Aster Loka
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Chapter 66
🕑 Added 2022-01-31 19:39:02 +0000 UTC"A treasure? Where?"
Levi gestured uncertainly around at the dungeon. "Somewhere." He started searching the walls and floors, looking for any flaw or crack that might conceal a hidden treasure. From their first few, he'd learned how very difficult they were to find unless you were looking straight at them.
It took hours to search the dungeon and each side detour as thoroughly as he wanted, but he persisted relentlessly. He wasn't going to give up on it.
"Cen, Centoo, check the ceiling."
They returned without finding anything, but he knew something was here. He could feel it.
He needed Flomper.
He checked, and they’d been wandering the dungeon for long enough that the Revive cooldown was nearly over. Another few minutes.
Levi wandered back into the empty boss room, stalagmites of ice speared up in haphazard fashion, results of whatever grand fight had taken place here, then into the final treasure room. He didn't think it was here, but... something felt off. He went back into the boss room, then into the treasure room, then back again.
Something here...
He stood in the doorway and looked up, the narrow slit between door and the wall taunting him. Inaccessible.
"Cen, Centoo, I need you both." They hurried over at once. "I need to reach up in there, give me a boost up."
They spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to best form themselves into a stair equivalent, and Levi climbed up onto their backs carefully, his balance precarious at first until he got used to the unstable footing.
"A bit higher..." He reached into the crack, feeling around in the darkness for any sign of what he sought. Anything not normal.
There! A faint lump, jagged instead of ice-smooth. He clawed at it, but it was embedded in the ice and didn't want to budge. He needed heat.
No one on his team had any fire abilities, so he grimaced and placed his hand against it to let his body heat do the slow work of loosening it from where it was embedded. His hand grew chilled, and he switched to the other, breathing on his cold palm to warm it back up. It took almost ten minutes before he'd melted enough of the ice to wiggle the object free. It slipped from his numb grip, bounced off Cen's head, and flopped damply to the floor. Levi jumped down and snatched it up.
Yes, it was another treasure map. The melting ice had dampened the outer layers, while the interior remained frozen. He took it into the treasure room to gently unroll it on the table, pausing frequently to let it thaw out without cracking, though the delay made him fidget impatiently.
Finally, he managed to finish opening out the page. As was becoming familiar habit, he mentally lined up the colored dots on the page with his mental map of US dungeons. This one pointed to a location where he remembered no such thing existing, a purple spot in a large gap between nearby dungeons.
Another of those that had been destroyed in the first timeline, then.
Satisfied that they'd claimed everything the dungeon had to offer, rolled up the map and tucked it away, then waited a few minutes longer until his cooldown ended and he could revive Flomper. Her body slowly reconstituted around the half-melted bones he'd salvaged, the spell taking much longer than the reassembly of Cen. Levi felt intuitively certain that if anything disrupted the process before it could complete, he'd have to wait another day before trying again. Don't try major revivals in combat, got it.
Once the repairs were completed, Flomper jumped up, looking around her frantically, then squinted up at Levi with suspicion.
"Gordon's fine. He's back that way."
Flomper offered no gratitude but immediately scampering off toward the entrance where they’d left Gordon. Levi followed, Cen, Centoo, and Skarm joining him.
Gordon was playing with his new Frost Spider, having it run around to test its speed and breath attack, while Flomper had resumed her standard perch on Gordon's shoulder. She watched the proceedings with her paws crossed and a scowl on her furry face.
"Someone looks unhappy," Levi teased. "Eh, Flomper?"
Gordon shrugged, almost toppling Flomper and causing her to flail to recover her balance. "She's just not used to sharing attention yet. She'll be fine once she gets used to her new sister. Frosty, come on over here."
“And you make fun of my minion names?”
“Frosty, the spider, is a very spiky girl!” Gordon sang out, with a deep laugh as Frosty jumped up on his arm. He— no, she (Gordon, why…)— clung to the bottom of it, poking her many-eyed face out to peer up at Flomper distrustfully. Flomper, for her part, looked anywhere but down at the new acquisition and maintained her stiff ‘not worth noticing you’ pose.
“Is it normal for minions to initially hate each other, or is this a sign of some deep psychological problems we’re hiding?” Gordon asked, staring down at Frosty.
“I think it’s normal. An adjustment period until things settle— Skarm!”
Skarm had urged Centoo over next to Gordon, and was poking at the giant spider hanging from Gordon's arm. Frosty skittered around, then spat a mouthful of webbing into Skarm’s face before Levi could intervene, following it up with a gust of frost breath.
Unlike most spiders, Frost Spiders didn't spin webs in any traditional way, but spat them in small sticky segments. Levi wasn't sure it would be effective in any normal environment, but it certainly knocked Skarm off balance. He nearly toppled off Centoo, the centipede’s quick adjustment the only reason he was able to keep his perch.
Dungeon creatures weren't things that had to fight their way up a food chain to survive. They appeared, fully grown and ready to fight, without any process to weed out the weaker or less effective ones.
“Frosty! These are friends,” Gordon scolded. “Don’t do that. Even if the gremlin was trying to pick a fight, you have to be the better spider and stay out of it.”
“And that goes for you too,” Levi told Skarm firmly.
The gremlin turned to him, clawing at the webbing on his face, sputtering indignantly.
“You can be curious without poking. And your claws are sharp, you could hurt someone.”
Skarm huffed something under his breath, still struggling to de-web his face. Now he’d managed to get one of his hands stuck as well.
Frosty swayed back and forth from her perch beneath Gordon’s arm, looking about as smug and self-satisfied as a spider could.
Levi shook his head at them and helped Skarm slip free of the entangling web. "You know we're all on the same team, right?"
Skarm squeaked indignantly and pointed at Frosty.
"I know you think she started it, but you do tend to poke people a lot. I don't mind it, but if Frosty retaliates you can hardly blame her."
Skarm crossed his arms, rubbing the last of the webbing off against his shoulder, and not meeting either Levi's or Frosty's gazes.
Frosty continued to sway back and forth on the underside of Gordon's arm, looking quite pleased with herself.
"That goes for you too," Gordon reprimanded. "And you need to get down, my arm is getting tired."
