Chronicles of a Royal Pet- Heroes Collide

by Ian Rodgers

  “Don’t play with that stuff…” Dora began, then stopped as she watched in shock as a whole new rough shard of quartz jutted out of the hole Gaelin had made. It was sharper than the piece removed, and eerily resembled a fang.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” I said, peering at the newly formed crystal. Gaelin looked down at the quartz in his hands, then back to the new growth, before he carefully pushed it back into a blank spot on the wall. The tunnel rumbled, almost as if it was acknowledging the halberdier’s actions.

  “…Let’s move on,” Dora said, worry in her voice. We all hurried off, flying down the tunnel. Why walk when you can use magic to soar, after all?”

  We made good time without having to rely on our legs, and reached the end of the Purple Crystal Path in an hour. We then beheld the Titan’s Teeth: a vast cavern filled with thousands of stalactites and stalagmites, each of them various colors. Some red, some blue, others green, orange, and a dozen hues and shades in between.

  There was a well-worn trail through the Teeth that wound around it to the right. Then a short fly over to the Ignis Lava Flow.

  We were struck by a hammer of a heated air before we could even see the glowing molten earth, and with a quick wave of my tendril blessed coolness immediately fell upon us.

  “There it is!” Dora said, pointing with her Witch’s Staff at the hellish red glow that soon appeared before us. We emerged from the dark into a strange beach-like underground zone. Black sand flanked a sluggishly moving river of lava that twisted and stretched far off into the distance. Holes dotted the walls of this underground zone, and I eyed them warily. They were too smooth and round to be natural crevasses, in my opinion.

  “Whoa!” Gaelin suddenly cried out, dropping down to dodge a jet of fire that shot out of one of the holes.

  “Salamandra!” I cried out, detecting creatures moving around inside of the holes. As I spoke, dozens of red and orange scaled lizards crawled out from the wall, their heads decorated with long, sharp black fins running down their backs and towards their tail.

  At first, the Salamandra merely poked their heads out, releasing bouts of fiery breath at us as we passed. Then, once their first attack missed, they surged out of their holes and began to swarm the beach, leaping and snapping at us.

  “What do we do, Jellik?” Dora asked, glaring at the host below us. I looked around, assessing the situation. The roof of the cavern was too low. Even if we flew all the way to the top, the monsters could still reach us with their flaming breath and a properly planned leap. And there were a lot of Salamandra. Not even flying over the river of lava would protect us from them, as those nasty lizards could swim in the stuff for hours without ill effect.

  “Fly faster!” I decided. “If we get to the next area, we can evade the Salamandra when we leave their territory!”

  “Works for me!” Gaelin declared, his Shapeless Raiment picking up speed and he shot off. Dora channeled mana into her broom-like flying tool, and wind erupted from it, propelling her forward.

  Meanwhile, I began to chant as I flew. “Fire to ice! Heat to cold! Deny the sun, and embrace the moon! Hide us, wind and shadows of the glacial towers! Frigid Storm!”

  The air around me turned icy, and flakes of frost appeared, dancing about the cavern, though they vanished into steam almost instantly. I aimed a tendril at the Salamandra hoard, and blasted them with a freezing tornado.

  Steam gushed out, blinding the monsters, letting us flee, and the sudden cold caused the Salamandra to stop in their tracks, shivering from the unexpected attack.

  I laughed, victorious, and shot after Gaelin and Dora who’d gone on ahead.

  “Good job!” the Healer shouted at me as I caught up.

  “I could feel the chill from here!” the halberdier praised.

  “It was just a Level Five spell, nothing big,” I said, waving it off, though I glowed with pride. Literally. They just chuckled and turned their attention back to our path.

  “Where to next?” Dora eventually inquired.

  “Um, let me check.” I removed the map and scanned it. “Okay, we follow this particular lava flow the rest of the way to their base. But it winds about rather oddly. We’ll pass by a small settlement based around a mine, which is where the Goldrift Spiders used to live, before the Dark Dwarves attacked. From there, we’ll need to take a different path; once the lava starts to flow through a small crack we won’t be able to fit through. After that, there’s a place we go past, called Obsidian Crater, and then a tunnel that leads to a small crossroads. And then it’s on the right past some sort of monument.”

  “Sounds so simple when you say it like that!” Gaelin laughed. “In my experience, it tends to be longer and harder than any map might claim!”

  “Same,” Dora piped up.

  “Oh, absolutely,” I agreed. “But looking at this map, this path Lord Kazuum plotted for us is easily the safest. Any of you want to try and trek past a dragon?”

  They both shook their heads rapidly. “In that case, let’s just hope and pray that Fate isn’t interested in giving us any harder times.”

  ~(o)~

  “You jinxed us, Jellik. I knew it would happen as soon as you mentioned Fate, but I kept silent. That was my fault. This, though, is all on you,” Dora griped. She was still on her broom, but she was hovering far off, keeping as much distance as she could.

  Gaelin grunted in agreement and shifted into a battle stance, leveling his halberd at the monster in our path.

  I, on the other tendril, just felt annoyed, and flailed some tendrils about in the air menacingly. “I’m starting to think it’s less Fate and more my bad luck kicking in. I mean, Lady Fate can’t be this cruel, can she? Her sister was nice, though. Maybe Lady Panacea got all the goodness and mercy…”

  An ear-shattering screech exploded through the air, shaking dirt from the tunnel’s walls and ceiling. In response, Gaelin hurled himself forward and engaged the monster, halberd flashing with silver sparks as he cut away at his opponent.

  Imagine an anteater, but a hundred feet long and forty feet tall. Make its claws capable of slicing through solid stone as if it were butter, and capable of spitting highly caustic acid. Then, give it three long, barbed tongues and a hide covered in rocky scales. That was a Stone Sipper, and was the monster we were currently facing as we tried to get to the Dark Dwarves’ hideout.

  Our travels had actually been quite simple for the past while. We got past the raided mine easily, and Obsidian Crater had been both breathtaking and not really a problem to navigate around. Things changed when we approached the tunnel that led from the massive obsidian deposit, and began to encounter traps.

  Darts, pitfalls, runes that activated spells if stepped on! Even a rolling boulder tried to crush us at one point, though Gaelin had laughed at it, then cut it in half with an overcharged Bladewave.

  And now we were facing a Stone Sipper, a fearsome tunneling lithovore that normally wouldn’t bother us, but due to the enchanted iron collar around its neck, was forced to fight us.

  “Can you do anything about that?” I asked Dora, jabbing a tendril at the monster’s collar. The half-orc gave it a look that was part frightened, part uncertain.

  “I-I don’t know!” she stammered. “Ask me that question a year ago and I’d have said ‘yes!’ But after falling out with Naliot…”

  “It’s better than nothing!” I replied, sending a jet of compressed water at the monster. It recoiled, and the gob of acid that had been aimed at Gaelin went wide, splattering and sizzling on the stone a mere foot from him. “Curses! Those scales are incredibly durable!”

  “Tell me about it!” Gaelin agreed, slashing into its body with his divine weapon glowing brightly. Though he did manage to carve out a decently sized chunk, it was still barely even a scratch against a creature that large.

  “Dora! You can do it!” the halberdier shouted at the Healer. “Who cares what the Chained God thinks! Whoa, there!”

  He quickly jumped out of the way of t
he Stone Sipper’s front paws as they smashed into the ground where he’d been standing. Stone shards flew everywhere, and several stone spikes erupted from the ground, catching Gaelin in the chest. His armor resisted the damage, but the force of the impacts still sent him flying.

  “I-I’ll try!” Dora declared, the waver in her force tinged with determination. She shot towards the monster, hovering above it. “Hold it still!” she told us, and I obliged.

  “Chains of Impediment!” I cried out, and dozens of barbed chains erupted from the walls, the lengths of transmuted rock wrapping around the Stone Sipper and pinning it to the floor. The magically summoned chains wouldn’t last long, though. Not with the monsters struggling so hard. Just in case, though, I wrapped a second layer of the spell onto the anteater-like monster.

  “Here goes nothing!” Dora cried out as she leapt from her Witch’s Staff and landed on the back on the Stone Sipper. She grabbed onto the collar and held on as its wearer thrashed about. She began to mutter words to herself, too quietly to hear, and with her face pressed close against the monster’s back, I couldn’t read her lips. Whatever spell she was chanting or technique she was attempting, something was happening, as I saw runes flash to life along the collar. They pulsed in a bronze colored light, and for a moment I thought we’d be able to free the Stone Sipper.

  Unfortunately, the iron collar began to spark with bolts of bronze lightning, and Dora suddenly screamed as they converged on her, blasting her off of the Stone Sipper’s stony back and onto the ground behind the monster.

  She wasn’t moving, and Gaelin and I cried out to her in worry.

  “We’ve got to save her!” Gaelin cried out, and I bobbed in agreement. The Stone Sipper managed to rend several of the chains holding it down, and before I could react it broke free, stone and steel shards flying everywhere. Most pinged off of Gaelin’s Berserker armor, and a few struck me.

  Now released, the Stone Sipper was starting to turn around and attack Dora who still lay on the ground.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” Gaelin shouted. “Bladewave!”

  A massive rippling blast of silver energy shot forth and slammed into the Stone Sipper, creating a huge, bloody gash on its right paw. It screeched in pain and whipped its head towards Gaelin, its three tongues lashing out and wrapping around him.

  “What the?!” he shouted before being hammered into the roof of the tunnel and tossed around like a ragdoll by the monster. It slammed Gaelin into the dirt afterwards, leaving the ex-adventurer groaning in pain from his broken bones.

  I didn’t have time to worry about him, though. Dora was starting to stir, but she was still in danger, so I bounced forward, growing bigger as I did so. Soon, I was large enough that I filled the entire passageway, only a few inches from scraping on the ceiling and the walls.

  ‘Time to fight like a monster!’ I thought to myself viciously. Spending those days on the planet known as Carnivore had taught me how to handle giant, violent creatures without using spells.

  Taken aback by my sudden shift in size, the Stone Sipper was unprepared for me when I lashed out with my tendrils, wrapping a few around its neck while others pinned its limbs down. Once it was trapped, I generated two final tendrils and, with noxious green poison dripping from their tips, I rammed them into the monster’s eyeballs, digging deep.

  It screeched and tried to fight back, barbed tongues lashing against me, scraping off large chunks of my body with every flail. I merely regenerated any damage done by replacing lost matter with the excess I kept stored in my Dimensional Pocket.

  Struggling in my grip, and blinded by my tendrils, the enormous beast began to try and dig its way out, the ground below it suddenly turning soft as it used its magical ability to turn solid stone into sand and mud.

  I refused to let it go that easily and drove my tendrils further into its now ruined sockets. For a moment, it didn’t seem to work, as half of its body was already starting to sink into the softened soil. However, it abruptly twitched and wailed before slumping down, and I withdrew the twin tendrils from its eyes, greyish matter clinging to the tips.

  “Gaelin, are you okay?” I asked, shrinking down slightly and shaking the chunks of brain matter from my limbs. I glanced over at him, and watched astounded as his body, previously broken, snapped back into position. Legs which had been bent awkwardly unbent with grisly snaps, and his ribs popped back into place with a barely audible plop. Then, to top it all off, his crown began to glow with golden light, and he staggered to his feet as his wounds were mended by the potent Healing magic flooding him.

  “I’m fine,” Gaelin said, grunting softly as his injuries knit themselves together. “What about Dora?”

  We hurried over to her side, and I winced. “That’s not good. She fell badly. Looks like she hit her head and her spine.”

  I quickly pried her mouth open and dribbled some homemade Elixir I’d brewed from my own unique Ooze extract. She coughed as it went down her throat, but after a few seconds her eyes fluttered open, and she looked up at me and Gaelin, remorse in her expression.

  “I’m sorry, I failed,” she mumbled.

  “It was our fault for pushing you to do something you couldn’t,” Gaelin replied.

  “Yeah, I guess it was,” she agreed softly, and we both winced.

  “What happened?” I asked her, and she frowned in thought.

  “The incantation I used to try and break the Stone Sipper’s collar is a sort of universal code for all slave collars. Naliot, being the god of imprisonment, can bind as well as free. It was one of the few things my fath- Scarrot, the boss of the Caravan, taught me, and it can give me access and control over any slave’s collar,” she explained. “But it only works for those who pay fealty to him. And, well, we didn’t part on good terms. When I tried to use the spell, I sensed his presence and he fought back.”

  “Sweet Cynthia,” Gaelin murmured, before bending down and helping Dora sit up. “Are you okay? Can you feel and move everything?”

  Dora closed her eyes and spent a minute wiggling her fingers and toes, before sighing in relief. “It’s fine, nothing’s damaged beyond some severe bruising.” She gave me a smile. “Thank you for the potion, Jellik.”

  “It was nothing,” I said, waving off her thanks. I then stretched out a tendril and snagged her Witch’s Staff, which was still hovering where Dora had left it. “Here, I do believe this is yours.”

  She smiled gratefully and stood up, though she needed some help from Gaelin to do so. Then, the Healer took the broom-like artifact and mounted it, before glancing at us and grinning.

  “Come on, it’s still a way to go before we reach their base, right?”

  “Yeah,” I confirmed. We all took off flying down the tunnel once more, now that the obstacle was removed. Still, I couldn’t help but feel bad for the Stone Sipper. In its natural habitat, it was a peaceful giant, feeding only on rocks and the occasional rust patch.

  It was dead now, though. And soon, the ones who’d enslaved it would meet the same fate.

  We soon came to the crossroads just like the map had promised – a small, rough circle with five paths radiating out from it like the arms of a star lit by a shining blue stalactite – but as soon as Dora spotted the monument the map referred to, she let out a gasp and stared at it, then down a long tunnel to the left of her that had a few pale mushrooms growing within it.

  “Is everything alright, Dora?” Gaelin asked worriedly as she landed on the ground and sprinted towards the crossroad’s marker, which was a slab of white metal propped up against the wall of a nearby tunnel covered in a language I couldn’t decipher. She ran a finger over it, before staring up at the glowing crystal stalactite that was bathing the area in a pale blue light.

  “I’ve been here before,” she muttered to herself. She then turned to Gaelin and me. “I know this place! I was here when I first came to Gaeum!”

  She pointed down a tunnel – the very same one the map said we had to take to reach the Dark Dwarves’ bas
e, interestingly enough – and said, “Ain, Enrai, and I went down that path and found a base filled with strange dwarf-like people and odd, horned goblins. We utterly wiped it out when they tried to attack us!”

  “Does that mean you already did the job for us?” Gaelin inquired, and I wobbled back and forth, simulating a shaking head.

  “Unlikely. If that was the case, surely Lord Kazuum would have known. Or some of his soldiers would have noticed the annihilation of a bandit camp,” I reasoned. “Some new folks must have moved in. Maybe that group you and your friends wiped out were part of a larger group?”

  “There did seem to be too few of them for the size of the settlement,” Dora conceded.

  “What if the ones you killed were guarding the place while the rest of them went out to raid the gold mine?” Gaelin suggested.

  “Plausible. Not that it matters much, though. We still have silk to acquire, and other ingredients to find,” I pointed out.

  “In that case, it’s a good thing this base has a portal to the city of Down in it,” Dora stated. “We found it after taking out the bandits.”

  “Even better!” I claimed. “Seems like we’ll be able to finish shopping for Lord Grandor very soon!”

  We quickly took off down the path, with Dora explaining the layout of the Dark Dwarves’ base, and the terrain in the surrounding cavern as we went.

  However, I couldn’t help but feel as if something was watching us as we departed the intersection. Looking back though, all I could see were the mushrooms from the other tunnel. Though was it my imagination, or were there more of them than before?

  Chapter 11: Down again

  I hastily reapplied the cooling charms onto us as we emerged into the superheated air of the cavern that held our targets.

  The Ignis Lava Flow, a major artery of molten earth that snaked its way through Gaeum, seethed through the cavern, cutting through and plummeting over the edge of a cliff, much like at Grandor’s forge.