High gloom, p.19
High Gloom, page 19
part #6 of The Bad Guys Series
There was a hand on my shoulder.
“There is nothing we can do,” Denitza said.
“Better to leave now,” Jørn added. “No sense having those things catch our scent and force us to run all the way back to Gloomguard.”
I let them pull me back from the edge, steering me toward the tunnel. I even let them walk me almost through to the other side before something in me snapped. I knew I had to try to help Erling. I had to save him, or die trying. It was an overriding feeling that welled up from somewhere. I stopped walking.
“What?” Lux asked.
I had no answer for them. I just turned and ran toward the cliff edge. I didn’t stop as the edge came closer. That voice inside told me I was out of time, that I had to jump.
So I did, leaping off the tiny ledge and soaring into the air.
41
Two things became immediately clear. One: it’s not always the best idea to listen to a little voice inside yourself, especially when you happen to be sharing your body with another creature. Two: there was really no reason for me to try and get up close and personal with the opponents, considering I could just drop fireballs on them from afar.
With the wind whipping by me, I whispered: “Corpse king, you dick bag, you better have a way out of this or we’re both going splat.”
I didn’t so much here the laughter in my head as feel it.
Which reminds me of a saying I’d once heard: don’t jump unless you know how you’re landing.
I felt my left hand moving through a weird set of motions I’d never learned before, followed by a draw from my mana pool. Deciding that my left hand better know what it was doing, I used my right hand to whip up a fireball, throwing it down right in the area where I thought I was going to be smacking into the ground. Better to smack into charred dead flesh than living creatures with pokey weapons. The creatures, meanwhile, had grown tired of Erling’s posturing, and were in the midst of their charge.
The fireball smashed into the front few lines of creatures, hitting with explosive force. I felt the heat wash over me.
In the last second before I was going to hit, my left hand released its spell.
Look at that, you’ve learned the spell: Featherfall
Featherfall allows you to fall at a rate where the caster will not receive any damage landing.
I slowed immediately, in what was the oddest attempt at stopping I’d ever experienced. It was a bit like my entire body was wrapped in a soft pillow, and every fiber of my being instantly decelerated at the same time to the same speed. I dropped the last few feet, gently stepping onto the charred remains of several groaning, quite-close-to-dying creatures.
Notifications started whizzing by, and I caught one.
GG! You’ve killed a Troglodyte (lvl 22 Brute).
You’ve earned 500 xp! What a mighty hero you are.
Troglodytes. Fantastic.
Screams and shouts and confusion reigned while I tried to get a better sense of my surroundings. Erling, his group, and I were up against a cliff wall that curved around, making it impossible for anyone to attack us from the rear. Unless, you know, they did something stupid like leap off the cliff a hundred feet up. In front of us was a large open cavern that went as far as I could see. To our right was the pathway up, back to my party, and eventually Gloomguard. Both exits were blocked by troglodytes.
My left hand was in a frenzy, causing bodies to start rising from the ground.
I gritted my teeth and started throwing sticky fireballs out into the oncoming horde, doing my best to create a barrier.
A clawed hand grabbed at me, but I twisted out of the way, feeling the claws rake against my leather armor.
I came face to face with a troglodyte, his mouth twisted into a cruel smile of disgusting yellow teeth that came out at odd angles from rubbery-looking lips covered with slick drool. Misshapen yellow eyes glared at me.
He tried to bite, but I ducked and grabbed a dagger from my belt, driving it backhand into his neck as I went by. He made a growling noise, and tried to grab at the blade, but he couldn’t quite reach it. Downside, though: neither could I.
Another charged toward me, coughing through the smoke.
I cast acid glob and tossed it in his open mouth.
He tried to scream, but that just made his life worse.
More and more dead troglodytes were rising up, leaping greedily to attack their comrades. The tide of the battle shifted from confusion to a route, since the undead didn’t mind the flames lighting them up, and didn’t go down unless they were literally ripped apart.
I moved back carefully, keeping my eyes on the melée in front of me while trying to get closer to Erling and his crew.
“I knew it was you, Dane,” Erling said in a weak voice.
I chanced a glance back, and saw Erling on his knees, leaning on his axe and shield. Blood absolutely covered him, though I couldn’t tell how much was his. I grabbed my two healing potions and pushed them at the Norseman.
His eyes lit up when he saw them, and he reached out to take them, his hands shaking.
Screams echoed around, like something else was attacking the troglodyte horde from the rear.
“Great,” I said.
Troglodytes were trampling each other, trying to escape but getting stuck.
A second later, Mornax burst through one edge, followed by Jørn, who looked like a whirling machine of bladed death. Mornax was a big dude and skilled with the axe, but I’d never seen anything like Jørn. He seemed to flow like liquid from one death to another, like he knew exactly where he needed to stab and thrust to cause the most damage.
Lux was right behind, running across the small open area, and sliding to her knees next to me, “Are you hurt?” She asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “But—”
“How—” she started.
“They are,” I finished and gestured to the party behind me, barely clinging to their lives.
She looked at me hard, anger flaring. But then she nodded and went to work on the others.
Arrows rained down on any troglodyte that seemed to be getting close to me. I looked up to see Denitza hanging off the edge of the cliff by a rope.
All that was left was Harpy Sarden, who I finally saw waving to me from the top ledge, holding onto the other end of Denitza’s rope and wearing our survival pack. The little air-slime’s cage moved around with wild abandon.
“Ha ha!” he shouted in glee.
With too many friendlies around to throw fireballs, I shifted to a mixture of fire bolts and setting troglodyte heads on fire from a distance. Within maybe thirty seconds, we had the troglodytes on the run.
Unfortunately, whatever was attacking the rear of the horde did as well.
42
Troglodytes were flying through the air.
Not by choice, though. Not in the slightest. Whatever was coming from the other cave was big and angry, and not above tossing things around.
After a hot minute of being compressed between us and the thing in the back, the troglodytes rediscovered the pathway leading up. A stampede of them headed in that direction, all thoughts on the self as they fought each other to get away from us. And the monster in the back.
For a heartbeat, we could rest and take stock of the next battle about to come.
Which is when I realized that my left hand was still moving furiously, almost faster than I could see, raising all sorts of zombies and skeletons, as well as pulling skeletons apart and reforming them into other creatures.
“What’s coming?” Mornax yelled up to Denitza.
I looked up, and saw that Harpy had wrapped the rope around some sort of anchor up top, and now was also out on the cliff face, avoiding the trample of troglodytes. Denitza tried to peer into the cavern ahead of us, but she was too high up.
She shook her head. “Can’t see,” she called back.
Jørn flicked the blood off his sword and took up a ready position to the left, standing still as the troglodytes ran past.
Mornax matched him on my right.
I stood in the center with my growing collection of undead off to one side. That was concerning: were they mine? Or were they the corpse king’s? I mean, kind of a stupid question — of course the corpse king was controlling them. I certainly wasn’t telling them who to fight.
I grabbed a dagger with my right hand and waited for a break in the casting of my left. Then I stabbed my left hand into my thigh.
Of all the times I’ve hurt myself, I’d have to rank this as one of the worst. It was an absolutely stunning amount of pain. I had trouble keeping on my feet and not shrieking.
I heard a gasp behind me.
“What are you doing?” Lux asked.
“Focus... On…Others…” I got out between flashes of pain. “Am... fine...”
“Yes, you really—”
“Go...” I snapped.
Her face darkened, but she nodded, and returned to Erling’s men.
The horde of troglodytes neared its end, and the monster at the back became visible for the first time.
A cold chill ran through me. If I hadn’t been in the depths of overwhelming pain at that moment, I might have broke into a run. I could hear the men behind me making gagging noises, and trying to leave, despite their state.
Lux tried to run, but Erling grabbed her leg to keep her behind us.
Jørn started laughing, while Mornax gripped his axe tighter.
The monster was a thing of nightmares, a mass of legs around a body made of darkness and teeth. The legs were everywhere, pushing off every surface at once, so the creature was able to move its body-mouth to any point in the cave system. It was both terrifying and incredible. Glistening chitin covered every surface except its multiple mouths, which were filled with black needles that efficiently caught troglodyte bodies and pulled them inside faster than imaginable.
“Close your eyes in three!” I shouted. “Three! Two! One!”
I cast Vaux’s Brilliance.
Even with my eyelids shut, the flare of light hurt. But it had to be nothing compared to what happened to the creature. It stopped eating and unleashed a torrent of painfully high-pitched shrieks that echoed around the caverns in a startling moment of madness.
I managed to get my eyes open, and while I could mostly see, I couldn’t see well. So I started tossing balls of light everywhere I could.The stupid undead were now just standing around listless, so I reached out and grabbed their tiny arcane tethers, ordering them to attack the creature.
As one, all of the different varieties of undead streamed forward. Some moaned in horrid tones, and others clanked their bones against the rock. But they all attempted to tear into the living monster.
The monster flailed about, likely blind for the first time in its life.
The remaining troglodytes stumbled about, blind as well. Plenty tumbled off the cliff above, plunging to their death in a grotesque rainfall of bodies.
Jørn was in motion, dancing under flailing legs and slipping through tiny gaps to make his way to the rear of the monster.
Mornax howled and charged, axe held high. He swung hard at the first leg he saw. His axe cut into the chitin, but stuck.
Up went the leg, and the minotaur.
I directed the undead over to the leg, and they swarmed, pulling that one leg down by the sheer weight of numbers.
Mornax wrenched his axe free.
Then I threw a sticky fireball right at the monster’s central body.
It hit square on the money, and fire erupted. The sticky arcane fire gloop spread over the body, stuck to the legs, and even splashed on the floor. Everywhere it hit broke out into flames, cooking the creature from every angle.
The monster went into a frenzy, its legs moving in a blur as it tried to put the fire out. But each time it brought a leg in, that leg got some of the sticky fire, and it spread and spread until my party stood still and just watched the conflagration in front of us. The undead, meanwhile, were still trying to fight, more than happy to wade into the maelstrom of fire and monster legs. Some merely got smashed by the creature’s flails, some went up in flames, some crawled into the creature’s mouths and trying to kill it from the inside.
There was a measure of horror to what was happening in front of us, a wrongness that I felt incalculably involved in, being that I was responsible, at least in part, for the undead who were clearly so wrong. The monster thrashed and thrashed, throwing its body against the walls in a frantic attempt to either put out the fire or smash the little things ripping at its carapace and tearing out anything they could get their hands on.
Screams echoed out from the creature, the pain, frustration, and fear evident in its alien cries.
Finally, the thing collapsed in a heap, no longer able to keep itself upright.
Jørn appeared on top of the creature, and sliced through the bountiful undead troglodytes until he was at the top of the bulbous body-mouth. He stabbed downward with his sword, plunging it deep into the monster.
The monster’s piercing scream cut short, and the thing just shuddered and jerked.
GG! You’ve killed a vakalegur hygrunalur (lvl 51 monstrosity).
You’ve earned 11500 xp! What a mighty hero you are.
We’d killed it.
I felt horrible.
43
"What in the eight hells is wrong with you?!?" Jørn had jumped down off the monster and was screaming right in my face.
"I, what?" I replied, reeling. I tried my damndest to figure out why he was so angry.
"You knew I was back there," he shouted, pointing to the rear of the vakalegur hygrunalur. “You saw me go through those legs, and yet you still threw enough fire at that thing to turn it into a gods-damned inferno!"
“I—”
"I had to run for my life to get away from those flames. And look—” he pulled out his sleeve to show where there was a large chunk of fabric missing. "I had to cut my shirt to get that damn sticky fire off! You could have killed me."
"I was just, I mean, trying—”
"Think about your damn actions, elfboy," Jørn snarled. "You are a member of a party. If you want to go solo, you let me know, and I'll be happy to find a tavern to visit instead of risk getting killed by someone professing to be my friend."
He glared at me for a moment, as if daring me to say anything. Then he spat on the ground, and stomped away.
I just stood there, trying to go through the fight. Trying to understand what it was I'd done and when I'd done it. More importantly, trying to understand why I'd done what I'd done.
Slowly, the realization came to me: I was not as in control of myself as I'd thought. It would probably be a good idea to talk to someone about what was happening inside, see if there was someone who could help make sure I was being me. But all the people who really knew me were in Glaton. Or in the old world. Like, was I even me here? What had I become?
I gathered all the undead things, the skeletons, the zombies, and the horrible mishmash things the corpse king made into one crowd off to the side. Then I threw a bunch of fireballs in their general direction and turned them into a bonfire.
Then I threw up, having used too much mana too fast.
As I wiped my mouth off, I noticed Lux standing next to me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“What’s with your hand?” She asked, pointing at the dagger holding my hand to my thigh.
“It was getting a bit, um, out of hand.”
"Can we save the jokes until after we're safe?"
"We could, but where's the fun in that?"
"I have become rather fond of not dying."
"Was there a time when you weren't?"
"When I thought I was going to be married, yes. I was somewhat looking forward to a calm and relaxing death as opposed to a lifetime of torturous bondage to that man.”
"I don't exactly feel that it would be appropriate to make a joke after that, so… I guess yes, I will stop joking until--"
"Leg. Hand. Dagger. Explain?"
"I wasn't controlling it."
She blinked a few times, and then gave my hand a closer look, careful not to touch it. She poured some water over it to wash the blood away, still not touching it.
"Why is it grey?" she asked.
"A question I'd like answered as well."
She sighed and shook her head. "I'm assuming you don't want any help with it?" she asked.
"Not at present," I said. "I'd rather whatever healing potions we have left go to help them."
I pointed to Erling's party, who were still looking pretty rough.
"Already ran out," Lux replied.
"Can they walk?" I asked.
"Not well. Definitely not all the way back to Gloomguard."
"Balls," I said.
She just gave me a smirk and an eyebrow raise, like it was something she was already working on.
It took some time to get Denitza and Harpy down from the cliff, but as soon as her feet hit the ground, Denitza to got to work on the vakalegur hygrunalur.
She was enthusiastic about things as well, starting by carving off all the exoskeleton, roping in Jørn and Harpy to help. Stacks of the glossy chitin piled up quickly. Then the teeth, stacks and stacks of them. I picked one up and was startled by how thin but strong they were. About the thickness of a pencil, but some were over a foot long with an incredibly sharp point on one end. Then, there were chunks of pink flesh that she put directly into our ice bag.
I finally got to appreciate the rest of the creature. It had a weirdly translucent sack it dragged behind itself, currently filled to the brim with dead troglodytes, none of which were completely whole. Small creatures were already making their way out from hidey holes in the dark recesses of the cavern to munch on the remains.
While I tromped around the back, Denitza went over and offered her help with the remains of Erling's monster. His party agreed, and she went to work on it, a creature that looked like it was somewhat mammalian, given the furry legs and body. It might have been some sort of nightmare mole. With wings. And tusks.
