The crab let out a final eerie screech, its body falling over and landing on the ground with a loud thud and a cloud of dust. Its body landed on top of me, but compared to trying to block its previous attacks, this was nothing. I lifted it up and climbed out from under it.
I let out a huge sigh of relief, and fell flat on my back.
“Holy shit.” I gasped through big gulps of air.
“Holy shit indeed.” Mathew agreed, limping over to me and falling across my stomach.
I winced and pushed him off, and struggled to catch the air he’d knocked out of me again.
Mathew laughed as he rolled onto the damp, cold stone floor beside me. “We did it man.”
“We almost died is what we did.” I wheezed.
“If the worst that happens to me is almost dying, I’m making it okay as a Diver.” Mathew said.
“We’re running if we ever see another one of those bastards again. I don’t ever want to go through that again.”
Mathew shook his head. “If there is a next time, hopefully you don’t let yourself almost die getting slammed into the wall, and we can just kill the damn thing.”
I nodded. “Hopefully.”
Mathew sat up. “Nice one, Ray.” He said, holding up his pinky and index fingers, and pressed them on my arm.
I gave him a confused look.
“Ah right, Halsry boy.” He laughed, “It’s just a show of goodwill, it can mean all sorts of stuff, good luck, good job, safe travels, depends.” Mathew took my hand and moved my fingers to match how he had his before, and pressed my fingers to my shoulder, then moved my hand to touch the shoulder of the arm I hadn’t moved.
“Nice one, Ray.” He told me again.
I returned his smile. “You too, Mathew.”
I’d only just met him, but risking your life with someone else really had a way to quicken bonds between people. It’d be sad when I finished business in Keero and had to leave his side, but there stood little doubt we’d see each other again someday.
Mathew then quickly dropped his happy demeanor and punched me in my gut. “That plan was beyond stupid though, don’t pull something like that again! If something went wrong we were both dead.”
As I hunched over in pain, I countered, “The crab is dead, my plan was fine!”
Though I say that, he was right, that could’ve gone wrong in too many ways. I had a habit of cutting it close too often it seems. The wolves on my first dive had me cornered, the lizard garg had gotten a pretty good scratch on my shoulder that could’ve just as easily hit my face and blinded me, or my neck, and now with the crab, if anything had gone wrong in my plan, I or Mathew could’ve been crushed.
Now it was different though, I rationalized, and I explained to Mathew why, “Had I not done anything though we would’ve died either way!”
Mathew didn’t say anything to that but seemed to understand.
“What do you want to do now Ray? It’ll be hard to transport this whole crab to sell, and we already have a pretty good haul, it’d be fine to call it here for the dive.”
Sure we had plenty of money, but that wasn’t the only thing I was here for, these battles have been some of the most fun I’ve had in my life, this may be dangerous, but I was getting addicted to having my life on the line, jumping headfirst into the unknown gave me such a rush I couldn’t help but want more.
“Let’s keep going, at least for a little longer.”
Mathew nods at me, and we look around the room the crab was in some more. It gave off the feeling of a dark oasis, and now that the crab was dead, was very peaceful. Another tunnel leading deeper into the cave was quickly found and we headed in.
Each room in the cave was pretty distinct, so there wasn’t much worry of getting lost yet, but just in case, Mathew kept making marks in the wall with his sword as we walked.
The tunnel leading away from the oasis room was long, we had been walking for a few minutes seeing nothing but more of the tunnel in front of us. As we got further into the tunnel the black mist grew ever thicker, a telltale sign of a strengthening corruption.
“This feels weird, we’ve been walking for too long, should we turn back?” Mathew asked, voice laced with worry.
“It is a pretty long path, but I feel like something interesting is at the end of this tunnel.” I didn’t quite want to turn back yet, not with this excitement of discovering growing in my chest.
“What makes you say that?”
“See how the mist has been growing thicker? I want to see where it’s coming from.”
“Well, o’ great ignorant one, the corruption comes from the earth, it doesn’t come from one place.”
“Well something is causing there to be more mist this way, there’s got to be a reason, and I want to know what it is, plus, it may help your research into the corruption.”
I knew that last part was a surefire way to get him on my side. Mathew had been collecting specimens of almost every garg we killed, and pocketing it to study it later, even taking a live sample of the moss and keeping it in a jar hanging from his bag.
Mathew’s eyes lit up for only a brief moment, before he tried to hide his excitement.
“Fine, we’ll go for a little longer, but if we can, we’re avoiding any more fights, I’m exhausted.”
“Right!” I was honestly pretty tired too, it wasn’t like I was running low on magic or anything. It’s just all this running around and getting slammed by massive crabs has drained me, not tired enough to not want to explore a little more of course.
My initial excitement to go deeper into the tunnel faded steadily as we walked down the boring path. It had gotten much steeper as we walked, and the initially large space we entered had shrunk to where I almost had to turn myself to the side to fit in.
“You sure there’s anything at the end of this tunnel Ray?”
“‘Course I’m not! I just got a feeling.” Does he think I’m some sort of prophet?
With a roll of his eyes, Mathew continued to lead me deeper into the cave.
The mist now filled the whole cave, and we had to hold a cloth to our faces to breathe without constantly coughing, though even with the cloth it's not exactly comfortable. Mathew stopped suddenly in front of me breaking out into a fit of coughs, causing me to bump into him.
Mathew quickly turned to me with a furious expression and almost shouted at me, “Watch where you’re going!” He pulled out his knife and held it up to me threateningly.
“What are you doing!” I pushed him away, why was he getting so angry over me bumping into him?
He didn’t respond to my question, just shoved his knife at me again threateningly and continued walking, letting an angry breath out of his nose. I was confused about what made him so upset, but this tunnel was no place to fight, so I let it go.
He snapped at me, shot me dirty looks, and rolled his eyes constantly, seemingly getting angrier as we got deeper. Maybe he was mad about me making him stay in the cave longer?
Eventually, despite Mathew’s foul mood, we reached a small room with a huge dark mass pulsing in the middle. We both walked around the mass, inspecting it from every angle. Mathew went the opposite way I did, seemingly to stay as far away from me as possible.
“What do you think it is?” I asked Mathew.
“Why the hell would I know? Asshole.” He snarled at me.
Really, what ticked him off so bad? Did I press some button I didn’t know about? Even if I did, Mathew didn’t seem like the kind of guy to just snap at me instead of telling me what’s wrong.
I decided it wasn’t worth the effort for now, and continued inspecting whatever this thing was. Every time it pulsed, the corrupted mist seemed to pour out of it, but that didn’t make sense, mist wasn’t supposed to come from anywhere specific. Maybe it’s some beast that breathes out the mist?
Thinking that, I shoved my sword into the mass, and immediately felt a massive amount of magic flow out of me into my sword. Not even the Invisible Horse moved this much magic out of my body. The dark blob thirstily sucked magic out of me, and slowly, the dark color the mass once was turned to a bright blue reminiscent of magic.
Just as I felt all my magic is about to be depleted, the dark mass pops into a cloud of mist similar to the familiar corrupted mist, but this seems to be a magic mist with its blue shine. The blue mist spreads from the previously dark blob, and pushes the corrupted mist out of the cave.
I wanted to investigate further, and see what was going on, but weariness overcame me. I wanted to take a nap. Right here was probably fine, just a quick nap would do.
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