Chapter 11: Chapter 11 – Disco Time

Chapter 11 - Disco TIme

Jax began slowly. He advanced into the room with the halting sway of a praying mantis. Each step a jerking dance of increasing pressure as he made sure that the floor would take his weight, and then once he was satisfied, he would pause, his eyes to the ceiling, looking for any sign of movement. Not knowing if he was going to be attacked from above or below, every second was a paranoid affair.

Meanwhile, I stood by the entrance, my heart thundering in my chest. Waiting for the shoe to drop was agony as I slowly fed the line tied to his waist, inch by inch. I wondered if I should cast my spell, but if it ended up being another pit trap, the spell would unnecessarily sap my stamina. I decided to hold off for now.

All of a sudden, a small creature leapt from behind the pedestal to perch atop it. It looked a bit like a hairless red gibbon with wings, all arms and stubby little legs, and a slightly too-small head. It made no sound nor screech of warning before it launched itself toward Jax, whom I noticed had his eyes glued to the ceiling.

“Look out, Jax!” I yelled in alarm.

I was not sure if he actually saw the thing or not, but he was so wound up that, at my shout, he simply ducked and rolled to the side. The creature sailed over his head but not before scoring a few lines across his back with its fiery red claws. Dropping the rope, I bellowed an incoherent war cry and charged the thing in an attempt to give Jax the time to recover.

The little monster turned to face me at my yell and inhaled dramatically. I may not be some storied hero or really much of a combatant, but I have seen my fair share of dragons and the like in my time as a gamer. When something inhales, it’s time to take evasive action. What little ‘battle acumen’ I had told me I needed to get something between me and whatever was coming, so I quickly twisted, putting my backpack between us. I then dove and tucked my legs to my chest. It was a good thing I did, because it belched a large burst of flames all about me. The heat of it was excruciating, but my pack and the short duration of it meant I was relatively unharmed.

Jax was on the thing in an instant — the rope still dangling from his torso — rapidly plunging his dagger into its side. The creature screeched in outrage and attempted to counterattack, but it was already dead on its feet. Unfortunately, neither of us saw the second one drop from the ceiling. It landed just behind Jax. Scurrying up the rope, it leapt onto his back, sinking its teeth into his shoulder.

He screamed in pain and began rolling around on the floor, trying to dislodge his attacker. Finally, he came to a stop with the thing somehow still straddling his back, though its wings were broken and bloody from the tumbling. It plunged its claws into Jax's side twice before I kicked it solidly in the head and sent it flying. Jax scurried back, clutching his wound.

The little bastard got to its feet slowly from its wounds and started lining up for its breath attack, but I was ready for it this time. I unslung my now singed and smoking pack from behind me and held it in front like a shield. Ducking down, I let the short burst of flame wash around me, and then, only slightly barbecued, I charged with my spear. The creature attempted to flap away from my smoking rush, but its wings were too damaged. Caught unaware by its own injury, it seemed shocked when my weapon plunged into its chest. That was when the third one hit me.

I was too engaged with running down my own target to notice it, and before I knew what was happening, scorching lines of fire erupted across my calves. These things may not have been particularly tough, nor big, nor strong. But they were not stupid. They knew better than to give away their position before they attacked. Screaming, I collapsed to the floor, clutching my bleeding legs. If Jax had not been there, I would be dead for sure.

“Come on, ye skelped arse! I’ll rip yer head off and jobby down yer neck!” he yelled before he charged the thing. It would seem that Jax did not share that instinct. But he did get the thing’s attention.

The little creature leapt away from its assault on me before my companion could close with it. Its main avenue for attack was surprise, after all, and it did not want to be overwhelmed by the much larger man. Flapping into the air it screeched in outrage at being interrupted in its kill.

Unfortunately, Jax was wounded and land bound while the winged horror was as yet uninjured. It flapped around the room, staying just out of reach of Jax's little dagger. When it thought it had the advantage, it would dive at the man, raking him with its claws. It only took one set of scorching claw marks across his forearm before Jax took inspiration from me and swung his pack around to use as an impromptu shield.

By that time, I had crawled my way over to my own kill and worked my spear from where it had lodged in the thing’s chest. Now rearmed, but unable to stand, my mind swirled in a chemical soup of adrenaline, panic, and confusion. How could I help? Trying to calm my shaking hands, I closed my eyes and took two long breaths.

The spell! It was not much of a card to play, but it was the only one I had. Summoning my will, I began the torturous process of forcing the words out of my mouth once more. It was only four words long, the spell. Or so I felt. Nevertheless, it was like trying to speak a Botswana click-language in pig Latin. When I finally wrestled the final word out of my mouth, the spell took hold. The already deep shadows in the crypt-like dungeon suddenly came alive, as if a torch were moving behind the natural stalagmites of a dark cave. Swiftly, Jax seemed to almost vanish as the now deepened darkness engulfed him.

The creature gave a squawk of confused outrage as the shifting shadows caused it to lose sight of its prey. Not knowing what else to do, it landed atop the pedestal in the middle of the room and belched out a fireball where it had lost sight of my stealthy companion. Temporarily blinded by its own attack, it did not see the dagger flash out of the dark, end over end. As the steel spike buried itself into the thing’s chest, it went still and silently slid to the floor. Dead.

The room was silent for a long time after that. I held the spell for as long as I could in case more of those things were hiding. Eventually though, my strength gave out, and the shadows returned to their calm and unmoving indifference.

Jax was sitting with his back to a wall, clutching his side, the rope still trailing between his legs, forgotten. He seemed to be having a hard time breathing, but he still managed to chuckle. “Fuck me dead, mate. Did ye see that one? Right to the chest!”

I was in more pain than I could ever remember. My legs were a wreck, and my arms were throbbing from the scraped abuse they had taken in the few hours previous. Still, I laughed, the sound trembling out of my chest as unspent adrenaline slowly worked its way out of my system. Haltingly, I stretched out on the floor, not wanting to move ever again.

“Jax…” I finally said into the floor, “what does ‘jobby down your neck’ mean?”

He barked with laughter at that but then clutched his side with a grimace, “Oh… don’t make me laugh, lad.”

“No, seriously.”

“Stop. Yer killin’ me.”

At this point, we were both so seriously wounded that any notion of continuing was unthinkable. Jax had a hole torn out of his shoulder from where one of those imp-like things had latched onto him with its teeth, a series of seeping lacerations just above his kidney and several slashes on his arms and back, to say nothing of his previous injuries. As for myself, though my particular traumas were nothing next to my companion’s, I could scarcely stand. We needed to find some way of recovering before escape was plausible.

Unfortunately, we both agreed that just staying put was no option. Though the Dungeon had thus far been kind enough, forgiving the anthropomorphism, to only attack us at certain key points, we did not trust it to keep to that pattern. We needed to find a safe place to hole up. Possibly for many days.

“Did nay that big walloper of a crystal say sommat about ‘returning when we be weary’?”

“Did it?” I asked, surprised.

“Aye, now I think on it. Could be a safe room,” he mused aloud.

“Okay, then. Sounds like a plan.”

Neither of us moved. The level of our exertions were such that after coming to a rest, our bodies had immediately reached that state of comfortable stiffness where only sleep seems viable. We just stared at each other with that dead-eyed expression of ‘you first, motherfucker’. Finally, caving in, I flopped over with… perhaps slightly exaggerated lamentations. Jax followed suit in similar fashion.

Crawling over to my most recent kill, I asked the menu to convert the little monster to Gem form. What coalesced was another of the average quality Gems from before. It was still rank one, whatever that meant. Pleased with the take, anyway, I set about transforming the rest of our foes. Jax, being the only one with an intact storage container, saw to it to collect the Red Key from the pedestal. That done, we both turned to the passageway back to the hub.

It was a long, long way. I had to crawl the entire time, my ruined legs trailing behind me, with my head drooping weakly between my arms. The hard stone was unforgiving on my knees, but I kept at it. Jax, at least, managed to stumble along using the wall for support, though he trailed a streak of blood in his wake. When we broke through into the hub, we stared at it forlornly. It was a bleak knowledge to know that we were only halfway to our sanctuary.

For some reason, as we crept along, Albinoni’s Adagio popped into my head. I had to chuckle at myself. It would seem that my subconscious was making fun of my overly morose mood. I have no idea how long it took us before we eventually collapsed at our destination. The long trek eventually dulled my mind to the point where I checked out completely, but when we did, there was a certain finality to it. We just lay there, unmoving save for the trembling of our limbs.

The large gem sitting in the room chirruped at us, after a moment, unprompted.

Ignoring the prompt for the moment, I asked, “Should we use these Power Gems before we pass out? Might do some good.”

“Maybe,” Jax agreed. “Who gets the third one?”

I was about to suggest paper, rock, scissors when I remembered something.

“Of course! That’s what it’s for,” I said, mentally chastising myself. At Jax's confused look, I continued, “That thing that was blocking you from using these? I can set it so that we evenly distribute our gains.”

“Ain’t that what we’s already doin’?” he asked.

“No, I have it disabled… hold on.” So saying, I reactivated the [Core Layer Gains] feature and set the provided slider to [Donum <— 50|50 —> Jax].

“Alright, that should do it. I’m not sure how this is supposed to work, though.”

“What do She say about it?”

Reading it again, I frowned, “Just that ‘core layer gains’ are now shared evenly between us. Somehow.”

He shrugged with one shoulder, “Do nay think about it too much. Trust in the Lady.”

Giving a half smile, I handed one of the Gems to Jax and kept the other two for myself. If this did not work, I figured I would just have let him have the next one. Jax did not protest.

“Down the hatch.”

As usual, the fruity candy-like consistency of the Gems was an oddly refreshing feeling. The power of them flowed down my throat and settled into my gut pleasantly. This time, however, I began to notice some of it drawing out from my core and away through the air toward Jax. There was no pain or discomfort to it. There was only a vaguely unsettling sensation. It was then that Jax gave out a gasp and something like a whimpering moan slipped out of his throat. Whatever it was he was feeling on his end, he quickly rolled away from me and curled up into a ball.

“Are you alright, man?” I began to crawl toward him in concern.

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Waving his arm blindly behind him, he shooed me off, saying, “Nay, Nay. Er… Yeah. Jus’ fine. Fine.”

Must feel weird on the receiving end. Giving a slight shrug, I sat back down just in time to see a new message pop up.

“Oh, nice!” I said, happy to see the notification. Quickly, I pulled up my character sheet to distribute my new stats.

I frowned. No points available? Do I not get stats and skills every level?

Looking further up the page, I saw that several of my ability scores were showing an increase. Poking at them only returned ‘change pending’.

Funny. I did not remember exactly what my stats were, but I was quite sure that I had raised my agility, at least, up from two. I could have sworn that my sheet just showed the change as if it had already occurred. None of this ‘pending’ business.

I sighed. Closing out of the screen, I decided that I would just wait to see what it looked like after I slept. As it was, I could barely keep my eyes open. Too much had happened, and I was far too injured to worry about this crap right now.

“You ready for me to hit this thing, Jax?” I asked.

He did not reply. While I had been toying with my menus, he seemed to have already passed out. A bit envious, I tapped the large crystal to indicate that we were going to sleep. I remembered nothing after that.

My eyes snapped open.

Where was I? I looked around at the dancing blue light playing about the earthen room. This isn’t my bedroom.

I had never experienced memory loss before, not having been much of a drinker. So, this was new for me. Sitting up, my eyes immediately focused on the large crystal sitting in the middle of the room. Slowly, the events of the last few days began to filter back into my sleep addled mind.

Right. Jax and I crawled in here to recover… It was then that I noticed the lack of pain. Looking over my arms, I remembered that they had been scraped almost bare from friction burns. Now, however, there was nothing but smooth, lightly tanned, healthy skin. I could scarcely believe it. It would take weeks to recover so much from an injury like that.

Hastily, I pulled up my still ripped trousers to examine my legs. There had been deep gouges there from where the monkey thing had torn into me. Now there was no sign that I had ever been injured. Not even a scar. Impossible. Then I looked over at the glowing crystal and remembered where I was. Right. Maybe not.

Truthfully, I felt fantastic. Hale and hearty, like a man first starting to see results from a new workout regime.

My reverie was interrupted by a few new pop ups.

Reading through the new notifications, I was happy to see so many skill improvements. I had to suppose that living through a life or death situation would do that to a person. The second notice was what caught my attention, however. Here, at last, were my points. I did not know why it was that my ‘Core’ needed to condense or whatever, but it seemed like I would only be getting my points after it had finished. Duly noted.

I went ahead and pulled up my character screen once more.

I scratched at my beard in thought. There were some differences since the last time I had looked at this. Naturally, I had slept since then, so spotting them was not so easy. Obviously, I had gained a core ‘layer’. Had it not originally said ‘level’? I was not certain anymore. But if that were the case, then why make the change? Was it adapting to my own understanding of the workings of this place? It was possible.

The next thing that jumped out at me were my stats, which appeared to have stabilized now, and I could tell some difference. Physically at least. Nothing absurd, mind you. I just felt… less like an out of shape slug. The mental changes where harder to quantify. Wisdom was supposed to mean that I could use the information at hand more efficiently. Somehow. And charisma? I mentally shrugged. At least I now had some more stat points to play with.

Pressing the notice, I pulled up the stat point distribution page. It looked much the same as before with the little pluses and the grayed out minuses. Thinking it over briefly, I decided that my original plan for my stats seemed to still be good enough. Maximize survivability. So, I put another point into agility and toughness. Then, once again, I put a point into wisdom. My idea was to bring it up to the level of my intelligence. After that, I would keep them even with each other. Probably. I still needed to know which of them was going to be the most useful to me in the long run. As for charisma… I figured trying to get it up to ten or so would be nice. Hitting the ‘Confirm’ button, I brought my screen back up.

I ran my fingers through my hair in confusion. What was going on? I was certain that my stats had not looked this way the last time I had assigned them. It was like my stat page was being designed and redesigned seemingly at whim. Why were there little pluses next to my stats now instead of just showing what the stat should be? Or even the little arrows from before? It just made no sense.

Moreover, why did I only now feel the stat differences in the choices I had made days ago? Did I have to go up in level for my stat changes to go into effect? What a bizarre way of doing things.

Then again… there was a certain logic to it, now that I thought about it. Why would you suddenly become stronger just because you caused a number to go up by one? Something needed to happen in order for those changes to occur. I had to suppose, for now, that Core Layer ‘condensation’ — whatever that meant — was the catalyst. I did know one thing though, I felt absolutely nothing from putting points into my stats just now.

Seeing motion out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Jax finally beginning to stir. He had gone through some changes, as well, during our slumber. For one, his hair had grown out about an inch. It now looked like a burr haircut that was in the late stages of being functional, and now that there was some length to it, I could see that it was really quite shockingly red, almost crimson in color. You would have to go to a parlor for a dye job to get a red like that back home. Besides the hair, I could see that he looked leaner, somehow. The man had never been even slightly fat, but now? It was hard to put into words. Looking him over, I could see some more definition in his arms. He had mentioned making himself stronger and faster, as I recalled. That must have been it.

He looked around in confusion for a moment before his eyes focused on me. I noticed immediately that his racial charisma bonus had kicked in. The diagonal scar that had previously been the single most defining feature of his face had now receded in prominence. It was still there, certainly, but it was no longer quite so distracting. Plus, his face, just in general, seemed to have evened out somewhat. Before, there was an asymmetrical quality to it. One eye had been slightly lower than the other. Now… it was not yet quite there, but it was like his eye had bent a bit upwards. Like it was slowly crawling along, inching its way up, trying to get back into place.

He had an expression of surprise on his face as he opened his mouth to say something, but then his head took on that characteristic tilt of his indicating he was listening to his notices. I decided I would leave him to it. I still needed to choose a new skill.

I knew already what I needed to get. If the last day had taught me anything, it was that I was not going to last long if I could not efficiently recover from my injuries. This place was just too dangerous. Honestly, I had been lucky to make it this far. Also, and somewhat more importantly, I was pretty sure Jax would kill me if I did not.

How to make the request, though… The skill system in this place was so vague, I needed to be specific with what I wanted.

Murmuring aloud, I began, “I would like to purchase a spell that will heal… the wounds,” I added hastily, “of both myself and Jax.” That sounded good.

Hmm… okay. That’ll do it, alright. I did not like the sound of ‘sacrificing’ life energy, though.

“Is there a healing spell that doesn’t involve life energy?” I asked hopefully.

That was not a ‘no’. Unfortunately, I did not think that I could afford the luxury of holding out for a better spell.

Frowning, I looked over at my companion, “Jax, I’m looking at a spell that I can use to induce regeneration, but it would cost life energy. What do you think?”

“…an’ put some more in strength, I be thinkin’.” He looked over at me, “What’s that, lad?”

I noticed, now that I was paying attention to him speak, that his voice seemed to have cleared up a bit. He had always had a gruff quality to his speech that I had gotten so used to that I mostly ignored it. Now, it was like he had finally dislodged a chronic bit of phlegm from his throat, and I was able to hear what he sounded like for the first time. His voice was… not quite a clear tenor. Maybe opaque?

“That healing spell we were talking about? I can get one, but it costs life energy,” I repeated for him.

“Life energy?”

I nodded, “Yeah, it says it’s what keeps people… or I guess all living things alive. You get it from food.”

He frowned at that, “I do nay like the sound o’ you starvin’ yerself ta keep us from bleedin’ out.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I chuckled.

He laid back to stare at the ceiling. Thinking aloud, he said, “Mayhaps… there be sommat I can get to help.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged into the ground, “I dunno. Last time, you got a skill ter go with mine, did ye nay?”

I nodded slowly. Maybe that kind of thing was a pattern for my class. One person’s limitations mitigated by the other’s. Complementary skills. I kind of liked the sound of it, to be honest.

“Alright, go ahead then.”

So saying, I accepted my new skill.

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