Chapter Thirty-Six - A Leaf of Faith

“It will take some time and experimentation to see whether the baseline sentients of this world can truly get by without the system holding their hand. I have so many hypotheses already.”

***

“Detect Magic!”

The limpet lowered her hands, her breathing hard and laboured as if she’d just run a marathon as opposed to merely casting a first-tier spell.

To be fair, she had been casting a lot of cantrips. Her concentration couldn’t be at its best, and I could sense that she was tiring even before casting a spell that was just short of the limit of her abilities.

She was progressing quite nicely as a wizard. Or as the case may be, warlock. Soon she’d have a wider variety of utilitarian spells under her belt, as well as quite a few offensive ones. Her choice in schools was rather typical for someone so young.

There was always this impression that the skills worth learning first were those that could harm the most.

But magic being what it is, there are few spells that can’t be twisted into causing harm. It was often better to learn a simple and useful utilitarian spell, then learning how to apply it for violence, than learning a spell meant for violence and trying to find a use for it in one’s day-to-day.

The limpet blinked a few times, accommodating herself to the magical vision, then she gestured for the tentacle that had grabbed onto Apprentice Yi. “Can I see that?” she asked.

Yi gave her the piece of vine still caught around his leg. He seemed quite eager to get rid of it.

“There’s not too much magic in this, but it’s there. I think... yeah, it looks like it’s fading? But there are spots of magic in it?” She squeezed the vine, then pushed a grape out of the severed end. “Oh! The grapes are magical. The vine is too, but way less so, and it fades when the vine is cut. At least, I think.”

“A good hypothesis,” I said.

She nodded. “We’ll need to test it. Maybe the vines naturally ebb and flow, or maybe there’s something else going on. But I think that the magic is just fading because it’s been cut, it’s the easiest explanation. And it means that seeing a living vine will be easier.”

She was likely correct. Still, it wouldn’t do for her to trust her own judgement. That’s not how science was meant to be. “Remember, limpet. Your goal on creating a hypothesis isn’t to prove it right, but to prove it wrong.”

She nodded. “Yes Master.”

“So, what did she do?” Ruolan asked. “I can guess what a spell called ‘Detect Magic’ does, but I wouldn’t mind an explanation.”

“I cast Detect Magic on myself. Now I can see magic. Sorta. It looks like light that isn’t really there. There’s magic in the vines, so I can probably see them in the dark.”

“I see. Good. You’re with me at the front. Yi, take the middle. Same formation otherwise,” Ruolan said.

We continued moving but didn’t make it far before the limpet gasped and pointed to something ahead. “Ah! It’s gone. There was something there but it disappeared. Is there an intersection out ahead?”

Ruolan pulled out her map and eyed it for just a moment before nodding. “There is,” she said.

“I think the vine went around it, then.”

“Let’s keep moving. Everyone, keep your eyes open. The limpet’s being helpful but that’s no excuse for you not to pay attention,” Ruolan said.

“My name’s Fenfang,” the limpet said.

“My apologies. Fenfang then.” Ruolan patted the limpet on the back, and soon we were moving once more.

The intersection came, and with it, a short passage into a large chamber with four pillars holding up a ceiling that had dozens of holes in it. They were just small enough for someone to stick their heads in, but little else. The floor rose at an angle, the lowest point right at the entrance we were using.

“Mah, any idea what this is meant to be?” Wrench asked.

I pointed to the holes above. “Those are likely drainage pipes leading off from... something above us. The water comes down here, flows down the floor, and off down the tunnel we’ve just come from.”

Hammer hummed. “We have similar things back home. Though we keep most of our piping in plain sight. Easier to fix that way.”

“Makes a bigger mess when it fails too,” Tweezers muttered.

“Quiet you guys,” Ruolan said. “Fenfang, you see anything?”

The limpet made a negative sound. “No ma’am. No sign of the vine either.”

Ruolan pointed to the tallest point in the room, where an archway stood leading off into another tunnel. “That way. We’re... what was that?”

The limpet gasped. “There’s something coming from there,” she said. “Not a vine. It’s... something else?” She turned, and I saw her eyes widening as she finally noticed the creature trailing after us and blocking our path back. “There’s another!”

Yi’s light spun around to paint the creature behind us in bright white.

The monster didn’t so much stand in the entrance as much as it merely occupied the place. After all, a pile of leaves and vines with no true distinct shape didn’t have legs on which to stand.

The monster at the far end of the room, likewise, was a heavy pile of vines and roots, with tentacles entwined through it and barely concealed by thick leaves. The thornes on its vines covering were still plainly visible though, and it radiated its intention for the living members of the party.

“There’s just two of them,” Ruolan said. “Yi and I will take the one ahead. Dwarves, focus the one behind.”

“Not quite just two,” I corrected as vines started to pour out of the holes above.

Yi shrieked and slashed his sword around wildly at some of the vines that came too near to him for his own comfort.

The group tightened up, everyone forming a rough circle with Alex and I in the middle. The centre of the room was the only area devoid of holes in the ceiling, so that was where we congregated as more and more plant monsters dropped from above or crawled out from one of the exits.

The moment one of them came too close, Ruolan slashed out at it, severing vines and roots, but her sword slowed noticeably before she ended her slash. “Tch. These bastards are tough,” she said.

“Observe.”

A Tentacle Grapist Chlorofiend, level 42

Significantly weaker than the strongest member of the party, but only a little weaker than the dwarves. And they outnumbered us quite significantly.

“Frostbite!”

The limpet’s spell caught one of the plants and slowed it down, but that was the sum total of its effect on the creature. Plants could endure some pretty harsh winters. A bit of magical freezing, at least at the level the limpet could manage, wouldn’t do much.

“This isn’t good,” Ruolan said. “We should retreat back to the tunnel we came from.”

The same tunnel which was pouring out more and more of the monsters. I sighed. “Please crouch down a little, I need a proper line of sight.”

Alex dropped to one knee and the limpet dove to the ground. The others stared at them, then at me. “What?” Ruolan asked.

“Get down,” I simplified.

She complied, if only a little.

It would do. Though I would have appreciated a bit more effort on her part. I was sacrificing my own entertainment for their sakes here. Mostly because standing back and watching them get assaulted by plants didn’t sound all that terribly amusing.

“Ray of Sickness.”

The Ray of Sickness was a simple first-tier necromantic spell, one that I intended to teach the limpet soon enough. It was an offensive spell that hit a target with a concentration of necrotic energy. Not just pure necrotic energy though, but one tailored to the production of sickness and ill-health. It was a minor but important distinction.

The spell’s original casting called for a single beam of magic, tight, concentrated, and very rapid. Hence the ‘ray’ part of its name. It would generally only target one person, and be over soon enough that the caster wouldn’t have time to switch targets.

I preferred a casting that lasted longer.

A green beam sliced out, passing through one of the plant monsters, then it swept around the room, spinning all the way around in a clockwise slice that cut the monsters apart wherever it passed.

In reality that was mostly an illusion. The Ray didn’t have any cutting power, or even any physical power. The ‘cuts’ was merely a line of plant matter and flesh that rotted away and disintegrated under the direct contact with the beam.

The seared flesh around that cut would necrotize and spread its infectious sickness through the monster’s body.

It was a good spell to use in an enclosed space where we couldn’t afford large displacements of air and such.

“What in the heavens,” Ruolan muttered as she slowly stood from her crouch.

The limpet jumped to her feet and patted down her dress. “Well done, Master.”

“Why thank you,” I said.

“Mah, that was something,” Wrench said. “Didn’t like the feel of that magic though.”

“Master’s magic is perfectly fine,” the limpet said.

“It’s fine, limpet,” I said. “Some people are more attuned to life and positive magics than others. Having necromantic magic pass by so closely can make them mildly uncomfortable.”

“Oh,” the limpet said.

“That was necromancy?” Ruolan asked. She looked disgusted, but I could see the moment where she took in the piles or severed and twitching bodies around us. She changed her mind. “Well, I suppose it worked.”

“I would hope so,” I said. “Shall we continue?”

The party took a moment to calm down. It was often difficult to change tracts from thinking you were certainly going to die, to realizing that everything was fine. At least, it took some time for those not used to such, or those who were still mortal.

The limpet seemed to take it best. I suspected that she thought that I wouldn’t let her die. It was even partially correct.

“Yes,” Ruolan said. “Let’s keep moving.”

“I hope that you can take care of the next group of these monsters yourselves,” I said. “It would be tiring to be the one doing all the work.”

“We’ll do our best, Master,” the limpet said.

I nodded, then gestured ahead.

The others were all quite careful as they walked over the corpses and soon-to-be-corpses in the room. A lot of the vine-y monsters were still clinging on to life despite the sickness raging through their plant-like bodies, but that wouldn’t last.

No one complained about the smell though, which was a nice change. Usually causing someone to die of raging sickness didn’t leave them smelling all that good.

We moved at a much slower pace, with lights shot ahead and behind in search of more monsters that didn’t show up. The party had grown cautious, which was entirely fair.

And then, finally, we arrived at a section of the tunnel where a large door sat in one of the walls. “This is it,” Ruolan said.

“What is it?” the limpet asked.

“Mah, that’s access into the undercity’s undercity,” Wrench said. “Some of these tunnels were dwarf built, you know. We had some of the old plans laying about, but Ruolan here found others, some from the city’s own archive when it was pillaged a long time ago.”

“Comparing the two maps, and matching up their details is what led us on this expedition,” Ruolan said. “Because whatever is behind that door, it’s not on the official maps. But the chambers beyond were dug out for the city.”

She pressed a hand to the ancient door. It was made of stone, carved and placed just-so in an iron frame that had long ago turned pitted and scaly with rust.

“Old secrets,” I said.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“The best sort,” Tweezers added.

I gave them a skeletal grin. “Well then, shall we knock?”

***