Several of the spikes hit Sophia’s armor and stuck to it. Sophia didn’t take the time to deal with them; sure, they went straight through her shield, but that was what armor was for. There wasn’t much that would go through dragonscale armor, even if the scales were just shed scales from a number of different young dragons reworked by a craftsman and attached to ordinary cow leather and then minimally enchanted. It still seemed to stack up well against the armor she could actually afford from the Registry. It didn’t have the fancy features Dav’s armor had, but in terms of protection it was just as good.
Sophia tugged mentally on her Animated Blade. It seemed to be stuck, so she pulled harder. After The blade suddenly flew free of the plant mimicking a hedgehog. She tried to guess where the corpsevine’s vitals were if they weren’t in the head. The most likely area was the thick midsection, which meant somewhere in the back, probably, but it could be more like the belly which would put it in the middle of the ball.
They probably couldn’t run from the hedgehog; it clearly considered them more of a threat than the fire at this point and it probably didn’t see from its head anyway. They had to kill it or it might follow them back to their base and that was definitely not on the list of things Sophia wanted to deal with. A spike-throwing hedgehog had never been on the list either, but she didn’t seem to have a choice about it now.
Another spray of projectile leaves sprang from the green ball, straight towards Sophia. She covered her eyes with her arm. This time, she actually felt the impacts. Two of them struck her forearm and one lodged in the side of her hand. It felt more like a stinging papercut than an actual wound.
Sophia definitely didn’t want one of those things to hit an eye. The fake monster hedgehog’s accuracy was terrible, but if it kept throwing out dozens of darts at a time, it would eventually hit something important. Sophia half wished she had a real shield, but what she had was a knife.
A knife and a lot of mana. The question was - Force Bolt or Force Blast? Bolt would penetrate better, but if she was lucky, Blast might damage the spikes and make it have a hard time throwing them.
“Wish I could do that,” Dav muttered as he sprinted past Sophia, followed almost immediately by Amy, who was still in her wolf shape. “Fucking roaming miniboss.”
Sophia was definitely going to have to tease him about that comment later. For now, though, her question was answered: Force Bolt was the better choice. She couldn’t shape Force Blast well enough to not hit Dav.
Dav got there first and crunched into the side of the spiky green ball. Sophia didn’t wait to find out if that was enough; she threw a pair of Force Bolts at the creature, one from her and one from her Animated Spell Blade. One of them impacted near the damage and didn’t seem to do much, but the other hit exactly where Sophia aimed: inside the protective layer of plant matter, where Dav’s sword had cleared the way.
It wasn’t enough to kill the creature, but the next set of sprayed projectiles had a dead spot on that side below the injury. It wasn’t enough to say for certain where the corpsevine’s control node was, but it helped. It also gave Sophia a place to shelter.
Sophia felt something warm as she moved into the safer area and reached up to find that the heat came from her neckline. Her necklace was warning her that the spikes were poisoned. She should have expected that; why else would the plant throw something that did only superficial damage and therefore wasn’t stopped by the Guide’s shield?
At least the necklace would take care of it. She’d still want to check in with Essia later but she knew she’d be fine. She’d have to make sure that Dav and Amy were healed first.
Amy snapped at the plant. Somehow, she caught the zombie hedgehog’s actual head in her mouth and yanked it backwards, partially unraveling the ball. She threw the head to the ground and almost seemed to lean on it. There was no way it was going to get away from the next hit or even return to the ball shape.
It took several more strikes from both Dav and Sophia while Amy held it in place before the hedgehog stopped flinging spikes, but that seemed to be all it was capable of. It was an unpleasant task and one that saw them all hit several more times, but there was no longer any danger of anything other than more random poisoned scrapes.
Amy had a surprisingly large number of small sharp green burrs in her fur. Dav had quite a few stuck to his armor and one that seemed to actually be stuck to the patterned part of his cheek.
Sophia looked down and found quite a few on her armor. The one that hit her hand was still there, too, so she used her other hand to remove it. “We should get out of here.”
Amy-the-wolf shook her head, then shapeshifted. A few of the tiny green spikes fell away, but most of them attached to her clothing instead. She dug in her bag. “I need to take an alchemical. Stupid plant has a numbing agent on the spikes, might do paralysis too.”
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Her voice did sound a little slurred and it took her a moment to find the potion bottle in her pouch. Her hand closed around it. She held it in one hand and flipped the metal ring up with the other. The stopper slid out of the inch-tall glass bottle with an audible pop and flipped to the side, held to the jar by the rest of the metal sealing contraption. Amy drank the potion in a single gulp then dropped the empty vial back in her pouch. “That’ll help until we get to Essia. Either of you need one? I always carry extra alchemicals.”
Alchemical [https://i.imgur.com/Y97GFLL.jpeg]
Sophia had a weird moment where she realized that Amy always called the alchemist’s concoctions alchemicals instead of potions. Moments like this were when she realized she really wasn’t home. She shook her head. “No, I’ve got an item, I’m fine. Dav?”
Dav shrugged. “I’m not feeling anything, but better safe than sorry I guess?”
Amy produced a second potion and moments later they were on their way back to the mansion that served as their base. Not long after they headed out, flames lit the sky in the distance. Sophia recognized one of the prearranged signals. Fortunately, it was that signal that said Samuel’s group was done for the night. Sophia was amazed they’d held out longer than she had; she hadn’t expected it to work out that well.
Liam waved at Sophia and her group as they passed through the archways that more or less formed the border with corpsevine territory. He looked exhausted but he was clearly watching their retreat, in case Samuel and Essia came back at a run. That wasn’t part of Sophia’s plan, but she had to admit that it was a good idea, despite how tired they were.
The fact that both Amy and Dav needed to see Essia as soon as possible made it an even better idea, at least if Essia had any mana left. They might have to wait until after they reached the mansion if she didn’t, and Samuel’s group was definitely out there long enough for Essia to run out of mana. It was also getting to be daylight and the plan was to leave before the corpsevines’ activity picked up, so Essia might still have mana. Sophia couldn’t know.
Sophia made her way to Liam. “I guess the others aren’t back yet?”
Liam shook his head. “Should be close. You three going to stay here with me or head on to the base?”
Sophia glanced around and realized she couldn’t see either Eliah or Skarn. “Are you alone here?”
“Yeah,” Liam answered with a nod. “Skarn found a tree with his face, and Eliah … well, he’s not worth having around if Skarn is injured. It’s nothing serious, but we had to head back early so I figured I’d watch here. It’s better than watching Eliah fuss over Skarn.”
Sophia blinked. Liam’s words added an entirely new dimension to the relationship between Eliah and Skarn. She’d barely noticed Skarn as anything more than one of Samuel’s guards, but when she thought about it she realized that she couldn’t remember ever seeing one of them when the other wasn’t present. Admittedly, she probably wouldn’t have paid that much attention to Eliah if he hadn’t argued with Amy about heading into the West Conservatory as part of the Leveled Challenge.
“Might as well stay,” Dav rumbled from behind Sophia. “They should be here any moment. They shouldn’t have left you out here alone.”
“They didn’t notice,” Liam said with a slight grimace and a shrug. “It’s fine; their nightvision eyedrops wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway. Wait, is that Samuel? Why didn’t Essia heal him?”
Sophia turned to look. Samuel’s red hair made him easy to find, and once she found him she could see everyone else. Only Samuel seemed injured; he limped with the assistance of one of his guards while Essia followed closely behind them. They moved slowly, but they didn’t seem to have any corpsevine-infested monsters following them. That made it better than the retreat earlier in the day.
Samuel seemed pleased at first when he saw the people waiting for him, but the smile quickly flipped into a frown. “Where are Eliah and Skarn?”
“Back at the base,” Liam repeated. “Skarn found a tree with his face, Eliah’s taking care of him. What happened to you?”
Samuel snorted. “The last monster we saw was a mage. It could make stone spikes rise from the ground; one of them got my leg. Essia stopped the bleeding, but she doesn’t have the mana to do more than that. If you see any that look like vines imitating a skeleton, watch out.”
“I can bring out my healing beacon,” Dav offered. “It should be able to fix a leg injury.”
Samuel shook his head. “When we’re back at the base. It’s good that we have two healers.”
That reminded Sophia. “How much mana do you have left, Essia?”
“Not much,” the girl admitted. “Not enough to heal anything big.”
“Do you have enough to look for and cure toxins? Numbness and maybe paralysis, that’s what you said isn’t it?” Sophia looked towards Amy to make sure she remembered correctly.
“When we’re back at the base, unless it has to be handled now,” Samuel directed. “We’ll all be more comfortable there. What did you run into?”
“An imitation hedgehog,” Sophia started. Despite how slowly they moved, they reached the base and settled in to recover in the central room downstairs before Sophia was able to finish her story. Samuel didn’t react much to the news of the spike-throwing giant fake hedgehog, other than making sure Essia checked all Sophia as well as Dav and Amy and insisting that they remove all of the sticky barbed spikes, then burn them, so that they wouldn’t poison anyone else.
Samuel laughed when Essia muttered about Sophia and Dav not needing her help. He seemed even more amused by the fact that they retreated instead of killing the monster bear and suggested that they’d start with looking for it as a whole group that evening, before they split up again.