NOVEL NEXT Chapter Ninety-Nine: Rock Toad Caverns
The Rock Toad Caverns
Will's friend was propped up against the rock wall, breathing heavily, eyes closed in focus against the pain. I was sure we'd have to cut her legs off under the knee, but seeing that Will had demanded that I Overcharge him again. I did. Then he went at the steel and leather plates at her shins with the same hunting knife, cutting in wild, energetic strikes that made her scream even louder than that. But it worked. In the end, he got the useless, ruined pieces of armor off her without cutting all the way into the bone. Then Will collapsed against the wall next to her. Her breastplate was ruined too, but that had loose enough fittings that I could help out with it. Once again I saw that body of someone who'd boosted their physical stats instead of mental like I had, and found a world-class athlete's body under the armor. And her legs were a bloody mess, just barely better than shattered.
"Can you hear me? What's your recovery ability," I said.
She took a few deep breaths, at first I thought she was about to panic again or go into shock, but I realized she was trying to laugh. She lifted her finger to Will, letting him answer for her. He winced.
"I think it's called 'walk it off'. Every few thousand steps she walks, she recovers a percentage of health," Will said. We all looked down at her legs now. She was clearly tough as hell, but we could see the bone sticking out, and remembered how we'd had to readjust her left foot so that it wasn't sticking to the left in a right angle at the middle. Looking at her I could imagine her gripping onto the ceiling of the cave and moving herself back all the way to the entrance by hand, but walking was one thing she was definitely not going to do.
"Adam, can you fix it?" I said.
"It would be the same ritual as before. I am… unsure if I could digest the toad," Adam said.
"Can you make sure?" I said.
Adam walked up to the toad and carved out an eye. He did it slowly and deliberately as he did everything else.
"Easiest meat to get to. Bon appetit," Adam said, and slurped it down, fluid leaking out of his neck bandages as he swallowed. He stood thinking for a while, then winced, his yellowed eyes started tearing up.
"Poisonous. I won't get hurt by it. Much. But it doesn't heal me," he said.
"You said you were a healer. Can't you do anything?" Will said.
"I can patch her skin up, fuse her bones together. But that sort of structural damage needs to be healed intentionally. If I just pump hitpoints into her right now it will all heal wrong," Adam said.
"It'll… do," Sarah said.
"It will have to be re-broken and re-healed. You won't be in a fighting shape," Adam said.
"Do it," she said.
Adam hesitated.
"We could just retreat. Get her out of here, find a healer, see if anyone else in your group has healing potions," I said, "The caves aren't going anywhere."
"Yeah, that," Anna said.
"Fuck. You're right. That's the right call. We'll get back here when we can," Will said.
I was already looking around in a rising panic. Now that we'd decided that we would go back, suddenly every one of my instincts screamed that something would happen that wouldn't let us.
"This place is close to Nowhere, Alex," Adam said, in an apparent non-sequitor.
"Inside the walls?" I said. I could feel it too. It wasn't any of my natural senses, at least not the ones I'd had on Earth. Everything felt solid, there was stone under my feet, stale air in my lungs. But there was this feeling, that if I turned in just the wrong way I could fall through a paper thin layer and keep falling forever.
"Indeed. This whole place is a magical construct," Adam said.
"The whole Tower is a magical construct. So what?" Anna said.
"Not quite. The Tower is very magical, and it was constructed, but mostly it was constructed from actual materials with the help of magic. This dungeon… I don't know. It doesn't feel… like anywhere," Adam said.
"Alright, let's get Sarah out of here before the whole thing collapses or something. Will, can you walk yet?" I said.
"I'll need a hand," he said.
"Adam, Anna, can you support her? Will, you can hold on to me," I said.
"Fuck," Sarah said, but didn't argue further.
The track outside was much harder than in, bearing our heaviest companions on our shoulders, the walking was trudging, included a lot of tripping, which in the case of me and Will was annoying, but each time Sarah's foot hit something she screamed. It was ugly, slow and painful, but at least Will was mostly recovered by the time we reached the dungeon entrance some half an hour later.
"Alright, let's get you something warm to eat and Meyers can fix your legs enough that you can walk it off," Will said, shrugging himself off my shoulder.
"Sounds… nice," Sarah said.
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Will changed places with Anna, more or less lifting Sarah off the ground by himself, and we crossed the threshold soon thereafter, Anna and I leading the way.
I smelled the burning flesh before the fog cleared from my eyes. It smelled more like pork than beef. And the smoke of burnt hair reminded me of an all too familiar feeling- the revulsion of feeling hunger rising from something that you absolutely should not.
And so I knew I would walk into a scene of carnage before I was there. I still did not expect to step on something that would go squish when my foot finally came down. The figures in the fog became clearer, three dark figures, standing tall among flame and broken bodies.
This was the scene that I arrived in: I looked down for a split second and saw that I'd stepped on a liver, larger than human and my eyes followed the trail of viscera to the opened up body of a horse. Three horses were still alive, the rest were thrown about, several with their heads lopped clean off in a single strike. Then I saw the stakes framing the three elfin figures in dark armor at the center of the scene. There were seven spikes, and seven people, our two goblin guides included, was stripped and impaled, among the burning remnants of their worldly possessions, each with a rune carved into their faces by a cruel blade. I knew they hadn't been dead when it happened for the jerky, uneven carvings.
The rest of Will's riders were shackled, made to kneel behind the elves, with strange, armored devices keeping their jaws shut, each looked furious, none could move.
And amidst all this stood three elves, in the same spiky dark armor that I'd seen among the corpses in the Goblin Market. They were all male, and it was clear as their armor covered little more than the very top of the chest and spandex-tight codpieces, with a fine, transparent silver mesh covering the rest of their bodies. The one who was clearly the leader had no helm on, had all-black eyes, ash-pale skin and hair white as snow. He had a cruel smile on his face, savoring the expression on my face as I saw what he had wrought.
"B-back," I said, but I felt my friends materialize behind me just as I said it.
Will roared and began his charge. I cast the stasis field spell stored in my staff, so that it'd activate instantly. I wasn't taking chances on this. Will kept running, until he hit the edge of the bubble.
"We're going back in," I said.
"The fuck we are. He had my friends, I'm taking them back," Will said.
I chanted the HUD spell, knowing what I would see. They'd taken out fourteen skilled adventurers. We might have been the best of the group, but not by so much a long shot. For the first time since I'd got the spell, I got nothing back from Savirak- which meant that he was more than 25 levels above me- and for the other two I could only see that they were level 30 and got no other information.
"This is not an enemy we can fight," I said.
"So we die trying. If we cannot beat them, we cannot run away," Will said.
"But we can. Dungeon rules. I'm pretty sure these guys have Journals, which means they cannot go into a dungeon with 5 people already in it," Anna said.
"Fuck. Fucking assholes," Sarah said.
"The Sorceress is right, Champion. If Alex hadn't done some quick Chronomancy we'd all be dead or captured now. The dungeon entrance won't care about it, so we can get out of here," Chum said.
"And, what, go back in there? Without getting healing for Sarah?" Will said.
"Least worst option, Will," Anna said.
Will walked up all the way to the edge of the stasis field. He looked the sneering elf right in the eye, and could see his file-sharpened teeth and wicked blades at his side. He spat at him. The spittle hit the time barrier and slid down it.
"Please tell me there's another way, Alex," Will said.
I really, really thought about it. But the level discrepancy was too much. I could escape myself in a couple of different other ways. The sentinel ability could send me back to the Guild in an instant. But that wasn't something I would ever seriously consider so long as my friends were in danger.
"It's a miracle I got us a way out. Sorry, Will," I said.
"Can't we at least get Sugarcube out somehow?" Will said, his heroic facade hair-splitting for a moment, with a tiny bit of petulant despair.
"They left three alive. For themselves. We will be back. We'll get your friends out. Just… There is no way to do it right now," I said.
But then I had a thought.
"I cannot beat them. But I can do something, at least," I said. I raised my staff aloft as I called my spellbook to me, and with the page flipped to the Mind Worm spell, I chose the probe variant. I cast the spell three times- targeting each of the elves. I didn't know what would happen if I tried to cast a physical spell- something that did damage, or conjured force, but this spell worked. If all went well, a few hours from now I would be able to see through their eyes for as long as they didn't notice the worm.
"Quick thinking, boss, nice," Chum said.
"What did that do?" Will said.
"Just bugged them. It will take a while to set in, but we have a direct line to them for the foreseeable future. Now, let's get out of here, we don't have much more than five minutes," I said.
"Fuck. Fine. Let's get out of here. Sarah, hold on to me," Will said.
With a last look over my shoulder I followed my friends back into the Rock Toad Caverns. Will was exhausted and injured from overuse of the Overcharge spell. One single encounter had left us with two walking casualties, one of which couldn't walk. And now we had only two options- to make it to the end of the dungeon, or to die trying.
The dread set into the pit of my stomach, but after nearly a week of this it felt like an old friend. And once more we went into the darkness to stalk through ill-lit halls with our lives on the line. I decided then that I would come out the other end alive, with my friends in tow, and plan bloody vengeance at the soonest opportunity.