But she was right. We had precious little time remaining—3 hours, 41 minutes and 48 seconds, to be exact—and couldn’t afford to second-guess or even hesitate.
Our small party continued without complaint. Surprisingly, I heard no grumble from either Swift or Cheer, though that may well have been because they were still too cold to talk. Their clothes and hair had stubbornly refused to dry out, clinging to their skin and reminding them of the fact with every little movement. Even Ris’kin’s limbs felt stiff with the lingering chill brought on by her still-damp fur.
As we ascended, though, the chill began to dissipate. Clothes, hair and fur alike finally resumed that blessed state known as ‘dry’, and the scavengers’ teeth no longer chattered. I was pretty sure I even saw steam rising from Cheer’s feathered pauldrons. Though we were getting higher, a sense of enormous pressure and heat bore down on us.
“Is it getting… warmer?” I asked.
Ket didn’t reply. I was about to repeat the question, but when we turned the next corner the sight that greeted us stole my breath.
Glowing crystals adorned the passage. Not polished and decorative, but raw and rough and deadly sharp. Clusters of the prismatic shards jutted from the floor, the walls, the ceiling, grouped together like defensive spear formations or sharp-staked barricades. The smallest could easily be worn as jewelry, like the pendant from which Bekkit had been freed, while the largest ones dwarfed even Ris’kin. The latter almost blocked our way in places, and my denizens and avatar were forced to turn sideways or duck beneath them in order to pass.
Most of the crystals we passed were an opaque, cloudy white, but here and there were hints of pink and blue, a beautiful spectrum of contrasting fuchsia and turquoise that combined to create a purplish aura that, I had to admit, put my gem to shame. It felt as though we’d stepped inside a geode lit with tealights.
I soon realized the glow did not come from the crystals themselves but from the mushrooms that grew alongside them like tiny perfect replicas. Crystalcaps, Insight told me. They were unique to these caves, and grew to mimic the crystals’ appearance, but otherwise behaved like regular fungi. Still, Ris’kin and I both felt the need to reach out and poke one just to make sure. Its rubbery texture was delightfully at odds with its sharp faceted appearance.
Swift’s initial reaction to the crystals’ beauteous sight – after trying and failing to pocket one, of course – was to check her reflection in the nearest one. When the opaque surface refused to oblige, she breathed on it and then rubbed it hard with her sleeve, as though intending to bully it into showing her what she wanted. Cheer’s first instinct was much more on brand; the scavenger immediately took out a chisel and began chipping enthusiastically at the crystal, seemingly unbothered by the heat that had poor Longshank positively dripping sweat.
Though the gnomes appeared largely unconcerned at the rising temperature, the recent events and the climb were beginning to take their toll. The scavengers’ stamina bars were running perilously low, and Longshank’s wasn’t faring much better. Though I was still cursing myself for not pushing on sooner, I couldn’t help but think back on my decision to relax and fully recuperate that day at the river. If I hadn’t insisted on those few hours’ rest—a decision Bekkit had chided me for as being ‘frivolous’—the gnomes’ already exhausted endurance would have already given out by now. I could only hope the rest would also ensure the rest of the tribe—and especially Gneil—were also able to reach the summit in time.
I surprised myself by wishing Bekkit were still with us. The pompous sprite might be annoying, but he was the only one of us with prior experience of Exodus, and without him here to empathize I felt oddly alone with my burden.
“Was Bekkit always so arrogant?” I asked Ket, mostly to take my mind off things.
It took her a moment to snap out of her odd, dreamy state. “Yes,” she eventually replied. She smiled. “But it was sort of endearing.”
“It’s hard to imagine him as the god of kobolds.”
“The kobolds weren’t always that way. Bekkit was nothing like Grimrock.”
“How did you find each other?” I asked.
“We learned of each other by accident. He was much further advanced than I was, and his Sphere gradually began to overlap mine, just like Grimrock's did yours."
"I'm guessing that unlike Grimrock, Bekkit didn't send an underwater monstrosity to butcher your god-born when you least expected it?"
Her wings flickered, and I sensed the sprite’s wry amusement. "He did not. He made peaceful contact, and later provided support and advice at a time when I was sorely in need of it."
I sensed great pain mingling with the simmering rage she experienced whenever we spoke about Bekkit.
“Why did you need his advice so much? What about your sprite?”
She was quiet for a while as we negotiated our way past more crystals. Then she said, “I didn’t have a sprite. I was alone.”
“What?!”
Sadness and regret now carried across the bond, but with them was also self-loathing. “You once asked why I didn’t have all the answers. The truth is, I fumbled my way through godhood with no idea what I was doing—and with a very similar attitude to yours when you were first awakened.”
That explained why she often grew so angry with me. Just like the time I’d almost burned out, she hadn’t wanted to see me repeat her own mistakes. For all my complaining about her interference and lectures, I couldn’t imagine having reached where I was now without her. To have been alone the entire time…
“Who were you?” I asked her. “Before you became the gnomes’ God Core.”
I’d raised the question before, many times. The sprite had always skirted the subject, and something in her voice
