Roger lowered his sword, realizing the movement wasn't an immediate threat.
Turning back to Lila, he leaned over and whispered into her ear, trying to stay quiet in case a threat awaited in the dense fog.
"Stay close behind me. There is a mist up ahead, so visibility will be low."
He looked past her down the way they came, noticing they were too far to see the floor anymore.
"I don't like how high this staircase is going. We should be approaching ground level, but I see no sign of a ceiling yet. My bet would be some kind of magical trickery, so be ready to run."
There was a graveness to his tone that left little room for questions. The ruin was becoming increasingly strange, and that wasn't a good thing.
At least not for Roger.
'Why couldn't this place have been a secret treasure house full of gold and credits? Instead, we get carvings that mess with your mind and a deceptively tall staircase.'
He purposefully kept his thoughts sarcastic, trying to cling to the optimism humor provided rather than let fear take hold.
'Just because this place is weird and cursed doesn't mean we can't find riches somewhere around here!'
He began to ascend once more, keeping his weapon at the ready and his guard up. The encounter with the giant squirrel had taught him that an attack can come from anywhere.
Roger entered the mist and felt water collect on his skin. It was an uncomfortable feeling in the already cold underground, and the feeling of droplets sliding down his body made him skittish.
It felt like something was touching him from all directions.
Shuddering from the sensation, he steeled his resolve and pushed on.
'You think a little bit of fog will scare me? Well, I'll show you! I'll show all of you! I'll push through this mist and find whatever waits at the top of this damned staircase!'
His mental boasting fueled him and kept him focused, suppressing the fear the situation was causing him.
'For the treasure, Roger, for the Treasure! This is a ruin, and Lila said ruins are special! Didn't she? Crap, I can't even remember if she ever said this was worth the risk!'
He took in a shaky breath to calm his nerves.
'It's okay, if there is nothing up here it won't matter anyway. We just turn around and leave. Quickly. But what if there is a dangerous creature? What if it kills us?'
His thoughts turned to the Mind Wraiths and the dreams they showed him. Lila being killed, himself being wounded, and his death approaching with the cold calculation of destiny.
Roger had purposefully avoided the memory, not wanting to experience it again, but couldn't stop it from filling his mind with the trauma.
A sudden roar caused him to jerk around, swinging his torch and almost hitting Lila.
She barely managed to lean back in time to dodge it, teetering dangerously on the edge of a step. She waved her arms out to arrest her motion, panic clear on her face.
Once she regained her footing, she stared at him with barely concealed fury, Vronti appearing in her hands with a flash of blue light.
"Why the hell did you do that?"
Her voice was quiet but sharp, coming out as more of a hiss than a question.
Roger didn't respond at first, his gaze locked on the shadows looming at the edge of the torchlight. His eyes were wide, and his body tensed with anticipation.
"The roar! Something is in here with us!"
Lila looked at him incredulously, her rage still present but muted in the face of confusion.
"What roar? I haven't heard anything since you last spoke! If there was a roar, I wouldn't be sitting here trying to figure out why you almost killed me!"
Roger spared her a single glance of disbelief before he turned it back to the mist, slowly turning into a circle as he tried to cover every angle.
"Why would I do that unless I heard something?"
Fed up with his antics, Lila took another step up the staircase, bringing her just one below Rogers.
"You need to control your nerves! They are going to get us killed! And by us, I mean me! They are going to get me killed!"
By this point, Roger wasn't listening to her, instead being entirely preoccupied with the mist.
'There is something out there hunting us, something that only I can hear!'
He whipped his head around, scanning the surroundings to try and find the culprit of the roar he had distinctly heard. He knew it was out there, it had to be.
'Lila must be unable to hear it due to the magic from earlier! Her brain must still be impacted! I'll have to figure this out alone.'
His focus was placed entirely on the mist surrounding them.
He scrutinized it in its entirety, knowing that without a doubt there had to be something out there.
Nothing stuck out to him, not a shadow, not a creature, nothing. It was just him and Lila in the damned mist.
'The mist! Of course!'
The realization hit him like a cannonball, stalling the rest of his actions. It should have been obvious from the start.
'If the engraving could influence our emotions, why couldn't the fog? It's trying to get us to leave, which means it must be protecting something!'
Roger, as a prisoner, knew all too well that the most guarded places were usually the most important.
He had seen it for himself a thousand times.
Every prisoner knew that if a door had multiple automated turrets outside it, there were prison controls inside.
Most attempted insurrections would target those doors, hoping to gain access and disable the other defenses, but Roger had never heard of anyone succeeding.
Now he was the one storming the door.
He knew it wasn't the same situation, but it felt like it.
Facing down a defensive system trying to control where people went was exactly what Roger had sworn to do.
Roger gritted his teeth and put one foot in front of the other, rising a few inches with each step, and ignoring the increasing pressure in his mind to turn around and flee the complex.
'This is just practice for when I return to Earth and turn that prison into rubble, you hear me System?'
He didn't know why he targeted his frustrations at the System, but it felt easy to place blame on the one universal power he had met since traveling to this world. It was a habit he one day hoped to break, but today wasn't going to be that day.
With the torch in one hand and a sword in the other, Roger pushed himself up the steps.
His focus on mounting the staircase and discovering the secrets at its top helped him ignore the intrusive thoughts brought upon by the mist, and instead put the energy into his climb.
Minutes passed and the pressure on his mind increased.
Each step began to take more of his strength, sapping his muscles and willpower, but he pressed on, determined to succeed where his fellow inmates had failed.
The image of victory was clear, and Roger wasn't going to abandon it.
His reforged body once again provided itself, as his Alpha-rank anatomy worked overtime to help him meet the challenge. His eyelids were peeled back as he kept his green eyes staring at the way up.
Every inch he traveled made him wish to see the peak, to surmount this foe and beat it.
To prove to the world that he wasn't just a lucky kid who survived encounters with magic beasts, but a growing warrior ready to prove himself.
After what felt like hours, he seemingly crossed a threshold, and the pressure abated, causing him to collapse forward onto the marble.
He had expected to fall on more stairs, but surprisingly hit a smooth surface, bruising his knees and elbows.
Lying there for a few minutes to regain some of his expended energy, he weakly pumped a fist into the air to mark his triumph.
"We… we did it, Lila! We made it to the top of this infernal staircase!"
Only silence followed his words.
Leaning up, he panned his vision around but didn't see the familiar blonde teenager.
"Lila?"
Standing up with vigor, his head whipped from side to side as he searched desperately for the missing girl.
"Lila? Where are you? Lila!"
Nobody answered him.