Chapter 31: Wormslayers in the Deep

The worm pushed its ropy, rubbery body into the chamber and the air rippled as Victoria hit it with her Microwave. "Karl, hold them back for us, we'll focus the paralysis worm." Luna had more confidence in our abilities than I did but if being paralysed was anything like being stunned I wanted this thing dead as quick as possible. Luna lunged the moment Victoria lost her concentration and began stabbing the horrible wormy thing, following up with a switch in tactics to slashing and slicing attacks when her blade nearly got stuck in the thing's clenching insides. I myself switched to the consuming darkness spell I'd created and fell back to charge it with mana while my friends held off the horde on one side and the Worm overseer on the other. Thanks to the design of the hives we had natural choke points on both sides which was both our biggest advantage and the reason we couldn't retreat or properly dodge the paralysis venom. The Cleric charged past me, armed with his ships-oar sized longsword and barged into the worm with the blade in front of him, showing the kind of supernatural reflexes her class and dexterity afforded her Luna leapt nimbly back as a torrent of purple ichor gushed from the massive rent in the thing's side. I finished charging my candle, having charged it to the maximum mana limit and then tossed it underhand past the waves of deformed humanoids pouring in from the tunnel we came in through. For a horrible, gut wrenching moment i thought one of the Derro had knocked the candle back towards us but I was relieved to see the orb of darkness erupt beyond their thrashing limbs and scything blades.

"Ha, Surface-Dog thinks we need light to kill him, we were molded by the worm's environment, darkness is as natural to us as breath itself!" That may have been true, in fact, I believed them totallly but this Darkness was a living and hostile mass that delighted in choking the tunnels with its inky blackness, the Derro cackled and mocked us incessantly as it began to swirl with grains of sand and pulverised glass. The mocking jeers turned into screams, the Derro in the back being lacerated and ripped into by the magic of the spell, their strange green blood swallowed by the hungry darkness as Karl cracked his demon-arm like a whip and added percussive blasts of red energy that knocked the Derro front line back into the spell. Area denial was a beautiful thing when it was on your side. The Derro may have been natural tunnel fighters but we weren't playing fair and they didn't seem to have a counter with their claw wielder dead and the armoured waves lacking magic.

I turned away from the wave attackers and saw the Worm bleeding from dozens of smaller wounds, arrows riddled its body already and Luna was continuing to nock and release, firing shot after shot right up until the moment the horrible living showerhead sprayed a cone of ichor that she was a little to slow to dodge. Luna went down with a choked, gurgling scream and I immediately swapped to the rosemary based cleansing spell. Stepping in close enough to grab her ankle and pull her out of the line of fire, the worm jerked its head towards me without warning and opened fire, the Cleric was faster though, throwing his body right in front of its strange maw and absorbing the full brunt of the attack, white fire ignited his armour in a blaze that engulfed his whole form and the cleric let out a sustained growl as he continued trading blows with the worm. I dropped and passed the light of the candle up and down Luna's form, melting wax dripping harmlessly onto her and soaking into the skin. She twitched, arm moving jerkily but surely and clearly of its own accord.

"Thanks Candle-boy" She sprang into the fray and stabbed the worm repeatedly while I turned back to the waves, I didn't have any easy way to do single target damage with my friends in the way and I had already learned that I couldn't overlap Aoe attacks, the spell candles seemed to interfere with each other when i tried it so I had to settle for support, a poisoned polearm sliced into Karl and his own demonic physiology fought back the effect but when the creatures overwhelmed his chokepoint and began pushing through into the chamber neither Victoria nor I hesitated to throw ourselves into the front line. Victoria was no swordswoman but she had a dagger and a shielding spell that slowed blades enough for her to counterthrust or put herself out of the way and the ring her father had left behind gave her a resistance to blades that could not be understated in this scenario. As long as the blades weren't the poisoned ones anyway.

Stolen story; please report.

The Darkness faded away and revealed all of the Derro who hadn't broken through the line were now little more than desiccated husks lying in curled positions. Victoria knifed a Derro between shoulder joint and helmet, another chopped at her with his pole weapon and left a deep gash that could have been significantly worse. I was feeling much worse for wear as I had suffered a total of 25 damage in the chaotic melee and only put down 2 attackers but Karl was fighting like a demon, 4 more Derro had been slashed, broken and impaled on appendage and blade while Victoria had knifed a Derro to evisceration.

Behind us the worm was thrashing and hissing, the few surviving Derro calling us blasphemers as the burning giant and nimble rogue finished their butchery of the Supervisory Annelid. Then attention was all on those last survivors, arrows finding their marks over our shoulders in a way that made me nervous but no one else seemed to have a problem with, finally it was done. All up we had killed 15 Derro scouts and warriors and one Blind Watcher. I immediately set to work on the paralysed slave, breaking through the venom and allowing him to rise up on shaky, terrified limbs.

The Cleric had not joined us for the final rout of our attackers, he had slumped to the ground where the worm had fallen, his armour was spotless but glowing with the residual heat, the man inside wasn't far off charred. His eyes rolled blearily towards us, not quite focusing on us but clearly proud of what we'd accomplished together.

"Its done, they're dead. My fire protected me from harm." It looked like the fire had done maybe 90% of the harm honestly, the Cleric had second degree burns everywhere I could see, skin bursting with the fluid beneath, open wounds left by the charring and cracking of skin. I wanted to get him out of the armour but I had a nasty feeling his skin would come with it and the big man wouldn't survive the experience. We might not have survived If he hadn't been able to tank the worm for us, resisting paralysis in a way none of us could. I didn't have much hope but I passed my cleansing spell over his body, attempting to do something for him, it didn't seem to work but he smiled weakly at me. "I just need time to cultivate the fire, to call it back into me and invigorate my steps. You all fought well." The massacre had involved the generation of lots of experience but after the total was split 5 ways it only brought me up to 40/55 experience to level 6. Wait, shouldn't it have been 6 ways.

In the chaos I'd not noticed it but we were a man down. "Where in the hell is Farrah?"

We all looked around, first with interest but then with concern, the Catwoman was gone, I racked my brains, realising I hadn't seen her since the first wave of attacks up above, the moment we came into the hive. "They got her, must have. Which tunnel was she on?"

"We can't go up Jack, she might be dead already and we can't leave our uh... our cleric friend here."

I understood, I didn't like it and I wasn't going to accept it but I understood. "Fine, I'll go up then, you cover each other's backs and I'll find out where she is."

Victoria's eyes widened in alarm. "Jack, you'll get killed. There's going to be way more of them."

I shook my head. "No, I don't think so, they were retreating, they said they were anyway, there's no reason to send the amount they sent otherwise, it was a delaying force, trying to take us down with a sacrificial force while pulling out in case they couldn't get the job done with low level units alone.

"She probably ran off on us, she's already played dead once."

The Cleric forced himself to sit just as I was about to leave. "When the Chimera struck the killing blow her body was transported away from the fight, I thought it was the beasts spell that did it at first but I gathered her body with the others and took her to you. I assume that is how the item saves her from certain death, teleport and feign death." The Cleric sank under his own weight, ribs shifting horribly within his chest.

A scream echoed through the corridors, Farrah. "Well there you go, she's alive, just captured by the torture-minded woman-slayers."

I grit my teeth and started for the sound of the scream despite my companions protests.

"I know what to do."