Methol’s scream echoed back at us from all over the cavern and her sprite flared brighter with each word. It made me question how exactly that thing was powered. I would’ve asked about it, but the drake-born was about to bite my head off, throat and all.
“You could’ve killed everyone up there twice over. Are you daft?! Do you pick up every loose bit of rock that you come across?”
Now she was just patently unfair.
“How was I supposed to know?” I defended myself. “My inventory just calls it an obsidian shard. Obsidian’s harmless where I’m from. It’s just… glass.” Granted, I knew that wasn’t strictly true, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what the fucking thing was ever used for on Earth.
“This is not where you’re from, Klaus. This is a new world for you. Expect new rules. Show a modicum of care!”
It was a good thing we were alone in the cavern—at least, we seemed to be alone. Otherwise Methol’s shrill screaming was as good as a fog horn for drawing attention. My ears burned and I was never happier that Eternity wasn’t there to witness all this.
“Again, how was I supposed to know?!”
“Ask,” she hissed. “Ask Eternity. Your first insight gave you that option. What have you been using it for?”
I elected to not answer that. Maybe my questions weren’t the best, but the constant stonewalling had me leery of asking for detailed stuff. More or less, I’d fallen on old bad habits from my work life: when the documentation is unreliable, wing it until you get it.
Naturally, I wasn’t going to admit that to Methol. Swallowing down two different hissy fits was hard enough without adding a third in the mix.
Also, in all honesty, it never occurred to me that I could take things out of the dungeon, much less that they could go spectacularly nuclear if I did. I dug into the little money pouch and showed it to her.
“This is that powerful?” I asked, still not quite believing, and desperate for a change of subject.
Methol snatched it from my hand and held it up to inspect it by the blob’s light.
“This is of spectacular quality. Is there more?” she cooed. “I’ll pay you for it if you want to sell it.”
“First off, no. Second off, fuck off. Third, give it back.” I held out the pouch.
Why? Because I’m a petty, spiteful prick when I can get away with it, and Methol had pushed every blinking button on my console. Her wanting it probably meant it was useful. In that case, I could very well find a use for it for myself.
“Are these dangerous too?” I showed her the pouch after she handed the shard back. “Came from here too.”
Methol glared at me, scrunched up her nose, took a deep, calming breath… and then looked at the coins I’d found.
“You’ll probably need to find a money changer that takes node currency. It tends to come in all shapes and sizes.” She picked up a gold coin, looked it over, then handed it back. “Not a bad haul for a node this small and this young. You’ll afford about an entire season at a decent inn, with meals included.”
“More importantly, will they explode?”
“No. These aren’t mined. Generated items are safe to handle.”
Well, that was nice at least. I tied off the pouch and slung it back on my belt hoop. “What can I do with the mana shard? And how do I keep it from exploding?”
To that, she turned a bit purple. Then she actually turned her back to me and started walking down the incline. And she huffed.
“That’s a very stable shard actually.” She didn’t look back as she spoke, but I could see the tips of her ears darkening. “You can keep it on you. Just be careful when you try and use it.”
“Sooo…” I drawled, savouring the way her ears drooped. “You’re saying this is not going to explode suddenly in my face? Did I get that right?”
A low growl, followed by an unenthusiastic “… yes. Just remember you won’t always be this lucky, especially without the right skills to handle items from a node.”
“Cool. What’s the mana shard good for?”
She raised a hand and made a fist. The metal on the back of her gauntlet slid back, like an eye opening, and revealed a yellow gemstone, about the size of an euro coin back home. It was set exactly on the back of Methol’s hand, glowing with a pale inner light. “Imbuing equipment. You have a runic class, so you should be able to use a shard like this to power a runic piece of gear, once you learn how to make them. You can probably find someone to teach you in a larger, more eclectic settlement. I assume you don’t plan on remaining out in the sticks.”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“I’m headed to Dragon’s Tear,” I said. “Seems as good a direction as any.”
I studied the strange rune Melenith had scratched into my sword. Testing it hadn’t been high on my priority list yet, what with my tendency to get swept away by events. But I could feel a hunger emanating from the blade now, like a tendril that wanted to reach for my MP store.
Maybe I could feed it from the mana shard instead of having it draw from my MP. Going by my experience with skills so far, it seemed possible that powering something like a flaming sword would require a lot of my MP, so anything to help with that would be welcomed.
“There’s a whole store down there,” I said as we approached the darkened shanty town. “In that building. I saw tonnes of this stuff earlier.”
“Also saw what they were using it for?”
“Making a sword. Big one.”
“Hmm.”
I never found out what had been making that breathing sound. Sure, the worm thing seemed quite loud, but it hadn’t been that. And the furnars were quiet. Melenith had been frozen when I’d gone down.
The absence of noise aside from our voices and the scrape of our boots on rock now set my skin to gooseflesh. I considered channelling some MP into the sword just to have my own source of light in case Methol suddenly fell into a hole or something, but quickly reconsidered. The last thing I needed was to get stranded here by some weird twist of fate, with no MP to even activate a skill.
With ridiculous thoughts swirling around my head, I walked straight into Methol’s back when she stopped. She might’ve looked tall and frail, but walking into her felt like hitting a steel wall. My nose smashed against her upper back and she didn’t even flinch.
Blood gushed out my nose.
Her ears twitched.
My knuckles turned white on the sword. This was it. We were going to run into the whole furnar army—
“Something was moved from here,” Methol said, voice distant. “There are still traces of mana in the air, but nothing like what I’d expect based on what you just described. How much obsidian did you say you saw?”
I snorted and held my nose to staunch the bleeding. “Mountains of the stuff. There’s a whole room filled with it. Could see the ceiling.”
“Hmm.”
Like Eklil, Methol also had a way of loading up a single word with enough meaning to send my head spinning. Unlike Eklil, it was harder to guess what she could be thinking.
The thought of the old iepurran had me feeling like a heel. With the dungeon cleared, I should now be able to contact him. And, sure enough, the connection tab in my interface was flashing, same as everything else. I hadn’t even thought about shooting him even a line once I got out. Granted, I had a lot on my mind, but still.
For now, I didn’t open the chat. It probably didn’t work in a dungeon, and Methol was already moving again.
“The big building?” she asked.
“Yup. Hang a right at the next cluster of hovels, and we should end up right in the forge.” I tightened my grip on the sword. “There were some nasty spiders there earlier. And a huge worm eating the obsidian.”
“Hmm.”
Once was fine. Twice gave her character. Beyond that, the “hmm” bit was getting obnoxious. I bit the inside of my cheek to stifle a mean comment, instead focusing on the shanty village. Like the rest of the cavern, it remained eerily quiet as we slipped between the rotted buildings. I could see the path of destruction I’d cut through them on my mad dash to escape. For some reason, I’d expected the whole thing to have been repaired or reset in some way.
No corpses. No metal left behind. Nothing.
“You had a spirited time of it here,” Methol noted as she looked through a set of knocked-down walls. “This is your work, yes? Were the doors hard to use?”
“Shortest way to connect two points is a straight line,” I said.
“Is that the level of physics your world operated on? Rather primitive. I’m assuming you never left your gravity well?”
I blinked. What? But before I figured how to react to that little bit, she went on. I added her comment to the file, so I’d explore it later. It’s not every day you meet an alien that tells you Earth is primitive.
“Your survival assessment says you’re a good improviser. I’m beginning to see what Eternity meant.”
“And you still won’t tell me more, right?”
“Pretty much.”
I raised a middle finger behind her back. My patience for the constant stonewalls was reaching saintly heights by now, so what was one more instance? I bit back on a cuss that would’ve involved ancestors and parentage.
We entered the forge—or smithy, I guess, would be a better term. Same as everything else, it lay empty and lifeless, the firelight in the pillar room now guttered out. Silence reigned. Our steps echoed on the bare stones.
“This is where they were making the sword. Just beyond that door there.”
Methol’s fists glowed with the same pale light as that shard. I felt a rush of power coursing through her, and then she looked taller somehow, muscles more well-defined. Her eyes shone for a moment.
But beyond we found nothing in the workroom.
Nothing, that is, except a great, deep hole that looked to have swallowed the room’s entire contents. It stretched from door to opposite door, and looked like it perfectly cut through the floor from wall to wall. The darkness yawning was a perfect pitch black, aside from a faint red glow deep within.
Methol spat into the hole with a hurk. She also said something in a language I couldn’t understand, but the tone was clear enough.
The sword was gone, along with everything else in the room. Unfortunately, the room’s occupants and the weapon had been the main draws when I’d snuck about, so I couldn’t remember if there had been more things in there.
Next, we went around the outer corridor until we reached the storage room where I’d crushed the furnar gatherer under the mountains of obsidian. The same sight greeted us: a great, yawning hole that covered the entire span of the room, the same gleam of molten rock at the bottom, and the same silence.
“Well, Klaus, I’ll have to leave you alone for a while,” Methol said. She clicked her tongue in annoyance. “Do you think you can make your own way back to the surface?” Her armour changed. From light leather, it became ornate plate, black with silver trimmings, the construction similar to her gauntlets. It encased her completely, making her seem quite a bit taller and far more muscular.
I stared into the hole. The walls were smooth glass, and the drop absolutely sheer. It travelled perfectly vertical down to who knew how deep.
“You’re planning on jumping in there?” I asked.
“Exactly. Be kind and head on up so I don’t have to worry about you.” A helmet appeared on her head, the face guard modelled as some snarling beast. Her voice came from within, tinny with echoes. “I don’t think I’ll be long, but I need to check this out. Sorry, I can’t tell you more until I actually see what’s at the bottom. Could’ve just been a natural reaction from the node to reabsorb its condensed mana.”
“And what else could it be?”
Methol shook her head slowly, “I can’t say.”
I didn’t get to make a protest about being sent away like a child. Methol turned, and leapt straight into the hole. Her sprite remained behind and drifted over to float above my head.
“Fucking lovely.”