Chapter 44: Chaos (Patreon)

Elliot sprinted toward the river. All around him, the myr had started to swarm.

He felt like he’d been jabbed with a cattle prod, thoughts tumbling over each other in a torrent of panic and plans. What could possibly have caused this? There’s no way the walls were just gone; this was a low grade warren, not the kill-trap that some of the higher grades could become. Was he missing something? Oh God, was that mosstalon going to beat him to the water? Could they swim?

Desperately pivoting his focus, he thrust his hand into his pouch and grabbed the hunk of moss he’d taken from the dead predator, activating [Detailed Appraisal]. He spun the vortex, fixing the entirety of his attention on the question of swimming. The water was only twenty feet away; he had to either dive or fight.

Mosstalons were ground-based, without a particular aversion to water. The moss they were named for depended on their core’s energy to survive, and had some kind of magical function. He forced his legs to pump faster. It was much harder to get general information from such a small specimen, and he could feel his ability veering towards facts particular to the moss itself. Tell me what I want to know! He yanked on the vortex, and the knowledge arrived. They could technically swim, but lacked any speed or control while doing so, and would avoid water while hunting.

As the information hit, he dove.

His staff hit the water awkwardly, thwacking Elliot’s skull as he passed below the surface. It was frigid. The shock caused his whole body to tense, and he nearly expelled his precious lungful of air.

Struggling forward with an awkward breast stroke, he aimed low to stay underwater for as long as possible. Should he follow the current and try to escape? He hadn’t memorized what portions of the maze actually touched the river, though. What if it came back and trapped him?

He surfaced, spluttering, and whipped his head around. The mosstalon had stopped at the bank, tail lashing. A pack of greliks was closing in though, and he had no idea if they were equally averse to water. If they could swim faster than him, which was possible, then escape wasn’t a viable option anyway.

Diving back down, Elliot kept his eyes open. The water was mostly clear, and he did his best to look around despite the rising haze of kicked-up silt. Then he saw what he needed.

Pushing forward, staff in hand, he swam toward the small stretch of rocky riverbed ahead. It had one large, squat stone sticking out of the mud that was fully submerged, but reached up to within a few feet of the surface. Somewhere to brace himself as the myr closed in.

He reached it, planted his feet as best he could while whirling his arms for balance, then slowly stood; his head breaking free of the water halfway through the motion.

Somewhere between five and ten greliks were in the water and could, in fact, swim. He activated [Golden Touch].

The heat of the sun on his face was a strange sensation after the grasping cold of the water. He tried to hold his staff still despite the shivers running through his body. The greliks were moving quickly, but not as quickly as on land, and as long as he kept his feet fixed in place the advantage should be his. He wasn’t going to die today. Not a chance. Easy peasy. 

His shivering intensified.

The leader of the pack had drawn ahead, thrashing through the water as it closed the distance. Its jet black eyes sucked in the light. Elliot raised his staff, feeling the hammer of his pulse. Have to keep them in front of me. I can kill ten, but not if I get surrounded.

He tried not to think about the next ten, or the ten after that. Or the mosstalons. Focus, damn it.

Swinging the staff down, Elliot finished the first grelik in an instant. The blow, and the flash of gold that followed, landed squarely between its long, pointy ears. The next three were coming single-file, but he could already see a few behind them starting to spread. He reached into his pocket and grabbed a handful of the crumpled flash paper, switching the focus of [Golden Touch]. There was no need for a power boost to the staff, standard force strikes would be enough.

The next two died the same way, but the third had already begun to circle around to his left, with the few behind it breaking to both sides. He flung the flash paper to his right, releasing [Golden Touch] and turning away from the intense burst of light that followed. It worked, the two greliks on that side screaming and swimming away, but they’d be back soon enough. Don’t lose track of them.

On the left the greliks had spread too far, and now three were coming at him at once. Time for something new. 

Fixing his attention on two of the three, he activated [Combative Bartering]. For the first time since acquiring it, the ability landed on enemies with much weaker minds than his own, and he felt the bargain-state slam into being.

“Retreat immediately, do not return, and I will let you live.”

His core burned, ethera spooling out faster than it ever had before, and what felt like an iron shackle twisted into being around the orange sphere. He knew at once it was his share of the skill’s outcome, and would keep him from killing the beasts as long as the bargain stood. 

They in turn spun and began swimming away as fast as they’d come. He brought his staff down on the last grelik still close enough to strike, taking two hits to finish it when the first blow glanced off its shoulder. The single remaining grelik in front hesitated, while the two who’d fled the flashbang had turned back and were approaching slowly. A new pack was about to hit the edge of the water. Elliot gritted his teeth. At least the two bound by [Combative Bartering] were still running.

Trying to assess his ethera level, he guessed it was probably achievable to activate the ability twice more, although there were so many variables. How long would the first bargain last? Was it harder to create new ones while one was already in place? Did they weaken the more he created at once?

Greliks seemed to swim at least as quickly as he did, so retreat wasn’t a good option. The three around him should be easy, but he couldn’t tell exactly how many were in the pack about to hit the river’s edge, and the two mosstalons nearby had begun to ease into the water.

His throat tightened, and his breathing was speeding up. Why was this happening? He knew this wasn’t a game, and it wasn’t like a low-energy warren was guaranteed to be easy, but the higher the energy level the stronger the myr and the more complex the ethereal mechanisms in play; that was nothing more than basic energy transference principles. Less energy, less going on. Breka had covered all this before he started delving in earnest.

The whole structure disappearing to free up the myr to all hunt him at once simply wasn’t supposed to happen at this level. It should have taken the vast majority of the available energy just to create the mirrorsteel and the beasts in the first place. Breka had said it was ‘finicky’, but she couldn’t possibly have meant this.

All three Greliks surrounding him chose that moment to thrash forward at once, and he leaned forward to smack the closest before the other two could reach him. The single hit to the skull killed the one in front, but Elliot’s weight came too far forward, and his foot slipped off the submerged rock.

He dropped his staff, fixing the two greliks that remained with his gaze in the instant before impacting the water, trying desperately to activate [Combative Bartering].

The water closed over his head before he could speak, and he saw the reddish-orange blur of the greliks only a few feet away, indistinct through the silt.

His panicked kick connected with one of their torsos, and he swept both arms forward in a powerful stroke, causing him to lurch backwards. Something drew a burning line down his lower left leg. Heaving as hard as he could, Elliot’s head broke free from the water, and he screamed: “Run and I’ll let you go!”

The same constricting force from before manifested, but it was thready—wobbling unsteadily unlike the firm pressure of the first. What? Why? Panicked, acting more by instinct than planning, Elliot fixed his attention on the flickering chain of energy and spun the vortex.

There was a mental click, and he understood. The offer to spare these two was much less valuable than before, because he was now in a position of weakness. The previous two would have almost certainly died if he hadn’t used the ability, even if the third had gotten him, but these two were about to reach his flailing, weaponless body. Having offered less value, the strength of the bargain was weaker, and it was already close to dissolving.

Only close, though. The greliks began to retreat slowly, eyes still on him, and he could sense them straining against the binding. He threw himself toward his staff that was bobbing away with the current.

His hand closed on the carved wood just as the bargain snapped. Where the hell had the rock gone? He kicked through the water in an awkward spin, whipping his head back and forth. It had to be close.

As he searched, a high pitched note rang out through the air. It started soft, but rose steadily, arising from no particular direction. A faint haze began to shimmer where the mirrorsteel walls had stood, like a long-delayed afterimage. 

All of them froze. The greliks were suddenly twitchy, heads swiveling, and Elliot began frantically trying to identify a spot that would be locked away from most of the myr if that shimmering meant what he thought it did. The walls returning with him in the same space as both mosstalons would be a death sentence.

His eyes caught on the one object left against the empty expanse of dirt around the river: the warren’s prize, some kind of shield or plank sitting about forty feet from where he was treading water.

He’d have to get to it eventually, and critically for the short term it would be isolated from everything when the walls finished forming. He shoved the staff into his mouth and bit down as hard as he could, then held on tight as he used all four limbs to swim for the shore.

None of the beasts were focused on him anymore, seeming agitated by the re-forming walls. The haze had already gotten thick enough to block Elliot’s view, and he threw himself into his breast stroke with every ounce of power he possessed. There were two walls between him and the final chamber, and he had absolutely no interest in being stuck out here with the myr.

As he reached the shore and hauled himself to his feet, the haze became fully opaque to his eyes, and he began to run.

Hitting the mist felt like plunging into a massive clump of cotton. Slowing only slightly, he put his hands up and leaned into the sprint. The last wall was harder, forcing him to slow, and as he pulled his foot free he could see the mirrorsteel surface starting to gleam.

But he made it. He stood in the room with the prize, without any myr, panting raggedly as the walls finished their transition to solidity. The item was leaning on its side against a metal stand. Elliot’s first impression was of some kind of wooden tablet. Rectangular, about four feet tall, and covered with a mess of symbols and lines, its potential use didn’t immediately jump out to him.

He let himself collapse slowly to the ground, taking deep, sucking breaths. That had been insane. It made no sense, no sense whatsoever. The memory of seeing the greliks underwater—their rusty red-orange shapes thrashing indistinctly—was playing on a loop in his mind. And one of them had gotten him at the end, hadn’t it?

Reaching down, Elliot felt the lower half of his left leg. His trousers sported a long rent, and when he pulled his hand back it was sticky with blood.

At least it’s not bleeding a ton anymore. And it seems relatively superficial. He squinted up at the sky, still dimmed by some kind of semi-visible barrier. God, my standards for optimism have lowered.

Easing to his feet, he walked over to the enchanted board, using [Detailed Appraisal]. 

It was a teak platter, and it was old—extremely old. The information that flowed into his mind was halting, almost stuttery. It was meant for holding food…ceremonial food? No, normal food, but only once a year. Some kind of festival? Yes, a local holiday, somewhere far from here. Called…called something. Elliot pulled at the vortex.

The Suncalling. He tilted his head. A solstice festival? No, something more specific. But what was the actual enchantment? And how had it been changed by the warren?

Despite another few minutes poking and prodding at the platter, his regular tricks didn’t manage to reveal any further interesting information.

Elliot gave up and started unspooling a line of rope from his bag. He’d jury rig a harness and carry the thing out on his back. Breka would be able to tell him more, hopefully.

And he still found himself about a quarter of the way from the fifth step. The exact formula by which the sale of an antique converted to a certain amount of vitae continued to elude him, but increasing age and value clearly correlated to increasing yield, so this being the oldest thing he’d found so far was promising.

Now to sneak his way back to the entrance, and hope the walls didn’t vanish again.