Chapter 47

I punched to my left reflexively at a sudden movement, and felt bones cave around the strike as a Boarfiend stumbled away, its’ face dented with the outline of my fist. I kicked backward at the vines still trying to entangle my legs, allowing a little flame to seep out around me and burn away anything that hadn’t quite gotten a grip on me. I twisted with the motion and felt a tearing sensation as more of the slender vines were pulled up from the dirt, roots shredding apart under the force of my movement. I chopped my hand behind me, a wide fan-shaped blaze of fire cutting through what remained of them. Off-balance, a lunging Serpanther landed on my chest, front paws shredding into my robe and rending the flesh beneath, barely fighting to keep my head away from its’ immense fangs. With my attributes as high as they were, I hardly even needed my abilities to keep back the tide of creatures, but I had to keep an eye to both my stamina and my magic; the nonstop assault of beasts and plants was pressing me further and further onto the defensive, unable to catch my breath unless I used my fire nova attack to burn away everything around me; a taxing attack that I could only do very occasionally, my mana dipping dangerously low whenever I did, and the hardier beasts attacking as if they knew it, too.

I fought to clear a little space around myself, carefully lunging toward a gap between two attackers and into the sinkhole cleared by the death of a Hydra Bush. I took a deep breath and tucked my head between my shoulders as I flipped up the hood of my new cloak, hitting the dirt like water and spearing through it. I felt roots shifting at my presence as if uncertain, little fish darting out of the way of a strange predator. As strange as it felt, I scooped into the dirt, swimming blindly forward until my chest began to ache, clawing my way upward. My arms trembled with the urge to breathe, even knowing that my mouth would fill with dirt if I did. I struck a cluster of roots, large and gnarled, too dense to push through, and shoved off, trying to find my way around it. Disoriented, I clawed at the ground and pushed forward, trusting to my sense of direction to keep myself pointed the right way, toward air and light.

When I emerged from the dirt like a breaching whale, I was shocked as I was suddenly pulled forward, thrown into the air –

Only to realize, in my disorientation, I had dug downward and breached into some sort of cave belowground. I tumbled to the floor, landing heavily on my face and chest. My robes were shredded, hanging from me in tatters as they struggled to knit themselves back together. My chest heaved for breath, lungs aching from the strain of holding my breath for so long. I must’ve been underground for four or five minutes, swimming through dirt and mud, even my heightened constitution barely enough to keep me going. The cloak hanging on my back was hot, the edges of it shining to my mana sight, the power within the weave stressed under high demand. I spat out a small amount of dirt, dragging myself to a sitting position in the tunnel as I tried to get my bearings. I held up my left hand, conjuring a small candleflame to hang over my shoulder, illuminating my surroundings with a dull, fitful light. When I saw my immediate surroundings were clear, I leaned back against the dirt wall of the cave to rest for a moment, trying to slow my labored breathing back into something resembling normalcy.

The winding tunnel ran off in two directions, narrowing to my right and widening to my left, no hint of light or movement in either direction. Not wanting to become trapped in a narrow space – swimming through the dirt had left me feeling oddly claustrophobic – I moved to my left, eyes carefully sweeping the darkness ahead. Here and there roots poked through from above, a thin net of them keeping the mostly-dirt ceiling suspended overhead. The small roots twisted as I passed as if tiny eyes, watching my progress through the tunnel. It widened out to a space perhaps fifteen or twenty feet wide, the uneven walls making it difficult to gauge distances properly. The air was close, but not stale, and it was slightly cool, the air damp and rich with the smell of living earth. The lack of hostile attention had me wary and suspicious, nowhere in the tutorial barren entirely of threats. I was almost convinced there wasn’t any danger until I felt something brush against my shoulder.

I turned to glance behind me, hand ready to chop toward whatever was trying to sneak up behind me, only to see nothing in the space behind me. I heard a dry, raspy sound from somewhere nearby, but the sounds echoed oddly and I couldn’t place its’ source. I turned this way and that, swiping a hand over my shoulder to check for any injuries, only to feel a slightly stinging sticky wetness there; when I drew my hand back, I could see a thin sheen of slime clinging to my fingers, the skin already reddening and irritated from the contact. I grimaced, briefly focusing flames around my fingers to burn the slime away, and it ignited quickly, burning like kerosene, flaring up dazzlingly bright for a moment as it burned away.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

The sudden surge of bright light drew another hiss from somewhere close to me, and I felt another brush on my shoulder as something serpentine fell around my shoulders, trying to wrap around me. I reached up and grabbed at the oily-feeling snake, moving to yank it away, and instead felt it tighten its’ grip. Then it began to pull me upward.

Caught by the throat, my head was pulled back, looking up toward a small shape on the ceiling; it looked like a fat slug with multiple writhing bodies splitting off of it, a starfish set in bilious yellow and glistening with an oily sheen, the body trembling with effort as it heaved me upward with a long slimy appendage, the grip fastening tight around my throat and squeezing my breath off to a reedy whistle. “Oh fuck,” I gave a strangled curse, grabbing onto it with both hands and trying to tear it away, only belatedly remembering how the slime had ignited a moment before. I channeled flame into both of my hands, and the tongue-like mass of muscle ignited immediately, the flames rushing upward. When it struck the starfish slug above me, the body trembled for a moment, convulsively pulling me in, and then it burst like an overripe fruit, showering me in clinging acidic gore. The tentacle-like appendage kept dragging at me, however, and as I neared where the body had been, I could see into a deep, tooth-lined maw set into the ceiling, the body going farther up into the soil than I had expected. I screamed as the deflated slug-like sacs around the mouth distended like lips, trying to draw me upward into its’ grip, and reflexively poured a stream of fire into the hole above, a fireball following as closely as I could manage it.

As if choking on the blast, the whole visible throat spread above me convulsed, and the tentacle released me, hurling me downward with a sudden and savage violence. I coughed and gagged as I finally regained the ability to breathe, landing in a crumpled heap on the floor, bouncing once and then rolling a few feet farther before I came to a stop, staring up into a horizontal line of more than a dozen tiny eyes, each perhaps the diameter of a dime, centered with a single solid black pinprick pupil. I held still for an instant, fighting against the lizard-brain that compelled me to freeze, and light flared around me as I pulled flames to my hands. The fitful light revealed the form ahead of me: some horrifying cross of a spider and a crocodile, legs sprouting off its’ torso at varying angles, long claws sunk into the dirt around almost daintily, standing under the pressure of just its’ claw-like toes pressed into the soil. A long narrow mouth lined with triangular teeth opened wide, and it lunged forward, snapping shut on my left arm as I raised it to block, the hydraulic muscles around its’ jaw swelling as it clamped down with the force of a car crash. It advanced toward me with dainty-quick steps of it’s innumerable legs, bearing me down to the floor under its’ weight, the bones in my arm grinding as it wrenched them back and forth.

I screamed and drew back my right hand, the ring on my finger bursting to life with a blinding radiance, turning the firebolt in my hand into a churning blast of sunlight. Before I could even strike with it, the creature shrieked, mouth opening as it tried to back away from the agonizingly bright light, pupils contracting frantically in an effort to save itself from the momentary blindness that afflicted both of us. I held out my hands and began firing a torrent of firebolts into the space where it had stood, my aim inconsistent as every firebolt’s blazing trail overlapped in my vision, turning it into an endless display of fireworks. The creature let out an enormous, heaving snarl as it collapsed, body burning with an oily flame.

A harsh, dry rustle of wings was my only warning of the next attack, dozens of small, furry rodent-like bodies flying on faintly luminescent grey moth-like wings surrounded me, battering me with their bodies and trying to latch onto me with short, sharp claws, scratching and tearing at my chest. I tore them off of me, one by one, crushing them in my hands as I did so. An ugly haze of greyish dirt came off of each, filling the air with glittering light that caught and reflected my firebolts, turning every cast into a dazzling surge of light that reflected and refracted all over the cave like bits of mirrored glass. Another lengthy tongue lashed at me from above, and I grabbed onto it with my right forearm, left still broken and useless, igniting the sack of vile slime hanging from the ceiling. The starfish slug burst, showering me with flammable effluvia, and I ignited it on myself to burn away the creatures that were too-eagerly trying to bite and claw at my shoulders, the eye-stinging fumes from burning slime offset by the way it also drove back the moth-bats and their needle-like bites.

More eyes appeared in the darkness as if awaiting their turn, as the slime clinging to my body burned away in bright, painful patches and clinging, eye-watering acidic smoke.

“This is bullshit!” I snapped at the darkness, not expecting anyone to answer.

Distantly, a memory slid back into mind; an old movie about an arsonist firefighter and the way fire would eat up all the oxygen in the room, waiting for the chance to explode outward; but first, I’d have to find out if I could survive without oxygen. Somehow, I doubted I would like the answer very much at all.