84. The Spelunkers

  Serac took no time to accept this expansive ‘cave’ as the hollow insides of the Realmtree. Who was she to question the local wisdom? Besides, this probably wasn’t even the most ludicrous thing she’d come across on her travels.

  The more pertinent question was which way to go next. Serac’s gut told her ‘up’. Only natural—the default answer that had gotten her this far. But Lars the local quickly pooh-poohed the suggestion.

  “You see that?”

  He pointed to something along the massive walls, a ways above the platform where the two of them had landed. Serac squinted until she saw flickers of light breaking up the darkness. The light revealed with it sprays of pressurized water, fed in from the same hole the Wayfarers had squeezed through.

  “Pressure difference,” Lars went on to explain. “We cannot go back out same way.”

  Funnily enough, despite Serac never having attended a physics lesson in her life, this wasn’t the first time she’d pondered the finer points of fluid dynamics.

  “But right before we popped through the hole, the river was draining, wasn’t it?” She wondered aloud. “Wouldn’t that mean there’s more fluid being pulled into this, uh, cave than there is collecting on the outside? How does that work?”

  “Not by any natural process,” Lars guessed, reasonably enough. “Something moving air and water inside the Realmtree. Something living somewhere below us. Which is why we must go down.”

  “You know this by reading the ripples?”

  Lars nodded, then added, “That and also logic. Further we descend into Rotgard, fiercer the Wildspawn resistance. Stands to reason their presence is fiercest in lowest part of the Roots. We go low enough, maybe we finally find root of our Aberrant problems.”

  That was good enough for Serac. After all, who was she to question the local wisdom? Besides, as far as she was concerned, ‘fierce Wildspawn resistance’ sounded synonymous with ‘big fat Karma’.

  “Well then, what’re we waiting for? Let’s go spelunking!”

  All things considered, conditions were ideal for Serac’s first dungeon exploration in Pretjord. After housing the Motgift pellet and Ulvknall liver, she now boasted a nearly full [Satiety] gauge to go along with decent reserves of Cartridge and Mana. Her Health had taken a big hit, but her passive healing would take care of that.

  The only thing missing was her usual Wayfaring partner. And as she glanced at the big Yaksha beside her, it occurred to her that the same could be said for Lars.

  “Worried about your brother at all?” she asked between labored breaths, as she followed the sturgeon man down a series of narrow ledges. Reverse rock-climbing wasn’t nearly as scary as whitewater rafting, but Serac had gone right back to hugging any flat surface she could find. Right now, the flattest surfaces were the sheer, luminescent walls that made up the cave.

  “No,” came the simple reply. Serac shouldn’t have expected much more, but then Lars took a pause before adding, “Not as much as you should be worried about Manusya.”

  “Zacko?” Serac remarked, both surprised and a little puzzled. “Why, just because he’s an outrealmer? But you saw him out there; he’s more than capable of handling himself in a—”

  “Quiet.”

  Serac quieted in an instant. She seemed to be in an unusually obedient mood, partly because she was out of her element, but mostly because Lars had a way about him to make people stand straight (read: hug the wall) and listen. Presently, the burly sturgeon squatted atop his ledge, facing outward with his dorsal fin rubbing up against the cave wall. He was as still as a statue, but by now, Serac could tell when a Yaksha was focused on ripple-reading.

  Serac gingerly spun herself around until she too had her back against the wall. It took her several seconds to see what Lars had already read. Large, greenish shadows ebbed and flowed within the semi-darkness below, visually distinct from the dim light seeping from the cave walls. As soon as Serac caught the shifting shapes with her naked eyes, Pathsight intervened to fill in the gaps: [Slangespytt].

  “How many?” she asked in the faintest of whispers. From where she stood, she could only count several globby shadows at a time before they moved out of frame.

  “At least nine, possibly ten.”

  Bad news. Nine or ten [Poison]-spitting globs might be a little too much for a gunslinger and her damage-type-challenged companion. Not to mention the risks involved if she were to [Bleed] herself again, having already eaten the last of her Ulvknall livers.

  If only there was a way for me to deal Infernal damage in a big—what’s that word Zacko uses?—‘AOE’. She soon realized she did have a spell to fit the description. The problem was making it count. She leaned over to whisper some more.

  “Is there any room down there for you to run around?”

  “Larger platform that curves downward. Much like one we first landed on. What do you have in mind?”

  “How do you feel about acting as bait? Wait, I mean… did I just say something offensive? I don’t know how you Yakshas feel about—”

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  “Spit it out, Rakshasa.”

  “Okay, what I need you to do is draw the Poison Balls’ attention, just so none of them realize I’m up here. Run around until they all gang up on you, then when I give the signal, you get as far away from them as possible.” The plan had seemed feasible in her mind, but as she gave it word, her confidence waned, especially given how little she knew about her impromptu partner. “Am I asking too much? Scratch that, let’s think of a different—”

  “No problem.”

  With that, Lars jumped off the ledge and into the shadows below.

  Caught totally off guard, Serac scrambled to unholster REVOLVER and nearly dropped it. Then she nearly fell off the ledge herself, as she caught her weapon and repositioned, her heart now pounding a mile a minute. Get a hold of yourself! Breathe. Watch. Aim.

  Serac’s picture of the battle was frustratingly incomplete. At first, she was dismayed by the sight of shadows moving en masse and out of her visual field. Wrong way, chief! She bit down on her shout of alarm and forced herself to trust once more in local wisdom.

  And boy, did he ever come through! The shadows returned soon enough, having now multiplied to fill Serac’s vision with a dense collection of labels and Health bars. Were there nine or ten? Too many tags and too little time to count, but she just had to trust that her senior Wayfarer knew what he was doing.

  “Now!”

  [Chamber One: CATHARSIS]

  [235!]

  [190!]

  The first tongue of [Catharsis]’s flame found just the one target: a green shadow belonging to the topmost Slangespytt. But along with the second tick of damage, the fire spread to several more adjacent globs.

  [340!], [340!], [340!]

  Then came the third tick, and by then, what had started as a solitary spark had grown into a proper wildfire. For one Ksana, Serac’s vision flashed bright-black, as all the Wildspawns in the vicinity went up in flames.

  [681!], [681!], [681!], [681!], [681!], …

  The vision brightened some more as the Slangespytts’ burnt-up remains burst into swirling Souldust. [860 ?], [860 ?], [860 ?], and so on and so forth.

  What a haul! Despite Lars Tomasen’s vital role in enabling the smites, all ten had been credited fully to Serac. Another one of Pathsight’s weird imperfections. If you don’t deal damage, your part in the smite just doesn’t count. She half-celebrated-half-grumbled, feeling just a tad guilty about the injustice of it all.

  The cheated Yaksha strolled back into the frame then, calm as you like, his burly figure momentarily illuminated by the fading Souldust. If Lars had any grievances about his magnificent turn as ‘bait’ going unrewarded, he didn’t show it. He merely looked up at Serac—still perched atop her narrow ledge—and waved her down.

  Serac’s first instinct was to wave back, wearing a vacant smile as she did. Then she flushed as she realized what her companion had in mind.

  “Uh… you want me to jump?”

  Lars nodded.

  “But… how big is the drop? Should I be worried about fall damage?”

  “As far as Pathsight is concerned”—Trippy’s monotone struck a stark contrast against Serac’s flustered babbling—“an unmitigated fall of 50 to 100 feet is considered ‘moderate’, incurring damage equal to 30% of the Wayfarer’s Max Health. Between 100 and 150 feet is ‘severe’, worth 50% of Max Health. Anything higher than that is deemed ‘lethal’, which, as the label suggests, would—”

  “Yeah, okay, I get the picture. Now, can you help me estimate—”

  “No need to estimate,” Lars called up, calm as you like. “I catch you. No fall damage.”

  For several seconds, Serac could only stare blankly. Even when she finally managed to speak, she could only do so in an incoherent stammer.

  “I, well, sure, that sounds… But chief, you’ve gotta see it from… Like, I don’t mean any offense, but I’m not totally—”

  “Hurry,” Lars insisted, with just a touch of impatience. “No time to waste.”

  Resigned to her fate, Serac let out a deep breath. Who was she to question the local wisdom? Besides, it wasn’t like she had anywhere else to go but down.

  When she finally did take the plunge, the moment passed in less than the space of a missed heartbeat. She’d shut her eyes, just like she did whenever she fell in water, but when she opened them again, she found herself in the firm embrace of a silent, towering sturgeon.

  “Uh…” she murmured hoarsely, staring up at Lars’s cold yet reassuring glare. “Thanks. And you were right. No fall damage!”

  She hopped off in a hurry and dusted herself off, all the while pointing her eyes to the rocky floor. Now that she and Lars had broken eye contact, Serac was oddly eager to keep it that way.

  “That was some good running back there, chief,” she said, voice still a little hoarse, and more to fill the silence than anything. “Really made my job easy. None of the Poison Balls got you, did they? Oh, what am I saying, I suppose Pathsight would’ve told me if—”

  Serac froze, suddenly remembering something very important.

  “Zacko!” she exclaimed. “He got hit by one of them Poison Balls, when we were up on the river! Do you think he’s still [Poisoned]? Wait, does your brother have the antidote too?”

  “He does,” Lars said matter-of-factly, “but no guarantee he and Manusya washed up in same place. Also, antidote will not help Manusya regardless.”

  Serac frowned, her earlier mistrust and uncertainties creeping back.

  “But why? You keep suggesting Zacko can’t hack it here, but he’s made of sterner stuff than you think. I should know. I’ve (literally) been to hell and back with him!”

  Lars shook his head, utterly unbothered by Serac’s rising tempers.

  “Manusya can conquer all Six Realms. Will not make difference.” The Yaksha calmly reminded a newly ascended Rakshasa what made her different from her outrealmer buddy. “Without [Synthesis], Wayfarer cannot receive additional effect from consumable item. Manusya can eat Motgift Pellet if he wants, sate his [Hunger] a little, but will not cure his [Poison].”

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