As I ran up the slope toward the fallen walkway and the exit, the loose shale of the crater floor crunched beneath my boots. Kobolds growled and yipped behind me and I heard the thud of Wren’s tail smacking flesh. Then I heard her gasp in pain. Still, I kept clambering upward, weaving between the kobold corpses on the ground and
Loot corpse?
Loot corpse?
Loot all the corpses, or leave them here for someone else?
Oh, shit, I’d forgotten all about that. Yes! Yes, please. Loot!
TREASURE! A whole mess of gel and foam beads and pearl beads, enough to combine into eleven pearls and ten foams with 2 gels remaining, you’re welcome.
“Thanks,” I thought, and combined the new beads into a gold-and-change by adding them to the ones already in my domain. Which I hadn’t known was possible.
Then I heard ... a different kind of fighting behind me. Not just Wren battling the villagers in a bloody melee, but the clank of metal and the shout of unfamiliar voices. And when I looked over my shoulder, I saw too much motion at the tunnel entrance where that kobold warparty was returning.
Because they weren’t just returning, they were fighting. They were engaged in a fighting retreat ... and as they backed toward the village, their enemy advanced into view.
First Tiral-ur stepped from the tunnel entrance. He was unhurt, of course, and pushing steadily forward as kobolds swarmed to bite and claw him. He ignored their attacks, the kobolds’ needle teeth unable to pierce his gemmed crachen carapace. Ten feet behind him came the white infenti twin and a half-dozen Sixer soldiers, protected by the half-circle of a sparking shield.
Kathina stepped into view next, with only a single dedicated defender. Her dress wasn’t so colorful and flouncy anymore. The fabric was torn and filthy, but that didn’t make her look weak or defeated. No, it made her look pissed.
The kobold swarm shrieked and recoiled every time the sparks hit them, and whenever the shield suddenly expanded to batter them. Which was pretty often. The shield flickered--on off, on off--as if Kathina was trying to conserve her mana. Every time her shield vanished, the Sixer soldiers stepped forward to stab with spears and slash with sword--then they retreated when the kobolds struck back, and Kathina raised her lightning shield again.
Meanwhile, ahead of them, Tiral-ur marched steadily toward the village. Another wave of kobolds swarmed him, but they started using different tactics. Instead of biting and slashing, they just clung to him, trying to slow him down as the little ones fled from the other side of the village.
Oh. Huh. If you couldn’t break through an enemy’s armor, try to cook him alive. That was a pretty clever strategy from the little rock-heads. Satisfyingly brutal, and I wished them all the best--at least against Tiral-ur.
I watched for a few heartbeats as Kathina and her soldiers fought their way closer to the kobolds clinging to Tiral-ur--then the ones piling onto Wren suddenly abandoned her. In response to some signal I didn’t hear, all twenty-ish of them loped away on all fours, abandoning their fight with her to defend their village from these new interlopers.
“There!” Kathina yelled, pointing at a bloodied, half-dead Wren as the crowd thinned. “She’s there!”
“That one is mine!” the white-skinned twin roared when he spotted me. “The human’s mine.”
He broke from the formation, veering toward the outer edge of the village, while the rest of the Sixers immediately reoriented on Wren. Who lifted her head, revealing that her eyes were swollen half-shut and blood was trickling from her mouth and even her mighty tail looked broken. I lost track of the white-skinned twin as the other Sixer started climbing toward Wren--but at least stopped almost immediately, to brace for the impact of the new kobold swarm.
Well, except Kathina didn’t stop. She surged toward Tiral-ur and screamed with effort, her mouth wide in her faceted face. Sparks shot from her eyes and her shield burst out of her her.
A wall of sparks slammed into the kobolds that were dog-piling Tiral-ur. The force hammered them away from the gemmed crachen, and sent them reeling with yips of pain. The shield hit so hard that even he took a few steps backward.
Well, a single step.
Then Kathina slumped from mana-exhaustion and the now-freed Tiral-ur started loping up the slope toward Wren.
Well, toward Wren and me, because I never missed an opportunity to fuck up.
When I’d spotted the Sixers entering, I’d started racing and stumbling down the slope. I stumbled to a halt beside her and draped her oversized arm across my shoulder to help her to the exit. I struggled to support half of her weight for like four steps, with her huge, broken tail dragging behind us, before she started shrinking down to her regular size.
Then I swept her into my arms like a groom carrying a bride across a threshold.
She didn’t object. Blood trickled down her red cheek from a slice on her temple and she winced every time one of her legs bounced. Probably because of the missing chunks of flesh. Plus, one of her eyes was bleeding on the inside, which looked horrible and must’ve felt even worse.
I still had two golden beads. One that I kept in the general space of my domain, which I could summon touching my skin. And one that I’d stored after placing it between my teeth. Which meant I could just ... lean down and put my lips against Wren’s and kiss a bead into her mouth.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Except I didn’t want to waste a gold on her. I mean, of course I also didn’t want Usim to lose his mother. But mostly I didn’t want to waste a gold on her. Gold beads were my literal lifeline. However, I did want Wren to fight Tiral-ur, to prevent his invulnerable crab-ass from following us. That sounded like a really good job for someone who wasn’t me.
Caught between the two options, I scrambled up the slope toward the exit. Except with my arms full of Wren, and a half-shredded calf, I didn’t scramble all that fast.
“Leave me,” Wren breathed.
“Fuck you,” I snarled, hating her for being selfless.
“Drop me,” she repeated.
“Here’s a fucking gold you fuck,” I said, in my charming way.
Then I pressed my lips to hers and tongued a bead into her mouth. And let me state for the record that there was exactly nothing sexy about it. My legs were burning with pain. Her face was covered in blood. We were ten seconds away from being chopped apart by an invulnerable crab-warrior. So no, she didn’t melt girlishly in my arms. Time didn’t stop as we shared a romantic moment amidst the violence.
Uh, but I won’t claim that I didn’t notice her lips. It had been a long time since I’d touched a woman.
Anyway. I gave her a bead along with too much saliva, then dropped her on her ass. She growled and bellowed ... then started growing, even ase the healing was throbbing through her.
I didn’t stop moving. Hell, I barely slowed down. I kept climbing for the exit, leaving her behind to keep the the Sixers off my ass.
And a handful of seconds after I heard her tail smashing uselessly against Tiral-ur, I’d almost reached the walkway. As I approached, I realized that the whole thing must’ve been held upright by diagonal wooden braces, which was what the kobold had removed to drop us. Clever little boulderheads, using the power of gravity to screw any intruders.
I climbed onto the now-vertical plank, then walked on the edge almost like a balance beam. I trotted toward the tunnel where we’d entered from the rubbled slope. From this side, I saw that the tunnel must’ve been cleared by the kobolds, because a ton of debris and rocks littered the area.
And as I reached the tunnel mouth, I thought about gravity again. Hm. Maybe I should try to be as smart as a kobold. It was a high bar, but still. I slowed down for a few steps, thinking about gravity, then I froze when my webtouch pinged an alarm.
An urgent alert, so I focused on the threat and--
A crossbow bolt took me in the throat.
A length of wood and metal. Impaling my neck.
Horror almost blinded me. I couldn’t breathe. My throat filled with blood. I couldn’t shout, I couldn’t think, my entire body weakened with dread.
And through my watery eyes, I saw the white-skinned twin, far below me, braced against a half-fallen wall near the side of the valley cavern. He was reloading a beefed-up crossbow, prepping another shot.
As I summoned my last gold bead, Princess shouted in my mind:
I didn’t listen. I needed to heal. I needed to live. So I raised my hand to my mouth and--
With a silken tug of thought, Princess took control. She moved my other hand to my throat, grabbed the crossbow bolt, started to yank and ...
And she paused.
Huh. Now that I heard. I immediately domained the crossbow bolt, which vanished from my neck. I sucked wet, bloody breath into my lungs, and the razor edge of terror sharpened to a blunt surface.
I swallowed the gold bead, and a kobold--my favorite kobold, my goddamn soulmate of a kobold--scrambled over the half-fallen wall and dropped onto the white-skinned twin like PacMan onto a line of dots.
Well, if the dots were the same level, because the infenti twin fought back. To my grim satisfaction, he didn’t look so white anymore, though. More of a blood-red.
SUPPORT: An additional twenty percent in strength points does not necessarily result in an additional twenty percent of strength.
What? What? What you talking about?
SUPPORT: Your supposition that raising your Strength from ten to twelve meant increasing your physical strength twenty percent was incorrect.
Yeah, I get it! Now shut up.
Kinda busy right now.
SUPPORT: You will equal the average strength of an adult olifern when your Strength attribute is fifteen.
Go away!
SUPPORT: The average adult olifern can ‘bench-press’ well in excess of 300 pounds.
I didn’t respond, too busy coughing blood from my throat.
SUPPORT: More like 500 pounds.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered, and felt the presence in my mind fade away. “Finally.”
After spitting one more gob of blood, I straightened and glanced toward the village. Wren and Tiral-ur were exchanging blows. She was fierce and graceful, and her now-healed tail whipped with monstrous blows. He was unnaturally-fast, like all gemmed, but far slower than Wren. Still, he shrugged off her strikes. She must’ve hit him ten times for every hit of his, yet his mace cut and bruised her while he looked unhurt.
So I watched the kobold trying to eat the twin for only two happy seconds, then I put a hand on a big roundish rock and--couldn’t blip it into my domain.
Apparently that rock weighed more than six hundred pounds, or whatever my domain could currently carry. It wasn’t even that big. It just turned out that rocks were, y’know, heavy.
So I put my hand against a smaller rock and shifted that one through my domain, then released it a few inches from the bottom of foot, which I’d shoved high into the air. Which, I will say, did not look cool. The pose reminded me of my niece’s first week of ballet school, when six-year-old-girls stretched their stubby legs behind themselves.
Still, the rock fell from my upraised foot, slammed the slope below, and started to roll. Faster and faster.
As did the next four rocks.
Gravity for the win. Even though the rocks weren’t that big, they must’ve weighed three or four hundred pounds each. Which meant that after they built up a little momentum, they’d turn into deadly weapons.
Not that they were accurately aimed or anything. Still, the seventh or eight of them started a minor avalanche of shale, while the others jolted and sped in the right general direction. Directly toward the pack of Sixers.
When a soldier called a warning, Kathina’s shield flickered into place and blocked the first two incoming boulders but she yelled that she couldn’t hold them for long. Especially since I kept rolling more at them.
So Tiral-ur disengaged from Wren and raced to the part of the slope that was directly below me. He stumbled to a stop in front of the boulders, then bent his knees and retracted his eyestalks. A boulders impacted him a rifle-shot crack that echoed in the valley cavern. Then another, and another. He didn’t take damage when the rocks smashed him, but he didn’t look happy.
He did look stuck, though, because he needed to stay there to keep his people safe.
So I dislodged more rocks as Wren clambered to join me. She moved fast up the slope, using her tail like a kangaroo, which was almost as dorky as my elementary-school ballet routine. I cast one more glance at the white-skin twin battling the kobold, but couldn’t see anything behind the half-wall, then I ducked into the tunnel at the top edge of the crater.
In front of me the rubbled ramp fell in a gentle slope away from the kobold village, back into the traguld neighborhood. Wren joined me as the clash of Sixers battling kobolds sounded behind us. I started down the ramp ... and a nearby crashing drowned out the shouts and growls.
Behind me, at the mouth of the entrance, Wren was lashing at upward with her tail. She was standing the top of the ramp, where the ceiling was only a few feet above her head, so her windmilling tail easily reached thacked into the ceiling. For a second, I didn’t know what the hell she was doing. Then I realized she was trying to bring down more wreckage and block the tunnel, so the Sixers couldn’t pursue us.
She was succeeding, too, as chunks of mortar and stone and wood rained around her at every whipcrack impact of her tail. Which didn’t look particularly safe, trying to collapse the ceiling onto herself. So my heartfelt response was: good luck with that, Commander Wren.
But me personally? I preferred to stay away from avalanches.