The Krakos: Book Two of The Legend of the Artificer

Chapter 21

"I'm just saying, we should probably know if a party member is carrying around man-eating fish," Grim insisted as the four of them walked down the road in the pre-dawn air.

"Well, I knew!" Elmer said happily, and Grim sighed.

"Even more reason for us to know," he muttered, and Tibalt snorted.

"There's a lot you don't know about me, and they're not man-eating! They're mushroom-eating. I even got them to stop biting off limbs!"

"See? That's not normal! You understand that's not normal, right?" Grim asked pleadingly, and Tibalt blinked at him.

"Wait, what limbs were they biting off?" Angel asked, and all eyes turned to Tibalt.

"Why do you think I got so good at time magic?" he asked in confusion. "I had to enchant my limbs. Normal healing enchantments don't cut it for limb regeneration."

Angel started coughing, and Grim stared at Tibalt in absolute bafflement.

"So you have a healing enchantment on your body?" he asked, and Tibalt blinked.

"Yeah, of course? It was the second enchantment I put in?"

"So what was the first?"

"Pain nullification, obviously. I'm not an idiot."

"Wait, why didn't you do the healing first?" Angel asked and Tibalt scoffed, because wasn't it obvious?

"Well, if the nullification enchantment backfired, I would just be in agonizing pain until I managed to remove it, which would be pretty easy with the prototype enchanter gloves. If the healing one backfired, I would probably just die. So it was obviously the correct move to do the pain nullification first to make sure an enchantment can actually be put on your body."

"Do you have any other enchantments we should be worried about?" Grim asked tightly, and Tibalt considered the question.

"Well, the intelligence one definitely made me weirder... The glamor one is the only one that didn't function exactly as intended, though, but that's not as big of a deal."

"So, you don't feel pain, and you are unkillable," Grim muttered. "We should have gotten you out of the tower sooner."

"Well, I wouldn't say unkillable," Tibalt said with a nervous laugh. "I don't think my head can grow back, and the healing only covers wounds, but it doesn't work as well for major illnesses. Pain nullification only covers basic injuries, and magic-based pain attacks. I can still get headaches and eye strain and stuff like that. Actually, I should start wearing glasses when I'm working, because all that reading really started giving me eye strain."

"Well, Tibalt will do what Tibalt wants," Elmer said grandly and looped her arm through Tibalt's. "We should just be glad he thought he was the best person to experiment on."

"... Yeah... Sure," Grim said with a worried glance as the entrance to the tower came into sight. "Did she say to enter through the front door or not?"

"I feel like that's a bad idea," Tibalt said as he gazed up at the tower with a sense of relief at the subject change. They probably didn't need to know about all of his modifications, or his plans for more. They'd probably lock him up.

"Maybe she'll send someone out for us?" Angel asked hesitantly, and Tibalt crinkled up his nose.

"I dunno..."

The four of them came to a halt as Tibalt studied the tower with minor interest. It really did sound terrible.

"Are the shields here, you think, or somewhere else?" he asked, and Elmer tilted her head.