“We might be outnumbered,” I said, “but we can even this out. First, we can all take some buffs. Mix a little bear, wolf, and turtle, and we should improve our all-round abilities. Then, we extinguish the ooze and draw the dwellers to us.”
“Sorry, Isaac. One buff makes the other vanish.”
“I can only use one at once?”
“Consuming one buff will replace the effects of your old one,” said Cleavon. “I have heard of some creatures with two stomachs who can use two at once, but that will not help us.”
I clenched and unclenched my fist. I liked to pace around while I thought about things, but there wasn’t enough room here, so this was the only substitute.
“This sets us back a little, but not much. We just need to be organized and give each other roles. Two of us can eat some nightwolf eyes and become our spotters. Then, three of us eat bear buffs for power, and two of us can chew on some wolf flesh and hope we get speed.”
“Either your arithmetic is wrong,” said Erimdag, “Or you plan to keep my chuttin’ hands tied while you fight.”
“You think we would untie you, put weapon in your hand, and give you buff?” said Tosvig.
“If not, your fight just became twelve against seven, didn’t it?” said the gnome.
“We cannot trust you.”
“True.”
“Then matter settled.”
“But,” said Erimdag, “you can trust my desire to survive. If I try and hurt any of you, I worsen our odds. If I try to escape alone, the dwellers will get to me. My only chance is with you, and that means we’re all just little brass balls tied up in the same sack.”
In practical terms, the gnome was right, and his argument stood up to logic. There was no motive for him to run because it’d be useless. Trying to injure any of us would only increase his likelihood of dying.
I took out my hunting knife, cut Erimdag’s ropes, and gave him my poker. I drew my sword, ready to use it for the first time.
“Harrien, Cleavon, I’ll need you ready with hrr-barrer. Here’s the plan.”
Ten minutes later, we were ready. Shaken, nervous, but ready. We ate our buffs, having decided on our individual roles. I popped some salted hellgre meat in my mouth. It tasted rank at first, and it was tougher than leather to chew through. I made as quick work of it as I could, and then swallowed it.
Buff received: Fire Blood
[For 2 hours, any fire attacks, spells, or weapons will be three times more powerful.]
We steeled ourselves, and then there was nothing left to do but act.
“Everyone clear on this?” I said.
I heard nod, grunts of assent, nervous yesses.
“I’ll start, then.”
Using the blue alchemooze, I extinguished all the splodges of burning ooze in front of us, and then I quickly retreated back to the group.
At first, we heard nothing. Without the flames, the darkness in the cavern was so oppressive that I could feel it like a weight on my shoulders. My eyes adjusted a little, and I wished I had assigned myself the role of spotter, so at least I could have eaten nightwolf eye and been able to see.
We pressed back against the door, with Erimdag and Tosvig standing at the front.
“See anything?” I asked.
“Hells,” said Harrien. The fear in his voice sent a shudder through me. “They’re clinging to the walls. They’re staring back at us.”
All I could see ahead of me was darkness. I imagined the far wall of the cavern, and I pictured a dozen spider-like creatures clinging to the stone, their pinprick eyes focused on us.
“Are they moving?” I said, asking the question to keep my mind off my mental image of the dwellers.
“No…wait, they are moving now.”
“Yes, moving,” said Tosvig.
“You have the ooze?”
Harrien and Tosvig each held up a tin. “Got it.”
“Then you know what to do. We’ll guard you as best we can.”
I wanted to use some yellow ooze to illuminate the cavern, but I couldn’t. That would ruin everything. So I bore it out, wrestling with my growing nerves, and soon, two things happened.
First, my eyes began to adjust to the darkness a little. Not with clarity, but enough that I could make out shapes. I could see my group around me, I could see the ceiling above us.
Secondly, I heard sounds.
Horrible, throaty chirps, and little pitter-patters of feet. Far away at first, but getting closer and closer.
It went against every instinct I had to stand there while the dwellers scuttled towards us, but I forced myself not to move, not to wave my blade or use red alchemooze.
Remember the plan…
The scuttling grew louder still. Lots and lots of feet crawling and walking and dragging over the stone, coming from straight ahead.
And then, I heard Tosvig and Harrien move away from us.
Good. I knew what that meant.
Bad…I knew what that meant!
“Begin,” I told Harrien and Cleavon.
With Harrien and Tosvig moving across the cavern, and with the rest of the group behind us, Harrien, Cleavon and I formed spells.
I built energy inside me until it reached the biting point, where it would be easy to cast the spell. I held the feeling for as long as I could until I could feel the spell begging to be born.
Just a second longer….
And then, a shape came into view. A monstrous mix of spider and humanoid dashing straight toward us, with its nestmates behind it.
“Hrr-barrer!”
[Kinetic] elemental depleted x1 [Total remaining: 7]
[Shield] discipline improved by 4%!
Rank: Grey 29.00%
Blue light shot out from me and formed a barrier of light. With two more shouts from Harrien and Cleavon, another shield formed to our right, and a third appeared above us.
“Pack closer together,” I said, and I felt Kayla press against one of my shoulders, Adi-Boto against the other.
With the metal doors behind us and hrr-barrer shields protecting our flanks and above us, we were safe.
At least, for as long as the shields held out.
A dweller thudded into my shield. The barrier held as its weight pressed against it. Another thud came from above, and now I saw a dweller over our heads, clawing at Cleavon’s shield.
Again and again, the dwellers smashed into our shields, each one sending a ripple of dread through me.
Come on, Harrien and Tosvig…
“Kayla, Judah, Adi,” I said. “You have the bear buffs. If the shields fall and Tosvig still hasn’t done his part, you know what to do.”
Two dwellers took running leaps into my shield, their combined force making the light flicker. I half expected the barrier to just fade out, and my breath caught in my chest.
It held. The magic was getting weaker, but it held.
“Tosvig?” I shouted, but my words probably didn’t reach him over the chirps and scuttles and thuds.
Overhead, Cleavon’s shield flickered like a broken streetlight. Harrien’s barrier pulsed to our right as a dweller hurtled into it. Not long until they broke through now…
With a whoosh, fire suddenly sprang up way behind the dwellers. Just a patch of it, but right then it was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.
Just a foot away, another fire started. Then another. On and on this went, these new columns of fire appearing and forming a semi-circle around the dwellers.
Now, we were huddled against the doors with our shields protecting us. Just in front were the dwellers, and the semi-circle of fires was behind them, trapping them.
Three dwellers hit my shield at once. The light flickered once, again, and then disappeared. No more shield.
“Go!”
I grabbed Kayla and pulled her, and we all sprinted away from the doors just as the dwellers pounced again. I heard metal clang as one creature slammed into the doors where we had just been stood.
We headed
to the flames and ran between the columns of fire, joining Tosvig and Harrien.
Now, the dwellers were gathered around the door, hemmed in by our red alchemooze flames.
I grabbed a tin from Harrien and started throwing the red alchemooze. I aimed it on the walls and ceiling, while Tosvig and Harrien spread even more on the ground.
“I’m empty,” I said, putting the metal tin back in my bag.
Tosvig flicked one more blob of ooze. “I am also.”
“Me too,” said Harrien.
I patted Harrien on the shoulder, momentarily forgetting that this gesture didn’t mean the same in Lonehill custom as it did for me, and was actually an insult. “Sorry,” I said, correcting myself by tapping his arm. “You did well, Harrien.”
“And Tosvig?” asked Tosvig.
“You too.”
We all caught our breaths now, admiring our work.
The alchemooze flames on the ground formed a barrier. While the dwellers had been trying to get through our shields, Tosvig and Harrien had fenced them in, trapping them. The ooze I had flung on the walls and ceiling completed the fiery snare.
Although we had sprinted through the narrow gap between the flame splodges, the dwellers couldn’t. They were so scared of it that they wouldn’t go anywhere near.
Now, those fearsome spider-things were huddled together. Some were trying to bite their way through the metal doors, while others reared on their back four legs, staring at the fire and us, hissing.
“Let’s not take any chances,” I said. “Kill them now.”
Harrien and I cast hrr-chare, while Kayla used her bow and Adi-Boto used his spear. My hellgre buff made my chare flames fierce, and together, we scorched, pierced, and stabbed the dwellers to death amidst a chorus of animalistic squeals.
The cavern filled with the smell of burning dweller flesh, and their desperate scratched and scrabbles on the doors behind became hard to listen to.
Watching them die like this, huddled together and desperate for escape, I felt sorry for them.
Not almost, but actually sorry.
Their death had been pathetic. Sure, they wouldn’t have hesitated to kill us. Eat us alive. That was why they were waiting for us, after all. But that didn’t mean I took pleasure in slaughtering them like this. Still, it had to be done, and that’s what it was now – done.
“Extinguish the fires,” said Tosvig. “they are dead.”
I held up my hand. “Just give it a second. Harrien, chare them again to make sure. Then we’ll get their elementals and their flesh, if anything is unburned, and try to get the doors open. Well done, everyone.”
It felt good for a plan to work. For it to go smoothly without any of us getting hurt or injured. For us all to be here and accounted for…
…wait.
“Where’s Judah?” I said.
I looked at everyone in the group once, twice, three times, as if I was being stupid and just miscounting, or something.
Nope, Judah was gone.
A rare look of worry crossed Adi-Boto’s face now. He stalked through the cavern, staring at the ground, the walls, everywhere.
“Judah?” he said.
Hearing Adi’s voice – when he was sober, this time – shocked me a little.
“Judah?” he said. “Judah?”
Seeing Adi-Boto panic was like lighting a fuse in the rest of us, and we all felt it fizzing inside our chests. Tosvig and Kayla joined Adi in searching the edges of the cavern, while I hunted for him in the other direction.
As I crossed the cavern and headed toward the right of the doors, I saw the dip in the ground where water had pooled. In it, was a dark shape. I drew my blade and braced for a dweller.
And then the logical part of my brain kicked in.
It was Judah!
I ran to him and found him submerged in the water face-first. I dragged him out. He would have been heavy enough anyway, but now he was sopping wet. I managed to drag him out of the water, and I rolled him onto his back.
“He’s here!” I shouted.
I heard footsteps behind me, and Adi-Boto was the first by my side. Kneeling, he shook Judah. He didn’t say anything now.
“Give me a second,” I said.
He wasn’t breathing. I tilted his head back and opened his mouth. I held a finger in front of his nose, but I felt no breath.
I took a deep breath and held it in. Adi-Boto touched my arm, stared at me, and took a breath himself.
Understanding that he meant to do this instead of me, I moved back. Adi-Boto gave Judah a few rescue breaths.
Judah spluttered, spraying Adi and me with water. I wiped it off my face, not caring, just glad that he was alive.
After Judah had coughed up water and was done retching, he wiped his chin. He looked at us, his eyes dazed. Then his gaze settled on Adi-Boto. He gripped his arm. “Thank you, friend.”
He staggered to his feet, nearly falling until Tosvig caught his arm. “Sit, Judah.”
“I can’t sit. Not now.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“I saw things clearly for a single time in all my years.”
“I mean, how did you end up in the pool?”
Judah waved his hand, dismissing the question as unimportant. “I stumbled in the dark. Does not matter. What matters is what I saw.”
“Where?”
“In the water.”
Tosvig ran over to the pool and stood over it, sword raised. “Nothing here.”
“Not in the water…in me, when I was in the water.”
Adi joined his friend and tried to gently guide him to the ground, but Judah shrugged him off.
“I saw a clan. Ours, perhaps. But the Lonehills, too. And we were in a city that stretched further than I could see. We had homes of brick. People worked iron, pulled carts, sold wares from their shops. I could feel their sense of purpose heavy in the air.”
He sounded delirious, but his eyes were back to their piercing normal now, and he held our stares one at a time.
“You need to rest, Judah,” said Kayla. “Senility is catching up with you, old man.”
“Did I see the future?” asked Judah. “Or something else?”
“Unless that is a pool of psychic water, I think your mind has snapped,” said Kayla. “Then again…”
Tosvig scooped water up in his hand and slurped it. Everyone watched him for a second, wondering what he’d see.
He wiped his hand on his trousers. “Just dirty water.”
“What did I see?” Judah muttered to himself, as he walked away from the pool.
I wondered about that. Sure, magic existed in this world, but that didn’t mean everything was magic. Tosvig had sipped some of the water, and he hadn’t had a crazy vision.
“You were drowning,” Tosvig shouted over. “I heard tell that a person sees things when water fills his lungs.”
Cleavon nodded. “Quite possible. As well as that, I must admit that the powder I gave you to keep you all awake can have some…strange side effects.”
“You could have told us that,” I said.
“It’s nothing dangerous, don’t worry,”
“He almost drowned.”
“My powder hardly caused him to stumble into the pool, did it?”
“Forget it,” I said. “We better move on. “I’ll extinguish the flames, we loot the corpses and move on.”
“What about the doors?” asked Harrien.
Tosvig shrugged. “The originals never sang of doors like these, and they have already shown they will not open for us. What we seek is deeper in this place. But we will eat what we can of the dwellers, and hope that with their flesh in our bellies, they can no longer sneak up on us in the dark.”
All that was left of the dwellers was a pile of charred and wounded spider corpses. There wasn’t much unspoiled flesh for us to take, but at least they would have left us elementals.
I held my sword in my right hand. As I approached them, a dweller’s leg twitched.
I felt like my heart dislodge from my chest for a second. Recovering myself, I gripped my sword. The dweller was twitching, but it wasn’t trying to get up.
Before I could reach it, Erimdag charged past me. He held a head-sized lump of stone in his hands, which he must have found somewhere in the cavern.
Was this him making his escape attempt? We had needed his help with the dwellers, but I hadn’t let my guard down around him. Or at least, I thought I hadn’t.
I held my sword, ready to cut him down if he tried anything.
He cut an arc around where I stood, getting to the dweller before me.
He raised the rock and brought it down on the dweller’s head, splattering himself with tar-like blood. He raised it again and then pulverized the creature some more.
Again and again, he did this, his face twisted in anger, his shirt and trousers covered in more and more black blood. He stopped only when his arms tired, and he let the rock fall from his hands, and he took shallow breaths.
“Sometimes I dreamed that I was back there,” he said. “Back in the mines. Just the three of us. Everyone dead around us, the smell of blood so strong I gagged. Hearing them creep around us.”
Then he pointed at the dweller that he had completely flattened, flesh and all. “Other times I dreamed about doing this.”
He sat down and then laid on his back and took deep breaths while closing his eyes. Beads of sweat fell from his forehead, mixing with tears forming in the corners of his eyes, and then running over his face and onto his shirt, cutting a current through the smears of blood.
“Tie him up again,” I said.
“He helped us,” said Harrien.
“He also lied to us. About handling the alchemooze, about seeing the dwellers before now. I trusted him out of necessity, but with the necessity gone, my trust is revoked. Sorry, Erimdag.”
The gnome didn’t seem to care, and I wondered if I was doing the right thing, but I didn’t want to have to worry about Erimdag while we navigated the rest of the mines.
Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale Page 43
