Hask didn't wait for us. He just walked in. I followed, blinking the sunlight out of my eyes, and waited for the dark to resolve itself into something. As we walked, the light of the cave slowly disappeared entirely.
Without my eyesight, the first thing I noticed was the smell. To say that it smelled off wouldn't do it justice…there was the smell of the cave: earthy, damp, very much underground.Mingling with that was a sharp tang…like iron, but…sharper. Somewhere in me, I recalled the scent of air just before lightning struck. I couldn't place where I knew it from, but it smelled very much like that here.
And in a noxious layer beneath it all…definitely iron. Blood. Mixed with the scent of rot and bodily fluid. The dungeon was cleared out this morning. I was probably smelling monster viscera.
It should have turned my stomach a hundred times over, but I couldn't even bring myself to feel…anything. It felt familiar somehow.
I didn't know how, and didn't want to think about it.
Kael's voice cut through the dark from somewhere near me. "It smells like blood, piss, and ozone in here."
"Quiet," Hask grunted from ahead of us.
As we obeyed his stern command, I began to notice the sounds around us.
Firstly, there was a drip of water coming from…somewhere. Slow. Persistent.
Next, I listened to how the echoes of our footsteps didn't echo quite right. The sounds reverberating back to us seemed to come from strange directions.
Then, I heard something more subtle: a faint hum. Not enough to be overwhelming but definitely present. It felt like it was coming from inside the walls. It occasionally changed pitch, but never volume.
The last thing I noticed was a distinct lack of other sounds. I would've expected a cave to be alive with subtle sounds: swarms of insects scurrying; the chitter of bats above, the occasional clatter of stones as rubble shifted its weight.
There was nothing. Just the drip, the hum, and our own echoes.
I was just starting to see the shapes of the tunnel and something caught my eye. An extremely faint glow. Almost like the effect of a candle going out while you're looking at it, leaving color spots in your vision.
Hask said calmly, "No danger off the bat. Good. Now that we've had time for our eyes to adjust, we can light our lamps."
I reached into my pack and pulled forth a small circle of metal that Kael had given me. He described it as a "folding lantern" he had made himself, calling the Guild standard issue lighting "obsolete." I had taken his word for it.
He had instructed me to flip a small switch on the bottom of the disc. I thumbed around for it in the darkness until I felt a piece give. There was a click, and the sound of shifting metal. As the lantern sprang into its proper shape, a small spark of what I assumed to be magic flickered into being within it, growing into a glowing orb inside of the metal cage.
I looked up to see that everyone else had one of these as well.
Tessa was already busy scribbling in a notebook, her quill pen working frantically. She poked her tongue out of the side of her mouth as she concentrated. Cute.
"Good. Glad you picked up on it too," Hask said approvingly.
She glanced up at him. "Yeah. The mana feels weird. Makes the air heavier…like it has too much air in it."
The description went right over my head, but Hask seemed to agree.
I noticed that even with our combined lanterns, the light they gave off only seemed to illuminate a circle around us. It made the darkness beyond it look even blacker.
"Flip the hood up on your lanterns now."
We followed Hask's instructions and, to my shock, the cave was flooded with light.
I immediately wished it had not been.
The walls of the cave themselves seemed about what I had expected. Dark grey with streaks of black meta that glowed with veins of gold, assumedly elginarium, running through, shining in the magical lamplight. The ore was beautiful in a strange way.
Then I saw that the walls were spattered with blood.
This led my eyes downward to the dozens of mangled corpses scattered across the cave floor. I couldn't tell exactly what these corpses were:
Long, segmented things, roughly the size of a large dog, scattered across the chamber floor in the boneless, deflated way that only the very recently dead manage. Their skin was translucent — or had been, while they were alive. I could see the structural suggestion of something internal, a faint residual glow running through the tissue like embers that hadn't quite decided to go out yet. The light was dying. Some had already gone dark entirely. Others still pulsed very faintly, slow and irregular, like a candle in a draft.
That explained what I saw before we turned on the lanterns.
They were, I realized with some discomfort, beautiful. In the way that things are beautiful when they have no interest in being looked at.
"Veilworms," Kael said, stepping over one with casual familiarity. "I've never seen this variant before, but I'm sure of it. Thunder Hawk did clean work — none of them detonated."
"Detonated?"
He glanced back at me with an expression that suggested he had forgotten, again, that I was new. "Later."
I felt like that absolutely should have disturbed me. Exploding cave worms? It was awful. But I felt so strangely calm. It almost made me nervous. "Okay."
Hask set immediately to work, snapping instructions in an efficient, clinical voice. "Lorne — bucket, one cap of Grime Reaper, let it sit. Tessa — mana sweep. Kael — traps. Alara — stand by with healing. Veilworm blood is acidic. Glove up."
I watched the other three set right to work.
Kael dug around in his pack and produced a small metal box, which he set upon the ground. He pressed a button on the side, and I watched in mild awe as the thing began to whir and twitch. Lights activated across it, a set of six metal legs unfolded, and something akin to a head sprouted from the top, spinning slowly, with glowing "eyes" seeming to take in its surroundings.
I saw that the contraption also seemed to have numerous small compartments running along its sides. It was also pretty heavily dented and scuffed, although it seemed much more had been repaired.
Kael stood up and glanced over at me. "Cool, huh?"
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I nodded slowly. "Very. What is that thing?"
Kael puffed out his chest proudly. "May I introduce to you, the Scout, Cartography and Residue Utility Bot!"
I pondered his words for just a moment before I felt a small smile of disbelief. "SCRUB? You named it SCRUB?"
Kael grinned. "What? I'm funny."
He turned his attention back to the machine. "Alright. SCRUB: Full sweep. Active traps, disarmed traps, residue concentrations, anything moving that shouldn't be. If you find something dangerous, come straight back — don't be a hero."
I watched the machine turn its "head" toward Kael without moving its body.
"I mean it this time."
The metal critter made a noise that could only be described as adorable, and clambered off with a rigid but determined gait, making small beeps and whirs as it went.
"You built that?"
His only response was to nod enthusiastically.
"You're amazing."
He quickly about-faced at my compliment, focusing his attention on the small machine.
"Not only did he build that, it's also the first of its kind," Hask chimed in. "Kid's been turning down gold left and right from people who want to buy the design from him." His voice carried a subtle, but very real note of pride.
I watched Kael's shoulders hunch in embarrassment. "If I sell it, it's only a matter of time before the military gets a hold of it. No, thank you."
I had known Kael all of two days, but I already felt a distinct kinship with him. I felt proud of him too.
Tessa bounced on the balls of her feet, waving for my attention. "Lorne! You think that's cool? Check this out!"
I watched her stuff her notebook in a pack and bring forth a small, leatherbound book, dog-eared and well-loved. She flipped open to a specific page with practised ease and cleared her throat.
She proceeded to take a wide stance and throw one hand out in front of her dramatically, the other hand holding the book at her side.
In a voice that sounded much more formal and serious than her normal one, she spoke. "That which flows unseen, be witnessed! That which corrupts in silence, be named!"
She definitely seemed quite serious and focused. I glanced at my other companions: Kael was staring at the ceiling exasperatedly; Alara's expression could curdle milk; Hask watched on with the expression of a deeply patient man.
Tessa continued, her voice getting slightly louder. "By the Third Principle of Arcane Revelation and the Undeniable Theorem of Visible Flux — show yourself! Cleansing Art:"
She paused, and I wondered if she wasn't pausing to bask in the drama.
"Mana Sight, activate!"
As amused as I was by her enthusiastic chanting, what happened next left me floored.
The air lit up. Not with light exactly — more like the suggestion of light, the memory of it, rendered in slow-moving currents that filled the chamber from floor to ceiling. The mana had been there the whole time, I understood suddenly. We'd been breathing it, moving through it, completely blind to it. Now it was visible, and the chamber felt entirely different. Fuller. More occupied.
The healthy current was blue-green and moved like a river, purposeful and steady. The tainted parts didn't move like that. They drifted. Gathered in low corners. Clung to surfaces. The color was wrong in a way I couldn't quantify — not a specific color, just upsetting in the way a smell can be before you identify its source.
Tessa made a sound that was half fascination and half concern. She was already three pages into her notebook.
I struggled to find words. "Tessa…that was incredible."
Despite being engrossed in her notebook, I could see her beaming.
Kael gave a small snort of amusement. "It's really impressive magic to be sure, but do you need to do that silly chant every time? All you need is the last part."
Tessa didn't miss a beat, simply continued scribbling, looking up at the mana flow around us. "I don't know what you're talking about, Kael. My magic is complex and highly specific."
Kael shook his head, and I suppressed a grin. Those two were truly the best of friends.
Hask snapped me away from my thoughts with a sharp command. "Callister!"
"Yes, Foreman?"
"Bucket."
I felt my face get hot with embarrassment. I grabbed the metal bucket I had slung onto the side of my pack and stared at it for a long, hard moment. "Foreman."
"Yes, Callister?"
I gestured confusedly at the bucket. Hask shrugged. "I guess Kael didn't tell you, huh? You fill it with magic."
Magic? Surely not. Then again, we didn't come here with any water. "Magic, sir?"
"Yes. Magic. Basic janitor ability. Guild determined you had an aptitude. Bucket's enchanted as a conduit. You'll mostly use it for filling the bucket, for a while, maybe a couple other things. Focus on the intent, not the action."
"One thing Tessa's spell does correctly -" Kael started.
"'Spell'. Right." Alara's voice was quiet, but cut through the air like a knife.
Kael rolled right past the snide remark. "One thing Tessa's spell does right is the intonation. When you cast magic, you have to summon your intent and put it out in the world. You think real hard about what it is you're trying to do, speak your intent, and it happens. If you do it right."
I looked between Hask, Kael, and the bucket several times before giving a firm nod.
I thought extremely hard about filling the bucket. "Fill the bucket."
Nothing happened.
I tried again, concentrating even harder on the image in my mind of a full bucket of water. I scrunched up my face from the effort. "Fill the bucket!"
Nothing.
"I'm telling you, it needs more words!" Tessa's voice was almost sing-song.
Hask grumbled something I couldn't make out, then spoke to me again. "You're thinking too hard. Less effort, more intent. Don't think about filling it. Think about needing it filled."
That made a weird kind of sense.
I focused my thoughts and tried to strain less. I imagined the bucket. I needed to fill the bucket so I could put the Grime Reaper stuff in there. We had to clean the dungeon. I couldn't do it without the bucket of water.
And if Tessa and Kael could do cool things - and I imagined Alara had tricks up her sleeve too - then I could definitely fill a bucket.
Then another thought crept in: What if I couldn't do it? Would Kael or Tessa think poorly of me? I may not have known them long yet, but I already felt a strange need for their approval. And Alara…Alara would never let me live it down. She'd be even snootier and more aloof than before. I didn't want that.
"FILL!"
I found myself shouting the word. What happened next caught all of us off guard.
There was definitely water. A massive torrent of water that shot up out of the metal container in a violent column. It hit me squarely in the face, knocking me straight off of my feet. I dropped the bucket as I hit the dirt, and the geyser caused it to bounce and rocket toward Hask.
Oh no. I was completely screwed.
To my relief, Hask expertly caught the bucket with one hand, and the torrent of water faded. "Well. It's a start." His voice sounded amused, with a tinge of something else…curiosity.
I could feel my face getting hot, my hair dripping. I scrambled to my feet as the foreman calmly filled the bucket with water.
"That was really good, Lorne!" Tessa called from a short distance away.
I looked away from everyone. "Thanks, Tessa."
Kael sidled over to me and said quietly, "Legitimate first attempt. Not kidding. You'll get there."
I relaxed slightly, but still felt the heat of embarrassment.
Hask didn't acknowledge what happened at all. He gestured to me. "Callister. Grime Reaper. Hop to."
I had almost forgotten what my actual task was before I tried to fill the bucket. I rummaged in my pack urgently before producing the appropriate bottle.
As previously instructed, I put on the heavy leather gloves that were given to me in my gear pack and filled a capful of bubbling purple liquid into the bucket of water. It hissed softly as it foamed.
"Good. Careful," Hask said with a gesture of approval. "This stuff can dissolve bone in seconds. Don't get it on you."
He pulled a wooden dowel from his belt and gave it a shake. It expanded by a few feet, and a mop head shook free from inside of it somehow. "Now we mop."
I was wondering when the literal "cleaning" was going to come into play. I dunked my mop into the bucket, carefully sloshing it all over the pile of dead veilworms, watching the remains dissolve.
It still took a frustrating amount of time. Hask made very clear that we had to clean every drop of blood, so we had to watch for splatter and blood trails.
I was surprised to see I wasn't the only one physically cleaning. Tessa and Alara were using spray bottles to magically saturate the corrupted patches of mana, scrubbing them with cloths and sponges that glowed faintly.
This job was weird.
I lost track of time as we worked. Someone could have told me I'd been elbow deep in monster guts for a day and a half and I would have believed them. But some specific amount of time and several bucket refills later, we managed to get every inch of rock and every stream of mana scrubbed clean.