Chapter 120: Calling Words

Chapter 120: Calling Words

Syçalia stared forward, into the darkness yawning before her like all hells made tangible, but her focus stayed arrowed in on the man beside her. She hadn't exactly given a rat's ass about her previous group beyond the jewels she'd have wrung them dry for, but at least she had known she was more powerful than them—she had no such idea for this stranger.

Ghasavâlk, no family names. Decidedly not from Calarata, although that meant nothing in a city of stowaways. Dressed in common enough garb, broad-shouldered in the way of all adventurers, thick hair piled loose on his shoulders. His eyes were strangely dark, even in the shadows of the caverns, twin black pools peering out at her. She disliked his eyes. She disliked his face. She disliked him.

But the First Mate had told them to delve the dungeon together, and Syçalia preferred to keep her throat attached.

The wooden boards thinned and disappeared as they went further in, the Adventuring Guild not giving enough of a shit to build a path all the way to the entrance of the dungeon. Figured. Syçalia hadn't been in Calarata long, only a handful of years, but the Dread Crew seemed the kind that would cover shit in gold. Any corners that could be cut would. Quartz-lights flickered from corners of the cavern, protective runes carved into stalagmites, the hum of mana racing under her tongue.

And all too soon, the path ended, a too-smooth opening into the stone before them.

"Hells," she muttered, crossing her arms to flick two fingers off each side of her throat, one of many symbols appealing to the goddess of luck. Technically that one was more used for avoiding storms, but she didn't know any specific ones for don't let this fucking dungeon kill me, so it would have to do.

Ghasavâlk merely blinked at her, the bastard. "Are you ready?" He asked, his first actual damn words to her, Viejabran thick with an accent that curled over the consonants.

No. She'd been ready when her plan had been to wait until her adventitiously-formed group had been suitably distracted, rob them blind, and get out before anything could challenge her. "Yes," she said, because there wasn't a chance she'd spill truth now. "But we should have a plan. What did the First Mate want?"

Beyond the obvious.

Ghasavâlk tilted his head to the side, examining her. She could feel his mana, irritably Gold, coiling in his chest and spilling up to wrap around his head—psionic caster or enhancer, if she had to guess. One of the many boons she'd come to love as she'd grown in strength. Becoming Gold wasn't like a creature's evolution, with a definitive jump from one level to the next—for humans, it was more of a general ranking that came with mana density and control. But the Gold-sense was a lovely thing from said control.

It wasn't flawless—few things were, in Aiqith—but it made it much harder for things to sneak up unawares on her. Sensing mana made it wonderfully easy to pick marks as well, when she could guess what attunement they had and choose those that couldn't harm her.

Psionic was, unfortunately, one of those that could. Not that she would have been able to rob him blind, being in a group of two and both Gold. Too dangerous.

As if a fucking dungeon wasn't dangerous enough.

"He wanted information," Ghasavâlk finally said, when it became readily apparent Syçalia wasn't going to answer her own damn question. "For us to delve as deep as possible, no?"

Deeper than the three floors that had already claimed lives. Fantastic. Gods, Syçalia was going to wring Lluc's shitty little neck.

"Yes," she said, and added in an imperious sniff for good measure. There was nothing frightening her, not for her fellow Gold to know. Absolutely not. "I know that. But is there anything specific?"

Ghasavâlk hummed. "Reports for the Scholar," he said, and drummed gloved fingers over his side. "Knowledge of the distant floors. The creatures there. How it is dangerous."

What a way with words he had. Little doubt that was the reason Lluc'd had to pluck Syçalia from her group and drop her with this loner. Gods, if he wasn't at least competent, she would be turning around and swimming out of the cove to avoid all of Calarata. She hated this gods-cursed city.

Only one she hadn't gotten a reputation in, though. Beggars couldn't be picky, even as a Gold. She could always pledge herself to Leóro and erase her past for a cushy job under some tyrannical and self-important High Lord, but her fingers fluttered too much to surround herself with such luxury and have it stay in the pockets of those that thought they owned it. She'd made that mistake a time too often to let herself fall for it again.

But if Ghasavâlk thought she would be hauling his ass through this dungeon, he was sorely mistaken.

Something that could almost be a smile flashed over Ghasavâlk's face, a quirk of the lips, though nothing particularly amusing had happened.

Hells. She'd have stolen her mother's eyes if she could get away with it, but now she had to play team. "What can you do?"

Ghasavâlk tapped a finger on his temple, black eyes fixed on hers. "Ukhân-analt," he said, and his voice purred over the word. "Grasp of the mind. I can influence those around us."

Ah, shit. Small wonder he hadn't had a group before Lluc shoved them together—it took a special flavour of person to attune themselves to such a power, and those that did were often not friendly, amicable types.

Syçalia leaned in despite herself.

A mushroom—a lacecap, she thought, if that idiotic baron who favoured himself a genius had explained it correctly—sat in the darkness, great trailing gills beneath its cap sticky with trapped bugs and their desiccated remains. Certainly larger than the others they'd encountered, white flesh quivering with excess mana. Nearing full, if she had to guess, and Ghasavâlk seemed to agree, if how he stared at it meant anything.

"It is hungry," he hummed, more motes of light sparking from his gaze.

What.

She stared at him. "It's a mushroom."

Ghasavâlk reached out, not touching it, but running his finger over the air above its cap. "All things within a dungeon have minds," he said, like that was a perfectly normal statement. "And it is hungry. More than those around it."

Syçalia looked at the fungi, which hardly came up to her knee. Hungry. Right.

Ghasavâlk pursed his lips, more mana sparking behind his eyes—then it traveled, slow and ponderous, to his mouth, gathering over his tongue. He looked to the side, still crouched, and his mana twanged with a soft, discordant note.

"Nhâsa," he said, in whatever tongue he had, and held out his hand.

And then, from the shadows, with the stiff, uncomfortable movements of something who did not want to do what it was doing, a burrowing rat emerged from a den. Its ears were pinned flat, forked tail lashing, black eyes quivering—but still it marched out, nosing through the green algae, and perched on Ghasavâlk's palm.

Syçalia felt something cold sink talons into her spine.

Ghasavâlk lifted his hand, the rat steadying itself as its platform moved, and, quite casually, dumped it right at the base of the mushroom.

The thing twitched, in what could be excused as wind if it weren't a fully underground cavern. It wasn't moving but the bugs caught in its lacy gills were, caught in some horrible, twisted form of life, little more than traps in of themselves. Their wings fluttered and thrashed and before the rat had a moment to shake itself free of Ghasavâlk's thrall, the gills of the mushroom had been spilled over its back, rooting it all but into the mountain itself.

The rat shrieked, animal brain finally catching up to the scenario, frantic squeaks that had reflective eyes disappearing back into shadows in other corners of the dungeon, and died a slow, thrashing life as the mushroom's reanimated bugs wound tendrils over its mouth and nose.

Her Gold-sense showed her as the rat's mana fled its corpse and went to the mushroom, but her eyes were only fixed on Ghasavâlk.

That was... significantly more powerful than she'd feared. Golds were, by their very nature, but that was steps above; to command a creature with a single word, mana laced throughout, and cajole it into its own death without a fight.

Ukhân-analt, he'd called it. Grasp of the mind.

She tightened her grasp on her daggers.

Ghasavâlk stood, wiping off his tunic with disturbing peace. "Interesting," he said, pondering the death. It was only a rat and they were both Golds, and she knew that for all his power she still had the edge to escape, insofar as her intangibility would not let this mountain hold her—but still, his black eyes taking in the corpse, she felt unsafe.

But she was Syçalia Celessé Temoro, and she wasn't scared.

"For rats," she said, and simpered the word, taking great pains to elucidate to this man how much she was comparing them. "But I'm interested in something else."

And, just to amuse herself, she flicked one of her claimed rubies through her fingers, bouncing along her knuckles until it secured itself in the drawstring pouch by her hip. A spark of warm mana sunk into her channels.

Ghasavâlk inclined his head. "Of course." He took in the rest of the floor, to the glassy pond in the back and the three beasts she could sense in the walls, watching them from the shadows that refused to retreat from her Gold-sense. "After you."

What an asshole.

Syçalia marched on. Time to find her crown.