Chapter Eighty-Three — There's No Sense Crying Over Every Mistake
Chapter Eighty-Three — There's No Sense Crying Over Every Mistake I woke up to find Amaryllis hunched over me, her face nearly pressed up to mine. “Hey,” I said. “Um. I forgot to think of any cool final words. Sorry?”Amaryllis’ lower lip wobbled, her eyes got teary, then she glared at me. “You idiot. You moron, you half witted, cretinous dolt!” She started to jab the not-pokey side of a talon into my ribs. “Imbecile, dullard, simpleton! Moron!”“You used that one already,” I pointed out. “Also, oww!”Amaryllis pulled her talon back, sniffed wetly, then glared even harder. “I’m charging you for those potions I used.”I blinked. I did feel pretty... normal. Except for my ribs, those kind of hurt. “I’m not going to die?” I asked.Awen appeared on my other side. “Ah... awa,” was all she said before she crashed onto me and buried her face in my chest. “I thought, I thought you died!” she cried.“Ah, hey hey,” I said as I patted the back of her head. “It’s okay. I’m fine.”“You nearly weren’t,” Amaryllis said. “You bled a lot. I’m quite certain humans need most of their blood to stay in their bodies.”“You’d think that,” I said. “Is Moon Moon okay?”“Yes yes,” Moon Moon said. I tilted my head back to see the droll sitting next to the device at the end of the corridor. “It’s good you’re not dead.”He bent forwards, pulled up a... hand mirror, then started to growl and show his teeth at it.I decided that was a problem for later.“I agree, being alive is nice,” I said. I wiggled my toes, shifted my hips, and moved all of my fingers. Everything was in place, still. My armour felt a little wet here and there, and sticky, but I could take care of that with some cleaning magic in no time. My bigger problem was Awen. “Hey, sweetie, you’re, uh, heavy?”Awen lifted her head and I had to hold back a wince. She could have used a spot of cleaning magic too. Her eyes were all puffy and her hair was a tangled mess. “Sorry,” she whispered.I pulled her back down into a big hug. “It’s okay. I’m fine. But I’m glad you were worried for me,” I said.Awen sniffed and tucked into the hug, but as with all things it had to end eventually.Amaryllis helped me to my feet and I took a moment to look around. There was a long red-brown stain running across the ground from the area with the glass spikes all the way to where I was standing now. It was... a lot of blood. Amaryllis was right with that.I licked my lips and turned away from that, instead focusing on my armour. There were some new tears in it, and a loonie-sized hole around the abdomen that let a bit of cold air in to tickle my tummy. I tsked and fired a strong burst of cleaning magic that turned my not-so-pretty-now dress back to its original sky blue.“We’re buying you heavier armour if you intend to go around injuring yourself like that again,” Amaryllis said.“Ah, I didn’t mean to,” I said. “I just got caught off guard.”She huffed a ‘I don’t like it’ huff. “The moment we’re out of this dungeon we’re starting you on a training regimen. You too Awen. I’ll whip both of you.”“You mean you’ll whip us into shape?”“I meant what I said,” the harpy declared.“R-right,” I said. I noticed a couple of notifications from Mister Menu waiting for my attention, so I let them open up to see what was going on.Congratulations! You have ruptured Glass Horror, level 7. Due to combating as a team your reward is reduced!Congratulations! Through repeated actions your Makeshift Weapons Proficiency skill has improved and is now eligible for rank up!Rank D is a free rank!“Oh hey, my weapon proficiency made it to rank D!” I said.“And it only cost you a few pints of blood,” Amaryllis said. She shook her head. “Awen, could you get the door open at the end? We should move on out of here.”“Awa, ye-yes,” Awen said. She rushed over to the last device in the zig-zagging room and, after setting her big spectacles onto her nose, started to fiddle with the rings controlling it.“You didn’t level up?” Amaryllis asked.“Nope,” I said. “It doesn’t... feel like I’m close yet either.”“Hmph,” Amaryllis said. “I think I’m nearly past my own. Just a little nudge and I should hit level ten.”“Cool!” I said. “I can’t wait to see how that works.”She rolled her eyes. “It’s nothing spectacular, I assure you.”“Awa, I got it!” Awen said. She had one hand up, holding her glasses in place as she waved towards the end of the final corridor.A door was recessed at the end, big and bulky, the kind of thing you couldn’t just blow past. Above it were three gems that began to glow as Awen used the machine to aim beams of light at them.The door shifted, a thin cloud of dust pouring off of it a moment before it started to swing ponderously open to reveal the ravine we had entered from.I stared, then tried to figure out a mental map of the dungeon. The room wasn’t nearly zig-zaggy enough for it to loop back around to the ravine. What’s more, we were lower down than the floor we had entered from.“Dungeons are weird,” I said.“You don’t know the half of it,” Amaryllis said.We all gathered our stuff in a hurry. I found my backpack, and Orange, around the last bend and my spade, which I noticed was a bit warped now, was laying off to one side as though forgotten. The poor thing was taking a beating.We moved onto the platform just beyond the door, then paused. “That was something,” I said.“It was,” Amaryllis agreed. “The next floor isn’t as physically taxing, according to what we read.”“I will not go there,” Moon Moon said.We all turned to the droll who stood behind us, mirror in hand. “That room is very bad. Lots of droll were lost there.”This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.“How come?” I asked.“There are drolls there who look like us, but are mean,” he said. Then he pointed to the mirror. “Like the one in this.”I stared at the mirror, then looked to Amaryllis for an explanation.“That was dropped by the glass horror. It’s nice enough. No enchantments that I’d find useful, Awen doesn’t want it, and you’d just use it as a poor weapon. So Moon Moon got it.”“But it’s just a mirror?” I asked.“Yes,” She said.Moon Moon turned it so that I was staring at myself, then he flipped it around and his hackles raised and he started growling. “The other droll is back.”“Maybe keeping you out of a place with mirror traps is for the best,” I said.Moon Moon set the mirror aside, scratched behind one ear, then nodded. “Yes yes. I will go wait outside for when you’re done?”Losing Moon Moon wasn’t nice. He was a good chunk of our fighting power, but if he didn’t want to go on, and if going on was a legitimate danger for him, I couldn’t exactly make him come with us.“That would be great,” I said. “Do drolls like hugs?” I asked.Moon Moon tilted his head to the side. “Yes?” he tried.I glomped him close. “Good! Then we’ll see you in a bit, okay?”He licked the side of my face which... was a little disgusting. “Yes! You are a very nice person. Please don’t die. You too, chicken girl and moist girl.”The air around Amaryllis sparked and Awen ‘awa’d most mightily as Moon Moon waved them off and scampered back into the tunnel.I waved at his departing back, then turned back towards the ravine. “Onwards, then!” I said.“I would have thought you would be a little hesitant, after what just happened to you,” Amaryllis said.I shrugged. “I don’t let little things like nearly dying get me down. And besides, I’m better now thanks to you, right? That spell you used in the end was awesome, by the way.”“It was taxing is what it was. If you weren’t such a moron I wouldn’t have needed to exhaust myself for you.”I laughed as I brought my spade down on the empty air before me until it clicked on the glass of the bridge.I bounced a few times on the glass to make sure it could take my weight, then with my spade ahead of me like a blind person’s walking stick, I guided my friends across the chasm.Some of the terror of walking over nothing across a hundred foot drop into churning waters had faded. Some. Awen walked by my side, and she very timidly poked my hand with hers until I held on as we crossed.The door for the second floor room was similar to the first, a large round slab of thick glass with a brass mechanism over it to keep it locked shut. We all sort of stood before it for a moment before I stepped up and spun the wheel. “This one is supposed to be mentally tricky, right?” I asked.“That’s what the compendium said,” Amaryllis replied. She stood with her dagger clutched by her side and her weight shifting from foot to foot.“Well, let’s see what we have in store.”The second floor was one long room. I could see a door at the far end just waiting to be opened, and stretching towards that door was a meter-wide stone bridge that spanned the entire distance from the entrance on.I stepped forwards and looked over the edge of the bridge and into a sea of glass spikes some dozen meters below. A fall down there would be fatal.“No monsters?” Amaryllis wondered aloud as she stepped in behind me. Awen was next, and she eyed the room with dread and suspicion.“None that I can see,” I said.Something clunked and we all froze.Then, all along the sides of the room, mirrors lowered themselves until they hung a meter or so off the side of the bridge, each one held up by a complex brass assembly. They thunked into place, one after another until the bridge was lined with mirrors every few steps all the way up to the door.“Okay,” I said. “It's a bit weird, but okay.”Amaryllis walked up slowly, then looked into the nearest mirror. I saw her eyes darting around, then widening. “Mom?” she whispered before taking a step towards the mirror, then another.I grabbed her collar and yoinked her back.She flailed, wings spiralling for a bit before she calmed down. “Damn,” she said.“You okay?”“I saw... nevermind. It showed me something I want. More than that, there’s got to be some sort of effect in place to pull you in. It’s subtle magic.” She huffed. “I hate metaphysical aspects.”“I’m going to look, pull me back if I try something stupid?”“If I had to pull you back everytime you did something stupid I would do nothing but drag you around all day,” she said.I laughed and walked to the middle of the bridge then stared into the mirror. It was me. Me with a cleaner, patched up dress, with Amaryllis and Awen and Orange. And I was happy, and with friends.I smiled at me in the mirror, and she smiled back. So I waved before looking back to my real friends. “Doesn't seem that bad,” I said.Amaryllis huffed. “It must require a certain level of intellect to work.”“Can, can I try?” Awen asked.“Sure,” I said. It was actually sort of fun.Awen stepped up next to me, then looked into the mirror. She gasped. The girl took one step forwards, and I grabbed her shoulder.“Awen?”She brushed me off and started walking. I tugged her back, and her polite shoves turned into desperate clawing in moments. “No! Let me go! I, you need to let me go!” she yelled as she spun and kicked and pushed towards the mirror.I tackled her to the ground, too close to the edge for my liking, and pinned her down. “No. Awen, Awen!” I snapped.The girl looked up to me, sobbing. “Let me go! Please!”
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Chapter Eighty-Four — Psychohazard
Chapter Eighty-Four — Psychohazard “Hey, hey,” I said as I rubbed Awen’s back.Her fighting and crying had stopped after a bit, especially when Amaryllis and I had pulled her away from the edges of the bridge and brought her closer to the doors.Those mirrors back there were awful. Worse than the golems by far. All the golems wanted to do was murder us, not make my friends cry.“This floor’s a tricky one, Moon Moon was right,” Amaryllis said as she stared into the room. “You don’t seem to be affected as much. We could use you as a guide?”“Yeah,” I said. I kept rubbing Awen’s back. “Let’s give Awen a bit to compose herself first?”“I’m-I’m sorry,” Awen sniffled.“None of that,” I said. “It’s okay. Sometimes things scare some people more than others; we all want some things really badly. Everyone has a price, I guess.”Awen shuddered. “It was, it was just a reflection,” she said. “But it was real, and it was me, and my family, and I was, I was myself, and they were happy.”I hugged her closer. “It’s okay. Those mirrors are big fat meanies if all they do is hang things you really want before you.”Awen sank into the hug. “Thank you, Broccoli. Really. You’re... good. You’re very good, and I’m really happy you’re here.”I grinned. “I’m glad you’re here too,” I said before tightening my hug. “Do you think you’re ready to try again?”“Awa, I don’t know?”Amaryllis snorted. “Don’t be a fool. The risk isn’t worth it. You have some cloth in your backpack?”“I do,” I said. I hoped my confusion showed because I didn’t know what to think of her non-sequitur.“Then we’ll fashion her a blindfold. It’s a simple enough solution. You can lead her to the end.” Amaryllis gestured to the door opposite us.“And what about you?”“What about me?”“You almost walked off the edge there,” I said.She huffed and crossed her wings. “I suppose I could tether myself to you. As demeaning as it is.”We took a few minutes to get ready, but by the end all three of us were tied together with ropes around our waists. Awen held onto my hand too, just to help guide her, and she had a few pieces of cloth wrapped over her eyes.“Everyone ready?” I asked.“Let’s get it over with,” Amaryllis said.I started walking. The smart thing to do, of course, would have been to stare straight ahead, or maybe at the bridge, ignoring all the mirrors as we walked past them. But I never claimed to be a very smart bun.Orange padded out ahead of us, then paused to look at her reflection. I was worried for a moment, but then the cat started strutting even harder as if trying to show up her own reflection.The first mirror showed the same image of me with my friends, but it didn’t appeal as much as it had even minutes before. As it was, my friends were right next to me, literally tied to me. If that didn’t trump mere reflections of smiles then nothing would.The next mirror had me snorting as Sky Captain Bunch stood tall and proud on the deck of a big airship.I shook my head and moved on. Some of the mirrors had me pausing. Me in a pretty dress in a large ballroom, or making snow-angels in a mountain of gold. They were really trying to pin exactly what I wanted, but were missing the mark.Some, I had to admit, were just really neat. I looked kind of awesome wearing full-plate armour and carrying a sword as wide as I was; facing off against some dark monster while an orphanage’s worth of kids hid behind me.Then I found my feet slowing down as I saw a reflection of myself. Not me as I currently was, but me as an older woman. Still spry, still smiling despite wrinkled skin and eyes that had gone a little cloudy with age. I was sitting on a rocking chair, a blanket over my lap. Pictures sat on the tables around my chair, of me and my friends as adults, of me next to young people that had to be my children.I swallowed and pushed past. That was something I wanted one day, and it was something that would happen. I didn’t need to look into a mirror to know it.“Oh,” Amaryllis said.I looked to her, then to the mirror she was looking at.My face flamed.The Broccoli in the reflection was wearing... not much at all. And she was in the arms of a few young men and even some young women. Handsome people who were wearing oil and very tight britches and who all had very nice chins. They were dancing and flexing and-I tugged the cord around Amaryllis’ waist and pulled her past that particular mirror. We both stared at our blushing faces and agreed not to talk about it.I crossed mirrors of myself glowing in pride as I rubbed a swollen belly, and myself as a benevolent queen, and even myself hugging a handsome boy and, strangely enough, myself and Awen both in white dresses in front of an altar.It kind of became a blur, but the long path to the end of the floor came closer and closer.I still paused a bit at the mirror that showed me riding a dragon, not because I wanted to step off to my death, but because it was pretty darned cool to see. And then we were near the end.I thought we were home free when I felt Amaryllis’ cord tightening. “Huh?” I asked.She was staring at one of the mirrors, not with wanting but with confusion.I looked into it to see myself in dark plate armour, riding atop a skeletal dragon at the head of an army of slaves about to assault a city. “I... think that one’s defective,” I said.“Likewise,” Amaryllis said.Reaching the end was a little anticlimactic. Compared to the room with the golems and the light puzzle devices, it had been a walk in the park. Though, perhaps that was unfair. The dungeon-if it could be spoken of as something sentient-had been clever, trying to use our own psyches against us. Clever, and mean.If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.I let go of Awen’s hand, wiggled mine a bit to get rid of some of the handholding claminess, then opened the door leading back into the ravine.“We’re free!” I said.“Awa, we made it?” Awen asked.I carefully pulled her blindfold off and let her see that we were out once more. “See,” I said.She beamed at me, then flushed and looked away. “I’m sorry that you had to do that,” She said. “If I was stronger, then you woul-oww!”I brought my hand up, still holding it flat above her head in the optimal pre-bonking position. “Don’t be so silly. We all have our weaknesses,” I said.“Awa, but, but you don’t have any,” she said.Amaryllis laughed. Not a ladylike giggle, or her pretty birdsong giggle, but a full on tummy laugh. “Oh world, that’s hilariously wrong on so many levels.”“Mean,” I said, but I couldn’t hold back a bit of a chuckle. It was hard not to laugh when a friend was laughing, and the weight of stress being lifted after crossing that last floor was such a relief that it only made it easier to laugh.Amaryllis wiped the back of a talon across her eyes. “We should keep moving. We still have a few more floors to get through.”“Right!” I said. “As soon as we’re all ready.”Awen nodded. “I, I’m ready,” she said.“Cool!” I said.We began our third trek across the ravine with a bit more confidence, though we still took our time and periodically tapped the glass bridge before us as we walked, just in case.As with the last two floors, the third was blocked off by a large round door with the same mechanisms as the last. “I can’t remember what this floor is supposed to be,” I admitted.“The boss floor, according to the compendium, but I believe that might have changed,” Amaryllis said. She pointed to the sides of the ravine. “There are two more bridges. That makes five.”“So five floors then?” I wondered.“Some dungeons have delve rooms that only work for the first few floors, there could be more.”I hummed. “I hope not. I wouldn’t want to sleep next to these bridges, or in the dungeon at all if I can avoid it.”“That’s more than fair,” Amaryllis said. “It’s only evening, we have a few hours to go before that becomes a worry, and even then, we can take a break after this floor to recuperate a little.”“Awesome. Let’s get this one over and done with then!” I said as I raised my shovel in preparation to tackle the floor in a jiffy.We opened the door, then stared into infinity.I saw myself reflected back on every surface and from nearly every angle. It took a moment to notice the way the floor curved around and split off in a few directions.“A mirror maze?” I wondered.“I’m unfamiliar with the term, what is it?” Amaryllis asked.I tried not to be too smug that I got to explain something for once. “It’s a maze, but the walls are all made of mirrors. It makes it harder to judge how far things are because you see a lot of reflections.”“Brilliant,” Amaryllis said. “I suppose turning right at every juncture won’t work.”“We could try turning left?” I said.She whapped me behind the head with her wing. “Moron.”“Awa, we could lay out some rope?” Awen said. “Or leave a mark on the glass?”“That’s an idea,” I said. “Anyone have a sharpie?”“A what?” Amaryllis asked. “No, nevermind. I have ink but I doubt it would stick to the mirrors. I think... one moment.”The harpy stepped up to the mirrored wall ahead of us and brought a talon up. Little electrical sparks snapped around her hand as she swiped it across the mirror. It left black marks on the glass.“That works,” I said. “So how do we actually navigate the maze?”“That’s the easy part,” Amaryllis said. “We ask the most valuable member of the team for help.” She gestured off to the side.We all turned to stare at Orange who paused in the act of cleaning herself to stare right back. Her little kitty expression seemed to say ‘why are you looking at me like that.’“You’re going to have to explain that one for me,” I said. “I love Orange, but she’s usually more keen on sleeping than doing work.”Orange nodded. It was probably just a strange tick though.Amaryllis rolled her eyes. “She’s a spirit cat. Or a spirit kitten, as the case may be. You shouldn’t underestimate her abilities. She can phase through the walls, find the exit, then guide us to it. No one else in this party has such skill or talent, or even scratched the surface of what she can do. Truly she is the best of us.”Amaryllis was... laying it on sort of thick. But one look at how Orange had puffed up at the praise suggested that maybe it was on purpose. “I suppose,” I said. “She is a nice kitty. Do you think we could convince her to help with scritches?”Amaryllis scoffed. “Please, as if you know the first thing about caring for such a majestic creature. Look at your blunt little human fingers! You can’t scratch anything properly with those. I, on the other hand, have superior harpy breeding on my side. I’m certain a creature as glorious as Orange would sympathize with my cause.”Orange looked between the two of us then, quite obviously, rolled her little kitty eyes and trotted off into one of the mirror-lined corridors.“That worked?” I whispered over to Amaryllis.“Don’t ruin it,” she said. “Come on, let’s finish up this floor.”
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