Prytaneum
Black Light
What came next happened fast. The ground beneath our feet shattered, opening up into an abrupt and massive chasm that yawned wide into darkness far below us. The monsters snapped at us, but they missed as we fell out of their reach, and though they followed us down as far as they could, we were soon beyond even them. I drew all the water I could, surrounding us so that we wouldn't be crushed mid-fall, but the shattering I began seemed to echo and continue around us, the destruction building upon itself. I heard things breaking beneath us and around us as I fell, felt it in a vague and distant way.
But more than that, I counted the seconds, my heart pounding as they seemed to drag on. I wasn't exactly the best science student in the world, but I'd actually gotten a B- once upon a time, which is one of the higher grades I'd ever gotten, so this was actually an equation I sort of knew. A falling object fell at about thirty-two feet per second per second, increasing until it hit terminal velocity at…some point or other. But the basic idea was that as you fell, you started falling faster and faster, covering a greater distance with each moment.
We fell for three full seconds without a response, falling—I think—something like two hundred feet. That probably wasn't quite right because of stuff like air resistance or whatever, but that didn't matter; the point was that it was a long way down and the amount of large, heavy rocks around us seemed to be multiplying. At the speed we were going, the landing alone might be uncomfortable, but this amount of rubble would almost certainly kill us.
And then something happened. A flicker of shadow caught my eye as a massive chunk of rock seemed to spin above us, its sides alternating between light and shadow. The dark side turned away from us and then seemed to wobble slightly in midair, revealing that Mrs. O'Leary was suddenly upon it as it turned. Her body was darker than I'd ever seen it, no longer looking like a giant hound but rather a dog shaped mass of liquid shadow, with two orbs of bright red light set into her skull. Her eyes met mine as we fell, taking in the situation quickly. She somehow clung to the stone as it turned even more wildly, perhaps sinking her claws deeply into it, but as it began to carry her out of my sight, she leapt, pushing the massive stone away with a sudden impulse—but the stone she jumped to hardly seemed to quiver as she connected and simply vanished into its surface.
She appeared again almost instantly, this time far closer to us, on a shadow the falling rubble cast on the walls as we fell, erupting as if her passage into shadow had done nothing to slow her momentum and leaping into the air once more. Several things hit her as she soared, some of them very hard, but she landed on all four upon a massive boulder, sending it careening towards the far wall even though she leapt again a moment after contact, landing on top of a platform sized piece and pushing it even further down.
Realizing what she was doing, I mustered the water I had and turned it against the forces of gravity, rising even as tons and tons of living stone fell all around us. Massive chunks hit my protective sphere and shattered, while I allowed smaller pieces to slip cleanly through, guiding them away from us. As she moved down, we moved up, until we were more or less on the same level, and then she lunged towards us and we collided in midair. I let her pass through the water without resistance, even willing it to disperse to lighten the coming burden, reaching out to grab ahold of her and let her carry me onwards. Something not quite solid flowed over us and carried us away—and then we were gone, slipping into a realm of shadows.
We reappeared in the light a moment later, but we hadn't gone far. I knew that from a glance at our surroundings and from the not-so-distant sounds of a thunderous crash—but more than anything, I knew it from a single look at my friend. Mrs. O'Leary was little more than a shadow of her former self; less, really, with the edges all seeming to melt away until it was hard to truly distinguish just what she was supposed to resemble. She had four legs, a head, a tail, and all the basics, but nothing truly stood out; she looked as much like a dog as she did a giant lizard or anything else that could have fit, seeming like nothing more than a flowing, living shadow.
And a moment after we appeared, she collapsed.
"Mrs. O'Leary," I said, voice tight even as I was immediately by her side. I reached out to touch her, but it was like reaching into a patch of cold, cold water or even air and the only reply she gave was a quiet whimper. I clenched my teeth for a moment, rightly blaming myself when I knew this could happen and had allowed it to anyway—but that wouldn't help her now. "Lili! The magic stones!"
Lili was on her hands and knees again, eyes still wild and wide from the flurry of things that had happened, but she jerked slightly at the sound of my voice, turning her head my way and catching sight of Mrs. O'Leary. She was shaking—though whether because of the monsters, the water, the fall, or the shadow travel, I wasn't sure—but she swallowed after a moment, pulling herself together quickly and focusing on the matter at hand.
"R-right," She said, standing and rushing towards me only a bit unsteadily. The replacement bag she'd bought wasn't full, but it had a noticeable weight to it as she ran, and I hoped it would be enough to do something. When she set it down and opened it, I wasted no time scoping up a handful and shoveling it into Mrs. O'Leary's mouth. She didn't so much swallow as quiver oddly, but after a moment the stones were gone and I went back for another.
Did it make a difference? Did it help? I honestly wasn't sure. Maybe her body got a little darker, a little more substantial, but maybe it was just my imagination. I'd been pushing her hard since we arrived in Orario, especially today and yesterday, and this was the result of that. She'd exhausted herself, maybe as badly as I had against Zanis.
No. I couldn't let that happen. I wouldn't let that happen. Tipping Lili's bag over roughly, I upended its contents into a pile on the ground and began pushing small piles of it into Mrs. O'Leary's mouth.
"Mr. Percy, the potions," Lili said urgently, snatching one up and uncorking it. Was it a Magic Potion or a normal one? Would it work on a monster to begin with? I didn't know the answer to either question, but I'd take whatever I could get right now; I'd just have to cross my fingers and hope that it wouldn't hurt her somehow.
"Uh…guys?" Welf called out to us, distracting me from what was important while he wasn't doing anything to help. That may have been unfair, may have been my sudden impatience talking, but still I almost snapped at him for it—but as I looked up to do so, I saw what he meant.
The hallway we were in was rocky and dim, boulders sticking out of the walls at random intervals that made the place feel somehow claustrophobic despite its massive size. The floors were uneven and as rocky as the rest of this place, built in such a way that running at full speed would have been difficult for most people. It was a dark, gloomy seeming place.
More importantly than that, however, it looked nothing like the sixth floor.
"What floor are we on?" Welf asked, standing guard with his sword drawn but looking more than a little nervous.
I didn't answer, looking at the walls around us intently but not with surprise. The Pantries were always positioned far from the primary mass of the Dungeon's floor. While, say, the fifth floor might be the size of central park as a whole, the Pantries stretched further out along rough and narrow paths. Having shattered the floor beneath one, it wasn't surprising that we'd gone a few floors down, especially with as far as we'd fallen. Two hundred-ish feet was a long way, even in the Dungeon, and judging by the walls of this place…this could have been anywhere from the thirteenth floor to the seventeenth.
In the end, it didn't really matter—because wherever we were, we were in a pretty damn shitty situation. That monster was still up above us and there was no way of knowing if it'd be there if we tried to ascend, while this place was definitely home to Level 2 monsters. Not as bad as that plant thing, to be sure, but bad enough to warrant a fair bit of worry with our only means of escape out of commission.
This…wasn't good. Better than staying up there had been, perhaps, but still really, really bad.
"We…we're in the Middle Floors," Lili answered when I didn't, looking around with eyes that were somehow even wider than before. "And…I've never been down this far before, but…this must be at least the fifteenth. No, maybe even the seventeenth. This is…Minotaur's live on these floors, Mr. Percy. What do we do?"
How the hell should I know is what I wanted to say—but I was the one who'd gotten us into this mess and I'd be damned if I didn't get us out. And if I happened to have no fucking clue how I was going to do that, it didn't change a goddamn thing, because I was still going to do it. To that end, I decided to keep my mouth shut until I thought of something smart to say.
Naturally, that's when the walls around us started breaking, signifying the birth of who knows how many monsters.
On the bright side, it gave me an idea.
"Welf, Lili, fall back and protect Mrs. O'Leary while I deal with this," I said as calmly as I could, doing my best to hide how terrified this situation left me. Not because of the danger to me or the chance that I'd die, but because of the chance that my friends might die and that it'd be all my fault, again. "We can't leave her here."
"Right," Welf said at once, swallowing but quickly moving closer. "What's the plan?"
"The War Shadows magic stones aren't enough," I said. "So I'll kill these things instead and feed their stones to Mrs. O'Leary. We need to get her moving before we can do anything, but once she is, we'll head for the eighteenth floor."
"The eighteenth…?" Welf repeated almost numbly, but Lili seemed to catch on at once.
"Rivira," She said, sucking in a quick breath. "The safe zone!"
I nodded silently. On the eighteen floor, past the Floor Boss on the seventeenth, was a safe zone where monsters didn't spawn. They could come down from the floor above or up from the floor below, but the floor itself was supposed to be safe. I wasn't sure how true that would be with me around, but the important part was that it also had a village inside of it, made up entirely of adventurers who could reach at least that far. Even if monsters attacked, they should be able to handle anything of Level 2. There, we'd have a chance to rest and gather supplies, and I could leave Welf and Lili in relative safety if I need to get more magic stones. Once Mrs. O'Leary was recovered enough to travel again, we'd skip past the dangers and report what happened to the Guild.
Assuming, of course, that the Goliath wasn't there, which it shouldn't be, having apparently been killed relatively recently. I'd just have to hope the two week spawn time for that thing was an actual rule, not just a suggestion.
"But will we be able to get that far?" Welf murmured, looking around us in concern. As Lili said, this was the floor that spawned Minotaurs, a heard of which had given me a fair bit of trouble less than a week ago. I'd improved after the incident, when Hestia updated my Status—but that was the only improvement I'd made, as she'd been gone since. Frankly, I wasn't confident that it'd be enough, not against an entire floors worth of the things, but…
"We'll make it," I promised with a smile, knowing I'd kill myself again if it was the only way to make it happen.
Welf swallowed again and then nodded shallowly, falling silent as I turned to focus on the things in front of us. Already, horns and limbs were breaking through the walls, massive chunks of the living stone falling to the ground as they did, but I just eyed them for a moment before reaching for one of the vials I kept at my side. I uncorked it and drank it down quickly.
It tasted like chocolate. Not like chocolate milk or, ugh, one of those chocolate sodas, but actual, liquid chocolate, except smooth enough to swallow down fast. It was delicious, like the brownies my mom used to make, and it tasted pleasantly warm on the way down. It sent a shudder though me and left me feeling warm after drinking it, the heat spreading quickly through my body—but hopefully not enough that I was risking spontaneous combustion yet. That was the tricky thing about nectar, you see; about the drink of the gods—even demigods couldn't risk drinking too much of it or else they'd burn alive. Mortal couldn't drink it at all, or their blood would turn to fire in their veins and their bones to sand.
In small doses, however, it was hell on wheels for healing wounds and restoring strength. I felt better the moment I drank it, energy spreading quickly through my body and wiping away the exhaustion I'd quickly racked up again. It was my trump card, something I'd made with Mystery while speaking with Eina, crafting it out of enchanted water, wine, milk, potions, and a few other things I'd scrounged up. I'd wanted to see if I could make it and I had, so I'd drank a couple yesterday and brought the rest with me, just in case. If I paced myself and fought wisely, I might even make it to the eighteenth floor before it or anything else killed me.
"Okay, then," I said as the Minotaurs finally broke free from the Dungeon's walls, raising Riptide and baring my teeth as I stood protectively in front of my friends. This makes round…let's call it round four of Percy vs. the Minotaur. I just had to do better than before, against worse odds, while standing guard over my friends. No problem. "I'll just be taking those magic stones of yours now, if you don't mind."