Still under Princess’s control, I shambled across the narrow edge of the fallen walkway toward the exit. Not, however, toward the exit to the traguld neighborhood. We’d already stumbled the wrong way for that. So instead, we shambled toward the exit leading toward the wraith cavern.
At least we tried to. She kept me balanced for about three steps, then I fell. Fortunately, I fell against the wall instead of down the hill.
“I’m back,” I told her aloud, and regained control without even thinking how strange that had been.
Which wasn’t completely true. We were departing, but not that fast. So I focused on my speed as I balanced on the narrow edge of the plank, my left hand steadying me against the crater wall. I tried to add a point to Dexterity and then one to Speed, but I had no points. Still, I managed to stay upright until I reached the tunnel leading back to the wraith cave, then I half-fell and half-crouched inside.
“That’s right, human scum,” Tiral-ur snarled, only twenty feet behind me. “On your knees.”
Which actually sounded like good advice, so I lowered myself further and started crawling back toward the cavern. By the time I reached the dog-leg in the middle of the tunnel, the crachen was only fifteen feet behind.
He was still talking, too. “... snip off your fingers, one at a time, before taking your kneecaps for my collection. Then both your ears, then both your eyes ...”
Which, I have to say, I found pretty motivating. I crawled faster. In fact, I crawled so fast that when I reached the end of tunnel, I missed my last handhold and fell out. I might need some points in Alertness, too. From halfway up the cave wall, I tumbled to the stony floor.
Health: 17/57
Mana: 4/24
I landed on my ass and crabbed--so to speak--away from where Tiral-ur was emerging from the tunnel. Retreating from him, toward the center of the cave. Checking with my webtouched awareness for any newly-emerged wraiths. I didn’t sense any, I didn’t feel a chill ... but I did detect the two nearest Pits: the empty one not far behind me, whose inhabitant was probably following even now, and the barest edge of the one past that.
Tiral-ur jumped down from the tunnel and landed with a bang that would’ve roused both other wraiths if they were rouse-able. Nothing exploded from the inky-black holes, though. Which I frankly didn’t understand. Unless, maybe, that one wraith lived in all three Pits? Or maybe the other two were too deep in hibernation to wake ... or just waiting for the right moment to strike? Or maybe you just couldn’t predict the behavior of spectral eel-bodied death monsters.
That wasn’t my biggest problem at the moment. My biggest problem at the moment was the murderous invulnerable crachen stalked toward me. It’s important to prioritize.
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I crabbed faster backward, angling past a rock-strewn patch of cave, and said, “You had one job, you psychopathic crayfish. But Commander Wren got away because you can’t jump.”
“I’m going to enjoy this,” he snarled at me, snapping his pincer.
I scrambled awkwardly onto my feet. “I already killed your little infenti friend.”
“I never gave a shit about those twins,” he scoffed.
“I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about sweet little yellow-skinned Foh.”
I wasn’t sure if I’d gotten the name right, but I thought that’s what the firefly-wielding gemmed Infenti woman who’d killed Oksar has been called. I’d tried to memorize her name so if I ever saw her again I could deliver payback.
Tiral-ur froze for a moment, and despite his alien musculature I noticed tension in his shoulders. Yeah, that was her name alright. His friend Foh. The one who’d killed Oksar. The one he’d addressed in his love notes.
“How do you know her?” her growled.
“Oh, she told me more than her name by the time I finished with her,” I said, summoning both hatchets. “She told me that you’re her little crachen loverboy. She begged for mercy. She told me that if I chopped off her head, you’d get revenge. But you’re going to fuck that up, too.”
He roared in fury and swung his mace at me.
I dodged and parried and hacked. His pincer snapped and his mace flashed; I parried and dodged, because I couldn’t afford to turn to smoke. I danced around him, my blades striking his carapace again and again, because he didn’t even pretend to care about defending himself. I carved long scratches in him that looked like welts, but never even drew blood.
He hit me once, hard enough to make me stagger backward, then I caught him with a vicious chop on his wrist ... that still barely hurt him.
Health: 10/57
Mana: 4/24
“She wasn’t as tough as you,” I grunted, circling for a better position while trying not to shuffle my feet or grimace in pain. “Though I did have to hack at her neck five times before her head popped off.”
He choked with rage, his eye stalks quivering.
“Yellow skin, one horn,” I said, so he’d know I’d seen her. “I’m gonna use her head as the world’s worst coat-rack.”
When he charged at me like a berserk bull, I summoned all of my dwindling strength and leaped high and planted both hatchets into the top of his clamshell-shaped head. He didn’t seem to notice. He crashed into me like a, um, well, like a mid-sized sedan, and tackled me backward.
Right into the wraith Pit.
Yeah, I’d taunted him into just the right spot.
I turned to smoke as he crashed into the bottom of the Pit beneath me. My vaporous self stretched to the opposite side of the Pit, then I reformed into my body with a single mana left.
And I looked down at Tiral-ur in the bottom of the hole.
He spat and swore, then grabbed his mace and stood to his full five feet tall. He reached upward and swung his mace at my boots, missing me by a full foot. Just venting his fury, because he hadn’t realized what had happened. Not yet. He was still too angry. He thought he was still invulnerable.
I crouched at the edge of the Pit and watched while he ranted, then I said, “My first week here, I met this infenti guy named Oksar. Now, maybe this is just because he was the first friendly face I saw, but I think he was something special. I think he was one of those rare people you meet, and they’re just ... good, you know? Maybe because he knew exactly who he was. People like that, they’re not driven by confusion or fear. They aren’t greedy for money or power. They just live their lives without always trying to prove something or--”
And that’s when he felt the chill.
That’s when his rant stopped short and he spun to gape behind himself, with the first hint of fear I’d ever seen in his posture. He was two feet too short to see over the lip of the Pit, but he knew what was coming from the frost in the air.
The wraith approached slowly, on the other side of the Pit from me. Twenty feet away, then fifteen. Its black eyes were holes, its gaping maw changed shape every second and each shape was horrible.
Despite his low angle, Tiral-ur must’ve finally caught a glimpse of a pale ghost eel-head drifting in the air. He made a terrible strangled cry of fear then dropped his mace and leaped for the edge of the Pit below me. His hand and pincer both grabbed hold of the cave floor and he started hauling himself upward.
I shoved him back with my hatchet.
He swore at me and tried again.
The wraith was ten feet away.
I pushed him back into the Pit.
He started pleading and cursing then dashed a few feet to the side trying to climb out in a different spot.
I moved a few feet and knocked him down.
He started weeping and raging--and I shoved him in one last time before suddenly trotting backward when that wraith got too damn close.
Tiral-ur leaped for the side again, and started pulling himself from the Pit as I backed in a wide loop around the wraith, toward the tunnel leading into the kobold village.
The crachen managed to heft his thick body halfway out of the the hole before the first eel-limb touched him. It was just the faintest brush against his carapaced shoulder. Unlike the soldiers--the non-gemmed--he didn’t immediately start crumpling. No, he was Gifted. He was invulnerable. He pulled himself another foot higher ... before the spectral limb sunk deeper into his body.
Then he started compressing in slow motion. Dark lines snapped into sight across his shell as his back cracked. He screamed and fluids seeped from him. I kept backpedalling ... until I remembered his gem.
The Gem of Invulnerability.
It wasn’t wasn’t worth dying for, especially because I’d heard that extracting them was a finicky process. Still, maybe worth taking a brief risk?
So I prowled back toward him, fear and disgust twisting in my stomach. My breath sounded loud and harsh in my ears despite Tiral-ur’s screaming.
He curled backward, his clamshell face pointing directly upward. He made a terrible sound. Then his face rotated even farther, farther, as the pressure snapped his spine. A moment later, his pained eyes, on quivering stalks, looked directly behind himself at the wraith as it sent another two, three, ten limbs into him.
Tiral-ur screamed as his chest burst, torn apart from the force. With my mind, I reached for his gem—I dug into him with Treasure, trying to loot the core of his power into my domain.
And I felt something shatter. Like the crunch of glass underfoot. Something delicate broke into a thousand shards. I felt his gem disintegrate at my mental touch ... and I didn’t wait around for a second thought.
I reached the cave wall at a run and climbed into the tunnel without slowing down.