In Loki's Honor

As I made my way around the crystal spikes poking the stone floor, I was thankful most of the gore was behind Barbara and that she was not turning around. Instead, she was still focusing on her spell to finish crystallizing all the loose stone and strengthening the rest of the crystal so it wouldn’t break or anything. According to mom’s journal the debris in the tunnels without any living creature nearby would be teleported away so the way out wouldn’t be blocked. Some gnomes in the other side of the world would have a field day with plenty of loot to salvage and even plentiful boulders to dodge. Their shit desert was about to become worse. But that was their problem. Mine was to make sure the living stayed that way.

One had to pause and wonder at the auspicious occasion. A monster, scuttling to save wounded people and keep them from dying. But while I was born one, it was undeniable I was tainted by mom’s sensibilities and her strong values, even though I couldn’t quite remember them. Besides, I doubted Bibliomimics were an aggressive species. They ate only paper and soft plant fibers and had not an ounce of a predator’s killing instinct. Although the sample size was one, those statements were still true for all the population. Just as I finished patting me on the back, I had Lord Hamilton before me.

Now that the rocks pinning his legs in place were gone, he was bleeding profusely. Without much time left, I tapped once more into the lich’s former vessel and used a major healing spell on him. An expensive one mixing two schools of magic but this was not the time to be thrifty. As the magical circle stamped on my pages flared to life and floated in the air like a spirit drifting away from the book, I summoned thin ribbons of water that snaked and splashed over his body, wiping away debris, knitting flesh, washing the blood and gore away as part of the water entered his body and converted to more blood. It was one of the advantages of this kind of healing magic mixing {Blood} and {Elemental} aspects. Not only allowed his body to keep on working by reverting the blood loss, but it also stopped the bleeding and dispelled all the ongoing debuffs that could threaten his HP pool. Recovering or regrowing his legs could wait. As the soothing magic quelled the mind-numbing pain, he opened his eyes and looked at me.

I sent the telepathic message with honest relief. Isaac croaked and coughed a dollop of blood from his throat as he tried to talk. After he nodded, I went to the closest person, Mrs. Blatherwick.

She was sitting on her heels and pressing her temples with her eyes closed. Traces of Force magic wafted from one broken trinket on the ground next to her, a bracelet by the looks of it. The enchanted item was spent and utterly ruined, the very material that held the magic decayed and warped. Maybe this was how she survived the landslide, instead of just luck.

I asked.

“Netherbane?” She said without opening her eyes. “I’m fine, just exhausted.”

I scuttled away from her and went to check the two surviving girls.

They were unconscious so I repeated the water-blood spell on both. One had a severe head trauma and her right side was ruined. The arm was pulverized and the ribcage shattered. Her leg was bent and the lower femur exposed. She’d be dead like her friends if she were struck on the other side. She gasped for air as the animated water inside her torso pulled the ribs back in place before knitting them. The leg fracture would also have to wait as the spell couldn’t regenerate all the lost tissue with the MP budget I had. As for the second girl, she was lucky to be on the far end of the group. She only had a concussion and a few broken bones. Her body was entirely fixed by the spell. With their health stable, I moved to our guides.

Atrion was dead. The centaur slammed on some of my origami ogres and then crushed by the rocks once they were unsummoned. On such a situation, size mattered a lot. The huge centaur required a large gap to safely avoid being crushed by the boulders. The two surviving satyr widows had broken limbs and lots of bruises and cuts but no life-threatening wounds the spell couldn’t fix.

I wrapped six bodies in paper and placed them in my dust cover’s dimensional storage. They deserved a proper funeral. Half the people of our expedition died. I was afraid most of the delvers inside the Labyrinth when the tremors happened had worse luck than us. My cover felt heavy as I made my way back to Barbara.

*

*

Climbing over her back and feeling her temples from her shoulder with two ribbons, I waited for her to finish channeling her spell. The phylactery was down to six million MP, still a huge reserve but a testament to our effort here. Between Barbara and I, we’d burned three or five [Archmages] worth of magic. Her shoulders sagged and she dropped the staff on her lap.

“I’m glad I head you and bought the channeling Perk,” she remarked with a dry chuckle. “How are the others?”

I replied dismissively.

Unconvinced, Barbara pressed for answers. She swallowed dry and shuddered as her moist eyes met the tiny ones on my spine, “How many, Nethe?”

I reported somberly.

She hiccupped and pressed her eyes shut, forcing the tears out. “What happened?” She demanded to know. With the chaos over, her rational mind demanded understanding.

I sensed Mrs. Blatherwick’s attention on us. Not willing to explain twice, I replied out loud. “Two deities fought somewhere far away. What we felt were the aftershocks of their battle. This is unrelated to the benign changes Bit wished to enact upon the Labyrinth.”

Barbara gasped in disbelief. “Gods? Fighting?”

The teacher’s gaze was burning a hole on my cover. Her face betrayed her thoughts and lacked an ounce of the incredulity of the naive apprentice next to me. She probably read reports of the cataclysm that devoured the northern half of this massive continent. I could also see fear. If the underground was affected like this, what about the surface?

“Most probably. I sensed violent divine energies during the earthquake. I can’t be sure who was fighting or why, but I picked up two different divine signatures. I’ll know more tomorrow, but right now we need to look after our wounded. Answers can wait.”

As Barbara turned around, she finally saw the sorry state of Isaac and the surviving women. She shook as pangs of guilt washed over her body. Barbara hadn’t a single scratch on her. Just harmless dust covering her body and sticking to her damp cheeks. My ribbons dusted her face and hair. Survivor’s guilt. She returned the shrunk staff to the necklace and clambered back on her feet, the shields following every movement of her torso. As she looked to the side, the shield floated away from her gaze intent on not blocking it. Once it sensed she was looking at it and not past it, it stopped. She grabbed it. Turning the now inert artifact around, she examined it and exhaled a long sigh. She tenderly rubbed the adamantite face of the shield’s cover and released it as she muttered her thanks. The object dutifully returned to its spot, ready to defend their mistress along with its twin.

Then she took one step on unsure legs. On either side of her body, she rubbed the palms of her hands with its very fingers, feeling her skin as she warmed them. Then they balled into fists and she took another step.

“Mrs. Blatherwick,” She called. The dazed teacher rose her head and opened her eyes. Barbara then ordered the teacher, “Help me tend the wounded. Nethe only kept them from dying.”

Not on purpose. But with them stable, I would rather help her before I finished healing them. Or better yet, waiting a whole day and letting mom fix their wounds and regenerate their bodies.

The teacher blinked her surprise away. Then she slowly tried to get on her feet but found no room to stand up underneath the crystal. “Yes, certainly. I’m glad you are fine, Ambrose. Nice shields, by the way.”

Only those who saw a book glare at someone could understand how I faced the teacher because of her loaded compliment. I was about to utter a retort and vent some of the anger on her but I shut my cover and kept my silence. Even Barbara didn’t answer. Instead, she just met the teacher’s eyes and nodded. I knew she hadn’t gleaned any information on them as the {Appraise} obfuscation from me and Barbara’s items were in full power. Finally, I took it as a sign we had to get ready for the inquiries. Barbara’s gear could raise more eyebrows than her familiar.

The girl walked between the leaning crystal columns and a few spikes as she went to see Lord Hamilton. Isaac was still unconscious but steadily breathing. He was lying on his stomach with his mangled legs trailing behind him. Kneeling next to him, she took a pillow from her storage and adjusted it under his head. Then she took a good look at his legs and shook her head with a frown.

“Can you fix it?” She whispered to me.

“Tomorrow. I’ll make sure not even scars are left. Then we are all going out.

She squinted at the darkness beyond the crystal jungle, “Won’t the tunnels be all blocked? I can barely feel any air current.”

“They will. The Labyrinth teleports debris away. You sensed it too, the rocks that dislodged from the roof and walls is no longer considered part of the Labyrinth.”

“And what of those who died?” Her voice trembled with worry. “We weren’t the only group in the delve.” Not to mention our group decided to return earlier.

“Everything a certain distance away from a creature will be teleported away, never to be seen again. Not our dead. I have them safely with me.” At the mention of her dead teammates, she looked at the spot they were, finding the bloodstains on the rock. Her legs faltered and Barbara had to hold onto a crystal to keep her balance. “You should rest. I don’t know if you can sleep but find a spot and lie down.”

“Not yet,” she said as she locked eyes with the two unconscious female students. She went and checked their pulse, pulling clothes from her storage and giving the sleeping girls the least comfort she could. Once she made sure her colleagues were okay, she sighed with relief. That’s when her adrenaline crashed. Her already unsteady legs gave and she fell on her butt. I crawled from her shoulder under her head, summoning a soft canvas mattress underneath her and playing the part of a pillow. Barbara was asleep the moment her ear touched my silk dust cover.

I let the sphere trinket float next to us, lighting the smoky quartz crystal and keeping monsters from spawning near our crystal prison. I slept for half an hour and kept vigil the rest of the time. Somewhere during the night, Mrs. Blatherwick crawled underneath the crystals to reach Isaac, checked on him, then leaned against a column to rest. The wounded people moaned in pain during their uncomfortable sleep and I waited. {Suppress Curse} refreshed several hours into the night but I refrained from unlocking my full self immediately. Instead, I waited until Barbara woke up. Her sleep was ripe with nightmares as everyone else’s. I tried to keep her as comfortable as I could and being her pillow would be kind of blissful for me, if not for the circumstances.

Barbara rolled on the canvas mattress and released me. Instead of crawling back under her head, I scuttled off to a corner of the crystal maze and worked on a small comfort project.

*

*

The uncanny and tantalizing smell probably woke them up. As the hot air from the oven and the fresh air rushing in to occupy the space left by the teleporting boulders all over the labyrinth, it escaped despite my best efforts, ruining my surprise.

“Bread?” One of the wounded girls, the lucky one, asked dreamily.

Barbara shot awake and sat up. She looked around, grasped at the cardboard mattress, then felt around searching for something. “Nethe?”

Balancing a tray over my cover, I scuttled like a bug on my many ribbon legs. On it laid a pile of freshly baked loaves of the softest fruit bread. The juicy slices of fruit were perfectly sealed with crystallized sugar to keep the moisture inside even after being baked. The dough was leavened and was soft and airy. The caramel-golden crust with just a hint of the fillings poking out here and there invited the customer to devour them. A cloud of steam wafted from them. As I approached the two awake girls, the third came back to the world of the conscious screaming.

“Eleanora, calm down,” the other girl held the noblewoman. Elizabeth, now that I recall.

The petite half-satyr teenager which looked perfectly human struggled under the bulk of her classmate but relented and softened as her awareness sharpened. Eventually she realized her predicament, her right arm limping uselessly by her side and the shoddily repaired ribs probably grinding on her. She leaned on Elizabeth’s shoulder and started to cry her brains out. Not literally, of course. I took extra care with her head trauma. Her skull was only a little bent inward.

As I approached the three girls, I formed a mouth on my back cover as the tray was on the other one. “Fresh bread. Pick as many as you want.”

Baking them without an oven was an exercise on spellcraft by itself. I had to regulate the output of a Fire spell, then contain it with Force magic. It gave me a point of [Spellcaster] and inspiration to turn it into a proper spell that would create a magical oven but that was a task for tomorrow. Today I had to heal the survivors, both mentally, spiritually, and physically.

Seeing the two nobles eyeing the monster-baked loaves with suspicion, Barbara took the initiative and quickly snatched one, like they would be gone in moments. She bit a huge halfling-sized chunk out of it and popped her eyes wide open as she gave the most splendid gormandizing groan and hummed delightfully as she chewed. A bit of fruit pulp seeped down the corner of her mouth with the next bite but she didn’t care. Barbara made a mess out of herself wolfing down the loaf, relishing on the Fire resistance I shared with her to eat the hot bun without burning herself. Then she grabbed a second one as she smiled at the other two.

“It shall built halt,” she mumbled with her mouth half-full of half-chewed bread. She finished and swallowed, “Sho take care.”

“May I have one, please?” Isaac shouted from his spot next to the teacher. “And one for Mrs. Blatherwick too, on my tab!”

When I tried to move away, the two noblewomen realized they were really peckish and deigned to favor me by savoring my confections. I supporessed the chuckle and let them take two while Barbara nabbed another two for herself. With the tray half-light, I went on my way to serve the Lord.

As I approached, Isaac blabbered. “Mrs. Blatherwick told me you healed me from the brink of death. It seems I owe you my life, Mr. Netherbane.”

Contested Charisma test won.

Warning: The Leader canceled. Both users have the same Perk.

We both froze as he had inadvertently revealed one of his cards and drawn one of mine too. Then I warbled in indignation, involuntarily letting the tray slip and clatter on the stone ground, covering my perfect masterwork buns in dust. Was he trying to cajole me? Getting me to like him? Trying to win me so I wouldn’t muddle any evil plans he had in store for Barbara. I made a show of creating eyes on the end of two ribbons I sent floating in front of the bread tray. The ends of the ribbons were rolled into a ball so I could also have eyelids. Only then I could properly stare at him.

“Now, now. Isn’t that a droll development, my Lord?”