“Centipede,” Jacobs called out, “Normally venomous. Don’t get bit. I don’t think one that big will be mostly harmless.”
“No shit, Hubby!” Peachy responded, aiming to slam her shield into its snout. I managed to get a Spark off before it hit her, but it was a close thing. Damn, this thing was fast…and it was still coming out of the cave.
It didn’t like having something slammed into its antennae. It reared back slightly and tried to dart forward for another strike. Something Peachy intercepted with her shield again. Attacking over her shield with her sword. This felt like a scythe creature to me. I cast
To my surprise, the first segment showed signs of freezing, but its neighbours looked entirely unaffected. I spun around for another slice and was surprised to find my weapon cutting harshly into four entirely untouched segments. Looking back at the others, Peachy was keeping her shield between her and the centipede's mandibles, but to do so had resulted in her turning with it as it tried to surround her, making it look like it was coiling around her. G and Darksider were laying into it with all they had.
I removed the legs from eight more sections before I got eyes on the rear end of the creature. I tried mixing in a Shocking Grasp and a Burning Touch, but neither seemed to have much effect beyond the one it got released into. It felt like each segment of the creature was separate from its neighbours.
“Not sure why you are letting it wrap you up, Peachy,” I called out, as I saw G try to wrestle the thing off her before it completed the second wrap.
“Would you like to tank while I make inane suggestions?” She shouted back with clenched teeth. “This thing is pretty quick!”
“Sounds like excuses to me,” Darksider quipped back, as he rapidly stabbed his epee into different segments, unleashing a Shocking Grasp on every other hit.
“I,” Peachy said through gritted teeth, as she drove her blade deep into the second segment before letting it go.
“REALLY”
She grabbed its antennae with both hands.
“HATE”
She used the leverage to start pounding its head into the ground.
“THESE THINGS!”
The four of us stood back and watched as our tank had a cathartic experience.
“Remind me again why you three like winding her up?” G said.
“The same reason you did it earlier…” I said.
“I’d forgotten this side of her?” G said.
After Peachy calmed down, we went to explore the passage it had emerged from. Some of the route looked mined, but it largely seemed to be some kind of natural formation through the rock. It eventually came to a steep drop.
We stared down into the cavern below, the light from the lantern had reflected on something. That prompted Jacobs to throw down a single-use torch.
For a few seconds, the light revealed that the floor of the chamber was carpeted by the writhing forms of a large number of centipedes. The light was lost as the torch fell beneath the forms and was smothered.
“I want Fireball,” Peachy said, her teeth gritted. “They deserve to die in fire. Teach me Fireball.”
“Errr,” I started, as she pushed me back towards the chamber with the mining equipment.
I looked at the expressions on the faces of the rest of my party.
Well… it looks like I’m teaching more magic.
“This is considerably more complex…” I began.
“Then you had better start explaining,” Peachy said dryly, “or we will be here all day.”
I sighed.
I started with Fireball.
G got it pretty quickly, but they all had experience with an Inferno spell, so it wasn't as painful as I had been expecting. I guess the hardest part was unlocking the new spell school.
I followed Fireball with Ball Lightning for Darksider and Peachy when G had to take a short break when a family member called him out of the blue.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“So the plan…” Darksider said. “Is that we all drop Fireballs into them, then if they chase us, we put Ball Lightnings in their path as we run back to use the stairwell door as a choke point? Not going to lie…sounds risky.”
“And cool.” G and Peachy both said.
“Well…yes, anything involving Fireball is automatically cool…” Darksider accepted, “But that doesn’t negate the risk.
“That’s what Aenara’s Hail Storm is for,” Peachy said sagely.
“Errr,” I responded in surprise. I wasn’t even sure if I could cast Hail Storm in a passage which was so much smaller than it… “I might need to check that before we rely on it… I haven’t tried casting a spell in an area smaller than it…”
“Might as well do it now…” Darksider said. “I can hear another one of them coming along the passage.
“Ok, so Hail Storm in a confined area is nasty…” G said with a grin. His maul had gotten a workout smashing the frozen segments that made taking out the single centipede a lot easier, even if it did take almost all my mana to maintain it.
“So,” I said while meditating to get my mana back up. “Hail might work to slow them down, but if I use it, I'm not going to be much use until I get my mana back up…That is still quite a run.” I said.
“Could you teach us it?” Jacobs asked.
“How much mana is Fireball setting you back?” I asked.
“About twenty per cent,” he replied.
“You might get it off once… for a second...”
“Oh…” he sounded disappointed. “Fives are big mana drains then…”
“One Fireball each, then we run. Don’t wait to see the result, if they come after us, we need all the headstart. If there are too many, we close the door. If not, we tank and spank using the doorway," Darksider summarised the plan we had agreed to.
The five of us lined up on the edge, and Peachy silently counted us down using her fingers. At zero, the five of us sent a
I wish I hadn’t.
My first indication that something wasn’t quite right was when the first fireball to expand went a shade of green and then started spreading so much quicker than I expected. Time seemed to slow down for me as I managed to Step into the tunnel now facing the right way to run.
“RUN!” I screamed as I Stepped to the end of the passage, completely bypassing my party. I dived to the side, then there was the bright flash from behind. Then I felt the shockwave come from the cave, its accompanying roar, and finally the wave of heat that followed. I slammed into the ground hard. It had just lost half my health.
“Shit!” I screamed! Why hadn’t I learnt healing! I got back to the passage, there was flickering light from the far end, and I could see the crumpled forms of my friends. “Fuck!” I exclaimed. Their health bars hadn’t bottomed out, but they were still falling faster than I would have liked.
Jacobs let out a groan, rolled over onto his back and then sat up. “Peachy!” he yelled. She had been at the back, heaviest armour slowing her down. From her position, she had also put herself behind Jacobs and had shielded him. “Peachy!” he cried out again, and got to her. Hitting her with a heal spell, then another.
“The others, Jacobs, and yourself,” I shouted to him. He wasn't the least well off, but he was still losing health, and Peachy was now stable.
“Right, right!” he acknowledged now that Peachy was stable. He hit himself with a HOT, and then sent another onto G before giving the squishier Darksider a full heal.
“What happened?” groaned a pained GoldenFist as he came around, when Jacobs moved his full attention to the big Breacher.
“Big badda booom,” I responded. “Flammable gas, I think…” I felt a cooling sensation and instantly felt so much better when Jacobs hit me with a HOT.
There was a loud boom echoing from deeper into the caves, as another explosion occurred further. There was a definite flow of air moving in towards the roaring fires.
“Leave?” Darksider suggested.
“Leave.” I agreed. “I’m no mining expert, but explosions can’t be healthy for rock stability.” I looked down the passageway to the rocks, which were glowing red, most likely from reflecting the light of the fire, I told myself.
“So, it’s official then, Vaxil is not cool.” G declared when we were halfway up the stairs.
“What?” I responded. Where did that come from?
“It’s been official for a while, but what makes you say that?” Jacobs laughed.
“Hey!” I said, scowling at my oldest friend.
“Well, we all know cool dudes don’t look at explosions, so someone who stayed to watch it, by definition, can’t be cool.”
“He got you there.” Jacobs laughed
“No love for your glorious leader,” I muttered.
“There there.” Peachy consoled me with a hug. Damnit.
"You're just jealous you can't Lightning Step." The silence vindicated me.
The air outside was cool and fresh; it was satisfying just taking a nice deep breath. We headed back around to the village. The same lad who had taken us to the airlock was waiting for us near the path.
“Grandma wants to see you,” he told us. We exchanged looks and decided three to two that we shouldn’t just head for the road.
“Are you kids responsible for that?” she asked, pointing at the plume of smoke rising from the other side of the cliff.
“We were hoping to take care of your beast problem…” G admitted.
“May have accidentally ignited something volatile,” Darksider said.
A distant boom echoed around the valley.
“Is that going to keep happening?” she asked, clearly not impressed.
“We don’t know,” I responded honestly. “Not even sure what is causing it. We dropped some fireballs on a nest of giant centipedes, and the next thing we know, we are in the middle of an explosion.”
“You killed those beasts? We can mine more iron for the forge?” a middle-aged man asked, coming out of the house.
“Maybe,” Darksider said. “We killed the one that attacked us, and then followed its trail back to its nest. The explosion nearly killed us, and their nest was where it originated. The heat was too intense to go and look. Can’t promise there aren't other nests though… ”
“Or that those explosions won’t cause the whole place to collapse…” I added, in response to another muffled boom.
“How long are we going to have to put up with those?” the old lady asked.
“Depends on how long the fuel lasts. They seem kind of regular and sound about the same in strength. I think it’s a pocket which is refilling and then detonating just when the volume gets large enough to hit a flame, burns itself out and then starts refilling… If I’m right… when the fuel runs out…” Darksider guessed.
“And how long will that take?” she asked again.