Chapter 11: Trapped

  Before leaving through the now open trial gate, Cole gathered ingredients.

  He did not have a place to put them, so he fashioned what approximated a makeshift sack out of some torn curtains he found in the cottage. The fabric was stiff with old dust and whatever the dungeon decided counted as grime. He dragged it down to the stream and washed it anyway, scrubbing until his fingers went numb in the cold water.

  It still smelled of mildew and smoke.

  But it worked to a degree.

  He did not make it huge. Just big enough to tie to his increasingly deteriorating pants. It would carry a little. So he brought along enough ingredients for mend potions and purge tonics. He was not going to walk into the next part of this place with empty hands.

  Cole turned and eyed the cauldron hanging above the cottage hearth.

  “I don’t think I’m going to be able to bring that,” he muttered.

  Faelen’s gaze followed his. The elf’s posture was straighter than it had been in days, but he still moved with pain. He let out a quiet, almost regretful sound.

  “No, sadly. We won’t be able to lug it along. Perhaps if we had a storage item, such as a bag of holding, but we don’t.”

  Cole blew out a breath that tasted flavored with ash and boiled herbs.

  “Should I make a few potions now? We won’t have much of an opportunity out there.”

  Faelen chewed it over, eyes narrowing. Risk. Time. How far they could run before something caught them. How long it would take Cole to brew while something hunted them through corridors.

  Finally he nodded.

  “You can carry a few in that jacket of yours, ruined as it is. Better to have them.”

  Cole nodded back. He did not argue. He wasn’t in the mood to gamble on luck.

  He got to work.

  The smell of wet stone and burned wick filled the cottage. The hearth heat pressed against his face, and when he leaned in close to check the simmer, the warmth crawled into his hairline and made sweat bead there. Outside the crooked windows, the dungeon light never changed. It did not tell you if it was morning or night. It just existed.

  Cole pulled his ingredients into a crude line on the bench.

  Marigold petals, bright and stubborn even down here.

  The fever thorne slivers, crimson and sharp enough to bite if you handled them wrong.

  Thistle, pale and dry.

  Cole did not want to waste anything. He did not have enough to waste anything.

  Faelen went in search of more mushrooms.

  That had Cole watching the door, jaw tight.

  “If there are more frog monsters, I’m going to be in trouble,” Cole said, and he did not make it a joke.

  Faelen lifted his shovel slightly, as if to reassure him that he was not walking out there bare-handed.

  “I’ll just run back here if there are,” he promised.

  Cole did not like the idea of Faelen running anywhere. The elf was better than he had been, but “better” was not “fine.” Still, Faelen moved with the confidence of someone who had spent his life in places like this. He slipped out through the open gate, boots quiet on stone.

  Cole stood alone in the cottage for a moment, listening.

  Water trickled in the stream outside.

  Fire hissed in the hearth.

  Somewhere far away, stone scraped against stone. A slow, ugly sound that could have been the dungeon shifting or something moving.

  Cole forced himself to breathe through it and focus.

  Faelen returned near the end of the first batch, unharmed, with two more mushrooms held carefully in his hand. His face was drawn, but he looked satisfied.

  “Found a patch,” he said. “No frogs.”

  Cole let himself breathe easier.

  He finished the batch, then started another, moving with practiced urgency now that the process was familiar. It was still slow, but it was not the hopeless flailing it had been before.

  By the time he finished two batches of mend potions and two of purge tonics, his shoulders were tight and his jaw ached from clenching, but he had vials lined up on the bench.

  A notification blinked in front of his vision.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  ALCHEMY EXPERIENCE GAINED: 300

  Cole waved it away.

  “Not now,” he muttered.

  He filled the cleanest vials, capped them, and tucked several into the inside pocket of his jacket. The jacket was torn and stained and smelled, but the pocket still held.

  He considered stuffing herbs into it too. He could, technically. But if he crushed the fever thorne or bruised the marigold too badly, he might as well throw them away. So he tied them into his makeshift sack and cinched it tight, then tested it by jogging two steps.

  It pulled at his pants.

  His pants pulled back, threatening to split.

  Cole sighed.

  “This is ridiculous,” he said.

  Faelen’s mouth twitched, almost a smile.

  “It is what we have.”

  Cole looked at the vials again, counting with his eyes. Four mend. Four purge. Not a lot. Enough to matter if they had to matter.

  He glanced at the cauldron one last time and felt a weird surge of irritation.

  It was just a pot.

  But it had kept them alive.

  He forced himself to step away from it.

  “Ready?” Cole asked, turning toward Faelen.

  Faelen shrugged, a gesture that somehow carried resignation and acceptance at the same time.

  “We can’t stay here forever. I just wish there was food, but short of cooking the frog, there is none.”

  Cole’s stomach chose that moment to twist. He had been ignoring it because it was not a gnawing hunger yet, but it was getting there. A low pull behind his ribs. A dull ache.

  “Why couldn’t we eat the frog?” Cole asked, and even as he said it, he pictured himself biting into something green and raw and immediately regretting every choice he had made since waking up that morning.

  “It takes a profession to be able to process and safely cook dungeon monsters,” Faelen said. “I do not wish to be poisoned again so soon after being cured of it.”

  Cole nodded, slow.

  “Right. Good point.”

  He did not need a second poison lesson.

  Everything taken care of, they departed the cottage through the trial gate.

  The air changed the moment they crossed.

  Cole’s skin prickled. His teeth clicked together once. The cottage heat vanished behind them as if it had never existed, and the dungeon took its place again.

  They were dropped back into a new section.

  Twisted corridors, those same lit torches, the same colored stone. The walls pressed close, then opened into wider stretches, then narrowed again. A maze with no straight lines. The torchlight threw long shadows that looked wrong, too sharp in some places and too blurred in others.

  Cole took two steps and his Authority screamed.

  A spike of awareness yanked at him.

  He moved without thinking, grabbing Faelen’s shoulder and shoving him sideways.

  A ball of green fire crackled past where Faelen’s head had been and slammed into the wall.

  The impact splashed light. Heat flared against the nape of Cole’s neck. The stone blackened and smoked.

  Faelen stared at the scorched wall, then at Cole.

  Cole did not give him time to speak.

  He whipped his head around, eyes scanning the corridor behind them.

  A hooded figure stood on a raised lip of stone farther down the passage, half-hidden in shadow. A dark staff was raised in one hand, and green runes crawled along it. Cole could not see a face. Just robes, black and heavy, hanging off a frame that looked too still.

  “It’s casting something dangerous!” Faelen warned, voice sharp.

  And as his warning cut through the air, another sound rose up.

  Skittering.

  Claws on stone. Fast and erratic.

  Bursts of movement rippled along the corridor edges, and then the ground split in thin cracks as corpse grey monstrosities clawed their way out, similar to the kind Cole had faced when he had first been dropped into the dungeon.

  Their eyes were wrong. Too pale. Too hungry.

  Faelen was already moving, shovel blurring as he stepped into them as he had done this a hundred times. He did not swing wildly. He angled the shovel, used the edge, the flat, the weight, turning it into a weapon that was more brutal than it had any right to be.

  Cole’s focus snapped to the caster.

  That green fire had almost taken Faelen’s head off.

  He did not wait to see what came next.

  “Edict: Null Hymn!” Cole called.

  The spell settled over the hooded figure. That subtle hum rolled through the air.

  The green light at the staff’s tip sputtered.

  The runes stuttered.

  Then the spell died, cut clean.

  The hooded figure’s head jerked slightly.

  A ghoul launched at Cole from the side, claws wide.

  “Ashen Aegis,” Cole said, holding out a hand.

  The air thickened.

  Just enough that the ghoul’s momentum hit something and stopped. It slammed into the unseen field and bounced, confused, limbs flailing.

  Cole did not give it time to adapt.

  “Black Halo Lance.”

  The seraphic black light snapped from his palm and took the creature in the throat.

  It became ash before it finished falling.

  Cole moved as more ghouls flooded toward him, a wave of grey bodies and scraping claws. He put up another Aegis, timing it so they hit it all at once, and the impact rang through his arms even though nothing touched him.

  He threw Lances into the gaps.

  Ash scattered.

  Faelen drove his shovel into a ghoul’s knee, snapped it sideways, then crushed its skull with the flat. He was breathing hard. His movements stayed sharp anyway.

  The hooded figure lifted its staff again.

  Green fire built up at the tip, brighter now, hungrier.

  Cole saw the runes on the staff moving, twisting into new shapes. The figure was learning. Adjusting.

  Cole pointed at it, Authority tightening in his chest.

  “Edict: Disarm!”

  The staff fell.

  It clattered against stone, runes flickered.

  At the same moment, Faelen’s shovel bashed into the figure’s ribs.

  Not to be outdone, the caster crossed its robed arms and a blue shield flared into existence, hard and sudden, rebuffing the shovel. The shove of force made Faelen stagger back a step.

  Cole finished the last ghoul with a Lance, breathing hard, ash dusting his boots.

  Now it was just him, Faelen, and the figure.

  The caster monster swung its arms outward.

  The blue shield exploded outward.

  Faelen was knocked back, boots skidding, but the elf was agile. He rolled with it, came up on one knee, shovel already raised again. His eyes were bright, focused, furious.

  Cole raised his hand to cast, already forming the words.

  The figure pointed a robed arm at him.

  Something snapped over him.

  It was a feeling.

  Cole’s breath caught.

  His fingers would not close.

  His arm would not rise.

  He tried anyway and felt resistance.

  His Authority screamed at him again.

  He was trapped.