CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
A QUEST
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Rio
“Steal it, yes, or slay the demon that has claimed it. The two tasks might be one and the same,” he replied with a sigh. “It is no longer so great in size as this.”
“I… don’t get it. If he’s already got the seal, why doesn’t he just break it?” I asked.
“Murad’Dal, the Demon of Claws, or Polkiss, Lash of the Dark, could snap the seal like a twig, as it is now. Pray that you never meet them. I’ve no doubt that whatever demon has decided to enter this realm is doing everything in his power to destroy it, but he is too weak. So he resorts to fast methods of power, feasting on mortals as all demonkind does, but he is making it a priority. Harvesting the energy to attack the seal. You even witnessed this during your captivity. Sacrifices. You are lucky that there seems to be only one, and he is only just barely a greater.”
“Only one!?” I exclaimed. “What do you mean only one? Then what have we been fighting all this time?”
“It’s spawn. As a human body creates sweat... or maybe cells, a greater demon creates lessers,” the Valam said. “They are slaves to its will, only freed if a greater dies, or if they manage to grow powerful enough in their own right to shake their chains.”
The Valam turned to look at the scene. I suddenly realized that the two beings inside the cave weren’t the only ones there. The outside edges of the cave were filled with hundreds of tiny creatures. Thousands. All of them were rushing toward the center where the great bug was still writhing while the angel continued to drill it full of spears, energy leaking out of it into the evergrowing geode. Every now and then, a wave of light would pulse off of the angel, pushing all of the lesser demons… the spawn back.
“So many…” I breathed.
“Even now he is surely trying to break it with every hellish sacrifice he can use to generate power. He is more clever than many of his brethren, allowing humans to gain the power of the curse before sacrificing them. If he succeeds… I fear for humanity.”
I frowned. That certainly wasn’t ominous at all. Still, I had trouble believing anything could survive a nuke. Worst case scenario, even these greater demons could be killed. If there was anything history had proven humanity was good at, it was killing things.
Then again, this Valam guy used my own memories to draw conclusions. Creepy. But if that was the case, was he saying these greater demons… Murad’Dal and Polkiss, could even survive something like that?
I shuddered.
“Well… any tips? Or did you just leave this message to make sure we all knew how fucked we are?” I asked.
He grinned. “A little from column A, a little from column B…”
Gallows humor. I snickered a little. It seemed that by reading my memories, he’d figured out my sense of humor, too.
“Unfortunately, we do not have much time to discuss. This place is not as safe as you first assumed. It has been a pleasure, Mrs. Tande. Go now. Save your people.”
“Wait, wha–!”
I blinked, and suddenly, the scene around me evaporated. Like a veil lifting from my eyes, I was back in the chamber, lying slumped against the strange gravestone.
The first thing I realized was that it was loud. A gunshot echoed throughout the grotto, followed by two more in quick succession.
“I thought you had good aim!” I heard Theo shout from right in front of me.
“I do at the range!” Dane shouted with his back towards one of the pedestals. I couldn’t initially see what we were facing, but an almost invisible thing was suddenly sliced to ribbons midway through a dive at Dane’s face. He was showered in gore and viscera, as the creature's innards were more visible than its camouflaged exterior. Theo’s totems at work. It took a moment before I realized that it wasn’t invisible. It just blended in so well with the glowing blue moss that it might as well have been.
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“Theo!” I shouted, throwing out traps of my own. One of them, thrown far before me, immediately began pelting the wall with ice bolts. It was hard to make out but I could see the thing skitter away, dodging all of the bolts.
It had legs. Lots of them. A neon blue spider the size of a big dog.
I watched Theo’s eyes light up in relief before he dodged a grey glob of… spit. No. These were spiders. The attack was obviously webbing. Giant spiders that could sling webs at us.
Fucking hell, this is what Luca considered rabble!?
“Ri! You’re okay!” Theo exclaimed joyously.
I withdrew my own gun, a borrowed Baretta that didn’t feel as comfortable as my revolver, and fired just ahead of where my trap’s bolts were peppering the walls. Miss.
Three more shots, Miss. Miss. Miss! The things were fast, and I was going deaf with the number of bullets coming from all three of us. I’d thought the Eagle Eye skill was supposed to improve my aim!
Theo’s traps saved Dane’s life again, his wind blades having no trouble slicing into the soft carapace of a spider that appeared behind us without warning. They were faster than my traps but not his.
Dane took the opportunity to fire bullets into the already dead spider, but I didn’t think he was seeing what he wanted to.
“Your damn wind turrets kill them too fast!” He shouted. “I know you said not to, but I would love to be able to throw a fireball at these things right now!”
I laid down one more trap, but it seemed they were only useful for spotting the spiders, as they were always fast enough to outrun my bolts. That was still useful, though, as bolts of ice started spraying in a new direction, identifying another spider. It was almost impossible to tell how many there were.
The problem was that while they were giant spiders, they weren’t giant enough. They were short, squat little things, barely taller than my knee, but they were wide. It made them damn hard to hit with a bullet. I was pretty sure I had hit one or two of the thing's legs, but that didn’t matter much when they had seven more of them.
“I guess this place wasn’t so safe after all?” I called.
“What happened to you?” Theo replied before gesturing to something blue that had fallen near the dead spider. “Dane! Get me that mana potion! I need more totems!”
“Mana… oh! Shit! Hey, don’t go totems, though! I need to kill one of these things!” he said, laughing.
Did he think this was a game? Shit, he probably did. Theo’s turrets kept saving his life. Oh well. He’d learn. I had a sudden memory of my arm being sliced off. This got very real after that. I hope he didn’t have to receive a lesson quite that harsh.
Theo ducked under another web, as Dane tossed him the potion. He caught it after almost dropping it twice.
“Dammit, man! These things are too fast for that! We’ll find some imps soon enough. With all these gunshots, I’m sure they can’t be far away!”
Despite his words, instead of throwing out a totem, an army of roots leaped out of the wall to attempt to grapple the spider. They succeeded, but the spider wriggled free with hardly any effort. Dane’s shots all missed it, and the opportunity was lost.
“Stick to totems, Teddy!” I called before jumping to the top of Luca’s gravestone and let myself calm down like I did at the range. “Keep them away from us!”
Eagle eye was helping. My shots had all been close. The spider I’d shot before was limping just a little. I fired. This time, I got a direct hit and was rewarded with… nothing. There was no high-pitched scream like the Hobbit movies had conditioned me to expect. Instead, the creature flopped over onto its back like any old spider, legs curled up.
“Watch out!” Theo shouted, just in time for me to dodge a sticky ball of gunk that would’ve knocked me right off the gigantic grave. Right. My aim was better here, but I was also a sitting duck.
Dane wasn’t so lucky as another ball of the gunk slammed into him and knocked him to the floor.
“Fucking gross!” He called out. The stuff had impacted him right in the chest, but the blob was too small to pin him to anything. Unfortunately, his first reaction was to try to wipe it off, and his hand got stuck to the mess on his shirt.
“It’s… it’s like glue!” He shouted, desperately tugging his shirt but unable to remove his hand.
“Rip the shirt!” Theo called, but Dane’s lack of attention made him the perfect target. Two more bursts of webbing smashed into his leg and then his face. He fell back, head thonking into the grave marker.
I was in no position to help him as the spiders simultaneously realized that the webbing could stop us. I jumped down off the grave just in time to dodge two or three more web bombs. A fourth splattered against the other side of Luca’s grave.
“How many of them are there?” I asked, horrified.
“No idea,” he said, shooting three bullets into a spider before his gun began to click. “Shit. Out of ammo! Dane? You okay!?”
Dane was not okay. I was pretty sure the last web bomb had covered his entire face, and I didn’t think they’d stopped pelting him. There had to be at least six more. Maybe seven.
“I got this! Make sure Dane can breathe!” I exclaimed.
“Wait, you got this!?”
“Go!” I shouted, happy to see him not question me further. I saw that a little bit of gold had dropped. This wouldn’t put me out of commission entirely, but damn, I really hoped it worked.
Taking careful aim to make sure we were still in the radius while catching as many spiders as I could, I felt my mana plummet as I threw out the Frostbite Trap.
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