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// 42 - I Can Handle This 
// Story: Bind on Pickup 
// by David Silver 
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The monsters were tougher, simply. They were harder to put down and struck back with force that made those who lived on the first ten floors feel like they were playing around. The puzzles, oddly, didn't feel like they were getting tougher.

"Or--" Garble prodded Spike in the shoulder. "--you're an even bigger nerd than we figured."

Spike snorted at that, crossing his arms. "I don't see you complaining when we get past them."

Smolder brushed past the two boys. "C'mon. I can smell treasure."

Sandra followed along with a dubious expression. "I don't think treasure has a specific smell."

The next room revealed that Smolder hadn't been entirely wrong. A bright silver lamp rested on a platform in the middle of a big pool that filled most of the interior of the room. She gestured at it with a smug grin. "What'd I tell ya? Want me to fly over there and snatch it?"

Spike leaned over the pool. The pool was clear, he could see right to the tiles on the bottom of it, and it looked like there wasn’t anything down there. The tiles were a pale aquamarine, as if they used to be white, and there was this pattern where there were very dark tiles interspersed.

But the part that was actually strange was that there was sort of a strange… smell. 

“No way,” Garble said, “I’m owed a badass something, so I’ll do it.”

Spike gingerly reached a claw over, touching his claw tip to the surface of the water, and he hissed as he pulled his hand back. It burnt, not quite like the fire but it hurt. But also notably, the water didn’t ripple like water, it wobbled, sending more like jiggles along the surface.

Garble bent his legs and opened his wings, and Spike called out. “Wait! I think it’s dangerous.”

Garble rolled his eyes. “It’s a pool of water with nothing in it. How dangerous could it be.” And he flapped out.

The 'water' didn't wait long to act, lashing out a reaching bluish psuedopod in a great motion. As huge as the wave was that approached him, it was slow enough for Garble to abort his motion, flapping haphazardly to not crash into it.

The mysterious substance flowed back into itself even as a new reaching wave began to grasp for him, set on capturing Garble from the air. "What is this?" he shouted, drawing his sword and slicing wildly. He could carve bits off as it came close, but it simply fell back into itself and became part of its whole, seemingly unharmed by his attempts.

Sandra brought her hand up. “Aiden!” she called out, and pointed at the pseudopod. Aiden flapped up a bit and sent a shot of fire at it, nailing the base of a psuedopod, which created a sizzling noise and a little bubble, which popped, to apparently little effect.

“Get back over here, Garble!” Spike shouted.

Garble looked back for a moment. “Screw that, the treasure is right there.” A psuedopod reached up again, smacking him on his side. There was a loud sizzling noise and he cried out in pain, faltering with his wings.

“Gar Gar!” Smolder shouted from the side, but he recovered.

Garble cut the psuedopod reaching for him again. “You guys coming out here, or at least making with the healing?”

“Garble it’s like a puzzle or something,” Smolder shouted, cupping her hands. “You come back here!”

“Screw that!” Garble shouted, swinging his sword in a wide electric arc, slicing down two psuedopods, but a third swept up and smacked his back. “Aargh!”

Spike wouldn't let Garble be swatted from the air without lending some assistance, even if his intoning prayer may have had some grumbles in it. Green energy jumped from him, soothing some of the worst burns, but the slaps kept coming, a race that was as franatic as it was obviously painful for Garble.

"Bro, get your flank down here." Smolder stomped a foot on the ground. "We can get the treasure the smart way."

"This is… the smart way." He banked to the left, narrowly avoiding one wave, but they were coming harder and faster. "Keep… going." He was as much speaking to himself as Spike, teeth grit against the loud sizzle that advertised the punishment he was receiving.

Sandra clapped her hands smartly, her form becoming shrouded in stone and gems. "I hope this is acid-proof." She thrust out a hand into the pool just to yank it back just as quickly. "No no no no!"

Garble continued to growl, his growl turning into a roar as he slashed frantically, most but not all of the psuedopods being sliced to ribbons before they could reach him, as they continued to smack him around, and he flapped and roared fire, his eyes squinted closed, until suddenly the flailing stopped.

He cracked his eyes open, still flapping his wings, to find out he was on top of the raised podium with the silver glowing lamp on it. “Yes!” he shouted, pumping his fists in the air. He landed on the platform. “Take that stupid puzzle pool!” He kicked his foot at the edge of the platform, swinging it out above the pool, at which the pool immediately reached up towards it. His motion continued, pulling his foot back with the finish of the kick and it all became calm below him once more.

Spike reached his hand out over the pool experimentally, it not coming up and immediately swatting him. “Okay, so it’s worse toward the middle.”

“I told you too!” Garble backed up and pointed out at his party. “I totally could make it. Way faster than figuring out how to do whatever it wants you to do.”

“Yeah, but you’re stuck on that side now.” Spike had an unamused expression on his face.

“Psh, I made it out here, didn’t I?”

“But you’re all banged up,” Sandra said.

Garble looked over himself. There were discolorations on his scales and armor… “Right, but we have things for that, so make with the healing already.” Garble gestured over to them. “There’s a reason we keep you around.”

Spike grumbled but indeed raised his staff, sending a burst of greenish light across the pool.

Which was swatted by the psuedopods, disappearing in a green sparkly flash.

“What!” Garble shouted, anger and discomfort raging in uncomfortable competition a moment. "Whatever, I got it." He turned away from the group and went for the lantern just sitting there. "Didn't come all this way for nothin'."
Smolder rubbed one arm with the opposing hand. "Guys, look… I love my Bro, and I am not at all comfortable with this situation, let me just put that out there."

"Seconded." Sandra had a hand raised. "None of the spirits I have are good with acid and I doubt we're going to burn away this entire pool."

Spike was thinking rather than speaking, twirling his staff and giving it a firm thrust, facing to the side and pushing it out horizontally. "Martyr can reach… but it's faint so far away. I can at least lower any hurt he gets, but I can't heal him, not right now."

Smolder slapped his nearest shoulder firmly. "You are the best sometimes, Spike. Now how do we get over there and save Gar Gar from himself?"

Garble was ignorant of their worries, wrapping his scaled fingers around the ornate lamp. "Huh, looks funny." Not that dragons had too many uses for oil lamps to keep things lit. Fire was rarely something they lacked. "What do you even do with this…?" He turned it around in his hands, trying to discern how to use it to defeat even larger foes.

The silver lamp jumped in his hands, rocking and quaking. Spike gasped with alarm, though he still held his staff out. "What if it has a genie?!"

"A genie?" Smolder lifted her shoulders. "What is that?"

"No clue," agreed Sandra, equally as ignorant to those stories. "But he's all alone out there. This isn't how a team should work."

Smoke began to billow out of the end of the lamp, taking on the form of the upper torso of a human with crossed arms. "Who has interrupted my slumber?" Bellowed the new figure, its lower body a trail of smoke leading back into the lamp.

"Me," boldly declared Garble, thumping his armored chest with a balled fist. "You some kinda boss?"

"I am a boss of sorts," allowed the figure, scrutinizing Garble. "For reaching this place, and to get you out of my hair, you get one wish. You cannot wish for life, death, or to change the mind of any save your own."

Spike inclined his head, able to hear the booming figure's words easily enough even at a distance. "Hey, I thought it was three wishes..."

Sandra pointed along the rim of the room. "Let's go around. Maybe we can get closer from another angle."

"A wish? Like anything?" He laughed with building confidence. "Maybe we don't need to climb this stupid tower then."

"Within reason," corrected the genie, fingers drumming on the opposing arm. "But given your reason, I doubt anything you speak will be beyond it."

"Yeah yeah. So can you send us home or what?" Garble waved his free hand wildly. "Back to our world."

"What world is that?"

Garble looked ready to rebuke the genie, but it hit him that he didn't actually have a word for his world. It was just... his world. "The one I hatched on. The one with Dragonlord Ember and Spike's stupid pony friends."

"You have surprised me." The djinn loomed larger, but never off the side of the platform. "You asked for something I cannot give. My power does not extend past the guardian. Ask for something closer at hand."

"Guardian? You mean the stupid pool?" He thrust a finger down in its general direction. "It tried to keep me from getting here. Ha! I showed it."

"You are here," admitted the genie. There was little arguing that. "Much as I wish it were otherwise. One wish, make it snappy."

"What if I wish for more wishes?"

"Then you'd be trying to change my mind." Arcs of power lanced over the chiseled chest of the genie. "And annoying me. Make your wish."

The rest of the group arrived at the other side of the room, having run around the rim the entire way. The pool didn't bother them at all along the way, apparently only agitated by those who tried to cross directly over its surface. On the other side, they could see the doors that led to the next room, or possibly stairs to the next floor, but Garble was still there, in the center.

Smolder danced from foot to foot, considering the deceptively tranquil not-water of the pool. "There has to be a way past this." She leaned over and looked at the colored tiles far below. Maybe... She hopped up and her wings caught her before she came back down. "Spike, keep me covered if this goes really badly. Countin' on ya!"

Sandra put her hands up, funneling her voice. "Garble! Smolder's coming to help, just hang on and don't do anything rash."

"Ugh." He rolled his eyes, one foot tapping at the floor of the platform. "As if I need help to make a stupid wish."

"Perhaps you do, as you have not made it yet," helpfully pointed out the genie. "My patience grows thin. There are other ways to remove you."

Garble suddenly snapped his fingers. "Got it. You can make stuff, right?"

"That is within my power."

"I want the best set of gear you can make for my class." His teeth were displayed in a manic grin, imagining what form the loot he requested could take. It hit him a moment later. "For everyone, for each of their classes, whatever. Ha, they thought I couldn't handle a stupid wish."

"As you request." The genie unfolded his arms just to clap loudly, magic exploding across the area.