Chapter 2:

I Think I Found Some Mana Capsules!

Heroic Puppygirl Chloe!

“Luka,” Chloe said, slashing her sword at the stone goblins climbing out of the culverts in the corridor walls as they ran, “you should let ME take care of em’ all, save your magic!”

Luka wasn’t listening; she had her grimoire floating in the air out in front of her, turned to a specific page as she ran, conjuring a blast of blue energy that pushed the emerging stone goblins into all the nearby walls, shattering them to dust in her path. Chloe jumped over her and sliced at the nearest ones, shielding her new friend from harm.

Luka kept running though, and slammed into Chloe, the two of them falling to the dirty dungeon floor. The torches in the walls, all alit with ancient, never-ending orange flame, waved about in the wind of their commotion.

“Hey, watch where you’re going!” Luka cried.

“Listen to me!” said Chloe, beheading a stone goblin that was sneaking up behind her—it fell to the ground in a heap of gray dust. “You don’t wanna have to sleep for nine hours every time you run out of mana down here, do you? What if something worse shows up?”

That finally got her to think about it. She peered down the chamber in the direction they’d come, certainly thinking about the specter Chloe had defeated whilst she slept. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Hah!” Chloe pointed at herself with her thumb and gave Luka wink. “I’m Heroic Puppygirl Chloe! I’m always right. Well, most of the time.”

“Most of the time you’re always right?” Luka echoed.

“Yes.”

Luka said nothing.

Just then, another stone goblin was crawling out of a pot in a culvert up ahead, snarling at them with its cinderblock-pavement textured face. Chloe “hmph’d” arrogantly and lunged, taking it out with ease. Both it and the pot it had emerged from shattered with the force of her attack, spilling its contents all over the corridor floor. Three marbles of varying sizes—a red one, a green one, and a blue one—bounced and rolled, emitting soft, pulsating light in each of their respective colors. Chloe looked down at them, dumbfounded. She motioned to pick one up—

“WAIT!” Luka shrieked.

Chloe froze. “Huh?”

The mage girl sprinted toward her, standing over the three treasures. “Be careful! Those are mana capsules!”

Chloe repeated: “Huh?”

Luka was waving her arms worriedly, the grimoire floating around her like a hovering bird. “They’re mage tools, and they’re incredibly incredibly rare! They store a spell of some kind, each corresponding to the twenty-four archetypal energies!”

Chloe’s nose twitched, smelling for any more intruders; sensing none, she sheathed her sword and stepped away, arms crossed. “The twenty four what now?”

Luka shook her head, looking at the orbs with heavy hesitance. “They’re basically little marbles that can summon a spell once. Look, they each have a rune, see?”

Chloe got a closer look, and indeed, each of them had a little character in the center, as if suspended in fluid of some kind. Yet again, they were runes she could not read, but thankfully it seemed Luka could, for she got on her knees and reached out very, very carefully, picking up the green one.

“This is the universal symbol for growth energy,” she said, showing it to Chloe. It looked somewhat like a leaf, but geometric in shape moreso than organic. “It’s got some kind of plant-related spell in it.”

“I see!” said Chloe, intrigued. “What spell?”

Luka stared at her a moment, and hung her head. “I have no idea.”

“What do you mean you have no idea?!”

“I’m a novice! I—I’m still in training, and I don’t know everything, and—”

Chloe could sense a ton of bubbling worry and panic in Luka’s very sweat; she was putting off the scents of someone utterly lost and helpless. Summoning her sense of companionship, she got closer to Luka and said, “Well, then uh… why are you down in the Dungeon Complex?”

And so, Luka sat against the wall as tears spilled down her face, and told Chloe her story.

Despite the danger of it all, Chloe had been having oodles of fun down here; monsters to fight, treasure to loot, bones to chew—all of it was a grand old’ time, and she was prepared to take as long as she pleased going through the Complex to find the Ronin’s Ruby. She needed to take it back home, of course—her family, her older brother and both parents—needed a great sum of money to improve the village and provide it with better resources for businesses and overall quality of life.

Among other things, Chloe recalled, but she pushed the thoughts down.

Still, she had time. She had intended to live this adventure to the fullest.

But as Luka shared with Chloe HER story, her perspective started to change. The Dungeon Complex was known the world over as a death trap, where adventurers either gave up on the first level or got lost and were never seen again. As Luka said, she’d been told to go inside by her mage school, Margera Academy, on a mission to retrieve the Helmet of Transitory Thoughts.

With no guidance. With no supervision.

Chloe looked forlorn. “Seriously? You were sent here by yourself?”

Luka curled her legs in and wrapped her arms around them, face in her knees. “I don’t think they expected me to come back. And… I d-don’t think they wanted me to, either…”

“That can’t be true,” Chloe said in protest. She’d never heard of Margera Academy, but magic schools were reputable educational institutions! They didn’t just send people do their deaths… did they?

“But it is!” Luka’s crying was softer than it usually was, which disturbed Chloe. “I failed the Push Exam three times, even though I’m in the Projection Class. Three failures is usually an expulsion, but they said I could stay if I came back from level one with the Helmet of Transitory Thoughts…”

Chloe brought her fist down on Luka’s shoulder gently and stood. “You have to prove them wrong about you, then,” she said. “You have to go get it and come back even stronger.”

Luka refused to look at her. “I can’t… I can’t do that…”

“Yes you can!”

She finally looked at Chloe. Tears were in her reddened eyes, snot caked around her nostrils.

Chloe dug into her backpack and produced a handkerchief, handing it to Luka. She blew into it with the force of an elephant, startling Chloe and making her ears perk up. By the time she was done it was positively soaking with snot.

“Uh… keep it.”

Luka put it in her shoulderbag. Chloe shook her head, trying to forget she saw that. “Up, Luka! I refuse to leave your side until we find that helmet.”

Luka stood. “R-really…?”

She gave the girl a grin and nodded. “Absolutely. But I need you to do something for me, too.”

Luka rubbed her face with her sleeve, closing her floating grimoire and attaching it to the book clamp that hung from her belt. “What’s that?”

Chloe put out her hand. “Stay with me until I find the Ronin’s Ruby,” she said.

Luka pursed her lips, trying to hold back a smile. Then she let out a little laugh and nodded. “Deal!”

A warm sensation of pride and affection swam through Chloe, suddenly quite happy she’d met the mage girl. She intended to stick with Luka, through thick and thin, and do all she could to protect her new friend.

The sound of a tiny ball rolling over uneven flagstones brought her out of her thoughts. And true enough, the largest of the mana capsules, the red one, was bouncing away, down the end of the corridor.

“Oh, we need to do something about those,” said Luka, moving to pick up the blue one at her feet.

Chloe, however, hadn’t even heard her. She felt all her Retriever instincts suddenly overtake her humanoid ones, and she bounded over Luka, chasing the ball on all fours.

“Chloe, wait!”

But she’d already caught up and taken the orb into her mouth—

It shattered like sugar glass, a sudden bright red heat spilling from her open jaw. Chloe looked at it for one moment before an overwhelming, funnel-shaped blast of fire suddenly projected straight into the corridor from her mouth, sending her flying back. Heat and bright orange light overtook the intermittent darkness, burning away the dust and the shadows as her body was sent into the air, torpedoing right back over Luka.

“CHLOOOOOEEEE!!!”

Chloe landed in a heap.

Luka, mortified, ran to her as the fire down the corridor suddenly died. But when she looked down at her friend and noticed the dumbfounded expression on her mostly unharmed face, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Why did you do that?!”

Chloe sat up, a thick coat of black ash sprinkling down from her face. “Uh… I, uh…”

Luka sighed. “You live up to the canine stereotype…”

“Hey! That’s prejudiced!”

“You just gave me a heroic speech about wanting to stay together and help me find my way while I help you find yours, but then you go and act like a literal dog and almost get burnt to a crisp? What gives?”

Chloe had no response. “It—it runs in the family…?”

Still, the mage girl shook her head, and offered her hand. Chloe took it.

…

On a lower level of the Dungeon Complex, a man stirred.

Pinned to a stone pillar, both legs and arms tied around the back, he looked up, beaten and bloodied, as the iron door across the room from him opened, allowing a scant burst of light to enter the otherwise pitch-black space. A figure was moving into the room, long cape sweeping across the tiled floor. He was tall and imposing, with the knife-sharp ears of Elvenkind.

The man tied to the pillar smiled. “Back for more?”

His captor didn’t even bother closing the door. He simply walked right up to him, saying nothing.

“Well? Got something to ask me?”

“Tell us where it is and you walk free.” A cold, commanding tone.

The captured man laughed. “What reason do I have to believe anything you say? I’m a dead man after all of this anyway, so why would I talk?”

His captor fitted his right hand with brass knuckles that gleamed in the wan light of the open door. The captured man laughed again, and shook his head. “Do the same thing a hundred times with no results and you—”

Bam.

Right in the gut. He doubled over, feeling the pain of bruised lower ribs and a battered diaphragm suddenly roar back to life. No tough-guy act could truly protect him from the agony that came with each wicked punch.

Even so, it wasn’t even close to the worst pain he’d ever felt.

“Again?” said the elven man.

The captured man closed his eyes. Hacked up all the phlegm in his throat. Spat on him.

He heard the man wiping it off before sighing and saying, “Very well.”

Bam.

Before blacking out, all he saw was a tiny stream of blood pouring from his open mouth. Then, all was nothing.

…

~CHLOE AND LUKA’S INVENTORY~

MANA CAPSULES ACQUIRED: x2

(growth capsule x1)

(mysterious blue capsule x1)

MANA CAPSULES USED: x1