by Cebelius
His eyes flicked to his mana bar, confirming the number: 65/90(100)
Not for the first time, he found himself resenting the game for making him pay just to have a HUD, but without it he knew he wouldn't be able to manage his expenditures with the requisite efficiency. It was a worthwhile cost ... just one he resented.
Come on ... come oooon ...
Long seconds had passed, and he had yet to hear anyone scream, but as he watched he noticed that the square was breaking up. That had to be a good thing, right?
His eyes narrowed, and he smiled as he finally saw what he was looking for: a dwarf caught by one of the runes being bodily stripped of armor. His smile went weak a second later as he realized that in doing so, the tentacular horrors had also stripped the dwarf of a great deal of flesh. Another second saw the job finished as the tentacles dismembered their prey.
Abram nodded, his question answered. His runes were not only strong enough to break up the formation, but kill his enemies. That would have to be good enough. If it wasn't, what he had done wouldn't be enough to save the broodmother.
He got up and strode forward, stepping carefully to avoid stumbling amid the wash of corpses he had to navigate. His lightning had a range of sixty feet, but he didn't want to waste it on dwarves his runes were already in the process of killing.
Closer up, individual targets began to reveal themselves and for the first time he heard a dwarven voice as it shouted an alarm. He located the source, saw the mace raised and pointed at him like an accusing finger, and sent a delicate spider's web of purple lightning out to caress the armored figure. It seized, shuddering, but took a full three seconds to collapse, which did not fill Abram with confidence. It meant — among other things — that if he concentrated both hands on a single target, he would be wasting a full tick of mana. The most efficient way to kill these dwarves would be to hit two targets at a time, which was a great way to either miss one or not kill quickly enough to keep them at bay.
Oh well. Efficiency until desperation, then we'll see, he thought as his lips thinned with determination. Abram picked two more targets and began his work, his gaze flickering over and over again to his mana pool as he watched it tick down far more quickly than he would like.
Off to his left, he saw Angie engaging one of the dwarves, and noted in passing that she wasn't using her ax and shield this time, but had instead drawn her bearded ax and was swinging for the fences. The dwarven armor seemed to be enough to keep her from simply lopping off limbs, but it was just as obvious that the giant proxy's strength drove a weapon that had at least a bit of magic in it, because with each deafening impact, the dwarves she struck were staggered despite their ridiculous protection.
Abram dropped another pair of runes as he noticed that the portion of the square that had already been past his initial line were reforming to continue their advance while others circled to deal with the unexpected assault from behind. The additional runes broke up the reforming square out front, but had the unhappy side effect of diverting even more of the dwarves his way, and he began slowly backpedaling as his lightning played as rapidly as he dared from one dwarf to the next.
His mana dropped below twenty, and he was on the verge of turning on his heel to run when the broodmother thundered from cover and joined the assault. The ground shook as she charged, and it was only pure luck — as far as Abram could tell — that saved him from her wrath.
She didn't stop to assault the dwarves. She simply, literally, ran over them.
Several crossbow bolts cracked her carapace, fired from point-blank range straight up as she plowed through the shattered remains of the dwarven formation, and Abram saw four at least that penetrated all the way through, exiting out her back in sprays of gore. These ignited in the air above her, but when they did she cut loose with a horrible sound of unspeakable agony, and Abram guessed that those bolts that hadn't gone all the way through did far worse as they ignited within her body.
Yet in return for her injuries, she did amazing amounts of damage. Fully half of the dwarves still standing when she'd begun her charge were dead by the time she was past, and many more were down with crushed or missing limbs.
A lone dwarf in armor that was distinguished from the rest by the fact that the spaulders were painted in red and blue began shouting commands, attempting to rally those that remained.
By Abram's quick count, there were only ten dwarves still able to stand, and the broodmother was already beginning to turn.
He sent a single second of lightning coursing into the commander, then diverted his attention to the dwarf next to him as the leader spasmed and sank to one knee, his orders cut off by pain and shock. He stopped when he had only five mana remaining, and cut across the field to rejoin Angie, who was waving her ax like a flag with both hands as she screamed, "Yara! It's Angrboda! I've come to help!"
Her voice wasn't exactly giant-sized, but the broodmother apparently heard her, and diverted her charge enough to miss the frantically waving woman.
She pulled up short at the edge of the carnage, reared up an easy thirty feet, and systematically slaughtered the remaining dwarves, saving only the leader and one other.
These two she knocked senseless and pinned beneath multiple legs as she twisted and leaned down to look at Angrboda and Abram, who had by now managed to join her. Sif was nowhere to be seen, but Abram wasn't surprised. She wasn't a fighter, and he hoped she had stayed hidden and safe.
"How you know I need you?" Yara asked, her multi-faceted green eyes glittering with the reflected light of the distant fires still flickering along the perimeter.
"The Norns brought me to you. Their reasons are not for us to know," Angie said, before glancing back along the broodmother's massive body. "Are you badly hurt?"
"Yes," Yara said, though the word did not express any pain. "Not die, but very badly hurt. Nasty dwarves use nasty fires. Lose much size soon."
"Why did you fight?" Angie asked.
The broodmother shifted, glanced over her shoulder, then turned her attention back to them, lowering her head until it was only a few feet above Abram. From this close up, he could see that his estimate at a distance had been about right. Her head was the size of his entire torso. Looking up into her eyes was completely surreal, as he saw himself darkly reflected in each glimmering facet.
"What this?" the broodmother asked, deciding apparently to ignore Angie's question. "Not dwarf."
She didn't seem to have eyelids, but the skin at the corners of the broodmother's eyes crinkled as she stared at him, her head tilting slowly as she leaned, which was enough to move her completely around him.
She reached out and poked him with a finger as long as his forearm. He staggered with the force of the blow, though Angie caught him before he fell as she said, "Careful! He's a template!"
"Template?" Her huge face split into a wide grin. Her mohawk of quills ruffled and rose, spreading above her head and reminding Abram of a cockatoo's crest. "You give?"
"No."
Angie wrapped both arms around Abram from behind, pulling him into her embrace. In the face of the looming broodmother, Abram wasn't about to protest. He had five points of mana remaining, which he was absolutely certain would not get him through a fight with this looming behemoth. If she decided to take him, there wasn't much he, or any of them, could do to stop her.
Just as he'd begun to seriously question Angie's decision to put them in this mess, the broodmother surprised him by lowering her head a bit, her quills flattening as her expression turned pleading.
"Borrow? Please?"
Abram blinked.
Both Yara's tone and expression were those of a supplicant speaking to a superior. Despite the jaw-dropping difference in size between the two, it was clear that the broodmother considered herself to be completely subordinate to Angrboda.
He looked up at Angie only to see her smiling warmly down at him as she asked, "Well, Abram? Care to increase your bonds? You did save her, after all."
"Him?" Yara asked, drawing back a few feet and clearly startled as her quills once more fluffed up behind her. "Not you?"
Angie nodded as she looked up. "Yes, little one. It was his power that turned the tide for you. I only told him you were here. The choice to save you was his and his alone."
'Little one?'
Despite himself, Abram was dazed by the rapid shifting of circumstances. He was brought sharply back to himself as Yara dipped her head down to look at him from less than a foot away. She hesitated a moment, then swayed forward and gently touched his forehead with her pursed lips before withdrawing enough to gaze at him as she said, "Thank you. Save me and more from greedy dwarves. Bond me. From one, many."
Abram stared up at Yara, eyes wide. He knew he was staring, knew that she knew he was staring, and stared anyway. He couldn't help it. His eyes flickered down her body, saw her pendant breasts almost brushing the ground. Though they were proportionate to her frame, even the familiar looking part of her body was many times larger than any human, and so those breasts that fit her so well were ... well, huge, and very hard to ignore.
Yara noticed his attention and leaned back, her hands dipping to cup and lift her assets, squeezing the flesh until it ballooned between her fingers as she smiled at him with lips that he already knew were much softer than they had any right to be.
"Please?" she asked, all the while toying with her nipples.
Abram had to force himself to speak, and what he said wasn't exactly smooth. Fortunately for him, smooth probably wasn't necessary given the woman he was speaking to seemed limited to nominal sentences in the present tense.
"Uh ... sure. Why the hell not."
Angie eased her hold on him and Abram, realizing he was essentially committed now to whatever might happen next, took a step forward. Yara was huge, looming over him in a way Angrboda hadn't.
She had been so large that he'd never seen her head or face, never been truly confronted by her sheer size. The broodmother might not be as large as the true body of Angrboda, but she was tremendously large, and she loomed over him now. Her expression was gentle, but her gem-like multi-faceted eyes lent her face an unmistakably monstrous cast that was impossible to ignore.
She reached for him, and he had just enough presence of mind to lift his arms so as not to have them caught up as she cupped his back, palmed his body, and lifted him up.
"Uh ... I thought you were going to manifest a proxy?" he asked as he got further and further from the ground. She straightened until he found himself some thirty feet up, then paused there and shook her massive head.
"No magic," she said. "Cannot proxy."
She held him far enough away from her that he could look down the length of her body, and saw that her carapace began just below her navel.
"Um ... you don't have ..."
He lamely trailed off. It seemed stupid to say it outright. She had to know what he meant. Her eyebrow rose marginally and she glanced down at herself, following his look. He was fascinated by the way her quills rose and settled just like a bird's according to her mood and interest.
She smiled after a few seconds and nodded at him as she said, "Have, not here."
She touched the blank plate of her carapace just below her belly button, then lifted her finger to touch her lower lip as she added, "Here."
Her smile broadened a bit. "You like. I promise. Come."
She turned, then winced and her head drooped a bit before she glanced behind her. Abram was far enough away from her that he could see around her bulk, and noticed that there were wisps of oily black smoke rising from between the segments of her chiton at several points along her body, which had to be at least a hundred feet long.
Yara looked apologetically back at him and set him down as she said, "Time."
Abram managed to keep his balance as his feet returned to ground, and he glanced at Angie as she stepped up to him and leaned down to murmur, "It will be all right. She'll treat you gently. Do not let her appearance deceive you. She's really quite sweet as long as you aren't threatening her or her brood."
As she spoke, Abram kept his eyes on Yara, who was leaning over herself. She was so long that she was able to twist and walk along her own back, and watching her do it was utterly bizarre. He couldn't look away though, and when she reached the segment of carapace nearest her head that was smoking and shaking she reached out with her hands and her top pair of legs, bracing against herself as she began twisting.
Abram's expression twisted too as he heard snapping, crunching sounds coming from inside her, and couldn't suppress a shudder as the last forty some-odd feet of her body abruptly trembled and collapsed.
Yara paused, then seemed to settle atop herself as she glanced back at the two of them.
"Pulling in," she said by way of explanation. "Little more time."
"Doesn't that hurt?" Abram asked.
Yara nodded, though her expression betrayed no pain as she said, "Very much. Many years lost today. Not good."
"Do I get an explanation?" Abram asked sotto voce to Angie, who answered in an equally low tone, "Yes, later."
He guessed that as an immortal, Yara was referring to the loss of effort in terms of years it had taken to attain the size she was losing, but he couldn't be sure. It could just as easily be that as she got older she lost segments and this represented an artificial shortening of her life. There was no way to know which case was correct. He suspected the former, given Angie had said she knew this creature and she'd been asleep for an indeterminate but long period just before his arrival, but he'd rather be sure. He was about to bond — somehow — to Yara, and wanted to know just what he was getting into.
They waited several minutes in relative silence before Yara's crest of spines rose as something caught her attention behind them. Abram turned to see Sif creeping toward them through the debris of the battle. Angie said, "It's all right; she's with us."
Yara's crest settled again, and she glanced around her body at the dwarves beneath her, reminding Abram that not all of them were dead, and given how heavily armored they were, some of them might only be faking their injuries.
"Angie, would you do me a favor and offer coup de grâce to all the dwarves around here?" he said, glancing back at her.
"What is ... you mean a death blow?" she asked, to which he nodded.
Yara spoke up and said, "Leave alive. I use."
A sick feeling began to fill Abram as he thought about the implications, but he had already chosen sides here. He had to take Yara on her own terms, and at Angie's questioning glance he merely shrugged and nodded as he said, "Oh well. Sucks to be them."
Her brows lifted as her lips pursed, and she nodded in grave agreement before saying, "They started this battle, they'll suffer the consequences for losing."
Movement caught Abram's attention, and he saw Yara inserting her top two chitonous legs into her mouth. She seemed to suck on them a moment, then drove the shining tips into the crevice between the segments she had twisted open.
New wisps of smoke drifted up from the contact, and an acid hiss told Abram clearly what she was doing. Several times she lifted her legs, sucked upon them, and continued to chemically cut and cauterize herself until she could use her true hands to wrench apart the bottom plate of chiton and drop the now dead length of herself to the ground.
"That was completely hardcore," Abram murmured. He had heard stories of hikers getting trapped in rocks and severing their own arms with pen knives and the like, but seeing the broodmother literally cut herself in half had been both horrifying and oddly fascinating.
A quick estimate as she crawled off herself toward them left her total length at now something like sixty feet, but that was only a guess. Yara twisted over herself in ways that foiled Abram's eyes as she came again to him and reached for him.
"I can walk with you!" he said, lifting his hands in a faint attempt to ward off being picked up again.
Yara's crest flickered, rustling against itself as she g
lanced toward Angie, who shrugged and smiled as she said, "Humor him, little one. He will give you what you want."
Nodding, Yara pointed needlessly before setting off in the direction from which she'd come, absently picking up the dwarven commander and his subordinate. Neither was able to put up much of a struggle, though when the commander retained his mace and began to swing, Yara shook him like a rag doll until physics forced him to drop the weapon.
Abram waited until she'd passed completely, his curiosity getting the better of him. The back of Yara's body was a still smoking ruin of chemical burns, but there was very little bleeding, and given the kind of damage the dwarven bolts had to have done to the part of her that she had severed, he couldn't help but conclude that she was better off. Still, it was a gruesome sight, and after a single look, he concentrated on where he was going rather than the giant creature leading him there.
As they walked, he noticed the remnants of the swarm following along around and behind them. He couldn't even guess their numbers, but knew that what accompanied them was only a fraction of what had once been, and Angie's observation that these were the weakest remnants of the broodmother's spawn made him shake his head in wary admiration, both at what she must be capable of putting together in terms of forces and at the dwarves' ability to devastate those forces in their effort to reach her.
Her words echoed in his thoughts as he followed along.
From one, many.
Glancing back at Angie, he asked, "Couldn't we just use these guys to go after the hobs?"
She shook her head.
"Only Yara has any control over the little ones, and she won't leave this forest. If her larger spawn still lived they might have been willing, but I doubt there are any left."
"Damn."
Abram glanced around, then shook his head and followed the broodmother, trying not to think too hard about what would come next.
Daji stepped daintily through the carnage with a glance toward where the template and his entourage had gone to ensure that they were out of sight. She knew better than to follow them. The broodmother was a creature she was not personally familiar with, but she knew the type, and it was simply too likely that she would be discovered if she followed them into Yara Hecilë's lair.
