Aetherios System: Whirlwind

Chapter 60: Last Meal

They were shoved inside the pit without ceremony. One of the guards clattered the iron-bar gate shut behind them and walked off without a glance back.

Above, torchlight flickered. Beyond that, deeper in the tunnels, came the unmistakable sounds of music and laughter. Kobold voices raised in celebration. Crude flutes, drums, the crackling of a fire pit, the occasional cheer, the feast had begun. But not for them, not for the humans.

He sat down heavily, back against the cold stone wall, wincing as his calf throbbed again. Someone had hastily wrapped a strip of shirt around the gash, but it was soaked through. He wished he could bandage it properly, but his extra supplies were in his backpack, which he left in the forest, tucked under some brush near the tunnel entrances.

Most of his other gear, which had he brought with him for the rescue mission, was already taken by the kobolds. At least they hadn’t taken everything.

His bracelet , still hidden in plain sight, sat innocently on his wrist like a chunk of river rock. His ring , the vine-like one, curled around his finger. Neither looked like anything more than scavenged junk to kobold eyes. At least that was what Alex still assumed.

Everything else—his belt, pouch of stolen crystals, gear, his dagger—gone. He let out a breath. Allie knelt next to him with a worried look. “Let me see that leg.”

“I’m good.”

“You’re very much not.”

Tom-Tom plopped down nearby, legs crossed, tail curling around his feet. “Human wounds are squishy. You don’t clot right.”

“Appreciate the commentary,” he muttered, as Allie began untying the shirt around his calf to inspect the wound. Alex caught her eye and gave a weak smile.

She didn’t return it.

“Can you understand him?” Devon asked, eyes wide. “Like… fluently?”

He nodded. “I think the magic helps bridge some of the grammar. I’ve been picking it up better and better every time he speaks or whines.”

“I do not whine!” Tom-Tom objected. “I declare with enthusiasm. ”

“Great,” Eric grunted from the corner. “So now we’re relying on Alex to be our translator and our champion. No pressure, right?”

“Oh! That reminds me,” with a flick of his wrist Alex accessed his bracelet’s storage and pulled out the pouch Sylvaris had given him. “I have presents for everyone. Be careful when the other kobolds are around though okay.”

“Oh my goodness Alex. Yes, yes a thousand times yes!” Garret shouted when Alex handed him his own ring. Alex ignored him and continued, tossing the enchanted rings to everyone. With rings on fingers, translation duty was off Alex’s shoulders and now everyone could finally talk with their little scaled lizard friend.

As he was handing out the rings, Tom-Tom gawked at him. It seemed the little lizard was taken aback by what Alex did. Since he didn’t appear to be an ultra powerful space mage, Alex could only guess at what Tom-Tom’s mind was thinking.

To avoid confusion, he showed the little guy his bracelet and how it works. Luckily, Alex still carried the most valuable items in his bracelet. Glyphcrafting stylus and other tools for one thing, the potions he bought from Celeste for another.

Drinking one of the healing potions now was certainly tempting, but he couldn’t do that. He just wasn’t sure how he could explain his sudden miraculous recovery when the kobolds came back for this Dark Den trial. He would have to suffer his wounds for now.

All the money he still held on to was also in his bracelet, a lesson learned from the last time the Kobolds scavenged him dry. And of course the final gifts he had for everyone else, the spell tomes.

Smiles, “ooh’s” and “aaah’s” filled the pit as Alex performed his Santa Claus act for everyone. Kate was especially surprised when he pressed a tome into her hands. She looked at him with suspicious eyes, the bruising around her nose almost gone at this point.

“Just take it,” Alex said. “We are in this together okay. Get stronger, maybe you can pay me back for that nosejob.”

The woman scoffed but took the scroll before walking off. Zach eyed him sternly during the whole exchange but said nothing when Alex handed off another tome to him. Next was Lance, Holly, Peter, everyone got a spell that he had hand picked for them from Celeste’s stash; of the ones that he could afford anyway.

“Alright, everyone read your tome. I don’t recommend trying them in here, but you can at least learn them now. I’m guessing everyone is behind on experience points, but where are you all with stats?”

As he had guessed, everyone had fallen behind in terms of raw stats as well. The mining labor had helped a little on the physical side, but not much. Their mental stats weren’t doing too bad though, as everyone had plenty of time to cultivate their cores, not only increasing their mental stats overtime naturally, but pushing their core attunement up with amazing speed.

That wasn’t all.

There was an attempt made by Alex to teach everyone the triple braided version of the [Condensing Spiral], but no one could pull in enough of their element’s nature to supply more than one braid of aether. It looked like Sylvaris was right in saying this was a unique advantage Alex had from his lack of element now.

Once everyone got their gifts and learned their spells, there was a round of sharing and comparing information, Alex telling his side of his journey, and them telling theirs.

“So you felt Alex had a dragon inside him?” Holly laughed as Tom-Tom told his side of the rescue mission story, and how he had stopped the Chieftain from killing him.

“He’s not exactly brave you know.” Allie added in.

“Hey, I volunteered to be the first in the ritual circle that Doudra set up.” Alex tried to defend his honor.

“Only because you needed to get closer to study the glyphs. You even said that.” Holly countered.

“That was part of it, yes. But that wasn’t the only reason.”

“Watch it now, Holly, he did save you from the Den Mother.” Lance came to his aid.

“You say that, but I didn’t see him saving anyone.” Eric said. Alex was unsure who’s side he was on.

“That’s because you were already knocked out against a tree at that point, captain.” Garret came in this time, nudging the captain’s shoulder and chuckling. “Don’t worry though, I was in the same boat there. We did our best, am I right?” Garret held up a palm to Eric, once again trying to get one of those high-fives that he kept ranting about.

Eric ignored him. Hank grinned.

“That’s true,” Holly bit her lip. “Thanks again, for that.”

“Forget it,” Alex waved her off. “Like I said, we are in this together, we save each other. That’s a given.”

“So you are truly brave?” Tom-Tom was back leaning next to Alex’s shoulder as he sat on the ground. The smell of mushroom really was strong.

“No,” Alex insisted, “I’m just the one who had the opportunity to try something. That’s it. Its the same even now, I’m not doing this test in the Dark Den because I want to, but because I have to.”

He got some nods, and some side-eyes, but everyone let the topic drop. From there Garret started asking Tom-Tom various questions about how kobolds cook their food. It was a conversation that Lance happily jumped into after a moment. Allie and Holly began chatting with Henry about something that Alex didn’t really care too much about.

He really had other things he had to look into and check on before this whole ‘Test’ business started.

First, he checked his quest.