Blue Core

Shayma wished she could use magic.  Unfortunately, [Seeker] locked out a lot of paths, given how powerful its primary skill was.  Yes, it had allowed her to find the two city-cubes that she then stashed in the dungeon, and the one in Iniri’s bag, but it meant she didn’t have any serious firepower at her disposal.  The best she could do was to push at [Luck] when it stirred, and hope that it helped.

Joce and Keel traded off shifts deflecting the artillery, which was only as infrequent as it was due to Iniri’s wards keeping their pursuers from scrying them fully.  Even the occasional Flame Knight scout didn’t see them, thanks to her talents. But...they were all getting worn down and worn out.

Someone had gotten wind that their group was not traders, clearly.  That wasn’t entirely unexpected, she’d just hoped it wouldn’t happen until they were firmly entrenched.  As it was, there was an awful long hike to the dungeon, and even if they made it, the mage-king’s lackeys might still be able to kill them.  Or worse, capture them and the dungeon.

Sure, it’d somehow killed a Flame Knight, but it wasn’t like a Great Dungeon with monsters and traps and thousands of protectors, so its ability to defend itself was somewhat...less.

“How much longer can they keep this up?” She muttered to Tulk. She was exhausted herself.  Despite [Endurance] and [Longstrider] giving her an edge in the cross-country trek, the uses of [Luck] were draining.  And sometimes it simply buzzed, the costs beyond her ability to supply.

“Oh, don’t worry girlie, they won’t fail us.”  Tulk was as cheerful as ever, despite the situation.  “They never have before.” He paused a moment. “But, how far away are we?”

“Still a couple days, at this pace,” she admitted.  She could get there faster on her own, but not everyone had movement skills.

“Then I guess a couple days.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, and he just shrugged and grinned, then went back to watching his feet as he nearly tripped over a stray root.  She snorted and drifted over to Iniri, who was grimly tromping along with the other mages. Kirin had better stamina reserves than most demihumans but she was in the same boat as most magic-users with having only magical options for resilience or speed.  Which she had to reserve for other things. “Should I go ahead? See if I can convince it to have defenses made?”

“No.”  Iniri said firmly.  “They’re scrying constantly now.  A dungeon entrance might escape their notice, but you won’t.”

“...doesn’t that mean that they’ll be able to track us down once we get inside?”

“Probably not.  It’s nearly impossible to scry into a dungeon itself and, well, unless the mage-king himself feels it’s worthwhile nobody is going to be able to find a hidden entrance lost somewhere in all this wilderness.  Unless they have a Seeker themselves.” Iniri gave her a sharp look.

“...right.”  She felt doubly idiotic at forgetting the value she had in enemy hands when Astair had managed to use her [Seeker] for himself only a month ago.  “But...I’m too low for any more [Luck] uses.” In fact, she was feeling strained enough that she was afraid they’d incur negative luck, the skill rebounding from overuse.

Iniri, already looking grim, pressed her mouth into a hard line.  “Let’s hope we don’t see any more Flame Knights then.” Shayma nodded.  Iniri’s wards could only do so much, and they wouldn’t stop someone from noticing their group if one of those discharges landed when they were in view.  The magical flares would make it impossible for them to hide from the scrying if even a drop made it through to touch them, and it was pretty clear where they were being deflected.

It was exceedingly hard to hide, and it wasn’t even the mage-king himself doing the looking.

They hadn’t made it much further before another one of the spells came arcing down, somewhere ahead of them, a hideous mixed green-and-pink that put both Joce and Keel on edge.  It wasn’t actually that color, of course, what she was seeing was using something like a rudimentary mana-sense, cut off from developing further by her Class.  But it was good enough to watch it fall silently and vanish into the trees, while Joce erected a barrier ahead of them and waited.

And waited.

Then suddenly a pink mist sprang up from the ground and all the mages began swearing at once.

“Hornrot,” Iniri hissed.  She made a sharp gesture with one hand, and the mist vanished instantly, but the damage was already done.  Whoever was watching knew where they were.

“Form up!” Keel barked, gruff as always, voice echoing from a slight magic amplification.  “We’ll see some mages, in the next few minutes, probably the Flame Knights, and -”

The ground began to tremble.  “Strike that, Earth Corps first,” he snapped, laying down a blanket of frozen air with a wave of his hand.  Shayma hastily clambered on. But no spikes or columns rose from the ground, no boulders hurled themselves at the group.  Instead, her [Seeker] sense spun wildly and hiccuped as a stairway into the earth opened up in front of them.