Page 50 of Spelunking Through Hell

“I won’t let you hurt yourself to save people who’ve been trying to kill you,” I said. “But I understand that it would hurt you to leave them behind if there’s any way to get them out. Of course, we’ll try to find a solution that frees them all. I have friends working on the issue of how we leave this place.”

Thomas frowned. “Alice... this is a killing jar.”

“I know. Jars can be broken.” I shrugged. “I found a map that had this world marked on it, drawn by a dude who was apparently a pretty damn famous dimensional cartographer. Some friends of mine inIthaca are familiar enough with his work to decode his notes, and they’re working on it now. They’ve been working on it since I left them with the map.”

Thomas kept on frowning. “That’s nice, but working on a thing isn’t the same as actually accomplishing a thing.”

“True enough, but the thing about this guy is that he’dbeenhere.” I said it with as much conviction as I possibly could. “He visited this dimension. Left notes about it and everything. And that means he knew how to get out of the jar. So if he wrote down the way he did it...”

“They may be able to recreate his work!” Thomas grabbed me by the shoulders and yanked me toward him, kissing me fiercely before letting go and jumping to his feet. “Alice Price, you’re a bloody genius!”

“Not something people call me very often,” I said, surprised. I wasn’t used to being kissed at all anymore, and he’d never been that much of one for displays like that. I could have conquered worlds with the power of that kiss. It lingered on my lips. I turned to face him, slightly dazed. “As soon as I knew this might be where you were, I knew I couldn’t go in after you unless I could get out. What if I’d been wrong?”

“What if you were only right once?”

“I found the map and the book together,” I said. “Healy family luck.”

“You’ve always put too much faith in a phenomenon we can neither replicate nor explain,” he said, frowning briefly. “So you may have people coming to get you, and presumably they’ll have prepared to possibly take us both, if they have faith in this luck of yours.”

“They’re Ithacan,” I said. “Helen likes to say I’m blessed by Tyche. She thinks my luck is a literal gift from a goddess.”

“Maybe she’s right,” he said. “It would be as believable an explanation as any other we’ve been able to devise. But all right. I’ll put my faith in your friends, and that means we’re not skimming the pneuma off of you until we absolutely have to.”

I blinked. “Why not?”

“Among other things, if your particular brand of ridiculous fortune reallyisa gift from a goddess—which seems less absurd now than it would have before I got abducted by the spirit of a dead world that apparently never existed, thanks to the granddaughter I’ve never met—then it may or may not behave like ordinary luck, and even ordinary luck can be harvested by unethical sorcerers. We have to assume that it can be pulled away, however temporarily.”

I frowned, nodding slowly. “And what would that do?”

“Harvesting someone’s luck leaves them a blank slate, with only what they’ve managed to acquire from the universe around them. They’ll gather more luck, attracting good or bad based on what’s already there. An unethical sorcerer can sour someone’s luck for the rest of their life. And luck tends to cling to the dimensional membrane.”

“Remove one, remove both,” I said carefully. “You think that’s what’s been going on with me?”

“I think it’s very possible, and even if I had the equipment to do so, I wouldn’t be skinning you alive to verify the theory,” said Thomas. “But yes, I believe Naga has been harvesting your luck, intentionally or as a side effect of getting what hereallywanted, for as long as this has been going on.”

“I... see,” I said.

Thomas nodded. “I’m glad. Now, if your ridiculous coincidences have continued since you started the rejuvenation process, and never turned sour on you, your luck is something you generate internally. I’ve always suspected that to be the case, given the way it seems to behave, but normal luck doesn’t work that way. It accretes, like layers of calcium carbonate around a speck of sand forming a pearl. No one’s luck consistently maintains the same form after it has been stripped away.”

“My luck always gets a little funky for a while after a treatment, but it goes back to normal pretty quickly,” I said, thinking of the way I stubbed my toes and stumbled more frequently in the wake of a treatment. I’d always chalked it up to being uneasy in my body while I adjusted to the changes, and not to having my luck literally peeled away. “So why does that stop you from peeling the pneuma off of me?”

“It’s very likely to pull your luck off with it, and I would prefer for us not to go into battle immediately after taking away one of your natural defenses,” he said. “Not to mention that unlike your luck, the pneuma we remove from you willnotregenerate, and if the solution your friends have found for getting us out of here assume any measure of natural magic in this place, we’ll need it.”

“So we’re saving me until necessary?”

“Precisely.”

“Cool. Now I don’t just have grenades, I get tobea grenade.” I smiled at him brightly. “I’ve always liked to be the biggest danger in a room.”

“Even so.” He rose, leaving me cross-legged on the bed as he began pacing around the room. “The Haspers are already on the march andshould be here well before nightfall. I’d give them perhaps six hours before they reach our outer barrier.”

“Tell me about them,” I said.

“About seven feet tall, on average, with black-and-orange skin and vicious claws,” he said, and raised his arms like he was trying to mimic the outline of a bear. “Their skin is pebbled and hardened, and it serves them almost as armor.”

I nodded slowly. “They’re from a dimension called Helos. They’re mostly scavengers, although they’re not above attacking travelers. Earth-adjacent, you can get there from North America, and from there you can get to about a dozen dimensions that I know of, most of them capable of supporting human life.”

Thomas blinked. “You recognize my description of the neighbors.”

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