I stared at the golden pond. This was extremely valuable, much more than I thought. How many gallons were there? Doesn’t matter now; I needed it. With the door still locked and Alya and Mary still unconscious, this was a godsend.

  I took my waterskin, I drank some until I quenched my thirst, and then I emptied the rest on the stony floor. I then filled it with the pond gold water. As I hurried back to the girls, I gave a little push to the mask to send it down the stairs again so I could keep an eye on it. As I descended myself, I noticed that the mask had changed now that I saw it from the front. It was still a mix of white bone and black, but there were patterns in the way the vines twisted together; they covered the horns too now, leaving the only colour aside from the monochrome to be the maroon core that Quinn smashed into the third eye in the forehead.

  The mask looked special in some way; there was a kind of energy from it. I believe it became a sort of magic item, but given that the curse inside the core was the stuff of nightmares, and the mask itself wasn’t much less, I will leave it there for the moment. I’m not going to touch it directly or put it on myself to see if I gain some sort of new magic, but I’m not even going to let it rot here; at worst, I’ll sell it.

  “Hey man, that wasn’t cool. I thought for a moment that that thing came back to haunt us.”

  “Nothing like that, but I want to keep an eye on that anyway.” I replied to the kid.

  As I reached the sleeping beauties, I went down to one knee, first Mary; she was the one that I didn’t manage to heal completely. I took her head and put it on my thigh, raising her up a little, and then I uncorked the waterskin.

  “You think she’s dehydrated?” Asked Quinn.

  I looked at him for a moment, and then I went on with my task. “No, it’s not that. There is a pond full of a strong health potion at the end of the cavern; I got some here.”

  “For real? Damn, that’s a good find. If only we had something more with us… do you think the crafter could cough up another barrel or two?”

  That was the good thinking I needed in my team: “Why not? We are camped for all the night; we could come back and collect as much as we could bring, maybe making another cart too, because we are sitting on a little mountain of loot here.” I helped Mary swallow the potion by massaging her throat. Fortunately she was swallowing it down without too many problems.

  After I gave her the equivalent of a glass of water, I stopped and let the potion work its magic, so I moved to Alya and started the process anew.

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  Quinn looked around. “Do you think that this monster’s armour is going to fit us?”

  “Maybe, but the weapons are sorely needed, and I’m sure at least the vambraces and leg protection we can use; the chest pieces, not so much. But somebody should be able to work them, adapt them or something.” As I fed Alya another gulp of potion, she started coughing it back up, then opened her eyes. I felt her body tensing, readying for a fight. But as soon as she looked at me, she calmed down, relaxing again.

  “Good morning, sleepyhead…” I told her with a smile.

  Her strikingly blue eyes stared straight into my own, then she blushed a little, diverting her look. “What happened? Did we win?”

  I helped her to sit up by herself while answering. “Of course we won; it was close, but thanks to some good old teamwork we made it, though Mary seems to be still out of it, but she is bound to recover soon.”

  “Good, good… tell me you killed the fucker who did thi- DON’T LOOK!” She pushed me away as she tried to close the cut at the front of her clothes; she was still bloodied all over, but her chest got exposed as she sat up.

  “Right,” I said. Then I looked around. Quinn was still sitting behind me; he didn’t understand what happened, given his look. I shook my head at him, then I looked at his clothes. No. It won’t do. Looking around I saw only Mary having a jacket over a linen vest, and I wasn’t going to strip her, then my curse gave me the tiniest of nudges… for real? Fucking bullshit, I hid my grumbling and removed my cloak; it was the only thing I had except my ruined shirt. How come that I was constantly giving away my magical items?

  I passed the cloak to Alya, keeping my head turned the other way. I saw everything already, but she didn’t need to know that. I saw even inside her ribcage, a place that nobody should see, but I supposed she should be kept in the dark about that too.

  “Thanks… I will give it back to you as soon as I get those fixed.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” I told her. “Can I turn around now?”

  She gave a small sigh. “I suppose…”

  Women… I had no idea what was going on in her head right now. No, that was a lie; I’m sure there were three thousand different thoughts fighting to make this situation worse than it was. “How do you feel? You went down pretty hard.”

  That was the euphemism of the century, but anyway.

  “Good, I don’t feel anything out of place. Was it that bad?”

  Quinn decided at this moment to intervene. “Yeah, when you’re half dead already and decide to run towards a monster like that… you were probably the size of his leg, did you realise? It couldn’t have possibly ended well, you know?”

  Alya went silent at that.

  “It doesn’t matter; we survived. We can learn from this and improve. It won’t be the first or the last time that we get injured; at this point we should take it as a constant of our new life,” I said just to break the silence. “At least we got a tonne of healing potion for the next time you decide to go Leeroy Jenkins on us.”

  “Dude! I can’t believe you know nothing of video games but know of that meme!” Quinn said while laughing like it was the funniest thing he had heard.

  “Who is Leeroy Jenkins?”

  I shrugged to Quinn, then I turned to Alya. “It’s not important, just… don’t do that again, please; you scared me to death.”

  She looked at me in surprise, then lowered her head until I couldn’t see past her curtain of dark hair and gave me a small nod.

  “Oh please, go and get a room, you two already!”

  Bad move, Quinn… bad move.

  “What the fuck did you just say to me, you little shit? Do you think you have the balls to repeat it? Do you think I’m going—”

  I turned around and went to check up on the mask, tuning out Alya’s invectives towards the kid, who was trying to make himself more and more little. I had a feeling he wanted to activate his stealth but didn’t dare to.

  I took one of the many warrior’s swords from the floor; when I reached the mask again, I took it up with the back of the curved blade, being careful not to touch it. My aura was sheathing my hand as I examined it. The long vines that tried to reach for the water had crumbled already; only a mask now remained. I put a finger on it tentatively, still covered by my aura.

  Nothing happened, so I retracted my aura and touched the mass; it was warm, and there was a pulse that could be felt from it. It pulsed in rhythm with the maroon core.

  I was sure the thing became even more evil than before, but maybe I’ll be able to find a use for this…