Chapter One Hundred and Ninety-Four — The Dead on Their Feet
Chapter One Hundred and Ninety-Four — The Dead on Their Feet My arms burned, but I raised my spade anyway and chopped the zombie, then, when that failed to make it turn into so much dust, I raised the tool again and brought it down once more. The shiver that ran through the haft on contact made my hands tremble, and when the zombie finally fell to the side and started to disappear, I couldn’t find the energy to lift my spade again.A hand on my shoulder pulled me back, and I followed without resisting.“Take a breather,” Bastion said.I looked up, blew a wilting, sweat-drenched ear out of my line of sight, then nodded. “Okay,” I said.I didn’t want to stop. I couldn’t. I had to help my friends.My legs were achey, and my arms were beyond sore. It reminded me a bit of some days after gym class, but a whole lot worse.My mana was basically depleted already, and my stamina was in the single digits. The zombies... didn’t seem to care much.I stumbled back just a bit more and looked around, trying to take everything in, lest one of the monsters snuck around my friends and came at me.Buster’s wall had fallen some time ago, so we had backed up, and the huge bun had erected a second that formed with a bit of a curve to it. We were behind that one now. It didn’t do much to stop the leaping zombies, but it was good against all the rest.I saw one of those leaping zombies scurrying across a roof, and almost called out when a bolt smacked it in the chest and sent it tumbling down to the street below and onto the swarm of similar monsters.“Hold!” Momma called. “Nearly done!”That was good news.I imagined that if the monsters didn’t fade away, there would be a pile of them so tall that it would be reaching way above the walls Buster had made.My friends looked haggard. Awen was reloading her crossbow, one bolt at a time now. She’d run out of her prepared strips of bolts a while ago, and had resorted to reusing the few bolts that she could pick off the ground and that weren’t busted. I’d seen her switch to using her hammer, and even flinging shards of glass around, but those seemed to tire her out a lot.Amaryllis was doing a little better. At some point we’d stopped caring about noise, and she started to let loose with barrages of stormy magic. I don’t think she needed to cackle so much while raining down thunder and lightning onto the hordes of enemies before us, but it did keep her in a good mood.Her puppetry was... still a little rough. She couldn’t use the zombies she turned into puppets and attack with her magic at the same time. So she resorted to holding one or two zombies in place while casting from behind them, then moved in to attack with her puppets. It seemed to be working out, but I suspected she’d been running on mana fumes for a while.The zombies were easy to dispatch. I saw Bastion deftly flick the heads of a couple of them with almost lazy strokes of his sword. The problem wasn’t that, it was the number of them.“Front cleared!” Momma shouted.I saw an orange blur move by me, and suddenly the wall had a new hole as Carrot blew through it and started to plow through the zombies on the other side with wild abandon and the occasional happy whoop.Peter appeared in the middle of the zombies without so much as a whisper. I never even saw him move. Then a knife flew around him, slashing through the air at odd angles while trailed by a whipping metallic cord. Where the cord passed, zombies were torn apart.I placed the head of my spade down, and leaned onto it, panting. It was pretty much over, as far as I could tell. The number of monsters coming out of the fog was decreasing, and with the buns there, we didn’t have to fight as hard.“You seem to have done well enough,” Momma said as she moved over. “Buster, keep an eye on the front, would you?”“Mmm,” Buster agreed. He turned around and stomped behind me, towards the front where the three buns had been fighting before.“I think I need a nap,” I said.Momma chuckled. “This floor is a bit of a challenge. But it’s a good lesson to learn. No matter how strong you are individually, you are always fighting with a limited pool of resources. Eventually, you can be whittled down.”“That doesn’t seem to apply to Carrot and Peter and you,” I said.“That’s another lesson,” she said as she pulled my ears up, and started to rub them. I closed my eyes and relaxed.“Oh?” I asked.“No matter how many opponents are sent against some people, they can persevere and push through.”I stood a little taller. “That sounds a bit contrary to what you were saying earlier,” I said.“Hmm, maybe. But in a battle, you sometimes need to assume contrary things. That you can defeat your opponent, and that your opponent is stronger than you.”“That doesn’t seem like a fun way to think,” I said.Momma rubbed my head between my ears. “You might just be a little too peaceful.”“I don’t think there’s such a thing,” I said.“And yet you fought today, still. I think you hold your own contrary thoughts.”I pouted at her, but Momma was wise and older and the pout bounced right off with no effect.“Look at your stats and gains. I’m sure you’ve gotten a few little rewards from this floor.”I nodded. “Is the next floor as hard?”She hummed. “No, not as I recall. This one is uniquely hard. The next challenges are not easier, but they are different. Let me go see with the others, we should be moving on soon.”I watched her go, then picked myself up a bit and dragged myself over to my friends. Awen had found a low wall to sit on, and was leaning against the arch of a doorway. Amaryllis was laying spread-eagle on the dying grass next to her, panting and staring into the grey sky with tangled coils of wire around her.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.“Hey,” I said.“I levelled,” Amaryllis said.“Oh?” I asked. “Good work.” I tried for enthusiasm, but only managed to land somewhere around moderate happiness.I slumped against the base of the wall, one of Awen’s legs rocking next to me, and my own legs atop Amaryllis’. She didn’t even complain, that’s how burnt out she was.Mister Menu had a bunch of things to tell me, and who was I to stop him when he was so excited? “Alright,” I said.Ding! Congratulations, you have dug the graves of twenty-seven (27) ‘Zombies of Newbining’s Ruin, level 10! And Four (4) ‘Zombie Leapers of Newbining,’ level 11! Due to combating as a team your reward is reduced!That was it? It had felt like a lot more than that at the time.I hadn’t levelled up, but it felt as if I was pretty close. At this rate, we’d all be a lot stronger on leaving the dungeon. Just how strong were the buns if they came here to practice often?Mister Menu had more news for me.Congratulations! Through repeated actions your Mad Millinery skill has improved and is now eligible for rank up!Rank D is a free rank!“Yes!” I cheered. Not very hard, but it was the thought that counted. It must have come from taking a few small blows while wearing my turtle hat. Mad Millinery wasn’t levelling very quickly, and I had the impression I was going about it wrong with that skill.New Skill Acquired: TurtlingRank: EThat was perfectly predictable, but it was nice to see.I expected Mister Menu to have more for me, but that was it. A glance at my skill sheet showed a few things nearling level-up, but none of them were at the next rank yet. “That’s disappointing,” I said.Health: 135/140Mana: 12/150Stamina: 14/130I needed an hour or two to rest if I wanted everything to be topped up. More if I wanted to clean myself off at the same time, and judging by how sweaty I was, I definitely needed that.“Alright, come on up lazy butts,” Carrot said as she bounced over. “No resting on your tails all day. We’re not even halfway through this dungeon.”I made some weird grumbly noise of protest, but Carrot was right, so I rolled over and got to my feet before helping Amaryllis up to hers. She started picking up her equipment from the ground, though it wasn’t a very energetic picking-up.“I think we need a bit of time to regain some mana and stamina,” I said.“Well, it’ll take a minute or two to get to the next gate, and then another couple to slot all the keys in.” Carrot raised a hand which held a bunch of rusty keys. “The zombies drop these.”“Oh,” I said. Was that this floor’s puzzle? So, there was no getting around all the monsters then. That was harsh.Awen slumped off the wall with a feeble, almost sad, “awa.” She leaned onto my side for comfort and because standing up seemed beyond her at the moment. “I need to pick up my bolts,” she said.We gathered up a few things. Bastion, who wasn’t nearly as tired as us, made sure we had all drunk a bit of water, then we set off.Momma seemed to get that we were on the tired side, because she had Peter get rid of any monsters in our path long before we got to see them.And so, finally, we reached the wall. There was a door in it with a long, long bar across it held in place by dozens of padlocks. Carrot got to be the one to unlock those and flick them away when she was done. The keys always broke after opening a single lock.“We will clear out a little spot on the other side,” Momma said. “And we’ll have ourselves a little something to eat. It should help fortify the lot of you littler ones.”“Thank you, ma’am,” Bastion said, because he was polite and not as tired as the rest of us.“Done!” Carrot called when she undid the last of the locks. Buster moved up and yanked the bar aside, freeing the doorway into the next floor and letting us past.I was expecting more city, more homes and buildings in poor repair, but instead I was greeted by a forest.Ancient trees rose up above, most of them growing atop bumpy hills covered in bushes and brambles. I could just barely make out the far wall across the woods, but only just.The fog from before was back, and far thicker, slithering across the ground and between the hillocks like a writhing, ghostly snake.“Wights here,” Carrot said.“What’s a wight?” I asked.Peter was the one to answer. For all that he was a quiet sort of bun, he seemed to like telling us about the monsters we’d be facing. “Wights are undead, as you may have guessed. They look like men, though they are thin and ragged, with glowing eyes. They have magic, casting shadows that can be felt and their touch will chill your soul. They don’t tend to fight together though.”“So, like zombies but different,” I said.“An oversimplification, but essentially correct,” he agreed.“Let’s settle down here for a little picnic,” Momma said. “Buster, you have the blankets?”Buster nodded. I wasn’t sure what to do at first as Momma and Buster started placing things on the ground. She had a lot of food in her pack. In fact, it was mostly food. “Ah, I have some things too,” I said as I jumped.It wouldn’t be kind of me to just sit back and let her do all the work.And so after a long and difficult battle, we settled down for sandwiches and tea before the next fight.
Chapter One Hundred and Ninety-Five — Buddy System
Chapter One Hundred and Ninety-Five — Buddy System Lunch was had!It was really good too. I don’t know when Momma had time to make sandwiches, but they were excellent. The bread were big oval slices that still tasted fresh, and there was some sauce, lettuce, and carrots that had been shredded. There were even tiny tomato-like veggies cut up into little wafers inside.All that served next to a big, heaping salad and some tea which I made on the spot. Momma had brought a little tin with some herbs in it for the tea, mostly dried berries and some wild-flowers that I didn’t immediately recognize. They were the sweet highlight of the meal.Still, it was a little strange to be eating next to a forest where we knew enemies were lurking. I felt pretty safe, what with the buns and all, but I couldn’t help but glance over every so often, expecting a big ugly monster to leap out and try to have us for lunch.Being eaten would have ruined the whole mood of a picnic.“So,” Amaryllis asked as she poked at her salad. “There’s something that’s been bothering me.”“Oh?” Momma asked.“To open the gate to this floor, you need keys. Keys dropped by the zombies. Why did we try to sneak over if we would have had to kill them anyway?”I continued munching as I looked over to the buns. It was Carrot that replied, while dipping her namesake in some sort of savoury sauce. “Oh, that’s an easy one. There are a couple of spots near the wall that you can bunker up in. Nice and safe. Well, safe-ish.”“So you were trying to get us there?” I asked.“Yup! When you only have a couple of buns, it’s easy to be sneaky.”“You are very much the opposite of stealthy,” Peter said.“Hey now!” Carrot protested.I raised my hand up. I had a question too! “So, um, how do you fight a wight? Is there a trick to it? Oh! And what’s the puzzle on this floor?”Peter nodded. “Wights are best fought with fire. They tend to only attack individually, so there’s little strategy involved. As for the floor’s puzzle; there are five braziers, you need to light them all, and then the fog lifts and the gate unlocks.”“So we just run to each one?” I asked.Carrot shook her head. “Nope. They change places all the time. You need to find them all over again.”“I don’t suppose we’ll all stick together in one large group, as is sensible?” Amaryllis asked.“There’s four of you, and four of us,” Momma said. “I think groups of two would make sense. We can regroup at the gate once the fog lifts.”I sat up a little. “So who’s going to go with who?” I asked.“Whom,” Amaryllis and Peter said at the same time.Carrot raised her arms in victory. “That’s one pair!” she cheered. “I call dibs on the human!”“Oh?” Momma asked. “Do you think you and the girl would make a good pair?”“Nope! I just think she’s quiet enough that she won’t stop me from prattling on,” Carrot said.I considered that for a moment while Awen wiggled her arms, all flustered and cute. “Awen is a pretty great listener,” I said. “Try to get her to talk a little too. She can be very interesting once you get past all the cute shyness.”“That leaves myself and Broccoli, as well as Miss Momma and Buster,” Bastion said over the kettle-pitched squeaking that Awen was making. “Perhaps I should go with you, Buster. Leave the two team leaders to work together?”Buster nodded, and Momma smiled faintly. “That seems perfectly fair. Now, if everyone is quite done, let’s pack things up and prepare to head out.”“I can clean everything up,” I said.“Thank you, but conserve your mana for now, little bun, we’ll be needing it,” Momma said.That sounded quite reasonable, so I nodded and started to pack things away. There wasn’t much food left to store since the lot of us had eaten our fill. When everything was put away I took a moment to stretch-very important to do just before some physical activity-then took a glance at my stats.Health: 135/135Mana: 72/150Stamina: 74/135A bit more than half my mana and stamina were back. It had taken less time than I expected. At some point along the way the ‘one point a minute’ rule of thumb had fallen behind. Maybe as one levelled up things were restored faster? That sounded fair.I held my warspade to my side, then adjusted my hat and made sure my pack was nice and snug. “This is going to be weird,” I said.“Why’s that?” Amaryllis asked.“I’ve been with you and Awen since... well, a while now. We’re not always together-together, but we’re rarely more than a few dozen meters apart,” I said. I ran my thumb along the haft of my spade. “Can I give you both goodbye hugs?”Awen was quick to raise her arms in the optimal hugging position, so she got to be squeezed first. When I let go of her and turned to Amaryllis, it was to find her raising her wings with a roll of her eyes. “Fine, get it over with,” she said.I squeezed her extra tight before letting go.“Do you want a hug too, Bastion?” I asked.The sylph smiled and shook his head. “I think I’ll be fine without. Though I appreciate the offer.”“You can never have enough hugs,” I said.He still didn’t seem that interested, and I didn’t want to push him.“Okay then,” I said to Momma. “What should we talk about as we go find those braziers?”Momma chuckled. “Oh, this and that.”“Don’t get her started about her kids,” Carrot warned. “She’ll talk your entire ears off.”The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.We set off into the forest. I could hear Carrot talking for a little bit, but her voice was soon muffled by the fog, and within a dozen meters it was gone entirely. Momma and I walked more or less side-by-side. The problem was, the forest was the old sort, with bushes everywhere and walls of fallen branches making areas entirely unpassable.The fog didn’t help. It looked as if some parts of it were thicker than others, with tendrils that sat in the air and only moved with the gentle sway of bubbles in a lava lamp, only bigger, and not as colourful, and a lot creepier.“How long have you been friends with Amaryllis and Awen?” Momma asked.I grinned up at her. “A while! Well, actually it’s been about a month, I think.” Strange, it felt as if it had been a whole lot longer than that. Maybe it was because it had been busy, with kidnapping attempts, and... successful kidnappings—of Awen, at least—then long adventures and dungeon delves and a tournament arc. Then the dragons and a bit of time off with Amaryllis’ family. “It hasn’t been super long, but I think we’ve been through a lot.”Momma smiled over at me. “You have been through a lot together,” she said as she pushed a branch up for me to pass.I folded my ears back and squeezed under it. “Yeah,” I said. “They’ve both become... well, the kind of friends that I always dreamed of having, I guess. We’re not as close as we could be yet, but give us another couple of months, and we’ll be inseparable!”“How cute!” Momma said. “I hope you cherish your friends while you can. Life will sometimes drag people away from you, kicking and screaming sometimes, but still.”I didn’t want to agree, but I knew that she was right. “Yeah, I know,” I said. “But for this adventure, and the next, and the next, we’ll be together, and as long as I’m still able to, I’ll do everything I can to be the best friend they ever had.”Momma chuckled and pat me atop my helmet, right between my ears.I usually found it really annoying when people patted me, but Momma felt like... well, she felt like a mom, and that made it okay.“Careful,” Momma said.My ears perked and I looked around us. We had entered a little clearing. Nothing too big, just a circle some dozen meters wide at the centre, and surrounded by trees.“I think you should take this one,” Momma said. “It’ll be a good experience, and I can hop in if you need the help.”“Take on which one?” I asked as I looked around.A cackle from above had me looking up in time to see a blur leaping down at me.I squeaked and rolled to the side. It wasn’t the nicest roll, what with my pack dragging behind me, but I managed to find my feet and hop back a little.The thing was attacking Momma, arms swinging wildly, and breath coming out in a hiss.Momma was parrying every punch and swing with one arm, pushing the blows away here, and weaving out of the way there. She was dancing, almost, and all with the easy grace of someone running through some habitual motion. She could have been doing the dishes for all the effort she seemed to put into the fight.The monster, the wight, I realized, seemed to notice, and it bounced back.“Hey!” I called out at it as I launched a ball of Cleaning magic right towards the side of its head.The wight ducked back and out of the spell’s path, then with its back curved all the way around, it planted its hands into the ground and cartwheeled back and out of the way of a second spell.It pressed its feet into the dirt, bunched up its legs, and shot towards me.For just a moment I was surprised, but if there was one thing I was getting decent at, it was fighting in the air, and I knew that once you took off, there wasn’t much you could do to change directions.The wight’s eyes, two glowing blue orbs that didn’t have iris or pupil, widened a little as I spun around and brought my spade up like a baseball bat.The thunk of the spade meeting the monster’s face rattled my arms, but it still felt pretty great.The wight rolled on landing, then reached out an arm and raked at my side. My armour took the worst of it, but I still felt its long, claw-like fingers digging into my ribs through my gambeson. Instead of stepping back, I moved in and tried to knee the monster.It stepped to the side and swung at me again.I parried with the haft of my spade, but that left my other side open and the wight was quick to take advantage of that.The shadows around us raced up, and like grasping tendrils from some sort of eldritch monster, they grabbed at my legs and pinned me in place as the wight punched me full-on in the chest.If it wasn’t for my breastplate, that would have been awful. As it was, it still knocked some of the wind out of me.I let loose a bust of Cleaning magic, then when the tendrils grasping me loosened a bit, I hopped up on the spot and rammed a knee into the wight’s face.It reeled back, which let me land and spin around.Magic rushed to my foot just before my roundhouse crashed into the monster’s chest, a good dose of stamina powering the blow.The wight went flying back.“You, are very rude,” I panted as I walked over to it with my spade.I brought the tool up, then swung it down as hard as I could.The wight turned to dust beneath me.Momma clapped behind me, while a very welcome message dinged into being before me. “Well done, little bun,” Momma said. “I think with a few years practice you could become quite the warrior!”
