Trial and Flame

by Kevin Murphy

  Melee and Roth experimentally chipped away at more easily accessible crystal on the ground level to see just how difficult it might be to dig their way out. As it turned out, it was very difficult. The protrusions jutting out from the visilium crystal cracked and snapped off with relative ease, but when those were gone the flattened surface was sturdy and resilient. They’d need something like a pickaxe to effectively dig into flush crystal. In their case, they’d also need to be striking upward with one hand while hanging from a roughly-formed handhold. They decided to shelve that plan as a last resort.

  “Why do you think the cave closed up?” Cline asked no one in particular.

  Nobody answered at first, but then after a moment of consideration Mina decided to share her hunch.

  “Do you guys remember the lower-pitched noise that came from deeper in the tunnels?” she asked.

  The others nodded.

  “It seemed like those creepy-crawlies scattered because of that noise,” Mina continued. “So, to me that means that either there’s some bigger, scarier monster that the bugs want nothing to do with…” She trailed off as though she’d just considered a third option. “Or, maybe, it could be a larger one of those that just happened to call them all back… Or—” Mina’s face twisted around like she was struggling to find the right words.

  “Just say whatever it is already,” Roth said. “You’re making it worse by building anticipation.”

  Mina sighed. “Well, I could be wrong here—no, I’m probably wrong—”

  “Out with it,” said Melee, shaking her head. “It can’t be much worse than it already is.”

  “Well, what if there was something controlling them intelligently?” Mina suggested.

  “How do you mean?” Dakkon asked.

  “Well, what if that ambush tactic that those bugs used was more than just raw hunting instinct. Like, maybe it was a strategy cooked up by something else down here?” Mina said.

  “Like the boss of this place?” Cline ventured.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Mina said. “I was just thinking that it was rather odd behavior for bugs to try and block our escape path. It was really suspicious when they all looked ready to keep fighting even after Dakkon smoked them, then suddenly fled after hearing that sound. Finally, now that we’re back here, our way out is blocked off again. It sure seems like something smart is trying to keep us down here.”

  “Well that’s certainly not a comforting thought…” Roth said. “Was there supposed to be something so clever down here?”

  “No, not that I know of,” admitted Mina. “But, there weren’t supposed to be any of those slimy, wall-bursters, either.”

  “I wish you sounded a little less convincing,” said Cline. “It feels a whole lot creepier down here all of a sudden.”

  “Well then, if that’s the case, what do we do?” Dakkon said. “We’ve already talked about not being able to fight the boss here. We need a few hard-hitting mages to get that done.”

  “That was before we knew you could roast it!” Roth exclaimed.

  “That was every last bit of my mana, gone in an instant,” said Dakkon. “I didn’t even get them all with a straight-shot down the tunnel. If there end up being more bugs, if my one spell isn’t enough to take down the boss, or if they employ some sort of strategy to bait me into a misfire—that’s the only shot gone.”

  “I’m not fighting those damned bugs again, either,” said Melee. “I’m sorry that’s inconvenient, but I’d rather log out than go through another nightmare scenario like that again.”

  “Ah, don’t be like that, Amelie,” Mina said. “We’ll have to get out of here some way or another.”

  Melee shook her head. “No. Friggin’. Chance.”

  “What if we move carefully and keep the bugs away?” Roth asked.

  “…” Melee just stared at him.

  “I suppose we could try the right tunnel,” said Cline. “It might lead somewhere completely different.”

  Dakkon looked over to Cline in surprise. His friend wasn’t the risk-taking sort, despite their adventures together. If he’d been given a standardized test on how well he could predict the actions of his companion, Dakkon would likely have always avoided the answer labeled ‘Cline elects to march further into unknown danger.’

  “That’s what I was thinking too,” said Mina. “We’re stuck down here for now, so we may as well explore. If we’re lucky, we might just find another exit. We don’t know for sure that the right tunnel has the same enemies as the left one. We can take our time and move carefully.”

  “… I guess we can try sealing off any dirt patches that we come across with ice,” Dakkon said. “I mean, so long as my water reserves hold up. There’s no meter, though, so it’s anybody’s guess as to when they might give out.”

  “Sounds like we’re forming a plan,” said Roth.

  “Now hold on,” Melee said, crossly. “I’m not going down that other tunnel, either. There’s bound to be more of those slimy hell spawn! You can go ahead and count me out.”

  “You don’t want to wait here, alone, do you, Amelie?” Mina asked with a wickedly innocent grin. “If those bugs come back, you’ll probably want us around to cover for you.”

  Melee stared at her friend with unpleasant eyes.

  “Just think about it,” said Mina in a measured, soothing voice. “We’ve got to get out of here one way or another. You can try to chip away at that thick crystal ceiling with your sword, or we can search down that path. Last time we went in blind, but now that we know what to watch out for, we’ll be prepared. You don’t even need to fight those bugs. Dakkon and Cline will pick off any we come across from a distance. Just cover us if anything else gets in too close.”

  Melee closed her eyes, tightening her facial features and tilting her head back as she thought.

  “We won’t have to deal with that situation again,” Mina soothed. “We’ll seal up those holes so that nothing will be able to come at us from behind, then we’ll take it nice and easy.”

  Melee let out a deep, exasperated breath upward before she righted the angle of her neck to look at Mina. “You know,” she said, “you can be a real manipulative pain in the ass sometimes.”

  “But I’m your manipulative pain in the ass,” Mina said with a cheeky grin and a wink.

  “Great,” said Roth. “Now we’ve definitely got a plan. That said, I’m not fully convinced we’ll find an exit by delving deeper.”

  “If there’s something that can make walls appear down here then maybe we can find something to make them disappear,” said Cline. “That, or we can find another exit. Even if we can’t, that little skirmish we had awarded some serious EXP. If the caves are offering it up freely, then I say we owe it to ourselves to gain a few more levels before turning tail and getting out of here.”

  Everyone nodded. The EXP had been great for such a short battle, even if they’d been against an unexpected and dangerous new enemy.

  “So, that just leaves strategy,” Dakkon said. “Once I run out of water, we need to stop exploring and come back here before the ice caps behind us melt. That means the deeper we go, the quicker we’ll need to be moving. I don’t want any chance of those things trapping us again, even if we can blast through some of them.

  “Also, in case we run into those bugs along with anything else, we’ve got to prioritize taking them out first,” Dakkon continued. “They hinder our ability to fight and their acid is way too risky for us to deal with.”

  Mina nodded her agreement with his assessment.

  “Anything else I might have missed?” Dakkon asked the others.

  “If we do see those bugs again,” Mina added, “and you’ve got a choice between being bitten by one of those and something else, I’d opt for the something else. There’s no guarantee I’ll have enough mana to heal everyone, so bear that in mind.”

  “I’ve learned that if you want to fight on the front line, then you’ve just got to accept that the healer’s always right,�
� Roth said with a nod.

  “No need for the stipulation about where you are in a fight,” Cline said. “Our healer’s always right, regardless.”

  “How wise you are, Cline,” said Mina. “That mindset will take you far.”

  “Oh gods, don’t water her ego,” Melee said, rolling her eyes.

  “No,” Mina said. “You may continue. I’m am right, after all.”

  Chapter 10: The Right Path

  Removing an ice cap would be a simple matter. Dakkon only needed to place a few of his thermomantic hotspots in key locations. That process would surely be much slower than freezing the ice had been, though, for reasons he didn’t fully understand. Magically freezing something seemed to be quite a bit more efficient than heating it up.

  He didn’t want to use thermomancy to remove his block of ice, however. Dakkon was keen to prioritize methods that might teach him more about his new class. By thinking the words ‘Burning Sigil,’ he traced his finger along the border of the ice block, then made an ‘X’ in the center for good measure. Once he thought the words a second time—activating the ability—the outline flared up and sizzled for a second, having no real effect on the large block of ice.

  Dakkon wanted to try double-casting Burning Sigil by activating the skill through feel and then thinking the words, but he hadn’t gotten the trick of it yet in his tests. He assumed that had something to do with needing to activate Burning Sigil more than once to get it to do anything productive, but he wasn’t certain. Even if he could double-cast the skill, it would almost certainly drain him completely of his mana—right at the very beginning of their journey into a new area. If the walls of the new tunnel proved to have as many dirt patches as the first one, he would need to use mana frequently to plug holes as they went to make sure they didn’t get pincered by bugs.

  Despite his urge to test more, practicality won out. Using thermomancy’s Hotspot and Condense, Dakkon created four small, warming orbs within the top, bottom, left, and right edges of the large, frigid plug. Then after the four hotspots had bored weaknesses into his barrier, he repeated the process twice more, each time closer to the center than the one before it.

  “Melee, would you like to do the honors?” Dakkon asked, stepping aside.

  “Gladly,” she said while she walked up, slinging her massive sword’s harness from her shoulder and drawing it.

  Dakkon took a few extra steps back in the event something went awry, deciding he could do without being pelted by shards of jagged ice. Melee reared back and slammed—more than slashed—the barrier of ice horizontally, bashing through the weakened and non-weakened areas alike. Dakkon wasn’t certain he had even needed to bother weakening the barrier for her in advance. She’d gotten stronger.

  “Is the left plug really going to keep the bugs out?” Roth asked with a hint of concern in his voice, likely borne of how easily Melee had gotten through the first iteration. He’d already seen one of the creatures breach Dakkon’s hastily constructed barrier in the tunnel.

  “It should be more than fine,” said Dakkon. “That one’s several times thicker. I don’t think Melee could get through after an hour of hacking away at it.”

  “Is that a challenge?” Melee asked, hefting her massive sword to demonstrate that she was up for the task.

  “We’ll experiment with just how much ice you can break some other time—when we’ve got some drinks that need chilling,” Dakkon said. “For now, we spelunk.”

  The right tunnel started out quite similarly to how the other one had, though it curved slightly to the right and was without the rocky impurities scattered throughout the other path’s crystal. At about the same distance traveled along the new path to when the old one had thoroughly reeked of the creatures’ pervasive stench, they still had yet to smell anything save for stagnant air. There had been no dirt patches yet, either—and, possibly the best sign of all—Jinx hadn’t bothered to growl at anything suspicious.

  Despite Melee’s initial hesitance to further explore the tunnels, she was far too proud to hide behind everyone else and took her place next to Roth at the party’s head. Her participation was reassuring to everyone, but doubly so to Dakkon. Once dirt patches started showing up again, if his ice caps were to give way to a horde of bugs, a crazed sword-swinging Melee might just be able to create enough of a hole to escape through. While he wanted the ice caps to give his party some peace of mind, he didn’t expect they’d hold indefinitely.

  To the party’s left side, they came across a patch of rough crystal like the geode-esque walls of the larger, chambered room they’d first descended into and where their exit had disappeared. Crystal jutted out chaotically from the wall—a drastic and noticeable difference from the rest of the tunnel’s nearly-smooth surface. Unsure what to make of it, the group simply skirted around the untamed crystal and continued on their way.

  Before even a single blemish of stone or dirt was spotted in the new tunnel, the party came to a second large chamber much like the first one they’d climbed down into. Rather than two decisions on where to go next, here there were seven new paths to take. Five smooth tunnels were cut into the rougher, crystal walls around the circumference of the rounded room, one climbed upward diagonally at the back left, and the last formed a hole that dropped straight down in the center of the chamber.

  After a cautious look around the room, the speculation about which way to go began.

  “The tunnels are pretty big,” Dakkon said. “Our plan to block every tunnel isn’t gonna fly. There’s no way I can block all of these.”

  “I’d rather you saved up for the bugs,” grumbled Melee.

  “On the bright side, since our first turn changed to a right, we shouldn’t be able to get lost if we just keep taking every first right,” Mina said. “We’ll just have to watch for company coming in from behind us…”

  The group took the first right and continued onward. Their new tunnel curved to the left as they traveled, and the gradual slope drove them upward. They stumbled upon a few more outcroppings of naturally-shaped, rough visilium crystal in disk-like shapes along the walls and began to suspect they might have been left as scenery or, perhaps, landmarks that could aid in tunnel navigation. Stops were only made for Dakkon to cover the occasional dirt patch which had begun to appear. It wasn’t long until they had found themselves at yet another rounded, crystal chamber.

  “This place is starting to really feel like a maze,” Roth said. “Look at that hole. Can you imagine dropping down it by mistake?”

  “This place is starting to feel more and more like…” Dakkon trailed off.

  “A hive,” Mina said with a nod. “It must be. That would explain these bizarre tunnels—especially the ones tilted at inhuman angles.” She pointed toward the sheer drop and the diagonally rising paths. “I guess this massive hunk of crystal has been hollowed out into something’s home.”

  “But then where are all of the hive workers and soldiers?” Dakkon pondered aloud.

  “—So, every first right on the way in means we only need to take every first left to get out again, right?” Cline asked, nervously. “Just making sure…”

  “You’ve got it,” Mina said. The room they’d entered had eight new paths. Five around the perimeter of the room, one up, one down, and one at another upward-sloping diagonal angle. “That means, we’re taking this one.”

  The group entered the path which, much like the last one, curved to the left. Rather than elevate them further toward the surface, this one gradually lowered them deeper into the ground. The subtle winding of the tunnel made it difficult to see what lay ahead, and they had long-since lost knowledge of which direction they were facing. It was no matter though, so long as they didn’t take any liberties while exploring they had a simple plan for how to find their way back.

  Ahead, another large disk of natural-looking crystal jutted out of the floor in jagged spikes that looked terribly uninviting to tread upon.

  “I really hope we don’t have to start w
alking on these things all the time,” said Roth. “I need to buy a pair of thicker boots.”

  Just beyond the rough patch of crystal they could see another large chamber.

  “What if taking every right just leads us in a big circle around the whole thing?” Melee asked.

  “Hrmm…” Mina pondered aloud. “I guess that means we’d have some idea of just how big this place was, I guess.” The uncertainty earned her a silent stare from Melee. “What? It’s not like I can see the future or anything.”

  The party carefully walked over the rough crystal patch, trying to find the least-spiky path as they went. Losing one’s balance and falling there would have certainly been unpleasant. The crystal beneath their feet didn’t shatter from their weight alone, however. Even the smallest pieces were surprisingly sturdy.

  While the party walked over the rough patch in the tunnel, Jinx’s ears pricked up. The wolf turned around and snarled at the ground he’d just stepped over, then loudly barked twice.

  “What’s wrong?” Dakkon asked.

  Mina stood still, staring dumbstruck at the ground where Jinx was growling. A single, translucent-blue appendage rose from a small crevice between the jagged crystals and tapped other crystals around it, as if probing for information. As the cogs of Mina’s brain worked to make full sense of their predicament, she began to speak slowly.

  “Don’t panic,” Mina said levelly. “Slowly turn around and walk back the way we came.”

  The others’ eyes were locked on the unexpected, crystalline leg, but they complied. Slowly, the group turned to move, but as Dakkon pivoted, he felt the ground beneath him give a little. Just then, Jinx lunged at the odd stick-like crystal leg and bit it, defensively.

  “Oh shi—” Dakkon started to say as the crystal floor below the group broke into dozens of half-meter-sized spiders, scrambling as they tried to climb over each other to a wall. The adventurers fell downward several meters, landing awkwardly on a slanted surface.