Rebirth

by Devin Auspland

  “Are we sure this is the right call?” Greg questioned.

  Austin scoffed. “We can handle this.” As he spoke, he poked a stone on the ground that caused part of the hallway floor to open up. The hole revealed rows and rows of sharp spikes waiting for an unlucky adventurer to fall into. Bob grabbed Austin’s arm preemptively. “See? This will be easy. Just need to walk around this hole and we’re set.” Austin went flat against the wall and carefully crossed the opening.

  Bob and Greg followed his lead and crossed the gap. When they all reached the other side, they entered spider territory. Cobwebs covered the walls, ceilings and most of the floor. It gave the adventurers tunnel vision, making it nearly impossible to see anywhere other than the path in front of them.

  “Just a wild guess but I think we're going to face some kind of spiders in here,” Austin joked.

  “Don’t be a smart-ass Austin. Pay attention and be ready for anything.” Greg started collecting essence in his staff. The wood illuminated a dim red color, and warm heat was washing off of it. “I’m going to clear out some of these cobwebs. Stand back for a second and get ready to fight. I‘ll be drained after this, so I’ll need you to defend me. Are you ready?” The rest of his party nodded, so he began. As he lifted his staff into the air, its glowing intensified. Austin and Bob felt a chill run over them as Greg drained the surrounding area of its fire essence. Pointing his staff-head toward the center of the room, Greg screamed, “Fireball!”

  In the span of just a few seconds, Greg’s staff turned a deep red, and a volleyball-sized fireball formed at its tip. The fireball shot into the center of the room so fast that it knocked Greg onto his ass. When the fireball struck the floor, it exploded outward in all directions. Fire engulfed the room rapidly as the spiderwebs ignited and spread to each other.

  Four large spiders that were on fire fell from the ceiling and charged toward Greg. Bob was the first to act. He jumped in front of the exhausted mage and swung his sword downward. The blade struck true and lopped off two of the spider’s right-side legs. The creature howled in pain and scurried to the side while being replaced by two more spiders. The monsters pounced on Bob, forcing him to the ground.

  One of the spiders sank its fangs deep into Bob’s shoulder, piercing armor and flesh alike. Bob screamed as Austin dashed forward, dislodging the spider with a hard kick. The spider soared and skipped across the rocky floor like a stone across water. With one less spider on his chest, Bob had the room he needed to stick his blade into the underbelly of his remaining assailant. A warm, stinky mixture of ooze and puss poured out onto Bob’s stomach. The smell was overwhelming and everyone did their best to hold back bile.

  Bob rolled onto his stomach and got to his feet, and it wasn’t long before the remaining three spiders descended upon them. This time they knew what they were facing and were ready for them. Bob and Austin worked like a well-oiled machine from countless battles together. They were weaving around one another while capitalizing on every opportunity they found to attack. Their biggest struggle was keeping Greg defended. One spider continued to circle around the group in order to kill the unconscious mage while the others distracted the warriors.

  “They seem to be handling themselves nicely, Jeeves. One of them died earlier in the fight, but his combined attack let another one sink his fangs into the adventurer,” Breck explained.

  Jeeves smiled. “That’s splendid to hear. But Sir, aren’t the spider's fangs venomous?”

  “Extremely venomous. I filled them with the strongest venom I could create. He hasn’t noticed it yet, but his movements have gotten slower. It’s only a matter of time before I add him to the menu.” Breck grinned and brought his attention back to the fight.

  Austin was handling his opponent and keeping the third spider from killing Greg. Bob, on the other hand, was indeed getting slower. Instead of slashing his sword at every opening, he was now trading blows. For every new cut on the spider, there was a matching bite or smack from his spider opponent.

  “I’m going to need some help here,” Bob frantically blurted in between dodging the spiders teeth.

  “I’m a little busy!” Austin kicked one spider away before jumping over Greg’s prone body, thrusting his sword as he leapt. The spider that was attempting to kill Greg was missing a few legs and failed to dodge the attack completely. Austin’s blade scored a deep gouge along its side before it disappeared back into darkness. “Greg! We need you here!” Austin kicked the sleeping mage before reengaging one spider.

  Bob was exhausted and realized that he was slowing down, so he tried something drastic. He threw his sword to the ground and balled his fists. “Come get me you motherfucker.”

  The spider looked between him and the blade before charging and pouncing on his seemingly defenseless prey. Bob had a plan and waited for the last possible moment to hatch it, before the spider made contact with him. He threw both his hands to his sides and grabbed a set of daggers holstered on his belt. He swung them at the spider with two vicious bladed uppercuts. Each dagger sunk deep into the spider’s body and, although the blades weren’t long, they kept the creature at bay, suspended in air.

  Spinning, he slammed the creature onto its back behind him. A crack of breaking exoskeleton rang through the chamber, but Bob didn’t stop his assault. One at a time, he pulled a dagger from flesh and sank it right back in. He stabbed and stabbed as fast and as hard as he could manage until the spider’s legs stopped twitching. Purple blood and gore splattered across his face as he roared in anger.

  He stood, panting. Blood dripping from each of his hands and thudding against the hard-packed earth below. “That’s what you get when you mess with…” The twang of his daggers hitting the floor was the last thing he heard before the poison took full effect. Bob collapsed to the floor. His body was convulsing and the bite mark on his chest now bubbled with white and purple puss. Foam was rolling down his chin through his gritted teeth.

  “BOB!” Austin screamed in fear. He channeled his pent up anger into a powerful thrust that drove his blade through the center of a spider's head. With a jerk or two, the spider went limp.

  Greg had finally recovered and sent another, much smaller, fireball at the remaining spider. It was the one with the missing legs, and the single fireball proved enough to finish the creature off. He slumped over again, this time remaining conscious. “Go help Bob.” He pointed a shaky arm toward his fallen party member.

  Austin did as he was told and ran toward his dying friend. He pulled several vials full of a white milky substance out of his pack and began to force feed them to Bob. Austin was prying Bob’s mouth open, pouring the substance in and holding his mouth shut while plugging his nose. It was effective in making him swallow, but, unbeknownst to them, Breck was giggling.

  “Haha. They’re trying to force feed him antidotes, but he died over a minute ago. I’ve already collected most of his essence.” Breck continued to laugh.

  “So the spiders fared well, Sir?” Jeeves asked.

  “The spiders did great. I mean, they lost, but they put on a fantastic showing. Their attacks were efficient and effective. I may need to tone down their poison a bit, but I’ll wait for a few more groups to give it a go first.”

  Bob stopped shaking and went deathly still. Austin stood and wiped some carnage from his face. He extended an arm toward Greg and helped the mage to his feet. A moment later, Breck absorbed everything in the room. As he absorbed the spiders, they left behind three to four copper coins each. The sight of the money shifted the mood in the room drastically.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Austin walked around the room and collected the fifteen copper before returning to Greg. “Fifteen copper… This is amazing! Two rooms and we already have over a silver. I haven’t seen payouts like this in a long time.” He divided the coins into four piles on the floor. “We can give three copper each to Rick’s and Bob’s families. That will leave us with nine copper to split.”

  Greg had a wide smile on h
is face. “Four copper each?! That will feed me and the kids for at least a few weeks. Why don’t we put the extra coin in the party fund? We can use it to help replenish some of the items we used down here.”

  “A copper won’t cover the potions we used but I don’t have a better idea how to split it.” Austin handed Greg a pile of four coins and pocketed the rest. He looked at the spot Bob once occupied. There wasn’t a trace of him or the fight left. Looking between the door they came from and the door leading to the unknown, he turned to Greg and let out a sigh. “As much as I want to continue, and I really want to, I don’t think it's a good idea. We're bound to encounter stronger foes if we proceed, and there's only two of us left.” Greg looked around before nodding. “I guess we should go then?” The pair grabbed their belongings and headed out of the dungeon.

  It didn’t take long for them to be out of Breck’s influence and out of sight. “That was incredible, Jeeves! But… I can’t seem to absorb any more essence,” Breck said with a tremble of worry tinging his voice.

  “Have you filled yourself?” Jeeves questioned.

  “Yeah. I’m full of essence, but there’s still a ton of ambient essence in the room that I can’t absorb. That Bob character was chock-full, but I can’t seem to fit anymore in myself. Usually I would rank up when that happens, but I’m not ranking up either. What gives?”

  Jeeves reviewed Breck’s core. He was, literally, beaming with energy. There was a faint white glow coming from him. “Allow me to search my database. This could take a few moments.”

  Breck sighed but cleaned the rest of the dungeon up and reset. He used a little of his full essence to recreate his monsters, but that energy refilled quickly with more of the dead adventurer’s essence. It only took him five or ten minutes to complete all his tasks and refill his core.

  “Jeeves… do you have an answer yet? I’m bored, and the essence is slowly fading,” Breck complained.

  “I believe so, Sir. It seems you need to break through to the next rank,” Jeeves explained.

  “I know I need to rank up, Jeeves. Is that all you found?”

  Jeeves shook his mental head. “No, Sir. I don’t think you're fully understanding. You are at the highest point in the beginner ranks and need to break through into the basic ranks. This is more involved than just gathering essence. You need to develop that essence into a higher tier. The knowledge you gain from that, coupled with the large amount of essence you have stored, should literally break you into the new ranks. My data calls this process a breakthrough.”

  Breck sent several question marks to Jeeves. “You lost me. How do I advance my essence to a higher tier?”

  Taking a deep breath, Jeeves began explaining everything he could. “Sir. Let’s rank you up.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Ranking Up

  “Explain that to me again. I need to advance my essence type?” Breck asked for the third time.

  “Yes, Sir. Right now you are using the most rudimentary essence types. In order to enter the basic ranks, you have to advance at least one of your essence’s into a basic form,” Jeeves repeated himself.

  A basic form? An advanced essence type… How the hell am I supposed to do that? Breck pulled up his patterns and saw nothing that screamed out ‘advanced essence.’ “Jeeves, you're going to have to give me more to go on. I’m not following you. What qualifies as an advance essence?”

  “I don’t actually know how to create any of them…” Breck scoffed. But Jeeves continued. “I can show you an example. My knowledge base expands with each new rank you achieve. I don’t know how helpful this will be to you but allow me to show you an example of fire essence.”

  Jeeves displayed the image of a steep staircase. Only the first few steps were visible, a dark fog shrouded the rest. The bottom step had the word ‘beginner’ carved into it and a few steps higher was the word ‘basic.’ The stairs themselves were made of a magma like stone. As the stairs ascended, the level of fire and magma increased.

  “This is an example of the fire magma essence tiers. I’ve simplified things into a staircase as an example. At the very bottom of the staircase…” Jeeves lit up the bottom step as he spoke, “is the first rank. This is basic fire and earth essence.” Two glowing orbs, one red and one green, floated above the beginner step. “If you move up the step to the basic ranks, you can see the two essences beginning to merge and create heated earth essence. I only know one more step of this particular essence type, which would be the intermediate rank. If you advance on this path, heated earth essence becomes molten earth essence, the key difference being the level of heat that the earth it creates can withstand.”

  Breck was reviewing the diagram that Jeeves displayed when a thought struck him. “Wait a minute. Isn’t my venom essence an advanced form of essence? Shouldn’t that qualify as a breakthrough?”

  Jeeves examined Breck’s venom pattern. It was indeed a basic level of essence with a mixture of earth and water corruption. Cross-referencing this pattern against his database revealed the answer as to why Breck couldn’t rank up. “I see two issues why that doesn’t qualify you. The first is that you didn’t create that essence type on your own. You absorbed it from something, so its creation wasn’t your own. The second issue is that it doesn’t use your primary essence type of life. While you can unlock more essence types,” (Breck tried to interrupt Jeeves, but he predicted the unspoken question and continued speaking), “using a process I do not know, you have to utilize your primary essence type to break through the ranks. Try to think of a concept, idea, or energy that would relate to life essence. Feel free to mix in your other known essence types.”

  Breck frowned. So much for learning how to control everything. It would have been really cool to shoot a giant fireball like Greg the mage. “Well, I don’t think this is going to happen instantly so I think it's best that I use up some of this spare essence before it vanishes. No point in letting my food go to waste.”

  He gathered a large portion of his essence and pushed it downward in a wide sweeping motion. Breaking apart the dense stone under his dungeon floor, he absorbed everything in sight. Every time he felt his essence expanding, he would return his focus to where Bob died and refill himself. He continued this process until Bob’s remaining essence was absorbed, and he kept his reserves full. He smiled when reviewing his work. Under his current dungeon floor, he cleared out enough space for a couple of rooms. He didn’t have any new patterns or ideas to fill them with, so he returned his focus to his breakthrough.

  Well, tick that off the to-do list. Wait… the to-do list… That might be my answer. Breck thought of the one major problem he continued to have. The issue that nagged at him ever since he opened his dungeon. He wanted to give Jeeves the vision of his depths while adventurers are present. It’s great trying to kill two birds with one stone but easier said than done. How can I do that?

  Breck pulled up his available essence. Without even trying, most of it was naturally converting to life essence. It felt like a warm pool of white water with specks of blue and swirls of brown. There were smaller, almost non-existent, specks of red, purple, green, and a handful of others mixed throughout.

  I need to find a way to combine life essence with something… Life… life… could I? Breck grabbed a large orb full of life essence inside himself and started swirling earth in. The mixture turned a tan color before exploding. The explosion shook Breck to his very core. Several new cracks formed on his surface and, for the first time in a long time, Breck experienced real fear. The cracks splintered enough to cause pieces of himself to flake off.

  “SIR! What happened? Are you ok?” Jeeves frantically searched for a cause of the disturbance.

  “My head… Oww…”

  “What happened!? You're covered in cracks now.”

  Breck reviewed himself. As he did, another small piece of his core fell to the ground. He quickly reabsorbed his lost body parts, but the process made his head burn. “That definitely can’t be good.
I was trying to merge two of my essences, and it just exploded. I grabbed some life essence and threw earth into it.”

  “I would suggest that you try again with a little less essence and with a bit more finesse. You can’t just throw essence together. Think of an idea or concept behind what you're doing. Essence doesn’t evolve with sheer force alone. Humans are so single minded.”

  Hmpf. Single minded. I’ll show him single minded. Breck knew what he wanted to achieve. He pictured it. He envisioned it. He focused on it. He knew what he wanted and was going to make it work! Grabbing some life essence, a lot less than before, he formed it into an orb about the size of a dime. Instead of forcing earth essence to merge with it, he left the ball of essence floating in mid-air while forming something around it. An oval rock, roughly the size of a football, came into existence. Another larger rock formed below the first with eight long, thin, stick-shaped rocks quickly following suit.

  Now to add the detail. He pulled up his pattern for acid and used it to carve. One, two, three indentations, a thin line and a hole to place the ball of essence he created. Moving the ball of life essence into the center of his creation, he reviewed his work. That still looks too basic to me. Jeeves said to elevate things to the next level, so let’s elevate things.

  Focusing on one point of his life essence, he tugged at it slightly. A thin string of essence pulled away from the ball. He stretched the string, pulling it out of the large rock, and through the football sized one. He repeated the process a few dozen times, stretching the essence strings through every rock he formed. When he finished, the strings connected every rock with multiple sources of essence. It still needs more.

  Breck focused on every string he created. He pulled more strings from the originals until his life essence resembled a system of veins or the roots of a tree coming off his central ball, or heart. To finish the process, he coated the entire creation with a thin layer of earth essence and lowered the overall creation to the ground for Jeeves and himself to review.