Chapter 33: Welcome To The Jungle

They decided they're gonna try and start some fires, maybe attempt to funnel the chimeras in so we're not surrounded. They also had the idea to block off the holes the beasts will be crawling from, but we're not sure what they'd block it with.

We've decided to check out the room. The one with the door that will try to suck the life outta me. Needless to say, I'm intrigued.

The portcullis slides closed behind us— incredibly ominously, as we didn't close it— and like strange lightbulbs, little orbs of light begin to flicker and pop to life inside translucent globes around the sides of the chamber. One by one, the light of a strong desert sun alights, revealing the chamber we have stepped into, lined with barred tunnels along the walls.

Mato lets out a long whistle in amazement as we take in the room.

Izzy remarks, saying “Well, I'd say this guy had an overinflated ego but, this might be appropriate for a pharaoh.”

In a strange, winding pattern, all through this long chamber are small statues coming about to knee height. From the way they're arranged and staggered unevenly, I'd guess that they create a pattern or image when viewed from above. Each of them depicts a person on their hands and knees in supplication, bowing towards the colossal door on the far end of the chamber.

The massive door, of some stone I can't identify— I'm no geologist, best I could do is lick it and tell you if it’s slate— is carved with an intricate relief of the same douchebag from the fountain. He stands, in a familiar artstyle similar to the ancient Egyptian murals— the sideways 2d depictions— but clearly evolved after thousands of years.

It has no color, but the usage of the lines still gives the impression of shadows and lighting. His stance is open, and he looks up and above all his supplicants. He still wears the mask over his face and the white robes. His right hand is raised— but only at chest level, to show the ease of it— and he holds the sun itself within it. His left is lowered, and I can see at the end of his finger, an intricate and complicated stone, different from the rest. Collapsed against the stone floor at the feet of this mural, is a decrepit skeleton, its clothing rotting around it, with its fleshless hand still stuck to the pharaoh’s fingertip.

Next to the door, spray-painted on the sandstone wall, is that same symbol of an open book with the ‘no’ sign over it.

My mouth suddenly feels very dry.

“I'm no detective, but if I had to guess, that's probably where I'll have to funnel the mana into.” I say pointing at the skeleton.

“But I still have no idea what that symbol is supposed to mean.”

Demarcus grabs my shoulder from behind, steadily. “Can't help ya there, but you got this man. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Take your time, we gotchu.”

“Not too much time.” Izzy says under her breath, but the sound carries in the large room.

When we turn to look at her she blushes, fakes a cough and changes subject.

“So, you think these statues are of his enemies or his subjects?”

Our footsteps echo as we spread about the room, and I stop my walk towards the room to squat and try to see the faces of one of the bowing statues.

“Well, the sculptors didn't make these people ugly caricatures, and most tombs have stuff that the interred want to bring with them, so I'd say… not subjects, but people he's saved.”

“Like look, this guy is a whole ass samurai. No way that's one of his subjects. These are people in awe of his magnanimosity— or whatever.” I say, letting my inner art critic out for a minute.

Izzy gives me a nod from where she stands with Mato by one of the barred tunnels.

“I'd guess these might be representations of foreign nations then, bowing at the power of the pharaoh.”

I nod, deep in thought.

“The pharaoh did indeed have countless men on their knees.”

Demarcus and I snicker at my crude joke, and I take a satisfied sigh.

“Alright, smash it.”

“What?” Izzy asks, looking up in alarm.

Demarcus breaks off one of the statues from the knees, as the stone seems to be part of the floor itself, and then breaks the arms.

Izzy and Mato look slightly askance from across the room.

“What? Your plan was to block off the holes right? Well, look! We got all of this usable stone!” I shout, a bit smug at their disappointment with me.

Demarcus begins to break off more, carrying them off with his [Lessened Weight], and letting Mato and Izzy try and wedge them into the tunnel openings.

I feel slightly useless, unable to help much as I need to conserve my mana, but I remember the other plan of fire and head back to the entrance.

I pat around on the stone for a minute before finding the hidden release button, and I walk back to the slave quarters.

I drag out the wooden cots one at a time and begin breaking them up for firewood. I shout over to Mato.

“Where do you want the fire wall? Oh and hey— if we wanted to burn the slaves' bodies this'd be a good opportunity! The ceiling is high enough, I'm sure the smoke won't be a problem. It'll probably get funneled down the higher tunnels anyways.”

Mato looks over his shoulder, but finishes wedging what looks to be the torso of someone wearing tattered rags before he replies.

“You want to use their bodies as firewood? No. That is incredibly disrespectful.”

“Aw cmon, I'm trying here. Besides, I'm sure they'd be psyched to help us fuck over their oppressors. At the very least let us use them as sandbags!”

I wince as the last bit comes out of my mouth. Even as I said it I realized how shitty that was, but some part of me resented Mato saying ‘no’ with such finality and my damn mouth went vigilante.

I turn around and leave as Mato starts trying to lecture me and Demarcus starts walking over.

Demarcus finds me frustratedly kicking at cots, failing to break some of the sturdier parts.

“You alright?” He asks.

“Yeah, of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?”

“Cuz you’re kicking furniture like it owes you money.”

“You know that wasn't cool to joke about, right?”

I sigh, and there's a frustrated bite in my tone when I say “yeah. I know.”

“Alright, so long as you know.”

“But what else has you so fucked up? You mouth off all the time, that can't be it.”

“I— I just—”

Do I tell him about Mato? About how I'm supposed to let him die?

I want to tell him. I want to tell him everything. He keeps my secrets— but— that doesn't mean he doesn't try to help or stop me. He definitely wouldn't let it happen.

Maybe that's a solution? Maybe I let Mato die, but Demarcus doesn't? Technically a fair interpretation, and would make sense if I have to do something instead of trying to save Mato.

Or maybe that's just a good way to get branched.

I settle on a “compromise”— which is another word for some pussy shit.

“There's… something I read, in the binder, that I'm trying to prevent or… work around. It's really fucking me up man.”

Demarcus steps closer and leans against the wall near me, nodding attentively as I go on.

“It's time shit so— hard to explain but— no real getting around it. The book has tips and tricks to navigate this stuff but it said ignorance is my best option and that ship has sailed. Ugh!”

“I just don't know what I'm gonna do man.”

Demarcus gives me another moment, letting me have a second to breathe and making sure I don't have anything else to say before he reassures me.

“That sounds like a lot dude. I'm sorry. Maybe you're biting off more than you can chew— you tend to do that.”

“Maybe you don't gotta be the judge, jury, and executioner of time or whatever.”

“Arbiter.” I offer.

“If you say so. What I'm saying is maybe time isn't your responsibility. I'd say do your best but you'd interpret your best to be trying to perfect time or some shit.” He says, and we chuckle.

“If you wanna tell the group what it is, we can try to help, ease the burden a bit. Or maybe you can just tell me. I don't gotta help, but maybe it'd be nice to have someone who knows?”

I shake my head.

“No. Ignorance is the best weapon, remember?”

“Yeah, alright, I trust you. Maybe we try not to worry about it for a bit, if it's not an immediate problem. You got a door to open first. The book ain't so helpful right now.”

“Hey, maybe that's what future you is tryna tell you with the ‘no book’ symbols? Maybe we just ignore what it says will be and focus on what's in front of us, yeah?”

I sigh, but it grows to a small smile.

“Yeah. Alright.”

“But it did say there was a footlocker in here and I refuse to let it get away from me!”

I play up the bit, and Demarcus just shakes his head like a weary foster worker.

“You get five minutes to look.”

“Ten.”

“Five.”

***

I didn't find it.

Elusive little box. Even tried tearing up the floor. But whatever.

I should take D's advice and forget about what the book says. Maybe that is what the symbols mean and my [Traveler’s Journal] is inaccurate here for some reason.

Forgetting or believing it’s wrong are the two better options for predestination, so, I'll do my best to think that. Hard though, when it feels like I'm doubting myself. This book is my biggest tool here, I can't really be doubting it like that.

I dwell on these things as I approach the door, pulling out the case of 12— now 11 after bartering— mana potions. I begin laying them on the floor next to the button I'll have to channel mana next to. And the skeleton.

I look up to it and give it a little nod.

“Sup. Mind if I give it a go?”

Skeleton doesn't seem to mind.

I pull my hands into the sleeves of my coat to pull the skeleton off the door without getting ancient skele-germs on my hands.

As the bones clatter to the floor and I push them further with one foot, I wonder how they're staying together like this, and notice the wooden ring on the finger bones of the hand that was once against the button.

I reach towards it, and then pull my hand back quickly.

“Good way to get cursed, numbnuts.” I whisper to myself.

Instead I take my meditative stance, pulling the hand with the ring attached in front of me by the upper arm, and hesitate casting [Eye-dentify].

After all, every drop of mana counts.

But, if this ring is powerful, we'll need it far more than a shitty store-brand bootleg spell's worth of mana.

I cast the spell, then tear the ring from the skeleton's finger, and yell back to Izzy where the others still diligently labor over filling the tunnels with rocks.

She was definitely complaining that I wasn't helping with the rocks. This'll shut her up.

“Yo Iz! Ring of dexterity!”

Her eyes shift between me sitting on the floor, the wooden ring I suddenly have in my hand, and the toppled skeleton I'm sitting in front of.

“Was that on the skeleton?!”

“...No!”

“Ew!”

“Aw c'mon, we can clean it!”

“We'd better.” She says, having walked over from the tunnel they finished blocking, Mato and Demarcus trailing behind her.

“So, what's it do?” She asks, as I pour water over it and wipe it with my undershirt.

I shrug and make the paralinguistic ‘I dunno’ sound.

“Makes ya dextrous. Figured that's best used with you, your fingering on that guitar will probably be insane.”

That gets her eyes to light up.

Hesitantly, she raises an open palm to me, and I drop the ring in it.

She slips it on her right middle finger, and the ring hangs loosely from her hand, but I can see the grain on the wood almost seem to spin as it slowly resizes itself.

Izzy shudders and says “ooh, that feels weird.”

Mato takes the opportunity to check in with everybody by saying

“I don't think we'll be blocking up any more tunnels. The rest of them are too high up and we don't exactly have a ladder, let alone a forklift.”

As he speaks, Isabella shifts from one foot to another, her stance adjusting slightly.

“We got the firewalls set up, and should light em a bit before you start goin’. We set em up to keep the critters from getting to you ‘n Izzy without havin’ to get through Demarcus ‘n me first.”

Izzy starts to look consternated, then surprised, as she rolls her shoulders and quietly snaps her fingers. All of them. Including snapping her middle finger with her ring finger, somehow.

“We all got tinderboxes ‘n firestarters right? Good. Demarcus you get the left wall, I got the right. Cy, don't start chargin’ that thing til we tell ya to. Don't want the bars raisin’ til the fire’s goin’.”

I'm barely listening. My eye is glued to Izzy as she unslings her guitar and begins tuning it, making microscopic adjustments and fiddling with levers and knobs on the body.

“Yeah, sure thing gramps, easy peazy.” I say, distantly.

He sighs. “This is imp—”

His voice is shouldered aside by the wail of a guitar, followed by Izzy playing a scale up and then down the guitar— and then both simultaneously— in less than a second. As a warmup.

She strikes a power chord and lets it ring, bending the strings to make the sound warble as she listens to the reverb of the chamber.

I stand there, listening with a manic grin, and take a breath to shout something annoying— before I hear her roaring guitar be echoed by the roar of a chimera.

Our eyes scan the tunnels surrounding us, seeing the strange magical light reflecting off the eyes of beasts in the dark of the tunnels. Their noises grow into a din of screeches and growls. Izzy hits another chord to drown them, then begins to follow it with simple licks, growing more and more complex and subdivided.

“I think that’s our cue boys!” I shout over the noise, and Demarcus and Mato scramble to light the fires.

I quickly jog to take my place next to the activation rune, and hear Izzy behind me, finally warmed up.

The reverberating sound of her guitar playing fantastical little licks stabilizes, and Mato’s head shoots up to her from where he kneels, lighting the fire. Shortly after, my grin grows even wider and my maniacal laughter is lost in the sound, as I too recognize the intro to Welcome To The Jungle by Guns N’ Roses.

The light behind me grows as the fires take, and I turn over my shoulder to see Demarcus stancing up with his newly durable crowbar in the opening between the fires and Mato jogging back.

They're not ready, and the fires aren't high enough, but the timing of the song is perfect, transitioning to changing feel and giving me just enough time so the bars will raise right as the lyrics come in. I have to do it now.

“Here we go!”

I slap a hand to the activation rune and channel mana into it like I'm trying to punch a [Magic Missile] without moving, or like I'm a 12 year old trying to use the force.

The rune begins to glow and I hear the scraping of a hundred metal bars over the screaming music, before they're drowned out by Izzy beginning to belt out the first verse.

Without lifting my hand, I turn back to see a few of the stones from where we filled the lower tunnels beginning to fall away. Looks like we forgot to account for the metal bars lowering when we wedged things in there.

Despite that, I can't help but smile as the first of the chimeras flock out in clusters from the upper holes, and are promptly sniped down by Mato.

I turn back to the door to focus on my part of this, but can't stop myself from shutting my eye and yelling out a “Sha-na-na-na-na-na-na knees, knees!” with Izzy and, surprisingly, Mato.

I examine the door as I feel the mana be sucked from me. The carved lines of the finger have slowly begun to fill with a soft blue light, almost like the rising line in a thermometer.

I trace the line and follow it as it fills the rest of the hand, and that slowly emptying feeling in my gut sinks as I realize;

This mural is all one line.

I'm going to have to fill this entire thing.

“Dear Neptune.” I say, my face paling.

I look back over my shoulder to see Demarcus kick a chimera in its lion-face while Mato ducks a swipe from a badger-bird and disembowels it with his new kukri before tossing his old knife into the chest of a pouncing jaguar-rabbit.

The fire walls seem to be working for the most part, funneling the larger ground based chimera into a chokepoint for Demarcus, but some still creep around it to get at the back line. The aerial chimera swoop down at us, and I only realize now that the reason I haven’t been scratched yet is that Mato has been defending me, judging by the 2 dead half-birds behind me.

The wedged statues are holding fast in at least a dozen of the tunnels— but I have no idea how long that will last. There has to be a stampede building behind them, and more and more chimera trickle out from the open tunnels every second.

Not nearly the horde we saw— perhaps Izzy's playing is scaring a good number off.

But that's not my problem. I have to have faith that they'll get through it— or we'll get branched. Either way, I need to focus on my task.

I look back up at the mural and see that blue glow has only reached halfway up the forearm by now. The growing sense of emptiness in my gut begins to ache, like the feel of emptiness after puking, but knowing you'll have to keep retching and dry-heaving for a while.

The reality of what I'm going to go through has me far less sympathetic to my allies fighting tooth and nail behind me. Izzy's singing picks up and I feel my heart swell, and falter.

“Sha-na-na-na-na— I'm so fucked.”

***

The 5th mana potion goes down, my mouth growing ever more sticky and dehydrated. I shake out the last drop of the blue liquid onto my tongue, and then huck the empty bottle into the crowd of beasts from my seated position on the floor against the door. The rune is thankfully placed so it can still be reached from sitting, as I think standing is begging to be too much, and if I were to collapse and my hand were to fall, I would have to start over.

The potion hits my roiling stomach and I can feel it burn through my veins, refilling my dwindling mana stores as I direct them towards the rune.

But that's not the problem.

I think as I let out a magical burp that causes me to wince.

The problem is that any mana channeled into a spell doesn't just get used, but changed, and has a byproduct of entropic, waste mana that stays within the body and will slowly be processed by the mage.

I'm not sure why that's still happening here, where I'm not casting a spell but just channeling raw mana into something— maybe I'm just a shitty mage and I could've avoided this— but regardless, it means that I have a growing, boiling sea of waste mana inside me. It feels like my stomach is going to burst, like I'm being forcefed gallons of water, slowly.

I stare out at the people, still fighting. Izzy's playing falters as a bat-winged cat-clawed chimera manages to swipe down and gets its claws caught in her hair. I can't see her face from here, but I can see the blood dripping off the side of her chin. Her head and arms have taken several hits already.

And yet, she plays on.

Mato is scavenging ammunition from dead chimeras, slashing out with his knife at any that come near him, while Demarcus has kicked over the left firewall to close off the chokepoint, and holds one chimera by its hyena neck while he pummels another with his crowbar.

My head hits the stone as I look straight up, my eye tracing my progress, and I watch the blue light painstakingly filling every inch of the elaborate filigree on the trim of the pharaoh's robes.

“Fuck you.” I whisper to the stone.

***

The 8th potion goes down, and immediately comes back up, pooling in my mouth. Too precious to waste, I choke the magical bile back down.

My head is slumped over now, and my ears ring. It feels as if every cell in my body is committing suicide one by one. Like lemmings— If that isn't an old wive’s tale.

Maybe it's a pheromones thing— the lemmings, I mean. I know ants will get into death-spirals following a dummy pheromone trail.

Funny, the things you think about when delirious from mana-sickness.

But this has gone far beyond sickness. I've gotta have mana-cancer by now.

My head lolls, rolling to a shoulder as I breathe heavily from the pain and nausea of movement.

I look up to see Izzy playing, though I'm not sure I hear it over the ringing. She's gone blind from the blood in her eyes, yet she still plays. Her throat tears as she screams the words to a song I've forgotten.

Mato has dragged Demarcus back and is holding a rearguard action as D pours a healing potion over the front of his helmet, getting half of it into his mouth while the rest of it trickles down onto his wounded body.

He's on his hands and knees now, flagging, but still manages to kick a leaping chimera into the dwindling fire.

When I finally process what I'm seeing, I remember something, and my chapped lips try to whisper.

“De— — th—”

It's too quiet, lost in the sound. But it's all I have.

“Demarcus, you— —a — th—gh!” I repeat, my dying body giving all it can, the vibration of my voice almost causing me to clench and fall— if that wouldn't have hurt more.

He doesn't hear me. But somehow, some way, Isabella does.

Her ragged voice tears across the room.

“Demarcus! You gotta push through!”

My eye burns on her, then on Demarcus, punching the ground beneath him and slowly coming to his feet.

A smile aches across my lips.

***

The 10th potion went down— I think. My face lies against the cold stone wall, and yet even that cold burns. I think I'm babbling.

Somewhere in the foggy delirium, beyond the obsession with pain, I've been debating just letting myself branch. Or die. Oblivion has to be better than this.

The arm I have to keep raised is trembling, and my gut has long been empty of mana, I'm just letting the last of it trickle like a leaky faucet now, trying to delay the inevitable long enough for even just a drop of the entropic mana eating its way through me to be processed before I have to add on to it.

The babbling helps, gives me something to do, something my brain is latching on to as the mana burns away at it. Though, I have no idea what I'm saying.

I think someone is touching me. The mana burns in a small spot, not touching the ground or wall— I don't think.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure of anything right now besides the fact that this hurts and I want it to stop.

The mana burns away at my body, but it's not contained solely by my body, but my very being, my very self— my soul.

I think my soul burst.

Like a trash bag too small for the trash can, and then dozens of gallons of gasoline were poured into it, bursting the bag and filling the bin. Then someone lit the gas on fire.

My body feels like a dumpster fire.

I think I hear something. The noise is closer now.

I think I've been hearing it for a while now, but it only just made its way to me now.

I think it's Izzy.

Glass touches my bloody and broken lips, bitten in several places and otherwise chapped from mana-sickness.

My head tilts, though I didn't move it, and that filthy liquid fills my mouth. I almost spit it out, but a hand clasps my jaws shut.

I try to open my eye, I think it's already open. Drying.

But I hear it.

“— — just one more.”

“Please, half-baked. You're almost there. Just one more.”

I swallow.

3rd-degree nerves thrash in my burn ward throat as they're doused in gasoline.

I think I'm crying.

But, I can do one more.

Just. One. More.

No longer the trickle, clench every muscle in my entire being, pouring all the mana out of me at once like magical vomit.

Entropic mana blooms in my chest and my fingertips like a molotov on a burning house.

I scream, and continue screaming as the pressure, spread across my body laying against the ground, is concentrated in two pinpoint spots as someone picks me up in their arms. I don't have anything left but to quietly scream, the last of my fluids bubbling as bilious spittle in my mouth, and dribbling as tears down my cheek.

When I'm set down, I hear something, something I've been waiting for.

Demarcus, choked up and panting, whispers repeatedly to me.

“You're done. It's done. It's done. It's over.”

It's over.

Now is a great opportunity for a sarcastic comment to him.

I pass out before I can even lick my lips.

***

Level up!

Tier 1 [Half-baked Time Traveler], level 8 — Tier 1 [Half-baked Time Traveler], level 9

Skill upgraded: [Serviceable Mana Well] — [Enhanced Mana Well] (passive, upgradeable)

Skill earned: [Magical Overclock] (active)

***

Thought drifts, somewhere in the semi-conscious mind, sinking.

As that voice speaks to the time traveler— dancing on a precipice in the moments between wake and sleep— a thought bubbles its way from the briney depths of his dimming mind:

Was that a pun?