Stumbling wildly, I struggled to maintain my balance as I ground to a halt, wincing as pain flared from my shoulder. Glancing upwards towards the snake, I spotted Amaranth on the side of the snake’s head, having sunk all four claws into the creature’s face as he brutally rent apart scales and flesh, going as far as to expose bone in places.
Rushing in close to the panicking snake as it began to thrash under Amaranth’s vicious assault, I took advantage of the cat’s distraction, thrusting my blade deep into the base of its head, just under its jaw as it swung towards me. Aided by the snake’s motion, I felt Razor grate against bone as it pierced through scales and sunk into flesh, stopping only when the hilt wouldn’t allow it to go any further.
Freezing in surprise from the attack, the snake let out a strangled cry before desperately trying to lift its head further away from the ground, burdened by the oversized puma still latched onto its face. Unable to pull Razor free, and too stubborn to let it go, I found myself lifted off the ground as the snake rose to nearly its full height, the motion forcing me to grab the hilt of my sword with both hands to keep myself from falling.
This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for today. The stray thought crossed my mind as I hung high in the air, holding onto my sword with my legs dangling in the air, feeling the flesh surrounding the blade begin to rip and tear, unable to support my weight indefinitely.
“Damn it, Marcus!” I cursed myself as I looked down at the ground and found it further away than was comfortable. “You just taught Alistair this morning about when to let go of his weapon, and now you’re hanging from a giant snake’s throat because—”
I shut my mouth with a snap as I looked up at the snake, realizing just where I had buried my blade.
“That might work…” I told myself softly as I turned to look back down towards the ground with a grimace. “I suppose a little bit more falling damage won’t kill me, hopefully…”
Taking a heartbeat to gather my courage, I gently pulled myself up, gripping Razor tightly until I was almost level with the hilt protruding from the snake’s flesh. Taking a single deep breath, I then let my weight drop, yanking the blade with all my strength as I fell, the motion causing Razor to slice deep into the snake’s flesh from within.
Almost instantly the snake roared in pain, its body trembling from the unexpected attack as the blade wreaked havoc to its throat. Wasting no time, I repeated the motion a second time, feeling Razor shift as it sliced through the flesh that kept it in place, a thick spurt of blood spilling from around the wound and onto my hands and face.
One more time, I thought, spitting out a mouthful of blood that rained down from above me, silently praying that I wouldn’t lose my grip on my now slick blade, the snake now desperately shaking me side to side as it tried to dislodge me, to no avail.
Heaving one final time, I felt my blade carve through the final layers of flesh and scale as I split open the snake’s throat, a torrent of blood raining down on me as I fell to the ground. Landing feet first with a heavy crash, I felt something snap in one of my ankles as I fell to the ground in a heap.
“Can’t believe that worked,” I muttered to myself, my hand instinctively gripping what had to be a broken ankle as I glanced upward, seeing the Grey Moss Snake flailing wildly in the air as it began its death throes. A torrent of blood gushed from its throat as it swayed drunkenly in the air, teetering from side to side before it finally lost its balance and collapsed to the ground with a thunderous crash.
Before I could reply to Amaranth, a screeching cry ripped through the air, causing me to twist my head and look in the direction of the noise, spotting Lazarus standing on top of a length of the Emerald Moss Snake’s body, his translucent sword cleaving a massive wound through its flesh. With something critical being damaged in the attack, the lower half of the snake’s body immediately went limp, causing its bulk to collapse to the ground lifelessly. Flailing off balance, the upper half of its body swayed perilously as severed nerves refused to respond, sending the creature’s head dipping towards the ground.
Sensing that the battle was nearly at its end, I heard a cheer rise up from the surviving Adventurers as a renewed wave of magic and arrows reached up to scour the mortally wounded snake, its body contorting wildly in an attempt to shield itself from the onslaught. As the ranged attackers continued to damage the massive creature, I saw a familiar blonde-haired figure race up the snake’s drooping body, before leaping powerfully into the air, a gleaming spear fully outstretched before her.
With a wordless battle cry heralding her attack, Freya then slammed into the snake’s descending head, her spear piercing through the creature’s skull and deep into its brain, sending it crashing into the ground with a sickening finality, the rest of its body joining it a heartbeat after. Holding back my relief, I glanced at my combat log, looking for confirmation that the battle was over.
You have slain a [Grey Moss Snake]!
You have gained Experience!
Freya has slain an [Emerald Moss Snake]!
You have gained Party Experience!
That was too close! I breathed silently as the adrenaline in my body began to fade and was slowly replaced with the gnawing ache of countless bruises and broken bones. That could have been much worse. As it was, we lost a good number of our recruits.
“We did it!” A voice that I didn’t recognize shouted from somewhere on the battlefield as the two massive corpses dissolved into nothingness, leaving a single large loot bag behind in their place.
A weary cheer rose briefly into the air before Sierra’s words cut it off and brought everyone back to the present.
“We’re not done just yet, Virtus! We have wounded still on the ground!” She called out to the surviving recruits. “Find and bring any injured to your group’s healer and get everyone back on their feet! Then we’ll have a reason to cheer!”
Barely seconds after Sierra’s shout, I heard footsteps rushing behind me with Alistair’s voice calling out to me as he approached. “Hey, Lyrian! I saw you take a nasty fall, are you okay?”
“Mostly,” I told the priest, waving at my foot as he came around me. “Fucked up my ankle when I landed though.”
“Well, I can fix that easily enough,” he replied, reaching out to touch it with a glowing hand and channeling healing magic into it. “Anything else? I can’t tell if that’s your blood or one of the snake’s.”
“The snake’s,” I said while shaking my head at the offer for more help and slowly rising to my feet, seeing both Freya and Amaranth crossing the field in my direction. “But I’m fine otherwise, just a few bumps and bruises that’ll fade in a few minutes. You should go check out the area where Drace’s group fought the Emerald Moss Snake though, it had a bite with paralytic venom, so we may still have wounded survivors out that way.”
“Shit! That’s nasty!” Alistair acknowledged, grimacing at the mention of the venom. “Alright, I’ll go take a look right now!”
Turning on his heel, the priest sped away from me and rushed out of sight, just as Freya and Amaranth came into range, the blonde-haired woman giving me an exasperated shake of her head as she met my gaze.
“Well, that was more than we bargained for,” she said with a whisper, her eyes looking over my blood-covered face and armor. “You look like something out of a bad movie production.”
“I can imagine,” I replied dryly, feeling the sticky blood starting to thicken as it seeped deeper into the chainmail an
d gambeson underneath. I already wasn’t looking forward to cleaning my armor when we got back to Aldford. “We were lucky this didn’t go bad for us.”
“It was a near thing,” Freya agreed, her eyes meeting mine meaningfully. “But we did learn something useful out of it all.”
“Yeah,” I said, knowing that she was referring to Stanton’s lack of participation in the battle. “We certainly did.”
I replied to the cat, appreciating his simple perspective.
“At least there’s one good thing about two rare boss creatures,” Freya said, changing the subject as she inclined her head towards the loot bag that sat on the ground.
“Experience and loot,” I answered, meeting her eyes with a smile.
“Everyone does seem to be fairly preoccupied at the moment,” Freya noted, taking a step towards the bag. “We should probably go sort through it, so we’re just not standing around while everyone works.”
“I think that would be the fair thing to do,” I said, following the woman towards the loot bag, the two of us wasting no time in taking a look what was inside.
Giant Snake Meat
Quantity: 140
Item Class: Common
Item Quality: Good (+15%)
Weight: 140 kg
Giant Snake Scales
Quantity: 120
Item Class: Common
Item Quality: Good (+15%)
Weight: 60 kg
Giant Snake Eye
Quantity: 3
Item Class: Common
Item Quality: Good (+15%)
Weight: 2 kg
Giant Snake Fang
Quantity: 2
Item Class: Common
Item Quality: Good (+15%)
Weight: 2 kg
Giant Snake Venom Gland
Quantity: 2
Item Class: Common
Item Quality: Good (+15%)
Weight: 2 kg
Giant Snake Bone
Quantity: 80
Item Class: Common
Item Quality: Good (+15%)
Weight: 80 kg
“Well, it looks like our food problems have been solved for the next little while,” Freya commented as she looked through the bag. “What are we going to do with eighty pieces of snake bone though?”
“Hell, if I know,” I replied with a shrug. “I might be able to use some pieces for crafting…but I think it can be used as fertilizer too.”
“The item quality for all of this stuff is pretty high,” I added, with a note of excitement as I continued to read over the items. “I should be able to craft some pretty high-quality gear with the scales and maybe the fangs—”
“Hey! You two are going through the loot already?” Constantine’s voice echoed out from behind me causing both Freya and I to spin, seeing the rest of the party approaching. “What happened to waiting for us?”
“You guys were taking too long,” I grunted, waving my hand dismissively as my eyes focused on Drace, Caius and Halcyon, the three of them flinching under my gaze, already knowing what I was going to say. “But now that you’re all here, I have a few questions…”
“It wasn’t our fault,” Caius said immediately.
“We had to do it,” Drace stated.
“We were pretty sure there was only one!” Halcyon exclaimed.
The three paused to glare between one another with blank expressions, then back towards me.
“Three different answers,” I replied thoughtfully, my hand rubbing my chin as I regarded the trio with a smile on my face. “But something tells me that each of those responses is true.”
“They are—” Drace started to reply as a loud clatter of hooves interrupted him, followed by Stanton’s sharp voice splitting the air.
“What is the meaning of this?! Are you trying to get us all kill—” the noble’s harsh words died in his throat as we all turned to look towards him, glaring intently at his sudden intrusion. Scanning our faces, a visible wave of fear passed over his face, before vanishing under an impassive mask.
“How nice of you to join us, Stanton,” I greeted the man loudly, savoring the man’s discomfort. “We missed you during the battle.”
I let a pause hang in the air as I watched my words cause Stanton’s lips to tighten, the implication behind my statement obvious to everyone within earshot.
“My friends here were just about to inform us what happened in the woods, and how they caught the snakes’ attention,” I continued, waving a hand in Drace’s direction. “I’m sure you’re curious to hear as well.”
“Of course,” Stanton replied in short, clipped tones that failed to hide the anger underneath as he kept his gaze locked onto mine.
“We were deep in the forest hunting with our recruits,” Halcyon began, catching my unspoken cue as his eyes shifted to Stanton. “You know, teaching them the value of looking up for snakes hidden in the trees, while also making sure not to step onto a badger den at the same time.”
“Basic stuff,” I acknowledged, everyone in the circle, save Stanton nodding in sync with me.
“Right,” Halcyon continued. “So, we had just finished carving through a batch of creatures when one of our scouts, Ameron, found a beaten path cutting through the brush. We thought that it would be something interesting to follow, and we did, up until the point where it led us to this massive nest.”
“A nest?” Stanton queried hesitantly, his anger vanishing and slowly being replaced with concern.
“A snake nest,” Halcyon clarified. “Full of eggs. Easily over two dozen of them piled high, with the Emerald Moss Snake perched high in the trees above it…”
I struggled to keep my face impassive as Halcyon continued to explain his group’s adventure through the forest, watching Stanton’s face grow pale the longer that the mage spoke.
Maybe this didn’t turn out so bad after all, I thought with a thin smile, seeing a brief look of horror cross Stanton’s face as Halcyon’s story went on to outline their decision to steal the eggs from the snake’s nest.
Not bad at all.
Chapter 19
The clap of thunder followed by a near torrential downpour of rain heralded the end of any meaningful adventuring for the day, the heavy deluge having thankfully waited until we reached Crater Lake to start. After recovering from the battle with the snakes, we found ourselves down four Adventurers on our return journey back to Aldford, a much lighter casualty count than I felt we deserved, given just how badly we were taken by surprise.
In the end, our numbers saved us, I told myself as Constantine, Amaranth and I led our soggy group in the direction of the tree line where the entrance to the Crater Lake ruin lay. Something that I’m sure hasn’t been lost on Stanton.
“I’m convinced that this region only has two types of weather,” Constantine muttered from beside me. “Heavy thunderstorms or crippling heat waves.”
“Still better than Reality,” I replied, rubbing a waterlogged glove across my face to clear my vision from all the rainwater pouring down. “We’re supposed to get another snowstorm this week.”
“Fuck, I can’t even think of snow right now. Spring is supposed to be around the corner!” he grunted, his head perking up as he saw something ahead of us. “Finally! I think I see the entrance to the ruin! I take back all of my complaining when you got us all to dig it out.”
“Hiding from a thunderstorm wasn’t exactly what was on my mind when we did that,” I started to tell the rogue, only to have him pull away from me as he rushed to get inside the now-exposed tunnel that led into the lakeside ruins. “Though I won’t say I’m not eager to get out of this rain…”
Trudging forward throu
gh the downpour, I watched Constantine and Amaranth vanish into the freshly excavated opening that protruded from the hillside, before turning around to look behind me. Travelling closely behind, I saw the rest of our entourage, their expressions one of relief as they too sighted respite from the rain.
“You’ll have to walk your horse through the tunnel,” I called to Stanton as the Adventurers slowly filtered their way into the tunnel, their voices echoing from the passage. “He should hopefully be able to fit without too many problems.”
“Hrm,” Stanton grunted in acknowledgment, the man having said little to me since the battle with the snakes, his bad mood going as far as to infect the rest of his group. But nevertheless, he motioned for Samuel to hold the animal steady before dismounting, his boots landing on the wet ground with a squish. Not giving any of us a second look, the silver-haired noble left the reins in Samuel’s hands and waited his turn to enter the passageway, motioning sharply for Lazarus and his friends to join him in line.
Content on waiting patiently for everyone else to enter the tunnel ahead of me, I ran a hand through my hair in an attempt to wring the excess water from it, watching both Samuel and Quincy lead Stanton’s reluctant mount forward. Finding myself at the back of the line, I finally stepped into the tunnel behind the horse, keeping a fair distance behind it, lest my presence spook it. The last thing I wanted at this point, was to be kicked by a panicked animal in close quarters.
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