They rested for a bit while Lisa calmed down. But after only a few breaths, Micah sat up again to keep an eye on the hole in the ceiling. Ryan must have noticed because he caught his eye and shook his head. No need. Then he tapped his ear. I’m listening.

That hadn’t helped against the ambush, though. How had Ryan missed that? Had the rats just sat there in the muddy water like herrings in a glass so they wouldn’t make a sound?

The image sent a shiver down Micah’s spine and he distracted himself with checking on Ryan’s bandages again, glancing at the hole every now and again despite him. Not that he didn’t trust Ryan. He just didn’t trust the Tower. Who knew what kind of silent monsters it would send next?

Ryan didn’t seem to mind. Or at least, Micah hoped he didn’t.

“What now?” Lisa eventually asked in a much calmer voice.

“What time is it?” Ryan turned to face her.

She fished something out of her pocket. Her movements were slow. Tired.

“It’s 10:47.”

“Then we still have six hours. We only have small injuries on one person and are well prepared, aside from lacking middle-grade healing potions. The only thing off is our behavior. Should we head back?”

“No,” Lisa said. “You were right, Rye. I’m sorry for … you know. And thank you again. That really took a lot out of me.”

She tucked Sam’s crystal into a pouch of her bag and got up. Micah took that as a sign that she didn’t want to summon it anymore today. Maybe he could ask her later? He would love to see the process.

“Just give me twenty minutes to take a nap, level up, and recover some mana. You can take a breather and we’ll head on.”

“Sure,” Ryan said. “We’ll keep watch.”

“Wait, level up?” Micah asked.

Lisa shambled over to the wall instead of answering, but Ryan explained, “Yeah, you can get level ups from naps. Climbers on expeditions do it more often, but the chances are supposed to be lower than if you actually got some proper rest. Plus, it’s dangerous.”

Oh. That made a weird kind of sense. Micah just hadn’t thought you would do it in the Tower, where monsters would attack you at any time. But if you had allies with you … why not?

“How are you sure she’ll level up, then?”

Ryan shrugged. “She maintained a summon for two weeks … somehow. And she fought a dozen rats with it in the Tower at level one. She’s bound to get at least one level, I think.”

Micah glanced at where Lisa had settled down against the wall of moss, her eyes closed. Her bag was on her lap and one of her hands on the pouch with Sam’s crystal. Could she really fall asleep like that?

“Help me collect these crystals?” Ryan asked, so Micah did that.

Fourteen new flesh crystals filled up his backpack then in varying shapes and sizes. One of them had another rat tail on it, one a foot that was dangling from a thin thread, and another a weird spiraling indention, like an innie. He wondered if there were people who collected weirdly-shaped crystals. The answer was probably. People collected all sorts of things. With that thought in mind, Micah put them in a separate pouch and picked out a few of the others instead, holding them up to his eye for inspection.

“Do these seem smaller to you?”

Ryan was busy drying himself off with one of the towels Micah had brought along, but looked when he asked. He’d used the other towel for their wounds, so it was the only one they had left. He’d just have to share it then.

He peered into Micah’s pack and shrugged. “Maybe we were just unlucky. Crystal sizes vary.” Then he looked around the room. “Hm. Wanna’ see if we can turn our luck around?”

He sounded a little excited. It was kind of infectious.

Micah dropped the crystal in his bag and said, “Sure. How?”

Ryan grinned and drew his sword. He went around the room and cut long stripes of moss from the walls. Micah helped tug them off. They were looking for a treasure chest, he realized. Sadly, even after searching all the walls they didn’t find one.

Ryan stared at the hole in the ceiling then.

“Ah, that’s why you wanted to know if Sam can climb ceilings,” Micah said. “To check for chests?”

“Yeah. Think we can make it up there?” He pointed.

Micah didn’t, but he nodded anyway.

Ryan tried to lift him up, but Micah noticed him wince and immediately dropped the attempt. He barely weighed anything, though, so he asked, “Is your shoulder acting up?”

Ryan scowled and said, “Yeah.” It seemed to Micah that he scowled because he’d been caught, not because of the pain.

He apologized, but Ryan assured him it was fine. They would just have to try again later when Lisa woke up or the healing potion had had a chance to work on him. Micah doubted it would work that quickly, though.

While he dried himself off, Ryan walked around the room and knocked on the bricks, looking for a fake wall. He paused, frowned, and drew his sword from one moment to the next and faced it towards the entrance. Micah dropped his towel and drew both dagger and slingshot as well.

A lone, small Sewer rat came shuffling in. It sat upright after a step or two and looked at them. Its eyes seem to sparkle as it actually observed them. As if it were sizing them up. Micah felt … known. Then it looked around the room and slowly walked up to the grate, glancing in their direction with every other step.

“Ryan?” Micah whispered.

The rat was looking for something around the dark water of the grate. Whatever it was, it must have found it because it struggled to dig something out.

“Shoot it!” Ryan hissed.

It ducked under his stone. Something shimmered into existence as it caught in the light of the nearby moss. A tan crystal in its mouth. The rat glanced at them only once before it fled. Micah tried again, but the beast was smaller than its kin and much too quick. His stone splashed harmlessly into the water.

Ryan blocked his line of sight as he sped after it. He lunged, but his sword sheared water. It escaped.

“What—” Micah started but remembered an appropriately small, lone tip in the Beginner’s Guide. It was one of those comment boxes on the bottom right side of the page that were easy to miss.

Sewer rats are occasionally known to steal items from climbers instead of outright attacking them. This presumably handicaps us for future fights. Keep an eye on your valuables!

They must have missed the crystal under the grate.

“Did that rat just steal from us?”

The Sewers were just getting worse and worse and yet, Micah was liking them more and more. A rat had stolen from them. That was awesome.

“Maybe,” Ryan said.

“What do you mean?”

“Small and agile rat this far in? It might also have been a scout.”

“A scout?” Micah echoed, thinking back to the book.

“It might be getting more,” Ryan summarized.

“Oh.”

Micah thought of his fourteen crystals in his bag. He needed twenty to pay just for his entrance fee and even more to make potions that he couldn’t sell. Of course, two-thirds of those spoils actually belonged to the others, not him.

More rats suited him just fine.

“That’s not too bad, right?”

“As long as Lisa wakes up beforehand?” Ryan said while he walked over. “She’ll have spells then. It’ll be fine.”

That hadn’t been what Micah meant at all. He could have handled a rat pack on his own if he had to. He hadn’t been asking for reassurances, just encouragement. But now that Ryan mentioned it, he glanced at Lisa to make sure she was still sleeping.

She looked like she was, so he stepped a little closer and whispered, “Spells that aren’t fire?”

Ryan glanced at him and nodded.

Oh. Good.

Five minutes later, they were leaning against the wall next to her when Ryan’s hand shot to the handle of his blade. He quickly sighed and relaxed again.

“What?” Micah asked.

“Fighting,” he said. “It seems the scout chose a different group to attack.”

“Whistle?”

Ryan shook his head.

“You would hear it yourself if they did. They’re just about five or six bends away. I think there’s … four of them? One is laughing loudly. They’re all pretty loud, actually. Must be having fun.”

“You can hear that?”

He shrugged. “I’ve been practicing. It’s a cumulative Skill, after all, meaning I got it half from my Path and half from my Class. I should be able to learn how to control half of it, if all it takes is more effort. Plus, sound travels well here. There’s little to distract me.”

He glanced at Micah then and he nodded in understanding. You were supposed to have much more control over the Skills you got from your Path, like how Micah could expand upon [Savagery] or shape it, or how [Mages] could cast the same spell in different ways. Micah just liked to avoid thinking about that because it brought up the whole “Path issue” again.

“Then what’s it like in the city?” he asked, thinking of the market clamor or even just finding a quiet moment at home. If all your senses were enhanced, wouldn’t that be horribly confusing? What about pain or balance? Did food taste better to him? Was he more ticklish? Did boredom feel like an eternity and hunger more demanding?

“That’s part of what tipped me off,” Ryan said, oblivious to the hundreds of questions in Micah’s head. “It’s not actually that bad. I seem to … blend things out if there’s too much. All people do that anyway, to a certain degree, but I can get it down to almost normal levels even with my Skill. It varies from sense to sense and it’s much easier if I focus on a single thing. I’m hoping for more or even the opposite someday.”

So it was like the clamor in the market, Micah supposed. Once you got used to it, it just became noise. Micah had a recipe for a “Potion of Lesser Perception.” He wondered if he should make that someday just to see what it was like.

“I bet—” Micah started, wanting to encourage him, but the other boy interrupted him.

“They’re done, by the way,” he said. “Sorry. Uhm, they won, but one of them is cursing like a sailor.”

“It’s fine. Should we go help?”

He shook his head. “We’re not leaving Lisa and we’re not splitting up. Plus, they’re already heading on. Also … you generally want to avoid other people in the Tower, Micah.”

“Why—”

“I’m done, too,” Lisa said next to them.

Micah jumped and his companions laughed.

“Did I surprise you?”

“Yes!”

“And?” Ryan asked. “Did you level up?”

“Yeah, did you?”

Lisa dripped water as she got up and nodded. “I’m level three. I got [Lesser Permeability].”

“That’s mana regeneration,” Ryan explained before Micah had to ask.

He had a long list of Stats that he kept at Ryan’s place but hadn’t found the time to study yet. His thoughts went to Sam anyway.

“Does that mean Sam—”

“No.” Lisa shook her head. “It would have given me two more days if I’d had it from the start. The two days of sleep I didn’t get, I suppose. I’ve settled for seven. That gives me enough mana to work spells if we’re going into the Tower on the weekends and doesn’t put too much strain on either it or me.”

Seven days? So the Salamander would live its life in weeks then?

That would still much better than other Summoners could manage, Micah thought. Or much worse, depending on how aware the monster was. Ryan had said Sam couldn’t feel. Having met Lisa, Micah guessed that wouldn’t true forever.

“How’s your mana now?” Ryan asked. “Do you have to do some, uhm, regeneration exercises?”

“You know I don’t do those,” Lisa said but seemed to consider it anyway. “Huh, but I am curious. I wonder how much I can get out of [Lesser Permeability] if I push it. My mana is fine for now, but we should still take it slow. Up the tunnel or do you want to go looking for stairs?”

“Tunnels to tunnels,” Ryan said. “spiders are our best bet.”

“Great. Just let me dry myself off then.”

She bent down and ran her hands over her pants. Dense wind essence flowed out from the sides of her palms then and began to heat up. It mixed with the water essence of her soaked pants and made it steam. Where she moved her hands, actual steam did rise. She was drying herself with a spell. Specifically, one that manipulated steam essence someway.

“Wait, what are regeneration exercises?” Micah asked.

“Thought exercises,” Ryan explained. “But they’re different for every person. Some like to read, or draw, or play instruments. Some solve math equations or riddles. Most just meditate on their spells. It’s basically just about getting your mind running to regenerate mana quicker.”

Why would getting your mind working get mana back quicker?

“It’s supposed to be really unreliable, though,” Ryan went on. “So not a lot of mages bother with learning them in the first place. Someone once told me you get, like, a five percent boost at best?”

“One in four is the best you can hope for based on past data,” Lisa clarified. “Three in ten is the theoretical limit, but that’s nearly impossible. One in twenty is a pretty good number, I think. Maybe one in ten once you get the hang of it. [Lesser Permeability] should double that number.”

Micah tried to memorize the numbers, but Lisa’s terms were a little confusing. He thought there was something else among the information there if he didn’t think too hard about it. It brought him back to his question of what mana even was.

Essence.

Yes, but what kinds?

“Kind-s.” Plural. And Micah had answered with a singular. No wonder why Lisa had been so frustrated towards him. That meant it was made of up several ingredients. He just didn’t know what else that implied … yet.

Lisa finished up, looking as good as new. She must have dried her back and hair somehow when Micah wasn’t looking. How did she do that?

Ryan looked envious. “Can you dry me, too?”

“Sure,” Lisa said and walked over to him.

Ryan must not have thought the request through though, because when she began running her hands over his chest he immediately went beet red and took a step back.

“Uh, I meant from afar?”

Micah tried not to snicker. He knew he would have made the same mistake had he asked first, though.

Lisa looked like she needed a moment before she caught on.

“Oh! Right. Because that would be awkward for you … Sorry, Rye.” She took a step back and looked like she was concentrating. “I actually don’t have a spell for this, but let me just try something—”

She placed a hand on Ryan’s shirt. After a moment, an oval dome of steam essence blew out around him from the contact point and made his clothes ripple violently as if he were standing in a strong breeze.

Slowly, Ryan’s clothes dried that way.

“You, too?” Lisa asked him.

“Uhm ...”

“It’s harmless.”

It really didn’t look that bad. It wasn’t even as hot as the water in the bathhouse, but ...

No. No “but.” There was no reason for Micah to decline.

“Sure,” he said.

When Lisa placed a hand on his shirt, he closed his eyes and waited for the effect to finish. His chainmesh rippled less, but Micah still felt the wind heat up and whip against his skin. When he opened his eyes again, the air around him stunk like wet dog. Well, it stunk more. The others were giving him the smile version of a thumbs-up.

He thanked Lisa.

“You’re welcome, Maya.”

“Maya?”

She smiled sheepishly. “Trying out a nickname.”

“My sister’s name is Maya.”

“Oh. Well, then I’ll just stick with Apples instead.”

“No!”

“Call him Flowers,” Ryan said. “Apparently, that’s his alchemist title.”

“How about you just call me by my name?”

“Nah. I’ll find a nickname eventually.”

She looked like she was about to head off, but Ryan reminded them about the hole in the ceiling and suggested boosting Micah up.

“No. What if there are more vermin hiding up there?” she asked. “It does lead up.”

They hadn’t even thought of that.

Micah did not like the idea of coming face-to-face with a rat or spider while he hung from a ledge three and a half meters off the ground. Especially Tower spiders. He’d read about them. Some of them were poisonous, some not, some had webs, some burrowed themselves into floors or walls to surprise you. Each of them was as big as any other monster in the Tower and sounded worse than the last.

“How about I give you a boost instead?” he asked Lisa.

She could at least defend herself.

She shrugged. “Worth a try. But don’t you want to get the rat out from under the grate first?”

Ryan and he frowned in unison.

“Rat?” they asked.

Micah thought back to when Ryan had shrugged the grate off himself. Had the monster it had fallen on burst into smoke? … No, it hadn’t. And that meant the scout that just stole a crystal from under the grate had actually stolen—

“Argh!” Micah shouted and ruffled his own hair. He stomped over to the grate and said, “That’s just perfect.”

A fully-formed without its crystal was quickly going to rot.

“What’s wrong?”

“Scout stole the crystal,” Ryan summarized.

“Oh.”

Micah had to guide a bit of Sewer moss over to see it properly, but the rat under the grate was mostly mush. One of the outer bars had fallen on its head and the others had blanketed its body like grill burns.

“Ew,” he mumbled.

“It’s not so bad,” Lisa said next to him. “Still edible, I bet.”

He spun on her. “Edible?”

“Huh?” She looked like she hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but now the cat was out of the bag. “Uh, yeah. Rat flesh is pretty good, like most monsters. Doesn’t have any dirt or diseases, it’s clean, fresh, and it maintains a bit of its magic even after you prepare it, so it’s extra healthy. It doesn’t taste so bad, either. Uhm … want me to grill it for you later?”

…Did he?

“No,” Micah decided, vehemently shaking his head. He added a belated “Thank you for the offer, though” because he wanted to be polite.

Lisa had eaten monsters before?

… Ew?

He knew all nobles were supposed to eat some monsters parts, like Honey Ant legs because they were supposed to be healthy. And her explanation did make sense. A lot, actually. The bit about magic interested him, too, so he was curious, but … he couldn’t just eat a monster. That would be weird, right? And what would Ryan think? Micah didn’t want to embarrass himself in case the older boy thought it was disgusting. Plus, it was already beginning to … decay …

Micah blinked.

“Didn’t you smell it?” Lisa asked, but her voice sounded a little muted.

“No, I was, uh, focusing on other stuff,” Ryan said.

Micah was busy inspecting the rat. He crouched down so he could get a better look at it.

Why was it decaying?

From one the wounds in its side, Micah looked past the blood and thought he saw something … dissipating in its flesh. It did so quickly, just like those flesh crystals earlier when Lisa had tried to heal Sam. As if there was something the essence was still trying to act but couldn’t, and the effort required made it disappear quicker than if it had just stayed in its … pattern …

Monsters have active, essence-fueled patterns, Micah realized. Just like his potions.

But how did that explain why they began to rot without their crystal? Did the crystal supply them with the essence for those patterns? And when it was gone ... the pattern would draw on the corpse for fuel ...?

Maybe.

Probably not. The simple crystals Micah had encountered so far couldn’t possibly hold enough essence to sustain such a powerful pattern, if that was what they were. And even if they did, they were still “full” when the monsters died.

The fully-formed had to get their essence from someplace else then. But where?

Unmade kind of grow into fully-made over time.

Ryan had said that. He’d told Micah that weeks ago when he found his first monster part. Micah should have realized it then. No, he should have realized it the moment he saw his first Salamander.

“Unmade are made of essence.”

It was just a … a claim for now, but if Micah made that claim, everything else fit into place.

If essence could exist in the form of crystals, why couldn’t it exist in the form a living being? Not without help, of course. It wouldn’t be nearly stable enough. A rock was structured. The many moving parts of a living being were not.

But that did answer another question Micah had. Fire didn’t want to be a rock, but essence has no dominion. You could force it into that structure and then use it to contain more essence in its pores. That’s how crystals existed. That’s how Lisa had overcharged her fire crystal earlier.

A little bit of fire essence to make the basic structure. Then more to fill it up and reinforce that structure.

Where had she gotten the fire essence for that, though?

Not important right now.

The important thing was that the essence inside of the fully-formed already existed before they became that. It was the unmade. And in order to make essence take the form a living being, you needed something to keep it stable.

You needed a pattern.

Specifically, one strong enough to weave essence together so dense it fooled light and could rot a body in a day. One strong enough to make a body in the first place. Micah thought of flesh essence, how it was supposed to form flesh inside your stomach. Unmade were probably the same. They had a pattern and they used it like a mold for soap or blade to form flesh inside of them.

What was the significance of the crystal, then?

Wait, no—

In order to make a living being of the essence, you needed a pattern. But a pattern without a living being was just as unstable. That was one of the reasons why Micah’s potions didn’t last forever. Patterns needed a … a tether. Something to keep them intact. In nature, that was the living being that had made the pattern itself.

Unmade didn’t have that. They needed something else to tie their strands together—their crystal.

And when people cut the hairs—damaged the body of the unmade—that tie came loose couldn’t hold it together anymore. Pattern and essence unraveled. The crystal slipped free while the body collapsed in on itself into a cloud of sludge-like essence that looked like smoke.

Like Micah’s very first potion attempt.

“Unmade are made of essence,” Micah decided. “They have a pattern strong enough to draw from the world around them, shaping bodies in their own likeness. Their crystal is the tie that holds their pattern together, their pattern the tie for their essence, their essence condensed into stone the tie for their pattern ... It is an endless cycle of the same fickle substance holding itself together until it makes a living being.”

“Fully-made decay without their crystal because they thrice decay: a part of what they are isn’t bound anymore, one part of that unbound substance eats up the other up during the process, and when nothing is left, it eats the body.”

The claims rang true to him.

The principal question was: Did any of that matter? Could Micah make use of this information or was it simply important for the sake of knowing?

Living beings made patterns. Patterns could affect the real world with the help of essence. That’s how Micah made potions.

Monsters had patterns. Patterns could affect the real world with the help of essence. That’s how they made bodies of flesh.

He was only theorizing the reverse. He had to find something he could use.

Could people maybe infuse themselves with essence to grow stronger? Micah couldn’t even see the patterns and essences of humans, so he wouldn’t know where to start. The best he could do was make potions to do it indirectly, but he filed the information away for later.

Maybe he could … create a weapon against the unmade? Some kind of poison that abused the fickle nature of their structure?

No. The warrior’s weapons are just a means to preservation.

Micah’s [Essence Path] was his alchemy Path. Was there something he could do there?

Maybe … if monsters could use crystals to keep their patterns stable without a physical body, could Micah do that, too? Could he somehow make a potion that would last forever by tying its pattern to a crystal?

It sounded possible, but he didn’t know how.

Coming to a halt on his Path felt like stumbling mid-run. Micah lurched to steady himself against the grate and heaved. That was another use of meditation, he knew. It taught your body to keep breathing while you thought on your Path.

He must not have been out for too long then.

Ryan and Lisa were talking above him. He sat in the water again. His pants were soaked and he felt like he was recovering from a headache. He got out a waterskin and took a thirsty sip of non-doggy water.

“Welcome back,” Lisa said.

“How long was I out?” Micah gasped as he wiped off his mouth.

“Not long,” Ryan said, but he scratched his nape and looked awkward while he did it. “Maybe a minute or two. But, uhm, Micah...I thought you might just not want to do it around other people, but have you not been meditating at all?”

Micah shook his head in confession. “No.”

He was already prepared to apologize—Ryan was bound to get upset after all and he had been endangering them like this—but for some reason, the other boy smiled down at him instead.

“Good thing we were here to protect you, then.”

Micah blinked. Huh?

“Right,” he said. “Thank you.”

Ryan offered him a hand and he pulled himself up.

“Did you get a Skill?” Lisa asked.

“Nope. But I got something better: Information.”

“Ha! Now you’re thinking like a real person.”

She slapped him on the back and Micah stumbled forward a step. Beneath him, the grate had shifted and the rat corpse was already gone. He looked for it and noticed Lisa’s bag bulging a little.

“Did you…?”

“We peppered some crystal dust over it,” Ryan explained. “Lisa says that’ll make it last for a few more hours, but we should probably use it within a day.”

“Right. Uh, thanks again.”

Micah had five feet and three tails now. He thought he could throw something together with that.

“No problem. We still want to check that grate, though.”

“Still want to give me a boost?” Lisa asked.

He nodded.

Micah positioned himself underneath the hole in the ceiling and interlaced his hands. Lisa took a little bit of momentum and pushed herself off of them. They immediately broke apart under the force and Lisa stumbled into him.

“Sorry. Again?”

The second time, Micah steeled himself for it and she got close, but not close enough.

The third, she pushed herself off Micah’s hands with a burst of force and wind essence and easily reached the hole in the ceiling. She only gripped the edge of the hole as she fell back down, then pulled herself back up in one smooth motion.

Micah waved his hands and grimaced, grateful that he was wearing gloves.

“And?” Ryan asked.

“I’m looking,” she called back. She turned around awkwardly in the hole and a bright light shone down from next to her.

“Hey, I found another flesh crystal,” she said. “Nothing else though.”

She jumped back down and Micah tried to help catch her, but they almost both fell into the water instead.

“Sorry,” he said again.

She showed them the flesh crystal. It was a little bigger, but nothing special. It didn’t even have a cool shape. They just dropped in it with the others in Micah’s bag.

“Onwards, then,” Lisa said and tapped him on the shoulder. Suddenly, that dome of steam essence enveloped him again. He stood still and closed his eyes while it dried him. He’d tried to keep them open, but the wind was blinding.

“Which spiders are we facing?” Micah asked as they headed into the gaping tunnel. The earth was soft and dark. It clung to his boots. With every step further in, it just got darker.

“You tell us,” Ryan said. “What do you see?”

“Dark tunnels, no glowing plants, no glowing veins or dust in the walls, soft earth …” Micah counted off, remembering the Guide.

At the top, they stepped into a system that split three ways. Each tunnel was curved slightly, even up and down. In the far off distance, there was a little bit of blue light in two of them. The dirt itself seemed to have a slight spiraling pattern. It didn’t look like it had been dug at all. Not by shovel, at least.

Micah saw the two beams of light and looked around, but couldn’t find the one coming from the Sewer grate in the room below them. It was in a different, unconnected tunnel then.

“Either the Tunnel spiders,” Micah said because it was the obvious choice. “Or the Cataracts?”

He didn’t like either of those options. Then again, he didn’t like the idea of facing monstrous spiders at all.

“Which Cataracts?” Ryan asked. “In a test, you have to be specif— Lisa!” He broke off and shouted a warning.

A black spider the size of a small pumpkin lept at Lisa from the ceiling. Micah hadn’t even seen it in the dark, but she must have because she just calmly stepped to the side and pressed a hand against its hairy back as it flew past.

Where she touched the black creature, a glimpse of blinding roots jumped from her hand to its body. The monster hit the floor and spasmed before rolling its legs up like it had died.

Sinking, black veins dotted Micah’s vision where the lightning had just been. He briefly thought the spider might be fully-formed because it had balled up, but then Lisa hammered it with her staff from above. It tried to dodge, but she cracked its legs, leaking light. The staff hit the earth and threw up dirt. Ryan impaled it with his sword, making it burst into smoke.

It had just been playing dead.

Lisa bent down to pick up the crystal and handed it to Micah, who had stepped back into the tunnel and behind Ryan without realizing it.

Giant freaking spider, his mind thought.

Ryan let out a breath. “That was close.”

He gulped and agreed. It had shown up out of nowhere and been fast. It hadn’t made a sound either, even when it died. When Micah had wondered which silent monster the Tower would send next, he hadn’t meant that as a challenge.

“I saw it,” Lisa said. “But thanks for the warning. Here, Micah. Does this answer your question?”

Micah carefully took the small crystal from her and peered inside. It was about half again as big as the rats’ and its essence behaved like smoke at first glance, but it wasn’t. It had tiny purple hairs like barbed edges that glowed ever so slightly. It also behaved more fluid, more like … poison essence?

He had only seen yellow poison essence before.

“Is it … the essence of its poison?” he asked despite knowing the answer. “Cataract, then. The Tunnel Spiders don’t have any poison.”

At least, not on the outer tunnels of the second floor.

“Exactly.”

Great.

Cataract poison was supposed to blur your vision and made it black around the edges, similar to the actual disease. The spiders were rare, however, because their tunnels were only found near the various Sewers or other light-giving floors. They relied on the Sewers’ light rather than lighting them up from above.

In short, they were either really lucky or very unlucky to have found them, depending on whether or not they were looking for them. They weren’t. Practically nobody was. Their entry in the Beginner’s Guide had only a single page. Cataracts’ tunnels had little of interest after all. Most of their chests were just Sewer chests. There were no interesting plants or other hidden treasures, just dirt and spiders. And what would a regular person do with their parts or crystals?

Micah … though he could maybe make an anti-venom potion himself? If he fueled a strong enough healing pattern with little enough poison essence, it should acclimate to that poison and specialize against it, he thought. Probably. He might have to make sure the healing pattern stayed healing by giving it a different type of essence first. Otherwise, the “healing” quality might actually support the poison instead of fighting it.

“I really don’t like Cataracts,” Ryan said, glancing around. “Nothing to do with spiders. They’re just irritating. Let’s hurry. Lisa, light?”

“On it. Flowers, do you still have that fire crystal from earlier?”

Micah scowled for a moment before he caught up to what she was asking for.

“Uhm, yeah?”

He brought it out for her.

“Thanks. You can have it back later.”

Lisa focused on it the crystal for a moment. Then its red shine flared. Micah caught the tiniest halo of light essence around it even when it died down again. Did— Had she just made it as bright for others as it was to Micah?

“This won’t last long, but you can use it to scout ahead,” she said to Ryan as if it were a lamp or torch. “When its temperature changes, you’ll know the effect is wearing off. Come back and tell me where the tunnels lead. I’ll work out the quickest route towards stairs. Micah can go with you.”

“I’d actually rather he stayed here,” Ryan said, taking the crystal in his sword hand. For a second, he looked like he didn’t know what to do with it. Then he managed to hold both it and his second shield strap in his one hand. “I’m not sure I can protect him against these things.”

“I can protect myself,” Micah said.

“You can protect me,” Lisa offered with a smile. “I’ll be busy drawing patterns in the dirt.”

She sat down and started doing just that, holding a small ball of light next to her. It was bright enough to light up her and the walls around them, but not much else.

“Micah?” Ryan asked.

Micah glanced at him, then Lisa’s maps, and scowled. He knew this trick. Prisha had done it all the time when he was younger.

If you gave a kid something they thought was important and they’d want to do it. Protecting Lisa was important; Micah just believed she could take care of herself. He would rather make sure Ryan stayed safe. But going with him might just mean he was an extra burden …

Argh.

“Fine,” he said, but he didn’t hide his displeasure.

Ryan headed off. Micah kept an eye on him and the other two tunnels while Lisa worked. He didn’t think it would be much use, though. He hadn’t seen that first spider at all.

“How are you doing that?” he asked over his shoulder, trying to distract himself with new knowledge. “Is there a rule on how the tunnels behave?”

“No, there’s just … maps. People make maps. You study the maps. You see the tunnels before you and draw the ones that fit, like fitting a larger puzzle onto only a few pieces. Once you find enough that have the object you want in a similar direction, you follow that way and adjust to any new information you get.”

Micah frowned. “Sounds like guessing to me.”

“Educated guessing,” Lisa corrected him.

Ryan stopped in the distance and started waving. Micah quickly waved back to show he was listening. The other boy moved his arm in a downwards cut towards one wall, then in an “L”-shaped cut towards him.

Ah.

Micah gave him a thumbs-up. He hoped Ryan saw it.

“I think Ryan’s telling me the tunnels moves like this,” he told Lisa, briefly crouching down to draw the shape next to her. Then he went back to…guard duty.

“Thanks.”

She brushed away a few of her maps that didn’t fit and redrew others.

“Aren’t there, like, spells for this?”

In another tunnel, something skittered over the blue beam of light that reached up from a Sewer grate and threw shadows.

Micah gulped and checked on Ryan again, but he was heading further towards his own light there. To check for treasure chests? Thankfully, it was a little closer. He guessed the lights were basically beacons for possible treasure …

… which just reeked of ambush. And that red crystal Ryan was holding seemed like a beacon itself.

“There are,” Lisa said calmly. “But I don’t know them.”

“Oh.”

That seemed like a good thing to learn, Micah thought. But then again, he didn’t know them either.

When he checked on Ryan again, the boy was sprinting back towards them and screaming. Micah gulped and nodded sagely. He really should start voicing his opinions on ambushes.

Behind Ryan, several somethings scuttled over the light. “Lisa!” he called. “Help!”

She immediately got up and raised a hand, noticed Micah, and cursed.

“Flowers, look away.”

Micah looked away.

He felt cold anger climbing up his throat then, counter to the rush of heat beside him and the sound of flames rushing in the wind. So much for spells other than fire. Micah grit his teeth despite that.

This was on him.

Screw fear.

He pulled back his own slingshot and turned back, firing at the ceiling and walls around Ryan in the hopes of hitting the shadows that moved there. He was basically firing blindly, though. Only after the fourth shot did he catch a tiny flicker of light, meaning he had hit something.

The boy reached them a moment later and Micah abandoned his slingshot in favor of his dagger.

Ryan slid to a stop in the dirt, braced one arm against the ground, turned around and charged with him.

A spider lept at Micah, although it was more like it launched itself at him. It hit him dead-on, but he had his arms raised to run. Pressing them together to block the thing was easy. Twisting the knife to point towards the spider was even easier. Its own force launched it into his blade and Micah heard the barest hint of a creak coming from its head, like an unoiled door being opened. They weren’t naturally mute, then.

Micah’s grip slipped a little on the knife, but he pushed out, dragging the blade sideways inside the beast to make it abandon its attack. While it flew to the floor, Ryan’s sword came down like a wood axe and hit to the ground, but it didn’t burst. Micah fastened his grip on his knife.

It landed on its back. He waited for it to turn around before he stomped a foot on it to keep it there, already surveying the rest of the tunnel. It tried to squirm free, but he just pressed down harder.

He couldn’t finish it off. He had to know where his enemies were before he turned his back on them.

Another spider reached them and launched itself as well. These things jumped like toy balls bounced on stone. Ryan bashed it out of the air before Micah could react.

A third was on the ceiling, but hiding behind Ryan and his shield, Micah took the chance to lean down and finish his off. Despite its wounds, it took him two quick stabs for it to burst.

Probably has to do with their segmented bodies, he realized. It only burst after he had stabbed it in a different segment. Might also be true for ants and other insectoids. Could just have been a weak point you missed, though, or have something to do with their shell structure.

Ryan was busy impaling the second spider and twisting the blade in, but it still wouldn’t burst as it balled up and leaked light like smoke. Thankfully, he was stabbing it right where Micah’s third stab had made his own spider burst. That confirmed his suspicion for now.

Another quick bolt of flames hit the third on the ceiling before it could drop on Ryan’s head, igniting and knocking it off-course.

“Stab it in a different body part,” Micah told him.

He did. It worked wonderfully.

The third flailed around for a bit before Ryan finished it off. He breathed then, hunched over a little, and flashed Micah a grin.

“Thanks for the help.”

He grinned back.

“You, too.”

“Nice job, Lisa,” Lisa said, interrupting them. “Thanks for burning two Cataracts before they could eat my brains out, Lisa. Oh, no problem, Ryan. I told you I got your back. It’s always my pleasure.”

Micah ended up collecting the crystals while Ryan reported what he’d seen. She drew about ten more maps that looked like a cutout from a spiraling spider-web before she decided on a direction they should head.

Before she got back up, Micah asked what the Sewers looked like.

She drew an example map. It looked similar to a city’s street system, unsurprisingly, with long, inwards-facing rectangles, some dead-ends, and the occasional circle or hidden space behind a false wall.

“And the Salamander’s Den?”

This pattern looked more like a mixture between a brick wall and lots and lots of intersecting squares. It looked angular in the dirt, but Micah remembered the curved edges. Further in, the organized structure apparently decayed into a maze of lines.

“And the Ant Hive?”

“Mm,” Lisa said. “That’s harder to do on paper. Or dirt, I guess. It’s shaped like a long inverted pyramid made of tunnels, so I would need to make a model instead. Have you ever seen a cast of a real ant hive?”

Micah shook his head.

“Shame. You’ll just have to see for yourself then.”

“No, he won’t,” Ryan said. “We aren’t going anywhere near clusters.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Lisa said. “I meant the … you know? Folding around?”

“Oh,” Ryan said. “Right. Hopefully, he’ll see that.”

Naturally, Micah asked about the thing Ryan didn’t want him to know about.

“Clusters?”

“They’re hollow spheres where lots of different tunnels meet up and extend into an open space,” Lisa explained, “meaning there are lots and lots of ants there. Hundreds of them. They’ll swarm you in moments and rip you to shreds.”

Micah saw an image of a hundred normal ants swarming his arms and legs and already shivered. Monstrous ones …?

Oh.

“How does anyone fight there?”

“Large groups,” Ryan said. “And lots of preparation. They organize themselves with the help of the Guild or employers. We’re just here to find a fully-formed or two and then head out again.”

“Right.”

Hopefully, finding fully-formed ants would be easier than rats.

They made their way further into the earthy tunnel, now with a ball of light hovering over Lisa’s side-stretched hand and kept a wary eye for any moving shadows. The space was black and quiet. The spiders didn’t make a sound, so Micah held his dagger high in case one of them jumped him again.

Every two tunnels or so, Lisa would stop and draw more maps. Micah wondered just how many of those you have to study before you could make use of this tactic. Dozens at least. It seemed impractical to him.

It was during one of those breaks that two Cataracts tried their luck. Lisa threw her ball of light at one without looking, briefly blinding it, and Micah had an easy time stabbing it once, then slicing off two legs to make it burst.

If they had more time and the spiders weren’t so freaking terrifying, Micah would have tried out wounding them in different places to find out their specific weak points. As it was, he waited for Lisa to reignite her light and helped Ryan.

That gave Micah seven of their poison crystals. He knew he wouldn’t be able to reliably come here, but making something with them seemed a little more viable now. Maybe even an actual poison?

They could also just sell the crystals at the Guild so Micah could pay the others for the rat parts. He was definitely going to make something out of those. Still, he wanted to keep at least a few so he could make a new potion. That was bound to get him closer to his next level up.

One more tunnel down, they found a staircase. That was quick. Lisa’s maps had worked.

“Thank my blood,” she said behind him.

“Let’s get out of here,” Ryan added.

They seemed relieved to get out of the dark. Micah shared the sentiment, if not the intensity of the emotion. He stared at the familiar stone steps as they climbed instead, trying not to think too hard on the memories that followed each one like a stroke as his shoes brushed the stone. He fell behind.

Ahead, Ryan and Lisa also scratched the mud off their boots on of the steps. Micah copied him absent-mindedly.

The structure wasn’t quite as broken-down as the one he’d climbed back then, but it wasn’t made of the same iridescent stone of the Towers either. It seemed a little different as if it used a different architectural style. Micah just couldn’t put his finger on any exact changes.

Ryan waited for him at the top.

The empty room they stepped into on the other hand was made of the Tower’s stone. It was lit in perfect white light.

The others headed on through a screen of its essence without noticing. Micah watched it stretch over his skin as he passed. There was light in every corner and a silver portal that looked like a miniature of the Towers’ in the left-side wall. Was it lightning up the room so seamlessly?

“There’s a portal,” Ryan said, smiling softly. His voice sounded stilted again. Micah recognized it as Ryan being “considerate.”

“So we can leave if we want to.”

Micah smiled to give him credit for the thought, even if it was unnecessary. He had no qualms with fighting his way out of the Tower anymore. And now that he knew monsters were edible, there was no rush either.

As if reading his mind, Lisa asked, “Anyone else hungry? Or did you eat already?”

“No, we were waiting on you,” Ryan said.

Micah blinked. They had? He had honestly just forgotten, but his stomach grumbled and the others turned to look at him. Micah blushed and avoided their looks.

They headed on anyway.

“Uhm, aren’t we going to eat?”

“We are,” Ryan said. “But you want to scout ahead first to see what’s coming up. Then you can prepare and strategize, or decide whether or not you want to turn back. Stuff like that.”

“Oh.”

Micah scampered after them.

At the top of the stairs, Lisa and Ryan stood in silent consideration. Micah caught a hint of dark trees and greenery and knew this wasn’t the Ant Hive, either. But it also wasn’t the Wolves’ Den.

It was a new forest he hadn’t seen before.

Ryan’s lips twitched a little as he mulled something over. Lisa seemed strangely still as she observed.

This forest had another fake sky and trees with trunks that rose up flat and high before the branches began. Climbing them would be a hassle. The sky was darker, but not dark. It was a deep blue dotted with long stripes of lazy clouds. Everywhere Micah looked, he saw cool shadows and duff. It was nothing like the perpetual white haze that covered the Wolves’ floors. It seemed closer to a normal forest Micah could find outside the city walls.

He also didn’t recognize it from the Beginner’s Guide, but he thought he should. Was it even in the book?

“What lives here?” he asked.

“Lives?” Lisa echoed in an indiscernible tone. “Myconids.”

Mushroom monsters.

“I’m not going in there,” she said plainly.

Ryan frowned and offered, “Why not? Myconids aren’t the worst we could face. Do you really want to head back to the Cataracts again and fight your way through their half-dark?”

“I won’t fight Myconids.” She enunciated each word ever so softly. A declaration.

“Oh.” Ryan paused. “Are you, like … a humanoidist?”

“Something like that.”

“What’s that?” Micah whispered though Lisa could hear him.

“They’re climbers who won’t fight humanoid monsters. Kobolds, Myconids, Golems, and so on,” Ryan explained, “... for various reasons. Some find it unethical. Some just don’t like the idea of fighting something that resembles them. Lisa …?”

“It’s cultural,” she said and turned away.

Ryan took one last glance at the forest before he nudged Micah and followed her.

Micah had a harder time parting from the forest, though. It was new and unfamiliar. He wanted to explore it. What kind of plants might grow here? What potions could he make from magic mushrooms?

He took one step out and glanced up to see where the stairs were even coming from. To satisfy at least one question. It was a stone box, reaching up from the ground in the middle of the forest. Dirt and grass grew up its sides like lawns.

A mushroom with eyes of a child peered down at him from over the edge of that box. The top of its head was shaped like a flat sun hat. It threw a thin shadow over him as it lay on the ceiling of the stairs. In wait? To ambush them?

For a second, Micah just stared at it.

It stared back.

He waved.

It raised a fungus arm over the ledge and waved back, then retracted that arm again. Was it shy? Micah could have counted the tiny strands that made up its arm if it hadn’t done that. From the slow motions alone, it seemed weighty. It even had small protrusions much smaller than its squash-shaped hand that might have been fingers.

Don’t be shy, Micah thought and almost said it. Tell me your secrets.

In the back of his head, over a hundred years of dark history answered: No.

Micah ducked back inside.

Once he was in the relative safety of the stairs, he checked the forest again. There were more eyes hidden there. Some looking out sideways high behind tree trunks. Some just waiting in brush. One fallen log had fungus growing from its side. Micah hadn’t given it much notice before, but now that fungus blinked.

He fled down the stairs.

Something inside him was thinking about how best to kill them. Questions tumbled over one another in their haste to prepare for when he got any information. But Micah didn’t intend to feed those for now.

The rest of him simply wanted to avoid fighting them if he could … for now.

Lisa and Ryan stood in the middle of the room and ate, so Micah joined them. Ryan had the typical school food with him: sandwiches. The same as Micah, but with other toppings. He even had a few slices of salad on it. Where had he gotten fresh salad this morning?

Lisa ripped off chunks of beef jerky with her teeth.

They ate in silence for a moment.

“What was that lightning thing you did earlier?” Micah asked between bites.

“[Shocking Grasp]?” Ryan tried.

Lisa finished chewing and said, “[Electric Touch]. It’s not enough to knock someone out or keep them down for long, but it can interrupt them for a moment.”

“Can you show it to me?”

She held a hand out for him. Suddenly, her fingers spasmed like a claw and rolling logs, and lightning arced between them. Around those roots, tiny balls of sinking distortion danced, vibrating ever so slightly. Wisps trailed out of them from time to time. Phantom lightning jumped off from the real ones and arced between those tiny orbs. Then the real lightning did as well and the orbs shifted to a new location.

Lightning essence, Micah realized. He had never seen it so clearly or so close before. It was fascinating.

He noticed her fingers still spasming and frowned.

“Is it shocking you, too?” he asked. “Is it hurting you?”

“No, that’s just helanic conversion,” Lisa mumbled while she took off another chunk of jerky.

Micah raised his eyebrows and stared at her patiently until she finished.

She rolled her eyes and dropped the spell. Or was it a cantrip?

“It’s the concept of essence conversion,” she explained. “Moving my fingers like that reminds me of a body being shocked. I convert that concept to lightning essence, making the spell less pricey.”

Micah gaped.

“You can do that?! How?”

“Not everyone can do it freely,” Lisa said. “It’s a, uh … blood thing, like the Heswarens and their Truth. But most cantrips use the concept to some degree or another. Like [Candle]? It converts ‘flammable’ essences to fire essence. That’s how you set distant things on fire that could easily be lit by a lighter. You can do it with other stuff, too. Like ‘red essence’ to ‘fire essence’, or even ‘red essence’ to ‘rage essence’ to ‘kinetic essence’ to make red things hit harder.”

Micah wanted to feel enthusiastic about the possibilities. Instead, all he felt was grief at the mention of [Candle]. Not just for having missed the prospect of using essence conversion. He just missed the Skill, plain and simple. The Myconids eyes actually reminded him of the tiny flame a bit. He took another bite of his sandwich, his mood dampened.

“What’s ‘helanic’?” Ryan asked.

“Huh?” Lisa said.

“I’ve never heard any mage mention that,” he went on. “What does ‘helanic’ mean?”

“It’s named after the person who spread the concept,” Lisa said. “But that’s obscure, foreign history from Lin. I bet they’ll have a different term for it here.”

Did that mean people from the Linnic continent had mages, too? The Northerners did, Micah knew. Even if they were supposed to be weaklings in comparison to Tower [Mages]. It was one of the many advantages their people had over them. The Northerners only had a few, like enchanting and … well, that was it, really.

Tower people were strong. Northerners were weak. Overseas people were crafty. Everyone knew that.

When Lisa and Ryan both brushed off their hands and got up, Micah stuffed the rest of his sandwich in his mouth with one go and wiped the crumbs from his lips. He didn’t want them waiting on him.

“Where do we go now?” Lisa asked.

“I actually want to leave and try getting to the Ant Hive again,” Ryan said. “I think I can make it this time. It’s better than the Cataracts.”

“Really?” Lisa asked. “Huh. Alright then, I’ll try as well.”

Micah needed a moment to catch up. “We’re leaving?”

“Just ducking out and back in again,” Ryan said.

“Oh. Okay, then.”

They got their things and stepped on through the portal. Suddenly, they were standing outside of the Tower again with a fresh stream of climbers headed towards them. The midday sun shone down from the side and people parted around them well in advance. None had been right in front of them when they stepped out.

Ryan tapped him on his shoulder to get Micah to turn back around. He took his hand again, then Lisa’s. Both of them closed their eyes for a time before they took a step back the way they’d just came.

This time, they’d made it.