As soon as the three glowing streaks in the sky disappeared behind them, down towards where the Tree had shrivelled up into the ground, they set off again. This time, Gora pushed them hard enough that there was little further time for conversation or cloud watching.
According to her, they were headed to a place called “Triskellion’s Outpost”, and she wanted to reach it before the Mitlan Inquisitors came back. Well, not reach it, exactly, since it was over a day’s walk away still, but she wanted to get out of the city as quickly as possible.
The Outpost itself was a Delver stronghold, build right at the edge of the Wilderness Zone of the Nightmare Domain to give Delvers the best possible jumping off point for their expeditions inside. It was a safe place manned by the Guild, where they could rest and hide until either the Inquisitors grew bored and went home or all of the opportunists and curious groups from Grailmane arrived to draw their attention. Then they could hitch a ride back to the city itself.
But first they had to get there.
As they were crossing what had once been a main road, something came rushing out from a side road further down. Something big.
It looked a lot like the two ball-things that they had scared off out of the building they had hidden in earlier. But where those had been maybe knee height, this one was about a head taller than Gora. Unlike the smaller ones which had spherical bodies, this one was more elongated and teardrop-shaped, with the pointed bit sticking out behind it.
It was covered in matted dark blue fur. In the centre of its face was still the same shark-like maw, except that it was now larger than Rita was with proportionally larger teeth.
It looked terrifying.
It still had only two muscular legs, ending in clawed, monkey-like feet, but around these powerfully muscled legs swarmed more than a dozen smaller versions of itself, pouring into the street behind it, screeching in high-pitched chirps and clacking their teeth.
“Seems they went and fetched Mommy,” Gora remarked dryly.
“It’s gonna be fine, right?” Rita asked nervously when Gora and the others made no move to run. “The tree isn’t pushing them to attack anymore. They should take one look at us and run for it, just like before, right?”
Weapons cleared their scabbards and loops while the mages started their preparations as the group moved into a combat formation, Gora and Samual at the front with Ava, Zaxier and Bob at the back. Rita awkwardly struggled to get her spear off her back and in a ready position.
“Animals still get hungry,” Gora warned, “and I’m guessing we look about snack-sized to these things. Rita, stay with the casters. Everyone, get ready.”
Rita nodded, swallowing nervously as they kept coming closer until she could just barely make out two tiny, beady black eyes set above its hellish maw. It looked a little like one of those deep-sea horror-fish… what were they called again? The ones that looked like their mouths were too small to hold all of their teeth and that had the little glowy thingy on dangling over their heads? Anglerfish! Just without the glowing thingy.
And more teeth.
Suddenly, it stopped and gave off a loud bellow. All of the smaller monsters that had been milling about its legs broke away from what Rita assumed was their mother and rushed right at them in a single wave of chittering teeth.
What kind of mother sends her children in to fight first?
“Magic on the Toothlings!” Gora ordered. “Thin them out!”
Spells slammed into the little teeth balls as they charged. A bolt of electricity shot from Bob’s hand under Zaxier’s guidance, leapt from one monster to the next, making their muscles lock up and spasm mid-run. Sadly, it wasn’t quite enough to kill them, but it did make them tumble over their own feet and trip up the ones behind them, breaking up their charge.
Ava fired a series of black darts into the mass of little monsters while her three remaining Anima sort of… poured out of a small black ball in her hand, surging forward to intercept. Where her darts struck their matted, dark blue fur, it left patches of black and brown necrosis that had the little things screech in pain.
Then one of the little sprinting balls with teeth reached Rita. One look at their slavering, drooling, razor sharp maws had her legs shaking. They were like little piranhas on legs!
She readied her spear as Samual had taught her, one hand gripping it in the middle, the other close to the back, tip angled slightly up and kept in line with her body. As the little ball of menace came closer, she stabbed forward with a quick, economical movement, just like she had practiced earlier.
To her great surprise, it worked!
The little monster tried to dodge the tip of the spear but had too much momentum to change direction that quickly when she stabbed out at it. She struck the little ball of teeth centre mass, right above its freakishly distended mouth.
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It was at this moment that she discovered a rather interesting quirk of her spear: It absolutely sucked at stabbing things.
The curved, looping, corkscrew metal blades at the front that merged into the sharpened tip looked fancy as heck and were definitely stronger than any metal that thin had any right to be, but it was no more rigid than normal. The large ‘bulb’ of empty space inside the blades made the whole thing act like a giant spring, collapsing under the force of the strike and absorbing the impact. All the strength of her blow was sapped and nothing but the very tip of her spear managed to pierce the surprisingly tough blue, furry skin of the creature.
What should have been an instant impalement was instead reduced to little more than a minor scratch. Not that you would think that listening to the thing. It began squealing like a stuck pig as it scrambled to get out of reach, before running back to its mother.
Rita put it out of her mind as two more of the things tried to take chunks out of her legs, forcing her to dance them just barely out of the way of the two sets of snapping jaws.
CRACK! CRACK!
This time she didn’t bother with the pointy bit and rather just used her spear as a big stick. She brought the blunt end around in powerful swings that sent the little things rolling, stunned but otherwise reasonably unhurt. At least until she kicked one and sent it careening off of a crumbling wall nearby.
Who knew the little toothy monsters were so bouncy?
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Gora gave the big Teether a slash across its lower lip as it tried to lunge forward, forcing it to step back. Behind her, she felt the usual irritating itch as Samual drew on his power before he punted one of the little Toothlings over a nearby building.
Whatever worked, she supposed.
The Teether kept circling her warily as she moved to keep herself between it and the mages. Samual could take care of himself, but if it reached Ava or Bob, it could kill one of them with a single bite. It could probably kill her in a single bite as well, for that matter, if she didn’t kill it first.
She clicked her tongue in annoyance. Normally, if you could strike hard enough, Teethers were not a problem to deal with. They charged in and tried to chomp your head off with no sense of subtlety. They had to get real close, though, so you just had to hit first and hit hard.
This one seemed more wary, however. It was unwilling to risk serious injury to land a bite which, on the one hand, made it easier to keep at bay, but on the other, made it much harder to land a solid finishing hit on. And each moment they wasted fighting increased the risk that they would get spotted by the Mitlan Inquisitors. Or heard, for that matter. The Toothlings began squealing as soon as they got hit, with some of them flat out fleeing for their lives, scurrying back among the ruins, while the others just sort of… ran around making noise.
The Teether lunged forward again. This time, Gora pretended to misjudge her timing and made as if she swung early, seemingly leaving herself vulnerable.
She was trying to bait the thing into committing too deeply, but it was either too intelligent and saw through her feint, or not intelligent enough to see the opening. Either way, it ducked back without completing its attack.
Unfortunately for the the creature, one of its own squealing Toothlings, one with what looked like a stab wound on its face, just happened to be running behind it at that time and somehow managed to find itself underfoot. The Teether stepped directly on it as it withdrew, and then, seemingly unwilling to crush one of its (her?) own children to paste under its massive feet, stumbled as it tried to avoid it and overbalanced, crashing to the ground with a loud impact.
Gora quickly took advantage and, before it could get back up, buried her blade into its body to the hilt. Twice.
It went still after that, and shortly thereafter the remaining few Toothlings scurried back into the ruins around them.
As quickly as it had began, everything was silent again.
“Everyone okay?” Gora asked, wiping her blade on the creature’s matted blue fur. Why were monsters always so filthy? Actually, probably the same reason they all were. No baths.
A chorus of a assents answered her. There hadn’t been enough of them to get through, and only one of Ava’s anima – a rhino-headed monkey with jagged, broken claws – had gotten chomped on a little. Not enough to (re)kill it, but it was missing an arm and a leg now and probably wouldn’t be useful in a fight again.
“What was that?” she heard Samual ask Rita, a note of anger in his voice.
“I tried to stab it! I did! Just like you showed me! But this stupid spear…”
Gora chuckled as she listened to them squabble. Then she noticed Ava squatting down next to the big Teether corpse.
“Hey, what are you doing? We need to keep moving,” she said.
“I’m running out of monsters,” Ava explained, placing her black orb on top of the corpse. “This one is reasonably undamaged, so I’m grabbing it. It won’t take long.”
“How long is “not long”?” she replied sceptically.
“A minute,” Ava said as she placed her hands on the orb. Then she frowned. “Two minutes. Maybe a little bit more.”
She knelt next to Ava. “Can’t you just animate the thing and have it run with us? You can animate it later once we get a bit further away.”
Ava shook her head. “If I animate it directly that consumes some of its remaining Essence and I can’t tether it to my orb anymore.”
Gora sighed. “Well, we don’t have a few minutes. These things kicked up a hell of a ruckus. We need to get out of here, right now.”
“I’m running low on Essence and anima! But give me three minutes and I’ll stuff this thing in my orb so it’s fighting on our side next time!” Ava hissed back.
“This thing won’t even slow an Inquisitor down!” Gora growled back. “Our best shot is to be out of here before they get here!”
“Er, Gora?” Zaxier tried to get her attention. “I do believe that ship has sailed.”
She turned and followed the cat’s gaze from where it was still laying on Bob’s shoulder. Crouching on top of one of the ruined buildings, some distance away, was a figure dressed entirely in a glowing suit of plate armor. Two feathery wings sprouted from his back.
The helmet’s visor was staring directly at them.
“Hiii Mister Inquisitor!” Bob shouted at him, waving wildly.
“Shut up, you foolish boy!” Zaxier said and slapped him on the ear. With claws.
“Ow!”
For several tense seconds the figure watched them without moving. Then he stood up, braced himself, and shot up into the air and away towards the Tree in a golden streak.
“What now?” Rita asked, looking at Gora.
“Now we get moving to the Outpost, same as before,” Gora replied, turning back. “Only difference is, they know we’re here now.”