Technomancer: Birth of a Goddess

Emily steps out of the portal, pulling free from the swirling black mass of mana to appear in the cave system once again. Her gaze is instantly drawn to Juliana, standing with their friends, cautiously surrounding the doorway with spells at the ready. A small tension she didn’t even realise she still held relaxes as she sees her safe and sound after the dungeon’s completion.

Everyone dismisses their preparations the moment they see Emily, and Juliana rushes forward, checking her for injuries and instantly noticing her uneven gait.

“Are you okay?” she asks with concern. “What happened?”

Before Emily can answer her, the door behind her shudders, sliding shut and receding into the wall, being replaced by smooth stone.

“I’m fine, just a flesh wound,” Emily reassures Juliana, pulling her into her right side and leaning against her to take the weight off her leg as she turns to answer the questioning gazes of her friends, lingering on the now missing door behind her. “The dungeon was an arena fight against a load of enemies. There were a few thousand goblins and six hundred hobgoblins, followed by a giant golem that I’d place at around third circle in strength since there was a mana inhibition zone around it.”

Their faces pale at her words, and Ivor quickly signs a question dripping with incredulity.

“You fought thousands of goblins and a golem in a mana inhibition zone alone, and only got a flesh wound?”

“Not quite,” Emily corrects. “The goblins and hobgoblins attacked first without the mana inhibition zone, then the golem spawned alone afterwards with the zone. Luckily, the zone only really blocked external casting, so I was able to keep ahead of its attacks most of the time. Also, I have some pretty heavy-hitting weapons, so I was able to destroy its core without spells.”

His surprise lowers a little, but shock and respect remain in his gaze.

“We should have come with you,” Dante complains. “I bet even you could have done with some help against such a big horde.”

Emily shrugs, unable to tell him the full truth.

“I’m almost certain it would have made us fight the hordes separately, and I didn’t have that much trouble against them. I’m very good at one against many in a melee since there’s a limit to how many can attack me at once. What’s done is done now, so let’s move on to the rewards.”

Her distraction works, as all of her friends’ eyes light up at the mention of rewards.

“Wait, do we get a share of them even though we did nothing?” Tom asks, surprisingly killing his own anticipation.

“I’m the one who stopped you all coming in, and I already said when we started this that I’d give you all your fair share from the expedition, so yes,” Emily answers with a firm nod. “Besides, by that logic, you wouldn’t get anything from the expedition as a whole.”

Everyone chuckles at her teasing remark, including Tom despite the small embarrassed blush on his cheeks.

Also, I’m more concerned about completing my quest than gaining resources. I’m already going to have enough mana crystals and magical metals to last me a while after this.

“First, there were these magic crystals,” Emily says, summoning two dozen greater crystals on the floor in front of her, a mix of water, ice, light, darkness, and wind.

Her friends’ eyes widen in surprise at the number of crystals, but Emily notices Enzo’s reaction is far more muted, and Dante barely reacts after seeing no fire crystals.

Enzo definitely understands the value of a dungeon far better than everyone else.

“Then the main reward was this,” Emily says, removing her right hand from Juliana’s waist to show off the Air Walker. “It’s a ring with a flight spell engraved on it.”

This time, Enzo’s reaction is the strongest, his eyes shooting open wide, and his mouth falling open.

“You got a flight artefact?” he asks, a glint of greed in his eyes.

“Yep.” Emily nods, noticing his greed and making a note to remove any risk he may pose before giving Juliana the ring. “I plan on analysing the engravings and making my own spell, so I’ll keep it with me for now. We can decide on who gets the ring itself later, and give everyone else a larger cut of the other loot.”

No one has any complaints about her handling of the situation, so Emily walks over to a rock, supported by Juliana, and sits down.

“We’ll stay here for a little bit longer so I can deal with my leg, then we keep following my Diver.”

Tom gathers the mana crystals Emily left behind in his bag, and everyone else settles down to wait for Emily.

“Do you need any help?” Juliana asks, crouching beside Emily.

“I’m not sure if my ankle is set correctly, so could you help me get my boot off please.”

Juliana nods, sitting down on the floor in front of her and looking closely at her right boot.

“Oh, Goddess,” she mutters as she sees the cracks covering the metal plates lining the boot.

They’re missing some segments, having fallen off during the battle, and some sections are folded in, poking into Emily’s flesh below the leather inner shoe. Juliana carefully undoes the internal lacing exposed at the top of the boot before gently prying out the folded sections. Emily turns off her pain receptors again as Juliana gets to work, but she doesn’t say anything, letting Juliana continue with the same delicate care.

Once she’s certain she’s removed all of the sections pressing into Emily’s leg, Juliana pulls the mouth of the boot wide and slowly slides it off, glancing up repeatedly to make sure she isn’t hurting Emily too much. Emily frowns slightly at the state of her boot but otherwise keeps a reassuring smile on her face as she watches. The moment her boot slides free of her foot, Emily winces at the colour of the flesh underneath, and Juliana gasps in shock.

Emily’s foot is an unnatural mix of pale white and purple, and, as Juliana takes out a pair of fabric shears and cuts up the inside seam of Emily’s leather trousers, they both see the rest of her leg matching it.

“What the hell do you mean a flesh wound?” Juliana hisses, her voice tinged with concern and a hint of helplessness. “How did you even do this?”

“The golem managed to catch me because I let my guard down a little. It was a thirty-metre-tall stone golem: I didn’t expect its arm to turn into a torrent of water.”

“Water did this?” Juliana asks with a shiver.

“Well, I don’t think it was really water. More like liquid stone. By the looks of it, it was really dense and crushed my leg with high pressure,” Emily says, inspecting the damage to her leg closely.

Juliana grimaces at the calm explanation, gently running her fingers over several divots in the leg where the boot was folded in on it.

“How aren’t you bleeding?”

“I used all my injectors,” Emily says, reaching up and tapping the back of her neck to convey her meaning.

“And it still looks like this?”

“Yeah. The healing potions I can make are only meant for light wounds like cuts and gashes, not shattered bones. They did their best and kept me in the fight, but this will probably take a bit of time to fix.”

I could reset and try again... Ah well. It’s a chance to test the healing spell I copied from Fionn on larger injuries.

Emily places her hands on either side of her leg, starting at the highest point of damage as she starts casting a spell. A glistening white magic circle wraps her legs, pouring healing light onto the wounds. She carefully directs the spell, focusing on knitting back together the blood vessels and muscles, using her robust musculature to hold the still-damaged bones in place.

Unfortunately, this spell’s too weak to help with damaged bones properly. I need some actual time to heal that fully. It’s more effective on myself though, I guess my understanding of my own body does help.

She carefully takes her time, moving the focus of the spell down her leg as the purple bruises slowly fade away to reveal healthy skin. Juliana silently settles down beside her, watching the process with concern but not interfering, fearful of breaking Emily’s focus and prolonging her pain.

After twenty minutes of repairing the damage, Emily cancels the spell, healing light, with a small sigh.

“It used a lot of mana, and it’s not perfect, but my bones should heal within a day or two,” she says, turning her focus to her ruined boot lying on the floor before her. “Tsk, I’ll have to use a substitute until I fix that.”

She sends the boot into her storage and produces a simple leather shoe as a temporary replacement before moving to stand. Juliana holds out her hands to help Emily steady herself, but she stands without issue and lightly hops on the spot a few times: the feeling is completely returned to her limb and only a dull ache remains.

“Are you sure you should be doing that?” Hester questions, surprising Emily.

She looks around and finds all of her friends staring at her with various expressions, from slight horror and concern to respect.

I guess it did look pretty bad.

“Yeah, I’ve repaired everything except a few cracks in my bones. I can’t target the remaining damage with my spells, since I’m not very good with healing spells and only have one I managed to copy from Fionn, but I should be fine to keep moving and fighting like this. Quite frankly, moving with a few cracks in my bones is easy. Agnes gave me worse in our spars,” she says with an amused smile that only seems to unsettle her friends more. “Right, let’s get going!”

With her healing finished, Emily takes down the barrier disc and continues to guide her friends down the tunnels, ignoring her low mana reserves and letting them slowly recharge with her passive regeneration. They wind through the passageway, away from the five-way split in the path they encountered before reaching the dungeon.

They travel for several hours, stopping halfway through for lunch, before the water starts to pick up speed again and Emily’s forced to remove her boat from the water. They continue forward and disappointingly find themselves at the five-way split once more.

“Damn it!” Dante groans, kicking a rock into the water. “Do we really have to backtrack?”

“Probably. This tunnel appears to be a dead end,” Hester says.

Emily tunes out their conversation, her eyes following the rock Dante kicked and remaining locked on the water. She steps closer to the water’s edge, looking out into the centre of the junction at the roiling current.

“Actually,” she says, cutting off the ongoing conversation as her friends all turn their attention to her. “I think we might be in the right place.”

Her friends follow her gaze, looking out into the river with confusion.

“Really?” Tom asks. “Where are we meant to go though?”

Emily turns back to her friends, answering his question with another question.

“How is there a current here?”

They all pause to consider her words, but Hester makes the connection first.

“The water needs to go somewhere,” Hester mutters, glancing past Emily towards the junction.

“Exactly!” Emily says with an excited grin, noticing the still confused looks etched on the others’ faces. “Look at the pathways in and out of this junction. There are three coming in, and two leading out. The two leading out are both in a closed loop with two of those leading in, so there’s only water coming in through one path. Now, this may be an oddity of magic, but logically, if it’s moving, it must be going somewhere.”

A light of realisation slowly dawns on her friends' faces she explains.

“An underwater tunnel,” Juliana squeaks, voicing Emily’s theory.

“Possibly,” Emily agrees. “I’ve been removing my boat from the water near here to stop it getting swept away, but that means I’ve never checked the riverbed around here. Our path forwards may be hidden in plain sight.”

She steps forward, bending down and pulling the boat from her storage once again.

“Only one way to find out!” she says, flashing a confident smile over her shoulder before dropping the watercraft onto the surface and watching it get dragged to the centre of the river.

Everyone watches with bated breath as it bobs in place for a moment, before suddenly vanishing into the swirling fog below the surface. Emily’s grin grows as she remains connected to the boat’s sensory array, watching it sink deep below, far further than the usual depth of the riverbed. The boat is thrown about, sending back a jumbled mess of information that barely helps Emily for a few seconds before suddenly blinking out and severing her connection.

“Tsk,” she clicks her tongue. “There’s definitely a tunnel down there, but my boat was destroyed.”

“Is there something down there?” Enzo questions.

“I don’t think so,” Emily says, shaking her head. “It was being thrown all over the place, so I think it’s just a violent current.”

“What now then?” Juliana asks, glancing at the water with a nervous gaze. “Do you have something else you can send down to check?”

Emily nods, tossing off her robes and sitting down to remove her shoes.

“Myself.”

Juliana jumps at her words, rushing forward to place a hand on Emily’s shoulder, gripping her hard.

“What do you mean yourself? Don’t you have some machine you can send down there? You’re still injured!” she fires off rapidly, glancing at the water repeatedly as her fear and concern mix.

Emily reaches up and gently rests her hand on her girlfriend’s, reassuring her as she looks over her shoulder with a smile.

“I only had one Diver prepared, and none of my other scouts are designed for underwater operation. I’ll be fine though. I’m pretty robust.”

And I can always reset if I get stuck.

Juliana doesn’t look convinced, but Emily doesn’t give her a chance to argue again, standing up and giving her a quick kiss before stepping backwards into the water. She turns around, ignoring the panicked cry behind her, and pushes forward to the centre of the current, where she feels a strong pull attempting to drag her down. She kicks against the current, holding herself above the water as she turns to face her friends.

“See, I can fight the current just fine,” she calls out, raising a single hand above the surface holding her Gills, pressing them to her face before giving a small wave as Juliana seems to relax slightly. “See you on the other side.”

Emily punctuates her goodbye by halting her movements, letting the current rip her down into the depths below.