Deacon exhaled sharply as he stepped out from beneath the massive aerial roots that hid the stone brick entrance to the underground prison that either the Aztecs or people who came off the boats used.
The humid air hit him almost immediately, the second he stepped from behind the stone brick door frame; it was thick with pollen and the scent of moss. Under normal circumstances, he hated the scent of pollen... but compared to what he'd been smelling for the past couple of hours while in the underground prison, it practically smelled like heaven to him.
His brow knitted as he glanced up, watching what appeared to him to be the morning sunlight break through the canopy in fractured beams. He glanced back over his shoulder at the underground prison entrance he'd crawled out from, hidden between the aerial roots of the massive jungle tree.
"Nothing," he muttered, shaking his head. "Couldn't find anything else worth a damn."
He rolled his shoulders and brushed some soot and grime off his sleeves. "Everything down there's covered in so much blighted growth that it makes any attempts at exploration dead ends."
The worst part wasn't the danger; it was how long he would have to wait before being able to enter the prison. Whatever secrets it held were buried under that festering corruption, and all he could do was stand there, staring, knowing it was right in front of him… and completely out of reach.
"I need a healer and or someone who can cleanse and sanctify this blighted crap," he muttered. "There's no exploring to be made without one."
Even the corridors that had stretched out past the chamber where he'd fought the Wyrgnash… they all led nowhere. Eventually, every path had been blocked off, overrun by hardened, pulsing masses of blighted tissue that had fused with the walls and floor.
He'd tried cutting through one of the smaller growths at first, but the Echoform blade practically bounced off it, and the moment it was wounded, it leaked some black, reeking sap that hissed on contact with his boots. That was enough of a warning.
He wasn't stupid, and today he wouldn't be.
"I guess I have no choice but to come back later," he said to no one, just the jungle. And this dungeon wasn't going anywhere. Especially with him about to cover it up from prying eyes and leave a mark around, so he would know where to search for it later.
Deacon grabbed a handful of broken branches from the surrounding underbrush around him, making sure that the branches were dry, dark, and still containing their moisture from the thick jungle humidity. He took his time placing them carefully over the stone brink entrance, layering them in between the aerial roots so that they blended in perfectly. He did so in a way while balancing the three main cores in naturally obscuring objects in plain sight; keeping it not too neat, not too messy, and just convincing enough to fool a preliminary glance.
When he was satisfied with how it looked, he took a step back and nodded to himself in agreement that it was properly hidden. Now, unless someone, like myself, was looking for an underground prison that was supposed to be buried under the roots of a massive tree, their eyes would gloss over this.
From a small pouch on his belt, he pulled out a tiny vial of red chalk dust mixed with coldroot powder, something he'd actually collected while tree-hopping in Floor Three.
He snapped it open and sprinkled it over the side of a tree, around 50 meters away from the underground prison, marking it with a faint sigil that only he would recognize what it meant when flaring out his mana.
"Now, even if I was drunk out of my mind, I would still be able to detect you when running into this area," he muttered as he dusted off his hands.
He looked up through the dense canopy toward the thick branches high above, the same perch he'd used as a vantage point when he'd first arrived. A familiar calm rolled through him at the thought of being above the treeline again.
With practiced ease, he began the climb, because now… it was time to relocate.
There was another island in the Isles of the Damned. One of the smaller, uncharted ones. No spires. No old-world ruins. Just jungle and rock and maybe a few beasts not yet catalogued by any floor-runner with half a brain. It was the perfect place to vanish into. To build a personal cache. A resting post. A sanctuary for when things went south.
Somewhere for Jass and Esmerelda to meet him, safely, once they finally made it through.
Any day now, he thought.
It'd been almost two days since he last saw them, and almost 26 hours ago when he took the Waystone to Floor Three. They should be ascending soon, but judging by their compasses on the Party Tab, they were still on Floor Two.
Deacon narrowed his eyes and leaped over a particularly large gap between tree branches, absent-mindedly spinning his Echoform Reliquary.
What's taking them so long? He asked himself.
A delay wasn't unusual, but it was annoying to deal with if you were the one waiting on them. Maybe they'd been saddled with a Group Quest. If so, what kind? Escort? Puzzle lockdown? Survival crawl?
Or maybe their teammates sucked, he grimaced. Yeah. That's probably it.
Jass could carry a fight, and Esmerelda had the support spells and control magics down to an art, but if they got paired with deadweight… it would slow them down.
Deacon pulled himself up onto a tree branch after having crawled up the trunk like a spider monkey, fingers finding solid purchase in a deep knot in the bark. The canopy opened around him like a green ocean, shifting and rustling with the wind. Birds scattered. Distant chirps echoed off the cliffs further inland.
He pulled himself into the crook of a much higher tree branch, the very same one he'd rested on before to take a quick breather after having entered Floor Three, and moved toward the squirrel hole that was connected to the very same trunk. Without wanting to waste a second more, he shoved his entire arm into the opening, fingers brushing against rough wood and dried twigs.
His brow furrowed. He pushed in deeper, twisting his arm around, trying to feel where his bow and quiver were.
Still nothing... He could feel the bottom of the squirrel hole, but not the bow and quiver he stuffed inside them.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nose, then let the breath out slowly between his teeth. "...Motherfucker..."
His arm remained in the hole for a moment longer before he took it out. The Echoform Reliquary was still in its short sword form and sheathed across his back.
He scanned the canopy. He turned his head left, right… scanning the trees around him, before something faint caught his attention.
He dropped into a crouch before leaping toward a nearby tree a fifteen meters away. A couple of seconds later, he landed on a wide, moss-coated tree branch with two smaller human-sized boot prints that had marred the moss. Either a man with small feet, or a woman, he noted to himself as he ran his hand along the bark, and his eyes narrowed as his palm met something that did not belong on a tree.
A tear of cloth.
It was tan colored, lightly stained, and judging by the material he was feeling, it wasn't something anyone would wear as a cadet. It feels way too coarse and… Deacon thoughts trailed as he brough the cloth to his nose. … It smells like shit and wet fur… was whoever was here a hunter? A large squirrel who mugged both me and someone else?
It had been snagged here.
He slipped it into one of the pouches on his lower back, eyes already scanning the surroundings, tracking where he, or whoever had come before, might've been looking. A few quiet minutes passed, with each one that passed furthering his annoyance. Then, something caught the bottom corner of his left eye: a black-fletched arrow, sunk deep into the base of a tree trunk nearly sixty meters out.
His bow had been used.
There goes my idea of my thief being a squirrel with giant feet.
And whoever took it used it to hunt for something.
He dropped down a couple of dozen levels of branches and landed onto the jungle floor with a soft thud. Upon scouring the area around it, he took notice of a splash of blood that stained the grass and the bottom of a tree twenty paces away from where the arrow was embedded into the base of the tree.
It was still red and damp, meaning it was fresh.
Deacon knelt, fingers brushing the dirt beside the stain, glancing up from the stain, his eyes darted around before zeroing in on a couple of hoof prints nearby.
"No body around," Deacon muttered, crouched low near the bloodstain, his fingers lightly tracing the edge where it met the grass. "Which means they took it with them."
He stood, slowly, letting his gaze drift across the underbrush.
"Using that logic…" he murmured, more to keep his thoughts focused than anything else, "they probably went somewhere with a running stream in order to clean the carcass to get rid of the bacteria inside it and eat it… They might even have a place or way to store it."
He could hear the birds chirping nearby before scattering away into the treeline above him, the annoying buzzing of cicadas all around him, the croaking of frogs, and many other ambient noises within the jungle. Deacon stilled his breath and closed his eyes as he listened to the undertone of the jungle.
As he focused on expanding his hearing, he initially could only hear the wind as it moved lightly through the upper canopy, whistling faintly between branches, but after dialing up the intensity of his hearing, he could hear the noises beneath it.
A faint, steady burble…
Running water.
He turned to the left and began moving quietly, swiftly, and keeping low to the ground. His boots hardly made a sound as he followed the trail, eyeing the snags of fur clinging to low-hanging fronds and other thorny and sticky plants and splatters of blood-soaked grass and dirt underfoot.
The trail wasn't hard to follow; whoever it was had been in a hurry and seemingly given up on covering any tracks they made while hauling around whatever it is they killed.
Eventually, Deacon reached a small ridge that overlooked a shallow drop that was thick with brambles. At the far end, he saw a decent-sized stream curled between stones and fallen logs, and he even saw a couple of small orange colored fish swimming inside it.
He spotted more blood near the water's edge and a couple of drag markings.
Then he spotted a figure crouched by the stream, partially hidden by tall grass and shrubs, and wearing both a bow and quiver behind their back - both were his. They were humanoid, lean, and had shoulder-length dirty blonde hair that was tied into a messy bun behind their head with an arrow shaft holding it together. One hand steadying the carcass of a doe while the other was carving it up with a dagger.
A small fire, recently made, still smoldered behind them.
Deacon narrowed his eyes and stayed just behind the cover of a low-hanging branch. He didn't move yet, nor did he wish to announce his presence.
Instead, he studied them.
The equipment they were wearing was similar to his own, in a sense where they were wearing leather armor, pants were covered in pouches, and daggers were sheathed around their back.
Shifting slowly to the side, Deacon got a look at their side and noticed two things: that his thief was a female and that she was from Class B.
Deacon's hand slid to Echoform Reliquary, thumbs pressing against its two grips in the sheathes on his back.