridges and structures that might have once been about the size of gazebos before they collapsed, as if this whole room was once some sort of ornamental garden or park. As if water once ran through the channels the red, steaming fluid now occupies.

Instead of birds and fish, or even goblins and wolves, the new occupants are decidedly more horrifying. We can see bat-like humanoids I can only think of as imps flitting about in the air, and massive, insectile, worm-like creatures snake through the lava, itself. One of the latter rears up when an imp flies too close. The imp manages to swoop out of the way, but the revelation that the insects are huge, evil-looking centipedes with round, tooth-filled maws is enough to give me plenty of nope.

We huddle in the entrance before fully entering the room.

"So what's the plan?" Korrigan is the first to ask.

"Well, we've got fiendish centipedes and imps," I point out. "I'll bet the latter will try to bombard us with fire magic from the air, and the centipedes will attack if we get too close to the pools they're in."

Ayre gives me a look that's half bewildered, half disgusted. "Why do you know this?!" he hisses at me.

I just give an innocent shrug. "I mean, I'm just calling what I see."

Korrigan looks back and forth between us. "Um, is Hero Remmi not supposed to know what imps are?"

Ayre doesn't answer, not out loud. He just gives me an angry glare. There's nothing I can do but shrug again.

Leuke casts his gaze around the hall. "It looks like there's a solid walkway all the way around the outer edge."

"Which is exactly why we're not taking it," I immediately contradict. "There's something fishy about anything that makes it so easy."

"It's not that easy," Ayre objects. "We'd have to walk single-file, and we'd still risk being under attack."

"We're fast," I point out. "We could blitz them, get to the far side where it's more solid and fight them off there."

"Okay," the elf demands, "so why aren't we doing that?"

"Because that's the suspiciously obvious solution. I guarantee you, there's something up with the wall route."

"Fine," Ayre relents, "we don't take the wall. I don't need to hear, I told you so, over something stupid. Down the middle, then?"

"Near as possible," I confirm. "It'll mean being attacked from more sides, but we've got enough firepower between the four of us to deal with these goons."

"... I'm not sure fire's going to be very useful here," Korrigan points out.

"Figure of speech," I answer with a wave of my hand. "Stick to your lightning, that should be fine."

She nods and we break our huddle.

"Alright, team, let's make this level our …" I pause, glance to Korrigan, who looks confused at my break, then I turn forward again. "... beatstick!"

"You were about to say b-" Ayre starts but his mouth is covered.

"There are children present, don't be vulgar!"

The first imps spot us and let out a cry that alerts the rest before barreling toward us. The one at the front tumbles out of the air a moment later as my bullet tears through its bulbous skull.

"Here we go! Let's deal with the imps first as much as possible!"

Ayre draws an arrow back. "I don't have your range, Remmi! We'll be counting on you to thin them down, then we'll take them out as they come in close!"

"Right!" I glance to Leuke. "Keep those worms off of us!"

"You can count on me!"

Plan in place, we begin the engagement. I focus on plinking the imps out of the air, not aiming to soak the skies with lead so much as focusing on taking precise shots. Two more ranged participants mean that I don't need to take them all down, myself. Besides, there's enough that it's not long before arrows and spells start flying, too.

Little surprise, the centipedes don't keep their noses out of it, either. They're slower to follow the noise of battle, but that just means they end up timing so that we're in the thick of the imps by the time they come crawling out of the molten sludge.

And, sure enough, the imps that come into casting range begin tossing firebolts at us, too. Leuke's strong, but when we find ourselves having to dance around too many bolts and he's facing down three worms at once, I give the order to move.

"Forward! Further into the cavern! We can't let ourselves get surrounded!"

Leuke takes one of the centipedes' heads off, then swats a firebolt that was coming for him and takes off running after us, all the while, Ayre, Korrigan and I are returning fire into the cloud of bat wings above our heads.

We leap across broken bridges to new platforms, briefly take cover in blown-out gazebos before imps flood the gaps and centipedes crawl over the barricades, and generally make our way in the direction of the far wall. It's a running battle, but we make a good showing of it.

Right up until something goes wrong.

"Ah!"

Our path has taken us close to the right side wall, and we're passing through one of the ruined buildings, but a bolt from an imp causes Ayre to lose his footing and topple backwards toward the wall.

Which wouldn't be a problem, the building hugs right against it, so there's no lava. Except we promptly find out the gimmick with the walls as ghostly hands reach out of it as soon as Ayre stumbles close and clamp down on him, pulling him tightly up against the wall. The hands are either extremely cold or necrotic, as I can immediately see Ayre's pale flesh start turning blue where they're grabbing him.

Either way, we gotta get him out of there quick. Besides, I don't like where some of them are grabbing, we're gonna get out of PG territory really fast.

I turn and shoot the face of the centipede clambering over the rubble that Leuke was about to engage and shout at him. "Leuke, ghost hands!"

He takes one look and makes a dash for Ayre, golden energy flaring around his blade with a shout as he activates some elemental skill and cleaves down through the pale, blue limbs. And well into the stone wall, itself.

There's an unholy wail as half the hands retract, and Leuke grabs Ayre with one hand, yanking the elf free of the hands on the other side.

I shoot another centipede while Korrigan unleashes a storm to chase the imps away. "Can you run?" I ask my friend.

Ayre is squinting and there's lots of blue fingerprints over his bare skin, but he nods. "Yeah … Yeah, I'm good. Going to need some of those healing bullets, though. That sucked a third of my hit points …"

I reach into my satchel and toss him a vial of apple juice instead. "Down it and let's keep moving!"

He nods, does so, and then because there's no reason to let the mana regeneration go to waste in the meantime, begins spamming Spiral Shot into the imps.

The extra firepower marks a new leg to our progress, and before long, we're breaking through the other side, onto a large, cobblestone clearing that stretches from wall to wall, capped with familiar doors.

We hold off the last stragglers until they drop into the muck and I add their loot to what we picked up along the run. And, finally, we're all allowed a moment to breathe.

At least Ayre's color has come back.

"Okay," I declare as I flop down against the fountain in the middle of the cobblestone, "who's for a break before we tackle this floor's versions of the halls again? In fact, let's break for lunch."

I don't hear any objections. Which is a good thing, because I think I'd overrule them. If nothing else, I need the time to restock on bullets.