Chapter 6: New Contenders
One moment Guide Halus was staring off into the distance, and going through what must have been his newest notifications. The next he was falling forward with this vacant, empty, look in his eyes.
Shae was moving for her uncle before anyone else had even realized what was happening. Bab, who was closer, still caught him with a grunt before she’d made it to their side.
“Now what? Our defender is down.” Bab groaned. Seeing the hovering Shae reaching out with grabby hands he passed off their guide's limp body to the woman. “This guy is heavy.”
“We’ll wait until he gets up.” Edgar thought the answer was obvious and based on the glare Bab was giving him the other shifter boy had caught a note of that in his tone.
“I meant more along the lines of what our plan would be if something comes across us while we wait.” Bab was giving the prince an unimpressed look that bordered on disrespectful.
“Let’s not be rude to the Prince of our nation.” Berra came up beside her brother and put a restraining hand to his shoulder. Despite her words the look on her face matched her twins.
Discomfort crept up the Prince’s spine as their square pupils bore into his. Were he anyone else he might have been forced to look away. As a prince he’d been subjected to far more intense stares from his father.
“I’m working towards being a healer. I can use a sword,” he reached out to show an empty pair of hands. “Otherwise, I’m not a fighter.”
“We know who our fighters are. I know Bab, at least, has been training to be a warrior since we were small. As long as he doesn't have to take care of it all alone we should be fine.” Berra looked at the other two members of the group expectantly.
When they showed no signs of answering the unasked question Bab shook his head and made sure to ask clearly.
“Can you two take any?”.
Shae nodded confidently but Hecate seemed less sure.
“I’ve always been more comfortable at range,” Hecate perfectly copied the same hands out motion that the Prince had done earlier and smiled. “But no bow, and I’m not seeing any sticks good enough for arrows anyway.”
“We’ll have to figure out a plan then.” Bab shrugged.
“Based on what?” Hecate asked “not a lot to work with over here.”
The truth of that statement was confirmed as they all looked and only found corpses and rusty tools in the maze with them. A distant crack that seemed out of place in the solemn maze shattered their sudden silence.
“The plan has to include dealing with whatever that was if it comes for us. Better yet, we should plan to stay away from all sudden and loud noises.” Berra told the group with a flat look.
The others had noticed that both Bab and Berra tended to look annoyed or unimpressed regardless of the way they felt. The prince found it familiar to the behavior of many of the other nobles in the kingdom, so he didn’t really mind it. Shae found it annoying and was starting to grow irritated with the twin. Hecate was starting to wonder what she’d have to do to get a reaction out of one of them. A smile would be preferred, but…
“Let’s just try and figure out what we’re actually dealing with.” The prince offered as he gestured at the corpses.
The Prince walked back the way they’d come. Reaching the nearest shambler puppet corpse he took note that the group had all come along as he’d wanted. Even Guide Halus was there, flung over Shae’s shoulder like a sack.
“I’d rather not touch that.” Berra said. She was focused on the leaking green fluids oozing from the cracked skull of the Shambler Puppet. “Looks like it’ll make me sick.”
The Prince agreed. Whatever had turned this person into a Shambler puppet had long ago taken anything human like away from them, at least on the inside. What should have been the brain was instead a ball of slick dripping vines wrapped around a flower. The flower was the same type as the ones growing along the maze walls but this one looked like its light had fully been drained. All that was left was an oozing sickness that infected what it touched.
Bab leaned in for a closer look. The neck of his shirt was pulled up over his face like a mask to ward off any odor. The prince hadn’t noticed a smell at all but he couldn’t blame the other shifter for being weary. Especially with a shifter’s enhanced senses.
“Looks like-hold on.” Bab started to say something but then just shoved his fingers into the skull crack to pull it open a bit more. He ignored the shouts of disgust and came in even closer.
“The vines coat the entire inside of the skull it looks like. There's actually a lot more in here than it looked like there was at first. These thick vines are just a bunch of smaller vines twisted around themselves.” He said as he rubbed his hands in the gravel.
“They probably extend down the spinal cord to give the flower control of the body.” The Prince added after some thought.
“So the flower is the puppet master of the Shambler puppets.” Shae said. “Does that mean we need to be worried about the flowers on the maze walls?”
“Let’s assume so. Some of these flowers are dimmer than the others. I don’t know if that means they might be able to become shambler puppets or turn us into them but let's keep our distance.”
“I’d noticed that as well.” Berra said. “Some of them looked sickly on the vine. Seems like corpses don’t make good gardeners.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Bab released a small huff of laughter at his sister, but no one else seemed to find it funny.
“So does that tell us anything? Other than break the spinal column or crush the skull to kill the plant?” Shae asked. She’d kept her distance from the body just in case anything happened and she needed to protect her uncle.
“Nope. But at least we know not to waste time on trying to hit any other Vital spots.” Hecate had actually found a stick somewhere and was poking it inside the skull.
When she pressed down on a vine one of the legs of the shambler kicked out, shocking everyone. They all jumped away from the shambler and all but the prince took some sort of fighting stance. The shambler did not move again.
“What kind of crap was that?!” Bab stared at Hecate wide eyed and questioning. The young fae woman could only shrug in response.
“She pressed down on one of the vines and it made the body react. I guess the puppet in Shambler Puppets is just that much more literal.” Berra stood from her ready stance and walked over to kick the no longer moving puppet.
“So, crush the skulls and avoid the maze walls.” The prince lifted two fingers, one for each thing to keep in mind. “Anything else?”
Bab stepped forward, bringing the groups attention to him.
“Stay moving and call out if you think you need any help. I noticed that there were times when the shambler puppets got more coordinated all of a sudden.”
The Prince nodded at the additional information. He had noticed the same thing but had forgotten to mention it. The Prince had been looking down a bit on the others, he realized. This was their first real conversation and the twins were showing themselves to be smarter than he had assumed.
“There we have it. As good a plan as any.” He said lazily, truthfully the prince wasn’t concerned about an attack coming in the first place.
It wasn’t that the Prince thought it was impossible that they could get attacked here. In fact, he felt it might be more likely than he’d originally given credence to. Something in the maze was watching them, he could feel it. But, after having seen how easily Guide Halus took them down, he figured they could handle a similar size group as a team.
He also knew how he would die and it wasn’t in a Garden.
“Better than nothing.” Hecate agreed.
The group put distance between themselves and the corpses once again and Shae placed her uncle on the ground so they could wait for him to recover. Shae had felt him twitch a few times when she’d had him on her shoulder. Now looking at him it seemed like he would wake at any moment.
It turned out that that had been wishful thinking. It took over thirty minutes before anything changed in the passage, and it wasn’t Halus waking.
It was Hecate who’d noticed them first. The group had broken into groups. The twins were engaged in a private conversation and the Prince and Shae were watching over Guide Halus to make sure he was okay. Hecate had been looking at the flowers. Even with how sick they were they reminded her of home. She’d been thinking about how long it had been since she’d been home to the forest, the trip to the mountain had taken her weeks, when she noticed movement from the corner of her eye.
Seven shambler puppets had arrived, but one of them was different. Six were the same gardener variant they had seen before but the last looked like some kind of barbarian warrior. The barbarian was shirtless and covered in black ink tattoos. It wore pants made of some kind of patch work animal hide and was holding a metal ball head club lazily to its side.
“They're here.” Hecate groaned and no one missed the fear and trepidation in her voice. She’d almost died the last time. “Seven of them.”
“And something different.” Shae said.
Barbarian Shambler Puppet Lv. 2
Garden Shambler Puppet Lv. 5
Garden Shambler Puppet Lv. 5
Garden Shambler Puppet Lv. 4
Garden Shambler Puppet Lv. 4
Garden Shambler Puppet Lv. 4
Garden Shambler Puppet Lv. 4
For a moment the aspirants just stared in shock and fear at the approaching monsters. They’d convinced themselves that at most they might have to deal with a group of four, like Halus had. As a group they’d thought they’d be able to take them down with their higher numbers. Now they were the ones that were outnumbered.
Even the Prince found himself worried. He looked at the aspirants and for the first time considered that some of them might not make it out of this dungeon.
“No weapons against seven, is more difficult than I was hoping to have to face. I'm shifting for this one.” Bab wasted no time and began to strip. Shifters, almost as a rule, were in great shape. The three in the aspirant group were no exception.
Bab showed no shame in his form, standing straight with his eyes focused ahead of him. His muscular body was only on display for a moment before those very muscles began to shift. Two horns sprouted from his skull as his face shifted forward into a round muzzle. Long shaggy white fur covered his pale skin and his arms and legs became powerful hooved limbs.
As a shifter his animal form was larger and more powerful than the mundane counterpart but Bab and Berra were a variant species as well. Standing four and a half feet at the shoulder the white furred goat put off a thick cloudy mist from his hooves. The cloudy mist wasn’t just for show.
The twins’ species were called Cloud Treaders. Their families lived high up in the mountains that were surrounded by clouds and were known to cross mountain ranges using the clouds like bridges.
“What about you Prince, I'm sure a tiger shifter would be really helpful at the moment.” Berra asked and received a confusing glare from Shae for it.
The prince, seeing now wasn’t the time to try and hide one of his weaknesses, decided to be honest. It wasn’t really a secret.
“I'm a fae-shifter Hybrid.” From the blank look that Berra gave him in response that answer hadn’t been as clear as he thought it was. “I’m a cat shifter with fae instincts on top of the normal tiger ones. Normally, I’m fine. But if I shift…”
“All that comes to the forefront. Great.” Berra said.
They were out of time for conversation. The shamblers had almost made it to them when Bab squatted and launched himself horns first at the closest level five shambler puppet. Displaying the unexpected coordination they had been talking about, the shambler puppet blocked the incoming head butt with arms that barely withstood the hit.
The puppets arms cracked and slammed into its face making it bleed out green ooze from its nose but it didn’t go down. It quickly recovered it’s balance before swiping out at the goat shifter in front of it. Bab had already retreated.
He was faster than the monster could keep track of. Before it had a chance to figure out where he’d gone, he’d come in with another head butt that shattered the shambler’s skull and covered him in plant goop.
“This will work.” Shae said enthusiastically. “Stay with my uncle, Prince. I’ll keep you both safe at the same time.”
“This seems manageable, Shae.” The prince protested the idea that he would need protecting.
He was thinking that as long as they kept out of reach they’d be fine. The shambler’s might have moments of coordination but over all they seemed pretty slow. They could whittle the group down and go after the barbarian together. Just in case this new monster had some trick.
As if wondering the same thing Bab launched himself towards the barbarian shambler. His horns gleamed, confidently, like deadly weapons beneath the flower light. The plant goop wicked off in droplets as he flew through the air.
The prince looked at Shae with a confident smile, it dropped when Bab hit the barbarian’s ball club. The goat shifter then hit the ground in a confused bleeding mess.