by Edwin McRae
Mark hauled Volcanic Bastard free of the carcass and spun about in time to see another soldier beetle bearing down on him. Its mandibles were splayed wide, revealing a set of four finger-like palps that would happily chew him up once the crushing mandibles had their way. He dove to the left, rolled, and came back up onto his feet. The beetle struggled to halt its lunge, scrabbling for purchase on the dust and gravel under its tarsal claws. With its flank thus exposed, the beetle was a sitting duck for Mark’s puncturing thrust. Once again the sword found the opening of a spiracle, plunging deep into the insect’s abdomen, cutting and cauterising the creature’s innards. The insect thrashed in agony, so violently that Mark was knocked sideways by the weight of its armored body. He lost his grip on his sword and tumbled in an ungainly heap into the dust. Mark heard a resounding “crunch” as he landed. His forearm was bent beyond tolerance by the force of the fall and the weight of his own body. The pain didn’t hit him straight away but he could feel it building beyond the numbing fog of shock.
You have suffered 25 HP in damage!
Your left forearm is broken.
HP: 101
“Vari! My arm!” he shouted as he scrambled to his feet. The welcome words, “Sculpt Bone”, swam through the gathering clouds of pain. Warmth washed down his arm, followed by the unnerving feeling of bone shifting of its own accord beneath his flesh. The encroaching agony receded and Mark waggled his fingers in relief.
Vari of Karajan has healed you for 25 HP.
Your left forearm is fully mended.
HP: 126
“Quagmire!” bellowed Braemar. Mark looked up in time to see a pair of mandibles plunge into a pool of mud rather than into his body. Another soldier beetle entered the battle from the nest and made a beeline for Mark while the fourth beetle, the one with the splintered leg, had positioned itself between him and Volcanic Bastard. The sword was still imbedded in its victim’s abdomen. The healthy soldier was extricating itself from Braemar’s quagmire and the injured beetle was sizing him up with its one remaining eye. The thing’s other eye was a milky pulp shot through with shards of shattered stone. Unarmed, Mark knew he would last about two seconds against the healthy beetle and maybe four against the injured one. He had to get to his sword.
“Ethereal Flesh,” he murmured.
Muddied mandibles snapped harmlessly through vapor that had been his body only a moment before. He flowed beneath this beetle and onto the second beetle. Then he repeated the movement, passing underneath the insect so it would have to turn around to attack him. Mark mustered his vapors by his beloved sword and made himself whole again. With a grunt of effort he pulled Volcanic Bastard free and parried the mandibles that now sought to tear him apart. Once, twice, he blocked the insect’s desperate attacks. Then he saw his opening. He ducked under the remains of the beetle’s injured leg and brought his sword sweeping up into the join between its thorax and its abdomen. Aided by its heated fury, Volcanic Bastard clove the beetle clean in half.
Mark rolled away from the final beetle’s attack, staying close enough to strike when he came back to his feet. The insect moved too fast for him to aim for the spiracles so this time he focused on the legs, lopping them off, one by one, as his opponent tried in vain to turn around. Once all three legs on one side were gone, the defeated soldier flopped helplessly onto the ground and Mark was quick to put it out of its misery, toasting it from the inside out. He turned to the nest, sword raised, expecting another wave of defenders. The structure remained silent.
Your party has defeated four Level 4 Pit Soldiers.
Your XP reward per party member = 53 XP
After several long seconds of stillness and silence, Mark turned to Vari and Braemar and smiled at them through the settling dust.
“Anyone up for a bit of looting?”
4
[Mark]
Mark knelt over the armor he’d just dug out of a pile of bones and assorted detritus. The steel was pitted with corrosion here and there, but nothing some polishing wouldn’t fix.
Breastplate, cuisses and greaves. Compared with Garridar’s Ironhide, the Breastplate of the High Legion was nothing to write home about, but the cuisses and greaves were a definite improvement on Citadel’s handiwork.
Cuisses of the High Legion
20% reduction in damage caused to the upper leg.
20% chance to prevent total damage to the upper leg.
10% reduction in upper leg muscle fatigue.
“An empire begins with a pair of sturdy legs
and a willingness to march.”
- Commander Ezra of the High Legion
Greaves of the High Legion
20% reduction in damage to the lower leg.
20% chance to prevent total damage to the lower leg.
10% reduction in lower leg muscle fatigue.
“Forget ceremony. A soldier stands on tender flesh
and brittle bone.”
- Commander Ezra of the High Legion
Both cuisses and greaves were engraved with the symbol of a hand grasping the sun, an image of unbridled ambition. Mark suspected that same ambition had come crashing down upon this once grand city. The thought sparked an old memory, one of being glued to the television, watching replays with horrified fascination as the twin towers fell. He shook off the morbid thought, picked up the breastplate, and passed it to Vari.
“Here, my lady. Something to prevent that gorgeous heart of yours from being skewered by an arrow.”
Vari smiled her thanks and pointed at the straps. “A little help, please?”
Vari settled the breastplate in place over her chest, as Mark buckled the straps across her back, enjoying the moment of closeness and the warm, appetizing fragrance of her hair. For some reason, Vari’s scent reminded him of the beautiful sourdough bread his mum had baked in the oven every Saturday morning.
“Comfy?”
“A little tighter, please. I’m not as chesty as you seem to imagine.”
Mark tightened the straps another notch. “Just didn’t want to squish you,” he murmured.
Vari turned to him, placed her smooth palm to his cheek and drew him closer. “You can squish me any time you like, darling.” Her whisper tickled his ear and sent his pulse-rate through the roof.
“Oh shit, sorry. I’ll just...” mumbled an embarrassed Braemar. Mark and Vari both laughed as they parted and turned to the druid. He’d been exploring the back chambers of the nest and had returned with a long ebony staff. It was shod at each end with silver.
“Nice stick,” complimented Mark. “Magic?”
Braemar nodded. “Yeah, faster casting speed and packs a bit of a wallop as well. That’s if I manage to hit anything with it.”
“I can give you a few pointers on that, mate” offered Mark.
“Thank you. That’d be great.”
“No worries. And try these on for size.”
Mark picked out a pair of dark brown boots from the rest of the items he and Vari had recovered and passed them to Braemar. The remaining items consisted of another Breastplate of the High Legion along with another cuisse and greave, both missing their partners. There was an assortment of jewelry and a few valuable ornaments, stuff that could either be sold or melted down for use in the forge.
Braemar’s eyes widened as he saw the stats on the boots. “Really? Boots of the Firmament?”
With the haste of a kid plundering a Christmas tree, Braemar sat down and pulled the boots on. He then nodded with both satisfaction and more than a little wonder. “Perfect bloody fit. Who’d have thought it.”
Mark had to bite his tongue, knowing that the game was resizing items automatically. He could tell without putting them on that his new greaves and cuisses would be just the right size for him. Vari’s breastplate had definitely shrunk a bit as he fastened the straps for her.
Braemar stood up and rocked back and forth a couple of times, heel to toe, pleased as punch with his new acquisitions. “Good Spirit boost too, especially
for earth-based spells. So I reckon-”
The druid left the sentence unfinished as he crunched across the floor and passed the ebony staff to Vari. Surprised, Vari accepted the staff and ran her fingertips along the smooth ebony.
“You’re sure?” she asked Braemar.
The druid shrugged. “Someone’s got to keep healing our warlock here. Poor man’s a bit accident prone.”
“Cheers for that, Braemar,” replied Mark. “Next time I’ll let you take point with the giant bugs, eh?”
“I’m alright, thank you,” answered Braemar with a wry grin. He gestured with his thumb over his shoulder. “There’s something else you two should see as well.”
“More loot?” Mark wondered hopefully.
Braemar tugged at his beard, something he tended to do when he was feeling unsure. “Don’t know, to be honest.”
They followed the druid down a short tunnel. It had been molded by beetles out of a mixture of resin and the bones of scavenged meals. Mark could make out more than a few humanoid bones in there. The tunnel ended abruptly at a ruptured wall. The masonry spilled into a huge, vaulted room. A single shaft of light poured down from the broken roof above, illuminating the otherwise darkened chamber.
“The beetles obviously broke into here but there’s no sign of them beyond the rubble. No resin, no scavenged remains,” observed Braemer. “The room’s clean.”
“Seems strange,” offered Vari with a frown. “All this space on their doorstep yet they didn’t make use of it.”
Mark stepped through the hole and onto a floor that had been painstakingly tiled with an elaborate mosaic. Now faded with age, it was difficult for Mark to make out the exact details. He walked around the chamber, piecing the image together. Figures stood before a glowing orb that dominated the center of the room, their long-limbed frames casting even longer shadows. Within the heart of the larger orb sat a smaller one engraved with swirling, runic engravings. With a start he realized that he recognized those symbols.
“Wait, aren’t those-”
“Pretty similar to the ones in Citadel’s tunnels,” Braemar finished for him.
Mark knelt by the orb, getting a closer look. “Not similar. Exactly like the ones at Citadel.” He reached out to touch the patterns.
“Are you sure you should do that?” worried Vari.
Mark winked at her. “If it blows my hand off, you can grow me a new one, can’t you?”
Vari rolled her eyes. “Maybe in a level or two. For now I’d just have to strangle you to death so you could resurrect in one piece.”
“Ah, the things we do for-” The final word caught in his throat.
Inside him, a part of Mark was hauling on the rein and yelling “Woah, horsey!” First of all, he and Vari hadn’t known each other that long. Yes, they’d made love in the mountain tarn, and a few times since at Citadel. Mark couldn’t question that he had some serious feelings for her. But part of his brain, one that had the word “Sensible” melted into its grey goo, kept pointing out that Vari wasn’t ‘real’. She was an AI, an NPC, a character in a virtual reality game. Falling in love with Vari was the equivalent of falling in love with the Google Maps girl.
“Friends,” said Vari, completing his sentence for him. Her expression was neutral, unreadable.
The heat of anxiety prickled across his shoulders and up his neck as he opened his mouth to explain himself. Not that he had any idea what he was going to say.
“Vari, I-”
Vari’s dark eyes widened with alarm and she pressed her finger to her lips. She’d heard something, and now Mark heard it too, a soft scraping and the dry trickle of falling dust. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, the sinuous unfurling of a shadow.
He jumped to his feet, put himself between Vari and the shadow, and shouted, “Second Skin!”, just as the shape exploded into fragments of fast-flying darkness. Sharp shadows rattled against his magical barrier and tumbled to the floor. He glanced down and tried to focus on the objects. They were spines of some sort, their tips glistening with moisture.
To his left, he heard a sharp scuffing of leather against stone. He turned to the sound and was horrified to see that it was Braemar. The druid lay flat on his back. He shuddered and thrashed, in the grips of a seizure. Bubbles of froth formed on his trembling lips and his eyes were wide with fear. While the spines had been aimed at Mark, the spread had been wide enough to catch Braemar. Two spines jutted from his left shoulder, having pierced the heavy cloth of his robe. Another pair had sunk into the bare skin of his left arm.
Vari rushed to the druid’s side and plucked the spines from his flesh, being careful not to touch the moistened points with her naked fingers. Then she slipped her hand down the neck of his robe so she could place her palm over his heart. She closed her eyes and whispered “Purify Blood”. For a moment nothing happened. Vari’s brow wrinkled as she pushed harder to inject her spell into Braemar’s veins. This time his body responded. The convulsions stilled, his jaw relaxed and Braemar opened his mouth to gasp in a welcome lungful of air. Vari opened her eyes, relief palpable on her face, and Mark let out the breath he’d been holding.
Then he turned his attention to the massive shadow creeping across the tiled floor towards him. Legs moved in a sickly Mexican wave, too many to count, propelling the worm-like body with unnerving speed. Mark noticed fresh spines sprouting up through skin that glistened with venomous moisture. Now it made sense why the Pit Beetles had stopped their tunneling at the ruptured wall. This was the territory of an even deadlier aberration.
The sleek, eyeless head broke open to extrude a long, pale tongue. A wet appendage reached out and tasted the air, perhaps trying to work out the type of prey that had wandered into its abode. Mark drew Volcanic Bastard and woke its inner fire. He wasn’t about to give the creature time to grow a fresh set of quills. If any of those poisoned spines hit Vari, they were all done for.
“Arcane Edge!” he shouted as he charged across the mosaic. The monster seemed to sense his approach. Its tongue lashed out, a cracking whip of sticky flesh that wrapped around his chest and belly, crushing the breath from him like a boa constrictor. He pressed Volcanic Bastard against the rubbery flesh and began to saw at it, hoping to cut through before its tongue dragged him into its gaping maw. Mark got a frightening glimpse of pale muscles undulating like waves on a fleshy sea. Its head had parted wide enough to swallow him whole.
“Mark! Let it pull you in!” Vari shouted behind him.
“What?!” Mark hollered back. “Why?”
“The central nervous system is at the back of the head. Puncturing that will kill the thing straight away.”
The monster’s maw was closing in fast and Mark was running out of air. His ribs screamed, his lungs burned, and black spots danced in front of his eyes. He forced his foggy brain to compare the length of his sword against the length of the monster’s head. Too short by roughly a meter, even if he fully extended his arm.
An image rose up from the encroaching blur. A battered helm tumbled from a saddle to land in the leaf litter of the forest floor. He nodded to himself and reached out with Volcanic Bastard to the full length of his trembling arm. His vision was closing in like the end of a Warner Bros cartoon. Yet still he waited, another long, agonizing moment, as the monster’s tongue hauled him beneath the reeking canopy of its upper jaw. With the last scraps of breath he wheezed, “Mind over Matter”. Volcanic Bastard flew from his fingers and dove into the rippling sea of flesh before him. Steam gushed up around its hilt, scalding his cheeks and forehead.
You have taken 5 DMG in light burns!
HP: 121/126
He screwed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth against the pain. Then he was falling, the monster’s limp tongue cushioning his impact on the tiles like a rubber mattress. The crushing pressure was gone from his lungs and he took in a welcome lungful of pungent air.
You have slain a Level 9 Horripede.
XP reward per party member = 30 XP
<
br /> Your Mind over Matter spell has reached Tier 2.
Tier 2: Move an object of up to 50 kilograms of weight.
The object can be moved at the speed and distance of a person with Body 15 throwing the object naturally. Accuracy is dependant on the caster’s Mind score.
“There is no boundary between Me and That. Our world is a reality that we alone create.”
- Zevryn the Everborn
Mark extricated himself from the beast’s tongue and turned to see Vari helping Braemar to his feet. “Feeling better, mate?”
Braemar nodded and offered him a weak smile. “Bit shaky still, but I’m coming right. Sorry I wasn’t much help there.”
“No worries at all. Vari had it covered.” He crossed the floor, gave her a fierce hug and pressed his lips to her forehead. “Thank you,” he murmured against her warm skin.
“Yuck!” Vari answered with a laugh. She gently pushed him away and proceeded to wipe tongue slime from her clothes and breastplate.
“Sorry about that.” He looked back at the dead Horripede. “How did you know about the nervous system thing?”
“Physik Perception. It’s Tier Four now so it gives me a pretty good idea of anatomy, human or otherwise.”
“Damn, that’s one useful skill.”
