Chương 21: The Fog Brings Guests

By now, the fog had fully settled in, thick, white, and pressing in from every direction. Ophila stared out with a blank look for a few more seconds, then turning back to her supply pile, pulled out a ration kit. She pried open the flat tin can and studied the contents with a small frown.

"Are you hungry?" she asked, looking up.

"I have more."

"No," Lio said. She glanced at him, raising a single eyebrow.

"You're just going to eat a stale loaf?"

"Yes." She looked like she wanted to argue but seemingly decided against it, turning back to her tin. She pulled out a strip of dried meat and a small dark block that smelled of pressed sunpears and honeyberries—good sources of vitamins—and began eating slowly.

"It's strange," she said after a while.

"What?" Lio asked.

"On the surface you can usually feel something before the fog comes in. Like a drop in pressure or something." She took another bite, chewing thoughtfully.

"I wonder why it doesn't happen here?"

"The pressure change still happens," Lio said.

"You're just not used to feeling it because of the altitude difference." She looked at him.

"Can you feel it?"

"Yes." She turned back to the fog and squinted with concentration, as if she could will herself into sensing it through sheer focus alone. After a minute of this she sighed and gave up, finishing her dried meat and starting on the dark fruit block instead, breaking a small piece off with her thumb. The canopy above them had gone almost entirely dark now, the last of the amber fading as the fungi also began to settle into their nightly dormant states. Lio leaned back against the Pillar and closed his eyes.

He wasn't planning on sleeping. But the physical rest was useful, letting his body recover the small accumulated costs of the day's walking. He listened to the sounds of the forest, though this was mostly interrupted by the noise of Ophila eating and occasionally shifting her weight. But after a while she stopped moving entirely. A tinge of curiosity nudging at him, he half-cracked open his eyes. She had pulled her knees up to her chest inside her shelter and was looking at the fog with a calm, pleasant expression.

Her food tin was closed and set aside. She seemed to be contemplating something, chewing softly on her lower lip as she did so. Then she whispered, very quietly, "Do you ever wonder what's really at the bottom?"

"Of Ghenna?"

"Yes."

"No," Lio said. She looked at him.

"Never?"

"I won't be making it all the way down anyway, so why would I think of it?" She considered this, nodding slowly.

"Well, that's a very practical way to think about it."

"Yes." She turned back to the fog.

"Personally, I don't even think the Fruit exists. I think we Delvers just made it up to give ourselves some sort of unified goal." Lio looked at her. He had nearly forgotten about the Fruit entirely. It crossed his mind less and less with each passing loop, the myth fading into a sort of background noise. But it was true that most Delvers descended because of it. After all, the promise of any wish waiting at the bottom was horribly enticing.

"Doesn't that seem kind of sad to you?" she asked. He said nothing. He didn't know if it was real or not. After a thousand loops he still hadn't gotten deep enough to find out, and that really did say something. It was true that during the earlier loops, he had imagined the possibility that the Fruit could possibly break him out of these loops. But the hope was getting more and more impossible to justify. He could barely get to the 30-40 range floors already. And who truly knew just how deep Ghenna was?

Ophila shook her head slightly, as if answering for herself, and reached for her water. It was around then that Lio heard it. Something was moving through the fog. It wasn't anything like the normal footsteps of Floor 1 creatures either. Instead, the sound was uneven and fast, as if something panicked and deranged was heading their way. He was on his feet in a split-second, the Adamantine knife already in his hand. Ophila also saw him stand and went still immediately, her hand moving to her pack.

The sound got closer, and then a shape appeared at the edge of their visibility. It was the silhouette of a person. The male—suggested by his body build—was moving desperately fast with one hand pressed hard against his ribs and one side of his face dark with dried blood. As he came stumbling into the small circle of their campsite's light, one could see that his eyes were wide and maniacal, Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Then his eyes landed on Lio and he stopped dead in his tracks. For a moment, the two men simply stared at each other. Then William Bone let out a short, bitter laugh.

"You have got to be kidding me," he said.

"Of all the people. Of all the people in this entire dungeon." He shook his head, heaving and gasping for breath.

"The barefoot maniac. Brilliant. This is just brilliant!"

"Sit down," Ophila said. She was already moving toward him, having retrieved a medical roll from her supplies.

"I'm fine," William said.

"Stop kidding yourself."

"I said I'm—" He tried to straighten up and immediately winced, his hand pressing harder against his side as a new rush of blood pushed out between his fingers.

"Sit down," she said again, in a firm tone. Overcome with the pain, he hurriedly sat down without another word. Silently, Ophila crouched in front of him and began working quickly, pulling back his jacket to check the damage. William hissed at the sudden movement, then went still and let her work. It was then, with nothing else to focus on, that he actually looked at her properly for the first time. He frowned deeply.

He took in the hair, the gold-ringed eyes, the gear with its riot of colorful stitching, and his head tilted slightly as the dots began connecting within his brain.

"Wait," he said.

"You're that girl." Ophila smiled.

"Mhm?"

"The one who gave me the alcohol bottle outside the Union." He pointed at her, his tone sounding slightly accusatory.

"Yeah that was me."

"Huh." He looked between her and Lio with a hysterical expression.

"You're together? You're both here?" He let out another short cold chuckle.

"So first you," he pointed at Ophila, "give me some free alcohol, and then you," he pointed at Lio, "grab me by the shirt and terrify me half to death, and now you're both here, in Ghenna, rescuing me." He palmed his face, groaning.

"Great," he said.

"This is just so great." Ophila gave him a small shrug, then set to work on wrapping his injuries. He let her, his eyes going to Lio with a complicated expression.

"Where's your group?" Lio asked, breaking the silence. William's expression changed, turning dark. He looked down at the ground, his face going pale.

"Gone," he whispered quietly. His voice sounded clipped and dull, like all the energy had been sapped out of him.

"What happened?" William was quiet, closing his eyes tightly from the pain as Ophila cleaned a long cut serrating his ribs.

"We were moving in a place maybe an hour from here," he said finally.

"The three of us, me and Jeanne and Marion." He paused.

"There was something following us." He shook his head.

"I told them something was wrong, but Jeanne said I was just being paranoid." Ophila glanced at Lio briefly, a look passing through them. There wasn't any creature on Floor 1 that liked to stalk its victims.

"It went for Marion first," William continued.

"It was so fast… and looked so weird…" He swallowed hard.

"It took him down in one hit. Just." He made a slashing motion through his throat.

"Dead."

"And then?" Lio said.

"And then it..." William shivered involuntarily.

"It went inside his fucking mouth." What? The fog moved slowly around them, cool white tendrils wrapping around them.

"And then Marion stood back up," William said.

"But it wasn't Marion anymore." He pressed his fingers against his eyes, a tortured expression forming on his face.

"And then Jeanne also let it get too close and then—" He stopped, cold sweat beginning to pour down his face.

"I ran," he managed to choke out.

"I just ran. I know, it was fucking cowardly, but—" Nobody said anything. William's breathing was ragged and uneven, his hands gripping his knees so tightly as his body continued to shake. He was staring at the ground between his feet with a terrified expression, barely holding onto his mental state.

"How long ago was this?" Lio asked. William blinked out of his trance, looking back up.

"What?"

"How long ago did you start running?" William thought about it, his brow furrowing.

"I don't know. Thirty minutes?" He shook his head.

"I—I don't know."

"And it didn't follow you the whole way?"

"I don't think so." He swallowed hard, looking at Lio with scared, red-rimmed eyes.

"You think it's still out there?" Lio didn't answer that, as he checked their surroundings carefully. Luckily, the creature really didn't seem to be around them.

"What does it want?" William pressed him.

"Is it just hunting? Is it territorial, or—""I think it's just hungry," Lio said simply. William stared at him, his mouth opening and closing like he was trying to find a right response to that. Then he just closed it and stared back down at the ground Meanwhile, Lio was silent, his mind already working through the problem. He knew exactly what creature William was describing. He had encountered it countless times on Floor 17. A Skinwalker.

A creature that killed and then wore whatever it killed, not mimicking from the outside but occupying from within, reanimating the body under its control. In normal conditions on Floor 17 they were dangerous but manageable if you knew the signs. But in this fog, on a floor where no one would expect them, they were something else entirely. But that wasn't what was bothering him right now. What was bothering him was the simple fact that a Skinwalker had no business being on Floor 1.

The creature was native to Floor 17, and had always been native to Floor 17, across every single one of his thousand loops without a single exception. The upper floors didn't even have the right prey to sustain one! And yet here one was. First Ophila disrupting the loop. Now this? Lio filed it away without letting it show on his face. The pattern was becoming harder to ignore, but the immediate problem was more pressing.

He could deal with the Skinwalker easily enough, but doing so properly would mean using his runes at a capacity that neither William nor Ophila could just avoid seeing. That was information he wasn't ready to give either of them.

"We need to move," Lio said, straightening up. Ophila looked up from William's ribs.

"Now? In this fog?"

"Yes." William looked at Lio.

"What is that thing?"

"Something that doesn't shouldn't be here," Lio answered. William stared at him incredulously.

"What?"

"That doesn't matter right now." Lio was already breaking down his bark shelter, shouldering his pack.

"Can you walk?" William also stood up carefully, gingerly testing his newly patched wounds. He grimaced but managed to stay upright.

"Yeah. I think so."

"Then let's go." Besides him, Ophila finished the last of her bandaging and began packing her medical roll away. She didn't ask more questions, which Lio noted. A nice skill, he commended, the ability to read the room. He looked around the fog carefully, orienting himself using the faint residual warmth in the floor beneath his feet. After confirming their positions, he pointed at the direction they needed to go.

"Over there," he said.

"Stay close. And don't use your lamps."

"We won't be able to see anything," William protested.

"I know," Lio said.

"But neither will it." He moved forward into the white and as the other two followed, the fog quickly swallowing them whole.