“You coming with?” Thorn asked the crow in the darkness. There was no response, so Thorn gave a shrug.
With his enhanced senses, Thorn could almost feel where things were in the enclosed space even without seeing them. He walked over to the tunnel and crouched down to enter, throwing a spark out using Concentrate to see his footing in the stream better.
The tunnel wound back and forth a few times, and turned downwards as the flow began to accelerate. Thorn moved carefully, bracing himself against the ceiling as he walked.
The stream was narrowing, and up ahead, Thorn could see frothy rapids lit by sparks on his fingers from Concentrate. There was an underlying, deeper roar that sounded like a waterfall. Thorn couldn’t see where the water dropped off, but if it did, that was not going to be a good way to exit.
He turned to walk back up to the fincroc’s lair, satisfied with his brief scouting trip. On his way back, he discovered that he’d missed a narrow side passage on his way down.
There was a hidden nook, carved into the side of the tunnel at one of the bends. Thorn was disappointed when the side passage turned and ended abruptly, but that disappointment turned to interest as he lit a spark and saw a backpack tucked against the stone wall.
He grabbed the pack and walked back up the stream. It was likely the hidden property of the half-eaten corpse he’d found in the stream, a get-away bag of some sort.
So when he opened up the pack back in the fincroc’s cavern, he was disappointed to find only a set of clothes and a pair of boots too small for him to wear. He checked again, but there was nothing of value in the pack and nothing he could use.
The clothes seemed somewhat familiar in design; he felt like he’d seen them before. They were a type of uniform resembling coveralls, and that type of design was very common amongst the guilds.
Thorn lit a spark. The name “Marta” was embroidered on the front of the coveralls; next to it was the water print of a stylized crow.
Back at the Crows Guild, he’d seen Beatrice wearing the exact same style of clothing. And the stylized design of the crow meant only one thing: the owner of these clothes had been a part of the Crows Guild.
He fiddled with the ring on his thumb, wondering what he would find if he took it to the Wayfarers Guild and asked to see the lock box that it would open. When the owner of the ring token had been an unidentified, illegal glitter farmer, he had not had any compunctions about taking it.
The Crows Guild, on the other hand, was notorious for protecting their own. They were a mercenary guild, relatively small on the scale of guilds, and often stuck with dangerous and difficult jobs. People didn’t join the Crows because they wanted to do the type of work the Crows were known for. No, they joined the Crows to become rich, powerful and to join a close-knit tribe that took care of their own.
His thoughts were interrupted by a low “crrrk” from the crow.
He felt a familiar weight settle on his shoulder and then the familiar peck of its beak on the side of his head.
“Must be time to go, then,” Thorn muttered. He cast a quick spark with Concentrate (he was getting really good at that), but didn’t see anything dangerous.
Ah, that was why they were leaving.
Thorn ran across the cavern for the pool of water leading to the entrance of the hidden lair. He caught himself just before he jumped in, though. He realized that he didn’t actually know which direction the bubble of quintessence was contracting towards.
He thought quickly and came up with a plan. If worst came to worst, he had significant quintessence reserves, far far more than the last time he’d been exposed to a dead zone.
He hoped that was enough time; he hoped that wasn’t too much time either. He activated his Meditate skill and sank into the slow breathing and detached state of mind that were the hallmarks of the skill.
He got the barest glimpse of the quintessence field around him.
That hadn’t been long enough. Who knew which direction was which in this cavern; he had no idea. He needed more time to see the dead zone contracting to know which way he had to go.
This time when he entered Meditate, Thorn could feel the fabric, the threads and strands of the quintessence field around him. The fabric itself was unraveling and there was a void, an emptiness, creeping in behind him. The threads broke and snapped, twisting before being pulled apart by an unseen force.
A peck to his neck, one that drew blood, shook him out of the skill.
The dead zone was behind him, advancing from the far end of the cavern where the smaller stream exited the tunnel. There had been something about the quintessence threads, about how they were unravelling and spinning around, but he didn’t have the time to think about it.
The water was bone-chilling cold. He dove deep and swam forward. The crow’s talons dug deep into his shoulder, staying with him. He was hoping that a simple underwater tunnel would connect to the underground lake in the original cavern.
Of course it wasn’t so simple. His hands hit a rock wall in the darkness, and he realized with growing panic that he wasn’t sure if his trick would work underwater. He Concentrated a few lines of quintessence and a dim flash lit the water.
The tunnel turned here, angling upwards and to the right for about twenty meters.
The dead zone was catching up behind them.
Thorn swam as quickly as he could, but didn’t get more than halfway down the tunnel when the dead zone caught up to them.
A deeper cold than the icy waters of the underground lake washed over Thorn’s senses. The last time he’d been exposed to a dead zone, the sensation of a prickling cold had invaded his body. This time, perhaps due to his upgraded senses and skills, it was much more intense, driving into his bones and hollowing him from the inside out.
He kept swimming. What else could he do?
After a few more strokes, he thought he should be close to the turn in the tunnel. He Concentrated a few lines of quintessence and let them go, but they failed to spark. He tried again, but nothing happened.
He kept his rising panic in check. He might be underwater, overtaken by a dead zone, and unsure of how much longer he needed to swim, but he had a lot of quints to burn through. He also had plenty of oxygen left; he’d been underwater at least a minute so far, but he wasn’t feeling the need to breathe yet.
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He concentrated on his senses. The water to his left felt a tad more “open” on his skin, or relatively more flowing. He turned left and struck out with powerful kicks. Far ahead, he thought he could detect the faintest glimmer of light. The black water gradually turned a dark gray, and Thorn knew he was on the right track. Just as he emerged from the tunnel and Thorn could see the water of the lake above him, he received another message from his System.
Thorn pushed upwards, breaking the surface of the lake and treading water. The crow leapt off of his shoulder and took flight, shaking water off of its wings.
The light of the remaining glow lamp was close. The production center was on the shore closest to him, and he made for it with fast strokes.
Climbing onto the beach, Thorn sat down and Meditated again, first asking his System to kick him out of the Skill after fifteen seconds.
His Meditate skill didn’t let him sense quintessence for very far; Thorn had previously estimated tens of meters, maybe farther. Distance was very difficult to judge without any relative markers.
In his brief use of the skill, he sensed what was likely (hopefully) the crow at the edge of his perception, a bright lump of quintessence. Unfortunately, he also sensed the edge of the void closing in behind him.
His System woke him and he ran forward. Should he risk yelling for Lief? He might attract other beasts, any that were still alive.
Who was he kidding? Anything still alive would also be running in the same direction, away from the shrinking edge of the dead zone.
“Lief!” Thorn yelled. His voice boomed across the surface of the lake, echoing in the cavern.
“Thorn!?,” came an incredulous reply, from the production center. “Thorn! Over here.”
Thorn sprinted across the uneven ground. The building was about twenty meters high, made of functional gray concrete. The ceiling was flat, and a maintenance ladder outside of the building led to the top. There was a hole in one corner of the building where the turtle-scorpion hybrid had brushed into it.
Lief’s voice had come from the broken corner. He was sitting just inside the production center, his back against the wall, covered in sweat, gore, and dirt and looking a little worse for wear. But he had the biggest smile on his face that Thorn had ever seen.
“How’re you still alive?” Lief asked him, clapping him on the shoulder. “I saw that fincroc leap off the wall and swallow you in one bite, before jumping in the lake and disappearing.”
“It should have learned to chew its food before swallowing,” Thorn said with a grin.
“Damn,” Lief said, shaking his head. “Sounds like a tale worth hearing, but let’s save it for later. We’re not out of the woods yet. The dead zone is contracting; I don’t know by how much, but it’s probably pretty close.”
“I know,” Thorn said. “I had to swim through part of it to get back up here. It was still shrinking, the last time I checked. What’s the plan?”
“There’s not much else alive in here, besides us,” Lief said. “That crow still around?”
Thorn nodded.
“I managed to carve my way into the turtle while you were off taking a break. I fought off the rest of the larger beasts for the core, so I have a pretty decent war chest ready to go. You?”
“I should–” Thorn started, then stopped and frowned.
“Well, get ready to spend ‘em.”
Thorn nodded while double checking and then triple checking his status. Something wasn’t right.
He estimated he’d been in the dead zone for maybe , and he’d lost half a minute and lost an enormous 68,699 quints. Last time he’d been caught in the dead zone, he’d been there for about the same amount of time, and only lost 8,000 quints or so.
So basically, if he had a lot of quints, it was more difficult for his System to hold onto them. That made logical, if unfortunate, sense. It also made it a lot harder to judge if they had enough to get out.
“We might have a problem with the plan, Lief… I just lost over sixty thousand quints in like thirty seconds swimming out of the fincroc’s lair.”
Lief grunted. “That’s really fast. I have about two hundred thousand from the turtle.”
That was a lot, but still a lot less than the fincroc. Thorn didn’t have time to wonder at the relative sizes of the beasts’ cores.
“Gimme a second, I’m going to have my System do some math,” Thorn said. He instructed his System to create a new custom Agent to model the collapse of the dead zone and their exposure to it.
While Thorn was waiting, the crow swooped down and landed on the ground next to him and Lief. It looked up at Lief with a critical eye, and gave what Thorn could only imagine as an affectionate “crwwwwk” before thumping its beak on the ground in a clear “gimme some food” gesture.
“So I have some bad news…” Thorn began.
“Ugh, it’s even worse. My System says we have five minutes, we don’t have enough quints, and oh, by the way, after our little bubble evaporates, the dead zone will continue to spread out into the surrounding area on the outside, making it even harder to escape. It gives us a less than 1% chance of getting out alive.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but can we trust those calculations?” Lief asked. “I’m asking my System, and it says it doesn’t really know.”
“I don’t know,” Thorn said. “I’m using the new skill that lets me make custom agents. It seems pretty confident.
“That also reminds me, I leveled up again, but there were issues. I need to ask you about them, but maybe when we’re not about to die. Again.”
“Fair enough,” Lief said. “Does your new Skill help at all?”
“Not really,” Thorn said. “It will let us make a peer-to-peer System connection, so we could have System comms back. But that’s about it.”
“So what do we do? Gamble on that less than 1% chance? It’s not like we have many other choices.” Lief seemed to have a thought. “Ask your System if you could make it if I gave you all of my quints.”
“No.”
“Just do it.”
“Why? Without System comms, you can’t give me quints anyways…Oh.” Thorn groaned. He’d just told Lief about Integrate. If they established a peer-to-peer connection, then yes, Lief could indeed transfer free quints to him.
“Fine,” Thorn said, and reluctantly did as Lief requested.
He looked over at Lief. The man had a cool, untroubled look on his face, like he was out for a stroll on one of his forest paths, and not bloody and half-broken from non-stop fights with crazed beasts trapped in a collapsing dead zone.
Thorn had a decision to make. If they pooled all of their quints together, one of them could make it. Probably.
There was no question that Thorn giving Lief his own quints was stupid. How would Lief run out of here, with only a single leg? He could crawl through the dirt, sure, but that wasn’t going to happen. Thorn wasn’t really a self-sacrificial kind of person either.
If he took Lief’s quints, he might be able to make it out, though. It was the smart move; it was what he needed to do to survive.
He knew he should do it… but it just didn’t feel right.
“Nope,” Thorn said with a sigh. “Doesn’t help.”
“You are one terrible liar,” Lief said, shaking his head. “And you wonder why I have to play the bad cop all the time. You suck at acting.”
Thorn just looked down and shook his head.
“Let’s go,” Lief said. “Do that new Skill of yours. We’re running out of time.”
Thorn refused to look at Lief. His mind raced for other options. What else could they do? Maybe if there were more beasts, more cores they could gather?
“Stop being stupid and selfish,” Lief said. “Don’t make the one-armed man crawl over there and beat some sense into you. This isn’t easy for me either, but we both know what needs to be done.”