by J. T. Wright
“They’re up front as well!” Trent’s voice echoed its way back to Kerry’s ears. “You and Felicia deal with the ones back there! Dreq and I will handle these!”
“No good!” Felicia cast a Spell to increase Kerry’s Agility and Speed as she shouted back at Trent, “I'm support only, and Kerry doesn’t have a weapon!”
A Mage without attack Spells? Curiously, the subject had never come up. Trent pushed Dreq back with his foot, sending a crude arrow flying towards the rapidly approaching bugs that crowded the tunnel in front of him.
“Dreq will come help you then. I'll finish these as fast as I can.” Trent did not waste time asking why Felicia didn’t know any offensive spells. He immediately changed his plan. He had intended to use these Beetles to hone his Archery and let Dreq practice. In the face of his companions’ lack of support, that wasn’t going to work.
“Go help Kerry, Dreq. I'll be fine!” Trent fired again, knocking the lead Beetle backward without penetrating its shell. The damage a bow could cause was directly related to the weapon itself. With a finely built bow and well-crafted arrows, an Archer could send devastation from a distance that had little to do with his personal Attributes.
Trent’s bow was only a training aid. The cheapest arrows it could produce, costing 5 MP, did 5 Damage from this distance, provided the projectiles managed to get through their target’s defenses. He could stall the Beetles as long as his Mana lasted. Without investing significantly more MP, he was unable to threaten these Level 4 bugs.
Trent had other options, however. The knives on his belt, his handcrafted darts, and the imbued Elwire swords in his Storage would all end these Beetles with a single hit. Instead of switching out the bow, Trent ran forward, charging an arrow as he went.
With his bow drawn to its limits, Trent set the tip against the stunned Beetle’s head and released. No momentum was lost in flight and the wooden shaft, so ineffectual before, penetrated with a crunch, causing significantly more harm. The insect slumped, lifeless.
Trent stepped on its back and jumped over, creating another arrow as he went. He landed on the back of a second Beetle and sent another arrow into the area where thorax met head. The second Trial Beast fell, and Trent kept moving, firing rapidly from point blank range at the monstrous insects that crowded the narrow tunnel.
He gave up an advantage fighting this way. Archers typically fought at the back. Then again, Trent was no Archer. He had no feel for the delaying and controlling tactics that a low-level Archer used to assist his party. He had seen the versatility the bow could provide when he covered for Dreq, and while he admitted that a good Marksmen would be invaluable, the whole exercise left a sour taste in his mouth.
The idea had come to him during the morning’s training. Archery was a common Skill, and like the spear movements he had learned, he now knew he needed to push the Skill. To make it work for him, he had to adapt it to his personal style. Common Archery was about stillness and distance. Trent preferred to move and stay close to his enemy. All he wanted was the Create Arrow Skill; there was no need to chain himself to the rigid Skill’s demands.
Once he had a stronger bow, he would explore Archery further. Today he intended to seize the Skill inside the slender wooden tool and move on. He fired a third arrow between snapping mandibles, and a fourth into a bulging compound eye. His bowstring hummed as he shot a sixth and seventh. His boots smashed against the fallen, and their exoskeletons creaked as he walked over their backs to reach his next target.
He kept careful count of each arrow he created. Twenty shots were his limit for this engagement. At five MP each, he could probably fire a few more, but doing so risked Mana drain. As slow as his MP recovered, he would finish this battle woozy if he pushed it too far.
Trent found his cautious count unnecessary when the Skill he was waiting for appeared after the twelfth shot. Create Arrow was his, and he could set the short bow aside at last! He almost tossed it to the ground with relief. Before he could, Sergeant Cullen’s tutelage kicked in, and he stored it away. His hands drew Sorrow in its hatchet form, and his shield appeared on his left arm.
Twelve arrows fired meant twelve Beetles slain. A thirteenth hopped over the body of the last one killed as Trent changed out his equipment. Trent discovered where Swift Beetles earned their name. Long thin wings buzzed, and the Beetle slammed into Trent’s hastily raised shield, rocking him on his feet. It was the first and last hit he would suffer from a Swift Beetle.
Bashing with his shield and hacking with Sorrow, Trent moved forward, more inconvenienced by the tight quarters than he was by the bugs. Mandibles snapped at him, and he answered them with a kick and a chop before moving on. Workmanlike, Trent avoided hits that would damage the Harvestable bits, and aimed for eyes and what passed for necks on an insect.
He kept up his count as he went. There was no need to, but the numbers occupied him more than the routine slaughter of Level 4 Trial Beasts. The count in his head reached thirty, and he lowered his weapon, relieved. He felt a little ashamed that he had used Sorrow for this task. It was too easy. The soul-bound weapon deserved better.
“There are too many! Run! I can’t hold them back!”
Suddenly, Kerry’s shout echoed down the tunnel, reminding Trent that he was not alone. It was followed by the sound of Dreq’s howl and Felicia’s scream that there was nowhere to run. Trent had been about to return Sorrow to his belt when the noise reached him. He spun on his heel and raced back the way he had come, dodging corpses as he went.
His three companions had been having a decidedly different experience from Trent’s. Kerry’s shield was holding the Beetles at bay, and Dreq’s Paralyzing Howl prevented them from being overrun, but they were being pushed back. Beetles unaffected by Dreq’s Skill buzzed through the air and slammed into Kerry.
Kerry grunted as the Beetle hit his tower shield. It fell to the floor and snapped at him with its alien jaws. Kerry tried to kick it away, and failing, began to hammer at the bug with the edge of his shield. He got in two hits before a second Beetle rammed him and forced him back another yard.
Trent was able to watch Felicia in action as he ran up. The Mage cast three Spells in the time it took for Trent to squeeze past her. He would have been even more impressed with the speed of her spell-slinging had there been a noticeable change when her magic reached Kerry. However, other than making Kerry and Dreq glow briefly, the Spells had no effect on the pace of the battle.
Trent flew by the three, not bothering to equip his shield as he entered the fray. There were as many Beetles on this side of the corridor as had been on his side. Thirty more Beetles and, as far as he could tell, only one of them was dead. A few bore cracks in their hard outer shells, the equivalent of flesh wounds. There was nothing significant to show how hard Kerry had been fighting.
Kerry watched in open-mouthed disbelief as Trent tore through the line of bugs. Each strike was a kill, and he never paused to line up his hits. Every step took him deeper into the dark, and if a lack of light hindered Trent, Kerry couldn’t tell. A fact he was distinctly grateful for.
As Trent single-handedly destroyed the Beetles, Kerry felt a weight of powerlessness settle in his chest. This was only the first floor! He had never felt so helpless before. The Beetles had come without end, and he had not been able to hold his ground, the one thing he was good at. Watching Trent fight highlighted his own weakness, and that stabbed at him.
“There are just as many behind us. All dead,” Felicia stood behind his shoulder and whispered.
“Too many, too many for the first floor.” Kerry leaned his shield against the wall, lifted his visor and looked back at her. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know.” Felicia’s veil waved as she shook her head. “But maybe we should–"
Whatever she had been about to recommend was lost when Trent returned. He held his pack and pressed it towards Kerry. “I'll Harvest, you pick up the drops, alright?”
Kerry’s hands closed on the leath
er bag. It was empty. Presumably, Trent had left its former contents in his Storage now that that mystery was out in the open. The bag couldn’t have weighed more than a pound or two, yet Kerry’s shoulder dropped as he gripped its straps.
“I'm good for more than packing the baggage.” Trent had drawn his knife again and turned away when he heard Kerry’s complaint, forced out from between clenched teeth.
“I never said you weren’t,” Trent answered, not stopping. “We split the loot and the work. That’s fair, isn’t it? Don’t forget your shield. You should stop dropping it like that.”
“I didn’t drop it!” Kerry said indignantly, hoisting the tower shield and hurrying to catch up. “I set it down. Carefully.”
“Stop setting it down then,” Trent replied with an odd chuckle. “Sergeant…it’s a bad habit. It’s unnecessary. You need to be alert in the Trials.”
“We should go back,” Felicia cut in. “The new configuration needs to be reported. It’s only going to get harder.”
“You can go back if you like.” Trent began to Harvest the first Beetle. “I'm going on.”
He moved to the second Beetle as Kerry began stuffing coins and vials into the pack. Trent gave a casual glance at the shield that Kerry set aside before he began disassembling the bug.
Kerry saw the look and felt a childish impulse to stick out his tongue which he repressed. Oddly, it was Felicia that came to his rescue. “He can hardly hold the shield and pick up coins!”
“Then he should find a way to sling the shield! Or he could hold the bag while you gather the loot.” Trent cracked open a thorax and dipped out a vial of what he now knew was bile, not slime.
“We should leave!” Felicia insisted. She waved Kerry away when he moved to collect the new pile of coins and followed Trent’s suggestion, all the while telling herself it was a suggestion, not an order.
“You’re a Mage without an attack Spell. He's a Warrior without a weapon’s Skill. Dreq is a Dog that… I'm not sure what he’s supposed to have, but he doesn’t have it.” Trent faced the trio and gestured at each one in turn with his knife. Felicia and Kerry stared at him blankly, Dreq's tail wagged, and he sneezed in agreement, happy to be included.
“Those are the reasons we should get out of here!” Felicia insisted, lifting the hem of her robe to move to the next pile of drops. She shoved each coin into the bag Kerry held forcefully.
“That’s why we, why you three, should go on. The Trial will make you better. That’s why we challenge them.” Trent sliced through a Beetle wing, then added, “Or it might kill you. That happens too.”
Felicia ignored the more ominous part of Trent’s words and said, “We delve for profit. It’s a way to make a living, keyword, living! Delving is not a calling!”
It was a lesson the Academy instructors hammered into them. Go slow. Be cautious. You can’t spend coin if you’re dead. However, Trent had had a different kind of teacher. There were many things Sergeant Cullen claimed he wasn’t able to talk about, but one thing he said, unreservedly, was that Trials were for the challenge.
Two things a student of Sergeant Cullen’s should never be was a hero or a coward. It was a contradiction that Cullen had never addressed, and Trent had never asked about. Trials were meant to be challenged. They were supposed to be difficult. When the going gets tough, the tough kicks the going in the face and cuts its thrice-damned throat! And the throat-cutting was just for good measure. The kick should have been enough to put the going down for good.
“I don’t know about profit,” Trent said, sawing away at a mandible. “I don’t even know why you’re here. I do know whatever brought you inside can’t be found in Bellrise. You should do what you feel is right. You’re good at making scarves; you could go do that.”
It sounded like an insult. From a fellow student, it would have been. Trent’s voice wasn’t mocking, though. He sounded quietly envious, as if he wished he knew how to make the brightly colored lengths of wool that Felicia sold.
However Trent meant the comment, Felicia stopped arguing. She did not suggest leaving again, settling for muttering to herself under her breath as she followed behind Trent, picking up coppers and occasionally staring at Trent’s back.
**********
“This is different.” Kerry set the edge of his shield against the ground. As long as he kept hold of the equipment’s handle, Trent wouldn’t say anything. Kerry had attempted to find a way to sling the shield over his shoulder when resting, but a sheet of metal five feet tall did not like to be slung.
There had never been a conversation about tactics. Kerry had expected there to be one. They had been lucky so far. That luck could end at any time. They needed to work out how they fit together as a group. He tried to hint at it. He brought it up with Felicia as casually as he could, asking her how her Spells worked and what he needed to do to help her.
The one time he managed to drag Trent into the conversation, Trent had merely asked, “Can you do more than stand there and get hit?”
Kerry had stopped bringing up tactics after that. Trent’s dismissal should have made him angry, yet Trent always sounded genuinely curious when he said something that might have been taken as a mean-spirited dig from anyone else. It was why Kerry felt, contrary to all evidence, that Trent was younger in age than he was, and that made it hard to remain frustrated with him. Especially since Trent was doing all the heavy lifting.
They were starting to find a rhythm of sorts. They had fought four times since that ambush. Each time, Trent managed the majority of the Beetles that swarmed them. Somehow, he never finished them off until Kerry and Dreq, working together, had made two or three kills of their own. That Trent viewed him in much the same way he saw the puppy was a fact Kerry had come to accept, even while he vowed to show Trent how wrong he was.
“Can we go through that?” Kerry asked, referring to the steam-filled passage ahead of the group of four. The Dungeon had thrown larger numbers of Beetles at them than he was used to. That wasn’t as unsettling as this latest change.
Other than the number of bugs and the red tint in the stone walls, the Dungeon was the same as it always was, long winding tunnels, broken by open caverns and dead ends. Kerry had latched on to that normality as a lifeline. For the most popular beginner’s Dungeon in the territory to put a new obstacle in their way did not bode well for the rest of the exploration.
The new obstacle was a wall of steam that billowed and swirled unpredictably, sometimes seeming to thin only to come back thicker than ever and never revealing what lay beyond. Kerry held his hand a few inches away from it, and sweat broke out on his palm beneath his gauntlet. The steel and leather of his armor heated up as he held his hand out, and he stepped back, waving his hand to cool it.
“Do you know a Shield Spell that can block that much heat?” Kerry asked Felicia, removing his gauntlet to blow on his fingers.
Felicia took a wand from within the sleeve of her robe and used it to draw in the air a few feet from the steam. The tip of her wand glowed and left sparkling shapes hanging in midair. After a few moments, she stopped and shook her head as the runes dissipated.
“It’s natural heat, not magic,” she said, tucking her wand back in her sleeve. “Mage shields don’t do well with natural heat. It would drain twice as fast at three times the cost. I could maintain the Spell for three or four seconds, tops.”
“That’s not very long,” Kerry mused, rubbing at his chin with his bare hand. “Looks like we won’t be going this way. What are you doing? Felicia, Healing!”
While Kerry and Felicia were talking, Trent had stepped up to the curtain of steam. As Kerry was preparing to turn back, Trent lifted his arm and thrust it into the dense white mist that Kerry had found burning hot. Kerry lunged forward to pull Trent back, certain he would find Trent’s arm had become a blistered mess.
Dragging Trent away from the steam, Kerry began to pull at the buckles and straps of Trent’s leather armor so that he could examine the wounds Trent m
ust have received. Felicia screamed at him to leave it; she could Heal through the leather.
“What are you doing?” Trent slapped Kerry’s hands away and pushed Felicia back. “I'm fine!”
“You are not fine!” Felicia insisted. “You must be in shock, but the pain is coming. Stop pushing me. I’m trying to help you!”
Trent danced away from the two who were trying to either undress him or douse him with potions. Dreq sensibly moved to the side, where he yawned and lay down. It would take a moment before the others learned what he already knew about Trent, and he did not want to be stepped on in the madness that had descended on the party.
“Grab him, Kerry!” Felicia shouted. “Tackle him! Hit him if you have to, just hold him still so I can work on him!”
Kerry drew back his arm… and then stopped. Trent was facing him, and the set of his shoulders dared Kerry to throw the punch he was threatening. Kerry wisely lowered his fist and moved to stand beside Dreq.
“You hit him!” Kerry leaned against the wall. “I don’t think he’s hurt. And I don’t want to be.”
“He has to be! That stuff is hundreds of degrees hot; it would be like sticking your hand in a fire!” Felicia panted as she continued to chase after Trent. The cloth of her veil got caught in her mouth as she shouted, and she spat it out. “Trent, unless your armor had fire resistance, you need to…”
“It does, err, I do!” Trent sidestepped Felicia’s lunge, and gave her a light shove to keep her away. “I’m not burned!”
“Your armor has fire resistance!” Felicia came to a halt, her chest heaving more from emotion than exertion. Trent nodded in response. He was willing to explain that the fire resistance came from an Ability and not his armor, if necessary; anything to keep Felicia’s grasping hands away.
“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Felicia huffed, tugging primly at her robe to straighten it.
