by Hayes, Drew
Together, we swept the room, searching for any clues or hints. Outside of the table and the door, we came up empty. I even attempted leaping back up the chute we’d come down, only to discover that the frictionless magic still held. There wasn’t even the hint of finding purchase. I’d have had better luck climbing a cloud.
By the time I was done experimenting, Neil had set up shop at the table, examining the small array of objects upon it. They appeared simple enough, except I was rapidly realizing not to take much on appearances alone. From left to right, they were a key, a knife, a club, and a feather quill. Neil reached for the quill; instantly, sparks flew between his outstretched fingers and the item. He closed his hand immediately, and the lightshow ended.
“Interesting. It’s checking to see if I’ve already touched one of the objects.” Neil flexed his hand, then moved it toward the knife. New sparks appeared, lighting up his face just in time for the satisfied grin to spread across it. “Got it. We’re supposed to choose. A single item each is my guess, but just in case we only get the one…” Neil pushed his hand the rest of the way, closing around the knife. There was a crackle of energy in the air, and without warning, the sparks died.
He twirled the weapon once, then made for the quill. Nothing appeared to stop him, yet, when his fingers met the quill, they passed through like it was nothing more than a shadow.
“Crafty. I expected them to use some sort of ward to stop me from taking more. This is smarter.” Neil half-looked at me as he spoke; I had a hunch I was here more as backstop than conversational partner. “Someone suspended the objects in a state of pseudo-existence, with an area enchantment that lets someone fully manifest one—but only if they haven’t done so already. Stops another mage like me from ripping apart barriers and taking whatever we want.”
With every new revelation, I felt more confused. A trap was one thing, but this was a lot of effort if someone wanted to kill us. Whatever the answer was, I didn’t expect to find it waiting around in the room. With only three objects to select from, I made the obvious choice, scooping up the key after an identical light display to the one Neil had shown. Once it was in hand, I turned to find the necromancer looking at me incredulously.
“The key? You realize keys are implied to fit a specific lock, which we may or may not find, whereas the club or the quill had other potential uses. You chose a unitasker when we’re facing down unknown challenges.”
“As opposed to the weapon?” I nodded to the knife in his hand.
“Or the screwdriver,” Neil shot back, lightly tapping the blade’s narrow tip. “Or the crowbar, if we need to pry something small open. People don’t keep knives in their pockets in case they need to do some lunchtime stabbing; they do it because the damn things are useful.”
That was a fair, if unexpected, point. However, I wasn’t quite ready to yield my ground. “Seeing as we’re clearly in some sort of magical trap, I’d hate to make it all the way to the end, only to discover we lack the means to escape. If a key is given, it’s usually for a reason.”
I felt as if I could see the struggle within Neil, his desire for further debate pushing up against the truth that there was no point to it. We could each make a single selection, and the dice were cast in that regard. Fighting over what we might have done wouldn’t get us any closer to freedom.
“Fine, you have the key, I have the knife. It doesn’t matter, anyway; we won’t actually need to finish this. We just have to find somewhere a little less warded. Once I reach Albert, he can come to us, and after that we’re as good as free.”
Neil reached up and tapped one of the runes. “These walls are hardy, and reinforced by magic, but they won’t stand up to the Blade of the Unlikely Champion. He’ll be able to cut his way through this place in no time. We just need to find a way to signal him, and since I don’t see one in our current room, I say we press on.”
There were times Neil and Albert spoke when I could virtually see Arch’s lips moving over theirs, lessons that had been drilled deep into their minds being repeated. But this wasn’t one of those moments, despite how competent Neil seemed. Relying on someone else to find you wasn’t a very Arch-like move, yet he still spoke with that same assured air of confidence as when he shared some bit of wisdom imparted from his teacher. Perhaps these two had grown even more than I realized throughout their training.
“Safe to say we’ve seen everything this room has to offer,” I agreed. “I should probably take the lead, though.”
“Ah yes, because now you ’re the tough one again.”
“No, because you can magically repair me if something goes wrong. Whereas I’m not a human-mancer, or whatever the term would be, so you’d just be injured until we found Amy.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to interpret the look Neil sent my way, but it wasn’t an angry one, so I took it to be agreement. Better to act than to wait and risk him dashing out in front. With great care and attention to my surroundings, I inched forward and put a hand on the doorknob. When neither the floor fell away, nor anything huge fell upon me, I felt confident enough to give it a twist. No resistance; it opened smoothly, revealing a new room.
My dark-vision snapped out of focus as a dozen braziers lining the walls all burst with flame, casting our new chamber in flickering, unsettling light. Honestly, I’d have preferred it stayed dark; that was somehow less disturbing than the burning illumination. Some of that may have been instinctual, I can admit, fire being one of the few things that could easily kill me. Finding it in abundance was not a sign I considered to be reassuring.
Finally dragging my eyes beyond the flames, I examined the rest of the chamber. This one was far larger than our landing room had been; a carved cave well below the Earth’s surface. Outside the braziers, it was largely featureless, save for the dark pool of liquid looming in the center. It could have been a puddle, or so deep it led to the ocean. There was no way to tell, and the flashes of the flames made it impossible to see beneath those placid, glassy waters. Over the pool were four sets of chains, each leading up to an elevated platform fifty feet off the ground. Although it took some walking to get the right angle, I finally caught the tip of a doorway peeking over the high ledge. That was our way out, apparently.
“So, we climb the chains to get to the top… what else?” Neil too was looking over the situation, brow furrowed as his brain worked overtime. “It can’t be that easy. Maybe they have the same charm as the slides we went down, making them impossible to grab. But they don’t appear to have anything other than a repair enchantment. What are we missing?”
I knew what Krystal would do in that moment, and while I wasn’t going to fulfill her role in quite the same manner, I also recognized its indispensability. Thought and action went hand-in-hand. New data had to be examined and considered, but action was what most often resulted in acquiring such data in the first place. Still, leaping out and climbing the chains was several steps too far for my level of risk tolerance.
Instead, I walked to the wall from which the outcropping jutted and began to climb. Much of that skill comes from training, coordination, and physical strength. I was lacking greatly on the first two, but when one’s grip is boosted to vampiric levels, it’s possible to lean entirely on the third—for short, well-motivated intervals, anyway.
After three tries to lend some rhythm to what amounted to me scrambling up the wall like some sweater vest-clad squirrel, I arrived at the doorway. Now that I could see the whole platform, it was clear there was more than just an exit up here. Set before the door was a large stone bowl resting on some sort of mechanism. I had a hunch where this was going, but tried the door anyway. Not so much as a budge. While I could try to break it down, it would probably be smart to save such drastic measures as final resorts. Once we made that kind of declaration, there was no taking it back.
“There’s a bowl up here,” I called to Neil. “Best guess is we have to find a way to fill it with water from that pool.”
At least the task w
as quickly taking shape, rather than forcing us to muddle through some obscure puzzle. Next up was to see if we could even use the chains, as otherwise, I’d have to haul Neil up the hard way. Reaching over from the outcropping, I took one in my hand. No slippage. It felt like a perfectly normal length of chain. I gave it a good shake, just to make sure it bore weight.
The instant the rattle of metal hit my ears, another sound followed: the loud gloomph of a giant, brown, slug-like head bursting from the water and swallowing the entire bottom twenty feet of the chain I’d just shook. It oozed back down slowly, leaving the chain intact, but with a quickly drying veneer of mucus.
Right, so I’d been almost correct. Turns out, our task was to fill the bowl, while dodging the ravenous monster that lived in the water and emerged at the slightest sound.
4.
“Any idea what that is?”
We both stared at the pool as I skipped a rock across the surface, instantly bringing the giant slug head up to the surface. Its mouth swept the area ineffectually before sinking back below the water, which turned still in moments, hiding its secret below the glassy surface once more. After I climbed down to get a better look and located some stone shards on the ground, skipping them across the surface had been the optimal method we’d devised for drawing the beast out.
“Best guess is it’s some kind of custom conjuration, probably homegrown,” Neil replied. “Might have started off as a normal slug, but at this point, it’s a mystery to me.”
Though that didn’t help much with our current predicament, it was a clue toward our greater situation. So far, we’d encountered a secret enclosure buried beneath the ground, enchanted slides and rooms, and now a custom-made monster. Far as I was from being a mage myself, I understood enough to realize that such breadth of skill would take specialty knowledge across multiple disciplines. The odds that we were actually here to meet a lone mage seeking aid were getting slimmer by the moment.
Keeping a keen awareness of my distance, I moved closer to the pool. No cups I could see in the chamber, not even up by the door, so we still needed a vessel. There was my flask, but I loathed the idea of throwing away backup blood in our given situation. Plus, it would take at least a dozen flask-worth’s to fill that bowl. That was assuming there was any chance we could actually touch the water. It was a hurdle we could put off no longer; one way or another, we had to use that pool.
Every step I took was cautious as I drew closer, ready for the head to burst forth. Nothing happened as I inched along, creeping my way up to the water’s edge. There was a small drop between the end of the floor and the pool, perhaps three inches of shorn rock. Seeing it like that, my perspective instantly shifted. This wasn’t a small pool at all. There was some sort of massive lake just below our feet, with a hole cut through the stone like its maker had wanted to go ice-fishing.
The surface remained still, despite my being near enough to the water to touch it. There was no helping it now. Hopefully, if things went poorly, Neil had a spell for regrowing vampire arms.
In one movement, I lightly tapped the top of the water and immediately rocketed myself backward with a powerful push of my legs.
It was undoubtedly the right strategy, as even moving that fast, I could see down the slug’s throat as the creature shot up, its mouth closing around the air where my limb had been microseconds prior. Flecks of its spit flew onto my sleeve, sizzling the material on contact. I ripped the sleeve off entirely, but not before a few drops ate through and burned my skin. The pain was short-lived—my body healed the damage almost as it came—but now we knew for certain that the slug-of-the-dark-lagoon could hurt us.
“Thing moves fast, considering what it looks like.” Neil had watched the entire exchange from a safe distance, a far-off look in his eye as he rubbed his chin. “The moment we dip something in, it’ll be on us, and we have to dip something unless we want to try brute force. Given the wards and silver woven into the walls, I expect there are probably traps for those who skip steps. This whole place seems designed to force us to play along.”
“Wait, there’s silver in the walls?” I gave a tentative sniff and caught nothing. No real surprise; a vampire’s nose was good, but whoever built this place had accounted for every detail thus far. They could have easily used the same process the Agency did to mask the scent.
Neil nodded. “Woven carefully throughout. Partially like a circuit, helping direct the magic for this place. Also helps keep parahumans from punching through the walls. That wouldn’t work on you, obviously, but the doors are pretty sturdy. Not sure you’ve got the muscle to force them.”
“Likely accurate.” There was a barb buried in there, one that I pointedly ignored. We had far larger concerns for the moment than petty personality clashes. “Which means our only real options are fill the bowl, or stay put and wait for rescue.”
Turning slowly, Neil spun in place, examining our chamber once more with a critical eye. “I know what I said earlier, but the rescue plan came when I thought we were dealing with a smaller overall area. Considering the size of just this one room, I suspect the whole place might be a lot larger than I initially guessed. The more rooms we clear, the more territory we can search.”
There was also the unspoken reason Neil wanted to press on. Seeing this room, stocked with actual danger, he was no doubt worried about how Albert fared elsewhere. We didn’t know if he was with the others, or on his own, and while that sword could probably cut through any threat, it only worked if the wielder was willing to draw. Albert was not a man quick to violence, a trait I respected all the more as his power grew, but that could be a hindrance in some fights. Not every enemy would permit Albert to ready himself for proper combat.
“Sounds like we try to get through the door,” I surmised. “We just need to find a way to transport the water, and figure out how to get any without getting an up-close tour of a magical slug’s digestion track.”
“Please, did you see how corrosive that saliva was? We’d dissolve long before we made it to the stomach. That’s why the chains are self-repairing; it’s all that keeps them intact. There is some good news, though. I found us a vessel.”
He clapped me hard on the back. “Seeing as touching the water didn’t hurt, we know it’s not corrosive. And as you don’t have to worry about things like disease or poison…”
I didn’t need the full walk; it was clear where this was heading. Worse, try as I might, I couldn’t think of a better alternative. We had nothing else on hand to use, and even if we did, any other vessel would take multiple trips to fill the bowl. The fewer times we could deal with the slug, the better our chances of leaving with all limbs still accounted for.
“I take it that means you’ll handle the distraction?”
“Already got something in mind.” From his back, Neil produced the spell book he’d fastened there. “Amy is a big believer that a mage is defined by their passions, not their specialties, and as such, required me to learn a few spells outside of necromancy. They’re not very comparable in terms of scale, but I’ve still got a couple of tricks I can pull.”
Working quickly, we sketched out the bare bones of a plan. Neil would distract our slug while I gathered the water, then I’d rush up to fill the bowl. I did say it was bare bones, remember. Keeping it simple was our best shot, anyway; Neil and I lacked the teamwork to coordinate much more complexly.
He moved to the opposite side of the room, book open as words I didn’t understand slipped from his mouth. To my surprise, I felt my hair move as a gentle wind flowed past—something that was entirely impossible, since we were in a sealed underground cave. Yet the breeze only grew in strength, whipping at my clothes as it gathered force. I was catching the fallout wind, at that; the true concentration was centered around the chains. Bit by bit, they were moving, swaying in the growing wind. Finally, one gained enough momentum to let out a proper rattle.
In a flash, the slug was on it, mouth gumming around the metal and slowly drifting down its
length. The moment I saw it land, I leapt into action, trying very hard not to think about what I was doing. My face plunged into the dark liquid as I opened my mouth and drank for all I was worth. A vampire’s stomach, like a human’s, could hold a great deal of liquid when fully stretched. The act of expanding my own gut didn’t hurt, as vampires were built for liquid gluttony, so I was able to drink far past the point where a human would have cried off. Sadly, amount was not my primary issue. I dared to chug for only a few seconds before physically throwing myself up and back, clear of the pool.
I was roughly two seconds ahead of the slug, which I realize does sound like a close call, but actually felt like a comfortable margin when moving at vampire speeds. It kept groping for me until the siren song of chains rattling pulled it to another, like a fish on a line. When it grew distracted, I dashed back in for another drink.
We kept like that for nearly a full minute, Neil conjuring, me racing in, chugging for all I was worth, darting back, and waiting until it was distracted again. As I neared my stomach’s limits, I noticed the wind slowing down. A glance over to Neil showed him sweating from effort; that breeze apparently demanded quite a bit from the caster. Or maybe it was a side effect of casting outside his specialty. I truly didn’t grasp how magic worked, which would have bothered me more, except the people who actually studied and used it were often in the same boat.
The writing was on the wall, so I made my last chug a good one, daring to stay for a handful of extra seconds before bolting away. That stunt left me coated in water, as I barely managed to stay ahead of the slug, so close I was caught in its splash. Nevertheless, I was still in one piece as it sank below the water once more, silently waiting for us to return.