The sense of foreboding is starting to make, well, sense. The lack of luma tulipa in the gap is due to them being destroyed, so the only light we get at all is the constant lightning streaking across Rayileklia’s darkened skies. The lightning reflects off of frequent patches of unusually persistent ice, giving The Gap a sort of funhouse-of-mirrors feel. That’s uncomfortably familiar in a way I’d prefer nothing ever be, like the second test in the Temple of Time. Worse, it’s like some warped version of our most recent sojourn in The Gap, and, unlike the Temple of Time, I don’t really have access to my time skill to help navigate any crazy dangers.
Hellga and Tiktik seem completely out of it, and both appear to be rapidly resting off their recent ordeals. In a way that’s good. I don’t have to worry that they’ll injure themselves further, if they’re completely conked out, recovering in the carriage. I do however have to worry for the safety of the carriage. I’m about to suggest that Teuila and I sit out in the driver’s seat, to maintain a better vantage point for greater alertness, but, as usual with a wonderful person riding my thoughts telepathically, Teuila’s a step ahead of my request.
Te hoists me out of our cuddlesome position, and in a motion so smooth I can barely perceive it occurring, has us out the open door of our moving carriage, and flipped up into its driver’s seat, still cuddled together, with the door closing swiftly behind us. I can’t resist smiling at her with the left half of my face, as my right half attempts to scan everything nearby. I don’t know if it’s hours or days as we make our way through The Gap, checking in occasionally on Tiktik and Hellga, making sure they at least stay hydrated. The horses are having a difficult time with footing, due to the random precarious patches of persistent ice, so our pace is a bit slower than I’d like.
Eventually, we make it to where the entrance to the Kobolds’ warren should be. In fact, it rather is here, somewhat. However, other kobolds are scrabbling away at it, fighting against what sounds like constantly regrowing stone, in an attempt to break into their tunnel structure. I mean, there’s the horrendous sound of stone moving against stone in slow, yet massive cracking scratching shaking noises. I assume that must be Miza, working her stoneshaping magic to keep the warrens sealed off, but why?
Why are these kobolds out here feverishly working away at the tunnels, trying to get in, if Miza, kind, benevolent, savior Miza, is trying to keep them out? She’s the only one I know with potent stoneshaping magic. It doesn’t take me long to realize why. The kobolds out here report to a dragon. A massive, sleek, icy-white beast. One that appears to be ridden by a woman in black, a woman whose veils and dress are simultaneously sultry, yet all-encompassing. The woman’s apparel nearly has the—, ah, of course. It has the appearance of scales, because she is a shapeshifted dragon. She’s the woman who nearly slew Daffodil. My ire rises, and perhaps my bloodlust offers up our location to those around us that I would consider foes. For, until now, we and our carriage had remained unnoticed.
Teuila springs into action, and I agonizingly slowly work to join her. Crap, there’s more at play here! Some of The Gap warrens kobolds are toiling near the feet of the great white. They look somewhat frightened, but are mostly maneuvering minerals around, sorting stone and gems like chaff from wheat. They’re relatively unharmed, but unmistakably being treated as servants, having to give up their own nutrition for some new capricious lord or lady. Speaking of, the enshrouded woman leaps down from atop the back of the great white, sliding down his neck, and she appears to kiss him passionately, leaving a smoking scar upon one of his scaled lips. After which, she changes shape, revealing her true form, that of an immense, terrifyingly powerful black dragon. She takes wing, low enough to avoid the constant lightning strikes, so she’s unable to pick up as much speed as she otherwise might be able to. Even still, she speeds away to the north almost unbelievably quickly.
Teuila barely dodges to the side as the great white releases a partially charged blast of frost in our direction, freezing me to our carriage, in my sluggishness to act. My ghostly steeds dissipate immediately, much to my dismay. Te, whatever you do, do not get hit by this thing if it spends any longer charging its breath. I’m already nearly a popsicle from the shortest charged blast, and you know how insane my thermal resistance is.
Teuila rockets in zig-zags about the chasm’s walls within The Gap, closing in on the great white, when the cowardly pile of crap picks up several kobolds in its claws and holds them in front of itself, right in Teuila’s path. Its action takes place just as she’s reaching the beast for a strike, resulting in a bloody, horrific mess. I nearly vomit from the gruesome brutality of it, combined with the enragement that I feel as tears stream from my cheeks. Teuila’s rapid force of impact met the clawed palm of the great white as it was full of kobolds, and she may have broken a hand-bone within the beast, but all the fight is drained from her, and leaves her body as she utterly decimates several innocent people. Teuila falls to her knees, covered in the blood of several The Gap kobolds whom I’d never met. She’s quaking with fury as she cries tears of rage, but she can’t get herself to move as several dozen other, more fanatical, kobolds surround her to begin hurling picks, stones, and spears at her.
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My own rage reaches new levels, and I fireball myself, again, and again, and again to break free of the ice impeding me. Thankfully the ice entrapping me and the carriage manages to shield the carriage somewhat, so that I mostly only chip ice and leave cracks in the carriage, rather than blowing it apart with our innocent allies resting within. I’ve still definitely caused significant damage to the carriage. It’s almost in shambles from being rocked by explosions and rapid changes in temperature.
Drawing my internal electrokinesis to a point, I coalesce it into a greater and greater charge. Teuila is starting to look bloodier and bloodier as spears lodge in her body amidst gaps in her armor, and the great white is about to dive its maw downwards to devour her. I fire two simultaneous lightning bolts, one at a swathe of kobolds on the near side of Teuila, this lightning bolt from my Archsorc staff. The other lightning bolt is all of my coalesced and guided internal electricity, straight for the face of the great white as it closes in on Teuila.
My first bolt fries a pack of kobolds, resulting in yowling shrieks, yips, and hisses. My second bolt lands on a particularly vulnerable scale on the face of the great white. That of the already-scarred scale, recently kissed by the lady-in-black. My bolt travels within the creature’s face, charring and scarring its nostrils, the roof of its mouth, and eventually leaves the dragon’s face by boiling its left eyeball to the point of explosion. The furious roar of pain that my attack earns me snaps Teuila from her stupor, but before she can attack the great white, it swats her wildly away.
The dragon’s wrath at my injury struck upon it causes its furious swipe to deal Teuila a devastating blow, striking her with easily as much force as one of the Felgre portalspawn monstrosities, knocking her to the entire other side of the chasm, slamming her facefirst into the mountainside. I grit my teeth in fury as I attempt to recover enough internal electrokinesis to get my body working again. I used up too much electricity at once. Teuila seems to have lost consciousness, but the great white is fleeing, at least temporarily, in the same direction as the lady-in-black dragon. It doesn’t know that it currently has the upper hand, since I’m currently completely at its mercy, as is Teuila, lucky for us.
All of the kobolds begin rushing across the chasm towards Teuila’s prone form. Te, forgive me for this. I shout, “If you value your lives, leave the Valkyrie alone, and get away from her, now! Stay away from her, or you die in five! Four! Three!—“
Kobolds that I assume are friends from The Gap recognize my voice it seems, and flee immediately. The rest peer over the edge towards me, and sneer, as they wave their weapons towards Teuila, not fleeing from their advance on her. Fine. I continue, “Two! One! Fine, die!” I unleash another fireball from the archsorc staff in the direction of the kobolds who’d been advancing on Teuila, decimating most of them, leaving a few at the periphery of the blast fleeing in terror with singed hides.
I can only manage perhaps one more spell from my staff at the moment I’ve used up about four fifths of its charge or so, but I need to get Teuila, and get her to the safety of the kobolds’ warrens. It’s my turn to rescue her in this murderbox canyon. The problem is, I also have Tiktik and Hellga to watch out for. Well, one of several problems. Perhaps the most pressing issue is that I physically can not move at the moment, while I dial in and regenerate internal electricity to regain motor control. My eyes glance about in the pitch-black as it’s occasionally lit by lightning streaking across the sky. I can tell there are kobold forms darting about, fearfully. But which are friends and which are foes, I can no longer tell.
I grit my teeth, and begin moving, against the nerve-damage. It feels like flaying flesh from my own bones as I tear my muscles by physically commanding them to move. The pain signals travel in newer, more robust ways, through cored-out pathways within my nervous system. Roaring my challenge against all-comers, I stand at the fore of the carriage, and shout a thunderclap that blows me backwards off of my feet. Well, there’s an ability I didn’t know I had. That’s also embarrassing as all hell. I suppose I always called it my thunderstick rather than my staff of lightning. It makes sense that I’ve got that flowing around somewhere in me as well.
Could I utilize that as a non-lethal deterrent? Can I knock things and people away, forcefully, without killing them? Ow, maybe if I learn to do it without giving myself whiplash first. Probably best not to practice at this very moment. Tiktik, Kitten? Are you okay? I can’t sense you. Please be okay. Bud? Bud are you okay? Please be okay.
Friggin’ hellspit and fel fires Reggie Shellcracker. Guess what time it is. Solo adventure time? Solo adventure time. I draw the rune for lightning, shaping it with all that I can muster, and I empower it, knowing how dangerous it is to empower a non-spelliform rune. Worse, I leave myself as the primary and only target. I’m greeted with a jolt that’s only slightly less powerful than my lightning bolt spells from the archsorc staff. My eyes swim and cross as my vision blurs from the intense agony. Still, I accomplished what I needed to do. I’ve re-energized my cored-out nerve pathways. I can move again. Slightly slower than my normal ability, prior to my nerve damage, and incredibly erratically, shakily. Thankfully, my fritzing, jerking, jolting movements look the frightening part that I’m trying to play as I begin darting about the canyon floor, towards Teuila.
Hang in there My Wings, I’m on my way. I love you, I won’t fail you.