It wasn’t unpleasant at all, actually, reminding him of something cloyingly sweet. Honey, maybe, or nectar, something he imagined might taste of rich sugar.
He slid his foot along the ground experimentally, pursing his lips when he found that the ointment had only made things more slippery when he walked.
Great. What was this purportedly magical mixture that he and Augustin had already preemptively paid out the nose for? Perhaps Elder Bahul could add snake-oil salesman to his impressive resume.
“It’s awfully slimy,” Elyssandra said, plodding unsteadily forward like a newborn foal.
“I don’t know,” Warren said, his elongated feet plopping wetly as he paced a few steps. “It’s a little nice, actually. I feel very moisturized.”
“Give it time,” the elder said. “You’ll know when the magic kicks in.”
And that didn’t take very long at all. Suddenly the dungeon walls were passing by a lot faster, though it didn’t feel as though Braiden was making much more effort with his muscles.
Quite the difference from Augustin’s fleetfoot spell, where Braiden had been very much conscious in the moment of how his feet had moved so fast as to turn into a blur, a burst of speed that exacted its toll on his physique after the fact.
He looked down at his feet to check if they were doing the same thing, his eyes going wide open when he saw the wings attached to his boots. Butterfly wings, in fact, several pairs lining either side of both shoes.
He gasped, stopping in his tracks to marvel at the sight, then gasped again when the wings vanished.
“Gotta keep moving or the magic don’t work,” Elder Bahul said. “Make the most of it. Flutterbutter wears off quick.”
A single step forward and Braiden’s shoes were covered in vividly colorful butterfly wings once again. He felt lighter than air, propelling himself with greater ease when he understood that the motion of his legs was what activated the magic, every step synchronized to the flutter of each wing.
Elder Bahul held on to his bandanna and jogged tirelessly along. His massive chest did nothing to slow his stride. Elyssandra tittered as she pranced down the passage, happy as a clam to go delving down to the fiery depths.
Augustin’s gorgeous boots were only enhanced by the butterfly wings, their deep beetle black festooned in delicate fluttering clouds of color. He frowned at his feet, clearly intrigued by the flutterbutter’s magic, and perhaps a little jealous of how well the ointment worked.
But Warren, well-moisturized and well-heeled, took to the ointment most naturally. Each of his bunny hops was boosted enormously by the magic, bounding along with such great leaps that he had to stop and wait for the rest of the group to catch up.
As they pressed further into the dungeon, Braiden noticed that the few elementals they ran into did indeed look smaller and weaker than before. Pellets of rock sailed past his head, fired almost lazily at him by one of the rockwalkers.
Aha. No more icicles, and terrible aim, to boot. Augustin was right — banishing the frozen cube had indeed altered the fundamental composition of the dungeon. He wondered how the rest of the place must have changed, fauna aside.
This also showed Braiden the wisdom of Elder Bahul’s intent to build infrastructure into the dungeon itself. These rockwalkers posed little threat and offered little of interest or value to more experienced adventurers.
As they’d seen for themselves in their first descent, the lesser elementals didn’t yield anything of worth when destroyed. Elevators like Elder Bahul was proposing would allow the stronger sort of adventurer to quickly descend to the more dangerous, but certainly more profitable levels of the dungeon.
Onward they went, downward they plunged, taking the familiar paths they’d already trodden through the dungeon. From memory Braiden knew that they would run into the great luminous cavern soon, lit by its abundance of glowing mushrooms.
And after that, the Underborough!
How long had it been since Braiden had a bite of rooty tooty stew? He always felt a bit shy about requesting that Warren bring some with him, feeling it too much of an imposition to request a pot each time he visited his grandmother.
Still, it was tempting to ask. And the tastiness of scooping up the stew’s sauce with delicious burrowfolk flatbread? Braiden pumped his legs faster, motivated to run by food, of all things, feeling slightly guilty that he hadn’t already been moving faster for Bones’s sake.
Surely the skeleton was still doing fine. Valefour wanted so badly for Braiden to descend, for whatever reason, that it was highly unlikely he would do something unsavory to his undead bargaining chit.
Braiden wondered how much hotter it might be down in these newly discovered depths. It was growing hotter even now, in fact, and not just because the icy cube was no longer cooling the dungeon with its ambient influence.
No, this heat must have been caused by the dungeon’s elemental shift in composition.
Or maybe it was caused by the great, flaming humanoid thing lurching at them from just around the corner.
Braiden gulped.
Chapter
Nineteen
