A Soldier's Life - 156 - Sanctuary (Patreon)

Chapter 156 Sanctuary

The water was cool as it soaked my boots, then socks, and the linen pants and worked its way up my body.  I was waist-deep, and a cloud of filth was spreading out from my body, fouling the clear water.  “Maveith, come on in, the water is fine!”  Maveith was still on shore, uncertain.  “We saw the cockatrice bathing.  There is nothing dangerous in the water.”

The tall goliath looked over the room, turning his head slowly, “I think I will harvest the cocks first.  That way, I don’t have to bathe twice.”

I rolled my eyes at Maveith, “Well, I saw some wild onion stems among the high grass.  You can dig them up as well.”

Maveith’s deep voice sounded hurt that I thought he could not spot the dark green stems of the onions, “I saw them too, Eryk.  There looks to be some garlic as well.  Did you see the garlic?”  He challenged somewhat playfully.

“No.  Is there garlic, too?  If you start pulling the root vegetables, see if you can capture some of the worms the cockatrices were eating.  I want to see if I can use the collector on them.”  Maveith looked doubtful at that statement.    

I started removing my armor, one piece at a time, and cleaning it before tossing it into the grass to dry.  Maveith was focused on the cockatrices, and I would throw him in if he tried not to bathe.  We both smelled so foul that we no longer noticed how bad it was.

After my armor was off and cleaned to the best of my ability, I worked on my clothes.  Soaking and rinsing them repeatedly until they no longer produced clouds in the water.  The dirty water quickly settled into the sandy bottom, being filtered downward.  Eventually, I was completely naked, so I produced my shaving kit to retrieve the small bar of soap inside. I then returned the rest of the kit.  I scrubbed out every crack and crevasse of dirt, dried blood, and sap.  I used the entire bar of soap, but it was worth it.  I moved under the waterfall and began to rinse my hair and scrub my face.  I remained under the cascading water until my skin was puckered, pale, and perfectly clean.

I had spent two hours bathing, and Maveith worked the entire time.  I might have felt guilty if I hadn’t asked him to join me a dozen times while he worked.  I pulled out clean underclothes from my storage and dressed.  I only had one spare pair of legion boots in my space, and I wear them now.  I no longer felt like a soldier on an infinite campaign.  I felt almost human if I was not trapped deep inside a dungeon that was trying to kill me.

Maveith had a tarp in the grass and a stack of bird meat and organs. There was a pile of small wild onions and a second pile of some pungent bulbous wild garlic.  The onions and garlic would give our meals a lot of flavor in the future.  After bathing for the first time in weeks, I was reluctant to dig them up.  “Eryk, if you cook, I will bathe.  We have about eight hours before we should leave.”

I nodded and was glad the goliath was tracking our time as well.  The last thing either of us wanted was to be bathing when the cockatrices were restored.  Maveith finally stripped and entered the water to wash himself and his gear.

I focused on cooking. I got some bear fat heated in Maveith’s cast iron pan.  I cut up a number of the onions and two of the garlic cloves and cooked them.  One of the cockatrice breasts was cut into thin flaps, and I ground up some pepper.  I put a little salt and pepper on each side and seared both sides of the bird meat, cooking it through.  I folded the crispy meat like a taco and filled it with the sautéed onion and garlic.

I munched on the first one, enjoying the texture and flavors.  As I prepared the second, I called Maveith over.  He came out of the water to get the cockatrice taco naked.  “Damn, Maveith, watch where you swing that thing!”  He ignored me, and the taco was gone in two bites.

“That was tasty. Can I get six more?” His deep voice asked eagerly. His statement brought back nightmares of working at a fast-food restaurant in high school, trying to keep up during the weekend lunch rush because half the staff called out sick.

“Keep washing. And no service without shoes, shorts, and a shirt!”  I told the goliath.  He was confused by the sudden requirements but waded back into the water.  “I will let you know when it is ready.”

I made two more for myself first before making six for Maveith.  “Can I cook the greens from the onions and garlic?” I asked Maveith, who was dressing.

Maveith considered, “Onion greens are bitter, but garlic greens taste like their bulbs, and I have used them before in my cooking.”  I chopped up the garlic leaves and added them to the next round of stir fry.  Maveith eight nine of the tacos before he was finally full and then topped it with a cup of his apple-berry jam for dessert. I had a cup of the savory-sweet jam myself.

“After we harvest as much onion and garlic as possible, we will explore the passage,” I said.  There was a passage directly opposite the one where we had entered the massive domed room.

“I am hoping we never have to fight these birds again.” He crunched into his last taco.  “But they are tasty.”  Personally, I thought they tasted closer to turkey than chicken, but all the flavor was from the bear fat, onions, and garlic.  We had only used up one of the massive breasts, too, so we had a lot of meat remaining.

As I pulled garlic and onions from the ground, I searched for the elusive worms.  I even tried placing the collector on the ground in a few spots, hoping the worms were close to the surface to pull their essence.  I didn’t have any luck.  

Maveith found the first worm when he pulled up the waist-high grass to inspect the roots.  Apparently, they nested in the roots.  I felt cheated when the finger-sized worm pulled tiny wisps of blue smoke but did not produce an essence.  I tried it on multiple worms, but it never produced an essence.  So much for the collector working on every creature in a dungeon.

We washed our hands, and I stored the harvest.  We filled our water from the falls and finally left the idyllic room.  The corridor was the same as elsewhere, but the room fifty feet down the corridor was not.  The room was square, twenty feet to the side.  A shelf of stone was on the left and right wall, three feet deep.  Across from us was the most confusing sight.  There was a wide stairway going up.  We didn’t enter the room as we both pondered it.

“There is writing on the wall, Eryk,” Maveith said, pointing.  It was hard to see as it looked to have faded with time, but there was elven script above one of the recessed shelves.

“I think this is a safe room, and those are sleeping alcoves. Otherwise, the dungeon would have erased the writing on the wall.”  I stepped into the room, trusting my instincts.  Nothing leaped out to attack me, and I cautiously approached the writing.  It was the elven script.

“It is a safe room,” I said to the relieved Maveith, who joined me.  “It is going to take me a little while to decipher this.  You want the dreamscape amulet?”

“I would be grateful for it, yes,” his deep voice intoned.

While Maveith made himself comfortable on the other alcove with the dreamscape amulet, I translated the ancient writing.  Maveith soon started sleeping deeply, and I slowly figured things out.  

The script gave our location.  We were on the third level of the labyrinth in a special series of rooms.  It warned of the cockatrices, fire bear, and shapeshifters.  The dark room was the real prize in the corner of this dungeon as it had silver ore with trace amounts of mithril.  Apparently, there were better places to mine mithril as this was not a popular path due to the cockatrices and greater doppelgangers guarding the path.

There was no reference to what was at the top of the stairs. My curiosity got the better of me.  I would climb the stairs and check.  Maybe there was another safe room at the top.  The stairs corkscrewed as I climbed and counted the steps.  It seemed to go on forever, and I was worried I might not be back before Maveith woke.

I assumed I was heading toward the second layer of the labyrinth and getting closer to others from the company.  Maybe the rooms on the second layer would not be as dangerous.  I reached the top of the stairs and did not like what I found.  An oval chamber with a glass floor where giant eels swam underneath.  No, it was not glass; it was ice.  This room was a skating rink.  There were two exits, though.  The question was if the eels were the monsters or if they were what the guardian ate.

I studied the room, but the only activity that seemed to be under the ice. I was about to leave when movement on the ceiling caught my eye.  The body of something had blended in nearly perfectly.  The creature gave up hiding and dropped to the ice as I focused on it.  Six thick legs ending in terrible claws scratched the glass-like ice, marring the surface and throwing chunks.  The dark blue lizard-like creature was larger than a horse and growled at me, unhappy with my presence.  

It paced on the ice, its claws ripping up chunks as it went.  I watched in horrific fascination as if I were at a zoo and perfectly safe on the other side of the bars.

After twenty minutes of prancing for me, the muscular creature burrowed into the ice in seconds.  I could see it under the ice hunting the large eels.  It was not long before it scored a victory and burst out of the ice at a different spot from where it had entered.  The ice appeared to be about six inches thick from the chunks that were washed across the rink.  I was curious about how the chamber was reset to make the surface of the ice smooth, but I needed to get back to Maveith. If only one creature existed in this chamber, then it should not be too difficult.

Maveith was still sleeping when I returned down the two hundred and six steps to the safe room.  When Maveith woke, we needed to make a big decision.  Would we leave this part of the dungeon with the familiar monsters and rooms?  Or would we go to the second layer and explore unknown threats and attempt to find the others?