Chapter 74: Only Two

Chapter 74: Only Two

It came out of the dark head first, and the head alone was the size of the litter Silas had carried down the stairs.

The guardian had the hunters’ low, heavy build, but its plates were as broad as doors, ridged and overlapping, the color of slate after rain. The arch’s stone posts cracked as it shouldered between them. When it opened its mouth, Silas saw teeth in three uneven rows and smelled something like a butcher’s drain.

It didn’t hiss. It swung its tail.

A gallery pillar on the east side of the arch exploded into rubble. The upper tier above it sagged and came down in a long slithering roar of stone. Leander shouted, and Silas was already scrambling backward over the rubble before he’d consciously decided to go.

Isolde raised a hand. Tavi shifted toward the flank, looking for an opening. Beside Silas, Alden planted his good leg and lifted his longsword, studying the creature with the concentration Silas knew from training.

Nobody had reached it when Elyra spoke.

"No," Elyra said, from the top of her turtle. "Let’s not. This is boring enough already."

The turtle advanced, lowered its head, and drove the front of its shell into the guardian’s chest. Armor cracked. The reptile went backward, its hind legs scraping trenches in the flagstones. It clawed at the shell, unable to gain purchase, while the turtle kept pushing until it had the creature pinned against the arch, forelegs lifted and belly exposed.

The broken chest plates were already drawing together. Torn flesh closed beneath them, repairing damage that should have crippled it. Silas remembered watching that happen again and again on a screen, each attempt buying the party less time.

Elyra didn’t give it time for a second attack.

Overhead, the red bird folded its wings and dropped a little lower. The light became a weight. Heat poured down onto the guardian until its plates smoked and blackened and split, and the flesh beneath them blistered and tried to heal and blistered again, faster than it could regrow.

Elyra’s shadow lay long across the floor, thrown forward by the light above her, and the guardian was standing in it.

The shadow went black. The arm that came out of it this time was far larger than the one that had torn the hunter apart, as long as the guardian’s own neck, with claws like curved scythes. It took the guardian’s head in its hand.

Then it pulled.

The sound was something Silas would remember for a long time. The head came free. The bird’s light fell on the stump at once, burning it closed before anything could knit, and the great body sagged against the turtle’s shell and slid down and did not move again.

The arm dropped the head and sank back into the shadow.

Isolde’s hand was still raised. Tavi had barely moved from the shelter of the turtle. Neither of them had landed a blow.

Silence settled over the sanctuary, broken only by falling grit and the slow creak of the turtle shifting its feet.

Silas turned toward the ramp. Maelin stood on the landing beside Dagna, one hand on the balustrade, staring at the dead guardian with her mouth open. She was safe, and the creature that should have killed her lay headless across the floor.

The relief went through him so strongly that his knees felt odd.

Then he looked at Alden.

Alden lowered his sword and looked from it to the carcass. "I didn’t even get a swing," he said. Then he shook his head and limped toward the ramp, where Bellamy was trying to stand again and shouldn’t.

Silas watched him go, and something cold settled in his stomach.

That was his awakening, he thought. That fight was supposed to make him. And it’s gone.

He had known things would change. He had changed them himself, deliberately, again and again. Elyra had even told him she was joining because of him. Somehow, he had still pictured Alden having his moment. He hadn’t expected her to bring out three major spirits and finish the fight without needing anyone’s help.

I’ll find another opportunity for him.

Silas had no idea where to start, and that frightened him. But he would never have chosen to put Maelin back under that guardian’s claws. Alden was already helping Bellamy settle again. Getting everyone out came first.

Behind the dead guardian, the arch began to glow.

Light filled its dark mouth from edge to edge, soft and white and steady. The turtle backed away, leaving a path beside the fallen body. Leander lifted his communicator, then lowered it without trying to call outside.

"That’s the exit," Leander said. "We’re cleared."

Then two small lights came down out of the arch’s glow and drifted across the floor.

One stopped in front of Isolde, at the height of her chest. It condensed as Silas watched into a seed the size of a cherry stone, dark red and glossy as a garnet.

The other drifted up the turtle’s flank and stopped in front of Elyra. Hers was different: pale as pearl, with a red heart that pulsed slowly, like a thing breathing.

Silas stared at it.

In the game, after this dungeon, a seed had appeared in front of every single member of the party. Alden’s had been green, leaf-shaped, faintly glowing. Super Regeneration.

He waited for the rest.

Nothing else came down. Not in front of Leander, or Tavi, or Gareth, or Alden. Not in front of him.

"Only two?" Tavi asked.

"It must be weighing the whole expedition," Leander said. "Isolde killed the elite on the rescue route. Elyra dealt with most of what came after it."

Silas looked at the bodies across the sanctuary. In the game, everyone had needed to fight through this place. This time Elyra had taken most of that work for herself. The rest of them had contributed, but apparently only she and Isolde had done enough to qualify for Trait seeds.

Isolde closed her hand around her seed. Her face was very still, and then something moved in it, quick and private. She looked up at Elyra.

"A-Rank," Isolde said. "Blood Renewal. It will help replace the blood I spend. What did you get?"

Elyra turned her seed over in her fingers, head tilted, as if listening to it. "Something nice," she said, and put it in her pocket.

Isolde tucked hers away in a pouch at her belt. Neither of them swallowed anything.

Tavi let out a long breath that was nearly a whistle. Gareth looked at the two seeds, then at the ground, and turned toward the ramp. Alden paused beside Bellamy, his gaze lingering on Isolde’s pouch before he returned to helping the older man. Even Leander watched Elyra put hers away. Trait seeds weren’t something any of them could expect to find again soon.

Silas stood there with his empty hands.

He hadn’t even wanted much. He’d told himself that over and over on the way down. Super Regeneration had been the dream, but he’d have taken anything. A C-Rank Trait. Something small that made his body a little harder to kill. A consolation prize.

Instead, nothing. He’d walked into a Red Gate with no way out, carried a litter down a hundred steps with his cousin at his back, spent most of his mana, and he was walking out exactly as he’d come in.

All because one person who shouldn’t have been here had come along.

He knew it was petty. Maelin was alive. They had people to bring home. He could be grateful for that and still badly want what was in Elyra’s pocket.

When he looked up, Elyra was watching him from the top of the turtle, her hand resting on the pocket where she’d put the seed.

She’d seen him staring at it.