Rebecca had journeyed through the tunnel only to find herself in a hospital.
Spotlights illuminated a rectangular stone cavern, beds set up between them in rows, cabinets on either end. A door at each side, metal merged with the natural stone of the cavern smoothly.
Scales lay on the beds. She could hear muttering, coughing, and moaning from those on it. Bandaged figures grumbled and turned as other Scales moved between the beds, administering medicine.
Easily a hundred beds, over half of them occupied. There might be even more, back beyond where Rebecca’s Darkvision extended. Curtained-off areas she occasionally heard yelling from had to be the surgical section.
It was strange. Jake and Lisa had been running through the town for at most fifteen minutes. She had no idea how long it had taken her, Lewis and Trevor to leave the forest, but it couldn’t have been less than that.
So, how were there so many wounded? She could believe a large number of the Scales were dead, but not this many wounded; Even with Lisa holding back, both her and Jake were blenders of Scales under the right conditions. Lightning and a six-foot-long sword didn’t tend to leave people living.
Still, she could see missing limbs, blood, and bandages held taut over where the eyes should be. Most looked like more minor injuries, but if these injuries were faked they’d scattered actual wounded pretty liberally in the trap.
She crept along the edges of the room. There wasn’t much space between the beds and the edges of the stone walls. They were crammed into a room half the size of what it should be. Apparently, they didn’t care too much for the comfort of their wounded.
There was only one other person in the room besides them.
Some Scale officer with scatterings of brown scales was drunkenly wandering the room, swaying as he walked. Occasionally, a medic would approach it, stop them, and harshly whisper something, only to get a slurred response in return.
It was impossible to make out what was being said since even this far down, the noise of fighting up above drowned out everything else. The roof still shook on occasion even this far down in the earth.
Outside them, no one else in the room was on their feet. Occasionally, the earth would rumble, and a Scale would fall out screaming or groaning in pain to the floor. Medics would scramble over to get them back up when they weren’t treating the ones already here.
Well, it was time to make her way through this. Walking on the ceiling or walls would eat precious mana. There were few enough medics, small enough that weaving her way in between the beds or on the edges wouldn’t be that hard.
Halfway down the room, a patch of loose gravel obscured by shadows crunched underneath her foot.
She winced and immediately looked around. Had anyone heard? Most of the medics still were tending to their wounded charges. The wounded were busy being in pain and not paying attention. The drunk officer…was making his way over to her. Fantastic, somehow it had noticed.
She sniffed hesitantly as the Scale stumbled forward. It reeked of booze to her magically boosted senses but also of death. It was not a wound; something was eating at it from the inside. Great, she was at risk of being discovered because some Scale wanted to find a quiet place to drink themselves to death.
She moved another step, gravel crunching underfoot. She couldn’t leap and stick to the roof. It would just make more noise. Maybe enough to get the attention of more than this drunk Scale.
They were currently still walking closer, muttering to themselves. It was hard to understand their reptilian tongue, and the slurring wasn’t making it any easier. “Need..need a place to take a piss,”
Rolling her eyes, her hands went to her knife. Yeah, no, she was just going to cut this fool down, to hell with the noise. He would die now.
“Can’t do the other tunnel..stupid rules on messing up traps.”
On second thought, maybe he could live a little bit longer. Holding still, Rebecca waited to see if anything else would come out of the drunkard’s mouth.
“Stick me down here,” the drunk’s mumblings dropped low, too low for her to hear. She leaned in, resisting the urge to sigh in frustration.
He suddenly lurched forward, and she immediately pulled back. Too slow. His arm smacked her across the front of her nose. Lightly, but contact.
Her hands went to her belt for knives while the officer recoiled, staring in confusion at where she was.
“That you, Molock?” The officer asked, staring at where she was blearily.
Crap. Could Rebecca just move back and hope that the drunkard forgot about it? The Scale was already shaking his head as if trying to shake off the alcohol afflicting him.
No. Rebecca needed information. She could speak their language. She’d picked up the talent and had a decent enough linguistics skill rank. And the accent shouldn’t be too bad.
“Yeah, it’s me…sir,” Rebecca answered, trying to think of the correct honorific. Was it a captain? She thought the three red streaks on the mask and uniform were Captain. Please let him be too drunk to recognize her voice wasn’t that of this Morlock person.
“You sound horrible,” The Scale slurred back. “You got wounded? Fuck, where did they hit you, Molock?”
“The arm, sir,” she answered awkwardly, leaning back from the Scale’s hands. She had kept the cloak up, and the Scale was probably wondering where this Molock was.
She looked around, making sure no one else was overhearing this. The medics were dealing with beds on the other side of the room. And the occupants of the nearby beds appeared to be out of it. Either that or just ignoring the officer.
“Molock, we should get you in a bed, have you get looked at. Where are you?”
“Right in front of you, I think you’ve had too many to drink sir.” Okay, it's time to make the play. “It’s only a flesh wound anyway. Gonna head back topside. But I’m afraid I lost my way, and I don’t want to trigger any of the traps on the way accidentally. Tell me where they are?”
The Scale considered her words, then gestured two feet to her right at empty air.
“You gotta lean in. Top secret. Can’t let this common rabble know about it.” The Scale said.
Rebecca rolled her eyes. She was already close enough that she could smell that taste of what had to be alcohol on his breath. Still, she leaned in closer and whispered, “Okay, sir. Where are the traps?”
“Everyone out of bed now!” The Scale screamed right into her ear.
Before he moved, she barely had time to register what the Scale had yelled.
The Scale smashed the bottle against her chest, glass shattering as liquid splattered across her. It burned. She recoiled as everywhere she’d been hit burned. Her chest, neck, arms, and even her chin all felt aflame as the liquid hissed. It ate through her clothes and swiftly continued to her flesh.
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You have been hit with Belarmarks Base Mixture. Alkalinity has inflicted 18 damage to you. The Burning Pain Status condition has been inflicted. Fortitude save vs poison has a 12% chance of succeeding every minute.
She stopped her backward movement, knife in hand as she lunged forward.
The Scale spat, viscous liquid flying from his mouth at her. Uncanny Dodge activated, but simultaneously, someone grabbed her from behind. Arms wrapped around her, forcing her own to her side as they tightened around her waist. Held in place, the liquid splashed into her eyes.
She expected it to burn, prepared for it. It never did. Instead, as she tried to blink, she could feel her eyelids fail to move. She couldn’t see, the liquid sticking to her skin. She could feel it solidifying in her eyes, covering them.
You have been hit by a Scaverian Breath Attack (Glue). Parts of your body are now covered in a Strength Five adhesive.
Strength five? Not hard to break with her hands. Impossible for her eyelids. She strained against the grasp of the Scale holding her. Their grip loosened, but not by much. Comparable strength. And she had moments before another joined. She could hear the sounds of Scales leaving beds.
She turned ethereal, passing through the grasp of the shocked Scale as she moved forward. She didn’t want to do this. Turning intangible ate up too much mana. Worse, the glue had just turned intangible with her.
She faded back into existence, hands scraping the gooey gunk out of her eyes. Blinking, she could see more Scales crawling off the beds, at least half of those here. The Scale officer stood ten feet in front of her, grinning as he tossed the bottle to the ground.
“Just so you know, your accent is atrocious,” the Scale laughed. A knife flew over his head a second later as he backpedaled. “So is your aim!”
She bit back a scream as more Scales moved off infirmary beds. Her free hand furiously tried to clean out the rest of the gunk he’d spat in her eyes while she ran, weaving in between Scales. Her other one furiously parried, blocking blow after blow as the Scales surrounded her.
This many bodies, this tightly packed, things went wrong fast—six blades at once. Two got parried, an instant spared for each. Rebecca’s Uncanny Dodge carried her up, out of the path of three more daggers. The last one made it, slicing at leather armor and past, enchantments flaring and burning as the knife passed through.
A Dagger has hit you and bypassed your armor. 16 Piercing Damage has been inflicted.
Like the rest of her build, her equipped armor was for an Evasion build. The knife went right through and sank into her flesh underneath, pain cutting across the back of her shoulder.
She went intangible again, pushed through the mass. Scales followed but she went up, out of their grasp.
They’d been using knives to avoid hitting each other. Now guns appeared, pulled out and tracking Rebecca as she moved her intangible form toward the ceiling. Did she want to bet on getting through it before she ran out of mana?
No. Rebecca went solid, then vanished from sight.
Going invisible didn’t stop the Scales from opening up. A hail of gunfire opened up at where she had been, and Uncanny Dodge triggered immediately, her body finding sufficient purchase on air to send her hurtling across the room.
She landed perfectly in between two beds. Bullets continued pumping into the ceiling all across the hospital. All of the Scales were gathered around the beds containing what must be the actual wounded. It would be moments before they started sending bullets among the empty beds.
Still cloaked, she got up and ran for the doorway. Her hand closed around the metal handle and pulled. The metal door scraping along the stone floor sent a shriek flying through the room, which was answered by alarmed exclamations.
She got it open a foot and then dashed through, bullets thudding into the door as she pulled it close.
She tried to find a lock and settled for casting a cantrip against the door. [Seal Portal] would hold long enough for her to make her escape.
She ran down the tunnel. She could hear footsteps ahead of her, someone else running, probably trying to raise the alarm. All the more reason to go as fast as she could. Kill it, keep going till she was out of here.
She hadn’t found the townspeople, but she didn’t care. Coming down into the tunnels had been the wrong call. Grab an officer, use magic, alchemy, anything to get them to confess where they had stuffed the townsfolk. No scouting out in these cramped quarters.
She reeked of the liquor the Scale had splashed her with, and her own [Smell Supressant] skill couldn’t stop the stench from reaching her nose. Taking the [Does Not Target Self] drawback had been worth a few skill points per level at the time. Now? Not so much.
She emerged into a large cavern, vehicles and wagons and trailers arranged. A vehicle park or storage cavern. Either way, it's a place to hide.
She darted between two wagons. She didn’t hear anyone walking around in here. A sniff got a variety of smells, some of which were familiar. Explosives. She was in an ammo dump of some kind.
A light moved. Rebecca jumped, touching down on top of a wagon. [Featherlight Fall] couldn’t be used all the time thanks to costing mana, but for situations like this, it was perfect.
Oil light illuminated the Scale officer from before. He looked to his left, whistling a tuneless noise through pointed teeth as he weaved between the crates, a lit flare in one hand and a lantern in the other.
Rebecca froze, stuck between two trucks, eyes glued to the officer. Within a second, a half-dozen buffs were slapped on to make her unnoticeable, noiseless, as stealthy as possible. She leaped up, floating to the ceiling, before heading towards the top of a nearby truck.
“I know you’re here,” The Scale stated confidently. Their voice was still slurred slightly, eyes wandering from crate to crate, truck to truck. “You stink of that booze I smashed you with.”
She spared a glance at her shrunken UI. It was miniscule, but even still she could see [Smell Supressant] was activated. Apparently, suppressing the alcohol’s smell wasn’t enough to prevent that stench.
“So you know I’m here,” She answered, quietly creeping along the top of a nearby truck. “What are you going to do about it? You’re all alone down here. Your soldiers are far away.”
“Nonsense. Private Pentolite and Major Minol are here to keep me company,” the Scale said, gesturing to the crates around them. “Not the intended use, of course, but well, you are here now! And the other one is not. I wouldn’t want them to go to waste. Care to share the bottle before we see how much use I can put them to?”
She couldn’t just throw a knife. An officer might be high enough level a thrown blade wouldn’t immediately kill him, which would mean detonation.
“How about you put down the flare,” she suggested, carefully trying to move closer. She opened Systemsight, hoping it wouldn’t cause the Scale to strike it. Crap, his level was just high enough that her damage would have to be on the higher end of normal. If she closed to melee, it would be higher.
The issue was getting there. Flickering out of sight would definitely cause the Scale to blow them both up.
“I don’t particularly have a reason to, so I don’t think I will,” the Scale responded. The slurring this time was certainly not an affectation. How much of that bottle had he downed before she had run in after him? Or had he just been well-functioning before?
“I’ll let you live if you don’t try blowing us up?” She offered.
The Scale laughed, the dry rasp turning into a cough halfway through. Her heart froze as his shaking hand flailed, the lit flare nearly reaching one of the fuses.
“Even if I believed you, fast over slow in the end,” The Scale said, then smashed the lantern against the wagon.
She moved, knives flying. The maniacal Scale was grinning as they sank into both eyes, the remnants of the lantern already flying.
She leaped, trying to snatch it. A mistake. The flare dropped from the other hand into the boxes.
The Scale tipped backward as flames spread. She landed and started to run.
The boxes exploded underneath her, the force ramming her against the ceiling. Fire licked at her, the entire cavern going up as flames roared through. She choked on a scream as something else exploded beneath, the force a hammer to her gut. Even a large HP pool couldn’t save her from pain.
Rebecca forced a bare hand onto the ceiling, Morphing so it would stick. Beneath was an inferno, raging flames as more explosions went off, the cavern ceiling quaking. Pieces of it were already collapsing, chunks of stone dropping into the fire. She scurried across the ceiling, screaming as occasional blasts of fire would scorch her.
The inferno below was now green and blue and a whole mixture of colors, something alchemical clearly contributing to it. She was near an exit, but fire blasted high once more, tendrils of blue scorching Rebecca as she leaped for it, screaming in pain.
You are affected by an Alchemical Substance with the Mana-eater trait. Mana is at 450/600.
No. Fuck.
She got to her feet, running from the burning cavern, eyes glued to her mana bar as she waited for another tick.
Alchemical Substance has been burned out by fire from other explosive sources. Final tick, Mana at 430/600.
Oh, thank fuck. Rebecca had no idea how the Scales had gotten their hands on mana-eating alchemical munitions. Things she’d read were a closely guarded weapon of the Bursa, on the far side of Aetheria.
Her HP total wasn’t that badly affected. That didn’t mean her back wasn’t a riot of pain every time she moved. Her legs ached where they didn’t burn. Her arm had a piece of shrapnel built somewhere, grinding against her shoulder every time she tried to move it.
Someone was going to pay for this.