Chapter 30: Chapter 30 – The Tongue-Flower Two Step

Chapter 30 - The Tongue-Flower Two Step

When I finally heard the steady tinkling of the fountain, I almost teared up. It is an amazingly stressful thing to try to make your way anywhere in pitch darkness, much less down a slick, moss-covered slope. I was just glad that there were walls to guide me, despite certain prior incidents.

Damned Faen. When the revolution came, they would be the first against the wall!

Sourly, I wondered how exactly I would even go about that. What even were they? Some kind of fairies? Ghosts? Whatever they were, they did not seem to have any sort of physical bodies, but they could affect the material world just fine. Something had blown in my ear.

Distractedly, I rubbed at it with my still throbbing hand. I did not think it was broken, but I had certainly given it a good whack earlier. And added to my still cramped up calf muscle, I was having just a splendid day.

Speaking of cramps… The fountain was calling to me. I had foolishly attracted the attention of a certain oscillating tongue-monster a bit ago, and now I was paying the price. Luckily, the smaller thorns seemed to have a lesser version of the poison, or else I would probably have been totally incapacitated. Or maybe they just could not inject as much. They were smaller, after all. That made sense. Swinging my foot in a wide arc in front of me to check for obstacles, I slowly shuffle-stepped my way towards it. We had left Jax in this room earlier, and I did not want to trip over him in my haste to drink. Of course, I was assuming he was still in here.

“Jax!” I whisper-shouted. “Are you awake yet, buddy?” Surely, he must be by now, I figured. I had been down here for ages. And what in the Lady’s name had happened to Hess? I had lost sight of her back when she had gone to light the wall sconces in the plant pit. I hoped nothing bad had happened to her. Or Jax.

I did not run into him in the dark before I hit the fountain. Of course, I was kind of trying to avoid him, so that tracked. He should be okay. Or alive, at the very least. No respawn timer had appeared, after all. Putting all of that from my mind, I plunged my head into the cool, crisp waters, and drank deeply. As that fresh-roasted flavor hit my tongue, my leg finally relaxed, and I slumped to the floor in the bliss that comes in the release from pain. Scrubbing at my face with my hands, I quickly ran them up through my hair and took a deep breath, seemingly renewed in life.

Blinking water from my eyes, it took me a moment to realize that I could see. Looking around briefly in confusion, I quickly zeroed in on a new light source. From the flickering, it seemed to be coming from a torch, and more importantly, it was being carried toward me. “Hess?” I called. “That you?”

“Of course it’s me, Little Moist-Maker,” she called back. “Who else would it be?”

My expression of relief died at the new nickname. “Oh, come on!” I shouted. “I was trying! You don’t have to rub it in!”

“Yes, I do,” she said brightly, as she stepped into the room. “It’s fun!” Laughing only to herself, she dropped a bundle of straight-ish branches on the ground, and then walked over to me where she deposited Jax’s still unconscious form. I had not even noticed that she had been carrying him.

Heaving a sigh, I decided to just let it go. She could tease me if she wanted to. She was right, after all. I was garbage at flirting. “Where have you been, anyway? I must have waited up there for hours!” I said, grumpily.

She snorted, “Hours, huh? Try ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes?!” I exclaimed, incredulously.

“Tops,” she affirmed with an air of finality.

Ten minutes? There was no way! There had been… Plus, there was… And I had waited…

“Anyway, my torch went out again,” she explained with an oddly aloof demeanor, interrupting my internal sputtering. “So I figured I’d go get a new one and grab a few spares while I was there. I realized it was silly to come down with just the one at a time.” She took a moment to sigh in regret, “It’s a shame we don’t have any lard or wicks for them. They would last much longer that way.”

Still glaring at her suspiciously with my arms crossed across my chest, I finally closed my eyes and sighed. So that was why our torches had looked so janky. In the movies, torches were these big-ass clubs with a nice bright fire perched on the end. Ours had just been sticks that struggled to maintain something that resembled a flame. If the wood had not been so dry, they probably would not have worked at all.

In any case, she was right. We could certainly use some more of the things. I knew that I could have used one about… well, it would have been about five minutes ago, if I were to believe Hess. And I was not sure that I did.

“Why did you decide to carry Jax with you,” I asked curiously, letting my arms fall.

She frowned in the dim light, “It was the funniest thing. When I came down here, he was thrashing around and moaning in his torpor. Almost like he was having a bad dream.”

I glanced down at him quickly. He seemed quite tranquil now, and for all that I could see, he still had the look of someone barely alive. “Is that… not normal?” I asked slowly.

She shook her head, “I’ve never seen it before. Anyway, when I went to check on him, he settled down, so I left him to go light the sconces. But then, on the way back, he was doing it again. By that point, though, my torch was about to die, so I grabbed him up, and after a few seconds, he calmed down again.” She glanced at me, “I don’t know how, but I think he can sense when we aren’t nearby. Must not like it.”

My eyebrows bunched together slightly. That was… plausible, I supposed. But, going from the timing she had described…

“So,” she continued, before the thought had finished forming, “Are the sconces out again? Is that why you’re down here?”

“They are. And no. Not exactly,” I replied. A lot had happened since I had seen her last, ten minutes or no. Still, some of it was more important than others, so I decided to start there.

 

“What do you mean, ‘it explodes the sconces out’?” Hess was sitting cross-legged in front of me, chewing on a knuckle as she listened to my tale.

“With the mucus it secretes,” I explained. “It drips onto the fire, and there’s like this fwump sort of sound. Poof. Fire goes out.” I was gesticulating a bit at this point. No point in talking about explosions if you are not throwing your arms around.

“Are you sure it’s not just dowsing the flames?” she asked doubtfully. “Like with water?”

“Pretty sure,” I replied. “Go see for yourself. There’s lots of smaller flowers on the wall on either side.”

Her eyes lit up at the suggestion, like a small child given permission to play with fire crackers, “I think I just may.”

A few minutes later, we were standing in the upper hallway. It was an arbitrary choice, for the most part, though there was a component of hesitation in potentially detonating a part of that monster where it might get at us, domain restrictions or no. And really, we were not sure if these wall flowers were a part of the main plant or just off-shoots.

In any case, Hess had selected a nice juicy looking flower for her experiment — against my recommendations. I knew that if whatever that mucus was did react to fire, it was not going to matter how much of it there was. Moreover, going big was a sure recipe for sadness. So, I was standing quite a ways back and holding my own torch. By that stage, I had resolved to make it the standard operating procedure to have multiple light sources in all dark areas, and if that flower did what I was expecting, I wanted to at least be able to see afterward.

“You ready?” Hess called.

“Yup,” I replied, quickly wedging the torch between my knees so that I could cover my ears. Explosions are loud, and we were in a narrow stone hallway. I am often a foolish man, particularly in interpersonal relationships, but when it came to stuff like this, I was someone to listen to.

Hess, unfortunately, had decided not to. Not only was she not covering her ears, she had elected to stand almost directly in front of the flower when she pushed her torch forward. The reaction was instantaneous. The second the flame made contact with the flower, there was a pow, and the front half of her torch was nearly vaporized. Smoking wood chips flew everywhere, ricocheting off of walls and pinging to the floor. Hess had no time to react. She just stood there, her broken torch handle dangling from her fingers, presumably in shock.

Running forward to check on her, I called out, “Are you okay?” She did not reply, her attention focused on the short stub of a stick left in her hand. I could see that she was covered in splinters and her vest had ripped a bit, but she seemed otherwise unharmed. I heaved a sigh of relief. From that explosion, I was worried it might have blown her fingers off, if not worse. Fortunately, her Toughness was high enough to protect her from the worst of it. “Uh… Hess?” I waved my hand in front of her face. “Can you hear me? I told you it would be loud.”

Hess turned to face me, finally, “What? I can’t hear you. There’s this weird ringing in my ears. That was really loud!”

“Y-yes…” I nodded. “Give it a minute. It should come back after a while.”

“What?”

 

After Hess’ little misfortune, we had elected to return to the sunlight to discuss options. It was wasteful, after all, to have long talks down in the tunnels, despite the abundance of firewood, so we had backtracked and found a nice spot in the shade. Also, and somewhat more importantly, Hess needed to do some personal grooming. Glancing at the sun, I decided that it was probably around four to five o’clock in the afternoon by that point, although something about that felt a bit off. Precisely what, I could not say. In any case, we probably had time for one more gambit before our time ran out. Two at most. After that, we would either have to retreat to the field, hoping that the scarecrows would go away, or seal ourselves in the underground.

As I allowed my gaze to settle back to the ground, my eyes briefly rested on Jax. Right now, he was sprawled haphazardly, face down where Hess had dropped him. I smirked at the continued lack of attention she paid the sleeping man. She had been dragging him around with the same sort of care that a child might with a rag doll, but I elected not to complain about it. Despite the extreme differences in our physical abilities, the woman seemed outright resentful in being asked to actually use it to our benefit. But I could handle that. Her half-ass was still quite a bit better than my whole-ass when it came to carrying dead weight.

“So what do you think?” Hess asked me, her attention on the multitude of splinters embedded in her flesh. She looked kind of like a kelthic cactus right now, but I was not so low as to rub it in. Unless, of course, she decided to whip out another new nickname for me. Then all bets were off! “We could try to go at the monster with torches, but…” she trailed off, letting the thought go unfinished.

But I knew where she going with it. Given the explosion we had just witnessed, it was likely that we would end up hurting ourselves worse than the plant. Plus, just supplying ourselves with lit torches would be quite a challenge all by itself. It was like trying to fight a dynamite-monster in melee with a matchbook. “Could we make some bows and arrows, do you think?” I said, speculating. If we could get some range on it, that would solve the problem all by itself.

“Not with the wood here,” Hess replied. Taking a branch in hand, she snapped it in half, saying, “It’s far too dry.”

“What about the wood by the clearing’s edge?” I asked.

“If we could find a sapling, that would be perfect,” she said. “I have no idea what kind of trees those are, but they are ridiculously hard, so they should be excellent… It would take a lot of time, though. For one thing, it would take me another hour or two just to push through to the tree line, to say nothing about carving the thing. And I don’t remember seeing any saplings. Do you?”

I shook my head, “No. But I wasn’t looking for any either. Does it have to be a sapling?”

Taking a moment to work a splinter out of her elbow, she said, “Technically, no. Just new growth. It would have to be about… oh, three… four cubits, at least. Good and straight. And no knots in it.”

Cubits… right. Doing some mental math, I worked that out to be about four and a half to six feet. It was probable that we would eventually find something that would foot the bill. There were a lot of trees out there, after all. But she was right. That would take way too long.

“Okay, let’s call that plan B, then,” I said, regretfully. It would have been really nice to get some kind of weapon for myself, finally. True, I had not shot a bow since my days at camp as a child, but I knew the basics. And I would like to at least claim to have contributed to our fighting power, if only a little.

We both sat in silence for a few minutes after that, just thinking. Or I was. Hess was still picking at herself.

“What if we just build a bonfire in the hallway, and throw logs at it?” Hess suggested absently.

Slowly, I nodded. The idea had some merit. It was a quick solution, it handled the ranged component just fine, and by having a ready fire, the ammunition problem was a non-issue. However… “We’d smoke ourselves out before we could kill it,” I objected. “We’d have to flee to get to clear air. Then wait for the fire to go out, wait for the smoke to clear the tunnels, rebuild the fire…”

“Alright, alright,” she interrupted me. “Point made.” She had finished with most of the splinters, and was now looking at the rip in her vest with a frown. The bottom half of it was now rent and flapping, making her vest little more than a sports bra with some extra loose fabric. Sighing, she said, “’Snails. At this rate, I’ll be running around naked by sundown.”

I chuckled. “You’re right. I don’t think we have a full outfit between us. Who knew Dungeoneering would be so hard on clothes?”

There was a pause in the conversation then, where we just sat there lightly smiling at one another, and slowly, it dawned on me what she had just implied. That had been a setup. And I had missed it completely. Crap…

“And there he is…” Hess said with a smile, following my expression.

I sighed, “Come on… we were making combat plans! You can’t expect me to think about that and flirt at the same time!”

“Why not?” she asked innocently.

“It’s a guy thing,” I explained. “Or maybe it’s just me, but I can’t think about more than one thing at a time. Especially sex stuff.”

“So if I were to do something like…” she began, but I cut in.

“No!” Looking away hurriedly, I said, “Honestly, if you do much of anything at all, my brain will switch over, and we won’t get anything done.”

Slowly, her grin grew, turning almost bestial, “Anything?” She started to crawl toward me, apparently considering the various possibilities for her coming torment, but then suddenly, she started to shiver again and fell forward.

“Uh… Hess?” I asked, in mild concern… both for myself and for her.

“’Stits…” she muttered into the dirt. “It’s getting stronger.”

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“What is?” I asked, helping her sit.

She took a few breaths, trying to calm down, before replying, “Your aura. I think.”

“You think that was from my aura?” I said incredulously, taking a few steps back and squatting down so as not to be looking down at her. “But it barely does anything.”

“I’m not so sure,” she said, her eyes following me. “It’s been since this morning that you bought it. And you said that it grows over time. Well… it’s grown.”

I rubbed at my knees absently, thinking. “Okay… I guess… But wait, it’s not like you’re falling over every few seconds, so clearly there’s something else going on.”

She nodded slowly, thinking it over. But then her eyebrow quirked, and affecting a coy smile, she said, “Yes, I suppose there must be.”

I leaned forward in anticipation, but it seemed that she was intent on leaving me hanging on that one. “And you’re not going to tell me what that is?”

“I have a suspicion,” she said quickly. “But if I’m right, then no. I’m not.”

I huffed out a frustrated grunt at that. “Hess, it’s my skill. Don’t you think I might need to know how the thing works?”

“You’ll figure it out,” she assured me. “But for now, I’m going to leave you in suspense. It’s more fun that way.”

“Only for you!” I complained.

“Exactly!” she smiled and poked me on the forehead. “Now, switch your brain back. We need to figure out this plant.”

“Can’t you give me a hint?” I asked.

“Nope,” she said playfully. “Plant!”

Seeing that this was going nowhere, I flopped onto my back, silently bemoaning my lot in life and the people I had to deal with. Letting my head fall to the side, my eyes rested on the large pile of wood that Jax and I had assembled earlier. Slowly, an idea began to germinate.

 

“This is a stupid idea,” I groused.

“Why didn’t you say that two hours ago?” Hess replied. “And besides, it was your idea!”

“I’m aware of that!” I snapped. “And I did say that two hours ago. I just wasn’t expecting you to go along with it.”

“It’ll work,” she reassured me. “Besides the hard part is already over.”

That was certainly true. The last two hours had been a back-breaking, nerve-wracking mess. Mainly because the whole thing had to be executed without the monster noticing, so we had to operate in total darkness and communicate in the barest of whispers. But we had done it. Somehow.

“Enough dallying. I’m going,” Hess announced, hefting a large handful of already lit torches. “You know the signal?”

“Naturally,” I said, a wry grin creeping onto my face.

“Good,” she pursed her lips for a moment. “Don’t forget your poison resistance before you go. With any luck, you won’t need it, but… you never know.”

I nodded solemnly. It was not the most complex of plans, but it could go tits up in a hurry. Casting a surreptitious glance at Jax’s still form, I internally groaned at what we were about to do. This would be so much easier if he were awake to help out, but it was apparently not to be. It was well past the time when he should have woken up, but he was still out. If this went on much longer, I was going to start getting seriously concerned. But I did not have time for that now.

We shared a long look, then, but there was nothing more to say. We knew what to do. So, with that, she gave me a reassuring smile, turned, and headed down. I took a deep breath and held it for a moment, trying to steel my nerves. This would be our third and hopefully final encounter with the Tongue-Flower — the official name we had dubbed it with — and I was all too glad of that. The cards were in play, now. I just had to hope that they fell like we wanted them to.

Turning, I took a quick swallow of the provided resistance buff water, hefted my own torch, and headed up the left hallway. As I walked, I absently wiped my sweaty palms on my already filthy pants. Casting a glance down at them, I noted that they were covered in soot and dirt and sporting more than a few holes. Hess was right, the last couple of days had not been the kindest to our attire, but they were still hanging in there. I sighed. I had only owned them for a little over a week, and they were already so beat up that I was going to need to toss them. Idly, I wondered if this world had self-repairing enchantments or the like. With how hard it was on a person’s wardrobe, I certainly hoped so. Otherwise, I was going to need to carry around a steamer trunk just for spares.

I shook my head. My mind was wandering to inconsequential things as I headed to battle. I wondered if that kind of thing happened to other people. Whether it was some trait of the human mind, that it would seek to comfort itself by thinking of little things in an effort not to think of the big ones. I laughed then. This probably was not even the boss of the Dungeon. We were just trying to get through a secret passage, and here I was waxing eloquent on the human condition, like I was some grizzled Vietnam veteran. I just hoped that this was all worth it.

Soon enough, I came to the domain line and stopped. I could not tell yet if Hess was in position, as I could not exactly see down into the room below. For one, I was blinded by the light of my own torch. For another, the grating was more than a little obscured at the moment.

I closed my eyes and rubbed at my temple. This was such a bad idea. And the more I thought about it, the more dumb it was sounding. But that was all the time I had left for second thoughts. Hess was starting.

As the sconces flared to life below, she gave a bellow and hurled one of her torches at the largest flower she could target. Or that is what I assumed. I could not actually see that part from where I was standing. But I certainly heard the result.

The THOOM that arose from her torch coming into contact with that much mucus all at once caused the hallway I was standing in to rock and dust to fall from the ceiling. My torch did not like that either, and it started to sputter. Shit! Frantically, I began nursing the thing back to life. Why had I not brought two? Just in case? Ugh… Finally, the thing stabilized just in time for the monster’s opening salvo, and I looked up as a shower of giant thorns clanged against the grating. Only a few made it through, and those that did clattered about the walls and ceiling before falling harmlessly down. We had seen enough of the Tongue-Flower to know it always liked to start like that. Probably, it figured that it was a good way to soften its prey up before closing for the kill. And it was right.

But we were ready for it, and that was my signal to move.

Quickly, I hurried forward, keeping to the edge of the wall and trying to remain as quiet as possible. With Hess down there running interference, it was probably unnecessary, but I did not want to take any chances. Holding my torch high, I began to carefully walk along the wall-edge of the grating. With all of the dry grass and drier wood that we had stacked in here, this area was now a literal tinder box. A stray spark was all I needed.

I had to be careful. If this was to work properly, the whole thing needed to go up at roughly the same time. If the Tongue-Flower caught on too soon, it could disrupt the wood pile all too easily, and dump it down into the water. So, I had to light this thing from back to front. Otherwise, the fire could spread too slowly, and I would be trapped on one side, unable to help it along. Unfortunately, that also meant that I was going to be fleeing from a spreading fire as I was lighting it along a floor with literal holes in it.

By the Three, this is such a bad idea.

As if on cue, right as I neared the mid-point, another explosion rocked the room below. Struggling to maintain my balance, my foot twisted, and my left leg slipped through the grate. As I went down, the metal scrapped the whole way up my shin, and I gritted my teeth at getting frogged across the entirety of my lower leg. Fortunately, I caught myself before I could go much further, or else I would be in real trouble. As I maneuvered myself back into a standing position, I risked a glance down below to survey the situation.

Hess was down in front of the thing, still near the hallway, wielding two of her remaining torches like a berserker. She was singing some kind of off-key, yet oddly appropriate bar ballad about a woman, named Petunia, getting her petals ‘plucked’ as she weaved and ducked under loops of vines and thorned lashes the monster was sending her way. Whatever sort of intelligence the Tongue-Flower had, it was enough for it to realize that it needed to keep certain parts of itself well away from those flaming sticks and the insane crooning woman that was swinging them around. There were a couple of chewed up holes in it already from the earlier explosions, and it seemed to be taking no chances.

Just then, several things happened all at once. A particularly large vine was descending toward Hess, probably about the girth of a man’s thigh, and she skipped to the side, swinging her torch at it for all she was worth, and screaming, “Head!” I knew from her explanation of the ability that it would not work without her being slop-assed drunk. Plus, she was swinging at a plant vine, not a person’s head. So, in the moment, she was probably just doing it out of reflex. It should have been a particularly unwise move. The mass difference alone meant that her little dry stick should have shattered into a hundred pieces. However, when the two made contact, I felt something. In the space of time it takes for a person to snap their fingers, a pulse of energy zipped down from me to Hess, and my heart seemed to skip a beat. In that moment, somehow the outcome changed. The flame of the torch crashed against the descending vine and zipped around the width of it for an instant. And suddenly… it was simply not attached anymore.

There was a pause in the battle then, as the massive vine splashed to the floor, and Hess looked down at her now shattered weapon. As if neither plant nor woman could understand what had just happened. And then Hess started shivering and twitching, and slowly an obscene laughter started bubbling up through her chest. Throwing her head back, she cackled like she had just gone truly insane. Some sort of energy rushed into her in that moment, and she seemed to almost swell with newfound power. Crouching down, she launched herself at the Tongue-Flower, fists and flame flying in a mad display of carnage, and pulped bits of plant fiber started to spray into the air.

The monster was not about to take that lying down though, and it tensed. Seeing the motion, my eyes widened. I knew what that meant.

Quickly, I dove over top of the wood pile, and curled into a ball as a new volley of dagger-like thorns tore through the air. One of the darts just grazed my back as it passed by, and I hissed in pain. It was not a terrible wound, and I still had plenty of resistance left. I knew I would feel it later, though. And from the cursing I could now hear coming from below, I had a feeling Hess would be, too.

Unfortunately, in my haste to not get skewered, I was a little too lax with exactly where I was swinging my torch around. The little ball of flame at the end of my stick thudded right against a wadded up piece of dried grass we had wedged into a bundle of wood, and it flared to life. I grimaced when I saw the telltale flicker start to rapidly expand in front of my eyes. Shit. Casting my eyes back and forth between the still young fire and the end of the wood pile, I realized I would never be able to make it there and back before I was cut off. Not without breaking a leg in the grating, anyway. Shit shit shit…

Making a snap decision, I started back the way I had come. Quickly thrusting my torch into the hay as I went, I improvised a new plan as I went. It was a dumb plan to go with our already dumb plan. I was going to have to be lucky as hell, but I could not see any other way to pull this off. At worst, we would just have to hope that a half destroyed monster was good enough. Hess seemed to be doing well down there. Maybe she would have a chance.

“Fucking ‘snails! That hurt, you ‘stit sucking, thrice-damned weed!”

My eyes swiveled down unbidden to see what had caused that latest outburst. Somewhere amidst her rampage, she had lost her torch, and reasonably, she had tried to go back for another. The Tongue-Flower was a tricky bastard, though, and she had been tripped up by one of its vine tendrils. The flowers had come in full force after that. Not without cost, of course. She was still a laughing terror, ripping anything to shreds that came too close, but she was now covered in slime and liberally bleeding from small cuts. Despite the ferocity of her attack, this looked to be a battle of attrition, and Hess was fading. I needed to hurry.

Finally arriving back at the start of the grating, I turned. The fire that I had accidentally set off in the middle of our improvised fuse was already crackling all across the floor and growing fierce. I sighed. I had been right to turn back. Now, all I had to do was set off the rest of it.

Closing my eyes for just a moment, I rattled off a quick prayer. Maeve, Ginna, and Bline… and I guess the other two? Sorry, I don’t know your names. Please, guide my hand. It was a sorry sort of prayer, and I did not even know if these Goddesses were much for responding to them anyway. But it probably would not hurt. Plus, it had seemed to help the last time.

Taking a step back, I cocked my elbow and hurled my torch as hard as I could. As I watched it tumble end over end through the licking flames, I smiled. It was a good throw. The trajectory was perfect, it had a good distance on it, the angle was right… and then it pinged off of the ceiling. Ah, hell… I cringed as it limply fell and flopped onto the wood pile, far short of the distance I had hoped for. Still, new flames started to spread from its position just past the halfway point, so that was something at least. It was better than nothing. And all I was going to get.

As the flames started to grow ever higher, smoke and fumes began to push me back. I could not risk staying any longer. Glowing embers were already starting to drift down into the chamber below. The clock was ticking.

“HESS!” I bellowed at the top of my lungs, “RUN!!!”

I did not know if she had heard me, but there was no way to check now. So, I turned and followed my own advice.

As I pelted back down the hallway, the light of the bonfire-fuse behind me did not follow me far, and I quickly began to seriously regret the lack of a second torch. Soon enough, I was totally blind, and I had to slow as my right arm scraped against the damp wall as it curved along on its way back to the fountain chamber. Pushing off, I angled my descent to try to account for the curve, but it was a tricky thing.

FOOM!

The ground rocked as the first explosion reverberated through the hallway, and I stumbled. But I could not stop. It was only going to get worse. Windmilling to try to stay on my feet, I collided with the wall again, but I was half expecting it and used it to help right myself. I ran on.

Ba-BOOM!

Two of the flowers detonated in close succession. They must have been smaller ones, as I barely felt it in my feet. They were still loud as all hell though. Soon enough, more followed. Small pops and crackles echoed back and forth in the dark stone passages, slowly increasing in frequency. It was like we had set off a bonfire on top of a fireworks factory.

Bla-FWOOM!!

A rain of dirt showered me as I ran, and I coughed as I took in a lungful. Tears ran from my eyes, but I did not stop to clear them. It would not have mattered. I was blind anyway, and besides, my hands were just as dirty as my face. I kept going.

Oh… regrets… so many regrets… Goddesses, what had we been thinking?

As I bounced off of yet another wall, I realized that I could see a faint light coming from around the corner, and with that to guide me, I quickly emerged into the fountain room. Hess was bent in front of it, holding her torch above her head and drinking deeply. She was a mess, covered in still bleeding gashes and pinprick holes and covered in patches of slimy, flower mucus. But when she heard me enter, panting and coughing from my flight, she casually turned to me with a brilliant smile on her face.

“There you are!”

Springing toward me, she grabbed me up into an embrace and without a shred of hesitation, kissed me full on the lips. And despite the imminent situation, my mind totally blanked.

“Donum! Did you see? Did you see it? I never thought…” she paused, and then frowned. “Aww… I think it reset.”

“W-what?” I stammered, but then I shook my head. “Hess! We don’t have time for this! We need to get out of here!”

She snorted, “Bah. We’re all the way back here. There’s no way…”

That was when the shock wave hit us.

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