By the time I scrambled back up to the plateau, it was already done. Kael was sitting on a rock looking quietly satisfied, the modified flare gun resting beside him. Tessa was watching the sky with her hands clasped.
"You fired it already?"
"About ten minutes ago."
"And?"
He shrugged. "Now we wait."
I nodded and turned to check on Hask. That's when I noticed Alara properly.
She had seemingly given up on pretending she wasn't struggling. Her skin was pallid and sweaty, her hair falling messily over her face.
I attempted to reach out. "Alara?"
She glanced over at me, and I was surprised she had the energy to be cantankerous. "What?"
"...you okay?"
"Better than Hask."
I felt myself slightly annoyed at the response but didn't act on it. "That's not what I asked. Are you -"
"I'm fine. It's just Mana Depletion Sickness. I can't hold the stabilizing spell on the foreman for much longer."
I marvelled that it was even still up. There was no light, no magical energy. Just a slowly draining elf with a sharp temper and an ever-worsening malaise.
I shook my head and turned my attention elsewhere.
Tessa looked up from staring worriedly at Hask. "Did you find someone, Lorne?"
I'm pretty sure I kept the disgust out of my voice. I hoped. "Yeah. No go. Adventurers. Not very helpful."
I guessed that I was still pretty obvious, because Kael gave an exaggerated eyeroll. "I'll bet they were really polite and apologized for not having the time to help us."
I exhaled sharply through my nose. "Something like that."
Tessa cocked her head curiously. "Who were they?"
"They called themselves 'The Scarlet Communion'."
They both snorted.
I looked between them. "You know them?"
Kael shrugged. "Sort of. They're a bunch of C-Rank adventurers. Basically nobodies. They started as a group of priests who stylized themselves as godly saviors. They died in every dungeon they entered and had to pay all of their savings for resurrections after the fact. They had to hire a barbarian just to survive."
"Ah. Nipple guy."
Tessa snickered. "Nipple guy?"
"Yeah. They had a big guy with armor over one nipple."
"Maybe he couldn't afford to cover the other nipple."
"That's what I said. I think I almost got my ass beat for it."
Tessa smiled. "Well, you didn't, so that's good. Now we can -"
She was cut off by a loud sizzling sound, as if somebody had slapped meat on a hot skillet.
Looking over at the source of the sound, I saw something that denied my belief.
The air split. No flash, no thunder, no fanfare. Just a clean vertical line of light that widened steadily into an oval barely large enough to step through. The edges shimmered faintly, the way heat shimmers above stone in summer. Through it, briefly visible before figures blocked the view, was somewhere that was definitely not a mountainside.
I had been warned about dungeons, monsters, mana sickness and vampire clowns. Nobody had mentioned that space could simply decide to have a door in it.
Four people stepped through like they were coming in from the next room: all of them wore the grey jumpsuits of the Guild. At the front was a large human man, followed by a woman who looked like an elf, and two sturdy dwarves.
I nearly collapsed in relief. We were saved. Alara did collapse. Tessa shrieked.
The big man began barking orders. "Fritz. Gurbach. Get a stretcher up. Salda, get a stabilizing spell on the Foreman. I'll handle the girl."
The dwarves and the elf wasted no time. The big man knelt beside Alara and pressed the lip of a bottle to her mouth. He tilted a warm-blue liquid past her lips and I watched her features relax after a moment. "Her mana has been restored slightly. She should be good to get home."
The woman was holding a hand to Hask's heart. "I've got him stable. That girl has power. He should have died already."
The man nodded. "Good. Get him on the stretcher and over to the House of Healing."
As the dwarves executed their order, the man finally turned to address us. "You kids able to stand?"
We all nodded dumbly.
"I'm Foreman Ebrich. We're gonna get you back to the city."
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Kael had the slightest look of excitement on his face. "You saw my flare?"
He nodded. "A guard on gate duty saw and alerted the Guilds. We commissioned a portal as quickly as possible."
I felt all the adrenaline flood out of me all at once, and I lost my balance. Ebrich caught me as his companions carried Hask through the portal and out of sight. "You all did well. Let's go home."
Several hours ago I had been mopping monster blood off a giant magic crystal while my foreman fought an eldritch nightmare. Now I was sitting in a chair that was slightly too hard to be comfortable, staring at a closed door, waiting.
The transition had been abrupt.
The healer who had taken Hask told us to wait. So we waited. There wasn't much else on offer.
The waiting room itself was unremarkable: clean white walls, a singular painting hung, a clock, polished marble floors, and a scattering of the aforementioned almost-comfortable chairs. In the center was a round table with some thin, leatherbound books.
Tessa could not for the life of her stand still. She paced the floor nervously, her forehead creased with worry, looking like she was on the verge of tears. We had thus far been unsuccessful in convincing her to stop, and we were concerned she was going to wear a path into the marble.
Kael stared off into space, and I had no idea where his mind was. He held a small contraption of some sort in one hand, a tool in the other, but his hands rested limply in his lap; he had initially been tinkering to occupy his mind, but had given up some time ago.
The only noise in the room was the clock on the wall ticking away.
How long we had been here, I was unsure. It felt like we were in some sort of liminal void.
I had had the same thoughts running through my head the entire time: all the questions I had coupled with intense worry for the foreman.
The Janitors had called in a Priest because, apparently, the magic required to save Hask was beyond the available healers.
Tessa stopped her pacing suddenly and swiveled her head toward me. "What if he dies?"
My chest tightened as I saw the genuine terror on her face. "Tessa, he's not going to d-"
"But what if he does?!" Her tone rose slightly with the question. "If he dies, then the team gets dissolved! We get assigned to different teams! New foremen! Rookie teams don't continue without a foreman. We almost definitely won't be reassigned together, so we won't get to hang out anymore!"
That thought had occurred to me. "Yeah, but Tessa-"
"AND! AND! We don't get our provisional B-rank license! We'd have to start earning it again on a different team! We've all worked so hard!"
I didn't say it, but they were the ones who had been working hard. I had just gotten here.
"AND! Our dungeon report loses ALL of its credibility. Without Hask to sign off and add his own experience, they'll probably send another exploration team and another janitor team, and they won't have credible info to tackle the dungeon with. More people could die."
I raised a finger to interject, but she just kept going. "AND! AND! AND! What about the tampering? OH MY GOD, THE TAMPERING! We haven't even thought about that since we found it! That's so important! Something is wrong, and if they dismiss our report, it could go unnoticed and something really bad could happen…"
I sighed. She was absolutely right. Everything we just went through hinged on Hask surviving.
"AND!"
I could tell that Tessa had been purposefully dancing around one major consequence, and it was just now hitting her. "And…"
She slumped slowly to the floor, her red hair falling in a curtain over her face. "And I lose my uncle…"
The silence that loomed over us in that moment was almost palpable. Tessa's shoulders began to shake, and her tears came slowly at first; a soft whine, followed by some choked sounds, until it escalated to full-blown sobbing.
I watched Kael snap out of his numbness at the sound of her crying. He immediately shifted from his seat to kneel next to her. He pulled her into his arms, and she cried loudly into his jumpsuit. I could hear the desperation; the fear; the grief. It broke my heart.
I didn't move. I was frozen, unsure of whether I could or should help. After a beat, Kael glanced at me and beckoned with a hand. I joined the two of them on the floor and threw my arms around them. Kael began to cry as well.
My eyes remained dry, but I felt the same as they did. It was reassuring to know that they already considered me a real part of the team.
I may not have understood why I was so attached, but being here, with Tessa and Kael, in this moment, I knew it was real. Real and painful.
Tessa managed to catch her breath after a few minutes. She tried to speak haltingly. "And-and….what about…w-what about Alara?! After all she went through to keep Uncle Hask alive, she could be in trouble. She joined the Janitors to stay out of prison. What if that deal becomes null and void?"
She collapsed into a fresh bout of sobbing. Kael said nothing and petted her hair gently.
I simply held onto them both.
My thoughts shifted to Alara. The Guild healers had assured us that she was much safer than Hask. Mana Depletion Sickness was very treatable: she just needed lots of rest and some standard treatment. She was resting comfortably in a different room.
I still worried, though. And Tessa's spiral made it worse.
After what seemed like an eternity, a door leading deeper into the House of Healing opened and a woman in a grey jumpsuit with a healer's emblem emblazoned on it stepped through.
We all looked up anxiously. She kept her expression professionally neutral.
The moment before she spoke felt like a thousand years.
Finally: "Foreman Hask is alive and stable. He's going to be alright."
I felt my chest and stomach unclench.
Tessa made a half-sob-half-squeak. She looked up at the healer with wide, tear-filled eyes. "He is?"
The woman nodded. "He's still unconscious, but with enough rest, he should be fine. Sister Silver did everything she could. But if it were not for your companion, he might not have made it."
The exhale that escaped us all came in perfect sync.
She continued: "He needs rest, but you can see him briefly, if you'd like."
We all almost ran to the door, and she let us down an equally sterile hallway to the room where Hask was being held.
He lay in a big soft bed, heavily wrapped in bandages from head to toe, and was propped up by many comfortable pillows.
Tessa dashed to him and immediately threw herself onto him.
The nurse gave a start. "Miss! No- he shouldn't be-"
Then she saw the poor girl's face and sighed, saying no more.
I noticed that the foreman actually looked peaceful. His face was largely exposed, and he had an expression that looked very close to satisfaction, even in his current state.
Kael moved around the bed and sat in a chair beside it. "Hey, foreman."
That was all he said. All he needed to say.
The woman spoke again. "Any normal person, or even a Janitor, would probably be dead right now. Adventurers are made of much sterner stuff, and Hask even more so than most."
I pondered her words silently. The man was truly incredible. I was so relieved he was okay.
"He'll probably need a few days at the very least. Possibly a couple of weeks."
With that, the healer shooed us from the room, urging us to acquire food and get some much-needed rest.
We left the House of Healing together, unsure of what to do with ourselves. We had no assignments, nor anyone to give them to us. So we began the trek into the city.
A drink, or seven, was very much in order.