The Golden Eagles captain lay on her back.
Deon listened to the wet breaths.
The front of the captain’s armor was partially melted and charred. What patches of dark skin he could see was just as bad. Still, no holes, which meant Hollis had stabbed the captain in the back.
“Captain Tamara Jackson, right?”
One eye leaked fluids.
The other latched on to him with surprising clarity.
He pulled a small vial of glowing liquid from on of his pouches of holding.
“This is your only hope. My teammate stabbed you with a terrible creature’s fang. Highly magical and highly venomous. In fact, had she not lowered the dosage your entire torso would be a messy goo. If I had to guess you have a few minutes before it kills you anyways. So, I’ll make this quick. You rejected my generous and life-saving offer earlier. You see what that got you? Only suffering and death. I told you that I didn’t want a fight. My fight is with the monsters in there.” He gestured toward the huge circular door blocking his way into the encounter challenge. “Open it. You’ll get the antidote and us out of your hair.”
To say thus was a bit cruel. Even with the antidote the damage done might already be fatal. Especially, when added to the fire damage.
The captain was truly a tough one.
“We just want to get inside to fight the real enemy. You fought well, but it’s over.”
The Golden Eagles that remained alive were either too wounded to continue or were zip-tied, held under Karna’s burning gaze.
“How about I sweeten the deal? We will also provide healing to those that won’t make it without immediate aid. Humanity needs every one of us. It’d be a shame to lose someone with your levels and ability. Any more deaths for you and your fighters beyond this point would just be wastes. Think on that, but do it quickly.”
He gazed down at the captain, silently imploring her to see reason.
The silence stretched with the seconds.
He had already identified the next highest ranked merc in case the captain proved herself a stubborn fool.
She needed to show wisdom.
He needed it desperately.
Every dead merc was a blow to his conscience and he hadn’t prepared himself as well as he thought.
To save the few dozen remaining in front of him was now a necessity.
Fortunately, the captain decided to bail him out.
“You’ll swear on a contract?”
Her voice was weak. The words pushed through a wet gurgle.
“On anything!” He nodded. “Open the door and we’ll heal what we can and will refrain from further violence against you and the fighters under your command in this place, unless attacked first.”
“Magically binding.”
“I can do that.”
Deon pulled a notebook and pen from one of his pouches and quickly wrote a contract.
Any magic user could do it.
Their strength level determined how binding it could be and the level of enforcement.
A weak mage couldn’t write up a contract with death as a consequence.
Deon wasn’t weak.
He wanted her to accept it, so he held nothing back.
“If me and my team don’t abide, then we’ll you and your fighters’ fates. Death for death.” He brought the contract to the captain’s one good eye.
Other eyes snapped to him with a combination of shock, alarm and anger.
The captain pressed a bloody thumb print into the paper.
He signed his name and that of his team.
“What the fuck, man?” Russ said. “You can’t sign for me!”
“Actually, I can. It’s in your contract. And mine and everyone else on the team.”
Russ scowled.
“It’s fine,” Elandria said. “Unless you’re planning on killing someone that’s already surrendered.”
“Well… no… but what if they pull a sneak attack?”
“Weren’t you listening?”
“Yeah, but I don’t make it a point of letting someone attack me first. That’s just stupid.”
The argument was mooted as the writing glowed briefly.
“It’s done.” Deon quickly poured the entire contents of the vial into the captain’s blood-filled mouth. Whether she swallowed it all or not didn’t matter. It was magical. Mere physical contact was enough. “Saint. Please keep her alive. I’ll take care of the others.”
The bloodmage pulled thin red tendrils from her artifact clay jug and directed them into the captain.
Deon’s mass healing spell took the form of a vague glowing green sphere over a wide area. He wasn’t a dedicated healer-type, which meant that he couldn’t direct the effects. It worked on everyone, friend or foe, inside the area. Plus, it was terrible from a mana efficiency standpoint. Without the gem burrowing into his back, he’d have been dangerously drained in a second. As it was, his back just got hotter.
“Now, your part of the deal?”
The captain beckoned to one of her sergeants.
Reluctantly, he slow-walked toward the massive door.
“You’re a fool, kid.” The captain’s voice no longer came out with a wet gurgle. “You killed my guys just to endanger everyone else on this planet.”
“Would this have something to do with those worms?”
“You know?” Her eye widened. “And you still want to go inside? If you know and you meant what you said about wanting to protect all of humanity then you’ll turn around right now and go to another encounter challenge. God knows there are more than enough out there. If you really want to help then you’ll work on keeping spawn zones under control.”
“We will once we finish here. The bats, the worms, all monsters. Maybe you guys couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of them, but we will.”
“If any of you get infected and bring them to th—”
“That won’t happen. We’re stronger than you.”
The captain didn’t respond.
He wasn’t certain if it was Saint’s work or the captain realized that she couldn’t weaken his resolve with fear mongering words. Regardless, he was done with conversation.
He went over to make sure the sergeant fulfilled the terms of the contract.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Precious minutes passed before they had sufficiently healed their defeated foes, but the time came for them to descend into the caves.
The chime sounded in his ears just as the thick metal door closed with a resounding thud.
He dismissed the spires message quickly and regarded the faraway looks in the eyes of his teammates.
“Don’t take too long. We need to move fast.”
Hollis suddenly appeared nose to nose with him.
He jumped, magic ready at the tips of his fingers.
“Fucking Jesus! I’ve told you to stop doing that!” He let a deep breath loose. “One of these days you’ll catch a fireball to the face.”
“You’ll miss,” she said flatly.
“Probably, but let’s not find out, huh?”
She shrugged. “You want my report?”
“Yeah.”
“I got most of the bat monsters. One got away.”
He stifled a curse. He had hoped to catch them by surprise. The standard move fast and pick them off in smaller groups tactic. Don’t let them organize. Keep the chaos going as they continued to reap the Quest rewards, one dead bat monster at a time. Get stronger while chipping away at their strength before going for a decapitation strike on their leadership with overwhelming strength and speed.
“They got a warning off.”
He cursed.
“Can’t be helped now. What about the mercs? How many made it down to their kill zone?”
“I get most of them. One got away. Tracked the kid to the cavern. One tunnel, narrow. No traps. Just like the map the scary alien lady gave us.”
He sensed something off with the tightness around the normally chill Hollis’ eyes.
The eidolon’s intel lacked details on the nature of the defense inside the cave system.
“I sensed danger,” Hollis said.
One could hear a pin drop in the dimly-lit cavern.
“You? Sensed danger?” Russ said.
She ignored him and kept her eyes locked on Deon’s.
After a moment she gave him a barely perceptible nod.
“The plan doesn’t change. We expect the hardest fights of our lives.”
They didn’t gainsay him.
Outside had been a cakewalk with their overpowered artifacts.
Half of them hadn’t been needed to raise their weapons or use their abilities.
There was no need for instructions or reminders.
He glanced at Karna.
“Karna, remember. Less explosions. More thin, focused streams.”
“I know!” she snapped.
“We should’ve brought that earth mage chick on,” Russ said. “Carve us a tunnel straight to where we need to go.”
“The bat monsters trump her magic,” Elandria said.
“No way! She’s Level 40!” Russ said.
“They have classes too.”
“Even if that’s true, they’re monsters. Primitive, basic. They lack our intelligence.”
“They live here. I don’t care how primitive they are… they’re going to be better than one of us at moving around down here.”
It was a moot point in any case.
There hadn’t been enough time to integrate a new member into the team.
To that end Deon had picked up a tunneling spell.
Once again, what skill or experience he lacked in its use would be covered by an overabundance of mana. After all, why pick the lock with precise and delicate tools when you had the strength to simple break it with a twist of your hand?
“Everyone ready?”
Nods.
It was as Hollis had said.
A long narrow tunnel that sloped down slightly with gentle turns every few hundred steps or so.
They passed the remains of the bat monsters and that of the Golden Eagles.
It struck him that he couldn’t spot differences between the puddles of bloody goo in armor and scattered weapons. Monster and human looked the same.
Hollis raised a fist, bringing them to a halt. She pointed to the end of the dimly lit tunnel.
The large cavern that contained the mercs’ kill zone.
They didn’t know the specifics.
Traps and armored firing positions seemed probable.
As soon as they stepped into the cavern he expected a rain of fire.
Perhaps a sticky oil trap first to drench them and hold them in place.
The thick mist obscuring what lay beyond the entrance looked magical in his mage’s eyes.
He shared the information with his team with a whisper.
“It’s cold. I can’t tell if there are additional effects. Elandria? Saint?”
The former raised her modular gun to look at the mist through the scope. The gun was configured in its submachine gun form for the cramped environment. He knew that she had also configured the rounds to fire at a subsonic speed to make it easier on their ears. As always, it’d take less than a minute for her to reconfigure it in the event it became necessary.
“Thirty-five degrees. I’m not detecting any other effects,” she said.
“I have to get my blood into it if you want to know more and that might let them know we’re here,” Saint said.
“Gee, carving a tunnel to bypass all this would’ve been nice,” Russ said.
They ignored him.
Deon wanted to save his one earth spell when it was really needed.
“Karna. I want a fireball, say, twenty feet past the entrance.”
“You said no explosions.”
“In the tunnels. That cavern’s big enough and we’re—” Deon had been about to say that the rest of them were going to move back the way they had come a good distance only to realize that the rest of his team was already moving. “Just wait until we’re behind that bend.”
He felt the eternal flame roiling within the lighter-like artifact in Karna’s hand. He saw the inferno it contained reflected in her eyes. He hustled back to join the rest of his team.
“Throw up a shield, yeah?” Elandria said.
Deon raised a mana shield.
The sudden burst of blue light made them squint.
Brand tapped the much smaller Saint on the top of her helmet.
“Maybe double it up?”
She scowled, but the bloody tendrils waving out of her clay jug snaked out and a red shield, slick and wet went up behind Deon’s shield, plunging them back into dimness.
It was just in time as a loud thump suddenly shook the tunnel, showering them with dust and small bits of rock and dirt.
Deon winced as he felt his mana drain.
Karna stood shrouded in smoke.
He blew it down the tunnel with a gust of wind.
Karna turned. Her eyes wide and with the biggest smile he had ever seen. All teeth and hunger. The all consuming nature of fire at its spiritual core.
The eidolon had warned that the heart of the elemental fire lord contained within the artifact wasn’t entirely dead.
A problem for another day.
He slapped a magic shield on Brand.
The added power of the gem in his back allowed him to shape it more precisely than he had been capable of before.
Instead of simply covering Brand’s entire body, Deon made one that protected the big man’s front, extending a few feet over his head and curving down to about shoulder height in order to leave space for and protect the passenger.
“Saint, you re—”
The small young woman was already covered in extra armor of her own making.
Blood, slick and wet, surrounded her body in form-fitting armor, just like the heroes in her favorite movies.
She hopped on Brand’s back, feet slotting into the footholds built into his thick steel plate. One hand grabbed the handle near his right shoulder, while the other held the clay jug close.
“I made my shield invisible, but you know where it is. Just like we practiced.”
“Yes, mom.”
He heard, rather than saw the roll of her eyes since her blood helmet didn’t have any openings.
“Okay, good. Move fast, strike fast. The shield won’t last more than a minute under sustained fire.”
“Relax, bro! We got this. Shock and Awe!” Brand said.
“We’ll hit them right behind you.”
Brand started walking toward the entrance.
He wouldn’t hit top speed until just before.
“Stay behind my shield until we know what we’re up against.”
Brand went from 2 to 60 in a handful of steps.
Deon sprinted after him, casting a large mana shield to cover the rest of his team as they emerged from the tunnel and into the cavern.
He had proved outside that his shield could handle it, so he was reasonably confident about absorbing enough of the initial barrage that they could maneuver and fire back.
What actually happened wasn’t something they had expected.
Out of every scenario they had game planned this wasn’t one.
There was nothing expect dim light crystals and dancing shadows.
“You will die forgotten in these dark depths.”
The voice was a rasp that seemed to come from everywhere and just next to both of his ears.