Chapter 102: A Pacifist’s Death

  Half a day had passed since their narrow escape, and Parth could finally sit up. His wounds had outwardly closed, but the constant ache was still present, albeit diminished. Moira was currently resting. Once she was up, another healing card would be enough for him to fully heal. He could still feel the previous card working its magic on him. He was no longer bleeding all over, and he could move about a bit, so he’d take the minor win.

  A minor win… the mere thought infuriated him. The sequence of events since the kraken could only be described as loss after loss. Running from the drake with his tail between his legs was the coup de grace to his pride. Throughout his career as a fighter, he had never given up. He had been knocked down a few times, even knocked out cold once. But he never threw the towel. Of course, retreating in that situation was the most logical move. Yet, sometimes when intense emotions come into play, logic takes a hike.

  This dungeon was pushing all his buttons. He might be an unwilling participant, but he wanted to win regardless of that. Getting seriously injured time and time again was a clear indicator that he was lacking. All that fighting experience, and what did he have to show for it?

  In his funk, he did not even consider triumphing over the kraken and the ambushers as a victory. Because in his experience, a victory in a fight was clear cut: either by decision or knockout, you won. Anything else was not a victory. It was either a draw or a loss. To him, the entire Centurial Challenge was an Olympic-style boxing tourney. Each level was a fight in itself. All the monsters and the antagonistic voyagers within that level amalgamated into one single enemy in his mind. And from where he was sitting, his last bout was clearly a loss. His opponents might not be fighting him ever again, but the combat record will not change. The cards had already been punched. They were already stranded. So far, the score was one victory and one draw. There were two more ‘fights’ remaining.

  He looked at his gauntlets in frustration, thinking about how even his artifact was giving him trouble.

  Letting his thoughts spiral anymore would be counterproductive, so he fell back to the familiar routine. He watched the tape, so to speak. Parth spent the next couple of hours scrolling through his ring’s data banks, searching for any mention of such oddities with the gauntlets. Surely he must not be the only voyager in thousands of years facing these issues. There must be something. Some mention in the compendium of Pygilists he had inherited.

  There were mentions of some niggling issues, but those were all skill-based issues. None relating to what he was currently going through. There were tales of how previous Pygilists noticed something odd in the dungeon: a feeling of soul-deep warmth from the gauntlets while in the trial of fire.

  Well, he was here, and it was not a soul-deep warmth. He felt temperature wholesale. And his flames were flashing blue and ballooning in size. That seemed to be a problem exclusive to Parth. Although, he was sure that it had nothing to do with this level of the dungeon. His temperature sensitivity had kicked in during the final legs of the previous trial. And it ramped up after his latest vision, which proved to be more eventful than the last. The blue flames originated from that as well. He needed answers, and he needed them now.

  He was broken out of his musings as Kwame began to stir. In the silence of the cave, the ruffling of Kwame’s clothes might as well have been a blaring alarm. Parth quickly moved towards the waking teen. Kwame opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling of the cave in confusion for a few seconds. Then he slowly turned his eyes towards his healed stump. Parth hovered over the injured teen in trepidation, waiting for the dam to break. And right on cue, Kwame began tearing up as he clutched the air below his stump; where his foot would normally be. It was as if he was grasping for the vestiges of his sheared foot, trying to pull it back into existence. But the injury was severe, and magic had its limits.

  Moira had healed the wound. But she couldn’t grow the missing appendage. What was gone was gone, and it was hitting Kwame hard.

  “It sucks that none of it was a dream.” Kwame sobbed between the words as he came to grips with the situation.

  “Yeah. I wish it were,” Parth mumbled, consoling a distraught Kwame.

  “It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have-” the teen wailed, unable to finish his sentence as an intense feeling of loss overcame him.

  “No, it’s not, Kwame,” Parth tried to comfort him to no avail. Kwame kept wailing.

  “You were right. I was making mistake after mistake, being so passive. It is my fault!”

  Parth heard some rusting and saw that Moira was waking up. All this commotion would attract the attention of any creature in the vicinity. But Parth didn’t have the heart to reprimand Kwame when he was breaking down like this. He didn’t know what exactly to say to the mourning teen as well.

  A few minutes later, Kwame wiped away the tears and snot. He didn’t stop crying, and his breathing was still erratic. “I could have prevented this... I had so many chances. Now it’s all gone.”

  “With how complicated this situation is, you can’t blame yourself, Kwame. We have many foes out here, and they want us gone. We can only handle so much,” Parth said.

  “No! Maybe if I had pushed for the redistribution round way back then. Maybe if I had another artifact, things might have been different.”

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  Parth didn’t have the heart to tell Kwame that things might indeed be different but for the worse. Without Moira, they’d be bleeding out in the snow. If not there, then somewhere else. She needed more offensive options, and they made the right decision sending her to the redistribution round. Also, there was no point speculating here. If Kwame had a new artifact and Moira was just stuck with her deck, there was no telling what would have happened. Without her vectors, Parth wouldn’t have managed to keep the team together during the tsunami. There were too many what ifs... and most of them worse than what was.

  Kwame’s mind seemed to come to the same conclusion but in a different route. “It wouldn’t have made any difference. I was too soft. Even against known, willing, gleeful murderers. I was always going for captures and incapacitations rather than kill shots. Not even when my attacks can sneak up on someone so easily. Having another artifact wouldn’t have changed anything. I still wouldn’t have gone for the kill.”

  His sobs started picking up pace once again, and Moira joined Parth in consoling the distraught teen. She gave him a bottle of water, which Kwame drank from greedily. That seemed to help him calm down a bit. But it was not over, Kwame would be scarred by this experience for a very long time.

  Parth knew that anything they said to him would not stand up to the sheer amount of blame Kwame was putting on himself. But he had to try. “Kwame, we all knew about Kade’s power. We had lots of time to plan. Even when dealing with the kraken, we all wasted mana on so many useless attacks. We could have brainstormed that infinite tunnel method first and not wasted mana. We all could have easily handled the ambush if we were at full strength, or if we had tried more. There’s plenty of blame to go around. Especially on those pieces of shit who decided to ambush us. It’s their fault. It’s their Patron’s fault. Instead of moving on to the next stage, they decided to camp out near the gates and set up this elaborate trap. Do not blame yourself. Blame them.”

  For a few moments, Kwame was silent. His face then twisted into an expression of grim determination. “There are so many what-ifs. But there is only one reality. And the reality is that my closest friend in this godforsaken world died while I could do nothing but watch. Never again.”

  After Kwame’s solemn declaration, things seemed to settle down a little. They spent the next hour in silence for the most while. Kwame, lost in his thoughts. Parth, silently lending his shoulder and comforting him. And Moira, forced to go back to sleep.

  A little while later, Kwame managed to calm down enough to eat some food. After the ordeal they’d all been through, food and water were critical for their bodies. Especially with Kwame’s injury and subsequent unconsciousness, he needed all the nutrients he could get. Moira’s healing was miraculous as it was, but even magic had its limits. The human body requires its sustenance. And despite Kwame’s reluctance to do anything at the moment, he couldn’t avoid the hunger.

  They were short on rations, but Parth did not say a word of it to Kwame and let the teen eat in peace. The shortage was another looming headache, but now was not the time for strict portioning.

  Now that Kwame was up, Parth knew that it was time to rethink their action plan. Despite Kwame’s current mobility issues, it wouldn’t be ideal to stay holed up in this cave for long. For an emergency, it was alright. But they’d need to move sooner than later. There was only one visible entry point. So if anything blocked the entrance, they were stuck. On the other side, they didn’t know what the murky depths contained. There was no telling what would pop out from the darkness. Venturing further in would be a wasted effort as well. Especially in their current state. Not to mention any potential traps that the dungeon had in store for them.

  “Before all that, you need to rest some more. You’re not yet at a hundred percent,” Moira said as she handed him an ace of hearts. Parth accepted the card without rebuttal and he was briefly covered in a green glow.

  Even partially healed, the sheer scale of an ace of hearts was evident, as a wave of vitality sprung up inside him. He could practically feel the dull aches disappearing in real-time. It no longer felt like his closed wounds would spring open at any moment. An ace was probably overkill at this stage, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

  “Now sleep up and let the magic do its work. We can start planning a relocation after that.”

  “Fine. I’m in no position to argue.”

  Maybe it was the fatigue, or maybe it was the magic at play, but Parth was pretty sure that he fell asleep seconds after he closed his eyes. The shift was abrupt. One moment, he was lying on the cavern floor. The next moment, he found himself in another one of those lucid dreams. But this time, there was no burning town square, no impending fight. Instead, he was looking through the eyes of his doppelganger, as evident by his green skin and familiar black flame patterns. The doppelganger was standing in front of an eerily familiar cavern.

  “Is this the one, dad?” A small voice asked from the side. The doppelganger’s head turned towards the voice, and Parth saw a little girl who couldn’t be more than ten. She had the same green skin as her father, but the black patterns did not adopt the shape of flames. Instead, they resembled what could be smoke... or clouds, or mist. It could be any gas. Parth couldn’t make a particular distinction.

  “Yes, darling. This is the one. You remember the path so far?” Parth felt the doppelganger’s mouth move as the deep voice tumbled out affectionately.

  “Mhmm. North of the forest. Then up the trail.”

  The doppelganger barked out a laugh and ruffled the wavy hair of his child. Parth noticed that the hair too twirled and flowed like the smoky pattern adorning her skin. Did these people all personify their magic in such a way? He couldn’t exactly tell from his doppelganger’s hair, because the man had always kept it short. Maybe if he grew it out, it would shape itself like an open flame?

  “What if there is no trail? What about the landmarks I pointed out to you?” The doppelganger asked.

  “I remember the stacked stones. And the small statues. And the... the trees!” She said excitedly while she held up her fingers, counting.

  “Good job, darling. Now come on, let’s go in.”

  Parth could say with certainty that this was indeed the cave they were currently resting inside. Heck, he could even recognize the exact rock he had been leaning on while keeping watch. Once again, he had so many questions. He was of half a mind to just dismiss this off as a fever dream. The dungeon had been around for a very long time. And throughout all of his predecessors, there was no mention of any kind of inhabitants within the dungeon other than monsters. So why was his doppelganger exploring a cave inside the dungeon? And he could not even force himself awake like one could usually do in lucid dreams. That alone was an indicator that this was truly another one of those weird dreams. But so far, all of them were in the backdrop of some unknown place. None of his dreams showed the doppelganger inside the dungeon.

  But with each dream, Parth was witnessing something new. These dreams seemed to be the key to this mystery. So Parth kept observing everything with a keen eye.