Chapter 8 #2
With a sound like a massive stone grinding against gravel, the heavy metal slab recessed into the wall and slid sideways.
The recoil of the spell threw Drystan backward.
He hit the stone floor, his left arm completely numb, the gauntlet smoking heavily and leaking a foul-smelling, coppery mist. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, his chest heaving as the adrenaline slowly ebbed, leaving behind a hollow, entirely exhausted shell.
He had passed the trial.
He rolled onto his stomach and dragged himself toward the open cache. The interior of the vault was small, lined with petrified wood to keep out the damp.
Inside, stacked in neat, precise rows, were thick blocks of a dark, amber-colored substance.
Drystan grabbed one of the blocks. It was heavy, hard as stone, and completely odorless. It was calcified mana-resin. The crude, highly concentrated survival rations used by Weaver-Mages during prolonged sieges.
It wasn't a glowing potion. It wasn't a feast. It was exactly what the Ashen Wastes offered: hard, bitter survival.
He grabbed three of the heavy blocks and pushed himself up, staggering back through the dark toward the front of the hollow.
Nymeria had stopped shivering. She was terrifyingly still.
Drystan dropped to his knees beside her. He grabbed her shoulder and shook her roughly. Her head lolled to the side, her twilight skin freezing to the touch.
"No," Drystan whispered, panic finally slicing through his exhaustion. "No, you don't get to check out. Not after everything."
He brought the block of mana-resin to the edge of the stone floor and smashed it down. The calcified block fractured, breaking into several jagged, amber-colored shards.
He picked up a shard and forced it between Nymeria’s pale lips.
"Eat," he commanded, his voice harsh. "Chew it. Swallow it."
She didn't move.
Drystan reached out with his bloody right hand and pinched her nose shut, forcing her jaw to reflexively part. He pushed the shard deeper into her mouth and clamped his hand over her lips.
It was a brutal, ugly method, but it triggered her survival instinct. Nymeria gagged, her eyes flying open in the dark. The glowing amber irises were dim, but they were awake. She choked, her jaw moving reflexively to crush the hard resin.
As the shards broke apart, the concentrated aether released directly into her bloodstream.
Nymeria arched her back, a sudden, violent gasp tearing from her lungs. The effect was immediate. The translucent gray pallor of her skin began to recede, replaced by the healthy, dusky twilight hue. The agonizing cellular starvation halted.
She rolled onto her side, coughing violently, spitting fragments of resin onto the stone.
"What is that?" she rasped, wiping her mouth with the back of her trembling hand.
"Mana-resin," Drystan said. He picked up a shard for himself and tossed it into his mouth.
He bit down. It was like chewing on a piece of alkaline chalk mixed with oxidized copper.
The taste was horrific, coating the back of his throat with a bitter, metallic film.
But as he swallowed the gritty fragments, he felt the Weave-Interface on his arm hum in faint, grateful recognition.
A tiny, microscopic fraction of his magical stamina returned.
It wasn't a cure for his broken rib, but it stopped the freezing ache in his marrow from spreading to his heart.
Nymeria sat up slowly, leaning her back against the damp cavern wall. She looked at Drystan in the gloom. She saw his shredded right palm. She saw the smoking, mangled ruin of his left gauntlet, the brass plating peeled back to reveal his burned flesh.
She realized exactly what he had put himself through while she slept.
He hadn't abandoned her. He had bled the architecture to keep her alive.
She reached out and picked up another jagged shard of the bitter resin. She didn't complain about the taste. She put it in her mouth and chewed, her amber eyes locked onto his icy gray ones.
"It tastes like old pennies," she whispered, a faint, cynical smirk touching her lips.
"It's a step up from the ash," Drystan replied, leaning his head back against the stone.
They sat in the dark, chewing the bitter sustenance of the Wastes.
It was a profound, grounded moment of adaptation.
The terrified corporate ghost and the hunted shadow-weaver were dead.
In their place sat two survivors, thoroughly baptized in the dirt, learning to accept the agonizing rules of their new reality.
They had achieved a fraction of equilibrium. They had food. They had a shelter.
But Kaelen-D?r despised equilibrium.
The quiet, heavy silence of the smuggler’s hollow was suddenly violated. The natural acoustics of the cavern, which amplified the smallest drip of water, magnified a new, terrifying sound originating from the narrow fissure at the entrance.
Skrrk. Skrrk. Skrrk.
It was the rhythmic, scraping sound of elongated, hardened claws dragging across solid basalt.
Drystan froze. The shard of resin turned to ash in his mouth.
He looked at Nymeria. Her eyes were wide, the cynical smirk entirely gone, replaced by the hyper-vigilant terror of prey that had just been tracked.
"The thermal mask dropped when I passed out," Nymeria breathed, her voice a horrified whisper. "We bled heat into the wind."
Snfffff.
A wet, heavy snorting sound echoed down the tunnel. The air pressure in the cavern shifted subtly, pushing the stench of alkaline dust and rancid, acidic saliva into their sanctuary.
It wasn't the towering Inquisitor-Gargoyle.
It wasn't an armored executioner. It was something entirely native to the brutal ecology of the Ashen Wastes. A Scavenger-Hound. A hairless, multi-eyed monstrosity that fed on the corpses of exiled students, drawn by the sudden spike of heat and the smell of Drystan’s spilled blood.
The trials of the Arch-Realm did not pause for rest. The game was endless.
Drystan didn't sigh. He didn't complain about the unfairness of the universe. The steep learning curve of Kaelen-D?r had successfully rewired his brain.
He pushed himself off the cavern floor, his heavy leather duster snapping softly in the dark. He ignored the grinding of his broken rib. He ignored the shredded skin of his right palm.
He stepped in front of Nymeria, placing himself directly between her and the pitch-black tunnel leading to the entrance.
He raised his left arm. The crude, horrific patch job of the Weave-Gauntlet sparked violently, the highly unstable green kinetic energy casting long, jagged shadows against the cavern walls. He aimed the sparking brass knuckle-plate directly at the suffocating darkness.
"Stay behind me," Drystan commanded, his voice cold, hollow, and absolutely ready for violence.
The beast in the tunnel let out a low, vibrating growl, entirely ignorant of the fact that the Doomed Mid-Boss had finally learned how to play the game.