Chapter 392: The Higher Chamber

Chapter 392: The Higher Chamber

Jin went back to the grotto on Sunday night with a sandwich in one hand and a plan he’d written on the back of a feed receipt.

The plan was short. Follow the moss. Flicker first. Glitch doesn’t go anywhere Flicker hasn’t been.

The sandwich was because Elena had sent him back to the academy that afternoon with a bag of leftovers.

His own appetite had improved with training. He’d begun keeping an eye on that alongside the avatar recovery records, though he hadn’t yet worked through the comparison.

He finished the sandwich and opened the Engine.

[Avatar Condition — Glitch: 100%]

[Avatar Condition — Flicker: 100%]

Both avatars stood on the first broad ledge of the upper grotto, where he’d left them, in the faint green light of the moss.

He sent Flicker climbing past the hoofed creatures and pale-winged sleepers to the highest ledge. The narrow line of moss disappeared into the slot there. She folded her wings to hop through sideways, then found space to open them again.

It was a passage, low and rough, sloping upward. The moss ran along its floor in a thin line, and the air moved past her, steady and cool, flattening the moss strands toward the grotto behind her.

Twenty meters in, the passage widened, and Flicker came out into a much bigger space.

[Quarry Depths — Higher Chamber]

Jin leaned closer to the screen.

The chamber ran north from Flicker’s entrance, its roof lost in shadow. A fissure high in the northern wall opened black and wide above three tiers of ledges. Moss stirred beneath it, bending toward the passage behind her.

Where does that go?

He didn’t let himself chase it. He made Flicker look at the chamber first.

Below the ledges lay a broad working floor where stone had once been cut from the walls. Two fallen quarry blocks divided its western edge from a sheltered strip behind them. On the east, a narrow shelf followed the wall above Flicker’s entrance.

Dark veins streaked the northern ledges. Small rounded lumps glowed amber within them.

Jin’s breath caught.

They weren’t Astral Stones, and they didn’t look like the Seepstone Clusters in storage. They were small and rounded, set into the dark rock like seeds in a fruit.

When Flicker flew closer, her avatar’s attention pulled toward them, the way the real Flicker had leaned toward the Kindlewind Sage at Thornwatch.

[Mineral nodules — unidentified]

[Energy content: present]

Then something moved on the middle tier.

It was a goat, more or less. It was big, as tall at the shoulder as Glitch’s avatar and much leaner, with a coat the colour of the rock and two thick horns that swept back from its skull in heavy ridged curves.

It stood on a ledge Jin would have called too narrow for a cat and looked at Flicker without any fear at all.

[Cliffhoof Ibex]

[Combat Rank: 2 — 1-Star]

A second ibex stood near the fissure. A third emerged onto the eastern shelf and picked its way south, above Flicker’s entrance. She rose away from it before its lowered horns could reach her.

Three, all Rank 2, 1-Star, the same as Glitch’s real body. All of them standing on the ledges with the nodules, and all of them watching his bird.

Of course, Jin thought. Of course there’s a landlord.

He pulled Flicker back to the passage mouth and made himself think.

The slot in the grotto was too narrow for Glitch. That was certain. So if this was going to be worth anything, Glitch needed another way in.

Flicker found another entrance at the southern end of the working floor, beneath the end of the eastern shelf. A broad ramp curved down through the rock and joined the grotto behind a tumble of boulders. From below, Jin had mistaken those boulders for a dead end.

He followed the route in both directions before bringing Glitch up. The drake could turn at the bends. At the upper end, the ramp opened onto the floor; to its left, the sheltered strip behind the quarry blocks offered another way back from the western side.

The blocks had a narrow gap between them. Flicker passed through it easily. Glitch would have to go around their southern end.

Jin drew the rough arrangement on the receipt, then brought Glitch to the top of the ramp at eleven.

He’d meant to look, not fight. But the ibex came down to look at him.

Two of them dropped from the middle tier to the lowest one in neat, effortless jumps and stood at the edge of the floor, ten meters from Glitch, with their heads low. The third stayed high.

Jin waited. The ibex waited.

Then the nearest one came.

It didn’t charge like the ram. It came in three quick, bouncing strides and drove its horns at Glitch’s shoulder in a short, hard lunge, and it was already springing back before Glitch could swing his head.

The second came from the other side while Glitch was turning toward the first.

Glitch’s hide went dark with Harden. The horns skidded off his plating. He snapped at the second ibex and caught nothing. It was back on the lowest ledge, a meter above the floor, looking down at him.

They don’t stay, Jin thought. They hit and go back up.

He tried to answer it. He sent Glitch toward the ledge, to make the ibex choose between fighting him there and going higher. The first one went higher. The second stayed and lunged at Glitch’s face, and then went higher too.

Flicker’s warning pulled his attention to the eastern shelf. The third ibex had followed it south while he watched the others. Now it stood above the ramp mouth, judging the drop.

Jin’s stomach tightened. Two attackers ahead, one about to land behind him. He’d put Glitch in the exact place they needed.

"Back," he said aloud. "Glitch, back down. Now. Flicker, the passage. Go."

Flicker swept across the high shelf. The ibex snapped its head toward her, delaying its drop just long enough for Glitch to turn. It landed behind him and lunged, striking his back plates as he rounded the first curve.

Jin kept him moving. On the descending ramp the ibex couldn’t leap past without committing to a close exchange, and after following a few strides it stopped. Flicker circled above the entrance until it turned back toward the ledges.

[Avatar Condition — Glitch: 81%]

Jin held Glitch at the second curve of the spiral, out of sight of the chamber, and breathed.

He watched the entrance a little longer before marking the retreat on his receipt. The ibex had chosen not to pursue far this time. That was useful, but he wouldn’t trust a wounded animal to make the same choice.

Beside the eastern shelf he drew a large cross. He’d seen the path during scouting and still failed to follow where it led. Next time Flicker would watch that route before he brought Glitch onto the floor.

On Monday, Crowe kept him back after class.

"Lucian Vale tells me you fixed his Stormstep," Crowe said, packing his notes.

"I pointed at his feet."

"He said that too." Crowe snapped the folder shut. "And I watched you and that sparrow in Yard Four. You gave her somewhere to go after each attack." He looked at Jin for a moment.

"There’s a small group that meets Thursdays. Selected Rank-Two students. Practical work, harder than the class exercises." He paused. "You’ll have some catching up to do. I think you’d get something from it."

Jin didn’t know what to say, so he said, "Thursday."

"Four o’clock. Bring both beasts."

That night, the partly used large stone ran out in his hand. He felt the threads thin, the grit fade, and then there was nothing left to take.

He put it at the back of the drawer with the other empties. The next night, he unwrapped one of the eight big ones from the cloth and started on it, one session a day, with a proper dinner first.

Verrick’s note was pinned to the stable door when he came back from the stall, about the beasts’ six-week course. Final checks next Monday. Both looking good.

He looked at it, then at the feed receipt in his pocket.

The ibex would still be there next week. The plan wasn’t ready yet.