Chapter 76: The Lay of the Land

Toren Daen

I followed after Darrin slowly, my thoughts a jumble. The fact that this zone imitated a city was a constant point in my mind, throbbing like a wound.

I had no illusions about the fact that my presence must have caused this zone to somehow change. This was my fault somehow.

"My team is a few floors up," Darrin said, his breathing finally evening out. "We've been here longer than I'd care to admit, so we can get you sorted."

I ground my teeth. "How long have you been here?" I asked as we entered a stairwell.

Darrin was quiet for a moment. "Nearly three weeks in our time," he said with a slight, defeated air. "The undead are an effective barrier to getting anywhere in this zone. It's nearly impossible to explore without causing an entire graveyard to pull themselves out of the stone."

That news was worse than I expected. The Unblooded party was among the best ascenders. Considering they'd been stuck in a single convergence zone for weeks spoke to the difficulty of this place.

"But that can change, now," Darrin said, opening a door to another floor. "You've got some sort of rune that lets you dampen sound. That… that will change everything. We'll finally be able to get out of here."

The floor in front of us opened up like a penthouse apartment. The ceiling was tall, a balcony with a glass railing looking down over a wide living area. Couches surrounded a coffee table, and I could see an elaborate kitchen setup off to the side.

I recognized Jared lounging on one of the couches. His beard had gotten even longer since I'd last seen him, clearly lacking any sort of maintenance. He was snoring slightly, his hammer resting on the ground beside the couch. His shield was leaning haphazardly against the back.

Alandra was sitting across from him, her auburn hair a mess. She had bags under her eyes, and the slump of her shoulders had a defeated air to them. Her freckles didn't stick out to me as they did in the desert zone, and her white and red battle robes were marked with cuts and burns.

But there was another woman across from them, looking at some sort of map. Her hair was a darker blonde than Darrin's, but her pale blue eyes were the first to catch onto our entrance.

"Darrin," she said, standing up, a frown on her face. "You made it back?"

Darrin smiled slightly, some of his usual jauntiness shining through as he met the stranger's eyes. "I'm afraid so. I can't let Jared keep napping all the time, after all."

Alandra perked up next, her tired eyes widening when they landed on me. "Toren?" she asked, wiping at her eyes as if she wasn't believing them. She looked at Darrin once more. "Was he the one that you found?"

Darrin nodded, clapping me on the back. "We heard the sounds of your battle from up here, Toren," he said. "It's happened quite a few times in the past weeks. I've tried to get to the ascenders that pop into the tombs, but it's rare that I've actually reached them in time. And even rarer that someone gets out alive," he said somberly.

"Toren?" the dark blonde woman asked, standing from her chair and setting down the map she was looking at. "As in Toren Daen? The mage you took on a prelim a while back?"

Darrin ran a hand through his hair. "I almost forgot to introduce you two! Dima, this is Toren of Named Blood Daen. Toren, this is Dima, our caster. She wasn't able to join us last time, unfortunately."

I nodded to the caster. "Pleasure to meet you," I said. "Though I wish it would've been under better circumstances."

Dima snorted. "I heard you had an eventful prelim, though," she said. "Shame I couldn't join. But I've got family back home I need to spend time with."

"I'd rather spend time with family of my own than fight scorpions," I said with a smile that didn't quite reach my eyes. I didn't like being reminded of my slipping memory. How long until I forgot my brother's face, too? Until the voices of my family became indistinct and grainy, worn down against the winds of time? "If there's anything Darrin and I agree on, it's that we hate insects."

Dima's eyes traced over Darrin. "Is that so?" she said, cocking her head slightly.

Darrin rolled his eyes. "We have a mutual distaste for things with more than four legs."

"They're fundamentally wrong," I affirmed, shuddering slightly as I remembered the scorpion at the end of the desert zone.

Alandra settled back into the couch, closing her eyes. "But I'm sorry you're here, Toren," she said with a sigh. "We're stuck here. Have been for a while."

I frowned. "Can't you locate the portal with your spell?" I asked, remembering her strange fire compass.

"I did when we first got here," she said with a quiet sigh, not opening her eyes. "But you can't go near the ground at all. That's why we're all up here, close to the clouds. Any sound that makes it to those strange roads makes those horrid undead burst from the ground."

Alandra seemed to wilt. I felt disjointed seeing the cocky conjurer so disheartened. "Surely there are other people in this convergence zone you can work with," I hedged. "There's no way everyone who entered here besides you has died."

Dima responded in place of Alandra. "There are a few other groups holed up in the other steel towers. But they're extremely distrustful. We're all almost out of limited food and water, making barely any progress in getting to that portal. Darrin saw the place from afar. It is an island with a tall, tall steel tower. And around that island is an entire lake. "

Darrin's face took on a determined look. "That's going to change now," he said with confidence. He looked at me from the side of his eye. "Toren here can nullify sounds around him. Perfect for getting past these undead."

Alandra perked up, blinking and looking at me. Dima didn't look so convinced. "That's real nice, Darrin," she said, "But we won't be able to do anything if we don't get more supplies. I haven't eaten in two days. And my water won't last through tomorrow. And I know you haven't touched a bite of food for almost a week."

She looked at him imperiously, as if that tidbit of information cemented her argument. I swallowed, taking another look at Darrin. On second inspection, maybe his cheeks looked a little too hollow. His form a bit too gaunt.

"I'll be fine, Dima," the leader of the Unblooded Party said dismissively. "We'll get out of here soon enough, you'll see–"

"And if there's another zone after this one?" she snapped. "What then? Will you just let yourself starve? "

"That's not going to happen," Darrin said stiltedly, the tension rising in the room. Alandra covered her face with her hands, leaning over in a defeated posture. "We'll be fine, okay? Just like every time."

"This isn't like every time," Dima snapped, moving closer. "This zone is like nothing we've ever seen before. Nothing anyone has seen before in the Relictombs. It's an alien city!" she said, throwing her hands up. "This is an entire city! It's like the ghost of a civilization! The Relictombs have always been strange, but… But I've had to kill things that shouldn't be able to move. How can you expect the next zone to go back to the norm?"

I stepped back slightly, feeling a wave of guilt. Dima hadn't directed the words at me, but I couldn't pretend anymore. This exact situation had been what I feared so deeply on my prelim: getting the group caught in a trap they couldn't escape.

How many people had Darrin seen swallowed the moment they stepped into this zone? How many people died because of my effect on the Relictombs?

I looked across the apartment as Darrin and Dima continued to have their back and forth, my mind disassociating. Alandra ignored it with a tired gaze on the floor, defeated utterly. Jared simply slept through his problems.

My mind began to tumble about, lost in waves of regret. If I hadn't come into the Relictombs, these people wouldn't be trapped. They wouldn't be facing such hell.

"--so where will you get us more food?" Dima challenged, her arms crossed. "Just take it from the other groups around here?"

Dima's words sparked something in my subconscious. I remembered how the town zone before this one had been stocked full of food in the refrigerators. I didn't know much about this place yet, but I'd seen something on the ground when I had been fleeing the zombies. If the odds were good…

Darrin had a pained look on his face, but I spoke up before the argument could continue any longer. "I've got a few weeks of food to spare," I said, cutting through the spat. "But there might be a better solution available to us."

Darrin turned to me, a thankful flash in his eyes. Dima tilted her head, looking at me with surprise. "What do you mean, Toren?" the striker asked, taking my offered way out thankfully.

I licked my lips. I had to be careful about this. In how much I showed I understood of this place. "When I was fighting the undead," I said slowly. "I saw a building. It was a store, I think. One that probably has food inside. And with my ability to quiet our footsteps, we can get down there. Restock on all the supplies we need."

That made both Darrin and Dima pause. "You're sure?" the blonde striker asked slowly. His piercing green eyes looked me over quizzically. "If you're right about that, it's worth a shot…"

Dima didn't look so convinced, but she relented anyway. "If you can get some food from this… horrid zone, we can work on more long-term plans."

Darrin's hand rested on my shoulders as he gave Dima a strained smile. "I'll go with him," he said. "Make sure he doesn't get himself into too much trouble."

Darrin turned me around forcefully, marching us both away from the penthouse. It was only because of my enhanced hearing that I picked up Dima's words.

"You can't keep sacrificing yourself forever, Darrin," she whispered, a strange longing in her eyes.

—

Darrin made for the stairwell, but a tug from me drew the confused striker in a different direction. I was feeling numb, each movement more like an echo of what I truly wanted. I stopped in front of a pair of elevators.

The striker looked at me like I was a loon. I ignored him as I pressed the button to go down. Predictably, it lit up as I made the selection.

"So…" Darrin said, looking at the elevator doors. "What's this do? Shouldn't we be taking the stairs?"

"Have you ever seen a mechanical lift?" I said, trying for an apt comparison.

Darrin nodded. "Yeah. They're used for the construction of some of the bigger buildings." He paused. "Wait, are you implying that this is a lift? " the striker said, a bit incredulous. "And it will take us all the way to the bottom?"

We were about twenty stories high in the air. I understood Darrin's confusion if all he had seen were winch mechanisms. "It makes sense, yeah?" I said, gesturing to the buttons. "One for up, one for down. If this place was a city, people can't afford to walk all those stairs every day just to get to their jobs."

Darrin didn't look convinced, but the elevator opening with a ding spared me any more explanation. I entered without hesitation, immediately looking at the buttons arrayed before me. I pressed the one labeled as the first floor as the striker slowly entered the small box, a frown on his face.

I had to hold him back from lashing out with his gauntlets as the doors shut us in. "Easy there," I said tiredly. "It's going to take us down now."

Sure enough, the elevator box began to lower. Darrin looked positively unnerved by the experience, which made me chuckle slightly. Over the speaker above us, a song began to play.

Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk

I'm a woman's man, no time to talk

Music loud and women warm, I've been kicked around

Since I was born

I ground my teeth. The beat was familiar to me. I never knew these lyrics by heart. Did that mean the Relictombs had drawn them from my actual previous world? Or had I actually known them all along? "Things seemed tense with your team," I said, trying to escape the constant reminders of my previous life. Maybe the words to the song were just made up, only following the tune?

Darrin sighed. "We've been cooped up in that little apartment for weeks without hope of escape," he said with a sigh. "Whenever I notice a disturbance down below, I try and go out to see if there's somebody I can save. You're… you're the first success. It's wearing us all down. Burning away our hopes."

The music continued to hack at my ear, chipping my patience away note by note.

And now it's alright, it's okay

And you may look the other way

We can try to understand

The New York Times' effect on man

"What about that island where the exit portal is?" I asked, trying to ignore the song. The elevator continued down and down, the little number at the top of the display ticking lower. Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve… "It can't all be hopeless."

"It's on an island at the center of a lake," Darrin said, running a hand through his hair. "The tallest 'skyscraper' I've ever seen in this zone. It nearly pierces the clouds, and there are undead around it. If we want to actually make it through, it would take one hell of a plan. And…" Darrin licked his lips.

Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother

You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive

Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin'

"And?" I prodded, clenching my fists. I forcefully breathed in and out, trying to center myself. This space was so close. Nine, eight, seven, six…

"There's something in that lake. I could sense it. Some sort of horrid monster, nesting there like a king. I couldn't get closer to the water's edge. I feared… I feared it would see me," Darrin said, not noticing my rising anger.

And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive

Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive

Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive

My mind went blank for a moment. All the pent-up stress, my failure to keep these people out of harm's way, the truth of my reincarnation, and that horrid fucking tune scraping at my eardrums… It burst out of me like a storm. I whirled, slamming my mana-enhanced fist into the wall of the elevator. The speaker, which had been spewing "Stayin' Alive" as if there was no tomorrow, crumpled around my fist. The song cut out abruptly, sparing my mind any more reminders of Earth.

The elevator doors opened on the bottom floor. "I'm going to get you out of this zone," I promised Darrin, who was looking at me warily. "I'm going to get everyone out of this zone.