10. Chapter 10 The Yeti #4
Her ears went up and forward. "I just did my job."
"Your job saved our lives at least four times in that gauntlet alone. I counted."
"You counted?"
"Four or five."
She grinned. "So, what is it? Four or five? My self-esteem needs to know the exact number."
The boss creature's body was dissolving.
The massive frame was losing definition, the white fur and frozen hide softening into the translucent shimmer that dungeon creatures dissolved into.
Where the body had been, materials were forming in a pile.
Thick white pelts sat on top, and ice-blue crystals pulsed with a cold light beside dense bone plates and a chunk of something dark and heavy that looked like metal but had the sheen of deep ice.
"Boss loot," Bjorna said. She crouched beside the pile and started sorting. "Full moon boss. This is the payday."
Sif whistled. "That dark piece. What is that?"
"I don't know. I've never seen it before.
It goes to the market." Bjorna loaded the materials into her Ring of Holding with efficient, practiced movements.
"We loot everything on the way back up. Every creature we killed across all five depths.
Full moon creature drops are better than standard across the board. "
"That's a lot of creatures," I said.
"That's a lot of coin," Sif said. "Which is the point."
We climbed.
The traps in depth five were dormant. They'd already fired, the mechanisms spent.
The corridors were littered with shattered ice spears and broken icicle fragments and the cold pockets had dispersed.
We moved through them fast, Liv still calling the route out of habit, her ears still sweeping the passages even though nothing was alive down here anymore.
The depth four creature's body had dissolved into materials.
Bjorna and Sif collected the pelts and the ice-plated bone fragments and the crystals.
At depth three, the frost brutes had left thick hide plates and more crystals.
At depth two, the stalkers had dissolved into lean pelts and hooked claws that Nott said had alchemical value.
At depth one, the runners had left smaller pelts and bone.
Every chamber had loot. We'd killed a lot of things on the way down and every one of them had turned into materials worth carrying.
Bjorna and Sif loaded it all. Sif's Ring of Holding was filling up and Bjorna's was getting heavy.
Nott carried the crystals separately, sorting them by type as we walked.
"This is more loot than our last three runs combined," Sif said.
She was carrying a bundle of stalker pelts over her shoulder because she wanted to admire them before putting them in her ring.
"The full moon was worth it. All of these pelts will fetch a good price.
You can make some incredible winter coats with these pelts. "
"It was worth it if we don't have to do it again tonight," I said.
"Aww, are you tired?"
"I used a brand new magical shield three times, healed all four of you from a boss fight, and walked through a murder tunnel. I'm allowed to be a little tired."
"A little tired," she repeated. "You're adorable."
We climbed through depth one and into the entry passage and the stone arch appeared ahead of us, the night sky beyond it. The air from outside hit my face and it was the strangest thing. The night air, in the middle of a cold night, was warm compared to what we'd been in.
We stepped through the arch.
The staging area was empty. The moon was still up, lower in the sky than when we'd entered, casting long blue shadows across the trampled clearing. The torches on the iron poles had burned low. The party that had been eating near the treeline was gone.
I stood in the clearing and breathed air that didn't freeze in my lungs.
The drain from three [Bubble] uses and a [Smite] and healing four people through a five-depth dungeon run sat in my chest and my shoulders and down into my legs.
Every part of me wanted to sit down. But I stayed on my feet. So did the rest of them.
Bjorna set down her shield. She looked at each of us, taking a moment with each face. Her jaw was relaxed and her eyes were steady and she stood like a woman who'd just done exactly what she'd set out to do.
"Well done. That was the hardest run I have ever been a part of. The party proved itself tonight."
"We proved ourselves against a yeti," Sif said. "I'm calling it a yeti. It looked like a yeti."
"You can call it whatever you want," I said. "I'm calling it terrifying."
"You fired a smite bolt through a magical shield and hit it in the chest. You were the opposite of terrified."
"I was extremely terrified while I was doing it. The two things can coexist."
Liv sat down on the ground beside me and leaned against my arm. Her ears had gone soft, the tension of the run gone out of them. "I'm hungry."
"Me too," I said. I looked at the four of them.
Bjorna with her shield on the ground and her longsword sheathed and her massive body at rest for the first time in hours.
Sif with stalker pelts still over her shoulder and her silver hair wild and her blue eyes bright in the moonlight.
Nott standing with her hands in her pockets, her dark hair stuck to her temples, the faintest hint of color on her cheeks from the cold.
Liv beside me, leaning, warm despite everything, her ears soft and low.
They were banged up and exhausted. They were also every bit as gorgeous as they had ever been.
"Let's go home," Bjorna said.
I couldn’t have agreed more.