Chapter 40.2

As promised, here is chapter 40, part 2.  It should have released on Monday, 12am CST.  (If you are a VIP, ignore this.  You've read it already.)  Again, sorry to everyone else, but you did vote for this.  I can't think of a better way to maintain a set schedule.

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The three of us burst through the door at practically the same moment, a cloud of dust at our heels.  The wooden portal slammed shut the instant we were through, and the raucous catastrophe that had been chasing us for what felt like hours was finally replaced by a silence as complete as the grave.

Or… it would have been.

We were all gasping and wheezing for air so desperately, you would have thought a trio of bagpipers were warming up.

I could not speak for the other two—thankfully—but for myself, I was so physically exhausted, the urge to dry heave had taken hold of my spine and begun crawling its way up my throat.  However, that was in direct competition with my rather extreme need for more oxygen.  So I managed to choke it back.

Lynnria was not quite so successful.  I tried not to think about it.  All things considered, it was a comparatively minor footnote on the growing list of horse shit I would have much preferred purged from my memory forever.

I was not entirely sure what all had happened to me after resurrecting Arx.  The whole thing had wound up mashed together within my mind like some pastiche of 1970’s Italian art-house films.  Disappointingly, minus the theatrical stylings of Lou Ferrigno.

But whatever that all had been, it only reaffirmed what I already knew.  Preemptive resurrections were best avoided unless absolutely necessary.

Abruptly, a door on the opposite side of the landing smashed open.

“Mas—!” a woman’s silhouette shouted, but she was cut off by the door rebounding back into her face.

The doorknob fell off a moment later.

Arx and I shared a wearied but knowing look.  Our connection was still feeling quite raw, so the sudden appearance of the third member of our trio had hit us like a too-sudden jostling of a very well-used set of privates.  And from the white we had seen behind her, it would seem that at least some part of the vision we had shared was real.

“Wh-uruk… who was that?” Lynnria’s fractured voice weaved through our panting.

“Jax,” Arx and I replied.  Simultaneously.

Our noses crinkled in mirrored frustration, but then very slowly and deliberately, she closed her left eye.  I nodded in appreciation.  Just a residual echo.  Nothing to worry about.

Although, now that we were all in a well-lit area, I immediately noted the mysterious disappearance of a certain lime-green skirt.  Mostly because, from the way she was squatting against the wall, her fur-topped slit was winking at me with her every heaving breath.

Her hand snaked between her legs to break my line of sight, and when I glanced up, I caught the twinkle in her eye.

Minx.

A heavy weight thudded against the door.  It did not otherwise react.

Arx pulled a face.  “Maybe… someone… should go… let her out.”

A solid thirty seconds of sucking wind came and went as the three of us considered it.

“Can… anybody move?” I asked finally.

“Huh-uh.”

“N—Urk…”

Another thud pounded against the door.  Still nothing.

With a grimace, I crawled forward on the landing just enough to look over its lip.  There was no way I was going to make it down those stairs—with all their traps—and back up the other side.  Fortunately, further examination of our platform revealed another path.  The landing seemed to be built into a U-shape, ultimately joining one side to the other for the purpose of leading up to the story above, but consequently connecting us to the other side.

“Arx,” I began.

“Noooooo…”

Her reply was less an actual word than it was a cross between a howl and a moan.  But it was all complaint.  A moment later, she collapsed to the floor, and when I looked, I could see all the tell-tale signs of torpor.

Oh, you bitch!  Now, you finally give out?

There came another thud followed shortly by another, and continuing in a periodic rhythm.  It seemed she had started using her ax.  So far, the door did not seem to care.

I glanced over at Lynnria, but her head was currently stuck through a pair of balusters like a French noblewoman at the guillotine.  And just as limp.

Damn it.  I knew we shouldn’t have coughed up those Gems for her.

It was a silly thought.  What was done was done, and besides, there was no way she would have made it without them.  She might well have been every bit the runner she claimed to be, but it seemed her training had focused more on sprinting than endurance.  And now torpor had claimed her just as it had my overtaxed—and admittedly deserving—lilim.

It looked like it was going to be up to me.

Unfortunately, there was no muscle in my body that was agreeable to the notion of moving.  They had instead banded together into an emergency quorum so as to push through a hasty motion of slipping into an outright coma.  I was trying to retain veto power, but that was not going over well.

A timid knock echoed through the entryway.  It seemed the door was resistant to axes.

With a sigh, I crawled to my feet again, relying heavily on the handrail for support, and began the long march to free my first companion.