Everybody charges, and I move toward the wall instead. I've spent enough time around these people to know where they need me during a fight, which is useful because it's also considerably farther from the golem than anywhere I'd have to stand to hit it. Jane moves into a firing position beside the entrance while I make sure I'm neither in her way nor directly behind Zachariah.
The Ancient Stone Golem's second swing comes down before Mark makes it halfway across the chamber.
Granite crashes against Zachariah's raised shield with a boom that I feel in my teeth. A fracture shoots through the tile beneath his right boot, and he slides backward over the broken pieces. This time, his health drops enough that I can see the difference without staring at the bar. He still has plenty left, but the noise makes that difficult to believe.
“Spread out!” he shouts. “Mark, left side. Jing, watch the legs. Jane, I want those joints tested. Everybody else, don't fucking stand behind me.”
The amusement is gone from his voice. That's the version of Zachariah I'm more comfortable following. He gives specific instructions, checks that people are moving, and puts himself where the next attack is going to land. I don't have to decide whether he means what he's saying or whether objecting would make me difficult. For the moment, there's a place I can stand that helps and several places that don't.
I choose a gap between two pillars near the right-hand wall, leaving myself a clear route back to the entrance.
Mark runs left with his kite shield forward and a flanged mace in his right hand. Alluoah goes the other way, his curved blades held low as he circles beyond the creature's reach. Jing follows Mark, staying far enough behind that they won't have to dodge through each other.
The golem's head turns toward them.
“Zach!”
“I've got it.”
Zachariah strikes his sword against the rim of his shield. The metallic crash cuts through the grinding stone, and violet light pulses outward across the floor.
PROVOKE
The golem turns back so sharply that its torso finishes moving after its head. Its fist comes down again. Zachariah meets it at an angle this time, bending his knees as the shield flexes beneath the impact.
Jane fires while the arm is extended.
Her arrow passes beside his helmet and strikes the orange seam inside the golem's elbow. Light spits around the shaft. The creature jerks its arm back, and the arrow snaps between the closing slabs.
“Joint's reactive,” Jane calls. “Don't waste damage on center mass. Hit the seams.”
“Thank you, Jane.” Mark reaches the back of its leg. “I was planning to beat the rock to death.”
“You were absolutely planning to beat the rock to death.”
“I have a mace. It's what it's for.”
He swings into the back of the knee. A piece of granite breaks loose and skips across the floor toward me, large enough that I move before finding out whether my boots could stop it. It strikes the wall where my ankle was and splits into several smaller pieces.
I look down at them, then move another few feet away from the fight.
Knowing where to stand apparently needs occasional revision.
For a while, the others work around the golem in a pattern I can follow. Zachariah catches a blow, Mark or Jing attacks while the creature is recovering, and Alluoah moves whenever it tries to turn. Jane keeps testing the seams. Some of her arrows break against stone, but enough find their way into the orange light that the creature's health starts falling in visible increments.
I watch Zachariah's health too. Every dip seems worse from here than it does to him, although a brief wash of gold from Celeste restores some of what he loses. She stands closer to the entrance than I do, shifting when the pillars interrupt her view.
Nobody needs me yet.
That ought to be reassuring. Instead, I keep looking from the fight to the supplies in my inventory, trying to anticipate a request before somebody has to make it. Having an answer ready is considerably easier than deciding whether I should speak.
The dust gets thicker. Each impact sends more of it down from the carved walls, and the orange seams in the golem's body stand out through the haze more clearly than the people moving around it. I pull the edge of my cloak over my mouth. It still smells faintly of the wet forest, but that doesn't stop grit working between my teeth.
Then the golem raises both arms.
“Back!” Zachariah shouts.
Mark is already recovering from another swing. He pulls his mace clear and starts retreating, but the creature's fists reach the floor before he's gone far enough.
The stone kicks upward beneath my boots.
I go down on one knee, the weight of my pack driving me forward until I catch myself on the edge of my buckler. A crack sounds beside me. I look down quickly, expecting to see something wrong with my leg, but it's the tile splitting beneath the shield.
Across the chamber, Mark hits a pillar shoulder-first.
His health drops almost a quarter.
“Fuck!”
“Mark?” Celeste calls.
“Arm's fucked.”
He pushes himself away from the pillar with his right hand. His left forearm hangs beneath the shield at an angle that makes me stop trying to get up.
The elbow is bent backward.
I know the pain limiter is working. Mark is still talking, and he looks more offended than overwhelmed, but the game has done nothing to soften what I'm seeing. The weight of the shield pulls at his arm while something hard presses against the skin above the joint. I find myself holding my own elbow close without meaning to.
Mark looks down.
“Oh, that's disgusting.”
He starts laughing, then stops when the movement shifts his arm.
“Can you move?” Zachariah asks.
“Yeah. Can't use the shield.”
“Then get out.”
“I'm still good.”
“Mark.”
“I'm fucking good, Zach.”
The golem swings again, and Zachariah has to turn away from him.
I get my foot beneath me and stand. Mark is on the other side of the chamber, with the fight between us. My hand moves toward the potion section of my inventory, but I stop before taking anything out. A healing bottle isn't going to put that elbow back where it belongs, and crossing the room would mean going through the space Zachariah keeps getting driven backward into.
Celeste points toward the passage.
“Come around behind me. I can't fix it while you're running.”
“After.”
“Mark, don't make it worse.”
He works the shield strap loose with his good hand. It drops to the floor with a clang, and he retrieves his mace.
I don't understand how he can look at his arm and decide the unfinished part of the situation is the monster. I'd be standing beside Celeste already. Possibly too close, apologizing while making absolutely no effort to move away from the person who could put me back together.
Jing darts in while the golem is occupied with Zachariah.
His spearhead finds the damaged seam behind its knee. He plants his feet and drives forward with his whole body, forcing the point deeper between two slabs.
Orange light erupts around the steel.
“Now!”
Alluoah is moving before Jing finishes.
He uses the creature's bent leg as a series of steps, one boot finding the knee and the next catching a ridge at its hip. One blade goes into its sheath as he jumps. His free hand catches a crack along the shoulder, and he pulls himself high enough to drive the other weapon into the seam beneath the golem's neck.
I forget about Mark's arm.
Alluoah braces both feet against the creature's back, draws his second blade, and plunges it beside the first.
The golem thrashes.
His body disappears behind its shoulder, and for a horrible second I can't see whether he's still holding on. My eyes jump to the party list. His name is there. His health drops, but not enough to mean what I'm imagining.
Then he falls from its back.
He lands hard, rolls over one shoulder, and comes up favoring his right leg.
“Didn't like that!”
“No shit,” Jane says, firing into the neck seam before it closes.
Alluoah limps clear while Jing withdraws his spear. The golem's health is below half now, although it still seems perfectly capable of flattening everyone within reach.
I look at the sword in my hand.
I've been holding it this whole time.
There's nothing on the blade except a pale coating of dust. I could put it away and it wouldn't change anything about the fight, which is probably what bothers me. I wanted to be able to do things like that. Maybe not climb a twelve-foot monster quite so enthusiastically, but at least recognize an opening and have the ability to use it.
Watching Alluoah doesn't even give me the comfort of deciding he's reckless. He is reckless, obviously, but he waits for Jing to force the knee down, uses the ridges that are actually there, and lets go before the creature can reach him. There's thought beneath the part that looks effortless.
I'd like to ask him about it sometime. How he knows when he'll have enough time, or whether he plans the whole movement before starting. Those are ordinary questions about the game. I could ask them without admitting how closely I've been watching him.
Unfortunately, then he might offer to watch me practice.
I tighten my grip on my sword, consider the distance to the golem, and finally sheath it.
There's no sensible opening for me. The seams are above my head unless the creature bends, and anything that brings them within reach also brings several tons of stone close enough to fall on me. Going in would mean asking the others to watch out for me while they're already dealing with it.
I believe that. I also appreciate how thoroughly it excuses staying where I am.
The fight settles into another few minutes of advances and retreats. Mark returns without his shield, keeping to the golem's rear and swinging only when Zachariah has its attention. His damaged arm moves with every step. I stop looking directly at it and watch his feet instead.
Jing keeps working at the same knee. Alluoah stays on the ground now, using the openings at its hip while Jane aims higher. The creature's health falls much more slowly than I'd like, but it does keep falling.
I loosen the flap over the potions and make sure the contents haven't shifted. My knee aches where I landed. It isn't enough to justify using anything, so I bend it twice and tell myself that's dealt with.
“You know,” Mark says during a retreat, breathing hard, “I'm beginning to think those mages might not have been completely full of shit.”
“I'd like it formally noted that I voted to leave,” Jane says.
“You didn't vote,” Alluoah answers.
“I objected repeatedly.”
“That's basically your resting state.”
Jane doesn't look at him. She draws again, holds while Zachariah steps across her line, and releases the moment there's space.
The arrow disappears into the damaged neck seam.
The golem turns its shoulders and throws a wide swing at Zachariah.
This time, he steps inside it.
The fist passes over him, close enough to send dust rolling across his armor. He drives his sword into the glowing gap beneath its armpit, braces his shield against the creature's side, and twists.
Stone separates with a grinding crack.
The arm tears free.
It hits the floor in a shower of fragments and orange sparks, bounces once, and rolls toward the wall.
Toward me.
I run.
The first step drags against the weight of the pack. Then my legs catch up, and everything strapped to me begins moving at once. Mark's spare shield slams against my back. The pot rattles against its rim. I take the gap beside the nearest pillar without stopping to check whether the shield will fit.
Something catches my cloak.
I jerk forward, expecting to be pulled off my feet, but the fabric slips free.
The stone arm crashes into the wall behind me.
I stop several steps farther on, bent forward beneath the pack, listening to little pieces of granite settle around the larger impact. My cloak is still attached. Both legs work. There's no death notification.
That last part is especially welcome.
I try to picture my apartment, the pod, the room where nothing enormous is trying to kill me. Knowing it's there usually helps. Right now, all I can manage is the faintly humiliating awareness that I'd be lying safely in it even if I'd just screamed in front of everybody.
“Bekah!”
I turn toward Jane.
She's pointing past me.
A small orange crystal lies beside the severed arm.
“Grab that!”
For a second, I keep looking at her instead of the crystal. I'd thought she was checking on me, which isn't fair because she hasn't actually said anything that suggests that. She can see I'm standing. There are other things happening.
Still, I would've liked the question.
I wait until the last loose stone stops moving, then hurry back. The fragment is hot enough to warm my palm through the glove as soon as I pick it up.
Blue text appears.
GOLEM CORE FRAGMENT
RARE CRAFTING MATERIAL
“Oh.”
“What?” Mark calls.
“Rare drop.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“How much?”
“I don't know.”
“Check market.”
“She's a little busy,” Jane snaps.
“She's standing by the wall.”
I look from the crystal to the arm that nearly killed me, then back toward the golem. Jane has another arrow ready. Mark is circling outside its remaining fist's reach while looking in my direction.
Neither of them has time for me to explain what standing by the wall has involved.
I put the fragment in my inventory and tag it for the shared loot list. The blue entry appears among the expedition items, attached to my name as the person carrying it. Seeing it there improves my mood more than it should. I haven't done any damage, but there's something valuable in my inventory that wasn't there before, and I made sure we didn't leave it behind.
I start to open the market information.
Then the golem takes another step, and I close the menu.
It doesn't last another minute.
Jing drives his spear into the damaged knee again while Mark strikes from the opposite side. The supporting stone splits. The golem drops, one enormous hand slamming down to catch its weight.
Zachariah stays in front of it, drawing its remaining arm away from the others. Jane fires into the neck. Alluoah follows the arrow's line with his blades, cutting through the exposed seam until the slabs beneath the head begin to separate.
Orange light shows through the widening gap.
“Core!” Jing calls.
Mark moves in.
He lifts his mace with one hand and brings it down into the light.
The crack is sharper than the others.
The golem freezes.
For a moment, it remains kneeling with its head turned toward Zachariah. Then the orange seams go dark, and its chest folds inward.
“Clear!”
Everybody backs away.
Stone crashes across the floor, smaller pieces bouncing beyond the pile as the shoulders collapse. I turn my face into my cloak before the dust reaches me. It gets through anyway, dry and bitter against my tongue.
Someone spits nearby.
“God, I hate that,” Alluoah mutters.
I keep listening until the last of the rubble stops moving.
No grinding follows it.
When I lower the cloak, Mark is sitting against a pillar with his mace beside him. His broken arm rests awkwardly across his lap. Now that the fight has stopped, he seems to have decided it deserves his full attention.
Jing walks over.
“Let me see it.”
“You a healer now?”
“No. I want to poke it.”
Mark looks up. Jing's expression doesn't change.
“Fuck you.”
He starts laughing again, more easily this time, and moves his good hand between Jing and the injury.
Celeste pushes past them.
“Move.”
Jing steps aside.
I haven't spoken to her much on this trip, and watching her kneel beside Mark makes me wish I had. She's a heavy-built human woman with copper-colored skin and gray threaded through the thick hair gathered at the back of her head. Her white mantle is streaked with dust, almost hiding the gold embroidery around its edge. She folds it clear of the floor before touching his arm.
“Stop moving it.”
“I'm not.”
“You're flexing.”
“I'm checking whether it works.”
“Your elbow's pointing the wrong way. It doesn't.”
She unfastens the leather above the joint and eases it away. Mark watches her hands with an expression considerably less confident than the one he wore while returning to the fight.
I come closer, keeping out of her light. A piece of his sleeve is caught against the armor, so when she pauses to adjust her grip, I lift the fabric out of the way.
She glances at me.
“Hold that there.”
“Okay.”
It's a small thing, but at least I don't have to decide whether I'm being helpful. I keep the cloth clear while gold gathers between her fingers.
Mark looks at the light, then at the position of her hands.
“Wait. You're setting it first?”
“Yes.”
“Can you heal it without doing that?”
“Not properly.”
He takes a breath through his nose.
“Fantastic.”
“Hold still.”
He looks toward Alluoah. “Distract me.”
Alluoah considers him for a moment.
“So when you said Emma pissed in your bed last year—”
“My daughter, asshole.”
Celeste straightens the arm.
The sound makes me flinch.
Mark screams, and my hands jerk against the sleeve before I manage to hold it steady.
Jing starts laughing. Alluoah loses whatever he was about to say. Mark looks around at them with his mouth still open, then lets out a furious, breathless laugh of his own.
“Oh, fuck all of you.”
I laugh too, although part of it is relief that he's still insulting people. The arm looks like an arm again, and I hadn't realized how much I needed it to stop being wrong until it does.
“Done,” Celeste says.
Golden light sinks through his skin. The swelling fades beneath her hands, and the hard shape above the elbow disappears. She lets go only after his fingers begin moving normally.
I release the sleeve.
Mark bends his wrist, then his elbow. He looks almost suspicious when neither movement causes a problem.
“Fuck me.”
“Buy me dinner first.”
He looks at her.
Celeste pats his cheek and gets to her feet.
I lower my eyes before she can catch me watching that too.
They make it seem easy. She says something, he gives her a look, and neither of them has to spend the next ten minutes establishing what the exchange meant. I don't think she expects dinner. I'm reasonably sure he understands that. It's the reasonably that would cause problems for me.
I'd still be wondering after everyone else had forgotten the conversation.
It isn't the mention of sex that embarrasses me, exactly. I'm perfectly capable of having thoughts I'd never say in front of these people. It's being expected to answer as though I have enough experience to know where a joke ends and an invitation starts. There doesn't seem to be a way to ask without revealing that I've reached twenty-one and somehow missed the part where everybody else learned.
I smooth Mark's sleeve back over the armor before remembering that he has two working hands again.
He doesn't notice.
Zachariah is already picking through the golem's remains.
Jane walks toward him, stepping around a piece of granite large enough to have been part of its shoulder.
“We've had our five minutes.”
“Technically, the fight took seven.”
“Then we're overdue.”
He doesn't answer.
I check my cloak where the stone hand caught it. The edge is scraped and dusty, but it hasn't torn badly enough to need attention. Behind me, Mark retrieves his shield. Celeste brushes her hands together and checks her status while the others start inspecting the scattered drops.
There are coins among the rubble, several more pieces of material, and something pale beneath a slab near Zachariah's knee.
Then he moves the slab.
Purple light catches on his gauntlet.
Everyone notices.
Alluoah gives a low whistle.
“Is that Epic?”
Zachariah lifts it into the light.
A heavy stone-gray gauntlet rests in his palm, its articulated fingers curled slightly inward. Runes around the wrist glow purple. It doesn't look especially elegant, but nobody moves past him to keep searching.
He opens the item window.
Then he starts laughing.
Jane closes her eyes.
“How much?” Mark asks.
“Current market?”
Zachariah turns the window outward.
“Eighty-two thousand.”
Nobody speaks.
I lean far enough to read it myself, even though there's no reason to think he's mistaken. The number is there, perfectly ordinary text beside an item he's holding in one hand.
Eighty-two thousand gold.
I'd been pleased with the Rare fragment. I still am, but now I can't remember why I thought checking its price mattered so urgently.
Mark comes closer, working his newly healed fingers into his glove.
“Eighty-two?”
“That's what it says.”
Alluoah looks from the item to the passage beyond the chamber.
“So the mages offer three hundred thousand for the location, and the first trash mob drops eighty grand.”
“Don't do this,” Jane says.
Mark keeps looking at the window.
“I'm not doing anything. I'm just saying that's…”
“A lot of fucking money,” Zachariah finishes.
I wish he'd sound less pleased with himself, because it's making it harder to admit that I'm thinking the same thing.
It's roughly eight thousand dollars before fees, and none of us would get all of it. My share would be smaller than theirs. I know those qualifications before the calculation starts, but the amount still leaves room for things I usually remove from consideration without checking the price.
A better sword. Repairs paid before the durability warning appears. Enough left after rent that logging in could occasionally begin with deciding what I feel like doing instead of checking which contract pays fastest.
I could spend a whole session practicing. Ask somebody to show me what I'm doing wrong without keeping track of how much money I ought to be earning while they explain.
Then I look at Mark's arm.
The sleeve is back in place. Apart from some blood and torn fabric, there's very little left to show what happened to it. He's flexing his fingers around the shield grip as though testing a new strap.
“You got lucky,” Jane tells Zachariah.
“Maybe.”
“One drop doesn't mean anything about the next room.”
“No,” he says. “But it means we can afford to look at the next one.”
Jane watches him.
I wait for her to answer, already agreeing with whatever she'll say about the difference between being able to pay for something and having a reason to do it. But she doesn't say it. Her gaze moves past him to the dark passage, then back to the gauntlet.
That unsettles me more than another argument would.
We've killed a Level 417 enemy. Nobody's dead. Celeste has put Mark's arm back together quickly enough that he's already discussing the reward instead of the injury. I can see how this looks to them, and the longer I look at the loot, the less unreasonable it feels to me.
Maybe I am too cautious.
I dislike the thought immediately, partly because it sounds like something people say before doing something stupid, and partly because I've spent enough evenings at home making perfectly sensible decisions that leave me with nothing to tell anybody afterward. I can always explain why I didn't go somewhere. Usually the explanation is good. That doesn't make the evening feel particularly worthwhile when I'm still awake, watching somebody else do the thing I decided wasn't worth the trouble.
This isn't an evening out, though. It's a dungeon that nearly killed me without the monster even choosing me as a target.
I glance toward the broken arm by the wall.
We could leave with the gauntlet. That would still count as doing something.
Zachariah puts the item away and starts toward the deeper passage. Jane stays where she is for several seconds before following. Mark goes next, then Alluoah. The others begin gathering their things.
I check my pack.
Nothing has come loose. The potion flap is still open, so I secure it where I can release it quickly. My sword is sheathed. Jane's silverheads remain beneath the cloak.
Far down the corridor behind us, daylight shows as a small gray rectangle.
The way out is still there.
I could say we should take it. I don't have to come up with a new argument, and I don't have to convince everyone that Zachariah is wrong about the loot. He can be right about there being more and we can still leave with what we've found.
I draw a breath.
“Bekah, you coming?” Mark calls. “You've got the potions.”
I close my mouth.
For a moment, I almost answer that I know what I'm carrying.
“Yeah,” I say instead.
I turn away from the daylight and follow.
The next corridor is narrower, forcing us closer together as the chamber falls behind. I have to angle the spare shield past the first pillar. Once I'm through, I settle behind Celeste, where I can see the light ahead and still reach the supplies without stopping everyone.
I tell myself I'm staying close because that will make leaving easier if we need to.
The air smells faintly of rust.
Then the light reaches the floor.
Dark smears cover the fitted stone from wall to wall, nearly black where they've dried in the cracks. A broken sword lies across one streak. Farther on, strips of leather and pieces of armor are scattered between the pillars.
Zachariah slows.
I look past Celeste.
Someone is sitting against the wall.
For a moment, the angle hides what's wrong. I can see a helmet, shoulders, both arms resting beside the body. Then the light moves farther down, and I realize there aren't any legs.
The corpse ends at the waist.
A jagged edge of armor surrounds the torn remains beneath its breastplate. Something shriveled lies across the floor below it, attached to a pale length of exposed spine.
I stop before I reach the first smear of blood.
Nobody speaks.
The helmet moves.
Slowly, it turns toward us.
Two pale blue lights appear behind the visor, and a nameplate resolves above the corpse.
HOLLOW KNIGHT
LEVEL 439
It plants both hands against the floor.
Farther down the corridor, metal scrapes against stone.
Another scraping sound follows from somewhere beyond the light.
Then another.
Zachariah raises his shield.