Delvers LLC- Surviving Ludus

by Blaise Corvin (ed)

  “Sounds good to me,” Pasha said, nodding. “Nicky, you with us?”

  “Yes, but we should find Diore.”

  “Well bang me sideways and make me a first wife!” exclaimed Pasha in her most irritating, sarcastic tone of voice. “Do you have any more extremely obvious things to share with us, Nicole? We are in the middle of a battle, but I can stop and listen if you have any more wisdom for us.”

  Nicole blinked at the smaller woman, then at the chaos around them. More buildings were beginning to catch on fire, and the only reason they were not currently surrounded by demons was that the nightmarish things were probably all eating the people they’d just killed. “You know what, Pasha, you can really be a bitch sometimes.”

  “I know, but I’m not wrong. Now move your ass. It’s time to follow Tru, she’s calling the shots.”

  “Damn straight,” said Bentru. She began to lead the way down an alley toward the sound of heavy combat.

  “Seriously, fuck you guys,” said Nicole.

  “I don’t swing that way,” said Pasha. “And I think you’re too pretty for Tru.”

  “I hate this world,” complained Nicole.

  “Are you ever going to get tired of saying that?” asked Bentru.

  Nicole cocked her head as the trio heard more screams in the distance. With feeling, she answered, “No. And after I came here, why couldn’t I have been saved by bakers, or by a tailor or something? This sucks.”

  Bentru and Pasha thought that was hilarious and when Nicole made a rude gesture at them, they only laughed harder.

  “Rot in a sewer,” muttered Nicole, using a Ludus curse, but a corner of her mouth seemed to lift on its own. Her friends were insane, maybe they were contagious. The reality was, she knew how lucky she’d been to meet these women in her first hours on Ludus. A chuckle almost escaped but Nicole bit down on it. She refused to sound as crazy as Pasha.

  The town was being overrun by demons and she was probably going to die tonight, but she had to admit she was having a tough time not giggling. Even the fact that she’d already come so close to death a dozen times in the last few minutes suddenly seemed hilarious. After swallowing a few times, getting herself under control, she finally said, “Shut the fuck up and let’s save some people.” To her surprise, she actually meant it.

  “Damn straight,” said Bentru.

  Missing in Action, Chapter Six

  “You know, I’m beginning to think we might not make it out of here alive,” said Pasha conversationally. She whirled a sword, lopping off the reaching claws of a demon, and her other sword slashed upward, slicing through its head.

  “Down,” ordered Nicole. After her friend crouched, Nicole aimed the air pistols she held in both hands and squeezed off pellets as fast as she could accurately deliver them. Some of the clawed, humanoid demons had tried crawling the walls to get around Pasha’s choke point. While some of the creatures they’d fought recently had thick hide and were resistant to Nicole’s pistols, these ones weren’t.

  “Thanks,” grunted Pasha, and whirled her blades to ward off another charging, hissing demon. This one’s face looked flayed; its body was covered in something sticky, and lumps, almost spikes moved right beneath the skin.

  “Go right,” said Nicole. Pasha instantly obeyed, and Nicole stabbed with her enchanted spear. The thin, wicked blade punched through the demon’s chest, and she willed it to create a puff of air out the tip. This function was not only deadly, it also freed the weapon—it could never get stuck. Nicole recovered and Pasha took her place ahead of her again. “Are you okay back there?” yelled Nicole.

  Behind them, Bentru grunted as she defended her side of their alley all by herself. “I’m hanging in there. These big rotters don’t go down easily. I’d say I didn’t have the weapon for it, and after seeing your pellets bounce off, we should all have spears like yours. Or we could just freeze things like Pasha’s sword.”

  Nicole glanced back in time to see Bentru hit a demon so hard with her shield, she launched it into its fellows. As an earth mage, even a tired one, defending a choke point like this alley was a good fit for Bentru.

  The big woman spat and asked, “What about you two? What is your status?”

  “Yes,” panted Pasha. “No more of the big ones have shown up over here, thank the maker. I think the alley is too narrow. I’m worried about more of those spike throwers, though.”

  “I’m keeping an eye out,” said Nicole. The venomous, reptilian demons that could attack with projectiles were deadly, but not super accurate until they’d thrown a few spikes. Nicole had gotten lucky enough to kill them all first...so far. Now that she was thinking about them, she hurriedly reloaded her pistols and began filling them up with air from the magic compressor at her lower back.

  Suddenly, there was a commotion in the alley on Bentru’s side. The alley was noisy anyway, with fighting on both sides and on the street outside, but it got truly deafening as demons began to shriek even louder. The alley was stacked with bodies and murderous creatures, so it took a moment before Nicole could see what was happening. She slung her spear and held a pistol in both hands, trying to watch both sides of the alley at once.

  Finally, the tip of a large sword moved up and down rhythmically, like chopping wood, and the handful of demons facing off with Bentru were mercilessly mowed down. Diore stood in a newly cleared alley, armor and face splattered with blood and worse. Her huge sword was covered in gore. One of the man-sized demons she’d just felled hadn’t been dead and suddenly surged upwards, claws reaching. She grabbed its arm, snapped it like a pencil, and slammed its head hard enough against the stone wall to make a sickening crunching sound.

  “We are glad to see you, Diore,” said Bentru. “Where the hell were you?”

  “First I was organizing the defenders to fight in places like this, I spread the word to fall to choke points, and gave everyone a fallback position. Then I was looking for you. After I saw the roof blow up I was worried for a minute, but I remembered that Pasha is too mean to die.”

  “Ha ha, you’re so funny, you smug orb-Bonded skank,” snarled Pasha. “How about a little help over here, huh?”

  Shit, thought Nicole. She’d lost her focus and Pasha had almost been overwhelmed in only a few seconds. The petite, hard-bodied, fitness-obsessed woman fought desperately, using both swords to cut at reaching claws. “Over your shoulder,” said Nicole. Pasha nodded and dropped so Nicole’s spear could punch through one of the attacking creatures.

  Diore said, “Tru, let me by so I can help Pasha.” As the Dolos’ Chosen leader slipped by the earth mage she asked, “Are you hurt?”

  “Yes. The only life-threatening stuff is a big cut on my leg, and a poison barb slipped past my armor on my left side. The numbness has been spreading and I think I’m starting to get a fever.”

  “You never told us that!” hollered Pasha over one shoulder.

  Bentru shrugged. “There was nothing you could do about it.”

  After a grunt, Pasha delivered a nasty slash with her sword, cutting a demon through the shoulder. Her weapon’s enchantment was simple, but strong, and it froze the flesh around the wound. “Well, since we’re pouring our hearts out, I got stabbed a while back with some big, crusty claws. Blood from that has been filling one boot, and the other boot has blood in it too, but I’m not sure which cut was deep enough to do it, maybe it’s a combination of all of them. I haven’t had a chance to look.”

  Diore sighed. “By the Great God Dolos, I’m really sorry it took me so long.” She gently brushed Pasha aside, and punched a demon in the face so hard its jaw came unhinged and it went rolling backwards.

  “Gosh am I glad she’s here,” said Pasha.

  “Yup. That’s what I said,” agreed Bentru with a nod of the head.

  Nicole just leaned against a wall gratefully, and took the initiative to watch the other end of the alley as Diore cleaned up Pasha’s side. Nicole had been so keyed up and tense, she’d almost lost her balance after Di
ore had shown up.

  The three of them had been stuck in this alley for a while. Finding and killing hellspawn had gone smoothly at first, and they’d helped groups of Action residents wherever they could.

  Most of the townspeople hadn’t really known what they were doing, but that hadn’t stopped them. Even children had been fighting. Ludus could be a hard place, but Nicole had still felt a piece of her soul die when she’d seen the first little body. Knowing that if the demons won, things would get even worse for the children of Action hadn’t helped her reaction. Sometimes knowing things with her mind didn’t help cushion the shot to her heart.

  At first, the defenders had been holding their own, but then everything had gone to hell when the big demons had arrived. They went down hard, and were armored enough that standard weapons hardly did any damage at all.

  One in particular, some sort of variant of a big, basher-type demon, had been another few feet taller, and it’d been faster than its kin. The thing had already torn through a solid knot of Action defenders before the three Dolos’ Chosen adventurers had gotten here. Nicole had recognized one of the dead women on the ground as a powerful mage she’d been introduced to the day before.

  Bentru had been able to hold the demon at bay, but it had been as durable as it was ugly, looking like it was constantly bleeding. All of Nicole’s pellets had bounced off its thick, leathery hide and she’d been wary of getting close enough to use her spear. Bentru’s mace hadn’t done any serious damage to the thing at all. Only Pasha’s enchanted blade had seemed to hurt it, but even that hadn’t put it down. It hadn’t been until Bentru had smashed through the wooden supports to a nearby building, bringing half of it down on the demon, that they’d beaten it.

  And by then, they’d been surrounded by lesser demons.

  The three of them had taken refuge in this alley, and Nicole had lost track of time. The nightmare had felt like it would never end. Now her entire body was sore, her arms still shaking, and she realized she was breathing so hard she actually felt nausea creeping up her neck. She glanced over at Diore before going back to watching her side of the alley.

  Good, she thought. Their orb-Bonded leader was healing Pasha and Bentru. She blew out, trying to get her breathing under control.

  A few minutes later, Diore walked over and said, “Your turn.”

  “Alright.” She was too tired to say anything else.

  Pasha joked, “Wow, things must be bad if Nicole is actually accepting help from people.”

  “Shut up, Pasha,” said Diore, but there was no bite to her words. She laid a hand on Nicole’s shoulder, and a moment later, the Californian woman felt like she’d been dunked in ice water. Being healed with magic always felt horrible.

  Full healing likely wouldn’t be possible in a short amount of time, but she knew that Diore could still stop all their bleeding, start the healing process, and energize them with a touch. It seemed she’d spent more time on Pasha and Bentru, like Nicole hadn’t needed as much time.

  Nicole was still tired after being magically energized, but already felt better and knew that in another half hour, she’d feel completely refreshed. Diore couldn’t do this many times per person per week without damaging them permanently, but at this point, if they didn’t survive, they would all die anyway. The best part of Diore’s magic was that Nicole could think clearly again.

  “Is everyone ready to move?” asked Diore.

  “I think so,” said Bentru.

  “We have to?” asked Pasha. “Maybe we could find some zebras somewhere still and get the hell out of here.”

  Diore ignored Pasha and slung her big sword over one shoulder. “Alright, let’s go kill some more demons. The town square is the fallback point for all the defenders to move to if their positions fall. I’m guessing all the positions have fallen at this point, so hopefully the Action people are all holed up in the square.

  “We can still win this, but the battle isn’t over yet and that glowy shit in the distance makes me nervous. If anything, it makes me feel more doubtful that we could just retreat and escape. I don’t know what’s going on right now, nobody does.”

  Pasha said, “It’s probably something bad, like the end of the world or something.” She pulled a piece of gum wrapped in foil from a pocket somewhere and carefully put it in her mouth without touching any of it with her bare fingers. “I’m serious about this, too. Like, true-demons? Rot this.”

  Nicole expected Bentru to argue with Pasha, but the big woman just nodded and said, “Regular monsters will usually retreat if you kill enough. These things just keep coming. If we are having problems, how are farmers with sharp sticks going to handle these things?”

  “Hopefully they won’t have to,” said Diore. “Let’s go.” She took a few steps but then hesitated, turning back to say, “I’m going to make sure we get paid for this, trust me. We need to get paid back for all those damn magic stones we used as ammo, too. We can consider this a job prior to taking the actual contract.”

  “From who?” asked Bentru.

  “The Berber government.”

  “Sure we can,” muttered Pasha. “Risking our lives on imaginary credit, sounds great.” The rest of the team ignored her as they left the alley.

  Once the team was back on the street, they quickly formed their normal arrangement without being told. Bentru led the way, with Diore following, then Nicole, and Pasha bringing up the rear. In this formation, the four of them knew their roles and fell into an easy, practiced teamwork. If not for all the bodies of people she recognized, the blood-curdling screams in the distance, or all the burning buildings, Nicole could almost pretend she was just killing monsters in a dungeon instead of true-demons, or whatever these things were. She avoided looking too closely at the demon she’d just skewered, something out of the land of nightmares. Not for the first time, she was glad that she could kill at range with her spear or pistols. Even with the protection of her magic armor, she didn’t want to get any closer than necessary.

  The group moved slowly, but efficiently. Bentru blocked projectiles with her massive shield and stopped groups of demons from reaching her comrades.

  Pasha had eagle-like eyes, and most of the time she could spot enemies or hazards before anyone else. She even found another of the invisible demons, either a new one or an old one. Diore promptly shot it with her powerful air rifle. Overall, Pasha was a very talented, coordinated, ambidextrous fighter, with considerable skill using her two deadly swords.

  Diore’s role was to work as a healer and a wild card, able to move faster than any normal human and deliver truly staggering amounts of damage. The fact that she had great armor and could heal her own injuries made her very difficult to kill, too.

  The three of them formed a barrier of sorts for Nicole to use her spear and pistols to great effect.

  Nicole’s father had been an NCO in the US Marines before he’d died in a car accident, and he’d taught Nicole how to shoot a long, long time ago. She’d never liked guns much, but had actually enjoyed air pistols and air rifles, a skill she’d continued to practice even after everything else in her life had gone to hell. Now that she’d been on Ludus for a few years, constantly shooting and getting thrust into life-or-death situations, sometimes Nicole’s precision and instinctive aim even surprised her.

  The four of them had made it about halfway to the town square when suddenly, Pasha saw something odd. She held up a fist and waved it forward slowly, signaling the group to slow down. Then she pointed.

  A man was crouched in a doorway, arms crossed, shaking his head as he watched the chaos around them. Nicole recognized him, but couldn’t figure out where at first. Then it snapped into place and out loud she blurted, “The man from the blacksmith! Tom!”

  The strange man looked up at once, making almost-eye contact with Nicole before glancing down again, shaking his head. Like the first time she’d seen him, she thought his appearance was strange—a fit body and clean clothes below long, messy hair and an unkemp
t beard. Now she noticed that his clothing looked different than before, in quality and style.

  His clothing now looked almost like it was tailor-made to be worn under armor, custom-fitted, and seemed like it must have cost a lot of money. The man was unarmed and wasn’t wearing any armor, though. Was he simple? Maybe his clothing was a costume.

  Nicole held up a fist and brought it down, signaling a halt while simultaneously ordering, “Halt!” After she did, the team stopped, spreading out slightly with their full attention aimed in different directions. This was a drill that Diore had come up with ages ago and had worked well for their team. At times, all of them had wanted to take a closer look at something, or call something to Diore’s attention.

  “Tom,” she instructed gently, “you need to go hide. I know you probably want to help, but if you don’t have any weapons or you don’t know how to fight, you should get out of here. Nobody can protect or support you here. All the survivors are regrouping and there is no shame in running to get help.”

  “Where?” he asked. His expression was flat, emotionless. Nicole thought he might really be simple, maybe something wrong developmentally.

  “The town square. Since the demons are hungry and hunting people to eat, it makes most sense now to group up at our fallback position and fight it out.”

  Tom nodded, but didn’t look like he was planning to move at first. Finally he shrugged and melted away, walking normally and disappearing with no signs of any stress other than a faint frown.

  Nicole watched him go, slightly worried but trying to put it out of her mind. As she signaled to move and the group got back to their earlier pace, with Diore taking over again, she shook her head.

  “Do you fancy that one?” asked Pasha. She nonchalantly held one of her dripping swords and watched the area that Tom had disappeared behind them. “He’d be handsome if he cleaned up a bit. Are you finally gonna settle down, Nicky, give up on ever getting back to Earth? You chose a bad time if that’s the case, that man is probably going to be worm food soon.”