Chapter 14 - To Put a Friend to Rest

  “It’s down this way,” said Spinny, as they stole down the tight hallways of the labyrinth. Brinn was amazed at how well her trick of running the thread behind her seemed to be working. She’d weighed it down with stone or brick every few hundred yards, and they’d have to hope that’d be enough to keep it from shifting too far when it got pulled taught. She never let the yarn out of her sight, and Brinn decided he would endeavor to do the same.

  “I had come across it early yesterday—or was it this morning? I’ve no idea what time it is, to be honest, lad; and I imagine you ‘aven’t either.”

  “I don’t even know how many nights it’s been since we got here, Spins,” answered Brinn. He thought these halls were a bit different. That thin, ambient light was a little brighter, and some of them were even lit by torchlight or brazier. He wondered if some poor creature of the labyrinth had to tend the flames, or if they burnt on, surviving in spite the dark and the horror.

  “Four, I think. Or five. Three?” she mused. Her fingers kept repeating that hooking motion. Brinn had tried to convince her several times now to do some knitting—or, crochet, she said it was called. He’d gotten quite an earful about the two arts being quite different. She’d even insulted his intelligence. How was he to know that a knitting needle would be long and pointed, rather than hooked?—but she didn’t do it. The yarn she had left was too valuable, she’d said.

  “So,” he said. “Tell me about what happened after…after, well, y’know.” After they’d been separated. After their lives—what meager lives adventurers got to live, at least. Yet, Spinny didn’t answer. Not immediately.

  They kept their pace for some time. She’d used a standard maze exploration technique used by adventurers—keep to the left, always, and straight when it isn’t available. Without the use of the yarn—and with the need to weigh the yarn down every so many paces—it had been slow going. But while Brinn had been running, dying, fighting, and talking; Spinny and Greta had been dominating the shifting halls. Forcing reality upon them one length of thread at a time. At first a part of him had been a little bit jealous—if they’d had the time for all of this, they must not have been in as much constant danger as he, Alexander, and Favel had been. He dashed those thought from his mind as much as he could when he remembered Spinny’s fate. A fate that was at least somewhat his fault. No matter what Spins had to say about it.

  They passed under arches, and by something that surprised Brinn—a room, much like all of the others—hard, cool stonework lit the orange-yellow of firelight. Brinn missed the sunlight. The light drew his eye to discarded gears, scorch marks, and darts.

  “Traps?” Brinn muttered, brow raised. “I haven’t seen any traps since the first chamber.”

  “Aye?” said Spinny. “Spent most of our first day ‘ere disarming traps, me and Greta. It was as if the whole maze was loaded to the gills with machines trying to kill us.”

  This made Brinn shudder. Of all the things in adventuring, Brinn was most worried about traps. He could never wrap his head around the mechanisms of the “simple” ones—pressure plates, dart shooting mechanisms, et cetera—and the ones he did understand were alchemical in nature.

  There was nothing an alchemist wanted to deal with less than a trap set by another alchemist. They were paranoid by nature, but moreover, every alchemist had a single thing in common: they were, to the last, completely up their own arse. Brinn was no exception, and he knew as much. Any trap set by an alchemist was an over-engineered spectacle of narcissism. A spectacle of narcissism just as likely to collapse on its creator well before it could be used for its intended purpose. So many of them were just spiteful, what was the point in trapping a room to protect it if you planned on bringing the entire thing down not heir heads in the process?

  Thankfully in his experience, such traps were relatively rare. Most alchemists had better things to do than rig things to blow in crusty old tombs. Most traps were simple, and thus, totally out of his own humble expertise. That was why someone like Spinny was important to any group that wanted to make it out of a place like this alive. He thought about the stories of his youth, of lone adventurers, stoic heroes, bursting through places like this on your own.

  Finally, Spinny’s pace began to slow. The thread rounded a corner in a distance, and as they turned it, a sense of eerie familiarity fell over Brinn. Spinny was right. This was the same hall he’d left earlier. His magical senses could see the orange red mana seeping through the door from the end of the hall. His hands started to shake. He felt his heartbeat start to spike, but he schooled his thoughts.

  It’s not my fault, he repeated in his head. Like a mantra. Like it would save him. He knew it wasn’t true.

  “He was a friend, you know,” said Spinny. It took a minute for him to realize who she meant.

  “Alexander?” he asked. It was good to be sure.

  “Aye. Not just a business partner. My own son was of the order, you know. Alexander recruited him himself,” the memory seemed to bring some warmth to the hard lines of her face. Brinn hadn’t seen that for some time now. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed it.

  Brinn blinked. The Order of Eternal Light—the group of knights and soldiers that made up Alexander’s holy order—was a split-off from the church. The kind of people who decided that slaying the undead was more important than honoring their god. That was the practical choice, of course, Brinn could see that. But aside from Alexander, other members of the order he had met had always struck him as a little bit fanatical.

  “Is that how you met?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, as they finally neared the door. “We go back much farther than that. I only mean to say that we were close.”

  “I…see,” he said. He wasn’t sure why, but he got the feeling that Spinny didn’t want to elaborate further.

  He reached for the knob, braced himself, and opened the door.

  The heat him in a wave. It made him think of checking on bread in an oven, yet the feeling was wrong. It was as if his body knew that the amount of heat mana in this place was unnatural. Absurd, even. His mind flashed again to the memories of Favel he’d felt when he’d first woke in the crater. As the door opened into the room it revealed an odd sight—the fallout looked much the same. A writhing mass of glowing orange and red, writhing and stirring in the air. But the overall area had shrunk. Gnarled brown vines had began to grow in the ashes—the ashes.

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  Brinn didn’t know what he’d expected, but there was a lot more ash than there had initially been. The magical fallout had eaten away at the crater itself. Idly, he thought about just how much heat it must take to make stone burn like this. He wondered if it was even possible at all.

  As they entered the room, and reached the lip of the crater, Spinny only stared on in silence.

  “This is where it happened,” he said, and waved his hands vaguely towards the epicenter of the crater.

  “Aye,” she said. Brinn had never really thought about how often she said that. He was surprised how many emotions you could convey, with a simple affirmation. Such was the ways of the gnomish, to the north. He scans the ashes with his eyes, looking for a sign of Alexander’s armor, or what—if anything—might remain of it. He thought he made out a silvery glint in the distance. It didn’t matter. He had to try. This was his penance.

  It wasn’t all bad, though. The plants around the edges weren’t ones he immediately recognized—but considering the circumstances, he thought they were likely the type that only grew in mana rich, ash-heavy environments. A forest burnt with dragon-fire—or a crater, made by war magic. The sort of things he could make a mana brew from, get these shakes dealt with. If only he had his vials.

  “Spins? You happen to have any potions on you?” he asked. He didn’t expect much. He’d given everyone in the party a few potions when they’d first entered, but it was nothing like the usual stock. He’d needed to use his reserves of life mana ingredients as weapons. There hadn’t been enough for their usual kit. But he only needed a single empty vial.

  “No, lad, I used the last of them ages ago. After—“ she paused for a moment, breath hitching. “After Greta. In any case, it, er, broke.”

  “And the other vials?” he asked, dreading the inevitable answer. Adventurers, he had come to realize, had a bad habit of throwing their potions on the ground when they were done drinking them. He understood that people were busy in the middle of a fight, but glass didn’t grow on trees. Except in the southern wastes, but no one wanted to go there. He got to work cutting at the gnarled brown vines in front of him. At closer look, he realized his assumption was right—the plants had heat mana coursing through them. He wondered if they’d even last outside of this place, or if they’d burn themselves up with their own heat.

  “Broken.”

  Brinn nodded, then a thought occurred to him. The gnome had always been fond of a little drink.

  “Have you got anything left in your flask?”

  “Lad,” she said. There was an edge to her voice.

  “You can have it back when I’m done with it! It’ll just, uh, taste a little odd, that’s all.”

  She took a step back, as if he was going to try and snatch the flask off of her belt. Whiskey wouldn’t be an ideal choice for brewing, but an alcohol was an alcohol.

  “I need the mana, Spins. You know I’ll be of more use to you with it anyways,” he continued, when she didn’t answer.

  “Fine,” she said, and tossed him the flask with a glare. He knew she would. She’d always done her best by him, even when it came to a little inconvenience like wasted liquor.

  He got to work immediately, processing the plant into a powder as best he could with his ingredients kit. He mixed the powder into the bottle, and began to feed some mana into it, slowly. Carefully. It felt good to be finally making a potion again. It felt like it had been weeks, but it couldn’t have been more than two days by now. He thought about the night he’d spent resting with Alexander and Favel. He wondered what they thought about all of this. Had their deaths been his fault? Alexander would never admit it, but Favel would tell him in a second.

  They took some time to rest, but they dared not tarry long. Brinn had come here for a reason, and then he was going to get out of this place. Spinny finally worked up to telling Brinn more about her time with Greta, but he’d frankly been surprised to find it underwhelming. They’d spent several days dodging and disarming traps, fighting the occasional undead—but until the painting of Brinn had shown up in the chamber they’d been sleeping in, very little had happened. The most interesting part was all of the traps. He’d meant what he said. He hadn’t seen a single mechanical trap since they’d first entered this place, before the party had been split up. Why was that? Why would only the one person who knew how to deal with traps be lead to the traps? Why would the labyrinth lead them towards what would be easier for them? Brinn didn’t have an answer.

  He only had a task. He was going to have to press through the fallout, and find what little of Alexander he could. Maybe even something of Favel. He was going to bury them, if he could, under something other than ashes and regret this time.

  This is going to hurt, he thought. He hesitated in the moment just before—and stepped into the crater.

  Nothing happened. Surprised, he pressed on a little further, and the mana stirred around him, beginning to eat some at his skin.

  “Lad?” called Spinny, a ways away. “Yer just goin’ to walk into it unprotected?”

  “I was going to try to ward it off with some ingredients but, I’m not sure I need to.” He said.

  “Well, be careful,” she said, and the idea of the old gnome nagging him about his safety brought a grin to his face. The grin disappeared when he remembered what he was meant to be doing. He pressed further into the crater, knee deep in ash, the searing mana shifting and licking at his exposed skin. He even felt his clothes begin to heat, but somehow, despite all of this, it still didn’t burn him. The mana crucible event had really done a number on him. Just how much heat could he take without permanent damage?

  Yet as he reached what he thought was the epicenter of it all—he began to panic. He could see nothing in the ashes around him. Whatever glinting metal he’d seen before in the ashes below was lost to him, and all he had in front of him now was a sea of black, grey, and white. He began to dig downwards with his arms, reaching deep into the ash, hoping beyond hope that something was still left of his dead friend—and something brushed against the tips of his fingers. He dived on it, the soot getting on his face, into his eyes, but he didn’t care. The heat was beginning to eat at his skin, finally. He pulled whatever it was he’d gotten free up, expecting a helmet or perhaps the knight’s breastplate—but instead, he was surprised to find a single gauntlet.

  It was silver, riveted, and finely crafted, but Brinn couldn’t make out much in the glowing orange light. His lungs were burning now, from the inside, much worse than the feeling on his skin, and he started to make his thrashing way through the ashes once again back towards Spinny at the epicenter of the crater. He didn’t think he would find anything of Favel, here—but he was beginning to expect, between the memories and his newfound affinity to fire, he had brought a piece of Fe avel with him. That would have to be enough.

  Finally, with only a few moments where he fell onto his face in the soot and ash, he reached the edge of the crater once again. He had expected to feel exhausted, and he was somber despite the moment—but he had to admit, with the mana sickness gone, he felt surprisingly alright. His skin still stung with irritation. He’d have to get this soot off of himself somehow.

  He looked down on his quarry with sad eyes. He wasn’t going to get to bury them. He wasn’t sure there was anything else of them left. But at least he could take a part of Alexander on with him. The gauntlet was silver, not steel like the rest of Alexander’s armor as Brinn had first assumed it would be. He was astonished to find it was covered with a series of alchemical sigils for controlling the flow of mana.

  “What in the hell had Alexander needed all of this for?” he wondered aloud.

  “What did you find?”

  “A gauntlet,” he said. “Somehow it survived even when the rest of his armor had been eaten away. But it’s…strange. I’ve never noticed all of this before…”

  “He kept it wrapped in cloth,” said Spinny, and Brinn realized she was right. Alexander had normally worn a length of cloth aroudn his left gauntlet, wrapped several times.

  “What was it for?” he asked. He tried rubbing some of the soot and ash off of his arms as he sat down, as far from the mana as he could get without leaving the room. Spinny came over, and joined him.

  “That, lad, is a long story, that I’ll have to save for when we’re on our way,” she said. She was right. He had spent enough time on this, and ultimately for sentimental reasons. They had to get moving.