Chapter 53
"Riley, we drop them, then I need a Mana potion. Be ready to wrap them with your vines. I'll cut them down," Tobias said, his focus straight ahead, braced in a ready position.
The remaining two soldiers stopped as if considering their life choices.
"Got it," she replied, already whispering to the tree roots, adding her own rumble to the dissonant subsonic cacophony vibrating her chest.
An unholy shriek coming from a yawning, inky black chasm behind the monsters seemed to spur them to motion.
Riley pulled, willing the roots to close in and bind up the soldiers, ensnaring their weapons, entangling around limbs and mandible.
They struggled, each cutting and hacking, yet Riley kept feeding them power, causing more to grow.
Tobias charged, causing each soldier to shriek in anger, drawing through one using form one, only to immediately switch to form two and cut through the next, destroying vines as he did so, moving in rapid succession, making four quick burning x patterns in the air, then sliced with a sweeping horizontal motion Riley knew as form nine, scything off their heads.
The roots smoldered and hissed from the heat, spurring natural flame to grow, lighting the corpses and adding to the acrid hanging smoke within the cavern.
"Riley, potion, now," Tobias ordered, jogging back over to her, only for the earth to rumble again.
"Last one!" She reported, willing it to manifest between her paws.
"Got it, nuance your cast. There's no need to hit with a sledgehammer when a normal one will do," Tobias coached, his tone flat and focused.
"Nuanced. Got it," Her projected words were clipped, dripping with concern and fear as the earthquake grew worse; the rivulets of shockwave bucking underneath her paws felt like a harbinger of death.
I'm not gonna run… I'm not gonna run.
Perhaps in defiance of her nature, Riley knew she was called to stand. Memories of the orphaned and wounded children popped into her mind, and the destruction of the peaceful settlement of Landon.
There was a time when she remembered feeling powerless in the face of an indifferent world when the only thing she could do was what she could hold her tiny candle of light to shine for as far as it would go while struggling to keep her head above water, herself.
This new world was still indifferent; in some ways it was more cruel, but here… here… she had greater power. She could do something about the dark in a way she never could before.
Those wounded children could be avenged, wrongs could be righted on a greater scale, and through it all, her day could be spent making things better as a ranger and as a soul that gave a damn.
That was more than worth the sinister ministrations of Cid and the bowel evacuating terror she felt both now and at times, just existing as an outcast and refugee from another place and time.
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I can make a difference. I am making a difference.
The idea of that, of being empowered to stand, bulwarked her against her fear.
For a moment…
An ear-piercing shriek heralded the slamming of a glistening white horror that burst into the inky black entrance the soldiers were guarding, obliterating the paltry wall of vines and the burning corpses of the queen's protectors.
As if a new reflex, Riley cast analyze.
Antlion Queen, Insect, 2-5
Devourer of Worlds
Weakness to Fire. Wakes enraged.
Buffs: Singular focus, Hive Wrath, Prolific breeder
This is why you hear boss music!
"Oh dear," Riley swallowed hard.
Tobias continued to push power into his sword, pointing the tip towards the writhing horror as it struggled to ram its way through the opening, causing tiny bits of dirt and rock to fall like rain all around them.
"It's like a greatest hits of bugs all rolled into one," Riley marveled. A stag beetle's head thrashed and snapped, with eight spider-like eyes glistening black, spindly legs poked out of the hole scrambling for purchase in the dirt, while the ones most front slashed and struck at them futilely.
Tobias pushed his magic, forcing a ball of flame out the tip of his sword; pure orange and hot, it sailed across the small space, striking the queen in its eyes. Three of the black orbs burst, and green ichor streamed down the monster's face like tears as it shrieked in agony.
"It's stuck!" Riley's heart thrilled, "Maybe this won't be so bad?"
Writhing and undulating, it forced its way forward into the tunnel, inching closer to them by degrees.
"Spoke too soon!" She corrected, backing up on her paws.
"Fall back to the rise; it won't be able to maneuver the slope well. We'll kill it from there," Tobias said with dispassion.
"Got it," Riley said, firing off a chaos bolt as she did so, striking the queen in the face, the easiest target to hit. The green leaking holes turned necrotic as an energy resembling maggots began to eat away at the edges of the holes, widening them as the terror began to seize.
"Bramble wall," Tobias ordered, pausing to breathe. The air was getting heavy. "...build it up thick around it."
"Coming right up!" She pulled at her power, causing the barricade to grow up around the queen, hemming it in, crowding into its flesh, and obstructing its movement further.
"This is like shooting fish in a barrel!" Riley bounced in joy at the easy impending victory. Tobias rotated his left hand palm up towards the ceiling before drawing his fingers closed.
The flame wall erupted, setting the bramble to light, causing only more smoke to begin choking off their air.
Tobias wavered, stumbling a bit, his eyes unfocusing.
"Get lower! The air is better down here!" Riley urged just as the queen launched forward, causing the cavern to begin to collapse around her, tearing her rightmost limb almost off in the process cutting deep gouges down her body.
Greenish blood began to pour from her body as the rest of her cleared the opening, only to become more ensconced and damaged. Multiple legs were broken, and the front right was just hanging.
Using the stump, she flung her damaged right limb forward in a strange fit of instinct. The limb tore away and cartwheeled, slamming into Riley at a deflecting angle, quartering across her right back and ribs.
Riley felt a crunch, then pain, her armor only doing so much to ablate the damage.
"Argggh!" She screamed, falling to the ground, pumping energy into her cast, reaching for healing halo as she coughed up a pink froth that rimmed her mouth.
The pulse rocketed out from around her, forcing her rib to snap back into place, which caused another flood of pain as her breathing cleared.
"Riley!" Tobias charged forward, focusing on the threat, sword flaming in white and orange flame.
The monster screeched in defiance. It lunged forward with snapping jaws, flinging green blood everywhere. Tobias jumped back and thrust drown.
With a sizzling crunch, the blade ripped through the beast's head.
The body shuddered and died as Riley passed out.