Soft as a Spike (Chaos God Sugar and Spice Companion Shorts #5)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

Kyle

If the straps snapped, I couldn’t let it hit the ground.

I couldn’t stop walking.

The carry pack bit into my shoulders with every step, canvas grinding against sweat-slick skin, the leather stiff with old salt and the splatter of monster blood.

I hooked my thumbs under the straps and jerked them wider, dragging the weight higher.

Something shifted inside the pack and stabbed between my shoulder blades.

I reached back, fingers fumbling over buckles and knotted cord, and shoved the piece of loot to one side until the pressure dulled to a tolerable bruise.

All of me ached.

The descent had been slow, spiraling down damp stone steps, jagged and rough as if they had been carved yesterday with no thought to uniformity or function.

My quadriceps trembled from breaking my weight on the decline and then carrying the load through the long stretches of the labyrinth corridors.

My rear burned with that deep, grinding fatigue that had the single silver lining of letting me know that my ass was going to look ever finer than before… if I had anyone I wanted to admire it.

I could thank every shred of luck I possessed that none of the Barons were gay enough to discover I never should have been assigned to be their squire in the first place.

At least they didn’t expect me to fight.

They didn’t shove a blade into my hand or make me join in their utterly terrifying-looking training sessions.

My job was simpler. Stay out of the way, carry what they killed for, clean their armor, and be neither seen nor heard unless they had need of me.

I barely even had to cast a minor healing spell unless there were serious injuries, and Heacur became exhausted.

Heacur was the Baron’s healer. He wore white with gold trim.

I wore the pack.

They had changed my schedule on me when I was assigned to them, moving me into trap evasion and minor healing.

I hadn’t realized how useless the introductory classes were until I’d seen my first ranked battle and realized how any of the Proper Students could fry one of us lowly mundanes with a spell without even thinking about it.

We weren’t even taught to protect ourselves.

At least now I knew how to detect traps, like the vines hanging down from the walls.

Their last squire had not lasted as long as me.

He fell into an acid trap.

I'd been with them for a year and a half now, and as job assignments went, being a glorified pack mule wasn't the worst, unlike the fish hatchery.

I tried not to think of my time there. That kind of horror made even the Dungeon feel like clerical work, and it had been the first job they gave me when I arrived.

Despite the way the memories lingered in the back of my mind, firmly laced in with the terror of being discovered, I was grateful for it. If I had not worked there, I would not have understood how carefully I needed to hide the circumstances of my birth.

I took a deep breath in, sucking in the cool, yet humid air.

This section of the maze was lush and beautiful.

Moss layered the flat stones in thick, damp sheets that looked soft enough to nap on if they didn’t climb vertically up the slabs that rose to twice the considerable height of the group’s lycan, Vut.

The walls towered at least twenty feet overhead, sheer and square cut, their edges softened by the green growth and beads of trapped moisture.

Vut had enough spring in him to clear that height. I’d seen him in the past coil and launch to at least that distance. Even with his shifted form chained by the bonds of the Order Goddess, he still had a serious pounce to him.

But he didn’t jump in here, because the ceiling was a trap.

A dense lattice of vines spread overhead, green and verdant, hanging slack in a gorgeous drapery.

If you climbed high enough on the rough-hewn stones to brush against them, they snapped awake.

They struck with the speed and force of a mantis shrimp, whipping down in a blur, wrapping whatever they could grab, and yanking the unfortunate victim out into the center.

They were strong enough to crack bones and buckle armor.

So there was no climbing to the top of the maze to navigate our way through.

"The map is wrong," Vut snapped. He filled the group’s role of the mobile fighter, or a secondary tank.

I didn't know of a group that didn't have a lycan in that position.

They were fast, required less energy from the healer when damaged, and could fight their way through injury.

The main downside of being around lycans is they tend to lose their temper.

That wasn’t a problem for the other fae and shifters, but it was for regular mundanes, like me.

We were disposable.

No one cared if a rampaging lycan accidentally hit us too hard.

I reached up to wad up my red jacket, the uniform of a mundane, shoving it up under the straps of the loaded carry pack to try to ease the bruising feelings.

The Barons liked to sell every bit of loot we got from the Dungeons, so instead of equipping me in even old or worn-down armor, they made me come down here with nothing more than my cloth school uniform.

It was no wonder their last squire died so quickly.

When I got a glimpse of the Kings taking their new squire into the Dungeon, all dressed up in leather armor too big for him, I was downright jealous.

Providing armor was the least they could do.

"This map cost me my favorite shield!" Quentin replied, his heavier metal armor clanking as he jabbed a finger at the worn-down paper map in Jonas's hands.

"I never got it back from that harpy nest!

The Quartermaster said it is spelled to update based on the configuration of the maze, but it hasn't. "

The Quartermaster demanded seven harpy hearts in exchange for the labyrinth map.

Dungeon creatures could be harvested for parts and traded directly, either for coin or for specific goods that let groups push deeper into the corridors. Hearts, eyes, venom sacks, all of them were catalogued, weighed, and priced. The deeper you went, the rarer the currency.

No one had reached the center where the real treasure lay. The Eye of Balor, the key to the Goddess’s prison. No one had even seen it. Every year, the school announced new progress, new territory maps, new records set, and lauded the teams that had accomplished the greatest feat.

At least that is what they claimed.

For me, the math wasn’t mathing.

The school had existed for over a century. In all that time, not one student had reached the middle to claim a prize of unspeakable value. Not one confirmed success.

So why were only students sent in?

Why not unbound alumni who had passed the Order test and been set free from the bonds that limited their power? Why not the soldiers who guarded the entrance? Why not the instructors themselves?

I had so many questions, but I didn't ask any of them outloud.

I kept my mouth shut and carried the load of loot and monster parts.

The ranked groups at this school had a strict composition: A rogue, a healer, a tank, a mobile fighter, and a ranged damage dealer.

The rogue detected traps and conducted sneak attacks, the healer stabilized wounds mid-combat and repaired the damage afterwards, the tank got front and center in the fight, absorbing the worst of the melee.

The mobile fighter shifted across the field, exploiting gaps and flanking.

The ranged damage dealer stayed out of reach and shot arrows, or spells if they were skilled enough to shape magic under pressure.

Squires were not a part of that formation. We carried the loot. We cooked. We cleaned weapons and armor. We managed supplies and tended to the group in safe rooms during longer dives.

At the start of the ranking battles, we had a single role to play, a competitive contest to earn tactical advantages before the main match began.

I had lost that trial every time.

So it was very important that I was good at cooking, carrying, and keeping my mouth shut.

"It took us a full day to reach the labyrinth," Heacur said.

"We've been in this for two days now, and there hasn't been a single monster or safe room.

I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to spend another night here waiting to see what the Dungeon is going to spring on us once we're exhausted.

We should recall and take the map back to the Quartermaster to get the spell on it fixed. "

The Dungeon itself was enormous. Its internal structure could change without much warning.

Monsters migrated or vanished. Entire rooms rotated, sliding and locking into new configurations like a massive Rubik’s Cube.

Passages that existed one week sealed the next, and so anyone going into its depths had to take a recall stone, a stone with an extremely complex spell that was simple to trigger that would instantly teleport the user back to the location the stone was attuned to.

The Dungeon was divided into known regions, though “known” shifted as often as the corridors did.

The labyrinth was harder to access, but this particular configuration was one of the rare times it was more accessible.

From what I could tell from the damp surroundings and the faint sound of water rushing, it lay somewhere beneath the river that cut through one side of the caldera holding the school.

"Heacur is right," Jonas agreed. "The fact that there hasn't been a single trap or monster in the labyrinth so far means that the Dungeon is likely setting up to attempt a full party wipe. Rule four."

"When in doubt, recall out," I murmured. That was my favorite rule. A cautious group meant a higher survival chance for their squire.