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Duskbound-Chapter 148 - Book 2, 69
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Torwin put on a glib act to keep spirits up, but the truth was that he was appalled to see the state of everyone. Little shards of guilt stabbed at his stomach every time he glanced at the hunters sprawled out on the ground. I should have gone with them, he thought to himself again.
He'd had good reasons for staying, and it had become beyond obvious that Velik had no future with the guild. Part of that was the young hunter's own fault—he'd almost seemed to go out of his way to alienate the senior hunters and administration—but part of it was their fault, too. Like it or not, more than a few of them had subconsciously blamed Velik for delivering a plague unto their house.
That was ridiculous, of course. Velik wasn't responsible for the infestation of monsters in the Monster Hunters Guild, but even to a casual perspective, it was obvious that he was connected to it in some way, and so the golds had been curt with him at best. I could have done more to stick up for him if I'd been there from the first.
But Velik had had months to rub people the wrong way with his abrasive personality even before it had come out that a good third of the guild's powerhouses were secretly harboring monsters in their abdominal cavities. That new crisis had left the golds raw and on edge, and Torwin had failed to defend Velik from the dark rumors that clung to him.
Despite that, the young man was still working in the guild's best interest. He'd saved three golds and the Cravel branch's only platinum, albeit with some help on that last one. And this time, even if Velik decided to move on, Torwin was determined that he'd be credited for his accomplishments. That all assumed they survived, which considering that only he and Aria were strong enough to descend into that mine and take the fight to the enemy, was by no means a guarantee.
Even that might be a bit of an exaggeration, Torwin thought as he stole a glance at his partner. Aria had pushed herself to the absolute limit getting Phun back to Cravel and bringing Torwin with her when she'd returned. She hadn't said anything, but Torwin was pretty sure she'd surprised even herself with how quickly she'd managed things.
The whole time Velik and Emberson had been explaining things, Sildra had been working to drive the corruption out of Revick. The other hunters had already been cleansed, but other than Emberson, they were unconscious. Torwin's eyes lingered on Agora's massive axe, stained with an oddly bright blood, and he briefly wondered what she'd killed that had bled like that. Monsters bled black and humans bled red, and neither matched the stains he saw on that blade.
He made a mental note to ask her when she woke up, if only to satisfy his curiosity. It wasn't important now, not when they needed to figure out how to save the remaining two hunters at minimum. Ideally, they'd do that and destroy the dungeon core creating more agents of corruption, but the rest of the team dispatched was traveling the old-fashioned way and were still at least a day behind, maybe two.
Torwin was itching to get down into the mine now, but as things stood, the only one in any shape to accompany him was Aria's cousin, who'd flatly refused to go. They'd compromised with a two-hour break to both give Velik's body time to break down the magic the healing potions had left behind, so that he could take another one, and to let Aria somewhat recover from her enormous expenditure of magic.
"There's no telling what preparations the other side is making while we sit here. We should go now," Velik insisted.
"Don't be foolish," Aria scolded him. "We'll accomplish nothing but throwing our lives away, or worse, giving them more bodies to infect. There could be dozens more of those monsters down there, just waiting for someone to latch onto."
"Not dozens," Emberson said, "but a few, at least. I saw the spawning sacs while I was under their control."
"Another reason we can't afford to wait. If the dungeon finishes another batch while we're sitting here, we'd be letting more of those monsters out into the world."
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"One way or another, that dungeon's getting destroyed," Torwin said. "Our objective now is to rescue the remaining hunters. I'm going to go keep an eye on that mine. You will wait the whole two hours before you join me. No excuses."
Before Velik could protest again, Torwin slipped out of the cave and started down the trail. He wasn't sure what exactly he'd do if either of the two hunters walked out, but it was better to know about it than not.
* * *
With only an hour left before dawn, Velik tipped another healing potion into his mouth. He was used to the feeling of heat suffusing his body as the magic repaired his injuries, but even after waiting, it was more like a soggy mush seeping through his veins. Some of the lacerations closed up, or at least got smaller, but that bone-deep ache of exhaustion was going nowhere.
Trying not to show it, he stood up. "It's time," he told Aria.
Sildra had finally succeeded in killing the last parasite twenty minutes earlier and was now passed out amongst her patients. Jensen was also napping, his back against a wall to prop him upright, and Giller sat cross-legged with four swords stabbed into the ground around her and a strange metal hoop sitting on her lap.
Velik wasn't sure if that was for strangling someone or cutting them, but either way, he was glad the weapon wasn't aimed at him. With any luck, she wouldn't need to use it, but he knew better than to rely on that. Even without taking their actual enemy into consideration, there were plenty of monsters living on the mountainside. Most of those were only around level 20, but someone still needed to be awake to handle anything that showed up.
He walked out of the cave with Aria and led the way down the trail. Torwin had left a few deliberate signs of his passage for Velik to follow, not that he needed to. Still, he took it as a good sign. He'd been surprised when the pair had shown up, especially since his last conversation with Torwin prior to leaving Cravel hadn't left him feeling like he was on good terms with the old hunter.
"You're not ready to get into another fight," Aria said bluntly after a few minutes of walking. "I can tell you're hiding how much pain you're in. Don't do that."
"Whining about it wouldn't help anybody. Don't worry about me. I'm fine."
"You're really bad at being part of a team. You know that?"
No argument there, Velik thought, but he didn't bother to reply to the criticism. It wouldn't do any good to engage Aria. If he'd learned anything from his time watching her and Giller argue, it was that.
"You need to be honest with us so we know what we can rely on you to do," she pressed on, ignoring his lack of answer. "If you hide an injury to make us think you're tough, we won't know to cover for you when you need it."
"I'm hardly hiding that I'm hurt," he told her.
"You're trying to hide how much."
"No, I'm not. I'm hurt pretty fucking bad. There just isn't any other choice. Now shut up. We're almost to the mine, and I don't want them to hear us coming."
Thankfully, she did. The next few minutes of their walk was blessedly quiet, though her footfalls on the stone grated on his nerves. Logically, he knew that she'd focused all her skills on magic and that [Stealth] had probably never been part of her skill list, but it was like she wasn't even trying.
They found Torwin on a small ridge covered in pine trees just north of the mine. He took them both in with a glance, lingered slightly on Velik, then nodded. "Just don't push yourself too hard. We'll take point," he said.
"Understood."
It's too bad I didn't get that regeneration aspect from that class orb like I wanted. That would have been perfect to have in this situation.
Together, the trio descended into the mine, moving slowly and cautiously. Torwin took the lead, with Aria in the middle and Velik at the back. Annoyingly, he seemed to be the only one capable of seeing underground without some sort of light, or at least Torwin didn't complain when Aria conjured up a small ball of illumination that floated overhead.
"That'll let them know we're coming," Velik remarked.
"They already know," Torwin said absently, his eyes scanning the shadows ahead. "A little bit of darkness won't stop them from seeing us, so there's not much point in stumbling around."
Velik privately disagreed, but since he was the weak link at the moment, he didn't argue the point. Instead, all he said was, "The lift shaft to get to the lower level is that way."
It wasn't until he saw it lit up for the first time that Velik noticed the gouges in the stone and the scrapes along the wall. Something had climbed up or down the shaft, something so big that it had just barely squeezed through. His mind flashed back to the debris brushed aside at the bottom and wondered if maybe it hadn't been someone cleaning up so much as something just shoving everything out of the way.
"That's… ominous," Aria said as she examined the scrapes.
"Let's just hope that whatever did it is long gone," Torwin replied. "Come on. We've got work to do."
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