Chapter 60 – Dungeon Crawl

Wherein Bosra wishes she was back out in the Wold for the first time since coming to Splendor.

Bosra followed Tina around all night, hanging back and maintaining distance, giving her friend the needed opportunity to ruin herself in the eyes of her fiancé.

For some reason, in a split second, she had lost track of the young woman. Cursing herself under her breath, she asked around, but either these idiots were playing it dumb, or they were too drunk and stoned to know whom she was talking about.

There was nothing for it but to go through the building room by room, hallway by hallway, like she would a dungeon. By the Divine, she missed Buddy. People would have made space for him.

As she combed through the dormitory, she came across any number of things she really could have done without. At least three quarters of these were people fucking in a place they had no business to be fucking in. The sight of Buddy would have had them skittering into a hidey-hole, where she didn’t have to see their private parts and hairy behinds.

One couple got it on against a door. A door that fell down across the hall, where the wilfully ignorant couple continued going like nothing had changed.

Bosra was tempted to kick in a skull. Instead, she stepped over them. 

A red-haired punk puked into a trashcan, and his brother threw up into a punch bowl. Yet a room later, girls and boys were dancing in their underwear, on a table covered with goo of undetermined origin. 

No sign of Valentina yet. Bosra went up the stairs, to the left, where she came across a make-shift laboratory where six guys wearing protective gear were mixing Nightsoul knew what. The smell that wafted from the room was an affront to all her senses and scorched away the hairs on the inside of her nose. 

Opening a window for some fresh air, Bosra stuck her head out.

For the first time in a year, Bosra longed for the Wold. She wouldn’t even care about having to sleep rough. As long as she could fight orcs, or undead, or swarms of giant bugs. She would give anything to be gone from this perverse dungeon of flesh.

One floor below her, she caught sight of a familiar head of butter-blonde hair. One among a dozen stumbling and skipping down the street, towards the fountain at the end.

Bosra slammed the back of her head against the window frame in her haste to retreat. She jumped down the stairs, taking them four at a time. She didn’t care who she pushed over as she rushed out of the building.

In long, easy strides, she closed the distance on her target, but not before her friend got dunked. She fished her from the fountain and set her on her feet, only half aware of another group approaching.

She recognised the bitch’s voice before she registered her frame.

"That’s her. That’s Valentina of Effyne."  

A snarl ripped from her lips as a light flashed, an unwanted assault in an already haggard situation. The same light flashed again.

"You’re done," she growled, lunging at the guy holding some kind of lensed box, smoke rising from a separate plate on a stick. He dodged her to hide behind the crowd.

An explosion blew out a window on the second floor. Smoke poured out, filling the night air with the same acrid stench as Bosra had braved earlier.

Pupper and Marissa were still in there.

She picked up Tina, carrying her over her shoulder, as she high-tailed it back to the dorm. The dividing expanse of grass seemed endless. Flames started licking up the outside of the building.

Inside, nobody seemed to have noticed anything.

Following the sound of laughter and music, she found Pupper standing on a table, strangling her violin. Another fit of giggles and squeals went up, just as the building shook on its foundation. An alarm sounded, the repetitive noise a loud wail. 

Bosra tossed Rose over her other shoulder. Marissa appeared beside her out of nowhere. "Hold on to me," she grunted at the wizard.

"Yes, I’ll get us out."

One blink later, they were back on the lawn.

The guy with his lensed box was there, causing another flash. Bosra levelled him a murderous stare. Before she could do more, she was whisked away.

When she opened her eyes, she was on a different lawn, surrounded by hedges and statues and buildings she didn’t know.

"University campus," Marissa panted, having expended a lot of thaumic energy to get them all there.

Bosra set Rose down, then Valentina. The young woman promptly collapsed again, lying shivering on the ground.

"Got clothes nearby?" In her room, perhaps, since this was Marissa’s home.

"Yeah. One second." Marissa straightened herself, regulating her breathing. With a swift motion, she pulled a tattered bathrobe from the same storage pocket as Rose’s violin case had gone into earlier.

"Oh no… my recording stone!" Rose realised as she got her bearing.

"You ain’t going back, Pupper." Bosra stared into the cute brown eyes until Rose looked away.

Meanwhile, Marissa managed to get Valentina into the robe. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

"Come to my room. You can borrow some clothes for Tina, while I call you a cab."

~

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