by Demi Harper
I urged it onward; if the whipfish could freeze the shaman, maybe the rain would stop. The evolved forrel had already fallen, but I sent the same command to my boulderskin, which was frantically scraping its body against the cavern wall in a desperate attempt to remove the acidic fluid from its skin.
The whipfish scuttled laboriously in the shaman’s direction, but after a few seconds the damage it had sustained was too much and the creature dropped from the ceiling, dead. A moment later it was absorbed by the stone.
I had just one globe of mana, and so was in no position to take advantage of the Creation slots freed up by the freshly deceased forrels and whipfish. Besides, even if I could have created more creatures to try and accomplish the task, with the shaman’s acid rain still in effect, there was little point.
Somehow, though, the boulderskin was still alive, and it was hauling itself toward the shaman in an attempt to fulfill my instructions. But when it got closer, Barka lashed out with his whip, keeping the boulderskin from reaching the passage.
Then the second shaman raised its arms.
This can’t be good.
‘Retreat!’ I shouted at the boulderskin. It turned, slow and lumbering from the pain, and began to make for the lake. I didn’t know if the water would negate the acid, but it would more than likely be safer than being out in the open for whatever the second shaman had planned next.
But as soon as the boulderskin changed direction, Barka snarled a command to the surviving kobolds. Miraculously, there were five of them remaining, writhing in agony, blinded by the acid, but still alive.
I sensed power behind Barka’s command – some kind of magical compulsion – and sure enough, the maddened kobolds stood, raised their weapons and formed cringing ranks between the boulderskin and the lake.
The kobolds stood their ground, though their acid-scarred eyes were wide with animalistic terror. The boulderskin looked ready to plow right through them – until the second shaman completed its chanting, and the world caught fire.
Thirty-Four
Adapt and Evolve
The corrosive drops of falling acid ignited, and a rain of orange-green flame descended on the creatures below. Barka growled another command, and all five kobolds dropped into a fighting stance. Those with weapons raised them, while those without raised clawed fists instead, each fighter apparently heedless of the deathly rain making their skin smoke and sizzle, though their whimpers said otherwise. As one, they set upon the boulderskin once more.
Enraged with pain and panic, the entire surface of its armored skin now coated in greenish flames, the maddened boulderskin charged, tossing kobolds to the side as it desperately sought out its black water, a cool haven from the rain of death assaulting it from above. But the compelled enemy fighters stood firm, the dead ones remaining in formation as they hadn’t in life, and together they kept the boulderskin away from sanctuary.
Fire and acid continued to rain down upon them all. Another minute and my strongest fighter would be done.
I couldn’t simply fling more creatures into the fray; they would be burned up by the fiery acid, just like my forrels and whipfish. No, there was only one thing I could do right now.
Using most of my lone globe of mana and a single Creation slot, I cast Evolution on the boulderskin once more. It grew marginally in size, taut muscles expanding and bony claws lengthening.
With a sudden twist, the newly empowered boulderskin finally broke through the line of kobolds and splashed into the lake, though the creature was still hampered somewhat by the polearms still fixed around its limbs.
Its flaming skin sizzled and hissed as it immersed itself in the water, and I imagined the soothing coolness as it coated the boulderskin’s burned, acid-pocked skin. The boulderskin’s natural healing abilities finally kicked in, and its wounds began to close and scar over.
Now that my boulderskin was relatively safe, I noticed that the remaining kobolds still stood in compelled frozenness as their own skin and armor continued to burn. Red scales, burned and cut and pocked from their battle with my god-born amid falling fire and acid, were beginning to melt, the flesh and muscle beneath sloughing off the bones. I stared, horrified and fascinated.
In the shelter of the entranceway, Barka snarled a command, snapping his jaws at the shamans beside him. Immediately, both of them lifted their arms again; I braced for their next assault – what would it be this time? Ice? Lightning? Locusts? – but instead of more deadly magic, the rain of flaming acid suddenly ceased, the last few drops pattering to the flooded ground with a hiss before being extinguished. The cavern was dark once more.
The kobold commander continued to snarl furiously, emerging into the cavern and lashing out futilely at the dying warriors with his whip. They didn’t notice; they were all but gone.
When the last burned kobold finally fell silent in death, Barka let out a yowl and turned on his two shamans.
They endured their commander’s physical assault in stoic silence, raising not a finger to defend themselves. Barka clearly held his forces in some kind of thrall. I had to admit, it must have been useful. However, no amount of discipline would help him get back his fallen forces.
Elation suddenly rose to fill me as I realized: the tide had turned. We’d beaten him!
I sensed that the fighting in the Heart had also stopped, my extra whipfish reinforcement stacking the odds even further against the raiders and allowing my avatar and Septimus to annihilate their foes.
I warned the boulderskin, still recovering in the lake, to ready itself for one final attack; now it was nearly healed, it could surely take care of Barka and his shamans by itself.
Then my skelemander sense twitched. The final party of raiders was heading our way. A quick check down the passage confirmed that this group was even larger than the others, sixty strong at least.
Crap.
Another squad of enemies were on their way, fully armed and ready to fight. With Barka to command them and the shamans in support, my boulderskin would stand no chance; the force would push through the lake cavern easily.
And with the forrels from the adjoining tunnel already defeated by the acid rain, there was just one more group in the Passage between here and the Grotto: three regular, un-evolved forrels, the first group I’d ever created. It would barely even be a fight.
I pictured the Grotto: my newly industrious gnomes laboring together to build the creche, and the all-important barracks; Gneil leading his new acolytes in worship; Jack and Elwood, enthusiastically chopping trees; Twain and the other sawyers, churning out boards for construction; Granny, running hither and thither to ensure the tribe functioned as a well-oiled machine; hell, even Swift and Cheer, their disgruntled reluctance to work somehow endearing now that I risked losing them. Losing all of my denizens. Not to mention losing myself.
‘I’m going to summon the forrel packs from the other two tunnels,’ I told Ket.
‘Wait!’ she cried. ‘You need to leave them where they are. You need a last line of defence in case more kobolds slip through!’
‘I can’t just leave them sitting there idle!’ I shouted back at her. ‘There are more enemies coming. We need reinforcements!’
‘Corey, don’t—’
But I’d already sent out a signal to the two forrel packs in the tunnels between the Heart and the Passage. I sensed them racing in our direction, leaving only a single forrel pack to guard the Grotto.
It’s fine, I told myself. They’re needed here. I’ll send them back once the fighting here is over.
One thing was clear: I could not allow Barka to advance any further into my domain. But the forrels hadn’t even reached the Heart yet. We need more backup.
‘Ris’kin! Get here now!’ I shouted at the avatar through our mental link, summoning her to the lake. I sensed her take off immediately, sprinting from the Heart in a flash of red fur. She’d be here in less than a minute.
But so would the kobolds.
‘Go!’ I commanded th
e boulderskin, and it launched itself from the lake straight at Barka and the shamans in the passage entrance.
The commander snarled in surprise and pushed one of the shamans in front of himself just as the boulderskin collided with them both. The boulderskin’s jaws snapped shut around the shaman’s head, tearing it clean from the kobold’s shoulders with a tearing crunch.
The boulderskin tossed the bloody head to one side and snapped at the second shaman, but something was holding it back. Barka had rolled away from the collision and was back on his feet almost immediately, and had lashed out with his whip. The serrated lash had curled around the boulderskin’s legs, holding the creature in place and preventing it from finishing off the second shaman.
The boulderskin turned, snapping furiously at the leash, and then at Barka. But before it could fully focus on its new opponent, the surviving shaman gestured, and a flame erupted in its hand. It waved the flame at the boulderskin; the creature flinched, then turned its attention away from Barka and toward the shaman.
The shaman dodged back into the cavern, waving the flame all the while.
‘The flame can’t hurt you,’ I lied, projecting my thoughts to the boulderskin. ‘Kill the shaman, then kill the commander.’
The boulderskin thrashed against its bindings yet again, dragging Barka out of the passageway and into the lake cavern. But the commander was even stronger than he looked, and held fast to the whip.
The incoming party of raiders was just around the corner. This had to end before they arrived.
‘Ris’kin, hurry!’
I knew she was almost here, but that wasn’t enough. I had to do something else – but what?
My acolytes’ worship – along with the shaman’s death, which had granted me an astounding entire globe of mana – had replenished my mana to just over two globes. Without further thought, I poured almost all of it into the boulderskin and cast Evolution.
Yet again, long legs elongated even further, and muscles expanded to match, straining against the whip that bound them. Still Barka held on, the whip’s handle clutched firmly in his hands. The lash itself remained wrapped around the boulderskin’s legs.
Until the whip finally snapped.
The boulderskin surged forward, and the look of stunned surprise on Barka’s face was the most gratifying thing I’d seen in ages. The commander dropped the handle of his now-useless whip and raised his hands futilely toward the oncoming boulderskin.
The boulderskin’s jaws clamped down on the kobold commander—
—but did not close completely.
To my utter shock, Barka was somehow holding those crocodilian jaws open. The red-scaled commander grinned a vicious, feral grin, then began to prise the boulderskin’s jaws further open. My boulderskin tried to back off, squirming, but Barka held him fast.
My first thought was that the unnaturally strong kobold was going to tear the jaws apart, but of course his arms were not nearly long enough for such a feat.
But what happened next proved just as deadly.
The commander snarled an instruction at the shaman, who clenched its fist around the flame in its hand and sprinted forward. It leaned past Barka’s straining arms, and shoved its flaming fist down my boulderskin’s throat.
I had no idea what it had just done, but the gnawing dread in the core of my being told me it wasn’t going to turn out well for me – or my boulderskin.
‘Come on!’ I screamed mentally at Ris’kin. But it was too late.
The shaman stepped backward, and Barka released the boulderskin. The massive lizard-like creature shuffled backward, shaking its head from side to side and pawing desperately at its throat.
What have they done to it??
For a few moments, nothing more happened.
Then the boulderskin exploded.
Thirty-Five
Straight Through the Heart
My avatar darted into the cavern just as flaming chunks of armored flesh erupted in all directions. She cringed away, the fiery bits of boulderskin no doubt blinding after the lightless Heart and pitch-black tunnels.
Luckily, the two remaining kobolds – Barka and his shaman – were equally dazzled by the sudden light, their own vision having adapted once again to the dark after the fiery acid rain had subsided.
Ris’kin recovered quickly, her fox-like senses compensating for her temporarily weakened vision, and she went straight for the enemy. She crossed the cavern in seconds; still blinded, the shaman didn’t see her coming at all, and immediately went down beneath her, falling limp and refilling a fraction of my mana as Ris’kin thrust both her spears into the kobold’s chest.
Barka had sharper senses than his shaman. Somehow hearing my avatar’s approach, he dodged away and backed toward the passage, from which now echoed the sounds of multiple kobold feet, their claws clacking on the stone floor as they advanced toward the lake.
Following the death of my thrice-evolved boulderskin, I now had fourteen Creation slots open to me. But my mana was now at a pitiful half-globe – far too little for me to do anything to help. My two forrel packs were on their way and would arrive within the next minute or so; I hoped they’d be enough, because with the initial group of invaders still wending their way from the Sinkhole into my domain, I definitely couldn’t afford to pull Septimus or the whipfish away from the Heart.
Thankfully, Ris’kin was holding her own against Barka. Not giving the retreating commander time to prepare, she leapt straight for him, her blood-stained spears angled toward his unarmored neck and head. Barka rolled away at the last second, and her spears passed through thin air.
That commander is one nimble bastard, I thought irritatedly.
Barka rose to his feet; he’d managed to snatch a black-bladed sword from one of his own fallen soldiers to replace his lost whip, and now he raised it and charged straight for Ris’kin, no doubt expecting her to be overbalanced after her own failed lunge.
Of course, my avatar was far more dextrous than that. She dodged Barka’s first sword stroke easily, and his second one too, then she spun and used her crossed spears to block the third. The instant their weapons locked together, she kicked out with one of her unnaturally long legs; the impact sent Barka stumbling backward, and her clawed foot would have eviscerated him if not for the leather armor he wore to protect his torso.
While Barka was unbalanced, Ris’kin launched one of her spears at his face. He saw it coming and flung himself to the side, barely in time. The spear’s head sliced his scaled cheek on its way past, but otherwise clattered uselessly against the rock several feet behind him.
The commander touched a hand to his injured face, looked at his bloody fingers and snarled at Ris’kin. Then he leapt straight back into the fight.
She was ready for him. As he swung at her again, she dropped to all fours. Barka’s blade whistled harmlessly over her head. She stabbed out with her remaining spear, jamming the point into the back of the kobold commander’s unprotected knee.
Barka roared and raised his injured leg above the blow, then stomped down. Ris’kin’s arm was still extended, her now blood-coated white fingers gripping the spear’s haft, and I cringed as I heard the bones in her forearm snap. She yelped and recoiled, but Barka snatched her by the neck, sinking his claws into my avatar’s thick fur and drawing blood.
But Ris’kin wasn’t done yet. She snarled at Barka, and twisted her head, snapping her jaws closed on his forearm and biting down hard. He bared his teeth and released her, hobbling backward a few steps toward the passage.
My avatar snarled and made to advance on Barka, but I called her back, suggesting she wait until she had healed. Her bloodstained fur was matted and dirty, but the wounds beneath were already closing.
Even as I watched, her broken arm, which had been hanging uselessly at her side, straightened and strengthened, and she bent to scoop up another fallen kobold spear from the ground to replace those she’d lost.
Just then, my skelemanders warned that the final gro
up of raiders – those who had first arrived at the Sinkhole in time for my boulderskin to be taken out by Grimrock’s mysterious creature – had chosen this moment to finally make their way around to the Heart.
In spite of the last shaman’s death and my acolytes’ ongoing devotion back in the Grotto, my mana was yet to fill its second globe. I waited impatiently for it to replenish enough for me to create reinforcements, hating that Ris’kin now stood alone against Barka and his oncoming troops.
Well, not quite alone. The first of the forrel packs arrived at the lake and spread out behind Ris’kin, teeth bared at the kobold commander. The second forrel pack I rerouted back toward the Heart.
As my avatar and her new allies closed in warily on Barka – hopefully to finish off the evil little devil – I sensed distress from Septimus, and tore myself away to the Heart to see how he was faring.
The colossal six-legged cave spider and the whipfish I’d left him with were defending relatively well. They used the Heart’s precarious ledges to great effect, the whipfish paralyzing as many attackers as it could on one side while Septimus ensured none survived the crossing on the other. Attacker after attacker came on, and the two god-born creatures continued to beat them back.
But it was twenty versus two, and attrition eventually began to take its toll on my god-born. As I paused to take in the scene, a cunningly-aimed kobold spear caught the whipfish in the center of its cluster of eyes, punching through exoskeleton in an explosion of blue blood-like fluid. Damn those spears! My creature dropped into the pit, its short life already violently over, and the kobolds on that side were able to successfully skirt the pit with no more resistance.
