“We should probably let Valthorpe know we’ve cleared the first floor,” I panted, looking at the slightly darker black of Warcry on the staircase.
He didn’t move. “Yeah, go on, then.”
I rolled onto my stomach, dragging my elbows under me, and messaged Valthorpe from my Winchester. Then I rested my dusty, sweaty forehead on one grimy arm.
“One of those cleaning scripts would go a long way right about now,” I said.
“You’re just gonna get dirty again, ain’t ya,” Warcry said. His boots gritted against the stone as he changed positions. “No wonder their hooligans kept dying.”
“It’s a wonder we didn’t.”
When I went to swipe some sweat off my face, my hand bumped a bit of stone too glassy to be from the building materials.
I picked it up and clicked on my HUD light. It was an undamaged red gem from one of the skeletons that collapsed when their buddy was killed. Like the creatures’ yellowed bones, elaborate swirls and shapes had been etched into the gemstone’s surface. Something down in its depths shifted, and I could feel the low thrum of power through my fingertips.
“I think its life point is in here.”
Warcry frowned. “Thought you could break through protections around life points.”
“Me, too.” I sat up and bounced the stone around on my palm. “Maybe the carvings are some kind of ancient script to keep people from taking them out. That could be why you have to destroy the gem to kill them—you crack through the script first and that destroys the life point.”
“Well, figure out a way to do it faster, yeah?” He let his head fall back against the steps and shut his eyes. “This’s bleedin’ exhausting.”
I smirked. “I thought you liked extra training.”
He winged the closest gemstone at me.
Footsteps echoed through the temple as Valthorpe and the hooligans made their way in. Smoky and Unu must’ve finally gotten bored of waiting around camp.
“Amazing.” The hairy academic acted like he didn’t know where to look first—the figures on the walls, the ancient weapons and gemstones littering the floor, or the carvings climbing up the worn stone steps. “You could spend a lifetime studying it all.”
“You’ve got two hours,” Smoky growled. “Then the sun goes down. I don’t want to be in here after dark.”
Valthorpe dug a journal out of his pocket and flipped it open. It looked like the same one Galston had been reading in the saloon. He hmmed and whispered to himself as he compared whatever was written in the journal to the figures on the walls.
“They seem to be leading the captives somewhere,” he said. “I noticed it in the outer rooms, too. They’re dragging them in here, and from here—” He zipped a finger along the wall, following some invisible line that landed on the staircase. “—up.”
I pocketed the red gemstone for later and got to my feet.
“Guess that’s where we’re headed, then.”
Warcry blew out a long breath, then came to join me at the foot of the stairs.
“One more floor,” he said, swiping sweat off his face with his shoulder. “Keep track of your kills. Loser has to rehydrate supper for the winner.”
I covered my arms with Death Metal. “Deal.”
Overcultivated
WARCRY’S A GRACIOUS loser when you beat him in a fight. He’s not when you beat him in a friendly competition.
“Here,” he snapped, shoving a rehydrated MealBag at me. “Choke on it.”
When you think about it, the deck was stacked against him to begin with. My shields were made for crushing the skeletons’ gemstones. Warcry’s go-to weapon, that massive roundhouse with his prosthetic, was made for taking your head off from your blind spot. The angle was all wrong for a forehead shot. He eventually adapted a crazy-high side kick for the job, but by then he was already down three points, and I made sure he didn’t gain them back.
But I didn’t make a smart comment. At that point, I was too hungry to think, and not because of the script tattoo. That was running on the ton of ancient Miasma I’d been sucking down all day long in the temple. I was starving because we had been in near-constant hand-to-hand combat for the last eight hours, and even if we’d had time for a break between skelebuddy swarms, we hadn’t thought to bring anything with us to eat. It felt like my stomach had taken over my whole body, and I had to feed it in the next second or it would flip me inside out and swallow me whole. I scarfed my victory dinner down, then dumped some dried fruit and jerky on top to fill in the empty spaces.
Unu started a fire in the fire pit and boiled a panful of water for his, Smoky’s, and Valthorpe’s MealBagz. Sushi swam around behind him, peeking over his shoulder every now and then, but staying just out of his line of vision.
“Tastes better hot,” the rock guy said, waving a crystal-encrusted hand at his ear like he was shooing away a mosquito. Sushi ducked behind his head.
“May do, but it takes forever.” Warcry plopped down on a log and tore into his rehydrated food.
Across the fire, Sushi peeked over Unu’s shoulder. When he didn’t immediately react, she swam up a little farther and watched him pour boiling water into the MealBagz.
“If you can steam your clothes dry, can’t you heat up your water? Just—” I held out my hand, palm up, and made a fwoosh sound.
“It don’t work like that,” Warcry growled around a mouthful of food.
“That’s what you said about the wet clothes.”
“Drop it, grav.”
