For a long, terror-saturated moment, nothing happened.
Nick held his sword in front of him, fighting the urge to hyperventilate. His racing heart began to slow as a minute passed, followed by another. Maybe the exposure wasn’t long enough, or maybe there wasn’t anything slumbering below…
His thoughts were erased by a tsunami of terror when he heard chittering coming from below. A gnashing bark, growing louder as it rose through the soil, heading his way fast.
Shit. Oh fuck. He began to panic before forcing his thoughts into order, every scrap of concentration focused on living through this blunder. He tried and failed to summon his arctic clarity, arms shaking like branches in a hurricane. Nick took a deep breath and tried again, managing to summon a chill tendril of focus this time.
It was enough to ground his thoughts and keep him from freaking out, if only by a hair. What’s my best move? Should I run, or should I fight? He wasn’t sure which option was better, and he was running out of time. Something deadly was headed his way fast, but sprinting out into the open wasn’t any safer than staying where he was.
While Nick was terrified by the prospect of facing one of the pale horrors in combat, he decided to wait and see what he was dealing with.
If it was a hellgrub, he would stand his ground and pray that he could fight it off. If it was a larger swarmling, he would make a break for it and hope that he could find somewhere else to hide. He had no chance of fighting one of the mantises, let alone the elephant-sized horrors, and slim odds of surviving were better than none.
As the dreadful clamor grew louder in his ears, he could feel the ground shifting beneath his boots. Whatever was rising from the deep earth was breaking through the final feet of topsoil between itself and the floor of the building.
A handful of heartbeats later, the patch of bare earth began to sink, disappearing as a hole widened to take its place. Nick made a final review of his weapons and tactics as globs of dirt began flying into the air. It’s too small to be a mantis, he decided.
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I’m going to have to take my chances and try to kill it before it kills me. I need to fight in a way that won’t attract the attention of the swarmlings outside. While his odds of defeating a single hellgrub were less than stellar, his chances of fighting more than one monster at once were flat out zero.
At least his energetic reservoir was full, and his wand had all three charges. He considered casting some spells now, but he couldn’t afford to waste them if the creature could sense his mana. I need to save them for when it’s distracted, then land a critical blow.
Although he had watched them move when they took down the giant porcupine, Nick needed to know exactly what he was dealing with before meeting the creature in melee. To start the fight, he would try to keep some distance between them, until he came up with a plan.
He spent the final few seconds at his disposal surveying the contours and contents of the room, grabbing anything that looked like it would be good to throw without looking away from the widening hole. With his sword in one hand and a brick clasped in the other, Nick ducked behind a crumbling statue… just in time to watch a pale, chitinous body emerge from the dirt.
At a glance, he was certain that it was a grub after all. At least it’s not one of the big ones, he tried to calm his racing heart, willing himself to focus rather than giving in to his fear.
The instant that the hellgrub broke the surface, Nick lobbed his brick and stepped behind the statue. Thankfully, his aim was true. The ragged chunk of masonry struck the swarmling broadside, producing a dull thunk before falling to the ground.
The creature hissed and spun to face the direction the attack had come from, looking around as if it wasn’t quite certain what had just happened. Watching the swarmling’s movements, he was certain that the creature didn’t hunt by scent or sensing heat. If it did, it would have already found him.
Having seen how quickly the hellgrubs moved, he had no desire to fight one of the agile creatures up close unless he was left with no other choice. The rapid leaps and rushes would be hard to deal with in this enclosed space, and there was a good chance that it had other abilities as well.
Since it hadn’t spotted him yet, Nick changed his mind, deciding to open the fight with a spell after all. His best chance was to end things here and now by unleashing his most powerful ability, then follow up with his sword and wand if the spell wasn’t sufficient to kill the hellgrub in a single shot.