A Soldier's Life

Chapter 169: Something Brewing

Through the pain, I kept trying to remind myself that it was not as bad as consuming the apex earth essence in Macha. Maveith’s voice echoed in the back of my mind as he tried to communicate, but the pain consumed all my focus. I bit my tongue, tasting the metallic, coppery blood that filled my mouth. As the pain finally ebbed away, my clenching muscles relaxed. I rasped out, “How long?”

Maveith was kneeling over me. “Less than a minute. Are you okay, Eryk? That looked unpleasant.”

There was no way it had been only a minute. I moved to a sitting position, every part of my body aching. “Shit.”

“What is it, Eryk? You smell horrible—like rotten eggs—and your skin is slimy.” Maveith voiced his concern but still backed away.

“Yeah, I shit myself too. If I ever do this again, I’m going to make sure I’ve purged both ends before I start.” I spat out the residual vomit and tried not to move my ass too much. My throat was sore, and I used some healing on my damaged tendons and ligaments from clenching so hard. The fouled clothing and filthy underclothes were definitely staying behind in this dungeon.

I recalled the conversation with Kolm. “The harpy room had some water—at least they said they were fishing there. We should be able to get past the earth drake since it hasn’t been a day yet. There should also be a reward chest to claim in the harpy room.”

“I will walk ahead of you,” Maveith said, scrunching his nose. I was going to retort that I had put up with his body odor for a long time, but then again, my own smell was making me nauseous and causing my eyes to water at the moment. We climbed the stairs, which was no fun in my soiled clothes. The dead earth drake was still there, and we cautiously crossed into the next corridor. It curved slightly before arriving at the harpy room.

The harpy room had a mix of short green trees and tall deadwood trees. I did not see any sign of the legionnaires, and the stone reward chest was visible next to a large pool in the center of the room. Without my armor on, I had Maveith lead. “You go first, Maveith. I have enough aether to manage one problem.” He nodded, and we passed the short trees with red berries on them.

Maveith ate one of the berries and immediately spat it out. “This is bitter, Eryk, do not try it.” I picked one of the berries anyway and inspected it. It looked like a small cherry, but it obviously was not. I squeezed the fruit, and a bean was inside the husk. The bean was white and looked oddly familiar.

“Maveith, I think this is a coffee bean. We have them in Tsinga.” I was not completely sure, but from my reading, I knew there was a dessert beverage that sounded like coffee. They roasted, crushed, and filtered water through the beans to create a rich black drink. It certainly sounded like coffee. I had not found coffee in the Telhian Empire, but many tea varieties were available.

We both walked to the pond in the center of the chamber and looked into it. It was about twenty feet across, and Kolm had been right about there being fish in this room.

This variety of fish was smaller than the eels or other fish I had already discovered. They were rotund and barely larger than my hand. They bobbed to the surface before diving deep into the depths of the pool and disappearing. I guessed they needed air to breathe, which gave the harpies a chance to swoop down and grab them from their perches in the dead trees.

I gratefully stripped, tossing my underclothes in a pile for the dungeon to reclaim. The water was cold when I tested it with my foot, and an oily sheen spread across the surface from my exposed leg. Whatever foulness my body had extruded was oily. The fish seemed to be repelled by my scent, suddenly stopping their trips to the surface.

As I settled into the water, there did not appear to be any threat. “Maveith, why don’t you check the chest in the center of the chamber while I clean up?” Surprisingly, the goliath did not seem as excited about treasure as most people. He nodded, accepting the task reluctantly.

I scrubbed myself as best I could in the water with a sock. With no detergent, it was difficult to clean off. Soon, the entire surface of the pool was covered in an oily film from my efforts. I scrubbed my skin raw, trying to free myself of the foul stench.

While I was bathing, Maveith returned with twelve silver coins and a potion, handing them to me. I studied the runic script on the potion before announcing, “As best as I can translate, it says see in the dark. This is a potion of night vision.” Maveith looked impressed. “Keep it, Maveith. Dungeon potions should be good for years.” I sent the coins to my dimensional space so he would not have to carry them and put the fishing kit on the shore for him.

Maveith looked disgusted at the pond, which now had an oil slick coating it. “Eryk, I do not know if I want to fish this pond.” I looked into the water, and it seemed some of the fish were having trouble swimming. Whatever impurities had been released from my body had fouled and poisoned the water.

“Can you harvest the berries for me? I think they have a use.” Maveith looked at the two dozen coffee trees and nodded. He seemed happy to have an excuse to get away. I continued my efforts to get as clean as possible before dressing in clean clothes. A few fish bobbed on the surface, clearly dead. I tried the collector on three of the small fish, and only one yielded a minor essence of constitution. I handed it to Maveith before putting my armor back on.

My legion armor was in bad shape. The red lacquer on the metal helmet was chipped. The leather pieces soaked in resin had warped slightly. The armor even had gouges from the harpy's talons. It looked like whoever wore this suit had been through a lot—the poor guy had been frozen, burned, crushed, and clawed. I had a new set of legion armor in my space, but I could not wear it without revealing my expansive space to the company. I helped Maveith fill a large tarp with the coffee berries before tying the corners together and sending it to storage. I had no idea how to turn the berries into actual coffee, but one thing we had plenty of in the dungeon was time.

There were two exits from this room. The one to the left led to Flavius and our legionnaire companions. The one to the right was probably where the goblin had come from. I had to make a choice: reunite with Flavius and the others, or search for Castile? We still had hours before the harpies would respawn.

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I debated internally for a long time before announcing to Maveith, “We’re going that way.” I pointed in the direction from which the goblin had most likely come. Maveith looked at the entrance that led to the legionnaires, then back at the one I had chosen. His confusion made me feel the need to explain myself. “Flavius can’t know that I have the collector, and the extent of my other abilities needs to remain a secret.”

Maveith understood. “I will take your secret to my deathbed, Eryk.” His deep tone was reassuring, though I was a little worried—he said it too loudly, like he was making an oath, and I glanced at the corridor, relieved no one was standing there. After my I had voiced my decision, we did not waste much time, leaving the harpy room behind.

As we went, the corridor curved left and right, but the familiar flowing lights on the ceiling and floor were reassuring. I wondered where the goblin had come from and why nothing had pursued it from the room we approached. When we reached the end of the corridor, it opened into a wide sandy room. Little dust devils of sand dotted the room.

“Maybe there’s something underneath the sand?” I gestured to Maveith on my right.

Maveith was studying the sand as well. His deep voice speculated, “There certainly are a lot of environments within this dungeon. I traveled through the Scorching Waste before. There were carnivorous beetles, scorpions of all sizes, and different varieties of elementals. Those sand swirls could be minor elementals.”

I studied the swirling clouds of sand more intently. They didn’t seem to move, and I could recall no books that referenced elementals. “If the goblin was able to pass through the room, should we try?” Maveith looked behind us, probably considering the five legionnaires and the Scholar back there. He eventually turned back to the sandscape.

“If they’re elementals, they should be affected by our runic weapons,” Maveith said. I took that as a yes and stepped out onto the sand. The chamber was sweltering hot, like I was in a scorching desert, and the sand eddies started moving toward me. Maveith stepped behind me. “They are not elementals, Eryk. Something is moving in the sand beneath them.”

Maveith was right. The sand formed mounds moving toward us. It was easy to get distracted by the mini tornados. They moved at a decent speed, spread out, and coordinated. “Back out of the room, Maveith.”

We both exited to the corridor’s safety, ready to retreat to the harpy room. All five mounds converged on us and stopped at the entrance. A dog-sized beetle emerged from the sand, its impressive mandibles snapping in the air in frustration. It appeared uncertain about leaving the sand before submerging itself again.

We both stood ready, but the beetles slowly moved away. Maveith’s baritone sounded, “I think they are sand scarabs. I have never seen them before, but sand scarabs use aether and earth magic to burrow in the sand. If you try to fight them, they can quickly sink you in the sand to attack you below the surface while you are immobilized.”

“That sounds utterly horrific. Getting trapped in the sand, unable to put up resistance while they use those mandibles on your legs—and other parts.” I shivered, understanding why Flavius and the others had not tried this room.

“They’re also fast, so it will be difficult to avoid them,” Maveith noted.

“We do not need to avoid them, Maveith. They will not leave the protection of the sand.” I stepped into the room and waited for the first scarab to reach me before pulling a deep column of sand under the vortex into my space. My aether bottomed out, and the beetle had resisted strongly, but I still succeeded. I stepped back into the corridor with Maveith.

We were both ready as the other four scarabs hovered outside the corridor, but they were still unwilling to leave the sand’s protection. I smiled at Maveith. “Now we just have to wait until I can do that again. It usually takes me about two hours, but it has been less than an hour in the dungeon.” I guessed it was not just the dungeon but also the gains in my aether channeling attribute that were speeding my recovery.

About forty minutes later, a second scarab was killed. They traveled about a foot under the sand, but the swirling sand above them made it easy to track their movements. After killing a third one, the last two surprised us by leaving the safety of the sandy room. Maveith wasn’t caught off guard—he crushed one with his hammer, and I was able to pierce the other between the mandibles with my black blade. This was good, as I could use the collector on the last two, getting a major earth essence from both. I tried the collector on the other three scarabs, getting one additional major earth essence and one minor earth essence. The first scarab had been dead for too long to yield anything.

We knew the room was clear when the stone reward chest appeared in the center of the micro desert. “Easy peasy, Maveith.” I smiled at the goliath, who gave me a doubtful look as he tried to figure out what “peasy” meant. I approached the modest chest and shattered it. Silver coins spilled out, and a leather-bound tome lay on top. It smelled strongly of seasoned leather as I opened it.

Inside were pages of layered spell forms for some type of spell. I could not understand what the spell actually did without the Latin script explaining it. After the first few pages of spell forms, the runic script on the following pages probably went into detail about the spell, but it would take me hours to puzzle out the translation in the dreamscape. I noted a few symbols that seemed to indicate it was related to the earth affinity. I held the book out to Maveith. “I think it might be an earth affinity spell. Do you want it?”

“No, I already inscribed my earth affinity, Eryk. And I cannot learn actual spells.” I shrugged and gathered up the silver coins along with the book. We looked around the room, seeing only sand filling the oval space.

“Let’s move to the corridor, Maveith. This room wasn’t very difficult for us, and I would not mind returning to get more earth essence later.” We walked into the unexplored corridor, and it was not long before we arrived at a familiar-looking room with two long, wide stone shelves.

Maveith grunted happily. “A rest room.” It was a safe room, unique in that there were three different exits—not including the corridor we were standing in or the oily black door tempting us to exit the dungeon for good.

We moved in and started to unpack, but I immediately noticed dark letters in Latin next to the faded elven script on the wall: "Castile’s group went this way," with an arrow pointing to one of the corridors. We were close—but how long ago had that been written?

I turned to Maveith, who could not read Latin. “Castile’s group was here.” His eyes went wide with excitement. He was clearly ready to get out of the dungeon. “Don’t get too excited. We don’t know how long ago they passed through here. Why don’t you get some sleep first? I’ll stay up and prepare some food.”

I pulled out the elven tablet table and some ingredients, including a handful of coffee berries. Maveith made himself comfortable and was soon snoring. With Maveith asleep, I grasped the edges of the table and activated the device. It was time to see what the major illusion essence had done for me.

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