In a fraction of a second, the walkway collapsed from horizontal to vertical, and I tumbled ass-over-eyebrow down the incline. ‘Walkway,’ hell. That was a goddamn booby trap. The kobolds had attached ropes to the undersize and turned the planks into a trap door. The whole length of the ‘boardwalk’ swung downward on a hinge and literally removed the ground under intruders’ feet.
And now eight or nine of the sentries closed in as we crashed in a wild tangle of limbs toward the village.
Where another thirty or so kobold warriors were scurrying toward us.
The ones who’d triggered the trap were scampering fast from above us on the hillside, aiming to attack us before we gained our bearings, so I turned to smoke. All of the momentum of my ungainly fall bled off in an instant, and when I returned to my body two seconds later, I was stable and on my feet--and a hand-span behind the pursuing kobolds.
Tansy, meanwhile, had activated her blackbead. Apparently that increased her speed so much that she’d been able to catch her balance--and then catch Usim. She hugged him tight to her chest with her left arm while her right drew her longsword.
And Wren? Well, she kept tumbling down the steep crater wall. Except not like a petite infenti woman; more like a bulky-ass meteor. She’d tapped into her gem, grown twice her size. And from the single glance I took at her, she seemed to be pushing herself to roll faster toward the village and incoming kobold warriors like devil-tailed meteor.
I didn’t look for long, though.
Instead, I chopped through the neck of the kobold in front of me, then spun and caught the next one in the stomach and realized that I hadn’t chopped through the neck of the kobold in front of me.
I’d merely chopped into its neck, because these things were way tougher than the previous ones.
INTUIT: Kobold Warrior, Level 11
Eleven! So when forty or fifty kobolds worked together, they were all level eleven? Holy shit. At least blood still spurted from the injured kobold’s neck where my hatchet carved its flesh--but it wasn’t dead. Hell, it wasn’t even down: it toppled toward me while I slashed the next one in the stomach, and as I stabbed that one in the eye with the spear-head of my other hatchet, the neck-bleeding one’s oversized mouth closed on my calf.
Teeth sliced through my armor and into my flesh.
I buckled as another kobold leapt at me. That one missed, but the next two didn’t. One caught my arm and the other bit through the back of my neck. Through my fucking spine. Which somehow, terrifyingly, didn’t hurt as much as it just felt wrong.
The lack of pain panicked me, so I turned to smoke and then drifted there in fear and uncertainty. Princess cooed in my mind, trying to soothe and center me, and maybe she did. Still, when I returned to my body, I immediately collapsed. Because, y’know, severed spine.
Still, I calmed enough to bamf a golden bead between my teeth and swallow.
Energy flared through my body. The flow of healing power felt like it was melting my neck. Pain kicked in, agony kicked in, but so did a sense of stability. Of solidity. I wasn’t fragile, not anymore. I wasn’t broken.
With a growl, I sliced a hatchet through the ropy thigh of the kobold who’d eaten my spine. Its severed leg fell away and it collapsed in a pool of pumping blood and I hurled my other hatchet at the one who’d chewed my arm.
For once, a thrown hatchet flew true. The blade chunked into the kobold’s cheek and it shrieked and flailed. Didn’t die, because level 11, but it was out of the fight.
I rose into a crouch and eyed the remaining kobolds. Four glared at me in a half-circle, while one chased Tansy and Usim uphill toward the exit. And while, well, about thirty swarmed Wren lower down on the slope. From the corner of my eye I saw her gem-strong tail scything through them before she was buried beneath the snarling pack, but I couldn’t do anything about that, not now.
I faced the ones circling me--then I turned and ran, sprinting after Tansy.
I wasn’t confident that she could handle a level 11 kobold, not now that she’d blown through her blackbead power. Maybe she could, maybe she couldn’t. She must’ve weighed five times as much as them, and she had at least three times the reach. Still, she was level 6 and these things were goddamn vicious when they were this numerous. I expected kobolds to be low-level mooks, but no. Not even close. One of them had just swallowed a couple of my goddamn vertebrae.
What would happen if five hundred kobolds lived together? Would each warrior be like level 36? Then nothing could stop them. They’d keep reproducing and spreading and getting stronger and stronger until there were a million of them, each one level 99, and they took over the world? What if they--
I mentally shook myself. Okay, Tansy was loping up-slope toward the spot we’d entered, and with her strength and her stride she was moving pretty fast. But the kobold chasing her was running on all fours, closer to the ground, and she--yes, from this angle I could tell that the kobold was a she, and yes, I’m just gonna leave that there--was getting steadily closer.
I was slower than either of them, but I threw my hatchets as I ran. I threw one, then the other, then recalled both and did it again.
I hit the kobold three times in eight throws. Only once with the blade, but the third strike was with the end of the hatchet haft, which whacked the kobold hard in the ear. She didn’t like that. She yowled and stopped ignoring me.
She turned, crouching low--and in that moment looked exactly like a big-headed Gollum with a shark’s teeth--and launched at me.
And let me just say that I loved things launching at me. Ever since I’d killed my first thornspider I’d really appreciated the help. I mean, sure, the other four kobolds were charging at me from behind, and the main pack was probably already chewing on Wren’s bones, but still. You needed to take your little pleasures where you could.
I shifted my grip then swung for the bleachers.
Level eleven or not, I cleaved liked little shit’s face in half. Blood splattered me. Hell, blood showed me. Some even got in my mouth but I didn’t care, too impressed with that absolute grand slam of a hatchet blow.
And then, at an urgent twang from webtouch, I shoved myself sideways. A claw raked across my armor from behind, but didn’t penetrate. Twisting and striking at the same moment, I caught another kobold in the stomach, opening a deep abdominal gash, then blocked a massive set of teeth about to bite my face off. The one that had clawed me dove at my right ankle but chomped the air as I dodged and the other two--or maybe the other three, I’d lost count--growled and yipped and snapped and slashed and tore, and the one that I’d gutted started prowling after Tansy even though its intestines were dragging on the floor.
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Well, points for dedication.
When one of the kobolds chomped my boot, its shark teeth didn’t break skin but still managed clamp onto me. First I tried to shake the fucker off then I tried to cut the fucker off, but my blow didn’t do much against level 11 skin, and I didn’t have a time for a second because the other kobold exploited my suddenly-limited mobility and slammed my knee with its rock-hard head.
Something cracked and I collapsed, and the two of them plus a wounded one climbed on top of me like jackals on a dead gazelle and started digging in.
Health: 15/55
Mana: 16/24
I struggled for a moment--then a wild claw-slash ripped into my neck. Blood spurted from me in a hot wet gush. I felt myself dying and bamfed another golden bead into my mouth and swallowed even as I turned to smoke.
That time I didn’t panic.
That time I watched as I wafted.
Above me, Tansy was squaring off with the partially-disemboweled kobold. Behind her, Usim was holding a dagger completely wrong, god bless him.
Below me, Wren was covered in blood. Mostly her own. She was still alive, though, still fighting despite the missing chunks of her legs and tail, and the ugly gashes across her face. And a moment later, I saw why she was still alive: she palmed something into her mouth then roared as her wounds knit closed.
She was burning through golden beads, too.
And finally, as I floated there in my vaporous form, I spared a moment’s consideration to the three kobolds in a pile below me. One was half dead but the other two looked pretty much unscratched. With them at level eleven and my strength just a ten, I’d struggled to injure them. I could add my free point into Strength, but how much difference would it make, getting 10% stronger?
Points Avail: 2
Where the hell had that second one come from?
So I added both points to Strength.
Alex Levin
Anomaly
Level 8, Wax Tier
Archmage Status
Arachrys Blooded (Webtouched, Twominds, Resistance)
Boons:
Domain (3/5)
Intuit (1/5)
Support (2/5)
Treasure (1/5)
Gems:
Smoke
Aptitudes:
Spear
Fighting Hatchets (speciality: dual-wielding)
Attributes
Strength: 12
Agility: 12
Fortitude: 15
Dexterity: 15
Alertness: 12
Speed: 10
Spirit: 12
Design: 14
Derived
Health: 57
Mana: 24
Craft: 14
Movement: 10
Avail 0
And even as I checked my stats, I turned solid and started hacking away. Targeting skinny biceps and bony thighs that time. And yep, I hacked through them like kindling now. Maybe because I was twenty percent stronger, which was more than I’d imagined: the difference between benching 200 and benching 240. Or maybe because I focused on them instead of going for head- or chest-shots. In any case, it only took a half-dozen hits before I left one of them with three limbs and the other with two.
I bellowed to Tansy and Wren, sharing my delicate, gentlemanly strategy of chopping off arms and legs. And finally, I slaughtered the bleeding kobolds at my feet, and swayed from exhaustion.
Health: 41/57
Mana: 14/24
Huh. I was in pretty good shape. I had no idea why I was so tired. Well, maybe from taking enough damage to die three times over. I’d popped three golden beads--though I didn’t quite remember when I’d taken one of them during all that chaos and bloodletting--and maybe that was more exhausting than I’d expected?
I started to climb toward Tansy, grumbling, “No rest for the weary.”
So I raised my gaze, and saw the teenaged demon’s orange, terrified face staring behind me. Peering over my shoulder at the village, realized why. A pile of writhing, biting, clawing kobolds were absolutely smothering his mother.
His eyes shone with unshed tears. His lip trembled and called, “Help her, Alex! Help her, she’s--please!”
“Welp,” I said, then raised my voice as I turned and started down-slope. “Hey, you boulderfaced fucks! You want a real fight?” I clanged my hatchets together. “C’mon!”
The kobolds ignored me--which I found frankly insulting--until I started throwing my weapons at the nearest ones. Then I heard Wren scream again, from deep inside the writhing pile of kobolds, the same bellow as the other times she’d eaten a golden bead.
The pile shuddered. The pile writhed like a mound of worms. I threw my hatchets five or six more times, then a blood-sheeted demon-looking She-Hulk erupted from the center of the mound of crawling kobolds, leaping toward me. Except she didn’t quite reach me. She must’ve taken serious damage in the few seconds since she’d healed herself, buried in that a horde of ravenous piranha kobolds, because she already looked rough. Her monstrous tail lashed furiously, but her side was sheeted with her own blood, her weirdly-stretchy clothing plastered to her skin, and one of her horns was broken.
“Get your kid,” I called. “I’ll hold them off.”
“What the fuck is that ollie doing?” She glared upward at Tansy with a blood-covered face and shouted: “Get him out of here! Go, go!”
The kobolds lower on the slope us regained their footing and spread out. There were only about twenty of them now, which meant Wren must’ve killed nine or ten. Which was impressive, given their level--except she’d used at least three golden beads.
“How many gold left?” I asked her, as the kobolds stalked closer.
“None,” she said.
I bamphed a bead into my palm and gave it to her. “Now we’ve got one each.”
“Not enough,” she said, spitting blood onto the floor before tucking the bead away. “This is why you never fight kobolds on their own ground.”
INTUIT: Kobold Warrior, Level 10
What the hell? Between us we’d killed over a dozen of the rock-headed beasts, and they’d only lost a single level?
“Still ten,” I grumbled.
“There’s a lot more’n ten, Alex.” She cut her eyes across the village. “Look, another warparty is coming back.”
I followed her gaze to the other side of the kobold town. At the bottom of a craggy crater wall, a broad tunnel opened beside what a fat clump of mushrooms. And sure enough, more kobolds were marching through the tunnel into the village. Just a handful in sight so far, though motion roiled in the shadows beyond them.
“Well, shit,” i said.
“I’ll hold them off,” she told me, wincing as she rolled her oversized shoulders. “I’m dead anyway.”
“You really going to turn yourself in?”
“Take care of my son. Promise me that you’ll--” She swallowed. “He needs to live.”
“He will live,” I said.
“Tell him ...” she wiped her face. “Send him to his father on Krelv.”
“I’ll tell him you love him. He already knows.”
“Yeah.”
I turned away, then said, “Hey, Wren?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not so bad for a homicidal maniac.”
And then I loped away--because she was right. Despite her son’s love, despite his pleas, Wren was dead already. Her entire goal was to surrender to the viceroy and get executed for her sins--to save Usim. If she died here, that wasn’t quite as good for Usim, but it was better than letting these PacMan-looking motherfuckers chase him down.
She was as good as dead, but I wasn’t. I didn’t need to sacrifice myself. I would if necessary, but not happily. And I really really didn’t want to get eaten alive by kobolds. That was another reason to run. On my list of Things to Avoid, getting eaten alive was well high.
So yeah, I turned tail as the village kobolds slammed into Wren behind me. Shark-like teeth gnashed and claws scratched. Wren’s powerful tail lashed and her sword stabbed. She swallowed her final gold bead and kept fighting as I climbed toward the tunnel where we’d entered not that long before. Tansy had already dragged Usim away, thank god, back into the traguld buildings in the Old City.
He wouldn’t see those oversized teeth ripping his mother to shreds. He wouldn’t see her die.
I grimaced at the thought, but I kept moving.