“And if komonaut doesn’t die? If Kayla can’t find weakness between scales?”
“Then she will die, but Kayla isn’t scared of death. None of us are. We submit willingly.”
“Yes, I am,” said Kayla. “And no, I don’t. Kostig, you are idealist. Good imagination, but sometimes need grounding or you float away.”
“Then you tell us a better plan…”
They descended into a babble of conflicting voices. I guessed their volume wasn’t a problem, since the komonaut was aware of where we were hiding and was playing the waiting game.
I tuned them out and focused on the boulder lying on top of poor, squashed Nino.
While the others argued about what to do, I remembered something that would help Nino.
It wasn’t the nicest of memories but it was there in my head, and it was useful. I pictured finding the Lonehill boy trapped under a rock. Funny I would need to my hrr-levita spell again, for pretty much the same reason.
I cast the spell, and energy shot from me as an invisible stream surging forth, propelled by the elemental it had absorbed from me. I could feel its connection to my palms, and I knew it would go where I wanted it to.
I sent it to the boulder, and I commanded it to lift the great stone. It moved four inches from the ground, revealing the squashed remains of Nino’s leg beneath it.
“Isaac…,” said a voice.
Someone else gagged.
Move, I commanded.
The boulder levitated eight inches to the left, away from Nino, and then slammed down to the ground with a great crash.
Holy hells!
It had taken me several cycles of movement to build energy and I had used one elemental, and even then, I’d barely lifted the boulder. Yet this komonaut could spit them out like they were pumpkin seeds.
[Kinetic] elemental depleted x1 [Total remaining: 0]
[Kinesis] discipline improved by 4%!
Rank: Grey 16.00%
Thanks, but I’m not done yet!
I was hesitant to use another elemental. Especially since I didn’t have any more kinetic elementals left, and it meant using a human elemental to power my spell.
But I hadn’t moved the boulder just give everyone a glimpse of Nino’s flattened leg.
I tuned out the hurried conversations around me and cast hrr-levita again. This time, I used my invisible streams of energy to lift Nino, and with a mental command, I brought him back to me. I gently lowered him to the ground so that he was in front of us but still covered by the rock overhead.
Cleavon and Harrien crawled over to him. Harrien looked in shock, while Cleavon got to work, pulling all kinds of herbs and powder vials from his bag.
Meanwhile, I realized that I still had control of the levita energy stream.
Interesting. It seemed that expending the levita spell on something heavy that required force, drained it quicker. Whereas for simple tasks, it would last longer. Good to know.
[Human] elemental depleted x1 [Total remaining: 4]
[Kinesis] discipline improved by 2%!
Rank: Grey 18.00%
It must have been a day of learning. I already met a komonaut for the first time, and I figured out something new about the levita spell.
Here was a third fact; if I used a spell for less work-intensive purposes, my discipline reward was less. Moving the boulder had earned me a 4% increase, whereas grabbing the bag and medallion earned 2%.
Now, it was time figure out how I could use that to knock the lizard son of a bitch from his perch.
CHAPTER 30 – Great Minds
“Cleavon, how is he?” I asked.
The healer gave me a quick glance, before fixing his attention on Nino again, while still talking. “Bones smashed, likely beyond repair. Lost blood, but I have stopped it flowing. I have given herbs for pain and used paste on wound. He will not die yet, but he needs better attention.”
“He has to go back to the camp,” I said.
“How? We cannot move from under the rock,” said Cleavon.
“And who will take him? We cannot give up the whole journey,” said Kostig. “I will go back with glory, mark this.”
“Let us figure a way to deal with the komonaut first,” I said.
Kostig nodded. “Agreed. First see to danger.”
So…now what?
How did we get out of this?
I turned the problem over in my head. No solution was too stupid to consider, no idea rejected without thought.
What if I appealed to the gods for divine intervention?
No, I didn’t feel like I had been a religious man before coming to this world, and I didn’t trust my survival to anyone but myself nowadays. Besides, even if gods existed here, what kind of weird-ass deities ruled over a place like this?
Onto more grounded solutions.
We could all try and run back the way we came. Call this whole thing off.
But that would mean abandoning the Mines of Light, forfeiting the support of the Tallsteeps, and dooming the Lonehill clan to a life of incessant, fruitless travel, or to a fight with the ogres that they couldn’t win.
So what if we just tried to run past the komonaut and further into the canyon?
If a few of us ate some hare meat and gained a speed buff, we’d be fine. Sure, some of the stragglers would get their skulls crushed by flying stone, but at least most of us would make it on to the next stage of our journey.
But then there was Tosvig to think about. He’d hurt his ankle, and even with a speed buff, he’d be too slow. Did I want to let Tosvig die?
I mean, I had to be honest with myself; if it was a choice between my survival and Tosvig’s, I’d choose mine. I’d choose my continued existence over every single person currently hiding under the rock ledge with me. But while there was any chance that I could get Tosvig out of this, I’d at least pursue it as an option.
So, if we ran, some people might die. Okay, that was a choice to set aside for a moment.
It occurred to me that if we accepted a solution where people died, then wasn’t it better if they died fighting? At least if we killed this lizard, we’d get its elementals and its flesh.
Those were the choices.
Run home. Or, to what counted as a temporary home.
Run down the canyon, onward to the mines, while accepting losses taken as we flee.
Or…we kill this mother-rock-chucker and reap the rewards.
It was a game of probabilities and risk versus reward, the way I saw it. We accepted some risk if we ran, but with little reward. The risk was even greater if we fought the komonaut, but the rewards were a thousandfold better.
With careful planning, taking every advantage we had, we could bring the risks down to an acceptable level. And man, did I want those rewards. I wanted them so much I could hardly think of anything else. What elementals would this thing drop? What insane buffs would its flesh give me?
Pausing my thoughts for now, I turned my focus back to the other guys and I tried to really see what assets we had to work with.
Where the Tallsteeps were concerned, there was Kostig, the scout leader. He was Tosvig’s younger brother, and seemed to have his brother’s strength and swordsmanship, but with a softer nature. Next to him was Judah, the middle-aged scout who said little and noticed a lot.
Then we had Kayla, who I had been told was good at sneaking and climbing. Finally, Adi-Boto, another scout. Adi-Boto hadn’t said a word in the two days we had all been traveling together. Though, I had seen him throw a stone so quickly he actually knocked a crow out of the air. So there was that.
What about with the Lonehills? Not a good picture.
Nino had been crippled. Tosvig was the strongest of us, but he had hurt his ankle. Cleavon was the doctor, and I already knew most of his hrr spells were based around healing. Unless we wanted to heal the komonaut’s anger issues, Cleavon wouldn’t help much. Lastly, there was Harrien; eager and brave, but inexperienced in magic and even less so in combat.
/> Oh yeah. And me. The schmuck who appeared in this world – what -two months ago? God knows. Time was like a bowling alley and I was the ball spinning around and around, losing my bearings before inevitably slamming in the gutter.
We weren’t an army, that was for sure, but I thought I had a way for us to work around this. The pieces were there, in my head, but I needed to say them to get them into place.
“We can run,” I said. Kostig paused a hushed conversation with Kayla and listened to me. “We can go home or we can go onward. Two obvious choices, and with each of them, some of us will die.”
Kostig rolled his eyes. “Next the outsider will tell me the sky is blue at day and dark at night,” he said. “What of it? Tell us a fact we don’t know already, perhaps?”
“Listen to Isaac!” said Harrien.
“Insolent whelp,” said Judah, and he gave Harrien a shove. As a Tallsteep, even in his middle age, he was bulky enough for this small force to plant Harrien on his ass.
Tosvig shoved Judah back, and Judah raised a fist in return.
“Na!” said Kostig. “Tension makes a fool of even the calmest minds. This was my fault for mocking Isaac. Please, outsider. Continue.”
“As I said, we can run either way and take our chance. Or, we can kill the komonaut and take the rewards we deserve.”
“We have no way to approach him on his ledge, and if we stray into canyon, he will kill us. We have no protection against rocks. Ah…unless you mean you have a spell that will protect us?”
“I have a shield spell, but it won’t withstand the komonaut’s rocks.”
“Pathetic,” said Judah.
“You have an iron shield on your back, scout,” I said. “Why take your ass out from this rock and prove how mighty it is?”
“How mighty his ass is, or shield?” said Tosvig.
Everyone laughed, even Judah, and the tension broke.
I took that as a signal to carry on. “We can’t all climb up to the ledge, and we will die if we stand in the open. But I might have a way.”
And so I explained my plan to them, forming and perfecting most of it while I talked. Tosvig, Kostig, and Judah asked me questions, helping me fill the gaps. Gaps that would, I realize, have gotten some of killed or at the least, horribly maimed.
They made queries, pointed out flaws. Some of them had already occurred to me, some hadn’t, and others I wouldn’t have dreamed of thinking about because I didn’t have their scouting knowledge.
We honed our plan so that the danger was as acceptable as we could make it. And then we honed it some more, and Kostig showed his leadership when he invited Harrien and Cleavon to add their thoughts.
By the end, we had a plan, and all that was left was for us to take the risk.
A considerably lessened risk, after our discussion, but still a risk.
I kneeled and opened my inventory bag. “I will share out the hare meat, and we will get started.”
Soon after, we were ready.
Kayla, the Tallsteep scout, looked pretty good in my spiderweave robes. She pulled them off more than I did, anyhow.
“Remember, Kayla,” said Kostig. “Komonaut’s weakness is between his scales. Scales are hard as diamond, but underneath is flesh just like us. There is always a part where the scales do not meet.”
“Understood.”
Kayla started climbing up the cliffside, finding handholds and footholds I wouldn’t have noticed even in daylight, let alone now in the dark.
She climbed faster than I could walk, and it wouldn’t be long until she got high enough that she was right under the ledge. Then, she would wait for the signal. It was a signal we had worked out after careful consideration, after a discussion about the merits of stealth and subtlety.
The signal was a giant ball of flames.
The risks, as I saw it, were the lizard seeing us or seeing Kayla. Having Kayla get close enough to stick a sword through its scales was central to our plan, and she needed to be hidden for that.
I had given her the spiderweave robes – as a loan, since I’m not a charity – and those should help. The komonaut had enhanced night vision, Kostig explained, but with a caveat.
Komonauts were farsighted.
This was a big screw you handed down from Big Daddy Evolution. The komonauts were descended from dragons, who used to hunt from way up high in the air and would need to be able to see the ground below them.
Though the komonauts had lost their wings over time, they hadn’t yet evolved beyond their farsightedness.
Now, this threw me into an existential crisis. How far into the future had I gone for dragons to not only exist but to evolve? Or did evolution happen quicker in a place like this?
Whatever, now wasn’t the time.
The important thing was that its farsightedness meant Kayla could get close to it, but only with our help. Right now, the komonaut had nothing to do but wait for us to make a move. Nothing to do but listen and watch.
The komonaut was way too alert now, since this place was silent save a faint breeze snaking through the gap in the cliffs. It would hear Kayla before she got close enough to find a weak point in its scales.
My first idea for a distraction was to share the hare meat between the fastest of us, gains speeds buffs, and we could go into the open and play dodge the boulder.
But why take a risk like that?
I looked at Harrien. “Ready?”
“Yap, Isaac. Are you ready? Need help with movements?”
“I got this.”
I looked up and saw Kayla had reached the underside of the ledge, and she was near the lip. She was ready to climb up onto the komonaut’s perch.
Time to do this.
A hand grabbed the collar of my robe. It was Kostig, and in the darkness, I could see the whites of his eyes peering at me.
“If Kayla get hurt, I take a measure of her death, and recreate for you,” he said.
Kostig was shoved back against the cliff wall.
“If Isaac gets hurt, I take measure of death,” said Tosvig, “And then I think of something worse.”
“You wouldn’t hurt your brother.”
“I have no brother.”
“Hey!” said Harrien. “You said clanmates were brothers.”
“Fine. I have no brother named Kostig. Now stop acting like fools. Your girlfriend understands the risks.”
Kayla was in place. There was only one more thing left to do. I gave Kostig and Judah a piece of hare meat and kept the last one for myself.
“If this goes wrong, we can run out to distract as a last resort.”
Judah nodded. Kostig clenched the meat in his fist.
“Okai, Harrien. You aim left, I will aim right. Time it so that we do not fire together. We need to keep him watching.”
“Enjoy the lights, komonaut bastard,” said Harrien.
“I’ll go first.”
Focusing on the night sky where hundreds of stars watched from their safe positions millions of lightyears away, I cast hrr-chare, making sure to charge it twice to make it stronger.
Energy streamed through my palms, transforming into flames at my fingertips and then forming a ball of burning fire, which shot toward the midnight sky like a comet going to kiss the stars.
[Fire] elemental depleted x2 [Total Remaining:8]
[Fire] discipline improved by 6%!
Rank: Grey 41.00%
Up the fireball went, so fast the noise sounded like a scream, the trail of yellow and red and orange behind it and waving this way and that as if it were a fox’s tail.
The display lit the sky, and it was disconcerting that it could probably be seen for miles around. There was no avoiding it, and besides, both Kostig and Tosvig told me that only a lunatic would travel for any distance at nighttime. If any lunatics out there came to investigate, we’d already be gone, and they could enjoy their lunacy alone.
Everyone in the group stared at the fire; Cleavon with disinterest, having seen magic thousands of times
, and Harrien with a more studious eye, no doubt judging my technique.
But Kostig, Judah, and the ever-silent Adi-Boto were wide-eyed as they watched my magic, with the flame light glowing on their green skin. I saw two things in their expression; wonder and suspicion.
And now came what I had hoped for.
Something else met my fireball in the night sky, but not another ball of flames. Instead, a giant rock shot up, almost reaching the flame before losing velocity and beginning to fall in an arc, where it smashed into the surface of the cliff opposite us.
Above out cliffside, Kayla saw her signal and began to climb, and in a blink, she was gone and she had leaped up onto the komonaut’s ledge.
My pulse felt like a drill. Even with Tosvig here, I’d still have to answer to Kostig’s anger if something went wrong.
I mean, I didn’t want to kill the guy, but if I had to…
Could I kill him? He was a strong guy. If it came to it, if he was that angry and set on murdering me, I’d have to give it a shot. Maybe with a hellgre fire blood buff…
Forget it for now.
“Now,” I told Harrien.
Harrien performed the cycles of hrr-chare. Since he hadn’t cared enough to practice the way I had, and because he didn’t have a medallion anywhere near as great as Siddel’s, his cycles took longer.
Soon, he shot flames of his own in the sky, aiming them toward the west, where again they cast a glow over the cliffs and canyon.
Another rock shot out to meet them, before losing speed and falling.
This told me a couple of things; the komonaut had been clever enough to wait it out, knowing we couldn’t escape, but it wasn’t a genius. It didn’t realize that rocks couldn’t shoot fire out of the sky.
Two, its projectile power had limits, shown by the arc of its rocks. That didn’t help much now, but it was something to file away in case I ever met one of these overgrown lizards again.
I hoped to hell I wouldn’t have to, but first, we needed this komonaut gone.
But our part was done. All we could do was wait…
Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale Page 29
