Sathera tumbled backward over the ground more times than she could count, as the world around her was nothing but a blur. After what felt like minutes of rotating but was probably only seconds, she found herself balancing on her shoulders as her momentum died, and she rolled back along her spine, her heels flopping against the floor, adding another dull ache to spike through her body. It felt like a wall of a house was swung and bashed into her front, leaving a pulsing bruise in its place.
But it was just pain. A sensation that had no place in a battle so long as nothing was damaged. And even if some body part was injured, the pain should only be acknowledged as a warning of a potential weakness that needed to be accounted for before discarding.
With a quick shake of her head, which was a mistake that did nothing to help, and a flex of her body to ensure everything was still working correctly, Sathera pivoted to her stomach and started carefully pushing herself to her feet so as to not fall over.
Sathera's vision was swimming as it went in and out of focus, distorting the shadows below her body. It would make finding where her sword ended up nearly impossible, but she needed her weapon back now, not in a few moments when her eyes cleared. She could have hung onto it, but holding onto an unsheathed sword during an uncontrolled tumble was asking for the blade to slice your own throat.
Seeing nothing but bare casted earth between her hands, Sathera lifted her head slightly to search farther out, blinking in surprise as her eyes landed on something. She honestly didn't expect to find anything, but that's the power of positivity!
As long as you try while hoping for the best, good things will eventually happen. You just can't be devastated when things end up going wrong.
The torch was only a few yards from her, lying in one of the grooves gouged into the ground. It still provided light to most of the room, but there were far more shadows shrouding the earth than when it was being held… Making searching for her sword an act of futility.
Getting to her feet while only swaying slightly, Sathera's head jerked to the side, taking her eyes from the ground as she heard Joxin message her, "Catch!". Sticking out her right hand and forcing a tendril through it, Sathera coiled the tendril around his sword's hilt and guided it into her hand without looking.
Joxin might not be able to fight hand-to-hand effectively right now, but he could fire his bow well enough to put an arrow into someone twenty feet away. A point that was proven when she heard then saw two arrows sunk into two of the gangsters on the far side of the room.
The woman fell to the floor, clutching her thigh around the arrow shaft and screaming in pain. Sathera felt confused as she looked at the woman. Shouldn't she be able to handle pain better? How did she ever become a gang leader without fighting? Then, discarding the useless thoughts, she took in the room.
While the first arrow was a flesh wound, the second arrow buried itself deep in the chest of its target. The target being the large bearded leader, who was now clutching at the arrow sticking out of the side of his chest as he staggered backward. He only stopped when he hit the wall of the chamber before slumping down it, coughing up blood to cover the front of his clothes.
The traitors, who were also scattered around the edges of the room, looked to the two wounded — or probably just their leader — and started edging towards the tunnel they were heading to before. Fear was plastered on their faces, and their eyes were darting around like rats desperate for escape.
Moments before the first would break and flee, the bearded man coughed out from where his upper body sat in the shadows filling the room's edges. "Fools!" A slight sneer made it into his voice through his wet-sounding words, "You think we can retreat now? After what we have done? No, there will be no scurrying back to our dens, hoping to go unnoticed or be too big of an effort to dig out. It is either victory or dea—
The man's voice abruptly cut off, and everyone waited a moment, their gazes slowly changing to one of confusion. From his chest up, he was covered in shadows, but they could see enough that there was no justification for the abrupt stop in his speech.
Sathera could even feel confusion from the Union as Jim was just about to release another arrow at the man. There was no point in leaving a unifying presence in an enemy force when one or two arrows could take it off the field.
A voice that sounded like claws scraping over stone came from every direction, grinding its way into Sathera's ears while vibrating her bones with its wrath. "Worms! Insects! Traitors~!" The far side of the room was flooded with impenetrable shadows as the words rang out.
The deformed shadow appendages that looked like they once belonged to creatures rapidly pulled the shadows forward. All around the room, shadow hands, with any number of fingers, tore up the ground as they struck out of the blackness into a faltering torch light.
Sathera planted her legs and spun around, anticipating having to fight off the casting, only to be left flat-footed as that moment never came. None of the shadows came close to her or anyone else on her team. In fact, their side of the chamber didn't look like it had any of the shadow casting at all.
"I expected a betrayal. I even planned for it, but after our first meeting, I never thought you had enough of a collective spine to act." The voice sounded strained and kind of wet but still filled with unbridled wrath and power. "Betrayal and backstabbing are as common as breathing with my people, but so are retaliations of mutual destruction."
With his hissing last words, the claws dragged the shadows towards the traitors. This time, instead of just hands and arms reaching out of the darkness, whole bodies were diving out of their inky depths. Some appeared humanoid, but they were deformed and twisted. Horns or spikes sticking out of random places or longer arms than should be natural with multiple joints.
"We're innocent!" Screamed one of the men, looking around in panic.
"Have mercy!" Added the woman with an arrow sticking out of her leg.
The dark elf only vindictively laughed in pleasure as their pleas for life sounded before they began to turn into them begging for death, but he never stopped his casting. A pang of sympathy ran through Sathera at the sounds.
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Squashing the feeling a moment later, Sathera reminded herself that traitors deserved nothing but death, though she would have given them a quick one. Like they were physical walls, she stumbled back from their screams, huddling with Jim and Joxin at their entrance to the chamber, hoping to go unnoticed. All they could do was cower as seconds passed, their ears filled with unending, blood-curdling screams.
When the screams finally stopped, Sathera thought she was imagining it, as her ears were still ringing. It wasn't until the shadows began to bleed away that she was sure everything was over.
In the deathly silence, what greeted their eyes was blood.
The bodies of the traitors were torn limb from limb. There were countless scratches carved into every portion of their skin until Sathera could not find a section of unmarred flesh on any body part scattered around the room. And there were a lot of body parts.
Not that she tried all that hard to search for a clear patch of flesh on the body sections. It was just that not looking at them would force her to look at the ceiling, which was impract— wait, never mind, there is some up there, too. It was impossible to tell who was who, or even man from woman, as the only defining feature left on anything was that the pieces were made of meat and bone.
In some ironic twist or a sign of the dark elf's morbid humor, the torch had been picked up and stabbed into the torso placed in the center of the room, leaving it to stand tall in the center of all the death.
As the room appeared to go back to regular shadows, the dark elf appeared as if out of nowhere, with his back to them, looming over the torch and torso, looking down at the body.
"There's nothing more insulting than a sloppy betrayal, you vermin," the elf sneered.
Sathera's heart skipped a beat when the elf's unveiled body turned to face her. Only for a wave of relief to crash through her, causing her whole body to slump in place.
The first arrow Jim shot was sticking out of the elf's chest, and the entire front of his clothes was soaked in blood to the point it was dripping from the hem of his black tunic. The elf's face was blotchy gray, his lips were a bright blue, and his eyes were glazed over.
He took one step towards Sathera before collapsing to the ground, snapping the few inches of the arrow shaft sticking out of his chest as it hit the ground.
With the crack of the arrow shaft, the room settled into silence, none of the four living willing to say a word for a moment.
"I knew I didn't miss," Jim grumbled, breaking the silence.
"If you hit him in the heart, we would already be passed here by now," Bellous snapped from the rear, his mental voice filled with irritation and weariness.
"What are you grumbling about? Everything worked out great this way." Jim sent, sounding defensive. "The elf killed everyone in the room for us."
"Yeah, while I was doing the hard work of entertaining all these bastards back here." Bellous griped.
As Sathera moved to the table, she heard Jim mutter, "Should consider yourself lucky to entertain anyone with that face." Making her stifle a snicker to not hurt Bellous's feelings. But Bellous did have a very… homely face. Not that it was bad or anything.
Grabbing every paper on the desk and shoving them into a satchel hooked around the chair, Sathera spoke in the Union, "Bellous, pull back to the entrance to the room and hold it. Jim, grab the torch and search the room for exits. Joxin, lean-guard."
“Harhar… Sath." Joxin messaged in the mental network, his voice as dry as a desert breeze as amusement flooded from Jim and Bellous.
It was a matter of seconds for Sathera to gather the documents on the desktop and throw the bag over her shoulder. By then, Bellous had arrived after a sprint to guard the tunnel they came from.
She started throwing open drawers, looking for other documents, but only found a bottle, writing supplies, and a small bag of coins. Turning to the wall behind the desk, Sathera saw darkness, the light too faint to make anything out. But she doubted that they were holding anything. The whole room, lone desk, and chair gave Sathera the feeling of a convenient meeting place where the dark elf could do paperwork rather than a command center.
"Jim, how many exits do we have," Sathera asked.
"Three," Jim answered, "Four, if you count the one we came from."
"Anything special about them?" She questioned, not expecting anything. He did have a light now, so there could be something that they had all missed in the dark.
"One looks like it's angled down," Jim answered with relevant information, surprising her with mental images of each tunnel. "It's the tunnel next to where the criminals were headed. The other two look the sa—"
"Contact!" Bellous thundered in the mental network, cutting Jim off.
Sathera's mind raced at the information. They had a chance here. It would remain a fact that the only direction they could go, where they would know where the passage was leading them, was the one they arrived from. You know, the one where all of their pursuers were coming from.
If they could end the threat chasing them here, they could move with more caution and actually spend time scouting. It sounded good, and they had light now, making any fighting far easier, but Sathera suspected they were running out of time. A disturbance like the one the dark elf just caused was unlikely to go unnoticed.
But the chance to be free from the axe hovering over their necks for the last half a day was just too tempting for Sathera.
Pulling her gaze away from the tunnel the traitors were trying to take, Sathera came to her decision, "Okay," she sent, "It's time to roll the dice. We're using the door as a chokepoint and slaughtering those fuckers. But we can not stay here long, so we must make this fast."
"Yes, Ma'am," Everyone chorused with enthusiasm. She wasn't the only one who had formed a grudge against those… Are these the things the dark elf was referring to when he said thralls? It would make sense.
"Jim and Joxin, you pepper them with arrows and keep watch. Bellous and I will hold them back." With everything as taken care of as possible, Sathera jumped forward, standing right behind Bellous from where he blocked the thralls' entrance into the chamber.
"Ready?" Sathera asked. When Bellous gave a curt nod, she sent, "Step back and to the right."
Thrusting forward as the leading thrall chased after Bellous, Sathera tore out a piece of his throat with a spray of blood. The man stood another second before collapsing from blood loss.
Before either Sathera or Bellous could do anything, the next thrall to step up had two arrows appear in her eyes, and she fell to the ground dead.
The mindless creatures stood no chance while standing against them alone, with Sathera and Bellous to the sides and the other two shooting between them. Figure after figure was quickly cut down.
They had just gotten into a rhythm and formed a seven-body high pile of bodies, partially blocking the passage, when Joxin called out, "We're being surrounded! Two passages are cut off!"
"To the third!" Sathera instantly ordered, internally cursing herself for taking a stupid risk.
A moment later, she felt Joxin's focus shift to the two tunnels next to each other. He sent a mental picture of what he was seeing, and her heart sank. There were a half dozen glimmering spots in the darkness, spots that were unmistakably not there before and had to come from creatures hiding in the shadows all along that side of the room.
Pivoting with Bellous so as not to leave an opening, Sathera moved toward the last open tunnel. Throwing a glance over her shoulder, she saw the glimmers in the shadows with her own eyes.
At that moment, the creatures must have noticed their prey was trying to escape, so four jumped forward into the light, wielding crudely forged curved swords. Sathera blinked in surprise. She had never seen creatures like them. They were short, dark-skinned creatures with fangs.
"I told you they exist!" Jim roared into the Union, his voice full of vindication as he shot an arrow at them.