"My fucking brain," Bonehead complained, the words dragging out of him like each syllable had to claw its way through his teeth. He sat slouched in the back of the wagon along with the rest of the Ravenlight Party, with his spine pressed against the wooden sideboard as he nursed the top of his skull with both hands.
"You don't even have a brain," Jass jabbed without missing a beat, right before she snapped forward in a sudden, violent sneeze that blasted a scatter of hay straight into the air.
Not a moment later, as hay was blasted into the air around her, Deacon, Esmerelda, and Sam broke into uncontrollable laughter – while Jass's cheeks tinged slightly red as karma had caught up to her not a second after her remark.
"You lot alright back there?" A feminine, yet gruff voice at the head of the wagon, not bothering to turn her head to look at the five of them.
"We're –Ahk!" Deacon said before getting interrupted by a one-inch jab in the side from Jass, who sat behind him. "–good."
"Just be sure not to damage my goods back there," lightly chuckling at the response she got, the wagon driver resumed the podcast that connected to her earphones that she was listening to – letting the gaggle of cadets behind her back to their own rambunctious shenanigans.
Giving a glancing glance towards the many boxes of aromatic mix of herbs and food the wagon driver was hauling towards her main stop, Deacon could only wonder just where this was going.
Truth be told, he'd checked every transport that passed near or through the Jagged Spires, and this was the only one willing to take passengers in their numbers. It wasn't cheap, though — he had to pay a 10% markup, since giving someone he'd never met directions to a specific stop ahead of time felt like a bad idea, especially when he had no idea who she might be connected to.
She could be from a guild with members like the ones who attacked him back when he tried to access the CFMT Tower on Floor Two — the Grasslands. Or she might just sell their drop-off location to an Info Broker, where a group of bandits and thieves could purchase the information from them and set up an ambush, rob them of everything they owned, and kill them afterward.
So many things you gotta consider, Deacon mused as he raised his gaze towards the sea of trees and the jagged mountains that towered above them.
Seeing Bonehead still hunched over himself, skeletal fingers pressed against the top ridge of his skull, Esmerelda shifted closer and tapped him gently on the arm before offering him a pill from a small plain porcelain vial that was decorated in beautifully painted kaleidoscopic chrysanthemums.
"You feeling okay?" she asked softly.
"…Yeah, I'm fine," Bonehead finally muttered, lowering his hands enough to reveal the faint hairline cracks that ran along the crown of his skull from just how harshly he'd been gripping his skull from the pain and stress he was feeling. Then immediately after doing so, he tugged his hood down further over his brow as if it would hide the fact that he looked like death warmed over.
Feeling Esmerelda lightly pat his shoulder, he glanced at the pill she'd held out for him to take, and with a brief, cursory look, he was immediately able to deduce that the pill she was holding out was a mild Pain Relief Pill.
"Thanks," he murmured, taking the pill from her outstretched hand and popping it into his mouth where he crunched down on it like a chalky lozenge.
Jass and Sam winced at the sound of the crunch; you were supposed to swallow the pill whole, not chew it — but Bonehead didn't seem bothered.
After swallowing the remains of the pill, he lowered his hands from the front of his face and began to sit a little straighter as the tension that had plagued his body was now beginning to fade away.
"I've just been… having a lot of ideas over the past three weeks," he admitted after a moment, lifting one hand to rub the side of his jaw. "About potions, poisons, mana infusion ratios, whether I can make a healing potion that doubles as a stamina one, magic—" He stopped and rubbed the side of his head. "I think I'm having withdrawals from not being able to act on them right away; They're all stuck in my head, and I can't… unclog the funnel. Not to mention my eye sockets feel like they're on fire."
The Party exchanged looks of concern with one another.
Sam was the first to speak, leaning forward slightly, the wagon creaking under the shift of weight. "Have you visited the graveyard again? Maybe the fumes that were trapped and broiling in your room finally caught up with you or something—"
"—I'm fine," Bonehead cut him off softly, though not unkindly. He pulled the hood the rest of the way back, revealing the faint mana-like veins going along the upper portion of his skull — all centered around his eye sockets. It drew attention to the most recent change in his appearance since they'd begun climbing the Tower: his shadow-colored, flame-lit eyes that he got when going to explore the undead castle on their Floor Five.
"I visited like ten two weeks ago, and they did help a bit, but… I think my skull is just overwhelmed by the brightness of the sun after being locked in an underground basement and doing alchemy for three weeks straight," he said as he rested his head against the tip of the wagon wall behind him.
"You sure?" Jass asked, tapping the side of her own head and pointing to her left eye socket. "'Cause you've got something going on around both your eyes."
Bonehead blinked at her in confusion for a moment before the realization hit him.
"Oh. That. No, it's fine— I went back to that undead priest-king guy on Floor Five and asked what the hell was going on with my eyes. He said it was some kind of legacy left behind by a great undead shadow witch or whatever — her 'masterpiece creation' before she died ten thousand years ago trying to stop an army from razing her factories, where she was printing erotica books en masse, according to him, or some crap like that. He said that any pain or irritation I feel is normal because the smoky flame thing is just… getting a feel for my body and my body in turn is adapting to it."
Seeing the various levels of concerned and confused looks from his friends, Bonehead decided that he should explain a bit more.
"My uncle," he said before clarifying, "the undead, family friend one, showed up to check on me the same day after I talked to the priest guy, and even though he doesn't know what it is either, he said it's a Tower Boon of sorts. Apparently, it's something like a parasitic symbiote: it'll boost my mana reserves over time, and in return, it gets to hang out in my body and absorb the extra undead miasma I give off. Which honestly? Sounds like a pretty solid trade to me, so I chose to keep it."
"So, it's safe?" Deacon asked, as everyone perked up at the words parasitic symbiote.
"Yeah," Bonehead nodded as the veins around his eyes were starting to recede, leaning into himself slightly as Esmerelda leaned closer to him and began sniffing him. "Uh? You good, Esme?"
After a period of silence, Esmerelda leaned away and sat back normally before speaking. "It smells fine, and the spirits say, while they don't know what it is, that it won't harm Bonehead."
Deacon, Jass, Sam, and Bonehead all looked at Esmerelda in confusion, then glanced at each other with matching expressions. After a moment, they simply shook their heads in confused agreement — if she said it was fine, then it was probably fine, and they'd just have to roll with it.
"Alright, but if you get the urge to eat our livers, please tell us," Jass said to him.
Bonehead rolled his flaming eyes and muttered something about how he'd rather eat shit than eat any of their livers — livers that had been soaked in enough alcohol to kill a normal man a thousand times over if not for health potions and healers.
Chuckling at his words, Deacon squinted as the dark veins along the sides of Bonehead's skull visibly faded back into his eye sockets and spread out his mana sense and felt that the undead miasma that Bonehead normally released felt quite muted.
"Does it still hurt now that they retracted back into your eye sockets?" Deacon asked, gesturing loosely toward Bonehead's eyes.
"A bit," Bonehead admitted, as he tilted his skull upward, toward the sun filtering through the forest canopy, and winced at its harsh glare. "It was a lot worse when the storm cleared and the sun came out full force earlier, but I've gotten used to it by now… Mostly."
He rubbed his left socket with the heel of his palm. "Still sucks though. I used to have no issues with bright light, and now my eyes have devolved to being on the same level as the rest of you fleshies."
"Wait until you see what happens to your eyes the next time you go to a club," Sam said, unable to stop the grin spreading across his face. "Or worse— a rave."
Jass snorted, already imagining just how horribly that would go, Bonehead, who used to frequent raves back on Floor Zero.
Deacon barked out a laugh, recalling the many times Bonehead tried dragging him out to raves.
Even Esmerelda cracked a smile, quietly amused by the mental image of Bonehead getting a bit of karma for that one time he dragged her to a rave.
Bonehead groaned dramatically, slumping further into his seat. "... fuck man…"
Deacon, still chuckling at his misery, twisted in his seat, raised an arm over the side of the wagon, and slapped his palm against the wooden frame loudly enough to cut through the steady stomping of hooves and rolling of wheels on dirt.
"Here is good!" he called out to the driver.
The wagon driver clicked her tongue sharply before giving her horses a curt whistle. The pair of chestnut mares immediately began slowing on her orders, muscles rippling beneath their harnesses as they eased to a clean stop along the dirt road just shy of where the treeline thickened into the shadow-heavy forest that was a good couple of hours of walking till you would reach the base of the Jagged Spires.
As the wagon settled, the group shifted into motion. Weapons that had been scattered around the floorboards — from Jass's collapsed glaive, to Sam's staff, to Esmerelda's wand — were collected. Bags were checked, belts buckled, armor and robes tightened, and hay brushed off them.
One by one, they vaulted out of the wagon, boots hitting the packed earth with soft thuds.
Deacon reached into his Spatial Sling Bag, pulled out the agreed-upon payment, and walked to the front of the wagon. He handed over the 470 credits to the driver, who accepted them with a bright smile.
"Pleasure doing business," she said with a tip of her hat before flicking the reins again. Upon the reins striking them, the horses let out sharp snorts before their legs got back to work and began kicking up dust behind the wagon, leaving the Ravenlight Party standing alone on the dirt road.
Deacon turned back to his team with the glint of excitement and anticipation at finally getting started on their journey to hunt down wyverns.
"Alright, boys and girls," he said, stepping toward the shadowed entrance of the forest, the towering dark pines forming a natural arch overhead. "Let's go Wyvern hunting."
And together, the Ravenlight Party crossed beneath the tree line at the bottom of the Jagged Spires.