He hesitated, then stabbed a finger at me. “You cut and retreat when I say. I ain’t dragging your corpse into a coffin twice in one week.”
“If I drag myself into it, you shouldn’t have to,” I said.
“What are you on about now?”
“Whenever I overcultivate, we retreat to somewhere we’re not being attacked, I hop in and condense, and then we get back to work. Creating the spirals is a lot faster in the coffin.”
Warcry looked like the suggestion left a bad taste in his mouth, but he didn’t argue against it. He knew our best bet was to finish this.
Valthorpe grinned with excitement.
“I think it’s an excellent plan,” he said. “Let’s do this.”
My stomach roared.
“First, food and a lot more water,” I said. “Then we do this.”
Temple Run
FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS, Warcry and I spent the bulk of our time clearing new rooms in the temple, fighting our way toward the final floor. With Wrathblade’s help, I pulled down massive Spirit boosts from skelebuddies. When I started to leak Miasma through my pores, Warcry shut the operation down, and I hopped into the Crucible Casket to condense. The process of getting the spirals going was harder under the pressure of the coffin, but once they started turning, they condensed much faster than if I’d been doing it outside. My Spirit reserve hit a hundred thousand and kept creeping up.
Other than stopping to shovel food into the ravenous beast in my stomach, we didn’t take much time off from the temple. Sushi hung out in camp with Unu and Smoky, who didn’t have much to do now that Warcry and I were there and weren’t looking to change that.
Valthorpe was over Sarca’s nonexistent moon about the progress we were making, and with the stints in the coffin, I was doing surprisingly well without sleep. Not only did the Crucible concentrate your Spirit and strength, but it seemed to do the same with time. If I was in there for a few minutes, it felt like I’d had a full night’s sleep. If I was in there an hour, I felt like I could fight for days without stopping.
Warcry, on the other hand, was starting to wear out. He caught naps while I was in the coffin and sometimes instead of eating when we went back to camp, but it obviously wasn’t enough. His technique stayed art form perfect, and he never slowed down or complained about being tired, but he got touchier every day.
“You could use the coffin, too,” I offered, holding the tiny black-and-silver necklace out to him. The casket and I had gotten used to each other, and I knew it would let one of my friends use it if I commanded it to. “It might help more than the naps.”
Warcry actually considered it for half a second, which in itself was probably a sign of how tired he was, but when he touched the coffin, he grimaced like he’d just stuck his hand in a full porta-potty.
“I ain’t getting in there.”
“Scared of the dark?” I asked. “Or is it small spaces?”
He didn’t take the bait. “It’s tainted.”
“You and everybody else keep saying stuff like that. Is there some taboo about dead matter in this universe, or are you talking literally tainted, like soul contamination?”
“It’s like poisoned water, yeah? If it was only a scum on top, you could clean it off, but this is mixed throughout. Get it in your Spirit sea, and it clings to you, mixes in. You can’t ever wash it out. Nobody in their right mind’d take the chance if they didn’t have to do.”
“Kest never seemed too worried about death pollution.” Thinking about her, I glanced at the cracked screen of my HUD even though I knew I didn’t have any new messages. “She was scavenging from the bodies that got washed down the Shut-Ins since she was little.”
“Then she’s already got it all over her, don’t she?” Warcry smirked. “Probably why she doesn’t mind your stinking carcass.”
Corpse Fire came to mind.
“What if you burned the contamination off when you were done?”
“How d’ya burn something out of a Spirit that’s already on fire?” he asked.
I scratched my jaw. “Touché.”
“Anyway, you don’t need to worry about me, grav.” He thumped a fist on his stomach like he was demonstrating that he had abs of steel. “I built this body to last. It’ll still be solid as stone when yours falls apart. I’m a professional.”
“Good to know.” I dropped the casket necklace back inside my shirt, then pointed at some ancient etchings on the staircase to the fifth floor. “That says professionals go first.”
The staircase leading up to the fifth floor was booby-trapped with stone spears that shot out each step. On the way up, Warcry took a broadhead through his left boot, and I narrowly avoided losing the ability to father future Hake generations.
Up on flat ground, we weren’t only contending with hordes of skelebuddies and fire geysers, but more of the spear traps. Luckily, in spite of the new booby traps, the skelebuddies weren’t any stronger or smarter than their counterparts on the lower levels. Whoever had set this place’s defenses up must’ve had a lot of faith in overwhelming numbers.
With Wrathblade on our side, Warcry and I had the first room cleared in under an hour. The whispering surprised me every time I drew Wrathblade, but the voices never got louder, just more numerous. The real danger came when I tried to figure out who they were or listen in to what they were saying.
We were just carrying out our assignments. It was you or us.
I never wronged you, Death cultivator. We never even spoke. Why did you do it?
I didn’t deserve it. The rest of the Contrails might have deserved
