Chapter 72 - Make the Call
Geddon did, indeed, love it. He loved his new toy so much, he hadn’t stopped using it for the past twenty-four hours, and there was no sign he would ever tire. The sound of ravenous metal on poor, defenseless forest flora was now the discordant choir to which I worked. The sound itself wasn’t loud, per se, just a sort of an irregular, buzzing hum that could easily fall into the background of your mind if you were not cursed with the knowledge of what the thing was capable of.
The old phrase ‘double edged sword’ was woefully inadequate in describing what I’d created.
The chainsaw sword… more like a greatsword, actually, was, by far, the most dangerous thing I’d ever made. On its face, the idea was ridiculous, a blade in constant motion, so sharp it could cut most anything. So tempermental you couldn’t let it anywhere near your own body, your clothes, your armor, allies, enemies, or the ground, lest it shoot off in a random direction and cut something you really didn’t want cut.
Six foot long from pommel to tip, thick as my palm in width, entirely steel, and fit with a battery that could blow a person sized crater in whatever ground was unfortunate enough to be under it, the two-handed greatsword was a cumbersome monster, but the big leori absolutely adored it. Even now he was hacking away at our perimeter, making the undercuts in the trunks that would have the giant trees fall in the proper direction when the time came to bring them down. Last time I’d seen Geddon, his mane was full of sawdust, and his eyes were red and puffy from contact with the stuff over a long period of time.
You have created Air Propelled Mortar Tube
2,480 experience gained. (620 base, 620 New Design, 1,240 Doing Your Part bonus)
I breathed out as the molecules of the final metal seam of my current project intertwined with one another, and the many disparate pieces finally became one. My tired eyes drifted in and out of focus, turning the knobby cylinder of metal into an indistinct blob, one I’d been staring at for… how long was it now? I’d gone through something like half of our firewood while I worked as well as countless cups of Samila’s tea, but there always seemed to be more to do.
We weren’t ready. I’d stop when we were ready.
I stood up from my little stool, the muscles in my neck, shoulders, and back protesting at moving after so long hunched over and tensed. Reaching down, I grabbed my pail of spring water and took a couple sips before dumping the rest of it over my head. The chill wasn’t uncomfortable to my Exotic body, but I certainly felt it. The ghost of a shiver passed through my me, and I felt my mind clear somewhat. At some point, little rituals like this helped me stay alert better than the tea did with the added bonus requiring fewer bathroom breaks.
Efficiency. That was the word I’d been forced to tattoo into my brain.
Blinking the water out of my eyes, I stretched and let my eyes drift. It was midday, thereabouts, judging by the thinness of the fog and how green the canopy was overhead.
*tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick*
A spherical bodied worker drone clicked over the now wet floor of my ‘workshop,’ the coin-sized construct’s six articulated limbs scraping at the petrified wood with Imbued fluidity, using its bristly, gripping hairs to sweep little particulates into a neat pile next to my workbench. Soon, once it had a sufficiently large pile, it would start shuffling the whole thing toward the entrance of the fortress and out of sight. Our floor, now mostly visible at least in the general vicinity of my work area, was an interesting blend of yellows, browns, reds, and grays that swirled into one another where one ancient tree ended and the others began, previously invisible under milenia of dirt and debris.
I could hear another worker doing its thing up above me as well, on the once bark ramparts that overlooked the rest of the forest. The construct’s limbs scraped over the stone in a quiet but distinctive way that itched at one’s ears. There would be quite a few more of the little drones out there somewhere, doing their thing and waiting to be brought back to their dock to be reprogrammed for logging duty. I really should have built in some kind of ‘return to base’ sort of command, but other than tracking them down and doing it myself, I had no way of getting the entire population on their next task.
*PAK*
A round of the new smart ammo dropped from a casting bowl on the shelf to my left to roll down the tin chute and into the magazine loading hopper. The loader itself hummed as it stirred the little bits inside until they fit into the feeder at the bottom, while the loading piston snapped another round into one of the old fan magazines.
Getting up on my tiptoes to check the levels in the bowl, I found it nearly empty of scrap metal, and I made a mental note to summon more of my stash later this evening, maybe during mealtime. I was down to the copper alloys now, my iron and steel stores nearly depleted aside from a few big pieces I was saving for turret components. Making things like brass into rounds wasn’t ideal. They’d deform more easily upon impact, meaning I’d get one, maybe two launches out of them before they were useless. That didn’t mean they weren’t needed, though.
Every bullet was going to be precious when the time came, irreplaceable. I’d foreseen it when I’d first sat down at my workbench. That’s where the idea for the worker drones came in, their casting bowl being the first new thing I’d laid out in our new ‘manufacturing area.’
*PAK* *PAK*
Another two rounds from two other bowls dropped into the chute. I had five of them going at once, producing bullets, but I still wasn't’ satisfied with the throughput. Once the lead started flying, attrition was going to be inevitable, and damaged bullets were going to need to go back into the casting bowls for re-Shaping. When that time came, I’d rather have more bowls than I needed and hands to fill them. I also needed to work out some kind of filtering system that sorted the damaged rounds from the healthy ones.
That was where the worker drones were going to really show their worth. Though the little dudes weren’t much use now, I was banking on my prioritization of their creation being vindicated soon.
At least their development had pushed me over the crest of a particular hill.
Split Mind is now level 11.
Imbue is now level 5.
Upgrade paths available:
Efficiency Upgrade
Solid State
Intuitive
Automate is now level 5+.
Upgrade paths available:
Efficiency Upgrade
Specialized Automation
Aura Extension
These upgrades had been a long time coming.
I’d already taken one efficiency upgrade to Imbue when Split Mind had hit 10, and I wasn’t opposed to taking another. I’d already noticed a huge difference when using Automate in how much cheaper it was, not enough to actually use the word “cheap” but certainly less like turning my body inside out and squeezing the mana from my internal organs.
‘Intuitive’ was vague in its description, but the gist of the upgrade was that I would be able to make little adjustments to the Imbued metal’s instructions on the fly, though nothing too big. It would be good for fine tuning my designs without having to start over and re-do the whole thing every time. A time saver, for sure, but not one I necessarily needed. I was almost sure I could use my existing abilities to do something similar.
Solid State was what I ended up choosing in the end.
Solid State: Imbued mana is now crystalized, slightly increasing mana cost, moderately increasing strength, and greatly increasing resistance to degradation, dispersal and tampering.
While the skill seemed okay on its face, the information the System gave me through context was even more valuable. Apparently, my mana could be tampered with. Good to know. I’d just add that the paranoia pile to be sorted later.
The next choice was easier.
Specialized Automation: Increase speed, strength, and efficiency of your Automated creations given simple programming. This bonus decreases and eventually becomes a penalty as programmed instructions for a single construct grow more complex.
The funny thing was that I was already kind of doing what Specialized Automation wanted me to do. None of my creations were “complex” in the way the System considered them. Maybe it came from my background of having been a mechanic as opposed to an engineer or a hacker or something, but I was always attracted to the idea that any given part of a machine should do its job well and reliably before it tried to do anything else. Simplicity bred efficiency (there was that word again), and if you got enough simple, efficient things together, they could do some damned complex stuff anyway.
My turrets had a wafer ‘brain’ that functioned as their power source and decision maker, but in the end, they just boiled down to sending signals on when to do certain things, like firing when the barrel was pointed at a valid target. The rest of the machine, from the aiming arms to the trigger to the magazines were already Automated individually to do one thing really well. Specialized Automation encouraged this kind of thing, required it almost, and it was already the way I worked, making it a straight upgrade for most projects.
The worker drones took a hit on their mana cost, but it was a small one. Their programming boiled down to “walk, find thing, move thing,” and that seemed to be just on the other side of the line the System had drawn between complex and simple.
My choice meant I wouldn’t be creating sentient robots anytime soon, but I wasn’t sure that was a good idea anyway.
“He’s talking about naming it Organ Grinder, Ryan,” Samila groaned from behind me. She stood there in the natural doorway to the fortress, a coil of rope looped around a pair of sturdy timbers, sharpened at the ends that would serve as our makeshift gate in the near future. A quick motion with her hand and a long pull on the knot, and she turned away, satisfied. Her clothes were filthy, and her blue skin was mottled with brown streaks of mud with tiny, navy blue scratches down one cheek.
“Organ Grinder. Like he’s making sausage,” she continued, disgust plain on her face. “I love him, but he might just be the most socially maladjusted person I’ve ever met outside of you.”
I tried not to let the blow to my ego show on my face. “Give him some credit,” I allowed jokingly. “It’s a pun. Musical instrument and messy food processor in one. It’s fitting, kind of.”
“That’s not a pun,” Sissa said, furrowing her eyebrows as she crouched down next to the little spring in the middle of the floor and wetted a cloth to run it over her head and neck. “Is this another translation magic thing? How did those words end up sounding the same in your language?”
“English is- uh- borrowed from lots of different places,” I replied. Damn. I’d never be able to trust puns again. Another thing the System had taken from me.
“I assume you mean ‘borrowed’ the same way Bole does.”
“How dare you,” I said defensively before the words fully sank in. Then I was forced to wobble my head side to side and amend my statement.“Yeah. Now that you mention it, I probably mean it a lot like Bole would.”
One of the worker drones, skittered down from the ceiling above my head, plopping down to the workbench before righting itself. It was carrying another of its kind, dragging it more like with its back legs. The other drone was inert, simply a sphere with little folded nubs that turned into the legs when it had power. This one must have worked itself until it had zero charge. The powered drone dragged its friend over to the side of my work area until the two teetered on the edge, and then it let go, dropping the dead drone into the drone production hopper. Three other dead drones sat there inside the thing among all the scrap, in the process of being re-Shaped and re-Automated. Then the live drone skittered off to do its own thing, probably wood cutting.
Samila spared a glance over at the hopper, pursing her lips. “It’s disturbing every time I see it,” she said. “Why not just give them a power source like you do your bowls?”
I shrugged. “I haven’t worked out how to stop the collectors just yet. With normal batteries, I’d just hook up a detection and protection circuit to it, but with these- I have no way to cut off the charging process. Let’s say a worker loses a couple legs out there, and it can’t come home. Given enough time, it just turns into a landmine. Plus, having them brought back like this has the added benefit of letting me reprogram them through the casting bowl, so I only have to do the costly spell-work once. Saves me time to work on other stuff.”
“Is that why we still have a couple roaming around the castle uselessly sweeping floors?” she asked.
“They’ll make it back to the casting bowl eventually,” I assured her defensively. “The round of cleaning was a test. I couldn’t have them all out there chewing through trees unless I knew they were working right and there were enough of them. I had to get it to the point where the system could perpetuate itself.”
“Shoemaking,” Samila said with a frown and little knowing nod.
“Uh. Bootstrapping, actually.”
“That’s exactly what I said.”
A whistle sounded out from above us, mimicking a bird call perfectly. There were no birds in the forest right now, however.
I took a handful of steps away from my work area to get out from under the roof and into the open air of the courtyard. My gaze drifted up to the battlements where Trix sat with his rifle shouldered and looking down the sights.
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“What is it?” Samila asked, drawing up beside me, a hand resting on the pommel of her sword.
“Hard to tell,” Trix called. He didn’t turn to address us, never turning away from his rifle or letting his aim waver. “The scouts are returning with great haste. Movement behind them. Lots of movement.”
My stomach did a little backflip. “Scourge?” I asked.
“I can’t tell. Not goblins or Returned. I can say that much.”
I looked over at Samila, already summoning the mask from spatial storage. Better safe than sorry.
Samila shook her head. “We’re not ready,” she told the both of us.
“I am holding my fire,” Trix replied. “But if we do not intervene now, they will most likely be overtaken.”
I called up the Volatility triggers on the turrets perched on that side of the fort, but Samila, probably sensing my intention or maybe knowing me too well, grabbed me by the shoulders.
“Hey. Hey!,” Samila practically shouted, holding my gaze for a long second to make sure I stood still and listened. “No firearms. We’re not ready.”
My mind conjured an image of Bole and Beedy running for their lives from a horde of monsters, the fort in sight, so close but so far away. Then the two of them are brought down and ripped apart while we all watch. I imagined watching that, thinking about how I could have done something to stop it.
My jaw clenched, and I could feel my teeth grinding against one another.
“Hey!” Samila called again, this time more gently, inching closer to my face until her eyes took up most of my field of vision. “Look at me. Don’t do it. Not yet. Remember why we’re here and what we need to do. Trust us to handle this one. Trust me at least.”
Seconds ticked by. Important seconds she didn’t need to waste reining me in.
“Time’s wasting,” I said. It was as close to a concession as I was capable just now.
She frowned, not quite satisfied with my answer, but she didn’t waste any more time. She took off for the gate, scooping up her shield from the floor in the process.
Before she was even out of sight, I was already climbing up the rudimentary stone stairs, slipping my mask over my face as I crested the lip of our ‘battlements’ that were in reality just a semi-level ring of carved stone about four feet from edge to edge, formerly the bark part of the petrified trees. It wasn’t fun to walk on, but a high(ish) Body score helped with that.
At the top of the stairs, a pair of inactive kinetic turrets sat low on the floor, their legs folded in on themselves and their housings resting directly on the stone to give them a low profile. I called their activation Triggers up specifically and kept them at the forefront of my mind just in case.
The area around the fort had changed quite a bit since I’d entered my work fugue. All the brush and scrub within fifty yards of our walls had been cleared away and left as little clusters of tripping stumps. Mangled vines and branches littered the ground and formed a carpet of new over all the old and rotting stuff that made up the soil. The beginnings of a trench, only a quarter circle long just now, snaked its way around the fort while sharpened stakes protruded from the bank of it, pointed outward. The smell of freshly cut wood drifted in the air, clashing with the wet and dank of the forest floor.
Geddon, Samila, and Sissa were already forming up down below and jogging together, none of them in their armor but all with their swords drawn. They ran toward two vague humanoid figures in the distance. The two were running with reckless abandon, leaping over fallen branches and vanishing briefly below dips in the terrain. It was a frantic, desperate way they moved.
I saw one of them fall, and the other was forced to stop and go back to help.
Meanwhile, something seethed behind them, something too distant for me to make out as more than a general impression of movement.
“Trix?” I asked, looking to my left to find the Vulpa there, his eye glamor spell he was using to enhance his vision even now tempting me to give his fur a little stroke. It would be so soft, I was sure.
“Not sure yet,” he answered. “Whatever it is that is following them is numerous but not a full horde as we saw in the city. I can see a beginning and end to it. They don’t move like- Wait. Yes. As I thought. These are beasts. Running on six- no, eight legs.”
Spiders.
Spiders were ambush predators. That was nearly universal. They were all explosive speed and power with venom to subdue and webs to entangle and…
“We have to assume they’re touched, Trix,” I said. “This isn’t natural.”
“Agreed. All the more reason for you to stay here and not reveal yourself,” Trix replied, sparing a cautious glance over to me. Damn. Did no one trust me to do the smart thing for once?
One of the running figures… Bole maybe, got an arm under the taller of the two and helped him hobble along. Beedy seemed to limp forward, favoring his left side. I couldn’t see his face well enough to be sure, but I imagined a pained look on his face judging by how his body reacted to movement.
The spiders drew closer. Any moment now, they’d be within pouncing distance. I should know, I’d been pounced by Ralqir’s giant spiders before. I suppressed a shudder at the memory.
The wedge of church guards now ran full speed out to meet them. At some point they were joined by the three goblins who struggled to keep up with the talk folks’ pace, but they gave it their all, loosely following the formation with spears held high.
The spiders were closer.
“They’re not going to make it,” I decided out loud, looking over at the inactive turrets. At this distance, they wouldn’t be very accurate, but with the enemy massed like that, they didn’t have to be. I could buy them time at least. We’d be drowning in scourge within a day, but the two scouts would be alive.
But we weren’t ready. Could I get us ready in that time? Could we afford to kick off early? There was no way to know.
My fingers twitched, and the muscles in my neck tightened as I made the calculations and hated what I came up with. We had to do something, though.
“Trix, we made your rifle relatively quiet-” I began.
I didn’t get to give the full order. My designated shootyfox was already on it, had probably already been squeezing the trigger even as I dithered. He’d never hang one of our own out to dry, bless him. Trix’s rifle barked three times, splitting the relative silence. The report was quiet by my standards but unpleasantly sharp and sudden compared to anything else, amplified by the stone floors and walls of the courtyard. It echoed infinite times from every single massive tree trunk in the area.
At least it wasn’t as distinctive as the turrets.
Trix shifted his shoulders and got down low, resting the barrel of the rifle on an odd lump in the petrified bark, settling himself for more sustained fire. Then he opened up with rapid, single, precise shots, once every second like the beat of a metronome. Tiny, needle rounds zipped through the air, too small and fast to actually see with the naked eye but with plenty of ballistic power.
I saw two spiders roll and flail as Trix’s needles hit them, their legs curling in on themselves and thrashing at the dirt as the projectiles pierced their exoskeletons and did untold damage to their insides. The others climbed over their still twitching corpses, heedless of the casualties they were taking.
*Crack* *Crack* *Crack*
Another spider, about to spring at the men’s backs, stopped suddenly and shrank back, its forelegs coming up to shield its face and the slits that were its eyes. Yes, now that they drew closer, I recognized these things.
Armor spiders.
*Crack* *Crack*
Trix’s efforts slowed the chasers or perhaps disincentivized them to pull ahead of the pack, but it wasn’t enough. Two hundred yards out from our position, Bole and Beedy were forced to stop and draw steel. Bole seemed to be in a much better state than his partner, drawing both of his swords and stepping in front of Beedy protectively, shouting something I couldn’t understand from this distance. Meanwhile, Beedy had his sword out and in a lazy guard, but he was heavily favoring his left side. Even from here, I could see his shoulders rising and falling with his ragged breaths.
The monsters pounced seconds before our reinforcements could get there. Three spiders took to the air, springing forward, legs out wide, coming down in a hollow arc flanking the two beleaguered men.
Bole sprang back and let the spider closest to him land before dashing back in to slash at an exposed leg joint and followed up with a stab into the side of the monster’s head, dropping it instantly. At the same time, Beedy feinted with a seemingly timid thrust but then severed another spider’s leg with the return slash. Unfortunately, the monster didn’t respond to the pain with anything other than a forward charge.
Beedy’s spider slammed into both of the men, using its mass to great effect to knock them both from their feet. Beedy ended up under the creature with his sword in the thing’s mouth, while Bole rolled to his feet and whipped his blade at the previously unengaged spider’s eyes before it could capitalize on their weakness. The rest of the swarm, twenty strong, closed in around the fight, forming a familiar kill circle that shrunk as the prey’s attention was drawn elsewhere.
Trix’s rifle spat, and the spider on top of Beedy clawed at its back as a rapidfire quartet of bullets stippled a line down its carapace. Beedy used the opening to get a kick at the spider’s abdomen with his good leg, gaining some precious space.
Then Geddon, Samila, Sissa, and the goblins slammed into the circle of many legs with their countercharge.
None of them had a chance to put on their armor, and only the dragonkin had their shields. That didn’t make them hesitate in the slightest, running full speed into the backs of the monsters.
Geddon was at the head of the charge making use of his new sword. The man loved his new sword, had loved it since the morning I’d handed it to him.
—---------------------
“You made me a mighty blade, my friend. Look at the size! You remembered!” Geddon had gasped with awe as I lifted the thing from my workbench, careful to not let the teeth brush against my skin.
“Not just a big sword,” I said, smiling nervously as I reached down and thumbed the safety release on the battery. Then I turned the pommel 180 degrees until I felt the mechanism inside click into place, the connection between the power supply and the rest of the machine snapping together and power rushing into the internals. There was a barely perceptible sort of tingle I could feel in my hands, probably not one anyone else could feel, since it was my mana bouncing around in there.
Activation complete, I brought my upper hand down to the crossguard and carefully squeezed the throttle trigger. The action was instantaneous. The 300 fingernail-sized, triangular teeth on the edge of the blade became a blurry line of buzzing death, whizzing, whistling as they sliced at the air.
It was surprisingly quiet, actually, for a machine with so many moving parts. Without the need for a combustion motor, measurements precise at the molecular level and a healthy dose of Willing Edge in strategic places to prevent parts grinding together, the chains inside the gutter of the blade simply zipped around, practically frictionless, at ridiculous speed. The weapon hummed menacingly in my hands, vibrating with deadly potential that I knew was just a touch from becoming realized.
When I let go, the chains halted instantly with a *snap* as the piston Triggers stopped pumping the crankshaft, and I hurriedly turned the pommel again to kill the power. No need to keep it running longer than was strictly necessary and risk losing my only remaining arm. If my math was correct, every tooth, in the full second I engaged the throttle, made 16 full trips around the track on the edge of the blade.
Geddon was a kid in a candy store, halfway between doing a little dance and standing at attention. He didn’t reach out or ask to take the sword, but his eyes were wide with anticipation, and his hands were held tightly down at his sides as if a wrong move on his part would jeopardize his chance at getting to hold his new weapon.
“Listen, big guy,” I began, looking up into the grinning face of my big leori friend. “You’re a professional. You know your swords and all that. But I feel a certain duty to inform you of just how dangerous this thing is.” Some of this was going to fly over his head, but I felt the need to impress upon him how it worked anyway.
“There’s a reciprocating Trigger here in the handle. It’s attached to a crankshaft that keeps the chains moving. Mana flows from here,” I said, pointing at the half circle shaped, nickel-cobalt construct that was the pommel, one of my Volatility batteries. “It supplies power to the engine that moves the chain and fuels the maintenance spells. If it ever starts to glow purple, just run the sword on full throttle for as long as it takes. Gently. Very gently. There is a- uh- slight risk of explosive disassembly if you’re not very gentle.”
I swallowed uncomfortably, holding the weapon by the crossguard and pointing to the blade track. “The teeth are sharp enough to split hairs and then split those split hairs. Some swords are good at cutting, but this thing… It’s evil. If I were back home, they’d take me to jail just for conceiving of the thing. It’ll chew through anything softer than itself. Well, actually, there’s a spell being refreshed on each tooth to keep their edges every time they enter the crossguard, so the list of things this sword won’t cut is very short.”
“A legendary blade, my friend,” Geddon breathed as I finally handed the sword to him. He wrapped a giant fist around the handle, flexing his fingers and allowing it to settle. It looked fitted for his hand, though it would most likely be uncomfortable and dangerous for anyone smaller than him to hold. I’d had to fit the moving parts somewhere.
“Have you named it?” Geddon asked, unable to take his eyes from his new toy.
“What? No. Listen. There’s a reason no one makes these things, especially for combat. When you hit something hard with the throttle open, this thing is going to buck like a Bray Knight, and if you don’t respect it, you’re going to be known as Geddon the Stumpy.”
“I will limit my dismemberment to others, Ryan. I promise,” Geddon tried to assure me, even going so far as to take his eyes away from the sword to smile at me. “And you don’t need to tell me to respect a blade.”
—--------------
Charging directly into the backs of the spiders, Geddon, with his six foot slab of gray death held out to his side with one hand, shoulder charged the nearest monster, lifting it up on its side and exposing its belly. The throttle on the chain sword buzzed, and Geddon, using the weight of the monster, rebounded off its body and brought the blurring blade around in an almost casual flick of the wrist.
The carapace of the armor spider parted cleanly, but that was all I could see before a cloud of aerosolized goo and ichor exploded from the creature and obscured everything else. The spider, suddenly losing all interest in everything other than holding its organs inside its own body, got down low to the ground and twitched as its legs curled in to hold its abdomen together.
However, Geddon was already on to the next fight. The following blow from the chain sword came down on the back of another monster engaged with Bole. The blade met the armor of the spider with a *ching* halting the blow for a mere fraction of a second before the teeth bit into the hard metal of the carapace, pulling itself forward along the monster’s back. Instead of fighting the sword’s pull, Geddon, in the most disturbing display of swordsmanship I’d seen to date, used the chainsword’s irresistible pull and allowed himself to be moved, surging forward along with the blade fluidly, even bringing his left hand down to apply additional pressure as his body was drawn forward.
The result was a sort of “unzipping” of the spider’s back, from its abdomen all the way to its head, and Geddon followed along behind his sword, his body sliding through the mess until he was on the other side, tucking his shoulder and rolling over his blade and to his feet with the grace of a dancer. It was as if he’d used a movement ability, it had happened so fast. The creature was close to bisected by the time Geddon’s thrust was done, and the sword was back under control. Or maybe the sword was under control the whole time, and Geddon was a damned genius with cutting instruments.
The hole in the spiders’ perimeter Geddon had made, the dragonkin exploited, hacking at legs, using their shields to block visor slits before crippling their opponents with quick slashes and thrusts. The women worked together like they’d been born to do so, and no spider could come between them.
Meanwhile, while the spiders were concerned with the tall folk, the goblins went wild stabbing with their spears anywhere the monsters didn’t have armor. Tiba, spry as she was, lept up onto the back of a particularly slow monster and seemed to plant herself, using the creature’s back as a platform to thrust at its friends as the lumbering arachnid turned ponderously and attempted to shake the goblin queen off.
Careful, precise rifle shots caught spiders in the joints where their legs and torsos joined, bullets sometimes slipping into the gap between the thorax and “head” or whatever spiders had in their place.
Still, it was a harrowing thing, watching the others fight in my stead. One wrong move meant disaster, and all I could do was watch. My breaths were rapid, and my hands trembled. I worried for them all. I wanted to be out there. I could help end this right now before the worst could happen, but if I went loud, I’d give away the game too early and risk us all.
The spiders quickly learned to give Geddon his space, retreating from wherever the big man and his screeching death blade chose to go. However, there wasn’t much they could do to stop him from catching them one by one. The explosive power the leori had in his legs gave him the ability to leap from one fight to the next to land among the enemy and down one before the rest could react. Geddon was breathing hard, his chest pumping like bellows, but even from here, I could see the huge grin on his face despite the coating of ichor that covered the rest of him.
Finally, the remaining dozen spiders got the picture and changed tactics. They charged, hoping to use their numbers to bring someone down before they could be separated and slain. Unfortunately for them, they charged the group after they’d formed back up, Geddon at the front, shield guards on the sides, and the goblins and rogues in the middle.
The resulting bloodbath and Geddon’s joyous laughter was something I’d hear in my nightmares, but I nurtured the small hope that the scourge had similar dreams from here on out.
When the last spider fell, a hush fell over the forest once more.
I knew it wouldn’t last.
I’d had Trix use his rifle to buy our people time. The weapon wasn’t as loud or distinctive as one of my turrets, but it was probably enough to pique the enemy’s curiosity. They’d send scouts, and we didn’t have the capability of killing them all before my identity was discovered.
The clock was now ticking.
“Trix!” Samila shouted. She was on her knees, hunched over something, doing something with her hands. Bole was down there next to her, frantically grasping at something. As I watched, Samila ripped a long piece of dirty fabric from her shirt and brought it around to-
Trix shouldered his weapon and took off like a shot, scrabbling down the outside wall and using his claws to slide down the petrified roots on all fours. Then he was sprinting away, toward the site of the battle.
Seven people. I counted seven. Someone was down.
Beedy was down. He was the only one I couldn’t see. He was down and he wasn’t moving.
No. Fucking no. No. No. Not again.
I’d made the wrong call.