Godsforsaken

Chapter 14: The Crystal Crown's Bloodline

“Mun for your thoughts," Annabella said when I didn't speak up.

“Just thinking about how the next few days will play out," I said. “Yume is easily the strongest of our party. If a single elite variant of the most common enemy type on the first floor is able to give her even the slightest bit of pause I shudder to think how hard this place will get.”

“You seem pretty confident that she is the strongest of our party," she said. “Why is that?”

“You haven't come close to seeing her in action yet," I said. “That trick you were curious about? She was the one that taught me how to do that.”

Annabella bit her lip. “You really want to know about my magic, don't you?”

“I'm always excited to learn more about dungeons," I said and she let out a sigh. “Why are you so hesitant to talk about it, anyway? It's not as if anyone without your bloodline could learn it.”

“It's embarrassing," she said. “All of my siblings are so much better at it than I am.”

I was starting to get a suspicion of why that might be the case. But if my theory were true, that would mean... “Annabella, that combat instructor from the south who was supposed to train you," I said, “do you know what happened to them?”

She frowned. “Apparently he died in an accident on the way here. Why?”

“Only a theory," I said. “I don't know enough yet to say more. Anyway, for being bad at it it still looks pretty spectacular.”

She gave me a sheepish smile.

We were quiet a little while, then she said:

“Alright, you win. Tomorrow I'll show you my magic, show you how I do it. I'm too curious about what it is you did there.”

Then she held her hand out in front of her and concentrated before summoning the sapphire sword again.

Even though I couldn't touch mana I had gotten enough of a feel for it that I could at least appreciate the basic theory behind magic, so that's why Annabella's spell drove me crazy.

She didn't summon an aura of mana around her, she didn't channel it into a specific shape and then release it. And yet, the act of summoning that sword still felt oddly familiar. A white outline of a sword appeared in front of her and then filled with blue crystal that seemed to flow out of her chest. Once it was fully formed her hand closed around it. She held it for a moment, then loosened her grip again and the sword vanished into thin air.

“I like the look on your face," she said after dismissing the blade. “Most people who see it get jealous or get a shrewd glint in their eyes and consider stealing one of them, but you just look excited about it.”

“I've given up envying mages long ago," I said. “It's just an amazing ability you have, powerful and beautiful. But now that you mention it, I am curious. Can you just make and sell sapphires? Or do they all vanish once you stop using your power?”

“I can," she said, then created a tiny little sapphire and threw it at me. I caught it and, sure enough, it was a genuine sapphire the size of a fingernail. “If I'm on a journey and running low on funds I use it sometimes, but I try not to.”

“Why not?" I asked.

“First of all, making them permanent takes way more effort. Second, I don't want to change the price of sapphires by flooding the market. Third, if people notice I'm selling a lot of gemstones they might try to mug me.”

“Yeah, that makes sense," I said, then looked at her. “So, what were all those herbs you picked?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you just asking that to give me a reason to talk about my interests?”

“I am genuinely curious which of these herbs are helpful to us," I said, “but yes, that too. Your eyes light up when you talk about herbs and traveling. It's a great look on you.”

Her cheeks reddened and she looked away. “How can you say things like this with a straight face?”

“Because they're true," I said. “So? Herbs?”

She grumbled under her breath and then pulled out some bushels of herbs from her satchel. First she pointed at a red leaf with purple ribs.

“This is Bloodwort," she said. “It grows in almost every dungeon and this one is no exception.”

I frowned at it. “So this is what the plant looks like? I've only ever seen Bloodwort as a potion.” Bloodwort was a pretty cheap and effective healing potion. It sped up the body's natural regeneration significantly and also helped deal with blood loss.

“Yeah," she said. “When turned into a solution it becomes much more effective but in a pinch you can chew the leaves to get a similar effect though it's weaker. Because the thing is, the healing component is the fluid inside the plant. Chewing only pops so many of these small chambers within but if you grind it down in a mortar and then mix it with alcohol to turn it into a solution you can get much more of the component out of each leaf. So much so that you then have to dilute it with water so it's actually drinkable.” As she spoke her voice kept getting faster and higher pitched and it was beyond adorable. I smiled at her and she realized she'd been babbling.

“So for herbs that you're supposed to chew as they are, I guess that means they would be too strong if turned into a solution?" I asked and she nodded.

“That's right! Although sometimes it's just because we haven't yet found any liquid to use as solvent. Alcohol destroys the components of some plants and some others aren't soluble in water either. There's a few other liquids to use, but... I'm boring you, aren't I?”

“You're not," I assured her. “This is interesting stuff. I wouldn't want to dedicate my life to studying it, but I wouldn't mind learning some of these recipes. I know a few by necessity, but...”

“Like?" she asked.

“Clotting paste," I said. Certain medicinal ingredients ground together could be used to make a thick green paste that could be smeared over wounds as a poultice to prevent infections and help clot the wounds. Before I met Alisha that stuff had saved my life a couple of times.

“Oh yeah, that's a classic," Annabella said. “But did you know that if you dissolve clotting paste in alcohol you get a tincture that is extremely dangerous to vampires? Of course, the smell is obvious enough that you couldn't trick a sane vampire with it, but it can be used to deal with feral vampires.”

“Wow," I said. “No, I didn't know that. I'll have to keep that in mind. I guess the blood clotting effect does something to them?”

She nodded excitedly. “Exactly. Dissolving it in alcohol makes it too strong. Other mortals can handle it but for a vampire the stuff makes the stolen blood clot in their veins. The only way for them to survive that is with bloodletting and then drinking a lot more blood right after.”

I winced. “So, what about the other herbs?"

“Right," she said and then pulled out something like a long reed but yellow. “This is Lunar Reed. So far it's only been discovered in this dungeon and only on floors one, two and five. It's a universal antidote. All but the strongest poisons can be cured with this stuff.”

“That sounds beyond useful," I said.

She waggled her hand. “It would be, but it needs a very specific solvent to be turned into a potion. So specific, in fact, that we can only get it from the third floor of this dungeon.”

“In that case I'll donate a waterskin if it means you can grab more of that solvent later," I said.

“Thank you," she said and then she was quiet for a long time. She looked at the other herbs she held, then sighed and put them away. Finally she asked: “Hey, Felix?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you mean what you told me the other night?”

I thought back to our talk by the shore, about her insecurity and to what I'd said to her.

“Every word," I said and she nodded and walked off.

I would have thought I'd said something wrong, but the small smile on her lips told a different story.

**

The next morning, after a hearty breakfast, we set out once again and soon enough we came across a group of three mermen. Clearly Annabella had been telling the truth about the encounters getting bigger beyond the first rest spot.

I was about to formulate a plan when Annabella stepped up.

“Are you sure?" I asked.

“You wanted to see my powers," she said. “So let me show you.”

She held her hand in front of her again, concentrated and created her sapphire sword once again, then held the sword in both hands and concentrated. As she did, the wing of sapphire shards on her back grew until it wrapped around her right shoulder. When she was done she stabbed the sword into the ground and drew her longbow. She nocked an arrow, took aim at the nearest merman, exhaled and let the arrow fly. The arrow pierced the merman right through the eye and kept going until the tip had exited from the back of its head. It fell over moments later.

The other two had only just noticed that their companion had fallen when Annabella ran at them and slit another merman's throat before the two had even registered her as a threat. The third tried to stab at her but her wing shot forward to deflect the attack and the harpoon glanced off it. While the merman was still off balance from the failed attack Annabella stabbed him through the heart.

She turned around to us, hands on her hips and a smug expression on her face, which meant she didn't see the fourth merman sneak up on her, his harpoon poised to stab her in the back.

I wanted to shout a warning but knew it would be too late to make a difference so I grabbed a rock and threw it with a Qi Burst, hitting the merman right between the eyes.

Annabella spun around when she heard the crack of the impact and saw the brained merman lying on the ground, then turned around and looked at us sheepishly.

“There it was again," she finally said. “That strange white power. What is this?”

“You'll get to hear it once you tell me about this power of yours," I reminded her.

She sighed and began explaining as I looted the mermen.

“Everyone in my family has this ability. We can create shapes out of gemstones, either temporary or permanent. The difference is mostly what gemstones we can summon. I got sapphires, my older sister Isabella can create emeralds and our oldest sister Mariabella can create rubies. My oldest brother Marcus has pure diamond and he argues that this means he deserves the crown the most. My second oldest brother Alfred I've never seen use his ability, same for the youngest of my brothers, Wilhelm. My second youngest brother Richard has rubies as well.”

I suddenly remembered something. “What gemstones can your mother create?”

“Clear gems with red at the center," Annabella said. “Blood diamonds, she calls them.”

I thought back to the enormous swords lining the throne room, made of colorless crystal with smudges of red at their center. “So those swords in the throne room..." I trailed off.

“Yes, those are her creation," she confirmed.

“So I guess if we had refused her then she would have brought them crashing down on us?" I asked.

Annabella's eyes widened and she shook her head vehemently. “Absolutely not," she said.

“How can you be so sure?" I asked.

“Because she told me what they're used for," she said. “The swords fill the function of load-bearing pillars so if she ever uses those swords to attack it would destabilize the entire throne room, meaning they're a last resort. They are also positioned in such a way that if you run away they can't hit you but if you try running towards her they will hit you. They're to be used against assassins or other armed attackers, not as a method of execution.”

“I'll take your word for it," I said.

And honestly, she was making sense. With how brazenly those assassins had attacked a princess in the middle of a city I could just about see someone being dumb enough to send assassins into the throne room. Although a much more likely scenario would be if a civil war broke out and a small army kicked down the door to the throne room. I imagined a small army of clerics and paladins trying to take the queen down by sheer weight of numbers and then getting crushed by giant crystal swords. I admit I smiled a little at the thought.

“So, you said you were worse at it than your siblings," I said. “How so?”

“They can do much more with it," she said. “More swords or more wings or more complex shapes. Meanwhile, one sword and one wing is as much as I can handle. So, how about you? What are these techniques limned in white?”

I was about to answer her when Yume said:

“You should know, you've been using them all along.”

We all turned to stare at her.

“What do you mean?" Annabella asked and I started to think back to the suspicion I'd gotten last night. It would appear I hadn't been the only one who had thought of that.

“It took me until now to realize what you were doing because you referred to your powers as 'magic', but you haven't used magic once since we met," Yume said and Annabella frowned.

“I doubt there is a way to summon sapphire swords that doesn't involve magic," Annabella said.

“She's using Qi, isn't she?" I asked and Annabella looked between Yume and me.

“She is," Yume agreed. “It took me watching it a few times to realize what I was seeing.”

“Qi?" Annabella asked. “What is that?”

“In our language we'd call it 'life force'," I said. “It's the techniques you've been curious about. And apparently Yume thinks that you're not using magic. You're using life force to summon these swords.”

I looked over at Yume for confirmation and the fox girl nodded.

“Exactly. It didn't really make much sense. Magic would require you to draw in mana and summon an aura, but you're not doing that. When you summon forth your power it comes from within. It didn't make much sense to me because Qi cannot create permanent structures, but now that we're in the dungeon that gave your family this power I can finally comprehend what's happening. Annabella, your life force has been tainted by the crystal magic of the dungeon.”

Annabella's eyes widened.

“Normally living atop a dungeon just gives someone an affinity for a certain type of magic, but your family's connection with this dungeon runs so deep that its mana is interwoven with your life force. The elixir sea inside your body is filled with the dungeon's power. When you summon life force from within you, the dungeon's mana comes along with it.”

I smacked my forehead. “So that's why the royal family receives training from southern specialists," I said and Annabella's eyes went from Yume to me, then back to Yume as she said:

“Precisely. That was the missing piece of the puzzle. This land knows nothing of how to use life force but the southern realms do, so if the royal family needs their children to be trained in its use they need help from beyond their borders.”

“But the instructor my mother had hired for me never arrived," Annabella protested.

“Right," Yume said. “Which explains why your control of your powers is weaker than that of your siblings.” She paused, then said: “Let me rephrase that. Without prior instruction it should be impossible for you to sense Qi at all, let alone summon forth your own. You shouldn't be bad at this, you should be incapable of this. But you aren't. Which means that you, Annabella, are a prodigy. The kind of prodigy that only comes along once in a generation, who figured out how to summon forth Qi without being instructed in its use.”

Annabella was shaking her head. “No no no," she said. “All my siblings either pity me or make fun of me because I'm so helpless.”

“Are you sure the death of your instructor was truly an accident?" I finally asked. “Or did someone orchestrate it to deny you your teacher?”

Annabella's gaze snapped to me. “Why would anyone do that? I'm the last in line for the throne and I've told my siblings that I have no intention to get in the way of their struggle.”

“Maybe they realized your potential and tried to nip it in the bud," I said, then turned to Yume. “Do you think you could give her some pointers on Qi techniques?”

“Absolutely," the little fox said. “It's unfathomable that she managed to teach herself how to use it but still, her technique is horribly sloppy and inefficient. It's no wonder she tires herself out so quickly.”

Then she held out her hand and I saw the Qi streaming from her as she created the exact same sword shape in her hand that Annabella had created, except no crystal rushed in to fill the shape out. By the time she was finished she was breathing like a bellows. Still, she grabbed the sword and it held. Then she showed off the translucent white outline of a sword to Annabella.

“This is what your technique looks like when someone without your bloodline uses it. Insubstantial, but still incredibly sharp.”

Then she loosened her grip and the blade immediately vanished into motes of light. She held her hand out in front of her again and summoned the shape again, except this time about four times as fast and much less hazy and without any heavy breathing required.

“And this is what your technique could be like if you had a better idea of the theory behind it.”

“Would you..." Annabella said and her voice broke a little. “Would you be willing to teach me?”

Yume smiled and looked over at me. “I promised to teach his companions these techniques," she said. “And besides, the idea of creating a blade out of Qi is interesting, so I suppose we would learn together.”

I looked over to Alisha and Selene, who had both been strangely quiet all this time. Selene seemed to be deep in thought but Alisha was all but vibrating with excitement. I hoped she hadn't misunderstood what Yume had meant when she'd declared Annabella one of our companions.

**

We kept going afterwards, mindful that we had to rush to reach the next rest spot by nightfall since we'd spent so much time talking. It forced us to avoid some encounters but between Annabella's knowledge of the dungeon and Yume's illusion magic it was fairly easy to do. We noticed that her inconspicuousness spell even let us bypass the elite variants, as that spell didn't attack their warded minds but instead tricked their perfectly mundane senses.

We ended up reaching the second rest spot half an hour before nightfall and just barely had enough time to make a proper dinner and even then only because Selene and I helped Alisha as best we could while Yume walked Annabella through the use of Qi. From the excited sounds Annabella made while I chopped vegetables it was clearly working. Either that or she was about to orgasm. You know. One of the two.

I'd always found chopping vegetables to be a relaxing activity that was good for thinking. I wasn't a half-bad cook and used to cook for myself a lot before I met my gorgeous women but these days, with Alisha along, I was only just good enough to help with the chopping, except for the one or two dishes I could cook that Alisha approved of. So while chopping veggies for Alisha's stew I got to thinking.

The four mermen might have been a shock to someone who had only just gotten used to the easy encounters, but even so they hadn't been an issue and I doubt any one of us would have struggled against them, but soon enough things would ramp up. Even if a dozen of these mermen wouldn't trouble us, a trio of the elite variant certainly might, not to mention the boss or even the cultists. From comparing information with Syr I figured the cultists had a couple weeks' worth of a head start, so if worst came to worst we'd need to descend quite a bit to catch up with them, even if the dungeon was actively slowing them down. I was also pretty sure that, after beating the first boss, Annabella would want to head back to the palace to report that the intruders were most likely cultists, which would slow us down another day at least.

As Annabella explained to us the first true challenge would be the encounter on the bridge leading to the next island. If we could beat that we would be fine for most of the first floor. She also told us that, if we knew the way we'd manage to clear the floor within four islands and none of them were as big as the first one, so we'd be able to finish the floor within two more days. It meant that this floor was slightly smaller than some other dungeons I'd seen but hey, those other dungeons had only had the one floor. I wondered whether the first floor shrunk the moment a second was created.

**

After dinner Annabella seemed excited, more excited than I'd ever seen her, and Yume told us that she truly was a prodigy and would go far. She told us Annabella had understood the theory a bit better already and would soon be able to do use her abilities faster and for longer.

She'd already been a very powerful fighter but this would make her much stronger still.

Though it did make me wonder about who might have tried to keep her weak. It was very likely one of her siblings, but why would they do that? Annabella clearly had no intention of becoming queen, no interest in the throne, so there should be no reason for anyone to want her weak. But by the same logic, there were still people trying to have her assassinated even though she was no threat.

I did not fall into the trap of believing that the same party was responsible for both, though. It was an easy connection to make but there was no evidence for it. As far as I was concerned, there could be an unlimited number of people who were after her life. Noblemen trying to deal a discreet slight against the royal family, gods trying to punish the queen for her perceived hubris, maybe even the Holy Maiden. If she were messing with the dungeon it only stood to reason that she had an issue with the royal family. And if not then she would at least know that messing with the dungeon would draw the ire of the royal family.

Wait a minute.

How had the Holy Maiden known where to find the dungeon entrance? Knowing about the dungeon wouldn't be too shocking given that half the capital speculated about its existence but the entrance had been very well hidden. We'd gone through a hidden door in an abandoned crypt on the outskirts of the capital to even reach the catacombs that led to the entrance. There was no way she'd found that place by accident. She must have had someone show her the way.

I was suddenly more than a little apprehensive about going back to the royal palace.