Pocket Dungeon 3, page 5
Elaene looked like she was curling in on herself, like the weight of whatever it was she’d just been through was too much.
This was far different from my first interaction with Yasha, or even Iris, and both of their respective badass attitudes.
“Are you alright?” I asked Elaene. I kept a healthy distance from the mysterious woman, even as I tried to comfort her. She might have been distraught, but that didn’t make her inherently safe or friendly.
Elaene looked up at me again, and her already beautiful eyes had changed colors as she cried. They were no longer the gorgeous green-gray they’d been before, but the color of a piece of green sea glass, and I had the strange notion that if I looked into them long enough, I’d be able to see myself reflected back in her gaze.
For a moment, I was terrified she would start sobbing all over again and we’d be back to square one right away. Instead, however, the strange woman just sniffled and continued to stare at me, like she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking at.
That made two of us.
I shifted from foot to foot and adjusted my stance, and as I did so, I became incredibly aware of just how much armor I was still wearing. While it wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, it also was far from the most comfortable getup in the entire world. And maybe being interrogated by two fully armed people wasn’t the most relaxing thing in the entire world.
“I’m going to take my armor off now,” I said to Elaene. “And my weapons. I’m not going to hurt you.”
To my surprise, Elaene gave a slight, nearly imperceptible nod of her head to indicate she’d heard me.
Okay, baby steps.
I took a few small paces backward and away from the woman toward the lockers mounted on the wall.
“Should I?” Yasha asked and gestured to her own weapons and armor.
“Uh,” I hesitated for a second. “Not yet. The weapons at least, but…”
But I wasn’t sure if Yasha should entirely strip naked in front of this clearly fragile woman. I had no idea what would set her off, or why any of this was setting her off in the first place, so it definitely seemed like the time to walk on eggshells if anything.
Yasha seemed to understand where I was coming from, because the fox-woman nodded.
The two of us carefully began to place all our weapons and armor back in our respective lockers while keeping an eye on Elaene. Despite the fact I’d been missing Mimic earlier, I was glad the chest mimic wasn’t here now. I had a feeling he would just exacerbate the already fragile situation.
Once I’d stripped out of all the armor and replaced it in the locker alongside my plethora of weapons, I turned back to Elaene once more.
The mermaid-ish woman was watching the two of us with wide, curious eyes. I felt like she was able to see straight through me, and I wasn’t sure how it made me feel.
I held my hands out in front of me to signal that I came in peace as I took a few steps back in her direction.
She shifted ever so slightly on the table, but it didn’t seem like she was uncomfortable with my presence. Okay, that was definitely better than nothing, right?
I came to a halt a yard or so away from the soaking wet, dark-haired woman.
“Are you alright?” I tried again. “You’re still dripping blood.”
I gestured down to where her feet dangled off the table, and Elaene looked down toward them, as if she also realized she was still bleeding for the first time.
She shifted backward on the table and pulled one of her slender legs up toward her. While they weren’t covered in the same scales her lower body had been patterned with while she had a tail, her legs still glimmered and glittered under the soft light of the chandelier above her head.
She gently began to run the pads of her fingers over her foot with an inquisitive look on her face, like she couldn’t quite believe that she’d stepped on a lot of fucking shattered glass.
“Hey, don’t,” I said quickly. I dropped down onto one knee without thinking and gently pulled her foot out of her grasp. I carefully braced one of my hands on the back of her ankle so I could tilt the sole of her foot up toward my face.
Instead of pulling away, Elaene went still for a moment, and I felt her intense gaze boring into me. But she wasn’t panicking, or kicking me, or telling me to fuck off, so I figured this was alright.
“I can’t believe you tried to keep walking,” I murmured conversationally. “This looks awful.”
And it did. Her foot looked painfully similar to raw meat, with the sheer amount of glass shards sticking out of the clearly delicate sole of her foot. There was enough blood to almost make it look like she was wearing a sock, and when paired with the glass itself, it was a slightly nauseating sight.
“I’m alright,” Elaene said.
For a moment, I thought I must have imagined her words, but when I glanced up, I saw her staring down at me through her thick, dark lashes, as if she was awaiting a response.
Her voice was still watery with tears, and it was as soft as a whisper, but at the same time, there was still a beautiful, musical quality to it that made me want to do nothing more than listen to her read the damn phone book.
“You are not alright,” Yasha said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You are hurt.”
“She has a point,” I said. “I need to get this glass out. It’s probably not going to feel great, but it has to be done.”
For a few long, dragging seconds, Elaene didn’t respond, but finally, she nodded her head.
“Alright,” she said.
I let out a sigh of relief and began the slow, careful process of picking out the larger chunks of glass from the delicate skin of her foot. It was precise work that would have been made easier with a pair of tweezers, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and impromptu podiatrists sometimes had to use their fingers. Apparently.
The first sliver of glass was the length of my pinkie finger, and it had sliced a nauseating distance up into her foot. It felt as if there was no end to the shard as I just kept pulling to remove it. It was red and slick with blood, and I set it up on the table next to Elaene once it was removed.
“Oh,” the mermaid-ish woman said softly, like she hadn’t quite believed her foot was that injured in the first place.
“Yeah,” I said. “The entire thing looks like it’s full of pieces that big. Sorry if this hurts, but I don’t want it to get worse if we leave it.”
“Why did you begin to cry?” Yasha asked. It wasn’t exactly tactful, but then again, tact had never really been one of the fox-woman’s many, many skills.
Thankfully, Elaene didn’t seem too put off by the brusqueness.
She shifted slightly on the edge of the table, and I could feel the hesitancy as it thrummed through her body while I continued tending to her foot.
Finally, however, she spoke.
“I do not remember the last time someone was kind to me without having to be kind,” Elaene finally said. “It overwhelmed me.”
“I see,” Yasha said. “Wes is very kind and noble, it is a part of who he is. Though your reaction is sensical, he is certainly one of a kind, in my opinion.”
Elaene looked down at me, and even though my gaze was focused on her foot and the task at hand, I could still feel her sea glass eyes boring into me with an intensity that felt like it had a physical weight.
“That is a rare quality,” she finally said.
“Shouldn’t be,” I added as I pulled out another lengthy shard and set it atop the table with the other.
“But that does not change the fact that it is,” Yasha said. “You are noble, Wes.”
“Noble or not,” I said. “I couldn’t just let you walk around with broken glass in your feet. Or stay in that tank.”
As soon as the word “tank” was out of my mouth, the energy in the room seemed to shift, and just as it felt like we were finally getting Elaene to open up, the woman seemed to close off again.
Her entire posture went tight and rigid, and she turned her face down to look at her knees. Her waterlogged hair dropped down around her face like a curtain and temporarily hid her expression from view.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” I said carefully as I extracted another bit of glass. “If you don’t want to. But… you weren’t supposed to be a part of the dungeon, were you.”
It wasn’t a question, because even though I’d been harboring some lingering skepticism over the whole thing, I knew in my gut I’d been right the first time. Whatever was going on with Elaene wasn’t a part of the dungeon. In all my time going into dungeons, I’d never encountered something that the Pauldrons of Wisdom treated like a void. Even the most basic of things were still illuminated in one of the three colors, so to find something the Pauldrons disregarded entirely was jarring at best, and downright nefarious at worst.
Elaene swallowed thickly and planted her palms down at her sides. Her slender fingers curled around the edge of the extravagant table so tightly her already pale knuckles went white.
“No,” she finally said. “I was not intended to be a puzzle in the dungeon.”
“So… what happened, then?” Yasha asked, and I sent her a quick look. “Of course, as Wes said, you don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to, but clearly something happened, otherwise you wouldn’t have been in… such a state.”
Despite her bluntness, I could tell the fox-woman had been about to say ‘in that tank,’ but I was glad she’d reconsidered. I figured maybe reminding Elaene again of the clearly life-threatening situation we’d only just barely gotten her out of wasn’t the best idea.
The dripping wet woman let out a slow breath and nodded.
“I was placed there a short time before the two of you appeared,” she said. “And I was meant to die there.”
I’d just lowered her newly glass-free foot and reached for the other when she spoke. Her words caused me to freeze, and I looked up at the strange woman on the table, like if I saw her face, maybe I could find some other meaning in her words.
But when Elaene met my eyes, I was overwhelmed with the truth. She’d meant just what she’d said. Someone had put her in that tank to die.
I was at a loss for words, and when I opened and closed my mouth to try and find something to say, the only word I could come up with was “why?”
Elaene shifted slightly on the table as she offered me her second foot.
“It is a long story,” she said after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence.
“We have time,” Yasha said. “The clock is not ticking in here.”
Elaene looked up at Yasha, and the two inhuman women stared one another down for a few seconds before some sort of silent agreement seemed to pass between them.
I had no idea what agreement it was, but I had a feeling it was something along the lines of “this human guy is alright.” Or at least I hoped it was.
“Then I will start from the beginning,” Elaene said. “Six months ago, I was in a level three dungeon. I had only just started venturing into my crystal, and I was not fully aware of what sort of things to expect inside.”
She paused for a few seconds, as if she needed to gather herself, and I figured it would be a good time to ask her a question to give her a little more time before she had to continue.
“Are crystals a part of your culture?” I asked. “Like, they aren’t a part of the culture in my world, but in Yasha’s, they’re a big deal.”
Elaene gave me a small, grateful smile.
“They are not,” she said. “They are known about, of course, and the knowledge of the crystals is passed down from generation to generation, but they are quite rare. They are… family heirlooms, and it is uncommon to have one remain usable.”
“What do you mean?” I asked as I extracted another chunk of glass from her foot and set it down in the pile with all the other pieces. “I’ve never heard of a crystal becoming unusable.”
“It is common in Atlantis for crystals to become damaged, as they are passed down in families and often forgotten and left unattended to the elements. Over time, the crystal begins to corrode and become dangerous to use. The pathway inside becomes unstable, and it is not unheard of for someone to become permanently injured if they use an unstable crystal.”
Okay.
So.
Everything Elaene said was fascinating. And had she not just dropped a bombshell, I might have had a few more relevant questions, but my mind stuck on one thing in particular.
Atlantis?
My brain buffered for what felt like a full fifteen seconds before I could form words again.
“Wait,” I said and held up one hand. “Did you just say ‘Atlantis’, as in the lost city of Atlantis?”
Elaene’s dark brow furrowed.
“It is not lost,” she said. “I know exactly where it is.”
A slightly manic laugh burst from my chest.
“Holy shit.” I rocked back on my heels and dropped her foot for a moment as I reeled with the casual mention of one of Earth’s biggest fucking myths.
The lost city of Atlantis was apparently real, and not only that, I was speaking with an Atlantean.
This was so normal and fine, and I wasn’t about to lose my mind.
Even though this was some Indiana Jones shit, and I had no idea how to react in a way that wasn’t just freaking the fuck out.
“Are you alright, Wes?” Yasha asked. The fox-woman moved closer to me to rest her hand on my shoulder. Her golden eyes narrowed in concern, and her tail twitched, like maybe Elaene had said something wrong to make me act like this.
“I’m fine,” I said quickly to brush off any concern. “I’m fine. Just… taken aback. Atlantis is sort of a big thing here. Like a fairytale. I had no idea it was a real place.”
“Of course it is a real place,” Elaene said. “It is my home. I assume I am not the first Atlantean to interact with someone of your world before, and so the story of our people has spread to yours.”
It made sense, in the same way that everything else with the crystals made sense, but I still felt like I was having a stroke.
“Right,” I said in a daze. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, this is just… a lot to process.”
“It is alright,” Elaene assured me. “But, yes, I am Atlantean, and while we Atlanteans know of the crystals, they are a bedtime story, much the same as my world is to your people. Once, they were in every household, and they are how my people acquired a vast wealth to build our kingdoms, but they are not commonplace any longer, and finding one that is able to be used is rarer still.”
“But your family had one,” I said as I tried to get her story back on track. “Right? That’s how you entered.”
“Yes,” she said. “It had belonged to my grandmother, and when she passed, it was given to me. No one knew it was still able to be used, as to everyone else in my life, the crystal seemed as dull and plain as any other stone. But in my hands, it seemed to come to life.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “It sounds similar to how I came across my own crystal. It was like it chose me.”
“Yes,” Elaene said. “That is what it felt like.”
She reached up to wipe at her eyes, and I noticed they’d shifted back from the vibrant, arresting sea glass green shade to the hypnotic green-gray of the ocean before a storm. The Atlantean woman had stopped crying, but she still seemed a little on edge.
It wasn’t like I could blame her. This was objectively a weird situation for everyone involved.
“Your third dungeon,” Yasha said. “That is where you were?”
“Yes, yes. I had ventured into the dungeons for a third time,” Elaene picked her story back up once more. “I did not expect anything strange, other than what the dungeons had to offer me. But I quickly found I was not alone in the dungeons like I’d first assumed.”
“You met someone in the dungeons, then?” I asked.
I’d finished taking all of the glass pieces out of her feet, and the pile next to the Atlantean on the table was far larger than I’d anticipated. I had no idea how she’d managed to stand after stepping on that much glass, or how she sat still as I pulled all the pieces out. If I had to place bets, I’d say it was the adrenaline, and when she inevitably came crashing down soon, the pain would hit. Her feet would definitely need more care than I was able to give her inside of the equipment room, but that felt like a bridge we’d have to cross later, considering I still had no idea if she’d even want to leave the dungeon with us in the first place.
“No,” Elaene said. Her voice grew a little quieter and a little more strained. She swallowed thickly once again and took a long, deep breath. “I did not realize I was not alone until it was too late.”
“What happened?” Yasha asked.
“I was taken,” Elaene said simply. “One moment, I was collecting a chest after having slain a monster, and the next, I encountered a different sort of monster altogether. The man came up from behind me and rendered me unconscious with a blow to the back of the head. When I woke, I was no longer in the dungeon, and I was no longer in Atlantis.”
“You were kidnapped out of the dungeon?” I tried to process her words, but the situation was almost too terrifying to consider.
My women and I had run into foes in the dungeons before, but to get kidnapped out of one? It was never even something I’d considered.
Elaene studied her hands and brought them to rest in her lap.
“Yes,” she finally said. “I was stolen from my dungeon, and I was brought to your world. Earth, yes?”
Now I was even more taken aback. My mind began to whir as I took in everything Elaene had said, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this had anything to do with William Harper. As far as I knew, Harper’s prerogative in the dungeons wasn’t to kidnap random women, but to send people in to earn riches for him. But maybe this was a new part of it I hadn’t been aware of.
Or, maybe there were just more monsters in the real world than I wanted to consider.
“Yeah,” I managed to choke out the word. “Earth. I’m from Earth.”
