Chapter 280: 281: Red

A thick, creeping fog surrounds the two of them on all sides as they walk through the chamber. Fresh clambers on to Basil’s arm, looking nervously around the room which is, by all means, objectively speaking, spooky.

The odd faces carved into the stone walls are spooky. The broken, shattered masks that cover the floor, having perhaps once belonged to some kind of now-dead monsters, are spooky. The heavy, dense fog that presses down onto them like a smothering blanket is spooky.

“Shamrock!” calls Basil out into the room. But her words don’t get far. If Fresh didn’t know better, she’d be sure that the fog itself was stopping the sound of the priestess’ voice, keeping it trapped inside of the domain that it had wrapped the two of them into. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s keep going.”

“I don’t know, Basil,” says Fresh. “It’s pretty creepy here,” she notes. “Maybe we should go back, if it’s not safe for us?”

“And Shamrock?” asks the priestess, turning her head back around towards her. Fresh frowns, not because Basil had countered her desire to leave. But because she realizes that she had had one to begin with. If Shamrock is here, in a creepy place like this, she obviously can’t just leave without him.

Fresh nods and the two of them keep going, shuffling through the fog.

“Have you ever been down deeper into a dungeon, Basil?” asks Fresh.

Basil shakes her head. “No. This is actually the deepest I’ve ever been,” she explains. “I’m a little curious about it, honestly,” she says, looking around the room as if there was something she was searching for.

“Me too,” replies Fresh, nodding her head. “It’s pretty spooky.”

“It was probably spookier while everything was still alive,” says Basil, carefully kicking a broken mask to the side and out of their way.

“Mm,” nods Fresh. “What’s down at the bottom of a dungeon, Basil?” she asks.

“I’ve heard lots of stories,” starts the priestess, looking around a corner to check if its clear. “But what I’ve heard most is that there’s…” She stops, considering something for a moment as she pulls Fresh around the corner. The fog of the previous room seems to not be able to come into this hallway, as if there were some artificial barrier stopping it from moving past the doorway. “There’s a passage,” she explains, apparently having made a choice.

“Huh?” asks Fresh. “A passage?”

“Yeah,” says the priestess, keeping her eyes locked straight ahead. “I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve heard that every dungeon has a passage on the lowest floor, where a tip of a root of the great tree reaches.”

“Huh? Tree?” Fresh thinks for a second. “You mean the central-city?”

Basil nods. “Yes.”

“So… there’s a way to get into the central-city at the bottom of the dungeons?” asks Fresh.

“That’s what I’ve heard,” replies Basil. “In fact, it’s the only way that anyone is allowed to go to the central-city. It’s how you prove yourself. It’s a real meritocracy.”

“Oh…” replies Fresh, not sure what to make of this somewhat awkward topic. It had been a point of contention between the four of them for a while and she never really got any straight answers on it or her friends’ behavior, regarding the subject.

Wait.

Fresh blinks, realizing. “Is that why there aren’t any high-level adventurers anywhere, Basil?” she asks. Fresh had been wondering about that forever. She’s always just made low-level gear and despite their broad base of customers from all over the world, she has never really seen many people who are significantly high-leveled or progressed. This could explain it.

All of the really high-level people simply had already cleared a dungeon, beaten the final boss and gained access to the central-city that was filled with equally as vetted people, or perhaps the offspring and kin of those who had ‘made it through’ in generations past, forming a much more tested, proven and competent society than the outside.

“It is,” replies Basil, turning back to look at her as they keep walking. “That’s why -”

Something clicks beneath their feet.

The two of them look down, seeing the stone pressed down into the floor by Basil’s foot.

“Look out!” cries Fresh, yanking the priestess back as the wall to their right descends and a thick, wooden beam covered in protruding blades shoots out and smashes into the adjacent wall.

The two of them fall down to the ground as Basil lets out a pained and surprised shriek as a protruding blade cuts a deep gash along her, at least uncrushed, thigh. The hallway shakes as the pillar collides with the wall.

“Basil! Are you alright?!” asks Fresh, getting up and looking at her friend’s leg. The blade cut right through the fabric of her robe and looks like it sliced all the way down to the bone. Blood streams out in all directions over her hands. Despite being untouched herself, Fresh finds herself becoming nauseous and dizzy at the sight of it. Her panic is made worse because of the sound that she’s never heard before and one that she never wants to hear again, Basil’s screaming.

They shouldn’t have come down here.

That’s all she can think about as she tries to figure out what to do. She isn’t sure if it’s been one second or ten, there’s just too much. There’s just too much. There is too much sound. There is too much color. There is too much racing past her eyes and through her mind and she can’t get a grip on a single thought because of how slippery everything is and she can’t get a grip on Basil’s leg because of all the blood.

Her bag drops off of her shoulders and she digs through it, smearing red everywhere as she pulls out a roll of bandages that is already soaked through just from the wet on her own hands.

“Hold still, Basil!” says Fresh, pulling the sticky robe away from the wound. The second she touches the fabric, Basil pushes her off of herself and Fresh falls back, crawling back towards her. “You have to let me look at it!” she cries, making a second attempt. Basil is trying to calm herself down by controlling her breathing, but it doesn’t seem to be working so well.

She pulls the fabric away as Basil presses her fists into the wall behind herself.

“Ow! DAMN IT!” swears the priestess. “Are you alright?” she asks.

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“I’m fine Basil!” says Fresh, fighting through her tears as she does her best to wrap the, essentially useless, bandage around the gash on the priestess’ leg. But what else is there to do?

She turns her gaze, looking at the menu. Basil is losing health-points fast.

“Basil!” says Fresh, not sure what to do. The priestess can keep her health up with her healing spells, but that’s only good for her health-points. It won’t help at all if she loses all of her blood.

“I’ll be fine,” says a pale-faced Basil. “I died before already, right?” she jokes. “I’ll just do it again.”

“I don’t want you to die, though!” argues Fresh, ugly-crying now.

Basil shakes her head, wincing. “Go on. Go back upstairs. I’ll meet you back home,” says the priestess, managing to smile a meek, but comforting smile. “This was my own fault.”

“AS IF!” yells Fresh, grabbing the priestess by the collar. Her face goes pale with a new pain as Fresh unapologetically moves her. “Don’t say that like it doesn’t mean anything!” Fresh gets up, rising to her feet and opens her window. “Jerk!”

Reaching with her bloodied arm into the black-water, she fishes around and pulls out a wax-sealed can of one of Basil’s own wound-healing salves as well as her flying-broom.

“I think it nicked the bone,” says Basil, sounding oddly tired. Fresh looks down, dropping into a puddle of blood. She grabs the lid of the can, trying to pry it open but her hands keep slipping because they’re slick with blood. Yelling a frustrated scream, she arcs her arm back and throws the container against the wall. It breaks into several large pieces and she scoops up as much of it as she can, simply throwing handfuls of it onto the open wound and smearing it all into one large, goopy, oily, red mess.

Following the instructions on the can, she holds her hands above it and focuses on using her magic. An orange glow surrounds her fingers. The slimy mess begins to harden into a disgusting, but solid crust.

Fresh breathes a breath of relief, feeling the world spin before her eyes as she finally gets a full mouth of air in and out herself.

“See, Basil?” she says, sighing in relief, wiping her face on her forehead. “Don’t give up so easily, next time, okay?” asks Fresh, looking at her friend. But Basil doesn’t respond, her eyes are closed, her head is drooped down.

Fresh grabs her bag, throwing it over her shoulder as she picks up her broom and gets ready to pull Basil over it, to fly the two of them back to the entrance.

A stone gives way beneath her boot.

Fresh looks down, staring at the trap, not even having enough time to say a single swear, despite having a good one on the tip of her tongue that she is sure would have made Jubilee proud.

The floor slides away, Fresh grabs Basil as her limp body falls over and the two of them fall deeper into darkness.

Razmatazz

Dungeon arc =(

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