42 – I blame you

“Let’s go.” Said Lisette.

She threw the creature core, a Tier 6 blue one she just extracted from the carcass of the slain monster, at Melina. Judging by her tattered armor and appearance, one could think that the fight had been hard, and that Lisette had only managed to come out victorious thanks to her strategy and skills. One would be wrong to think that. The fight had been completely one-sided: if anything, the recent events had lit a fire inside of Lisette and she fought with renewed strength, galvanized by her burning desire to take Ishrin to safety before the invisible death timer placed on her struck zero.

She had Tiered up, twice, and now she was as strong, if not stronger than Melina. Sitting at the peak of Tier 6, she fought viciously against the threats of the seventh floor of the Dungeon, making mincemeat of anything that tried to threaten them. As for the reason behind her ragged appearance, Ishrin was laying in his makeshift stretcher made of black and brown leather, made from the armor of the two adventurers.

Melina placed the monster core in her dimensional bag and followed Lisette’s lead. She was on stretcher duty right now, while Lisette scouted ahead and dealt with any monsters she encountered. Their strategy was to engage everything up to Tier 6 and kill it, while avoiding at any cost the Tier 7 monsters that roamed the floor. The air was still hot and humid, but less so the more they ventured towards the center of the maze, a sign that they were getting somewhat closer to the exit. Lisette was mostly silent, only speaking when she needed to give information or instructions. By all means she was now the party leader, Melina having renounced her authority and her independence. She only followed behind, eyes empty, head filled with dark thoughts.

Thoughts that became more incoherent as time passed. Of the two, Lisette was the more lucid one, her recent power spike staving off the worst of the symptoms for a while. Yet it had not been enough against the corrosive effect of the void between universes, and the damage had once again begun to accrue on her body and mind.

It was unclear what Lisette was thinking. Her face was a complex mask of emotionless emotions, and frozen anger could be read in the lines around her mouth where her skin would have been smooth and white but wasn’t. She explored the floor with methodical precision, mapping the entirety of the maze as she went, consulting the mental map she built and slowly progressing towards where she thought was the exit that led up to the 6^th floor.

The dungeon was a maze, its walls bare rock with a deep brown tint.

Sometimes lanterns and torches were hung on the walls to light the way, by some unknown keeper of the dungeon or by natural formation. Nobody knew. Philosophers and erudite people often stopped in magical places like this in an attempt at gleaming their secrets but failed, the unknowable magic that made these natural yet so unnatural structures appear was still shrouded in mystery. The maze was one of many paths, and all paths eventually led to rooms. These rooms were sometimes empty, sometimes trapped, and at other times they held enemies of various kinds. The party avoided all rooms that were hidden behind doors, for it was true that those rooms held secrets and riches beyond imagination at times, but at other times they held dangers that were best left alone. Boss rooms they were called by some, the places of densest magic where the most powerful enemies dwelled.

They also met nobody on their travels. The Labirintine dungeon had this peculiar property to present itself differently to each party that visited it, and even if the party were to come back to it soon after leaving, they would find it to be completely changed. Thus, once through the threshold to the dungeon, everyone was left to fend for themselves.

The silence stretched on, only interrupted by the occasional sounds of fighting. In one of these fights, Lisette was wounded, and Melina was forced to intervene, shaking her out of her contemplative stupor with the adrenaline of battle. She stepped in and saw Lisette going toe to toe with a gigantic toad, easily four to five meters tall. She was slashing at it relentlessly, but her attacks were ineffective: most bounced right off its skin while the ones that managed to land left a slash that didn’t bleed and that closed up in a matter of seconds. Meanwhile Lisette was accumulating wounds, the monster scratching at her through the gaps in her armor and in her defenses. Melina could see now that no matter how enraged Lisette was, her speed was slowing down with each fight, and she was becoming increasingly weak.

She took a stance, looking once behind her to see that Ishrin was safely propped against the wall. She let the energies gather around her, feeling the power of the wind and its magic. It felt strange, slow, as if a barrier had been put all around her that dampened her power. The insights that she had gained by speaking with Ishrin felt so distant now, and her foundation felt stuck in thick mud.

Still, she managed to gather a considerable amount of magic and let it condense into a green ethereal blade that glowed so bright it plunged the whole room into a neon green light that flattened all shadow. It flew at the monster, slicing its head clean off.

Melina didn’t have time to celebrate, for she felt the world begin to spin and found herself on one knee. The pain shot up through her leg and she tried to push herself up from the hard floor but felt weak, frail. By the time she was up and standing, panting against the wall close to Ishrin like he was a healing shrine, Lisette was done extracting the core and had joined her.

“Your wounds.” Melina croaked between deep, uneven, breaths. “They are not closing.”

Lisette was indeed bleeding all over the place. She downed a healing potion, the first one Melina ever saw the girl drink ever since they met, but even with it the wounds seemed to linger, to refuse to heal. The blood spilling from them was thin and its hue pale, watered down.

“I am beginning to feel the effects of tissue degradation.” Lisette said. Then she looked at Melina, at her pale visage. “As are you.”

There was no contempt in her voice, no satisfaction at the fact that Melina too was suffering and not just her and Ishrin. There was just the clinical detachment of a philosopher mage making their observation about a test subject, and Melina didn’t know if this made her feel better or worse. Right now, her head was still swimming, and her thoughts were jumbled by the strain and effort her body was putting on her.

“It will get much worse,” Lisette said. “We need to be strong while we still can.”

Melina tried to nod.

“I will carry the stretcher now.” Lisette said.

“Thank you.”

Lisette nodded. Silence.

They walked like that for a while, and Melina felt a bit better. She explored ahead and scouted for enemies, and the task took her full attention and finally allowed her mind to relax.

“I’m sorry for what happened back at the mountain. Well, for what it’s worth at least.” She said.

Lisette shrugged. “There is no use in saying sorry over and over again, Melina. What is done is done.”

Melina sighed. “You must hate me.” she said.

“I do not hate you. However, I do question the motives behind your decisions.” Lisette said.

“As do I…” she said. “It just… felt like the right thing to do back there. And now, now it doesn’t anymore.”

“You thought that you were doing a good deed, and that the sacrifice would have been little.” Lisette said. “You were wrong.”

Melina felt attacked. She wanted to say that Ishrin too had agreed with her plan to blow up the mountain, but the memory once again felt distant and faint. Did he really? She tried to recall their conversation, back in the control room. She had an inkling that perhaps it had been him who told her to destroy the mountain.

Her earlier ruminations came back rushing, leaving a deep chasm in her mind as her unstable subconscious integrated them with her current thoughts. The little bridge that connected an island of her thinking to the rest of her wider framework, already perilously shaking, collapsed under the weight of thought, unsupported by a rational mind due to her condition. Something shifted in her perspective.

Ishrin was always right, a little voice told her. She should listen to him, for he knew better.

“I was.” She said, but then a child-like protest made its way to her lips. If Ishrin was always right, how come he had not been right when he told her to destroy the mountain? She voiced the thought. “But Ishrin agreed with me. Did he not? Did he stop me? No, he just agreed to act.”

It was all she could muster to say, really. She did not even know what she was talking about anymore, and logic had left her argument long ago. She only knew that she felt hurt, but she did not know who had hurt her, and how or why. It had to be Ishrin, for her mind had elected him to the pillar upon which her view of the world was based. If there were problems, then she should refer to him. But since he was currently unconscious, she would then refer to past him for answers to her questions. But the answers did not make sense. Because Ishrin was a complex human being, not just a figment of imagination, and his behavior reflected his complex nature.

It was not lost on Lisette, who was far more lucid. “He did agree, up to the point where it became clear that we were not escaping unscathed. After which, Melina, you ordered him to follow through. I do remember it clearly.”

Melina drew a sharp breath. “I don’t remember you speaking up, Lisette.”

It was then that she realized her mistake. Lisette scoffed, perhaps her most human gesture so far, and turned around to look over Ishrin’s body lying on the ground.

“While your decision to destroy the cube,” she said after a long time, during which Melina thought the woman had tried to compose herself as best she could—so not to lash out in anger against an opponent she could now take in a fight. “While it might not have been the moment where it all went wrong, it is undeniable that it was the tipping point when things started getting out of control. Try to remember Ishrin’s face, demeanor, and tone of voice during our whole expedition. Ask yourself if and when it ever felt like he was not in control prior to your order to blow up the mountain.”

She paused, taking a deep breath. “Try to recall his face, after the first time the ritual was used. When we found ourselves stranded.”

“He was… scared.” Melina said.

“You must think that was the moment when everything went wrong, but it was not. Things had already been going wrong ever since we tried the inventory trick for the first time. Ishrin, for his part, was experiencing a lack of control over his surroundings for the first time in a very long time. Perhaps millennia.” Lisette said.

“He’s used to playing it safe.” Melina said.

“He still did remarkably well, until he finally slipped, and that is also why the second ritual failed. I am aware that it was technically his fault, but I still blame you for pushing him into a situation he was not used to anymore. You, as the leader, did not only fail us when you ordered us to destroy the mountain, you also failed us when you refused to acknowledge us for who we are, and not for who you think we must be in order to fit your small framework of the world.”

And with that, silence fell, leaving Melina thoroughly stunned. Lisette had completely upturned the way she saw… everything, and she did not know what to think anymore. A thought had taken residence in her mind.

How come she, of all people, had been able to see it all so clearly?

By extension, how had Melina, who had always thought herself among the best at reading other people and situations, been so blind?