She hadn’t missed that the creature they had previously faced was nothing more than a spore. A trunk-thick tentacle crashed onto the stone bridge, sending spiderwebbed cracks across its surface.
Less than ten yards off, Elora’s fear was confirmed. Mature Shoggoth Tentacle floated in the air above the appendage.
In all her years, from all her studies, Elora had only heard rumors that some creatures were so impossibly massive that their limbs had their own pools of HP, SP, and MP.
Nothing she could do would slow it but the Ranger refused to give up without a fight. They continued their frantic rush, all the while Elora fired Radiant Burst arrows at the thing. They flared with bright flashes of light that were soon swallowed by more dark flesh.
Unlike the Shoggoth Spore, the Mature Shoggoth was aggressive to the extreme; but they managed to use its massive bulk against it. They were small and while the bridge made them an easy target, their smaller forms carried them faster than the bulky creature could rise from the depths. With so much mass, it was struggling to rise up ahead of them.
As soon as it managed to do so, they were dead.
A dark tunnel reared up ahead of them. Mira leaped the remaining distance to the rocky shelf and twisted about to face a tentacle that raised up from an oil-slick rock to her left.
The Dragoon parried the blow. Her boots ground against the stone and her heels hovered over the edge. Mira kept her nerve and returned the attack two-fold. Elora lent her strength to the Dragoon, firing a triple-shot of Radiant Burst into the tendril that emerged from the stone.
Flashes of bright light mixed with blue streaks of azure mana. It shouldn’t have been enough to topple the tentacle. But Elora didn’t question the win. She was desperate to get out of the chamber.
Mira turned and fled into the tunnel. Elora took three long strides until she understood the truth behind the Shoggoth’s sudden disinterest in them. Giel’s HP flashed and the bridge vibrated from another colossal impact.
Behind them, Giel had stopped to face the Mature Shoggoth.
In the Warrior’s illuminating Guild badge, the creature was beyond massive. It reared up, a wall of onyx flesh filled with countless bloodshot eyes as large as house doors. Its gibbering mouths ripped wide, ragged holes filled with gleaming ivory teeth.
Whip-thin appendages swayed about in the air. Each tipped with a series of hooked bony protrusions. Without warning, dozens of the cruel tentacles crashed down into the Warrior.
The bridge shuddered beneath the blows.
Giel parried and swept his greatsword across with as much skill as she had seen anybody wield such a massive blade. But there were too many. For every one that he fended, three more hooked pseudopods found their mark.
Elora was amazed that the Tavernkeeper had managed to stand against the attack. Red motes of defensive energy rolled around him but they weren’t enough. A collection of emptied, glittering crystalline vials littered the stone bridge at his feet.
His HP swayed one way then the other as he guzzled one potion after the next, heedless of the toxic effects from imbibing too many at once.
<“Go!”> Giel cried.
<“Wait, what’s the idiot doing now?”> Mira asked, as the situation became clear to her. <“Giel you get out of there right now!”>
He couldn’t even if he wanted to now, Elora realized. Giel’s distraction wouldn’t last long. With the way the Shoggoth seemed to squeeze into the tiniest cracks, the tunnel ahead was thin protection.
Giel, the suspiciously kind Tavernkeeper, had come to the same conclusion Elora did just then. He had understood before her what needed to be done if they were to have any chance of getting out.
With a twinge of guilt for thinking the hulking lamora was dim, Elora turned and fled.
She would not waste his sacrifice.
<“Thank you, Giel,”> Elora said, her voice raw with sudden fondness and loss.
She nearly collided with Mira as the Dragoon came out of the tunnel. Elora grabbed her arm and ran for all she was worth. The chamber behind them filled with the disjointed screams of a million mouths.
As the two women fled, Elora couldn’t pull her eyes away from the only proof of the man that remained. She stared at his name, his rapidly shrinking HP. Giel’s HP took one final nosedive.
Maybe it was because he wanted to spare their feelings or like so many other animals, he wanted to die alone. Whatever the reason, Elora felt like somebody had punched her in the gut when the prompt flashed across her vision with one final whispered message.
<“Ma, I did all I knew how. It’s up to Hal now, I reckon. I hope you’ll be proud of me.”>
Giel has left the Party.
They barely had enough time to register the meaning of his words before the Shoggoth reached into the tunnel after them. Tendrils snaked out from the porous stone around them. Countless oily tentacles squeezed out from cracks no wider than Elora’s pinky.
The tunnel forked ahead and as one, the pair broke to the left as the right passage collapsed. They ran with everything they had. With her long legs, Mira easily outpaced the Ranger.
Swirling wind wrapped around Elora’s ankles as she tapped her Windwalk ability. Her feet barely touched the stone floor. She paced herself, bringing her quickened stride in line with Mira’s.
She wasn’t going to lose another.
The Dragoon’s face was contorted into a tortured grimace. Tears streaked a beautiful tanned face better suited to laughter and smiles. They fell and glittered in the air, bright and beautiful. Jewels in the dark that were gone too soon.
Just like Giel.
But as a twisting tentacle appeared to split the narrow tunnel ahead of them, the grief turned to rage. Elora felt, more than heard, the snarl that ripped up through Mira’s throat.
The constant quaking and percussive force of the Shoggoth trying to collapse their tunnel was nearly deafening but Mira’s shout of denial rose above it.
Elora got there before the Dragoon. She sent a Radiant Blast into the tendril before the Dragoon took three long strides.
The tentacle split down the middle and like a toothless maw it bit down on the arrow mid-flight. The tendril retracted with blinding speed and the dull thump of the explosion told Elora that she had done what the Shoggoth couldn’t.
Elora realized the truth too late. The Shoggoth had tricked her. The ceiling ahead cracked and shifted precariously from the force of her arrow’s explosion.
The tunnel fractured around them and Elora poured on every ounce of speed she could get out of her Windwalk.
When she passed Mira, she slung her bow over her shoulder and gripped the Dragoon’s hand, once more dragging her along. If their escape was cut off they were as good as dead.
Better to risk being buried alive than to turn back and face the questing tentacles of that abomination.
They didn’t see the tentacle again as they stepped onto the shifting, disturbingly fluid cracked stone floor. A hundred oily feelers sprang from every crack and fissure in the rough stone of the tunnel.
It was squeezing into every space it could and widening the cracks. The tunnel wouldn’t last long.
Elora pulled on Mira’s hand with all her might and heaved her forward, shouting, “Jump!”
The Dragoon heeded her the only way she knew how. She Jumped. It wasn’t quite what Elora had in mind. Her arm was nearly jerked out of its socket as Mira rocketed down the tunnel at a blistering pace.
The feelers vanished into the stone a heartbeat later. The tunnel suddenly shifted. It split down the middle. Like a broken pipe with no support, the tunnel ahead tilted down at a dangerous angle, taking the floor out from beneath their feet.
Half a dozen tons of rock bounced and chased them on the descent, promising death.
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Elora had all she could manage just keeping ahead of the encroaching thunderstorm of dust and debris. Sharp stones bounced and cut against her skin as effectively as any blade.
Mira was
worse off.
The Dragoon had Jumped with her supernatural skill just as the tunnel had broken and tilted down. Her angle was all off and though she dragged Elora along, Mira hit the sloping ceiling first.
Her impact softened the blow for the Ranger, who managed to twist about and place her feet against the ceiling. In one smooth feat of exemplary acrobatics that nobody would ever witness, Elora scooped the unconscious Dragoon, sprang from the ceiling and sprang to the flood of rolling debris below.
Somehow, she managed to right herself and she hit the first chunk of shifting stone upright with Mira still in her arms.
She spared a single look at her, glad she was only unconscious. Not dead. Scales of her armor were fractured and many were missing entirely. Her spear was nowhere to be seen.
The dust of the collapse rolled past them just as Elora caught sight of the end. With her burden increased, the Ranger couldn’t hope to outrun the avalanche behind her.
So long as she carried Mira, she knew they would both be buried beneath tons of stone before they ever got near the exit.
There was only one option available to her.
Elora squeezed Mira tightly to herself and muttered the incantation to a spell she prayed would work. The shimmering shield of Redoubt appeared around her like a bubble. Elora tucked her feet and cradled Mira to her, glad she wasn’t awake for the intimate embrace.
With the shield rapidly draining her MP, they bounced down along with the tons of rock. The spell had no hope of sustaining itself if the full weight of the collapse came upon them.
Elora could only tuck herself into as tight a ball around Mira as possible and pray the shield would be propelled down and out of the tunnel ahead of the worst of the deadly debris.
Through the gloom of the dust swirling all around, Elora spotted the exit. At first, she didn’t understand what she was looking at.
Then it hit her and she cursed. She had hoped for another cavern, one that they could roll to the side or somehow get ahead of the collapsing tunnel.
Instead, the broken tunnel emptied out of a ragged hole on the verge of collapse itself and into a dark pool of what she desperately hoped was water. If it was another part of the Shoggoth… she didn’t want to think about what would happen.
Feet from the jagged exit the tunnel had broken open, the Redoubt shield vanished and pain struck the Ranger from every possible angle. The fractured opening bit into her shoulder like the fangs of a giant monster. Hot lines of agony stole her breath away and then she was launched into the air.
The shifting glitter of reflected light gave Elora enough of a warning to take one final gasp of breath before she barreled into the water. The force of the impact felt like being hit with a sledgehammer wrapped in sandpaper.
She fought against the urge to gasp in pain and with one arm looped around Mira’s middle, she kicked and swam as fast as she could, going deeper still.
Percussive impacts, dulled and muted by the cushion of water above her, told her that she narrowly avoided the avalanche that surely would have killed them both. She swam on with every ounce of strength she had.
But Elora wasn’t much of a swimmer. Her lungs burned like fire, forcing her to the surface sooner than she would have liked. It only occurred to her after breaking the surface that Mira couldn’t consciously hold her breath.
As she kicked her feet, propelling the pair farther away from the splashing rocks, Elora checked Mira for signs of life. She sighed in relief when she felt the elf breathing.
After they reached the dark, muddy shore, Elora collapsed. Her cheek against the sticky mud, panting and with a thousand injuries. The disturbed lake lazily lapped its dark waters over the pair but Elora was beyond caring.
The dark claimed its due, and Elora knew no more.
When she woke, everything hurt. Worse, was the Exhaustion Debuff she gained from passing out on the shore of a frigid lake. Her fingers oscillated between pain and numbness.
One look at the Dragoon nearby showed that she not only hadn’t woken up the entire night but also had a Level of Exhaustion. Neither of them would be passively regenerating their HP until their Exhaustion was gone.
Grumbling, Elora dragged herself to her feet and pulled the Dragoon with her. It took a very long time. Hours at least, where Elora kept dropping Mira’s arm as she dragged the lithe elf along the muddy ground.
Eventually, the mudflats that bordered the shore of the dark lake gave rise to cold, hard stone. But the cavern was still too large for Elora’s tastes to set up a fire.
Elora didn’t know how long they wandered about in that massive cavern. She went in and out of a fugue state, barely clinging to consciousness. It took her several long moments before she realized that the Ashera’s name had changed from gray to white.
Her voice was stolen by the sudden realization that Ashera was close enough that her party information was updated. Hal’s information flashed and updated as well a moment later.
The voice that came out felt strangled and harsh.
<“Hal? Ashera, is that really you?”>
<“Elora! Where are you?”> Ashera asked.
The Ranger looked around. It was the same rocky expanse of nothingness in all directions.
<“I... don’t know. I’m going to get a fire going so we don’t freeze. Are you both okay?”>
<“We are fine,”> Ashera said as soothingly as possible.
There was a long pause as Elora dragged Mira along in search of a level section of stone to set up the campfire. Once she found an area, she dropped the Dragoon’s arm and got to work.
With numb, fumbling fingers Elora dropped her [Firestone] more often than not. She cursed and picked it up half a dozen times until she gave up and laid it on the cavern floor.
<“Elora?”> Hal asked.
<“Yes, Hal?”> She struck the [Firestone] with her silvered dagger, sending flaming arcs of magic that ignited the assembled dried wood. It took Hal a while to find his voice.
She couldn’t be sure, but she imagined him searching for a way to ask her about Giel. It would suit her just fine if he never asked her.
She glanced at the party menu, keenly noting his absence. Once more she felt the weight of guilt in the pit of her stomach.
Elora had doubted his intentions, or at least his reasons. She even doubted his intelligence. But in the end, he was the only one to realize the true danger they were in.
And the only one willing to do what was necessary.
After a long pause, the question she dreaded finally came. <“Where is Giel?”> Hal’s voice held a tremor of emotion. He clearly thought something was wrong. The picture her newly appeared status would paint was a grim one.
For all his failings, Hal truly cared about those around him. She still didn’t understand how he did that. That blind faith and compassion would get him killed one day, Elora was sure of it. And yet, she was envious of his ability to connect with people so readily.
<“He’s dead.”> Best to rip the bandage off immediately. <“He held the bridge long enough for Mira and me to make our escape. We… woke something up. A fully mature Shoggoth. It was massive.”>
<“Heaven forfend,”> Ashera whispered in horror.
Hal’s weary sigh came loud and clear through their connection. <“I’m so sorry, Elora.”>
The fire caught and began to lick hungrily at the seasoned wood. There was no reason to bother with a stone ring.
The Ranger sat down, warmed her hands by the welcoming heat of the fire, and thought through the next moves she would need to make. Mira was still unconscious, her HP even lower than hers.
She dragged the elf closer to the fire.
An errant thought passed her by and she felt a stab of guilt for wondering how many potions Giel had taken to his grave.
Potions they sorely needed.
Even with the collapse, a creature of that size would find a way to get to her.
In fact, she was astonished it hadn’t destroyed the entire town of
Murkmire. Then she thought better of it. They had found more than a few monsters down in the honeycombed network of tunnels in the mountain.
The Manatree’s protection must not reach down this far, she reasoned. Even still, it didn’t mean the Shoggoth couldn’t escape the bounds of Murkmire and emerge in the surrounding hills.
<“We are north and above you. Elora, how did you get below us?”> Ashera asked.
It was ironic that they somehow managed to fall below Hal and Ashera. If the tunnel hadn’t collapsed, would they have found a straight path to the pair?
There was no use in wondering about something that might have been.
Elora crawled to Mira and pulled her even closer to the warmth of the fire, chafing the elf’s goose pebbled arms. She held the tanned girl in her arms and gently rocked her back and forth in front of the soothing heat of the flames.
As much to warm the unconscious Dragoon as to get some much-needed comfort for herself.
<“Are you okay? Is Mira okay?”> Ashera asked when she didn’t reply to her last question.
A thin smile graced Elora’s lips. She knew Ashera didn’t mean physically. One look at their HP was enough to determine that they were emphatically not okay.
<“We’re… okay, all things considered. But without a potion, I don’t know how far we’ll get. So far nothing has attacked us. I don’t know how long that will hold. We’re camping in the middle of the cavern. I can’t even find a wall.”
Even when she took care of their many hurts, they would be days on the mend without magical aid. Several of the wounds they suffered would hamper their natural regeneration unless they were fixed. Her store of herbs would cut that, perhaps, in half but that was still more time than they had to regroup.
<“That’s… ironic,”> Hal said.
<“How so?”> Elora asked.
Hal explained how they were worried about being separated from the group and decided to get ingredients – which were not typically easy to come by – for a batch of new healing potions.
Beastborne- Mark of the Founder Page 54
