Broken

Chapter 5

It didn't take us long to come to a crashing stop at the end of the shoot. I had the wind knocked out of me when we hit the bottom, before I continued to roll across a cold, yet oddly smooth, floor. Coming to a halt against another warm body that let out a grunt as my weight collided with it, I realized that I was still tangled up with at least one twin.

"Ow..." I heard the man groan as a hand clasped my shoulder and turned me around. I blinked, blurrily, at the blonde male leaning over my bruised form, and saw that it was the cat-like Greyson. There was a dribble of blood falling from his brow, but that didn't seem to deter the grin that crossed his handsome face. "Maybe you are unlucky!"

"Ugh... Shut up..." I moaned, closing my eyes and grasping my throbbing head. "Is your brother dead?"

"Never." I heard another grunting voice answer from somewhere to my left.

"No need to worry about Eric." Greyson laughed, as he moved my rather uncooperative limbs around, clearly checking for injuries while I was half out of it. "He can take a hit even better than I can. I'm bendier though." He added when he saw that I was looking at him once again, wiggeling his eyebrows sugestivly.

I sighed in exasperation. I don't know why I didn't think that falling down a bone breaking ramp would dampen these two in their quest to take absolutely nothing serious. "Why, because you're a cat?" I asked, deciding that playing along was easier than telling him off while partially concussed.

"Jaguar!" He said, sounding slightly offended.

Eric chuckled. "I'm a bear, if you wanted to know."

With Greyson's help I managed to get to a seated position, running my hands over my own limbs to be sure that the aches and pains were nothing more than an impressive collection of colorful bruising. Nothing seemed to be broken, though I could really use a nice, long, hot, soak once we finally got out of this damn instance.

"I'm gonna scout ahead." Stated Eric, patting me on the head as if I were a child. I glared up at the man, who was clearly somewhere between my own age and that of my younger brother's. He simply laughed and headed off into the semi-darkness.

Now that I was fairly certain that I was in one piece, I took the opportunity to examine our surroundings, while Greyson stumbled to the shoot we had been ejected from, holding a torn piece of cloth to the gash in his skull.

The first thing I noted was that this part of the instance was very different to the glowing mushroom biome we had just left behind. Rather than wet slate walls and floors with sporadic clusters of glowing moss, and giant mushrooms, we were now in a relatively tight, rectangular room made of what looked like carved crystals. The floor was almost mirror like, and the walls were chiseled, rather than smooth.

At least there didn't seem to be monsters in the immediate area.

"We need to get back to the others." I said, using the glassy wall to get to my feet and stumble over to Greyson, who was just extracting his head from the death slide.

"Agreed. Though, I highly doubt it will be easy..." His hand was still pressed to his temple where the torn scrap of his shirt was turning red, and he looked worried as he gazed off into the direction his twin had left. "There is no way we are getting back up this shoot; its too steep, smooth, and even if we did manage to get back up there I am willing to bet that the door we fell through will be sealed shut behind us. And, unless you have other hidden skills beyond your fire magic- ones that let you break through sealing magic for instance- then we are stuck here."

I frowned and avoided eye contact. I guess the fact that I had a skill was now out of the bag. I shook my head and sighed, leaning against the wall near the opening and sliding back down to the floor. "Nope." Was all I said.