§135 Double Dare II (Patreon)

“We’re leaving!” Lindsey grabbed her hand, and they fled. They skirted the edge of the cave, then tried to cut through a gap in the enslaved crowd. Twice, they nearly ran headlong into the arms of more slaves coming from somewhere else, and ran a drunken line to a destination only Linsey could see. There was no way to know if the Dimmik girl was taking her in the right direction or not. Mariella had started the task without any sense of direction to begin with.

They soon lost the slaves in a plane of cut stone, with no walls or ceiling to see. At one time, it must have been a fantastic deposit of metal, long since dug out.

She smelled fresh air. It was a scarce whiff of cold mountain peaks and growing things before the smothering atmosphere of the mines pressed in on them again. Lindsey felt it too and veered slightly. Most glorious of all, the ground started to slope up again. Walls closed in on them until they were in a shaft once more. The running climb tired them, but the excitement of escape drove them on, as eager as any slaver's whip. Lindsey's choices grew ever more certain, following her nose, skipping or taking side-shafts, seeking her way back to Dimmik.

They entered a lit section of the mine where they could see normally. Here, the slaves wouldn't need their masters to bring them light just to see. Lindsey skidded to a stop, and Mariella plastered herself against her back, almost knocking her over. The shaft bent slightly, and then, suddenly, it was crammed with human slaves, children with empty eyes whose limbs hung slack at their sides. Behind the children crouched one of the reptilian mana beasts, almost human but on all fours, his sickly pale scales smooth and glistening. Spines grew along its back. Mariella was off-balance when it plucked one from its back and threw it at her. Lindsey could have dodged, but put herself directly between Mariella and the poison thorn.

It hit Lindsey square in the chest with a thud. Mariella screamed and loosed the Spear of Light she'd been holding for so long, extinguishing the mana beast's existence.

"Lindsey!" she shouted and turned the girl by her shoulders. She expected to find a weapon in her heart, but it wasn't there: it lay on the ground, fractured into several smaller shards.

"Those are some good enhancements!" They both looked at the spot where it had hit her. The leather was scored deep, and the attack might have left a bruise, but the Dimmik princess was alive. They held hands again and waded through the children. The little ones sat stoically, waiting. Mariella didn't have her purifying circle with her, so there was little she could do for them except live long enough to return with help.

"Will you be able to find them again?"

"That won't be a problem," puffed Lindsey as they endured the climb. "I remember this shaft. It was empty when they brought me down. That was before they stunned me."

"How did they get you?"

"They enslaved a few of my guards and had them snatch me in my sleep. What does a Mine Lord even want with a princess?"

"I don't want to find out," Mariella whispered. 

The shaft emptied into a vast cavern, hollowed out entirely by mortal hands. A line of magic lamps on poles shone a line through the dark expanse. Lindsey's excitement fed her own: they were close! They followed the line of lamps, breath heaving loudly.

Halfway to the far end, she felt mana users all around her, lurking past the pools of light. How did they escape her notice before? 

"We're surrounded," she shouted. "Run!"

Her legs, pushed well beyond their normal endurance, burned despite the enhancements. Whatever the mana sources were, they chased them from behind and closed in on their flanks. The way forward was clear until they reached an area where the cave narrowed and became a tunnel again, sloping upward, the hard stone worn almost smooth down the center. The smells of Dimmik's caldera, different from Estfold but nonethless Outside, grew persistent. Lamps above their heads gave periodic light.

That's when they ran headlong into the gang of tamers. Their white, almost human figures waited for them with a shield of fifty enslaved people. They looked like townsfolk, recently caught. Just how many people were down here, in the dark? 

Lindsey skidded to a stop, one arm out to her side to brace Mariella. Behind them, the tunnel echoed with shuffling feet. More mana users were down there, too, though she couldn't see them yet.

"We can't go back," she told Lindsey. "They've blocked the tunnel behind us."

Cruel mirth hissed from the lipless mouths of tamers. 

"S-s-o clos-se!" said one. The others made a variety of noises, from hissing to gargling to gulping. Their slaves stood blankly, ready for orders.

"Pretty things-s!" said another.

"Better when they f-f-fight!" said a third. 

She didn't see who threw the spines, but Lindsey parried two of them in mid-air. Splinters flew at Mariella, and she shouted in panic. One scratch might be enough to turn her into one of them, a mindless worker stripped of mana and will.

"S-s-stop!" said the first. "Our Lord says to bind, not tame. Take them! Hold them!"

The townsfolk, impassive until now, raised their heads with a purpose, their eyes fixed on the two girls.

Mariella filled the tunnel with Glitter Bomb as far as she could reach without hurting herself, hiding the world in a fog of harshly twinkling light. She pulled her newfound friend back several steps, hoping the slaves would be poor attackers without their sight. They had seemed nearly incapable earlier, when commanded in the dark. She put their backs to a wall.

"Buy me time," she said grimly. "I know it isn't…"

"…I know," said the Dimmik princess.

Innocent people were about to die, so they could live. Neither of them tried to justify it further. Mariella knew the same decision was being made elsewhere in the mines, as the main force fought against Mine Lord Reccared. It had certainly been made in Iredale. After the defense of the town, she had seen the way men looked away from each other. There were some kills that nobody could be proud of.

If Lindastra was going to buy her time in innocent blood, then Mariella had to make the most of it. She didn't have a purification circle, but she had tons of mana, and she knew the art of Permutation. Her mana stones, gifts from Miss Wibbles, were discreetly mounted in settings inscribed with attribute-altering permutation circles, to convert their disparate mana into her best attribute: light. She drew from one while shaping her mana into a Permutation circle to convert light to purification, the same as her usual circle but far simpler and single-purpose. She let the mana flow straight through her, from mana stone to active spellwork, without regard to the strain on her body. Fire kindled in her belly and slowly grew toward her heart.

She was afraid, at first. The slaves came wandering out of the fog, and Lindsey struck them down one after another. The fire inside her spread until her arms and legs burned with brutal light. Her teachers had warned her about channeling mana directly from source to spell, that it would hurt, and maybe damage her ability to use magic in the future. But there wouldn't be a future unless she could form a purification circle with the only thing she had: her mana and her skill.

The circle she had in mind was very simple, but getting mana to maintain a shape on its own was no simple feat. She formed the mana in multiple strands and twisted them to give them stability, as Miss Wibbles taught her. The circle formed in the air, invisible to anyone without mana sensing. It stood vertically, with the focused edge pointing uphill at their exit.

She worked through the pain and through Lindsey's demand to hurry things along. About the time the mana burn reached her ears and set them to ringing, she stopped being afraid. They would live, or they would die. She drained one stone completely and had to start on another before the diagram was complete.

"Duck!" she shouted, and Lindsay got her head down just in time.

What was left of Glitter Bomb exploded into molten gold wherever the beam of purification touched it. The enslaved who were touched by it stopped in their tracks. The tamers, who were largely made of corrupted mana, caught fire. Mariella willed the fire to live, to consume them to its utmost, to erase them and their works from the world. Purifying wrath writhed around them, outrage and magic given the shape and substance to punish.

Behind her, she felt Lindsey's mana falter. Mariella turned and saw her go down under the weight of several large men. There was blood on the walls, on their clothes, in their faces. Bodies circled the two girls, the majority with terrible head wounds. 

She spun her circle and swept the downhill side of the tunnel with her retribution. Harmless glitter turned to punishing gold, and several tamers caught fire. She counted eight of the reptilian forms. They must have screamed, but she could not hear them over the rush of mana burn in her head.

This was more than mana and permutation. She had written her will onto the world and turned it into something new. Its imperfections made it hers and hers alone, and she knew she could call upon it as she willed.

Though she couldn't hear her own voice, she spoke. "I name you, Ray of Sunshine."

Original skill acquired: [Ray of Sunshine]

There were other messages from Knexenk, but she ignored them and focused on keeping the construct alive. It would cost more to make again than to keep around.

With the tamers dead, the three enslaved men couldn't do anything to Lindsey other than pin her down.  The two girls had to struggle to move their languid bodies.

Mariella knelt beside Lindsey and took the girl's hand to scan her body. There was nothing seriously wrong with her aside from hairline fractures, deep bruising, a twisted knee, and several cuts that stopped at the bone. She patched her up well enough to move.

"We have to go back down. Just a little way," she said. "Eat and drink something."

Lindsey eyed the circle, stationed with its focus pointing back the way they came. Apparently, it was visible without mana sensing. "What is that?"

"A new spell. Sort of. I had to get creative."

"Where did you learn to do something like that?" Lindsey took canteens and trail rations from her inventory. They ate and drank quickly. Going back down was a risk: they might exhaust themselves too much to get back. But there was a chance to help more people.

"I had a special teacher." She briefly explained the improbable existence of Miss Wibbles.

"Your sister really missed out."

"She had no one to blame but herself. Can you stand? I know it's asking a lot."

"I'm with you," Lindsey said. Mariella pulled the taller girl to her feet using both hands. "It's too late for these unfortunates. But we can help some of the others."

Enemies retreated away from them as they backtracked, afraid to come within sight. Perhaps the Mine Lord's control over his tamers was not as complete as the tamers' control over their monsters and slaves. They paced calmly to near the center of the long line of lights. Ray of Sunshine hovered in front of them.

"They're out there, in the dark. I can hear them make that disgusting gulping sound," Lindsey whispered. "Can you feel them?"

"I can't. They must be able to hide their mana. That's how they ambushed us earlier."

"They should have sent more people," she said grimly.

"Too late, now."

Mariella swept the entire cave with her Ray of Sunshine. The traveling beam lit up the cave in sections as it passed. It burned her down to the bone to do it, and left her barely able to stand, but it was worth the pain. She had expected to free some slaves and maybe catch a few tamers. The moving glow of her new spell briefly illuminated hundreds of people, most of them from the town of Sinter. Beyond them, far enough away they must have expected to be out of her range, no less than thirty of the intelligent mana beasts went up in flames.

When she was done sweeping the cave, Mariella released her new spell. She could hardly feel her own body, and there was blood in her mouth. She spat an unprincessly gob to one side. She hated the taste of blood. Depletion sickness would set in, any second now.

Event: [Imperial Princess Rampage I] You defeated fifty enemies in a single engagement while defending your realm. A multiplier will be added to your class rewards.

Event: [Double Princess Rampage I] You eliminated one hundred enemies in a single engagement while teamed with another princess defending her realm. A multiplier will be added to your class rewards.

Mariella's knees buckled, and she grabbed onto Lindsey for support. "That's all I've got."

"You don't want to push for Rampage II?" Lindsey laughed weakly in the vast underground cavern. The distant tamers lay still as Sunshine's flames consumed them, shedding pools of light. Slaves sat in clusters, waiting for orders that would never come.

"I feel like Knexenk miscounted."

"That happens with Rampage. She may have given us partial credit for the slaves we released. We might have killed more than we knew." Lindastra had burned through all the enhancements Mariella had given her, but she was strong enough on her own to support the smaller girl with one arm while keeping her sword in the other. "I've got you. Let's get out of here."

"Not yet. We have to look for Eterine." She had to lean heavily on the Dimmik princess as they went from one group of enslaved humans to the next, looking for the tall woman in healer's skirts. She approached each new group with hope, and left each one with growing distress. Her breath grew more and more shaky.

"That's all of them," Lindsey finally said. "I'm sorry."

"I'm so tired." She was having trouble getting her feet to work right. Every step shot pain through her, from her soles to her knees.

"It's a short climb. We'll be out of here soon."