Despite everything that had just happened, despite all of the things that were waiting to be done, and even despite the mystery of what he had ‘to know,’ there was only one thing on Richter’s mind. He sighed heavily in frustration and pain, then shouted up to his people looking down at him, “Would you hurry the fuck up! I’m literally hanging off a cliff down here!
All that kept him from falling to his death was one hand clutching the hilt of his short sword. The weapon was jammed into the wall of the pit he hung over. As he had fallen, Richter had managed to desperately plunge the clear green blade into the stone as he fell. To be honest, he hadn’t actually expected it to work, but luckily the fey metal had been up to the task.
As he swayed slightly in the air, he swung his other hand up with a pained grunt. His muscles felt like they had been stretched and seared, and his free hand was shaking slightly as he came down from the battle high. Despite this, he was able to grab a small shelf of stone. Now somewhat more secure, he breathed out slightly in relief. That feeling didn’t last.
An internal voice told him, no screamed at him, not to, but Richter just couldn’t resist looking down. Both arms extended above his head, he twisted his neck back and to the right. Beneath him, a sea of black satin Dark magic undulated and hinted of hidden monsters.
Gazing at the pool of pitch-black magic beneath him, fear began to worm its way through his heart. That internal voice sat back, smug, and said, ‘See, dumbass? You shouldn’t have looked.’ The voice wasn’t getting any argument from Richter anymore. He kept staring for a few seconds, afraid that a creature of the Dark would rise up and attack him, but thankfully the level of roiling liquid began to drop. Whether it was because the spell duration had elapsed or whether it was because the Witch Doctor had been killed, Richter didn’t know. Even if he did, though, it would be safe to say that he gave absolutely zero fucks. The chaos seed was just happy that he wouldn’t be pulled down into whatever had made that blackness. A few seconds later, it had disappeared, leaving a narrow shaft that led deep into the ground. The bottom was obscured by the natural darkness of shadow.
Richter was about to shout up to his people again when a rope dropped down from above. He ground his teeth together in pure frustration when he saw that the end of the rope was still a few feet short of his position. To make matters worse, the wall he was hanging from was angled. The pit flared out from the hole like a cone with the top cut off. It meant that the rope was not only two feet above his head, but it was five feet behind him. His name wasn’t Pythagoras, and he didn’t know the hypotenuse, but he did know he was fucked! Trying to keep from screaming every curse he knew as he clung to the shaft wall like a fly on glass, he instead shouted up, “It’s not long enough!”
Sion’s head poked out over the hole, “It is all the rope we have. Now grab it!”
“You grab it!” Richter snapped back. He couldn’t help it anymore! “Gahhh!” he shouted in frustration. His body was battered, and he was exhausted. If the shaft rose straight up, he might have tried to scale the rock wall. His enchanted gauntlets gave a boost to climbing, after all. His stamina was already low, however, and the act of supporting his weight while he hung over empty air was making the green bar slowly drop even more. Richter’s jaw was tight with frustration, but he also knew that staring at the rope above his head wasn’t going to bring it any closer. The chaos seed took a deep breath as he steeled himself for what was about to happen.
Keeping a death grip on the hilt of his elementum short sword with his right-hand, he let go of the shelf with his left. For a moment, he once again rotated slowly over the bottomless chasm. The only thing anchoring him to this life was the foot-and-a-half of his green blade that he had managed to jam into a crack in the stone. It did not fill him with a sense of security. He felt even less ‘secure’ when his short sword slid two inches out of the wall.
“Shit! Shit shit shit shit shit shit!” While expletives flew from the chaos seed’s mouth, he yanked his Moonstone Dagger of +3 from his belt. Richter did a one arm pullup, using his already slipping short sword as an anchor, and slammed his white-bladed dagger into the stone above him. It did not enter the rock as easily as the clear green metal of his short sword, but the moonstone weapon was still able to give him another handhold. He had made sure to angle the blade perpendicular to the pull of gravity. With his weight distributed, the short sword stopped sliding. Richter exhaled in relief.
“Be careful,” Sion shouted down. “I think you almost fell.”
Richter’s nostrils started flaring. He breathed out slowly and softly spoke the truth of his heart, “Muthafucka, I’m going to kill you.” Deciding not to waste energy on shouting up his response to his friend’s superfluous advice, he implemented the next phase of his plan. Richter braced one foot on a small knob of stone to try and remove some of the weight he was placing on both blades. Then he began easing his elementum short sword out of the wall. This time, the fact that it slid free easily worked in his favor.
He stretched his body and jabbed the tip of the green blade into the stone above him several times. With each strike against the cliff face, the edge of the blade dulled. The impossibly hard fey metal was tough enough to only lose a few points of durability through the process, but Richter still knew that that Krom would be apoplectic if he saw the powerful instrument of war being utilized in such a fashion. At the moment, Richter didn’t care. The point was that it got the job done. A small hole appeared in the shaft wall.
The chaos seed coughed and shook his head to clear some of the dust and gravel that had fallen down on him, then slid the short sword into the sheath on his back. Richter pulled himself up, using his dagger as a handhold and stuck his fingers into the hole he had made. Slowly wiggling the dagger’s hilt, he eased it out of the wall. His other arm began to tremble, and his stamina bar started falling faster. With a loud cry, he jammed the dagger into a nearby crack several feet higher than its previous home, praying to find purchase. It entered the break in the stone… and it held!
Richter closed his eyes. For the brief moment before the dagger was secure, his heart had started hammering in his chest again. He took several deep breaths to center his mind. When he was able to focus clearly on his purpose, he increased his breathing again to psyche himself up. The chaos seed swung both feet up to the angled wall. Pulling up with both hands, he kicked off of the wall at the same time and turned to face the rope hanging in the air before him!