Ch.29
Floor 12 was warmer than Floor 11 and the ceiling was lower and the walls sweated. The Dungeon's glow shifted from blue-green to amber down here, and the corridors branched more often, side passages opening at angles that didn't follow any logic I could map. Monsters spawned faster. The walls pulsed like stone breathing.
We'd been down for two hours. Welf had hit his stride. He fought better today than yesterday, more confident with the greatsword, swinging with his full weight behind it instead of checking himself. Lili had stopped compensating. She ran the formation with hand signals and short barks of direction and the three of us moved through the corridors in a rhythm that was starting to feel natural. Me at the front with the knife, Welf covering the width with the greatsword, Lili behind us managing the drops and watching our backs.
Imps came in clusters of four or five and died fast. The Hard Armoreds took longer. Welf handled most of those himself, prying at their plate joints with the same technique from yesterday, and I took the ones that got past him. My stats were climbing. My arm didn't ache after a full swing anymore. My legs pushed off from standing starts faster than they had a week ago. Level 2 was settling in.
We cleared a nest of Orcs in a wide chamber and stopped to collect the magic stones. Lili cracked open the Orcs' chests with a small hammer she carried for the purpose, quick efficient strikes, the crystals going into her pack in a practiced rhythm. Welf sat on a broken pillar and drank from his canteen and his shirt was dark with sweat across the shoulders.
"How deep do we go?" he asked.
"Twelve is the plan," Lili said without looking up. "Lili will decide when to turn around."
"She's the boss," I said.
Welf looked at me. "I thought you were the party leader."
"I make the combat calls. She decides when we leave. Welf makes sure our gear holds."
"And if the combat call and the leaving call happen at the same time?"
"Then Lili wins," Lili said. She snapped the last stone free and dropped it in her pack. "Always."
A Silverback came through the far entrance of the chamber while we were still resting. Big, silver-furred, arms thick as my torso. It saw three people and no retreat and charged. I didn't stand up from where I was crouching. Just turned, raised my hand, and hit it with a Firebolt at ten feet. The bolt caught it in the chest and it folded. Standard strength. Orange-red. The kind of Firebolt I'd gotten used to.
Welf looked at the dead Silverback and then at me. "That was casual."
"It was a Silverback."
"You didn't stand up."
"Didn't need to."
Lili collected the stone. She was already walking toward the far corridor before I'd wiped my hand on my pants.
The corridor narrowed after the chamber, single-file width, the amber glow dimmer. I took point with the knife out. The stone was slick underfoot and the air smelled different. Heavier. Sulfur, maybe, or something mineral and hot. Floor 12 had a higher spawn rate for reptilian-type monsters. Dragons hatched down here.
The sound came before the shadow did.
A screech from the corridor behind Lili. High-pitched, wet, reverberating off the stone. Footsteps following it, fast, claws on rock. Lili spun and her crossbow was up in a second and then she was running toward us because whatever was behind her was too big for the bolt to matter.
It came around the corner with its mouth open.
Infant Dragon. Smaller than a Minotaur but not small. Scaled, dark red, two legs and a long neck and a jaw full of teeth that were already slick. Its eyes were orange and reflective and locked on Lili's backpack, attracted by the magic stones. It lunged and Lili dove sideways and the dragon's jaw snapped closed where her shoulder had been and it skidded past her and turned and came again.
Welf was behind me in the corridor. Too narrow for the greatsword. He couldn't swing.
I raised my right hand.
The Firebolt spell was instinct now. I'd used it enough times that it came without thinking, the word forming in my mind and the bolt building at my fingertips. Except this time it built differently.
My right hand sparked. Blue-white light, brighter than a Firebolt had ever been, climbing my fingers and spreading to my palm. Warm, then hot, then a pressure behind my knuckles that pulsed like a second heartbeat. The light was visible through my skin, blue veins of energy threading toward my fingertips.
Welf saw it. I heard his breath stop.
"WHAT IS THAT," he said.
I didn't answer because I didn't know. The Infant Dragon was turning back toward Lili and Lili was against the wall with her crossbow up and the bolt wouldn't stop it and the light in my hand was still building, three seconds of charge that I hadn't chosen, and the dragon opened its mouth and I fired.
The bolt left my hand like a punch.
It was white. Firebolt was usually orange-red, a small lance of lightning-fire that hit hard for its size. This was white and wide and it crossed the corridor and hit the Infant Dragon in the chest and everything above the ribs was gone. Just gone.
The sound hit me after the light. A concussive crack that slammed off the corridor walls and came back doubled. The stone floor split under the point of impact. Shrapnel, scale fragments, and a fine hot mist sprayed across the passage. What was left of the dragon stood upright for half a second on its two legs before it toppled sideways and hit the wall and slid down into a heap that was already dissolving.
The corridor was quiet. Smoke curled from the point of impact. A crack ran along the ceiling where the blast had rattled the stone loose.
Lili was against the wall. Her backpack was smoking. There was a scorch mark on the stone beside her head where the edge of the blast had kissed the wall.
I stared at my hand.
The blue-white light was fading, crawling back down my fingers like water draining from a glove, until the only light was the Dungeon's amber glow and the faint orange of dissolving dragon.
Argonaut charged Firebolt.
I knew both skills. I'd been using them separately. Argonaut pooled power over time. Firebolt was the no-chant bolt. They were in the same body. Same Falna. Same conduit.
They stack.
"What." Welf's voice came from behind me. He stepped past me in the corridor and looked at the crater and the dissolving remains and the cracked ceiling. "What the fuck was that."
"Firebolt," I said.
"That was not Firebolt. I've seen Firebolt. Firebolt doesn't crack the floor."
"It was a charged Firebolt."
"Charged with WHAT?"
"I don't know yet."
He turned to look at me. His face was pale under the sweat and his eyes were wide and he was looking at my right hand like it might go off again. Residual heat in my palm. A buzz where the charge had passed through. My heartbeat loud in my ears. The corridor smelled like ozone and burned scale.
"You need to learn to control that," Welf said, "before you kill one of us."
"Working on it."
Lili stood up from the wall. She dusted off her skirt with precise flicks of her wrists. Her pack had a new scorch mark and her hair had been blown back from her face and she looked, if anything, irritated.
"Preferably before Lili's next haircut," she said.
"You okay?"
"Lili was six feet from a small sun." She picked a scale fragment off her sleeve and flicked it away. "Lili is reconsidering the combat call hierarchy."
She walked toward me. Her boots crunched on the debris where the corridor floor had cracked. She stopped in front of me and looked at my right hand, the one that was still trembling, and she reached out and took my wrist.
Her fingers were small and cool against my skin. She turned my hand over, palm up, and examined it. The blue-white light had faded completely but my palm was still warm and she could feel it. Her thumb pressed against the inside of my wrist, on the pulse. She held it there.
"Bell-sama's heart rate is elevated," she said.
"I just vaporized a dragon."
"Lili's is too." She didn't let go of my wrist. Her brown eyes came up from my hand to my face. Sharp. Running numbers behind the steady surface. Her thumb was still on my pulse and my heart was beating against her touch and she was counting.
"How long did the charge take?" she asked.
"Three seconds. Maybe."
"Involuntary?"
"Yeah."
"Can Bell-sama do it again?"
"I don't know."
She looked back at my hand. Turned it over again. Ran her thumb along the lines of my palm where the light had been brightest. Her face was all business. Her ears were pink.
"Lili will need to observe this further," she said.
"You can let go of my hand for that."
"Lili is not done observing." Her thumb traced one more line across my palm. Then she let go and turned back toward her pack and adjusted the straps and started walking toward the exit like none of it had happened.
Welf was staring at me.
"Don't," I said.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were going to."
"I was going to say that your party supporter just held your hand for thirty seconds while your hand was still warm from a spell that could have killed her, and she didn't let go, and she was blushing." He shouldered his greatsword. "But I wasn't going to say anything."
We followed Lili toward the surface.
My right hand was still warm. I could still feel where her thumb had been on my pulse, a cool point against the residual heat. The Falna buzzed in my back, absorbing everything.
The drops from the dragon remains dissolved before we could collect them. Lili noted this and her mouth went tight, which meant the financial loss bothered her more than the near-death experience.
We sold what we had at the exchange. Lili divided the shares. My hand had stopped trembling by then but I kept flexing it, opening and closing my fingers, feeling for the charge that wasn't there anymore.
Three seconds. One bolt. One dragon.
I was going to need to practice that somewhere with more room and fewer allies.