Our progress was slow by necessity. The bugs could be anywhere, and while they were mostly easy to deal with. And for a few more intersections, things went fine.

  Unfortunately, things took a turn when Paige got caught by a smaller one I hadn’t noticed. It tore into her thigh, and she went down, stuck onto her like it was glued there, Paige’s screams of pain echoing through the tunnels. It was lucky that our side wasn’t very active or that would have been the end of her.

  I turned from the one I’d been working to finish off, the protruding handle of one of my tonfas crushing it’s head, and aimed a kick at the one latched onto Paige. There was a ripping squelching sound, accompanied by a scream from Paige, and watched as it impacted hard. Zaion shot and started to clean up the creatures behind it as I moved to kneel next to our injured rogue.

  I put a hand on her shoulder to stop her from flailing from the pain. My heal spell covered her, and I noticed the wound slowly begin to close. I tried to push more energy into the spell, but it didn’t seem to do anything. Instead, I was stuck channeling it into her as I kept an eye out on the surroundings. One creature managed to make it past Zaion’s barrage, or maybe it was from the other side, I’d lost track of the fighting, and lunged at me. I got a very clear look at the open mouth full of a circle of teeth that all pointed inwards.

  A transparent barrier appeared in between us, only barely ahead of a sharp whistle. Still focused on the spell, I took a knife from Paige’s bandolier and stabbed it forward, through the translucent barrier and burying it into the thing’s faceted eye.

  The fighting ended not long after that.

  Paige, tears still in her eyes, sat up before throwing her arms around me in a hug filled with more strength than I’d have expected. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou!”

  I tried to gently separate myself from her, but the girl wasn’t having any of it. Elayne had to help, convincing the girl to let me go and taking her off to the side to talk with her. I stood up and brushed myself off as Deacon walked up, looking over the battle. “I think it’s fair to say, we aren’t enough for this problem.”

  “No. No we are not.” I said, sighing and following his gaze. “Ideas?”

  “Drop the mine on them and start a new one somewhere else.” Jason, of all people, suggested. He’d discarded his spear completely at some point and was just using his shield as both an offensive and defensive tool.

  “There’s no guarantee that’ll kill them all, or even enough of them.” Deacon said, though I could tell he agreed with the sentiment.

  I looked over to Zaion, “Any ideas?”

  “Drowning them would probably work, but getting enough water would be hard.” The elven man said, considering the problem, “We could probably suffocate them with smoke too, but that’d take a lot of fuel, not to mention a number of casters working day and night. And other entrances would make it less effective…”

  As he trailed off, I considered the issue as well. We probably could deal with any kind of infestation like this at the rate we were going. Every injury would add up, healing spells or not. Healing Paige’s bite had taken a lot out of me, though I could feel whatever had gone missing filling back up slowly. “I really need to learn more about how magic works.”

  “It’s on the list.” Deacon said, not even looking in my direction, “What specifically? We’re not going anywhere for a minute.”

  I idly kicked at one of the bodies, pushing it out of the main path. I’d put a few more of the bug bodies into my storage after a couple of other encounters, but had no desire to put anymore in there. “How does the mana we use to cast spells refill?”

  Zaion laughed, a low but genuine sound that made me turn to look at him. “You don’t ask easy questions, do you?”

  “No, she doesn’t.” Deacon replied with a considerate tone. “But there isn’t much you can do to increase how fast the mana regenerates. No one really understands how it works.”

  I rolled my eyes. There was probably a few people who had theories, but no one wanted to share. Or it’s system related. I thought bitterly.

  “There are potions that work, but they’re more expensive than a good healing potion.” Zaion added on, helpfully. “The kind that fully restore someone. They also, don’t refill much.”

  I grimaced, but didn’t ask anymore questions, busy trying to figure out how to proceed. I pulled up the map, and then the quest to save Melvin. There was actually a marker, but the tunnels from the map I’d copied didn’t reach that far, and we were still just scratching the surface for exploring them all.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder and I jumped, whipping a tonfa up to hit whatever was coming after me. It was Deacon, who had just danced back to avoid the blow. His eyebrows both went up as if to ask ‘You good?’

  “I’m sorry, thinking.” I said, as explanation, but didn’t put my weapon away.

  “I figured. We’re going to head back.” He said, raising his voice so the whole party could hear him. “We’ve made a dent, but we aren’t enough to clean this place out. I’ll give my recommendation for a purge team to come through.”

  I looked around and everyone was nodding, Paige a little more enthusiastically than everyone else. Sighing, I nodded too, “We were just supposed to scout anyway, right?”

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  “That’s right.” Elayne said, leaning on her hammer, the head resting in the dirt. “We’ve killed at least a hundred, but our party isn’t right to do this by ourselves. No offense, Paige, but even with a club you’re not built for this kind of mission.”

  “N-none taken.” The usually bubbly girl said, “I’m just… really glad Dani was here.”

  “Agreed.” Deacon said, smiling at me.

  “Waste of a spell on a thief.” Jason muttered under his breath. I had a sudden urge to break his kneecap.

  I restrained myself.

  “If we’re all ready, let’s get out into daylight and report back.” Deacon said, pointing back the way we came from. “Let’s take it slow, make sure we don’t get ambushed by anything, okay?” When he got nods from everyone, we started to head back, following the chalk arrows.

  The return trip wasn’t easy, unfortunately.

  While going deeper into the quarry mines, the bugs had been roughly as high as my chest at most, leaving we ran into a different problem. Smaller bugs, had apparently been massing from the tunnels we’d cleared. It still wasn’t in massive numbers, but instead of a calm walk back to the entrance, we were needing to regularly stomp and crush them as we went. It didn’t become a problem until…

  “AHHHH!” A shrill scream came from Jason, and he practically collapsed onto the floor, rolling around while holding one of his legs. It was lucky for him that he crushed the rest of the bugs that had been going for him, because the three I could see sticking out of his shin guards would have had friend.

  He wasn’t as happy as I was when I just ripped them off of him. The heal spell did not improve his mood, and he refused to take lead with Elayne after that.

  I’d needed to heal them a few more times, but we eventually made it past all the smaller bugs. It was much like when we’d been going deeper: tedious and messy. Just in different ways.

  The rest of the trudge back to the entrance was done in tense silence, Deacon and Elayne doing their best to keep an eye out for anything that might try to ge the drop on us. Nobody relaxed until we saw the outside.

  Deacon walked over to one of the guards, and everyone else started to trudge their way up the ramps out of the quarry. Elayne, Paige, and I went towards the tavern while Jason and Zaion went to return the goggles we’d all borrowed. When we made it into the tavern, not a single person got in our way as we walked over to the bar.

  We ordered strong drinks, Elayne only giving me a suspicious squint when I ordered the same thing she had, and found a table to nurse our drinks. Once we were settled, I noticed Paige was shaking pretty hard. I reached out and put my hand over hers, giving her a reassuring smile. “You’re going to be okay.”

  She nodded, but didn’t look like she believed me as she took a deep drink from her mug. Elayne patted the girl on the back, “She’s right. Is this your first time fighting monsters?”

  Paige shook her head slowly, “N-no… I just… never…”

  “You’ve never taken a hit.” Elayne said, understanding in her voice. “Or never in a way that might get you killed, right?”

  She nodded slowly. “I… I’ve been stabbed a few times… and a wild strider got me across the back once… But there were always so… many of those things… and it’s legs were just…” She shivered, thinking about it.

  I patted Paige’s hand, “I know I’ll probably have a nightmare or two about the thing’s teeth.” I said, knowing it was probably a lie. My nightmares were probably still going to be about Alexei, but Paige didn’t need to know that.

  The girl in question shuddered at the thought, “I didn’t even look at their mouths… are they bad?”

  Elayne snorted, “It’s pretty bad, but you get used to bad.” She took a long draw from her own mug and let out a content sigh, “One of the core rules of being an adventurer: If you can walk away from a mission, it wasn’t a bad mission.”

  Paige looked at her like she was crazy, but I nodded in agreement. “Sometimes even if you can’t walk, I’m guessing. So long as you’re breathing.”

  The warrior nodded, "You've got the right of it.”

  Deacon came by and grabbed me, leaving Paige and Elayne to talk. When we were outside, he whistled his sound barrier into existence. He looked tired doing it, but I guessed he wanted a private word.

  “How far away were we?” He asked after a few moments.

  I went to the map and looked it over, “I can’t be sure, but I’m pretty sure we’d have been spending the night down there if we wanted to get all the way there.”

  “What did the quest call the thing that guy is stuck in? Some kind of pod, right?” He asked, looking towards the quarry.

  I double checked, “It says it’s a spawning pod.”

  Deacon was silent for a while. Just when I was about to ask him a question, he spoke up, “He’s coming back to life in the thing, right?”

  I nodded, “I think so. Where are you going with this?”

  He hesitated before asking, “Can you ask Zeratus if there’s another entrance to it?”

  I blinked, looking at him curious, “What do you mean?”

  The bard turned to face me, a frown on his face, “If that’s supposed to be where you come back from the dead… why would it be buried in a quarry? I don’t even know for sure how long this quarry has been here.”

  “That’s… a good point…” I said, considering his words. Why would anyone want to get revived somewhere they’d have to dig their way out of? “Think an entrance is nearby?”

  He sighed and scrubbed at his eyes with his fingers, “I don’t know. I hate to say it, but if there isn’t we may just have to leave this Melvin guy until we can get more help.”

  I brought up the messaging application and started to write out a message. As I did, I asked Deacon, “Is it wrong that I don’t feel bad about that?”

  The bard looked at me like I’d threatened to cut his other hand off, “What?! Yes, that’s bad. What’s the matter with you?”

  I resisted the urge to rub between my shoulder blades, and not just because it’d be awkward to reach. “Then it should probably make you feel better than I’m weirded out about not feeling bad about that.”

  I sent my message, and Deacon squinted at me, like he was studying a strange painting. “You’ve got issues, Dani.”

  I rolled my eyes, “No shit.” I looked back towards the tavern, “I sent the message, though I’m not sure how soon I should expect a response.”

  “Last time was pretty immediate, wasn’t it?” Deacon asked, turning to look towards the manager’s office.

  “Yes, but he’s a god… right?” I said, still not really understanding the meaning behind the word. “He’s probably got an actual job or something to do, right?”

  “Probably…” He said, absentmindedly. The barrier around us popped and he motioned for me to follow, “Well, while we wait for that, come on. We’ve got to show the quarry manager one of the bodies. We’ll stay here the night and head out in the morning.”

  He started walking, and I followed, waiting for Zeratus’ reply while I tried to decide how I felt about saving Melvin.