Chapter 73 Leaps and Bounds.
Keith spoke his chant calmly and moved the tip of his staff in a tight circular motion. The spell created a ring of fire that shot from both the floor and ceiling. The large monster tried to barrel through it as it hadn’t had any time to stop before becoming engulfed in flames and Isaac felt the swarm of dark creatures that controlled the mass lessen slightly. The smaller creatures were being cooked off and burnt flesh was left behind on the walls and floor as the monster went. The monster didn’t slow so Keith cut the power to his spell after a few seconds. He assumed that the monster was about to leave its area of effect if it hadn’t already and he didn’t have mana left to waste.
“That could have gone better.” Isaac stated. The damage done was noticeable but the monster hadn’t even slowed.
Keith sighed. “I would have preferred to disintegrate it but I didn’t have enough mana.” He confessed. “At best I can cast it three or four times a day.” He looked down at Isaac who was sitting a few feet from him. “I don’t suppose you could keep it busy for another eight hours or so could you?”
Isaac scoffed. “I would just go home at that point.” Isaac replied. “Watch it smash itself against Safeharbor’s walls for a while.” Isaac knew that it was an option but he would prefer to not have to run back to Safeharbor with a rolling and wiggling apocalypse trying to eat him the entire way. Jala and Alexander would make short work of it but that would be humiliating at best. Isaac was past the point of showing his irritation and anger at the monster. The longer it survived the closer Isaac got to going on a crusade against mushrooms, the mushroom kingdom, and mushroomancers.
Lenna got up and hopped down from the wagon. She drew her sword. “Two options.” She told Isaac. “We continue to drag this out and hope it dies before we reach Ben’s End or it eats us.” She lit her sword with the flames of her broken oath. “Or Perdition.”
“The first one.” Isaac told her sternly. “You are forbidden from using that spell.” He ordered.
Lenna was taken aback. Isaac never pulled rank on her. Normally it was directives from one partner to another or requests. This time it was different. Isaac hadn’t left any room to argue or even comment in response. It was clear that in that instance his words were final. Lenna didn’t want to use the spell but it was something that she had at her disposal. Even if he told her that she was forbidden from using the spell she still knew that he would prefer that she used the spell over dying but from his tone and set jaw she also knew that that was the only instance that he would forgive her for using it. “Understood.” She replied a little softer than usual.
“What is this, ‘Perdition’?” Keith asked.
“It doesn’t matter.” Isaac replied. “I’ll drop the tunnel on it before we resort to that.”
Keith and Wo Lu shared a look. They were both curious about the spell but neither of them were brave enough to risk pissing Isaac off over some mild curiosity. “How much damage has it taken at this point?” Wo Lu asked.
“Less than a quarter… maybe fifteen percent.” Isaac replied.
Lenna reached her palm out towards the monster. “Let my flames consume all before me.” She spoke and flames poured from her hand and washed over all of the outstretched tendrils that were reaching for Isaac even though he was still fifteen feet away.
Isaac teleported behind the monster and started pulling it away again. He came back a few minutes later. “I was wrong.” He told them. “I didn’t realize that it’s been dying slowly on its own.” He explained. “It’s only around twenty feet tall in ball form. It might just die on its own if we drop the tunnel on it.”
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“That has to be a last resort.” Wo Lu told him. “This is the main path.”
“Everyone here owes me a beer for this.” Keith spoke as the monster approached at sprinting speed. He reached into the bag on his hip and pulled out a potion that had a soft blue glow to it. He downed it in two deep swallows. “Command: Be Undone!” He told the monster with his staff pointing towards it. Branches of reality reached across the distance and a split second later a chunk of the monster was gone.
The monster stopped. It froze, sliding slightly from its momentum, but maintained shape. A two foot diameter half circle had been removed from the front of the monster. Keith pulled out another potion and drank that one to its completion. “Open gate to torment and fury.” He drew a line right in front of the monster as close to it as he could get. The front of the monster started sizzling and popping before bits of it started to slosh to the ground. It started to wiggle in place and spasm.
“It only knows how to go forwards. Retreat is not something it understands how to do yet.” Isaac commented. “Lenna, can you use a conjured weapon?”
Lenna looked back at him. “Probably.” She replied.
Isaac conjured a long spear out of shadows and handed it to her. “Smite it.” He told her.
Lenna grabbed Isaac’s shadowspear and focused her aura on it in the same way that she focused it on her sword and sure enough a dim flame raced along the haft and over the spearhead. “Understood.” She told him with her usual seriousness and determination. She started stabbing the flesh monster through the wall of flames over and over again. By the time she had stabbed it a dozen times it managed to start backing up without having to chase Isaac.
Keith knelt down. “I only had two mana potions.” He told Isaac. “I’m about to run out of mana again.”
“Just hold it for a little longer.” Isaac told the older man. The monster tried to start rolling backwards as it had lost enough of itself to form a fifteen foot tall ball and roll through the tunnel but the chitin rings from the Tunnel Horror were preventing that notion from becoming a reality. The monster shifted even as it sizzled and burned. Eventually it got the rings into a position that allowed it to roll and it started to move away. No sooner had it moved out of the wall of flames on its own accord did Keith collapse completely into the bed of the wagon.
“I need a drink.” He groaned with his face pressed against the cold wooden floor of the wagon..
Isaac handed him a waterskin. “Good job.” He told the older man.
Keith opened an eye at the waterskin. “Not that kind of drink.” He replied. “But thanks.”
The monster stopped as soon as the flames stopped like it was hesitating. With the fire gone it should have been able to chase after its meals again but the colony couldn’t seem to reach a consensus on whether or not retreat was still the best option. Lenna decided for them as she continued to press the assault with Isaac’s spear. She started to use her mana to leave burning wounds with each stab.
The monster finally started retreating for real but after another dozen feet it just, stopped. It had nowhere to go as its food source was what it was retreating from. After a few minutes it started to shake and spasm before it froze again. Isaac, Lenna, and Wo Lu had decided to stay off the wagon and keep an eye on the monster. “This thing is strange.” Isaac commented.
“Agreed.” Lenna replied.
“It’s unnatural.” Wo Lu said.
“Do we just wait and see what happens?” Isaac asked. “I think it can run out of power. I think when it was moving around it was burning through something, whether that is nutrients or mana I have no idea, but it was slowly killing itself.”
“No idea.” Wo Lu replied.
“Let’s wait.” Lenna said with a sigh. “Wo Lu, can you let the caravan know what’s happening.”
Wo Lu nodded. “I don’t think Keith is in any condition to talk.” He agreed and started jogging after the wagon train.
The caravan made camp in the cavern the experienced guard had mentioned. Isaac and Lenna moved as far from the monster as they could while still being able to see it before making their own little camp. Neither of them would sleep but Isaac at least wanted to be comfortable if they were going to be staking out a disgusting ball of flesh for the rest of the day. The ball didn’t move at all. A few hours later Isaac and Lenna went back to the caravan and used some of their extra water to wash Isaac’s face, hair, and hands of the Ori-Masa blood.
Luckily for Isaac he had a change of clothes. Unluckily for Isaac his armor was still covered in blood. He left it in his Inventory and hoped that he wouldn’t need it. “Better?” Lenna asked once Isaac was in clean clothes and not covered from head to toe in blood and guts anymore.
“By leaps and bounds.” He replied contentedly. Lenna suddenly froze and flexed her aura with extreme prejudice. “What happened?” Isaac asked.
“Scrying again.” She told him. “This one felt different.”
“How so?” Isaac questioned.
“It felt like someone else. Everyone’s magic has its own feel to it.” She explained. “This didn’t feel like whoever cast it on me before.”
Isaac frowned and voiced his mind: “I don’t know if that is a good or bad sign.”
Lenna shook her head. “We can worry about it when we are back in Safeharbor.” She told him. They were on a mission and immediate threats were more important than potential ones.