by Demi Harper
The Exodus timer flashed obnoxiously in my vision.
Time remaining for Exodus: 4 hours, 39 minutes, 21 seconds
“Let’s go.”
But Ket drew reluctantly to a halt. “We should wait for the others.” It sounded as though the words pained her.
“The others?”
Ris’kin had also stopped to wait, despite my urging her to begin the climb. Her ears twitched. A moment later, a series of heavy splashes from behind was followed by the clatter of something being tossed onto the stone shelf.
When we turned around, Longshank was examining a piece of driftwood. Though gnarled and twisted, it also looked fairly solid, and was a decent match for his old leg. He nodded up at the two figures standing over him and began to bind the new limb in place.
Swift and Cheer looked even more bedraggled than usual. Whereas Ris’kin’s fur and Longshank’s clothes were damp but not wet, the scavengers were dripping water. Given that there were no other entrances other than the one in the ceiling, it was apparent they’d swum beneath the water to get here, and had braved the current—and the fangfins—to look for materials that would help patch up our hunter.
Both of them glanced at Ris’kin, who also nodded at them. Swift’s eyes fell upon the gem tucked under my avatar’s arm. The scavenger rolled her eyes, then shrugged and dropped the other bits of wood she’d been carrying—presumably they’d been intended to repair the ark, but the savvy scavenger recognized immediately that they were no longer needed. Despite her obvious annoyance at her wasted efforts, I also detected some relief. I doubted she’d been looking forward to getting roped into sharing the load of the cumbersome ark.
Cheer had already donned her boots—which I now noticed had been left on the edge of the stone shelf—and was squeezing water from her hair. Longshank finished affixing his new driftwood limb, and Ris’kin and I reached out a hand to help him stand. He tested his weight on the leg and seemed satisfied.
I looked around at our small party. The three gnomes were wet, dirty, and tired. Separated from the rest of their tribe, they were nonetheless ready for whatever was about to be thrown at them next, and I was glad to have them here.
Ket alighted on Ris’kin’s left shoulder, and pride flashed from her through our bond. Then she took off again, leading the way up the shaft and into the mountain.
Fifty-Six
Unscorched
Corey
The ascent was steep and uncomfortable.
The muscles in our neck ached. Without the squirrel to watch her right side, Ris’kin tended to keep her head turned in that direction, the better to allow her remaining eye a wider field of vision in front of her. She was also chilly; it felt like her fur still hadn’t dried all the way through, the cold damp tunnels seeming to trap the water rather than air it out.
Though Longshank limped along with his usual stoic determination, I could see he was shivering beneath his still-damp upper-body armor. Bringing up the rear, Swift and Cheer’s chattering teeth provided a constant accompaniment that made it feel like we were being pursued by a pair of angry castanets.
The shaft opened out into another cave, just a little larger than the one below. At first glance it seemed we’d already hit a dead end, and I was preparing to retrace our steps and attempt the futile long way around when Swift disappeared through the wall.
A closer look revealed a crevice in the rock, almost invisible unless you were standing right in front of it. The rest of us followed the scavenger through it with ease, emerging into a wider passage.
I was already lamenting the loss of my god’s-eye vision. Though my Sphere was of course limited, in that ethereal form I’d still have been able to pass through the wall easily and discover the way out myself. Thankfully, I had reliable allies. Hopefully Swift, Cheer, and Longshank’s skills—and Ris’kin’s, of course—would get us to where I no longer could.
The entrance through which we’d just passed was similarly invisible from the other side, naturally concealed by folds in the rock. Natural chance, or a cleverly constructed secret exit? There didn’t seem to be any marks indicating that the stone had been worked, but perhaps that was the point.
We followed the passage upward past many twists and turns and branching tunnels. I would doubtless have spent far too long agonizing over which path to take, but each time we were faced with a choice, Ket led the way unerringly. She seemed in a sort of daze again, staring dreamily around her and flitting between different points to touch the rocky walls and ceiling. Almost like she was greeting old friends.
Every time I asked her if she was all right, she brushed the question off, saying only that we needed to hurry. I had to admit (though not directly to her, of course) I was mildly creeped out by her recent behavior.
But she was right. We had precious little time remaining—3 hours, 41 minutes and 48 seconds, to be exact—and couldn’t afford to second-guess or even hesitate.
Our small party continued without complaint. Surprisingly, I heard no grumble from either Swift or Cheer, though that may well have been because they were still too cold to talk. Their clothes and hair had stubbornly refused to dry out, clinging to their skin and reminding them of the fact with every little movement. Even Ris’kin’s limbs felt stiff with the lingering chill brought on by her still-damp fur.
As we ascended, though, the chill began to dissipate. Clothes, hair and fur alike finally resumed that blessed state known as ‘dry’, and the scavengers’ teeth no longer chattered. I was pretty sure I even saw steam rising from Cheer’s feathered pauldrons. Though we were getting higher, a sense of enormous pressure and heat bore down on us.
“Is it getting… warmer?” I asked.
Ket didn’t reply. I was about to repeat the question, but when we turned the next corner the sight that greeted us stole my breath.
Glowing crystals adorned the passage. Not polished and decorative, but raw and rough and deadly sharp. Clusters of the prismatic shards jutted from the floor, the walls, the ceiling, grouped together like defensive spear formations or sharp-staked barricades. The smallest could easily be worn as jewelry, like the pendant from which Bekkit had been freed, while the largest ones dwarfed even Ris’kin. The latter almost blocked our way in places, and my denizens and avatar were forced to turn sideways or duck beneath them in order to pass.
Most of the crystals we passed were an opaque, cloudy white, but here and there were hints of pink and blue, a beautiful spectrum of contrasting fuchsia and turquoise that combined to create a purplish aura that, I had to admit, put my gem to shame. It felt as though we’d stepped inside a geode lit with tealights.
I soon realized the glow did not come from the crystals themselves but from the mushrooms that grew alongside them like tiny perfect replicas. Crystalcaps, Insight told me. They were unique to these caves, and grew to mimic the crystals’ appearance, but otherwise behaved like regular fungi. Still, Ris’kin and I both felt the need to reach out and poke one just to make sure. Its rubbery texture was delightfully at odds with its sharp faceted appearance.
Swift’s initial reaction to the crystals’ beauteous sight – after trying and failing to pocket one, of course – was to check her reflection in the nearest one. When the opaque surface refused to oblige, she breathed on it and then rubbed it hard with her sleeve, as though intending to bully it into showing her what she wanted. Cheer’s first instinct was much more on brand; the scavenger immediately took out a chisel and began chipping enthusiastically at the crystal, seemingly unbothered by the heat that had poor Longshank positively dripping sweat.
Though the gnomes appeared largely unconcerned at the rising temperature, the recent events and the climb were beginning to take their toll. The scavengers’ stamina bars were running perilously low, and Longshank’s wasn’t faring much better. Though I was still cursing myself for not pushing on sooner, I couldn’t help but think back on my decision to relax and fully recuperate that day at the river. If I hadn’t insisted on those few hours
’ rest—a decision Bekkit had chided me for as being ‘frivolous’—the gnomes’ already exhausted endurance would have already given out by now. I could only hope the rest would also ensure the rest of the tribe—and especially Gneil—were also able to reach the summit in time.
I surprised myself by wishing Bekkit were still with us. The pompous sprite might be annoying, but he was the only one of us with prior experience of Exodus, and without him here to empathize I felt oddly alone with my burden.
“Was Bekkit always so arrogant?” I asked Ket, mostly to take my mind off things.
It took her a moment to snap out of her odd, dreamy state. “Yes,” she eventually replied. She smiled. “But it was sort of endearing.”
“It’s hard to imagine him as the god of kobolds.”
“The kobolds weren’t always that way. Bekkit was nothing like Grimrock.”
“How did you find each other?” I asked.
“We learned of each other by accident. He was much further advanced than I was, and his Sphere gradually began to overlap mine, just like Grimrock's did yours."
"I'm guessing that unlike Grimrock, Bekkit didn't send an underwater monstrosity to butcher your god-born when you least expected it?"
Her wings flickered, and I sensed the sprite’s wry amusement. "He did not. He made peaceful contact, and later provided support and advice at a time when I was sorely in need of it."
I sensed great pain mingling with the simmering rage she experienced whenever we spoke about Bekkit.
“Why did you need his advice so much? What about your sprite?”
She was quiet for a while as we negotiated our way past more crystals. Then she said, “I didn’t have a sprite. I was alone.”
“What?!”
Sadness and regret now carried across the bond, but with them was also self-loathing. “You once asked why I didn’t have all the answers. The truth is, I fumbled my way through godhood with no idea what I was doing—and with a very similar attitude to yours when you were first awakened.”
That explained why she often grew so angry with me. Just like the time I’d almost burned out, she hadn’t wanted to see me repeat her own mistakes. For all my complaining about her interference and lectures, I couldn’t imagine having reached where I was now without her. To have been alone the entire time…
“Who were you?” I asked her. “Before you became the gnomes’ God Core.”
I’d raised the question before, many times. The sprite had always skirted the subject, and something in her voice always warned me not to push it. Eventually I’d accepted that it was moot; just like me, Ket was where she was, and looking back would not help us to move forward.
But hearing Benin ask her recently had stirred my curiosity awake again, as had the sprite’s uncharacteristically odd behavior the closer we’d gotten to our destination. I couldn’t shake the image of her staring up at the mountain, fixated upon what we now knew to be the exact location of what we’d been seeking this whole time.
“I don’t recall.” This was the answer she gave every time. Now, though, her voice contained not the tone of finality that said the topic was closed. Now, though, it sounded almost like a question rather than a statement. Through our bond I sensed a storm of emotions: confusion, sadness, nostalgia, regret. There was also something that felt very familiar to me: denial.
“It’s coming back to you, isn’t it?” I whispered. I thought again about the barrage of memories I’d received. Though many of the details had faded, already pushed away by whatever magic had made me lose them in the first place, I still recalled far more about my former life as a dark elf than I had in all the months since my reincarnation as a Core.
I definitely wasn’t ready to share them with anyone just yet. Reluctantly accepting that Ket felt the same way, I ceased my questions and focused on our journey.
The crystal tunnels slowed us considerably. Their razor-sharp edges forced caution when edging past the larger ones. It was nothing short of maddening; it felt like we ought to be sprinting for the summit, not carefully creeping through a shiny obstacle course. I found myself glancing again and again at the Exodus timer.
Time remaining for Exodus: 3 hours, 2 minutes, 33 seconds
Our progress sped up enormously once we left the crystals behind. The tunnels began to change as well; I spotted pipes embedded in the dark rock, running along the ceiling and burrowing into the rock itself, though what function they served was anyone’s guess.
It was definitely getting hotter the deeper we journeyed into the mountain. There was also a faint whiff of something that made Ris’kin wrinkle her nose. It took me a while to recognize it, and then only because Swift and Cheer had begun to drool.
“Do I smell eggs?”
“Sulfur,” Ket informed me. She breathed in deeply, as though inhaling the scents of spring and not something that smelled like a troll’s underpants. I was going to ask why this place smelled of sulfur; then I spotted an orange glow at the far end of the passage and thought I could hazard a guess, though I hoped I was wrong.
We emerged into an enormous cavern. Just like the Heart in my former domain, the center of this cave was a deep, deep hole. My suspicions were proved correct when I looked carefully over the edge and was greeted by the sight of simmering magma far below.
“I suspected as much when you described the city,” said Ket. “You said it was inside a crater at the top of the mountain. It fits the description of a caldera, which are formed after an eruption has made the volcano mouth collapse.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the bubbling magma. It wasn’t as bright as I’d expected, nor as runny. It was more of a thick mush, dark red layered with patches of black. “You couldn’t have mentioned this sooner?”
“It’s fine. It’s dormant.” She laid a tiny hand against the rock, as though listening to the volcano. “Probably.”
Her attention wasn’t focused on the lake of magma.I hadn’t noticed at first, but there were more pipes like the ones in the tunnels. They ran vertically along the walls, some of them seemingly emerging from the magma itself, with many disappearing into the rock as though the mountain had absorbed them. What they carried or where they led was still a mystery.
One pipe in particular was larger than the rest. Thick enough for Swift and Cheer to climb up inside it side by side, the pipe rose higher and straighter than those around it, and I followed it with my gaze until it was lost in the darkness above. I noticed something else too—stairs, carved into the rock in a spiraling ascent, presumably all the way to the summit.
Ris’kin’s ears twitched at a scraping sound behind us. Danger sense tingling, hackles rising, we turned to see a creature climbing from the magma pit and onto the ledge.
It looked to be some kind of salamander. Unlike those I’d encountered in my previous Sphere, however, this one’s hide was the magnificent color of a fire opal. They shimmered in shifting tones of red and orange; deep crimson on its back and brow, where the scales were heavy and thick as armor. Each scale glistened like a precious gem, as though the flesh were encrusted with rubies and carnelian.
Pyromander
Reptile
These volcano-dwelling creatures thrive in the world’s deepest, hottest places. Able to subsist entirely on the very magma that births and sustains it, the pyromander has no need to hunt for food, but will aggressively defend its territory from rare incursions by those foolish enough to go wandering around inside volcanoes.
A thrice-forked tongue flicked in and out of the creature’s mouth, glowing like a fiery whip as it scented the air.
Its head jerked in our direction. Orange flames spewed from its mouth as it bared its needle-like teeth. Then it leapt at Longshank.
The hunter, quick off the mark as ever, twisted to avoid it. The creature sailed past him, and Longshank lashed out reflexively with his fist, which glanced off the armored hide harmlessly. As they made contact with the pyromander’s scales, the brambles around his knuckles immediately
lit aflame.
I winced, expecting him to yell in pain. But the burning brambles never touched his skin. The wraps he wore to protect his own fingers from the sharp thorns were made of mole-rat leather; the flames licked at the wrinkly material but did not burn or otherwise damage it.
As the red lizard spun, preparing to launch itself at Longshank a second time, a net of webbing slammed into the side of its face. Shaking its head to rid itself of the clinging web, which was already sizzling and smoking, the pyromander turned its face toward Swift, who was giving her netgun a congratulatory pat on the stock.
Before the lizard could attack her, there was a flash of movement on its other side as an object hit the corner of its mouth and lodged there.
It roared as its head was pulled to the side. The owl talons that hooked its mouth were still attached to a spindly and by now somewhat mummified foot, which was affixed to a length of woven webbing. Cheer was tugging on the end of it, her cheeks flushed with exertion, and her stamina draining alarmingly as she strove to pull her opponent away from her fellow scavenger.
Once it realized what was happening, the pyromander chomped down on the talons. They broke with a series of cracks; the improvised grapple fell from the lizard’s mouth, and Cheer was left holding the least dangerous half of an owl’s foot on a string.
The distraction was enough. Longshank had unsheathed his spear, and now lunged at the creature, driving his weapon toward its more vulnerable underbelly. The speartip pierced the flesh beneath the lizard’s foreleg and drove in deep.
The pyromander recoiled from the blow. It coughed and jerked, and bits of liquid flame dribbled from its mouth. Wrenching itself off the spear, it looked around at the three gnomes, then at Ris’kin, who’d also unsheathed her spears and was poised to strike. It seemed to be reassessing the wisdom of continuing the fight.
