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  [colpse]Chapter Eighty-Three - There's No Sense g Over Every Mistake

  I woke up to find Amaryllis hunched over me, her faearly pressed up to mine. “Hey,” I said. “Um. I fot to think of any cool final words. Sorry?”

  Amaryllis’ lower lip wobbled, her eyes got teary, then she gred at me. “You idiot. You moron, you half witted, cretinous dolt!” She started to jab the not-pokey side of a talon into my ribs. “Imbecile, dulrd, simpleton! Moron!”

  “You used that one already,” I pointed out. “Also, oww!”

  Amaryllis pulled her talon back, sniffed wetly, then gred even harder. “I’m charging you for those potions I used.”

  I blinked. I did feel pretty... normal. Except for my ribs, those kind of hurt. “I’m not going to die?” I asked.

  Aeared on my other side. “Ah... awa,” was all she said before she crashed onto me and buried her fa my chest. “I thought, I thought you died!” she cried.

  “Ah, hey hey,” I said as I patted the back of her head. “It’s okay. I’m fine.”

  “You nearly weren’t,” Amaryllis said. “You bled a lot. I’m quite certain humans need most of their blood to stay in their bodies.”

  “You’d think that,” I said. “Is Moon Moon okay?”

  “Yes yes,” Moon Moon said. I tilted my head back to see the droll sittio the device at the end of the corridor. “It’s good you’re not dead.”

  He bent forwards, pulled up a... hand mirror, then started to growl and show his teeth at it.

  I decided that roblem for ter.

  “I agree, being alive is nice,” I said. I wiggled my toes, shifted my hips, and moved all of my fingers. Everything was iill. My armour felt a little wet here and there, and sticky, but I could take care of that with some ing magi no time. My bigger problem was Awen. “Hey, sweetie, you’re, uh, heavy?”

  Awen lifted her head and I had to hold back a wince. She could have used a spot of ing magic too. Her eyes were all puffy and her hair was a tangled mess. “Sorry,” she whispered.

  I pulled her back down into a big hug. “It’s okay. I’m fine. But I’m gd you were worried for me,” I said.

  Awen sniffed and tucked into the hug, but as with all things it had to eually.

  Amaryllis helped me to my feet and I took a moment to look around. There was a long red-brown stain running across the ground from the area with the gss spikes all the way to where I was standing now. It was... a lot of blood. Amaryllis was right with that.

  I licked my lips and turned away from that, instead fog on my armour. There were some ears in it, and a loonie-sized hole around the abdomen that let a bit of cold air in to tickle my tummy. I tsked and fired a strong burst of ing magic that turned my not-so-pretty-now dress back to its inal sky blue.

  “We’re buying you heavier armour if you io go around injuring yourself like that again,” Amaryllis said.

  “Ah, I didn’t mean to,” I said. “I just got caught off guard.”

  She huffed a ‘I don’t like it’ huff. “The moment we’re out of this dungeon we’re starting you on a training regimen. You too Awen. I’ll whip both of you.”

  “You mean you’ll whip us into shape?”

  “I meant what I said,” the harpy decred.

  “R-right,” I said. I noticed a couple of notifications from Mister Menu waiting for my attention, so I let them open up to see what was going on.

  gratutions! You have ruptured Gss Horror, level 7. Due to bating as a team your reward is reduced!

  gratutions! Through repeated as your Makeshift ons Proficy skill has improved and is now eligible for rank up!Rank D is a free rank!

  “Oh hey, my on proficy made it to rank D!” I said.

  “And it only cost you a few pints of blood,” Amaryllis said. She shook her head. “Awen, could you get the door open at the end? We should move on out of here.”

  “Awa, ye-yes,” Awen said. She rushed over to the st devi the zig-zagging room and, after setting her big spectacles onto her arted to fiddle with the rings trolling it.

  “You didn’t level up?” Amaryllis asked.

  “Nope,” I said. “It doesn’t... feel like I’m close yet either.”

  “Hmph,” Amaryllis said. “I think I’m nearly past my own. Just a little nudge and I should hit level ten.”

  “Cool!” I said. “I ’t wait to see how that works.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s nothing spectacur, I assure you.”

  “Awa, I got it!” Awen said. She had one hand up, holding her gsses in pce as she waved towards the end of the final corridor.

  A door was recessed at the end, big and bulky, the kind of thing you couldn’t just blow past. Above it were three gems that began to glow as Awehe mae to aim beams of light at them.

  The door shifted, a thin cloud of dust p off of it a moment before it started to swing ponderously open to reveal the ravine we had entered from.

  I stared, then tried to figure out a mental map of the dungeon. The room wasn’t nearly zig-zaggy enough for it to loop back around to the ravine. What’s more, we were lower down than the floor we had entered from.

  “Dungeons are weird,” I said.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Amaryllis said.

  We all gathered our stuff in a hurry. I found my backpack, and e, around the st bend and my spade, which I noticed was a bit ed now, was ying off to one side as though fotten. The poor thing was taking a beating.

  We moved onto the ptform just beyond the door, then paused. “That was something,” I said.

  “It was,” Amaryllis agreed. “The floor isn’t as physically taxing, acc to what we read.”

  “I will not go there,” Moon Moon said.

  We all turo the droll who stood behind us, mirror in hand. “That room is very bad. Lots of droll were lost there.”

  “How e?” I asked.

  “There are drolls there who look like us, but are mean,” he said. Then he poio the mirror. “Like the one in this.”

  I stared at the mirror, then looked to Amaryllis for an expnation.

  “That was dropped by the gss horror. It’s niough. No entments that I’d find useful, Awe want it, and you’d just use it as a poor on. So Moon Moon got it.”

  “But it’s just a mirror?” I asked.

  “Yes,” She said.

  Moon Moon tur so that I was staring at myself, then he flipped it around and his hackles raised aarted growling. “The other droll is back.”

  “Maybe keeping you out of a pce with mirror traps is for the best,” I said.

  Moon Moohe mirror aside, scratched behind one ear, then nodded. “Yes yes. I will go wait outside for when you’re done?”

  Losing Moon Moon wasn’t nice. He was a good k of hting power, but if he didn’t want to go on, and if going on was a legitimate danger for him, I couldly make him e with us.

  “That would be great,” I said. “Do drolls like hugs?” I asked.

  Moon Moon tilted his head to the side. “Yes?” he tried.

  I glomped him close. “Good! Then we’ll see you in a bit, okay?”

  He licked the side of my face which... was a little disgusting. “Yes! You are a very nice person. Please don’t die. You too, chi girl and moist girl.”

  The air around Amaryllis sparked and Awen ‘awa’d most mightily as Moon Moon waved them off and scampered bato the tunnel.

  I waved at his departing back, then turned back towards the ravine. “Onwards, then!” I said.

  “I would have thought you would be a little hesitant, after what just happeo you,” Amaryllis said.

  I shrugged. “I don’t let little things like nearly dyi me down. And besides, I’m better now thanks to yht? That spell you used in the end was awesome, by the way.”

  “It was taxing is what it was. If you weren’t such a moron I wouldn’t have o exhaust myself for you.”

  I ughed as I brought my spade down on the empty air before me until it clicked on the gss of the bridge.

  I bounced a few times on the gss to make sure it could take my weight, then with my spade ahead of me like a blind person’s walking stick, I guided my friends across the chasm.

  Some of the terror of walking over nothing across a hundred foot drop into ing waters had faded. Some. Awen walked by my side, and she very timidly poked my hand with hers until I held on as we crossed.

  The door for the sed floor room was simir to the first, a rge round sb of thick gss with a brass meism over it to keep it locked shut. We all sort of stood before it for a moment before I stepped up and spun the wheel. “This one is supposed to be mentally tricky, right?” I asked.

  “That’s what the pendium said,” Amaryllis replied. She stood with her dagger clutched by her side and her weight shifting from foot to foot.

  “Well, let’s see what we have in store.”

  The sed floor was one long room. I could see a door at the far end just waiting to be opened, and stretg towards that door was a meter-wide stone bridge that spahe entire distance from the entran.

  I stepped forwards and looked over the edge of the bridge and into a sea of gss spikes some dozeers below. A fall down there would be fatal.

  “No monsters?” Amaryllis wondered aloud as she stepped in behind me. Awen was , and she eyed the room with dread and suspi.

  “hat I see,” I said.

  Something ked and we all froze.

  Then, all along the sides of the room, mirrors lowered themselves until they hung a meter or so off the side of the bridge, eae held up by a plex brass assembly. They thunked into pce, oer another until the bridge was lined with mirrors every few steps all the to the door.

  “Okay,” I said. “It's a bit weird, but okay.”

  Amaryllis walked up slowly, then looked into the mirror. I saw her eyes darting around, then widening. “Mom?” she whispered before taking a step towards the mirror, then another.

  I grabbed her colr and yoinked her back.

  She filed, wings spiralling for a bit before she calmed down. “Damn,” she said.

  “You okay?”

  “I saw... nevermind. It showed me something I want. More than that, there’s got to be some sort of effe pce to pull you in. It’s subtle magic.” She huffed. “I hate metaphysical aspects.”

  “I’m going to look, pull me back if I try something stupid?”

  “If I had to pull you back everytime you did something stupid I would do nothing but drag you around all day,” she said.

  I ughed and walked to the middle of the bridge then stared into the mirror. It was me. Me with a er, patched up dress, with Amaryllis and Awen and e. And I was happy, and with friends.

  I smiled at me in the mirror, and she smiled back. So I waved before looking bay real friends. “Doesn't seem that bad,” I said.

  Amaryllis huffed. “It must require a certain level of intellect to work.”

  “, I try?” Awen asked.

  “Sure,” I said. It was actually sort of fun.

  Awen stepped up o me, then looked into the mirror. She gasped. The girl took oep forwards, and I grabbed her shoulder.

  “Awen?”

  She brushed me off and started walking. I tugged her back, and her polite shoves turned into desperate g in moments. “No! Let me go! I, you o let me go!” she yelled as she spun and kicked and pushed towards the mirror.

  I tackled her to the ground, too close to the edge for my liking, and pinned her down. “No. Awen, Awen!” I snapped.

  The girl looked up to me, sobbing. “Let me go! Please!”