Evolution of a Healer

Hex was at the next crossroad Cyn came to, lying on the ground and with one arm in a hole up to his shoulder. The Rogue was facing away from her as she approached, and, slowing down, she called out to not startle him too badly. “Whatcha doin?”

He must have been pretty focused on whatever was down that hole, because he was startled anyway. He jerked, but not enough to remove his arm from its position, and attempted to crane his head to look over his shoulder at her. “I uh…might be stuck.”

Cyn wandered around his front, crouching down so he didn’t have to strain to look at her, and noting without surprise that Hex’s satchel and pouches were gone. It actually would have been more surprising if all of them didn’t get the Promising Ring of Holding, based on its description.

“What the fuck is that?!”

She had forgotten about Spam, who was now almost eye level with the Rogue and seemed to be initiating another staring contest. Hex’s reaction was fair, honestly. It wasn’t every day you see a fat, bubblegum pink, three eyed frog. “Oh, that's Spam, my familiar. It forced me to take it with me between the dungeon floors.” Hex lost the staring contest, glancing up at her with raised eyebrows before Cyn continued, “Anyway, how did you get stuck?”

“There's treasure below some of the crossroads, I’ve already found a few of them. I think this one was rigged, though. There’s a bear trap or something that has clamped down on my arm.”

Cyn winced in sympathy. “How bad do you think it’s going to be if you just pull your arm out?”

“Bad enough I decided to just stay here a while and hope you showed up. It probably wouldn’t have killed me to do it alone, but…” Hex shrugged his free shoulder. “No reason to risk it since it seems pretty safe around here.”

She nodded, reaching out to put a hand on the Rogue’s side. “Ready when you are.” Hex took a deep breath, and with a quick jerk sat half-upright. Cyn felt his health drop, but not dangerously. He probably underestimated the effectiveness of his stats, she thought while channeling a normal Restoration. Hex’s first movement did not fully free him, but a second sharp tug pulled his lightly mangled arm out of the hole. In his hand was a small box, since apparently he was unwilling to let go of the treasure, and attached to the same wrist was the trap. It did resemble a bear trap, with two closing sides with a row of sharp, metal teeth and a pressure trigger below his hand. Based on where the long, jagged wounds started it had initially clamped down just above the Rogue’s elbow, and he had pulled it down to the wrist while escaping.

While Cyn helped pry off the trap and heal him, Hex told her about what he had found so far. The treasures themselves were not great, a combination of dimensional credits, crappy potions, and what he assumed were meant to be profession supplies. Things like uncooked food and scraps of various materials. However, each of the treasures came in a puzzle box that, based on the description, gave class experience when solved. So Hex had continued to uncover and open the boxes as he detected them.

Now that Cyn was with him, they would take turns opening the boxes. Hex let her take the one that he had injured himself for, and she took a moment to look it over.

Hungering Labyrinth Puzzle Box (Common) - Contains common quality treasure. Solving the puzzle will unlock the puzzle box and reward class experience.

The puzzle itself was simple, in this case. There was a series of six symbols across the top of the box, and when a symbol was infused with mana it would change to a different symbol, alongside zero to five of the other symbols. The goal was to make the symbols all match. Having solved puzzles like this before, it took Cyn no time at all to get the box open and collect her mediocre rewards.

While she was solving the box, they continued to talk. Now that they were out of the infested mine, and overall the pressure to survive had lessened, Cyn found it easier to chat. She was pleased to learn she was correct in assuming that the Rogue was planning to head for the center of the labyrinth, with or without the party. She explained to him her method of using Spam to choose the direction, and since that was no worse than his method of taking turns at random, once she was done with her puzzle Cyn fished out the familiar from her hood so the trio could set off once again.

Traveling with Hex was technically slower than traveling alone, but that was only because they kept stopping as the Rogue detected the common treasures hiding mostly under the bricks below their feet. Not that Cyn was going to complain about that, it was nice to be under the sunlight again after spending so long in the spider mines, and even if the boxes only gave a little experience it was basically free. Hex also kept up with putting down arrows at the crossroads by pricking his finger with a dagger, just in case anyone else from the party was trying to follow.

She mentioned the hedges while they waited for Spam to choose a path at one of the crossroads, and learned that Hex had actually tried to climb them without inspecting them, just like she was going to, and discovered why it was a bad idea. Apparently, when he touched them, a vine suddenly shot out and grabbed the Rogue around the waist to try and pull him into the hedge. He also started losing health points rapidly, although it didn’t appear to cause any actual wounds. It was a combination of luck and agility that allowed Hex to cut the vine and free himself before becoming plant food. Because of where the vine was cut, he actually had a small sample of it from where it had been wrapped around his body.

Of course, he had already licked it too. Good thing it wasn’t poisonous.

After a few hours they saw the first exit, just a freestanding door located in a small alcove off of the path. It was a little surprising how fast they had found one. Cyn thought it would probably be a few days at least. The leaves around them were still the warm colors of autumn, and Cyn had developed a suspicion the colors would indicate how deep they were in the labyrinth. The theory mostly stemmed from the fact that Hex said he had not found any treasures in the green area. And if her theory was correct, they were nowhere near the center yet.

Finding an exit made things a little more complicated. They were still leaving a trail for others to follow, and now they needed a way to tell anyone following them it was alright to leave without Hex and Cyn. If anyone was following them. They considered resting for a while, but despite the fights that had occurred before the party had arrived on the second floor, neither of them felt tired. Ultimately, Hex just ended up writing out a longer note in blood on the stones.

H & C go mid

U exit if want 2

Believing that to be a clear enough message, they kept moving. When they almost immediately went a longer stint without any treasure, Hex expressed concern they were possibly moving further away from their goal despite the hedges staying a range of reds and oranges. The concern was quickly alleviated, however, when instead of an expected crossroad they turned a corner and found something very different.

It was like something had cut a large square out of the labyrinth, leaving behind just a clean section of stone slabs. With the exception of the opening they would enter through and an identical opening opposite, the entire square looked to be surrounded by a solid wall of hedge. It was empty, the entire area devoid of any clues as to what Hex and Cyn might be facing by entering. The Rogue commented he did not detect anything in the area and, to test, tossed a chuck of scrap metal into the area. Nothing happened, it just bounced before coming to rest. The pair agreed that the case would probably not be the same for them, but with no good alternatives they crossed the threshold together.

They managed to get a few feet in before it all suddenly shifted. Cyn turned, wanting to return to the relative safety of the path, but found their entrance point to now be just more hedge wall. Entire slabs seemed to vanish before their eyes, while others rose high into the air, higher than the hedge walls, and still others descended downward. The slabs were actually four-foot cubes of stone floating over what looked like empty space, only made obvious now that they were moving. Hex and Cyn both remained still, just observing the chaos for a few moments, and once enough of the slabs had vanished they watched as the remaining ones started to move along the horizontal axis as well.

Nothing remained still for more than a few seconds, the entire square a flurry of movement. Cyn heard Spam croak a warning, and instinctively she moved, scrambling up the cube at hip height beside her as it rose. Not a moment too soon, as the stone slab she and Hex had been standing on vanished. The Rogue obviously did not have the same reaction to Spam’s croak, falling a short distance before managing to just barely catch hold of a passing cube lower down. Cyn let herself worry about him for only a few heartbeats as Hex was ferried away, watching the Rogue manage to pull himself up to the top of the cube, before she had to shove the concern to the back of her mind. She needed to worry about herself, first.

Her cube was still rising up, but as interesting as it may have been to look around at the labyrinth a moment now that she was above the hedges, Cyn chose instead to locate the next cube she needed to move to. All of the cubes had moved enough to create persistent gaps between them, large enough she would have to make a small jump at the very least every time she tried to change cubes. There would be one passing right in front of and a little below her sometime in the next few seconds, so long as it stayed on its current path. There wasn’t time to wait for it to be an easy transfer, though, as Spam let out another warning croak, so Cyn made the jump for the traveling cube.

To her surprise, she almost overshot the jump. Clearly, she needed to do a little testing on what she was physically capable of. Once they were clear of this obstacle. Cyn quickly found that once she had touched one of the cubes, it would only persist five to ten seconds before vanishing. This forced her to be in constant motion alongside what remained of what was once a solid square. At a glance, the number of cubes did not appear to be decreasing, so she assumed that they would either reappear after a time or new ones were springing into existence. The most pressing problem was that alongside their entrance, the exit appeared to have vanished too.

It was now a solid line of hedge all the way around the square, and at first she could not find any indication on what they were supposed to do. Whenever Cyn caught a glimpse of Hex, he appeared to be in the same predicament she was, having nowhere to go and not being able to stand still long enough to get a good look around them. Finally, while climbing up the side of yet another rising cube, Cyn happened to look up.

High above the square was a grid of floating objects. She could not quite make them out, especially when she had only a few seconds at a time to look, but Cyn thought she counted it to be five-by-five. The next time Hex was close she called out, “Look above! Can you tell what they are?”

The Rogue, who was on a cube currently moving towards her, glanced first at Cyn then upwards. After looking long enough for both of them to have to change cubes he called back, “No. Try shooting your magic at one of them.”

They were pretty far away, and she wasn’t even sure she could hold one of her mana needles long enough to make it. Much less if she could avoid falling while doing so. But since it was the only idea they had, and neither of them could continue this dance forever, she had to try. Cyn was able to form and shoot a very small needle while standing on one of the cubes, and then tried to jump to the next safe spot when she heard Spam croak, with the needle still rocketing towards one of the objects above. Almost instantly, she lost focus on her mana and the needle dispersed.

Cyn tried again. And again. And again. If she focused too much on her mana, she ran the risk of falling, either from not determining her next destination fast enough, or miscalculating the jump itself. At least with Spam’s help, she did not have to worry about keeping track of seconds like Hex would have to. If she didn’t focus enough, the needle would disperse before reaching the grid. It’s not like they were free, either. Since she was at full health points, Cyn’s mana was not regenerating nearly quick enough to keep going like this. Finally, after way too many tries and nearly out of mana, she hit her target.

It was incredibly difficult to multitask shaping and holding her mana using Freeform Mana Casting while doing anything else, but Cyn managed to do it. She looked up after jumping just in time to see her needle strike one of the objects in the grid above. As she felt her mana disperse, the object began to glow a bright, fluorescent green.

Now she just had to repeat that impressive feat of mana control twenty-four more times.

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