Broken Lands

Sophia knelt next to Dav. He hadn’t stirred yet; did that mean he was more injured than she’d first assumed or was something else going on?

Sometimes she wished she knew more about healing. For all that Blaze had tried to teach her, healing simply wasn’t her strength. She knew that was because she’d never put the time in to learn more than enough to keep someone alive until they made it to a healer, but that had always been enough; she’d delved without a proper healer more times than she could count.

The only thing in her favor right now was that she’d never taken a healing Path. Her Skills weren’t working, but she wouldn’t have lost what little ability she had to figure out what was wrong.

Spreading her aura across Dav felt strange. She’d never felt an adult that was Tier Zero before, but he was definitely Tier Zero. She moved as gently as she could; a three-Tier difference didn’t sound like much, but she wasn’t sure how much of a difference it made for aura strength. She didn’t worry about it with most people, but she didn’t want to hurt him just because she was trying to check for injuries.

His Tier didn’t make sense; he was well past the age where the Voice should have counted him as an adult and allowed him to choose his first Tier One Path. Why had he never picked one?

Sophia could come up with some dark possibilities, but none of them squared with the fact that he had the Etherium to hire an escort for a delve. She was just going to have to ask.

There was something else odd about him, too. It was like his spirit wasn’t properly anchored to his body; his aura was actually centered just above where he lay on the ground. Sophia took a moment to check his body, but when she didn’t immediately find anything obvious, she guessed that oddity was probably why he was unconscious. She’d never had one, but she’d heard about out-of-body experiences; this sounded a lot like one.

Fortunately, that meant she ought to be able to push him back into his body. He could probably go back on his own, but he probably didn’t know how; Tier Zero people usually didn’t know enough about their auras to control it. The only real trick was that her aura was apparently “not very scary;” she could stand up to others but she just couldn’t take her own aura seriously enough to scare others. She blamed her father; no one else seemed scary when compared to Sophia’s Dad.

Sophia pulled her aura back carefully, then physically moved so that Dav’s aura was between her and his body. She wasn’t good enough to finely control her aura, so her physical position would have to do. Once she was in place, she pushed her aura out quickly but carefully, watching what happened as best she could.

She felt it as his aura moved away from hers. It seemed to click into place as he reached his body and she had to quickly halt her expansion. Good enough; she’d rather not do that again any time soon. Hopefully it would be enough.

Dav coughed, then leaned to the side and retched. Nothing came up, but he sounded like he felt absolutely wretched.

Sophia wasn’t sure if that was the trip through the Origin, landing on the stone ground without the cushion she’d had, or the way she’d performed rough field medicine on him. All she could do was hope he recovered quickly. “How are you feeling?”

“Ugh. Pretty bad. I thought they’d fixed that.” Dav took a breath, gagged one more time, then seemed to gather himself. He focused, then blinked and shook his head before waving a hand in front of himself. “Going to have to fix my settings, not really a fan of the eyeball theme. Anyway, the only way to get over this is going to be time, so let’s get moving. Do you know which way we need to go to get out of here?”

Eyeball theme? Sophia had to agree that that sounded a lot less pleasant than the one she’d seen. “Mine had feathers. Do you really think it’s customizable?”

“Almost has to be. Why would yours be different from …?” Dav had an odd expression on his face, but he shook his head then seemed to have a moment where he realized just how bad an idea that was when he was already feeling under the weather. After another deep breath, he stood carefully still and repeated his question. “Do you know which way is out?”

Sophia shook her head, then reminded herself that he probably couldn’t see her, even with the limited glow from the magelight. It was pointed mostly at Dav, not at Sophia.. “No, I’ve only been awake a little longer than you have. There was someone watching us; I think he assigned the rewards that were on that screen. I don’t understand why he gave rewards instead of, you know, helping us out.” She was still more than a bit ticked about that. Sure, she was fine, but Dav wasn’t! For that matter, leaving two people inside a dungeon without checking to see if they were able to manage it was not okay!

Dav sighed then shrugged. “Limited programming, probably. It’s supposed to hand out rewards, so that’s what it does.”

Sophia nodded unhappily. “You’re probably right. It wasn’t a dungeon, but the Voice here is weird. Maybe it was related to that. Did you get the notice about being near a Shard of Kestii? I think that might mean we’re in a dungeon, but it didn’t give a Tier.”

Dav shrugged. “This is still the intro section; it shouldn’t be too hard.”

Sophia paused at the odd response. Did he think the portion of the dungeon they’d been in affected where they’d landed? If only that were true. “Intro section? Only if we’re lucky. The Origin connects to all places. We can’t be sure what this place is like. This area doesn’t have particularly high mana density, but who knows what it’s like near the Shard or if we can get out without going near it? If it’s like a dungeon, it’ll get worse the closer we are to the center.”

This wasn’t a dungeon, but it was definitely similar. The more time Sophia spent here, the more obvious that was. She wasn’t sure what she’d noticed that made her so certain, but she’d grown up in a dungeon; it wasn’t that surprising that she could tell when she was in one or not.

Dav shrugged and turned away. “Do you have a second light? I … can actually see. Huh. Weird. That’s the strangest lighting effect I’ve ever seen.”

“I don’t, but I can loan you this one if you like. I think I can cast a basic light spell without it.” Sophia was a bit nervous about that, but she was pretty sure she still remembered the spellform. It was pretty simple and if she messed it up it would just be inefficient.

“Nah, just don’t point the light at me,” Dav answered. “Seems like it’s too bright and I have to let my eyes adjust.”

Sophia shook her head. She knew it was dark in here; she’d been in the dark twice and she definitely couldn’t see anything where her light didn’t reach. It sounded like they’d found one of the effects of whatever happened to Dav in the Origin; he could see in the dark. As side effects went, that one was positive. Sophia hoped they were all similarly minor. It would be better if that was the only one, but she wasn’t about to bet on it. At least he seemed to still be present mentally, even if he was a bit confused about where they were; that was the big thing. Anything else could be fixed or lived with.

“We should probably stay somewhat close together,” Sophia offered when she saw Dav start moving towards one of the walls. “You can lead if you want, since you can see better than I can. I don’t want to be too far apart if there are monsters.”

Dav nodded, then paused. “The exit’s over there; at least, an exit is. Let’s search the rest of the room and see if there’s anything else hidden here. Wouldn’t want to miss a secret by being too eager.”

Sophia nodded to herself. That seemed reasonable; few dungeons hid things at the entrance, but there was no reason to assume they were at the entrance and many dungeons did hide things. The description of the Shard of Kestii didn’t sound like something that was that active, but if it attracted things, they might also have a den or something. There wasn’t a reason to hurry yet; she still had her pack and it had supplies.

They took the time to check the cavern they’d found themselves in. Cavern was definitely the right term; it was a single huge void in natural rock, though the area had clearly been improved at some point. Whenever that was, it was probably a long time ago; there was no evidence of recent habitation by anything. The only noticeable marks in the small layer of grit that covered much of the floor were those left by Dav and Sophia.

Unfortunately, the only thing they found was that there were three other entrances or exits and no sign of which one actually led out of the cave system. Two were relatively level exits, while one seemed to lead up for a while and one seemed to head downwards. Sophia was about to suggest that they follow the fourth one they’d found, simply because they were next to it, when Dav turned and walked over to the previous exit. The slight purple glow from his face made him relatively easy to follow, even though it didn’t give enough light for her to see anything else without using the magelight.

“Any particular reason you picked this one?” Sophia couldn’t see one, which meant she didn’t really care, but she wanted to know if there was something she’d missed. He was able to see in the darkness, at least to some extent; maybe he’d seen something she missed?

Dav shrugged. “It goes down. That should be where the good stuff is. It’s no guarantee, but it seems worth trying.”

Sophia frowned at that. “I’d rather find people and know what we’re getting into than charge into it blindly, but I guess there’s really no way to know which leads to the danger and which leads to safety.”

Dav took that as agreement and headed down the passage. Sophia wasn’t entirely happy to have him in the front, since he was Tier Zero. Even without her Skills, Sophia was Tier Two. She’d be able to handle a surprise better than Dav. Unfortunately, he was probably right to take point; he could see.

If she were willing to let him range ahead, he might be able to sneak up on things. She wasn’t willing to let it go that far; she was still responsible for him. She was supposed to be his escort, even though this wasn’t exactly the delve he’d signed up for. Since she needed light, everything was going to see them coming. With him between the light and the corridor, that would be minimized and give them the best chance.

Sophia didn’t see anything until Dav drew his sword and smacked something on the wall with a surprisingly metallic-sounding crunch. Rather than worrying about something Dav seemed to have already handled, Sophia directed her magelight at the wall he’d turned away from.

A bright flash, like the light had hit something well-polished, made Sophia spring forward, knife in hand. She buried her knife in the gleaming metallic insectoid before she registered anything more than its presence and size. It crumpled at her blow, the same way the other had crunched to Dav’s.

Sophia sent her light around the curving tunnel ahead of them. She didn’t see any more of the metallic monsters within the short distance before it turned.