Fresh Calamari

I was not fast enough. Later I thought about a dozen things that I could have or might have done, but in that moment the only thought I had was to block the spell with my body, and I simply couldn't make myself move that way. The spell that Artemis had endured with her increased resistance attributes crashed into the crowd of low-level, exhausted captives and the two nearest just stopped moving. Artemis moved to interfere with Glouach, and between her and Hannah they seemed to have the octopus busy, but he was still clearly capable of throwing an off-handed spell at the captives that I would be freeing.

"Get as far away from the fight as you can," I shouted, and cast the fire resistance spell once more.

I crawled through the disappearing fire, and hoped that this faerie coat would aid me for a few moments more, as I got to work on those pools that were still on this side of the room. I kept moving as I pulled off the grates on each of the pools, trying to lean on my staff to try to walk. My left foot just didn't bend right at all, it was painful, but I had adrenaline and shock flowing through my system once more, and so I could make myself move.

There were four grates on this side, two on the other and I got to the last one just as desperate people were letting out their dying gasps. I heard Artemis scream. Hannah yelled "No!" in her new, indomitable voice, and I turned to look.

Glouach was badly wounded, in fact he had Hannah's sword through where his heart would have been were he a human. But he had somehow then ripped it out of Hannah's hands even as it was still lodged in there, and had now managed to capture Artemis in the magical bubble once again. Hannah was attacking him with her gauntleted hands, but it was clear that in a fistfight Glouach had advantage in both reach and natural weapons, as black, hooked tentacles sought out Hannah's face and any flesh uncovered by plate, holding her off and piercing shallow, but hundreds of gouges in her slowly rotting skin.

"Fucking trolley problem bullshit," I said, "Clarence! If you're still conscious we could really fucking use your help." "Mr. Vorhal," I heard a weak, burned voice behind me. I turned to look and found that Clarence was back at the alchemy table that he'd used to light the fire together with Chum. He had scraped off all of the caustic substance that had left him scarred and disfigured, but he looked… Well, he looked like how I imagine I must have looked back in the fire elemental room. "Shit, goddamnit," I said, and I threw a healing potion his direction. Then, realizing how stupid I had been so far for limping around on my bad foot for the last two dozen seconds, I threw back my last one of my own. The pain in my foot immediately improved, and some of the bones and tendons snapped and knit together, but that just left me in the same dilemma that I was in the beginning.

I think I tried to tell myself that the three of us would have a good chance of saving the remaining captives, working together. There might be enough air. The water hadn't reached the grates that long ago. I cannot remember if I believed it.

I hit Glouach with the old icicle, straight into the body of his 'head'. It split apart in ink and ichor, but even that didn't seem like the weak-point that was fragile enough to actually put the monster down. The symbol previously etched onto it was now floating in air where it would have been if his 'head' had remained intact. Hell, did octopuses have weak-points? I guess maybe the head was the part closer to the neck and tentacles. I threw out more spells, but Gloach moved quickly grabbing Hannah and shielding his body with hers. One icicle missed the both of them from their movement, but another hit Hannah on the chestplate.

The plate deflected and redirected the cutting impact, but there was still a crash of kinetic energy that threw the both of them a few feet back. I was already running towards the fight, and now I was close enough. I stabbed the head of my staff into the floating bubble with Artemis inside, and she grabbed the staff, and I yanked her out of the crowd control spell. The fighting had taken a toll on her too, she was a little woozy and pale, and coughed up water as she turned to Glouach and sprinted to attack. I went on distracting him with as many icicles as I could throw, but still, all of that together was not enough.

I cast the communication spell, trying to focus on both Hannah and Artemis, probably succeeding, and I sent Push him in a corner. He was fighting back, and even with all the ichor and fluid gushing out of his wounds, he could fight back defensively well enough that no more hits were landing. Then too he was casting black magics, often enervating or lightly wounding one or both of his fighter enemies. He was restricted to low-ranking spells by the melee, but he could still cast.

So I sent to my friends when I'm at fifth syllable, jump back as far as you can and began casting the invisible wall just as Glouach was being driven into the corner. Screw interrogation, I thought I could maybe give ourselves a chance to kill the bastard. I envisioned the wall as follows: two five-foot walls on either side, boxing him in, one above, cutting off his escape. And I left enough space between each of the squares. And then I started conjuring the icicle over and over again, firing it through the murder-holes visible only to my eye. With my increased Arcana attribute the barrier spell lasted for about half a minute. By the time it was done, the inside of the trap was an icy chowder with cloth and arcane tools mixed in.

The last fires went out. Clarence had crawled towards the last remaining pool, still badly injured even with the healing potion. He had managed to pry more than half of the iron bars off the wooden floor by the time that there was no one left to save underneath. He had kept going, of course. Then he had tried CPR on the people he thought might have a hope. No one among them woke up. Of the 32 people we had come here to rescue, 24 were still alive. That was sort of like a victory, right?

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I found that I hated finishing fights in a state where I could still think. All the times before I had been debilitated by pain, exhausted, terrified, delirious or some combination of the above, and I could simply retreat into my temporary madness. As I stood in that room among the blood and the bodies, it made me sick. I had come up with a plan, executed it with conviction, and improvised successfully with each challenge that came up, and eight people were dead. I just wanted to find a corner and hide until all the people stuff was sorted by the others. I was about to do that, when I heard Artemis take a couple of deep breaths and saw her stand up tall.

"Alright, everyone, listen up! If you don't have a healing ability, please come to talk to me. If you do have one, make sure that you are in the right state to start recovering. If you don't have a healing ability and cannot move, please call out now or raise your hand," she said, her voice loud and firm above the confused babble of the classroom. I cleared my throat, and my voice didn't break when I said, "I will go over the bodies, see if anyone has a pulse or something. Can I get one of your healing potions just in case?" I didn't think I would find anybody, but I wanted to help. With a little help from my friends, I realized that I wanted to help more than I wanted to disappear into a dark hole and never speak to anyone ever again.

Artemis started her triage- most of the people did have healing abilities; mostly the novice one. It had been over thirty hours in here, and a bunch of people still hadn't even gotten a class. Damn it, Chum had been right. Chum, fuck, that's right. I only wasn't freaking out because I knew that he would be back where he came from now. His death would never be permanent in the Tower. Even so, he had died protecting us; giving us a chance, and I remembered with certainty that he had dropped something. I still went over the bodies of the people I had chosen to leave behind to help my friends, but Clarence told me that he had made absolutely certain. He had first aid training and I didn't so instead I went over to where Chum had fallen and looked for what he'd dropped. I found a business card on the ground.

It was really nice- black paper, gold ink, a demonic symbol where the logo of a business would be on a normal card. When I picked it up it was almost uncomfortably warm to the touch, it wasn't cooling and it said:

Chum, Senior familiar of the Demonic Relations Division of Hell For priority summoning, conjure by the following True Name:

That was followed by a series of strange symbols and runes, that did nonetheless transmit to my brain a word that I knew I could pronounce, but never put into writing. That was nice. He must have enjoyed working with me well enough to want to work with me again. I just had to find a demon summoning spell, and I could get back in touch with him, probably resume the contract. Or maybe I should avoid interacting with demons in the future. Chum had been nice enough, but he had also regularly tried to tempt me with the demonologist class and infernal knowledge at terrible cost.

I laughed. Hannah raised an eyebrow at me. "Sorry, just went through a dumb train of thought and nearly called Chum seductive in my head," I said. She laughed too, though for her it was clearly an act of intention. She wasn't becoming more monotonous or unfeeling, but seeing it not change for many hours after what she'd gone through was kind of disturbing. Which, of course, I would never tell her.

After feeding a healing potion to one particularly badly injured older lady, even Artemis looked like she had nothing more to do and finally said to the group: "Rest up, check your journals, and we'll get going to a safe space. It is a couple of hours of walk, so make sure you're well rested." "Ten of you should take the weapons of the fish-men. It's gotten dangerous outside," I said.

And then I went to look at my own journal.

Log: Quest "Rescue the Captives"(Auto-generated) completed: Experience to level 7: 750/750. Level up! Experience to level 8: 250/1000 Glouach the Discarded defeated Experience to level 7: 550/750 Deep Ones defeated x 10: Experience to level 7: 385/750 Stealth skill increased to level 3 Deception skill increased to level 1 Spellcasting skill increased to level 5, Human special ability disabled for Spellcasting New spell learned: Message(Telepathy)

Level Up! 1 Attribute point available 1 Title Ability available

I put another point into my Arcana, and went through the experience of my mind expanding in a strange, sideways direction as before. All but two attribute points in my Mind capacity were now maxed out, and I only had to level up two more times and defeat the bone gremlin to get my wizard class. It kind of seemed trite at this point. Surely, the bone gremlin wouldn't cause me anywhere near as much trouble as Glouach and Kalax? But things changed in the dungeon, I still had a 50% chance to freeze when I next saw the monster and, of course, with all my focus on my mind attributes I wasn't any more tough or physically stronger than I had been when I first came into the dungeon.

I checked my abilities.

Abilities Odd level reached, Title 'Helpful' Ability choice available:

Party Up: Designate up to 5 people to be in a party with you. While partied up you can use the Contacts section of this Journal to send them messages. You know which direction to go to find your party members, so long as they are on the same plane of existence of you, and there is a possible path to them.

Support Caster 2: Gain another support spell scroll

Assistant: When adventuring with an Organizer or Politician type of class, you boost all of their abilities. Specific descriptions of your aid will appear in the description of their abilities.

This was a no-brainer. Sure, I still needed more spells, but I knew that Glouach must have had some hidden away, and I still had two levels to find them. Sure, helping out Artemis would be useful, but I knew that she wouldn't be adventuring out with us full-time. In fact, she had all but said that she would take the rest of the people back to the safe room, and continue organizing the guild. The Party skill could be absolutely invaluable. Information transfer on its own would be huge, but knowing which direction my friends would be in any given moment would be even better. I picked it without hesitation.

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