Chapter 32: Mana Potion Keg-stand

Level up!

Tier 1 [Half-baked Time Traveler], level 7 — Tier 1 [Half-baked Time Traveler], level 8

Skill earned: [Sense of timing] (passive)

***

“I'm just not finding it. I'm telling you dude, it's not under here.” Demarcus calls from beneath one of the cots in the slaves’ quarters.

“Keep looking!” I shout from beneath my own.

“Ugh. No, man. We've been looking for… damn there's no clocks in here.” Demarcus says, pulling himself from beneath the cot with ancient dust bunnies stuck to his hair. Mato made him a little loop to tie off his helmet to his pack while still allowing him to slap it on when he needs it.

“17 minutes 36— 37 seconds. Wow, that's… wow.” I say. Just sorta sulking from beneath the cot.

I poke my head out from beneath and look up at Demarcus, now standing with Izzy.

“There's gotta be more to this skill, right?”

“Yeah man,” Demarcus says, a pained and forcibly supportive smile on his face as he quite literally looks down on me.

“I bet if we needed to do something at the exact same time, you could do it without a countdown or nothing.”

“Either that or you're an annoying clock.” Izzy says.

When Demarcus gives her a look she relents with a sigh. “It's probably very useful for alchemy and things like that. Knowing exactly how much time has passed is useful.”

“You've gotta remember that we're still low level. We're gonna be getting a bunch of basic fundamental skills. Like, I got [Perfect Pitch]. My pitch was fine before but, whatever.” She says with a shrug.

“Yeah, I mean, I got [Durable Weapon]. Which, I feel, is a little late.” Demarcus says, pulling out his dented, bent, and blunted crowbar.

“But hey, fundamentals. Can't build a roof before ya got walls.”

“I'm sure you'll find a way to use it for somethin’ great.” Mato says from afar, where we had painstakingly removed the chains from the mummified slaves that had been shackled to their cots, and he is now laying them out as gently as possible.

“Alright, alright, you've made your point. I'm fine being an annoying clock.” I say, brushing dust from my pants, which— dust is mostly dead skin, so I pointedly don't look at the corpses that had been lying on the cots I've been crawling under.

“Regardless, the binder said there was a footlocker under one of these cots. But it is not here.”

“Maybe your book’s wrong. I mean, you did say this place gets tweaked for the tutorial. So, could be what's there for them isn't there for us.” Izzy says, leaning against one of the walls.

“It's true that the tomb we're walking through now isn't the same one I'll be fucking with in the future. But this binder was written for this one. I've got [Perfect Memory], so when I write this passage I'll remember if this was here or not. If I wrote it in the book, it's here.” I assert.

“How about we move on to check out the monsters and we can come back later with a fresh set of eyes.” Demarcus offers.

Frustrated, I give a long suffering sigh.

“Fine. But I'm not letting loot slip through my fingers. I'll tear this place up brick by brick if I have to!” I say, yelling and pointing around the quarters as if I'm challenging the room itself.

Walking back across into the fountain room, pulling the lever to shut the bars to the slaves quarters behind us, and walking to the other side, we arrive at the archway labeled with the blue pawprint, Blue's Clues style.

The hall on the other side of the bars is dark, and the pink flickering light from our current chamber doesn't extend more than 20 feet dimly into it. What we can see on the entry hallway are a few hooks along the walls, with chains, leads, whips, and various other tools hanging from them.

And a lot of claw marks scratched into the walls.

My hand is on the lever when Mato stops me.

“Best to see if there's anythin’ waitin’ for us first. Don't wanna get pounced as soon as ya open the door.”

He kneels down a good few feet from the portcullis, and draws his knife. He taps the blade against the bars repeatedly, the metallic banging echoing down the hall into the darkness. He starts making little squeaking noises with his lips to add effect.

We wait a few moments, before Mato turns to me.

“See if ya can send a light down there.”

I remember those same pulsing lights on a dark winter night, and the ball appears above my upturned hand.

I send it floating down the claw-carved hall, the light originally fighting with the pink torchlight before finding no opposition as it reaches the dark. I float it further and it illuminates where the initial hallway opens to larger chambers.

The floor becomes sandy towards the end of the hall. In the room this hall opens to I can see two large metal doors, further in and along the sides of the chamber, a few feet apart. I begin to struggle with the distance as I feel the spell growing unstable so far from me, and the last thing I manage to see before it winks out is the reflection of the light, glinting off of some glass pane on the far end of the chamber.

“Looks like there's nothing, but imma test one last thing.” I say, and begin casting [Minor Illusion].

A tiny 3 foot tall Mato appears, apparently my subconscious either dwindling on him or instantly jumping to him when I thought of “scout.” Mato gives me a side eye while Demarcus coos over it.

“Awww, hey lil’ guy! Who’s a grumpy old man?” Demarcus says, in that condescending pet voice as he tries to ruffle its hair, his hand instead just going through the illusion.

I resummon [Light], [Simultaneous Sustain] easing the burden, and have Tiny Mato walk through the bars. I even add the little detail of having him crouched, skulking with his knife in one hand and the light floating above his other, for an additional layer of realness.

The illusion stalks to the edge of the hallway, and it mimics my thoughts as I imagine it peeking its head around the corner to peer around the dark room.

Nothing pounces upon his adorable little head, so I dismiss the illusion.

The portcullis glides up with a slight scrape, and Izzy and I follow Demarcus and Mato into the room, Demarcus’ clanking steps paired with Mato's absolute silence. My [Light] dances off of the sandstone walls, casting shadows in the shallow scratches.

Getting closer I can see the several reinforced latches along the metal doors, and little metal pegs in front of them, removable from the floor, to stop the doors from opening more than a few inches unless the pegs are removed.

Instinctually, I am drawn to the glass, and as our feet hit sand and we near it, I realize it is a window. Large, thick, 10 feet across and 4 feet high.

Mato and Demarcus reach it first, and their sharp intake of breath is troubling. Izzy and I quickly reup our steps and catch up to them to see.

What we see through that window has the others cold and still, but just makes me dread the inconvenience and trial we'll have to endure, and glad I won't have to fight that. Mana sickness may be a fair price to pay.

Through the window is a warehouse of space, dimly lit by magical lighting. The entire floor is glass and metal bars, with metal walkways along it. 10 or 15 feet below that glass is a sea of beasts. And that is what they are; Beasts— of every make and model.

At first I think it is just endless bodies pressed together, birds and snakes and pigs and cats and— an endless writhing pit of bodies pressed together. But, as I look closer, as I try to focus on each individual animal, I see that the lines between them still blur. I see the leg of a lion and follow it to the body of a bull, then lose that beneath a massive harpy's head. Countless types and species of beasts, but never individual. I look and see each creature complete, with legs, tails, bodies and heads— sometimes several— but each and every part of these creatures are separate and seem to come from a different animal.

“It's like Noah had an orgy on his ark and these are their incestuous descendants.” I joke.

“What are they?” Demarcus asks, and I turn to Mato, but it's Izzy that replies.

“Chimeras.” She says.

“They're, well, they're that. A hodgepodge of animals stitched together, though I don't see stitches. Ya know gryphons?”

She asks and Mato and I nod or look at her with recognition. Demarcus shakes his head.

“Body of a lion, wings and head of an eagle. Same concept but… these are— much more complicated.” She finishes.

I look back down at them, and inspect their enclosure. It widens and contracts on occasion, with little pockets like habitats. I trace the paths as, like a fucked up cat tower crossed with an ant farm or those hamster tubes, the pens climb vertically, up along the walls even with perches for the chimera that are more avian than most.

I squint my eye and can see dozens of holes in the walls on the far side of the chamber, and I just bet those are the holes these things will crawl from when I start opening the door.

I hear a creak followed by a cacophony of animalistic screeches and yells, like a mass shooting at the petting zoo. I am backhanded by the sheer smell— an indecipherable caustic mixture of shit and musk, the scent of life, compounded exponentially.

My head reels and whips around to where Demarcus has opened one of the metal doors a crack. The sound and smell hits him with a force, and he quickly goes to shut it, but it is slammed back into his face as a bear-like claw forces its way through. The door slams against the peg in the floor, and sticks, as the chimera beyond tries to push in.

Demarcus recovers and, foolishly, kicks at the paw, before drawing his crowbar. He smacks at it and unleashes a roar like a tiger, its claws rake against his too-close calf but thankfully glide against his armor.

I step forward, and see through the space in the door the creature's face, and despite it having the roar of a tiger I see the head of a wolf.

I flick a [Firebolt] at its face and it quickly retreats. Demarcus slams the door behind it.

“Bad doggy.”

“Alright, now that you know what you're facing, got any plans?” I ask.

“What, dont have a hare-brained scheme for this one, half-baked?” Izzy mockingly retorts.

“My plan is to get my soul sucked out by a door while doing a mana potion keg-stand. You guys are gonna be the ones fighting, so you should probably figure out how you wanna do that.” I remind.

Demarcus shrugs, and says “I'm probably gonna hit em with a crowbar.”

Mato stares out the window, watching the creatures below.

“Might be able to start some fires in the room, hold em off for a while. Maybe scare em off with loud enough sound. But I dunno if these are gonna act like normal animals.

Coulda poisoned their water supply, if we did that before breakin’ it.”

“That seems a little cruel.” Izzy says, quietly.

“You're gonna be killing them anyways, poisons as good a way as any.” I say with a shrug.

“But, book didn't mention that. Sorry.”

Mato just looks back at me. “Not everything we do needs to be written down.”

I give him a frustrated glance. “Fair enough, but—”

I was about to say ‘but we need to do everything that's written down.’ But the words rotted in my mouth.

“—fair enough.”

Is all I say.