Chapter 46: No T-Rex?

  The fountain’s glow lingered, painting the courtyard in pale blues and silvers. With the biome object complete the air no longer carried the cloying stink of flowers or spores, only cool stone, clean water, and the faint hum of what Alex assumed was the sound of the System’s begrudging approval.

  For the first time since the maze had swallowed them into its dizzying confines, the squad could breathe, literally.

  Once everyone’s poison was cleared Allie crouched by the fountain, already repositioning her alchemy kit with well-practiced hands. Glass clinked as she siphoned off a vial of water. The liquid shimmered faintly in the container, as though it wanted to spill its light instead of the liquid itself. Her brow furrowed as she looked at it, her eyes alight with calculation.

  “Feels… alive,” she said.

  She dipped a glass rod into the vial and stirred it a bit. “It has healing properties, yes. But its not that straightforward. It’s layered together with various healing intent. Some physical, mental... hell, maybe even spiritual.” She set the rod down and already began sketching hasty lines into her notebook. “Give me time. I’ll figure it out.”

  “I don’t care what it’s made of, I’m just glad my pancreas isn’t revolting inside me anymore.” Garret said.

  Henry leaned against a stone column with a grunt. His deep voice carried across the group easily as he spoke. “No need to rush. We finally have a moment without fangs at our throats.”

  Lance laughed under his breath and shook his head. “Speak for yourself. I thought we were dead three times over. Holly, you should’ve seen Garret panic when a hedge tried to eat us. He didn’t scream, but I swear his pants suddenly got very damp.”

  Garret shot him an incredulous look, but said nothing.

  Tom-Tom perked up from Henry’s shoulder, his small reptilian eyes gleaming with renewed color. He pointed at Garret, then himself. He puffed up his tiny chest, then threw himself dramatically onto the stone floor and began flopping about with exaggerated fear. His little paws tried to cover his crotch as he rolled onto his back, tail flicking wildly.

  The courtyard broke into laughter. Even Henry cracked a smile, while Garret doubled over, cackling so hard he dropped his shield, the slab of metal clattered to the ground.

  “Gods above,” Garret wheezed, “Tom-Tom does a better impression of me than I do!”

  Alex simply leaned against the fountain’s edge, a tired grin tugging at his mouth as he watched them all. “You didn’t try bathing in the fountain after did you? It’ll probably mess up Allie’s alchemy work.”

  “I plead the 5th?” Garret smiled.

  He then caught Holly’s gaze across the courtyard. Her face was streaked with dirt and sweat, but her eyes were focused and bright. She tilted her head toward the quieter edge of the courtyard. Alex stepped away from the others and joined her, meeting up next to a large trellis in the far corner. For a moment they just sat shoulder to shoulder together, listening to the fountain’s soft trickle and the fading laughter of their companions.

  “You had me worried,” Holly said finally. “Too many close calls with those snakes. I kept thinking… what if you didn’t come back from your run?”

  Alex exhaled, brushing a hand over his face. “I had you worried? Funny. I was thinking the same thing about you. We all were waiting for you to make it back for awhile.”

  He glanced at her, his lips quirking into a sly smile. “But... Guess we’re both stubborn enough to prove the Heavenly System can’t stop us.”

  “Stubborn doesn’t begin to cover it.” She smiled.

  They sat in silence for a few breaths. The air between them was warm despite the chill breeze of the garden. Holly shifted, allowing her hand to brush against his. The contact was small, almost accidental but neither of them pulled away. He entwined his fingers with hers and squeezed lightly.

  “I don’t want to lose anyone. Least of all you,” He admitted.

  “You won’t. Not if I have anything to say about it.” Holly replied. She leaned in, resting her head lightly against his shoulder.

  For a minute or two, the world shrank to just them. The fountain’s glow, the soft brush of her hair against his arm, the faint warmth of her hand in his. Alex sighed and let the tension bleed from his shoulders.

  “Guess we’ll just have to keep proving to this System that we won’t give up.”

  Holly laughed softly, and the sound carried like a twinkle of handbells through the air. Alex, finally, let his tired eyes close after so many waking hours. He was out cold within seconds.

  When he awoke, Allie still had her kit spread wide across the fountain rim with vials and flasks catching the glow of the water as she muttered to herself, mixing a drop here, a splash there. Everyone else had settled into an exhausted lull, but her focus only sharpened with each test.

  Finally, Alex watched as she leaned back, biting her lip, her eyes fixed on the faintly glowing vial in her hand. “It’s… complicated. The water definitely heals, better than any potion we’ve seen so far. It restores vitality, mends tissues, clears fatigue, even eradicates poison entirely.”

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  “That sounds pretty perfect, where’s the but?” Garret said.

  Allie shook her head. “Its not perfect. It’s… unique. It works because it’s tethered to this fountain. There’s a resonance between the elixir and the basin. Its like it’s pulling on the dungeon’s energy and conforming it to a spell's structure, intent and all. I can’t just replicate that with an alchemy kit.”

  Lance leaned over her shoulder, wide-eyed. “So… you’re saying if we bottled it—”

  “—it loses more than half its potency within a minute,” she cut in sharply. “Already tested it.”

  She set the vial down with a sigh. “I might be able to mimic some of its effects if I had the right natural treasures. Crystal-root orchid, sky-iron moss, maybe aether-saturated Lightbearer-Axolotl bone powder. But those… I don’t exactly have lying around.”

  Alex yawned and stretched. “Dungeon shop?”

  “Mmm, maybe. Once we finish, I’ll see what I can get. Maybe I can craft something stable. But right now, this fountain’s the only source,” she said grimly.

  Silence lingered a moment as the truth settled in. Then Eric spoke up. “Then we don’t need to sit around and waste time. We’ve got what we came for. Let’s move.”

  The squad gathered their gear, the faint glow of the fountain faded behind them as they began their march toward the southwestern exit—the one closest to the ruined city. The courtyard was happily in their rear-view within minutes as they braved the garden paths once more.

  The trek wasn’t quiet or easy. The chimera flower-snakes weren’t done with them.

  They came in waves, the petal-frilled serpents slithering out of the hedges, some already showing subtle changes to their body: thicker scales forming against Garret’s shield bashes, vibrating ridges along their jaws to create pressure waves that scattered Holly’s wind blasts. Stomach plating that insulated against Eric’s lightning, and the oscillating back-scales that dampened Alex’s [Flare] bursts.

  But the adaptations came too slowly for them to make much of a difference.

  For every defense a serpent sprouted, another of their team had something different to answer with. Piercing, sharp tipped vines sank into the gaps where scales thickened. Aether infused sword blades cut where ranged magic failed. Caustic-acid blood hissed where armor grew dense. The battle rhythm was brutal and efficient, their formation flowing throughout the garden like a compost-wheel of death that ground the chimeras into mulch.

  By the time the hedges thinned and the stone paths ended, their clothes were slick with the purple gore of dozens of serpents.

  They happily pushed through the garden gates and stepped out onto an open hillside.

  The air was soft and cool on their faces, the stench of the garden giving way to crisp wind and wild grass. Below them stretched a wide plain, rippling waves of green rolling toward the shattered silhouette of the central city ruins beyond. Towers leaned about in the skyline, each of them cracked and broken. Like teeth gnawed down by time, their outlines starkly cropped against the distant horizon.

  To their right, the land glittered faintly as crystalline spires jutted from the floor as if they were frozen lightning bolts; the crystal biome. Even from there, its light bled into the sky in fractured beams, casting prismatic hues of every color that bent across the mountain wall and ceiling.

  Alex shaded his eyes with one hand and peered out. “That’s our route.” He pointed toward the glimmering biome. “We should head that way and meet up with the others. Hopefully they’ve cleared their objectives… or are close to it.”

  Garret groaned but shouldered his shield anyway. “Crystal land, huh? Great. Nothing says fun like blinding light and sharp edges.”

  Allie gave him a sidelong smirk. “Don’t worry. If you trip, we’ll use you to clear the way.”

  “Some medic you are,” Garret muttered, but a grin tugged back at his face all the same.

  Alex shook his head at their exchange. His eyes lingered once more on the distant ruins of the city before turning to the squad. “Alright. Let’s move. The sooner we regroup, the better our odds at clearing this thing.”

  The wind swept the hillside as they started down the slope. It wasn’t a hard travel, everything was wide open, so they covered ground at a rapid click. Within the hour the tall grass crunched under their footfalls as they slowed to the very edge where green met crystal.

  The crystal stretched ahead in a vast glittering sprawl, every blade of grass replaced with razor-edged gem-facets, every tree frozen into prismatic towers. Even the air seemed to fracture the light, scattering rainbows across the plains and into their eyes.

  The team stopped there, just shy of the biome’s border, waiting. The others hadn’t shown yet.

  Henry planted his halberd into the ground, silent as always. Allie perched on a broken stone, her alchemy kit still clinking faintly as she reorganized her vials. Garret, naturally, couldn’t keep still.

  “So,” the tank-mage said, stretching his arms behind his head, “how long d’you think they’ll be? Ten minutes? Twenty? Or should we assume they’re trapped inside wrestling some giant crystal T-Rex?”

  Alex smirked, “If I had to bet? Yeah... Definitely a T-Rex. Big teeth, crystal claws, shoots laser beams or some crap. You know, the usual.”

  Garret’s eyes lit up. “See, that’s just not fair. Why don’t we get the cool fights? A crystal T-Rex sounds like the most metal thing I’ve ever heard of. And we get… crocodiles. And snakes. And poison spores.” He threw his hands up dramatically. “Its just not fair.”

  “You sound disappointed you didn’t almost die harder,” Holly muttered, leaning on Alex, her arm wrapped around his waist.

  Garret ignored her, already sidling up to Eric with a grin. “Come on, tell me you wouldn’t want to fight that? A Crystal T-Rex! Boom! Tail smash! Whole ground shattering!” He raised a hand. “High five, right?”

  Eric just stared at him. Then adjusted his gloves and looked away.

  “Cold,” Garret muttered, pivoting to Lance. “Okay, you get it. Come on—” He raised his hand again.

  Lance just shook his head with a slow, pitying smile.

  Garret’s grin faltered, but he turned to Peter. “Don’t let me down, man. Crystal. T. Rex.”

  Peter chuckled lightly… and patted Garret’s raised hand like he was indulging a child. “There you go, champ.”

  “Uh… its not the same,” Garret groaned, dropping his hand. “Not even close.”

  Alex rolled his eyes, his lips twitching at the corners. He was about to tell Garret to save his T-Rex fantasies for later when the familiar chime of the System rang in his head. The air itself seemed to shiver and a faint blue script unfurled across their vision all at once.

  The text lingered, harsh and bright in the fractured light of the crystal fields.

  Alex exhaled slowly. “Well. Guess they did it.”

  “Guess so,” Eric murmured.

  “Yeah, but does that mean no T-Rex now?”

  Nobody answered Garret's plea. They were far too distracted as from the city at the center of the Dungeon, they heard it.

  The Chimera Queen...