Heading Up

The stone doors slide open to a literal flood of crawling insect flesh, as the countless creatures run over one another for a chance to get at the fresh meat inside. A strong gust of wind blows against the swarm, holding them in place for long enough that the stone doors are able to close again.

An elf charges forwards, trailing long blonde hair thrusting into the few that got through to us. Her blade severs limbs and thrusts clean through thick chitin into critical organs within.

Nel and I stand side by side, tackling a single of the critters that has tried to escape from Eshya’s slaughter. I refrain from wasting mana on any powerful attacks, still recovering what I lost.

Between the two of us the single dog sized insect stands no chance, its legs are cracked and broken before Nels cuts into its head with one of her knives, finally killing it.

Eshya and Vii have by this time finished the rest.

“Everyone okay?” I ask, checking that my own injuries aren’t bleeding too badly.

“We’re fine.” Eshya replies, waving her bloodied sword, “There are an awful lot of them though.”

We drag the corpses away from the door and add them to the growing pile. This is the third wave that we’ve let inside, and still there is no sign that there are any fewer waiting for us outside.

I can’t help but worry that we might be stuck down here slaughtering little bug-like critters until we grow desperate enough to start actually consuming the disgusting spider guts.

It was bad enough sucking the mana from their disgusting flesh.

“What do we do?” Vii asks, “They seem to be gathering outside the doors. If there really are that many down here, we might end up filling this room with their corpses as this goes on.”

“We don’t have the power to push past them and make a run for the surface.” Nel says, “We’ll have to hope that either they lose interest in us, or we can cut down their numbers into something more manageable.”

“If I go out and you close the doors behind me, I might be able to kill more of them.” Eshya suggests, hesitantly.

“No.” I reply firmly, “We stay together. Besides, you’d be overrun in seconds.”

“I can move pretty fast now.” She replies, “I could probably do it.”

“Then worst case, you run through them and get help.” I say, “Even then, I don’t like the idea.”

“Any other ideas?” I ask, hoping that they’ll have something.

They don’t.

“Then I’ve got something that might work.” I pull out a chunk of chitin that I’ve pulled from a spider, “If I fill this with as much mana as I can spare, I can make a nice big blast of fire. Considering everything, I doubt it would kill many, but it would scatter them.”

“And we take that chance to push through and make a run for the exit?” Nel asks, “It would be difficult, once they stop panicking, they would catch up to us. They are still faster than you and I.”

“Eshya should be able to lead us through, cutting down the enemies in front of us.” She nods in agreement.

“Vii, could you keep your magic up, blowing the swarms back as we move forwards. I could probably spare a few fireballs here and there to support, but you’d have to do most of the work.”

“I can try. If it really is a massive swarm, I mightn’t be able to slow them much though.”

“Whatever you can do.” I say, “Does anyone have any improvements to the plan?”

They’re silent.

In fact, everything is silent.

I put my ear to the door, careful not to open it. Still, I can hear nothing.

“Are they… gone?” I’m hesitant to ask.

“It sounds like it.” Nel replies.

“All of a sudden?” Vii asks, “That’s strange.”

“We should take this chance.” Eshya insists, “If we wait, they might come back. Or something worse might come knocking.”

“What if something worse spooked them away?” I ask.

“Then even better to run now, who knows if this door will protect us from anything bigger.” She says, forcing me into frightened agreement.

“Same formation?” I ask, as we prepare for the escape. They nod, “Vii, you’re at the back, close the door behind us and don’t lag behind. I’m hoping Barry can survive down here on his own, and maybe we can get back to him one day.”

“Okay,” Vii responds, ready to open the door as Eshya stands with her sword ready.

“Go.” Eshya says, and Vii opens the doors.

Our vanguard is out and checking the corridor, sword in one hand, and light wand in the other, while the doors are still fully opening. We follow quickly, and Vii shuts the door with a wave of her wing.

The corridor is dark and gloomy, and I can see no signs of the insects that were swarming here just minutes ago. Nel whispers directions and Eshya leads us out at a brisk pace, ready to fight.

We don’t linger, and we watch every corner and every shadow with far more care than we did when we were looking for treasure on our way down. At the edges of the light the shadows move and twist unnaturally.

These solid stone halls should be impossible to hide in, yet we already know that fearsome creatures lurk down here, ready to tear us apart the moment we let our guards down.

“I hear something.” Eshya says, slowing further. We hesitantly follow her steps along the path we took to get down here.

It isn’t long before I can hear it too. A wet, slurping sound, far too loud and far too constant. The sounds alone are enough to draw into my mind the worst horrors of Lovecraft’s design.

“Should we retreat?” Nel asks

“No, we should take a look at it first.” Eshya says, “We can run back and lock ourselves in Barry’s room again if it’s too much for us.”

“If the spiders come back?” Vii asks, “I can’t push through them, and neither can you.”

“Then we’re fucked.” Eshya responds, “But we can’t just cower in that room forever.”

“We could try and find another exit…” Nel doesn’t sound hopeful of that plan.

“We go forwards. We’ll retreat if it looks bad.” I say, and they nod in agreement. It’s the best plan we have, but sometimes the difference between the best bathroom stall and the worst is simply how friendly the indecencies are, that are writ upon the walls in faeces.

We head up the stairs and to the source of the sounds. Eshya hesitantly looks around the corner and into the room where the sounds are coming from, her light shines in and her sword is ready.

She stares in quiet horror, shifting her tense grip on her sword. Her eyes move quickly through the room figuring something out.

“I know where the spider swarm went…” She says. “I don’t think it can see or hear very well. We might be able to sneak past it.”

I poke my head around the corner to look at this creature that is supposedly so safe and passive that we won’t need to fight it. Hesitant to take her words at face value.

A writhing, wet ball of tentacles and beaks rolls slowly across the room. I imagine it’s what it would look like if you somehow gave life to the cancerous miscarriage of a giant squid. The white flesh of the tentacles shines with moisture, gripping dozens of black spiders as the many beaks are crunching on the thick exoskeletons of the critters.

It doesn’t seem to have eyes, and from the way it’s moving, I suspect that it senses its surroundings by feel and squirms all about to move. How it managed to devour a swarm of spiders I don’t know, but I don’t want to find out.

I can see why Eshya is not interested in fighting it.

“Can we get by it?” Vii asks, “It’s everywhere, and even I’m not good enough at flying to squeeze past that. I wouldn’t even dare to try while walking…”

“I’m not fighting it.” Eshya says in reply, “We’re sneaking past it, or we’re turning around.”

“Let’s just see which way it goes; we might get lucky if it decides to go down a different path.” I suggest, my stomach squirming at the idea of staying nearer to this thing than we have to.

“Perhaps…” Nel replies, “Or perhaps it would be better to simply return to the room for now.”

I don’t want to hole up in there until we grow desperate from hunger and dehydration, but I don’t exactly want to see what this creature will do to my friends either. I grit my teeth in the face of my ever-consistent powerlessness.

This crawling tumour is in the way, somehow powerful enough to bring us to a stop. To maybe even kill us…

I look down at the chitin in my hand that I’d intended to use as a bomb. Even fully powered and thrown right in one of this things many gullets, I know it won’t be enough to kill it.

Trembling, I feel the mana coursing through my body and my mind as I struggle with my rage to find a solution to save us. A way to make this tumour roll over and fuck off, but I know pulling at its limbs is a bad idea and light and sound seem to have no impact. If it could read the presence of our mana, we’d similarly be dead by now.

I want to burn it so fucking bad, but I hold myself back. It was these simple and stupid reactions that we came down here to help resolve. I shouldn’t act out of rage, but with a measure of dignity and calm.

“We’ll follow it until it moves out of our path.” I say, watching it helplessly as it crawls along the side of the room, still snacking on bugs.

“Good plan. If we get caught?” Vii says.

“I blast it with all the fire I can spare, and we run.” I say, “Pretty much the same plan as with the bugs.”

“That works.” Eshya shrugs.

With that conclusion, we slowly tail the cancer ball, careful to stay far back from its grasping tentacles. The sickly, white flesh makes the most awful moist sounds as it pulls itself along the ground, and as it lifts the corpses of the bugs to its beaks. The chitin crunches as effortlessly as potato chips.

We follow after the creature as it crawls along the path to our escape, ever closer to our goal, but still so far away when that thing is still in the way.

Unfortunately, the creature seems to have come to something of a pause. It must’ve been moving quickly before, but perhaps after it’s meal it needs an afternoon nap, because even its grasping limbs slowly lower and become still.

The room that it’s settled into is at least wider than the hallways we’ve been sneaking through, but it’s still small enough that the cancer ball’s spread-out limbs cover the length of the room. It’s not impossible to step carefully past it, but that doesn’t make it feel like a good idea.

“Should we…?” Eshya asks, clearly hesitant.

“We should, we don’t know when we’ll get another chance,” I say, swallowing back my own concerns. “I’ll go first. Nel next. You two step in if we fuck up and we’ll race for the exit. I’ll blast fire in its face if it wakes up.”

They quietly nod, just as anxious as I am.

I take my first step out, holding tightly to the chitin bomb that I’m ready to make in a moment’s notice. Our task isn’t that hard, all in all. The tentacles aren’t massive, I just have to step over them without making such a fuss that it feels it. Oh god, I hope it doesn’t feel the vibration of my feet touching the ground, or feel the air moving around, or smell me. I’m still covered in spider juice and sweat. Maybe, this is all just a trap, and it’s lying still waiting for us to get closer to it. Maybe, it’s actually full and it’s just letting us pass. What if it has a nightmare and throws its limbs about in a panic and finds us…

Or maybe…

And, I’m past it.

That was easy.

I stand in the empty door frame to the stairs that leading up to our escape, while breathing deep and heavy I look back at the others. They’re close behind me, stepping slow and careful, watching each limb and the slowly shifting main body that is hopefully asleep.

In no time Nel is by my side, she looks up into the darkness above us with as much worry as I have looking back. Eshya, of course has no troubles either, her steps like those of a dancer, she gets past the monster with ease.

Vii, is almost with us when one of the tentacles twitches. It’s only a little, not enough to even touch her, but the fright of it has her jumping in the air and beating her wings, trying to fly the rest of the way to us.

As if sensing the stirring air, the tentacle beneath her slams up for her with terrifying speed, second only to Eshya’s quick blade. Just as the tentacle wraps around our winged friend, it’s separated from the body of the beast by a powerful sword strike.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop the separated limb from wrapping her up and pulling her to the ground. The lump of bird, wrapped in deadly calamari, rolls along the ground in our general direction. Nel leaps forwards, with no time to free Vii from the alien limb wrapping around her, she pulls the struggling sushi roll out of the room.

Eshya is forced to cut down more limbs as the creature screams in either pain or rage. Whichever this cancerous lump can manage to feel.

I plug the chitin with as much mana as I can risk, leaning heavily on my delayed casting Skill, I set it to blast as Nel drags Vii into the lower staircase.

The fiery explosion wraps around us, but from how little it burns my skin, I know it’s not going to do much to this beast. Eshya pushes me ahead as she watches the tentacles from the rear.

I grab onto Vii, opposite Nel, and together we charge up the stairs, taking them two at a time, too busy to even look back at whatever is going on behind us. Eshya’s footsteps still resound behind me, and I promise that if she dies to that cancerous shit, I’m finding the cure for cancer and genociding its entire family-line.

In the rush of our escape, I at once feel like time is passing both faster and slower as my steps race ahead, but the steps continue on endlessly. Eventually the stairs do come to an end, but there is no reprieve for my aching legs as we continue our sprint along the hall that follows.

A quick glance behind us confirms that Eshya’s still with us, but I can’t see if anything is behind her.

“Keep going!” She insists.

A few minutes more and we’re huffing and puffing in the last chamber before we get back to civilisation, and the welfare officers that will be more than interested in both our injuries and the giant limb still wrapped around Vii. Eshya stands guard, but this inner door still has the power to open and close. If the cancer breaks through it, it’s breaking through the next one too, and out into the city.

“Help…” Vii wheezes, and I finally remember that we should be unwrapping her.

“Nel,” I call for her to help, but she’s already a step ahead of me. With my added assistance it isn’t long before our feathered friend has escaped from the limbs slimy grasp.

“You okay?” I ask.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” She says, shivering slightly, “It was close…”

“It wasn’t the first close call we’ve had,” I reply.

“It reminded me of that last time…” The time she was very nearly crushed to death, and half of her bones were broken, and all she could do was scream beside me. The memories come back to me, and it takes a little effort to cram them back down.

I head over to her side and hug her. It takes a moment before she hugs me back wrapping her wings and her legs around me in a complete and tight embrace, her body trembling and her feathers shivering. With my lowered mana it’s slightly painful, but I don’t complain.

“Kyra, your wounds!” Vii panics as she notices and starts fussing over my injures that have reopened. Probably more from the hectic escape, than from her eager affections.

Knock, knock, knock.

The polite rapping comes from the worse of the two doors. The one with the horrifying, and slimy monsters, rather than the one with the welfare officers that might want to collar us.

“Ah… hello?” I ask, trying to imagine the cancerous ball of tentacles knocking the door so politely, perhaps dressed like a girl scout selling cookies.

“Hi, I’m coming through. I just thought to knock considering what you’ve just been through. We don’t need any accidents to happen.”

“Ah, okay…”

The doors slide open and out walks a tall and well-proportioned lady of considerable height. Her ears suggest that she might be elvish but her skin lacks the inexplicable liveliness of true elves, and her full bust and trunk are rather far from the skin and bones of all elves I’ve seen thus far.

Her curious gaze falls upon us, as she takes off her oversized hat, it’s brim too wide and the adornments atop it far too glaring. Should she take a walk back on earth, all sorts of birds would be taking the challenge to steal the wonderous mountain of ‘shinies’ gathered atop her head.

“You have all been through quite something down there.” She says, smiling gleefully.

“You were watching us?” I ask in disbelief.

“I would have stepped in if you were in danger of dying, but you girls had it in hand.” The strange woman says, “It’s the sort of thrilling experience I rarely get to have anymore, so it was a pleasure to watch. There’s not anything left on this world that can put such a good scare in me as I felt watching the close calls you girls had.”

“Could you try not bragging about how powerful you are, while I’m still struggling not to bleed out?” I say putting pressure on the worst of my bleeding wounds.

“Oh, that little scratch?” She asks as if it’s nothing. She waves a hand and extends a thin tendril of golden mana towards me.

It warmly runs over my injuries and heals them in moments. She then does the same for Nel. She looks at Eshya and Vii but just confirms that they’re both uninjured.

“Feeling better now? A little less whiny?” She asks, casually leaning on the door to a world filled with monsters.

“Thanks, you a teacher here?” I ask hopefully.

“Oh, no, no, no.” She laughs haughtily, “Nothing so terrible. I’m just a caretaker of sorts, though I did give myself the position so don’t go expecting anyone to know about it.”

“Could you teach us anyway?” I ask.

“I’m afraid I haven’t the time. I already have far too much to busy myself with already, and to be quite honest I’m not sure you’d really keep me entertained that long. I’d hate to make a promise that I’d be too bored to fulfill.”

“So, beating on some poor beasts and creatures that are barely even a threat to you, is more interesting than teaching some wonderfully skilled and talented young students?” I ask, but she’s clearly not biting.

“Come back by to bother me when you have something more interesting to keep me occupied, and do be careful from now on, I won’t likely be around to help you the next time. I’m not everywhere at once, you know, I gave up on that life a long time ago.”

“Before you leave,” I interrupt her, standing to address her properly, “I hope you don’t mind if I claim some of the ruins below. It’s rather cosy down there and I’ve taken a liking to it.”

“Anyone is free to claim their own territory below.” She replies with a smile, “You’ll have to be careful that someone or something stronger doesn’t take it from you, but I’ll be sure to warn you if you should ever step on my toes.”

“How gracious of our new neighbour.” I reply, “Will we have any way to contact you? Or even a name to call you, perhaps?”

“While your spine is refreshing, I haven’t the interest to share either just yet. I may just drop by every now and again, so please do impress me with whatever you have planned.”

With those vague words she opens the door and re-enters the dungeon below the academy, apparently, it’s her lair or something.

“Who the hell was she?” I ask, but the others look at me with wide eyes and as much confusion as I’m surely showing on my own face.

“Why did she come talk to us?” I ask, trying to think of anything she said that even needed saying, “Was this… did she do all of this just to heal us while pretending like she was unconcerned. I mean she could’ve just watched us struggle then left…

“Well, whatever. We’ve gotten healed. We’re safe. We should set aside anything dangerous that we can’t hide and head back.”

Eshya looks down at her sword sadly. She hasn’t gotten much use out of it but for what killing she has done, it’s been reliable.

“We’ll be back.” I tell her firmly, “I’ve already decided that our first goal will be to section off a part of the underground ruins to make our home. Hide it and reinforce it to defend against threats from above and below. We’ll find a way to deal with Adler, and we’ll grow strong enough to fight off the beasts that live down there. What do you all think?”

“It’s achievable.” Eshya says with a nod, “It means I get to practice fighting where I won’t be bothered by the welfare officers, too. I like it.”

“I don’t know how we’ll deal with Adler and the other welfare officers, but it’s probably our most realistic goal to work towards at the moment.” Nel says.

“Maybe we can dig up some powerful relics or something.” Vii says, “Like Barry, or those stones you’ve been sucking on. I like the plan.”

Now we’ve got a goal it’s a simple enough matter of trying to figure out the means we’ll take to get there. Trying to hush Adler is the biggest of the issues, but learning to fight, even without her getting in the way is going to be trouble.

We need to be strong enough to fight off the cancer ball and the horde of bugs that caused us so much trouble, all without making it obvious that we’re trying to learn how to fight. This is all assuming that we’re not going to learn properly from our classes, but I’m already rather dead set in that pessimistic assumption to be honest.

“I’ll need to figure out what to write about this place for that journalist group.” I say, recalling the least of my worries, “I don’t need more people poking their noses around, especially if we’re going to be making a secret base down here.”

“We can all think about it.” Nel suggests, “For now, we should get some fresh clothes.”

She pokes at me, and only then do I realize that I’m showing off quite a bit more than I’m normally willing to show in public. Turning my shirt into bandages might be useful for keeping my blood in, but it’s not quite as good at covering me up.

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~Mana Form: Grade 1

Current mana density: 101 units

~Mana distribution:

Skin: 21%

Muscle: 7%

Mind: 4%

Cardiovascular: 7%

Misc.: 1%

Efficiency: 39%

~Skills:

-Mana skin

-Mana shield.

-Mana surge strike

-Flame burst

-Fireball

-Infused Delayed Casting