Pitiless, Samson switches his glare to me. “Youbegged?”
“Well…” I bite my lip. “I said pretty please with whip cream and a cherry on top.” Then I realized cuteness held no weight with Slate, so I switched to spitting off monster facts with an accuracy that Ithinkcould count as a heart event with the crazed genius. But. Anyway. I’ll reference my journal later. “Does that count?”
Slate smiles. “Citrus is very charismatic.”
My wee heart swells, and I place my free hand to my chest. I haveneverbeen called charismatic before. More proof that I was meant to be born in Gem Ridge, notFlorida.
Samson drops my hand and puffs a breath like a bull, then he grumbles, “Fine.” He clomps toward the mouth of the cave, broad back shouldering a heavy pack of supplies he insisted werestandard, sturdy hips bearing a broadsword.
No, I do not know what will happen to my vital organs when he draws that thing.
But, yes, I am willing to accept the consequences.
Once I’m struggling to keep up with his steps, he crams an enchanted ring on his finger. The classic ring emits a sphere of soft light, and when Slate sends a cheerfulbe carefulafter us, he receives a perfect view of the brightest gleam as Samson flips him off.
Samson and I cut into the pitch black darkness of the cave, and I’m so grateful for the glow ring because, realistically, having torches lit on the walls for the first fifty floors or so makes no sense. Especially after a flood. Even if they were all blessed pyrite emanating fire magic, fire and flood waters do not mix. Beyond the halo of Samson’s body, there is night.
He marches straight to the cage of an elevator on the far wall, fiddles with the mechanics, then grumbles, “Busted. I thought so.” Glaring over a big beautiful shoulder at me, he says, “The gems powering it at each level there’s a station probably washed away or disconnected from the mechanism that triggers their blessed power. Same with the light sources.” He glances sidelong at a dormant sconce on the wall. “Assuming you aren’t secretly blessed, we won’t be able to do anything with this unless we bring Aurelia what she needs to fix it.”
Well, that’s a new process, courtesy of the realism mod I’m sure. In game, the elevator just activates every five levels without fuss. The mine is a tiered dungeon, full of loot and monsters. At the start, you travel down by ladder, heightening the difficulty the deeper you go, then every five levels, the elevator works as a difficulty save point.
Needless to say, that isclassic.
This is less classic. “What will she need to fix the elevator?”
“Topaz, likely.”
That makes sense. Imbued topaz is used in many electronic crafting recipes, even the street lamps in town seem to shed light from a mounted yellow gem, kind of like Samson’s glow ring,which I bet is also a blessed topaz, set to trigger whenever it’s worn.
I begin, “Did you know that pure topaz is colorless?”
Stalking to a ladder obscured in the shadows, Samson checks the stability and grumbles, “Yes.”
“Its colors are only caused by impurities.”
“Uh-huh.” He swings his body onto the rungs and descends with a single, fast leap.
I follow his light down the ladder, rambling, “And, did you know, the deeper the colors, the more expensive the gem? Isn’t that beautiful? Imperfections make some things more valuable.” I squeak when big hands circle my waist and whisk me to solid ground.
Samson’s body blocks mine a moment before he draws his sword. My heartbu-bumpsin response to his muscles flexing. Something about the way his glow ring’s light dances across his tattoos does something awful to me.
Calmly squaring off against a bubbling mass of goo, he says, “I didn’t know that part.”
I remove my harlot eyes from the man protecting me and identify the…slime?
Is that a slime?
It’s totally a slime.
Oh my granite. That is so classic I am actively relieved. Screw the realism mod’sthreat of dyingDLC. There’s no way in any world I’m dying to aslime.
The wobbly, bulbous mass wiggles its way toward us with labored hops.
“It’s kind of cute,” I say.
Samson exhales the vague outline of a laugh. “It’s living water and gunk, held together by a toxic membrane. Breaking that membrane kills it. Getting it on your skin faintly burns. It’sonly a problem if there’s a lot of them because they will join together and try to drown you.”
Yikes.
