“ATTACK!” Xilbit cried, somehow having stolen my spare spear AGAIN.

All the kobolds turned and stared at Dale, awaiting confirmation.

Dale stared at the shoggoth, and it was a shoggoth straight from the pages of Lovecraft. Black, glistening slime forming a blob-like body. Eyes floating in various places around the entire surface.

“Run.” Dale told them. He pointed over to the other side of the highway. “RUN!”

All of them followed Dale, along with the small family, sprinting across the highway to the south-bound side. Dale stopped and helped kobolds over the barrier between the two sides of the road. For them, it was a wall. For Dale it was just a hurdle.

Steve, Mary, and Anna were all holding hands and sprinting together for the barrier. They weren’t too far behind the last of the kobolds. Dale helped them climb over the mid-road barrier and then they were running north on the other side.

Dale brought up the rear. Starting to breathe hard, he looked at the small imp that looked just as freaked out as he was. “Please tell me… You know something… About how to hurt those things.” Dale puffed at the imp.

It shrugged tiny shoulders. “I have no idea! Maybe fire?” It cried out.

Dale stopped and took a couple deep breaths to calm himself. He began to form a flame arrow in his mind’s eye. Hints of flame began to coalesce and disburse in the air a meter from him. The shoggoth reached the barrier and began to ooze itself over the top of it.

Dale focused, trying to force his mana faster and faster into the form. A massive spike of pain began to form behind his eyes. Dale gritted his teeth and kept pushing. The last point of his twenty points of mana now swirled in front of him in a spike. Dale launched it.

The flaming spike of energy slammed into the massive blobby body. A pulse of what felt like screaming burst in Dale’s mind. He was soon on his knees. Dale’s eyes didn’t want to focus.

A second later, a tiny stab of pain on his nose drew his attention. The imp was there and biting him. It saw his eyes refocused, and it screamed something at him, waving little arms.

Dale shifted his eyes to see the shoggoth wasn’t moving towards him anymore. It was sitting there with the barrier about halfway underneath it. The mental scream was still echoing in his mind. Another bite snapped Dale out of his misery.

Dale stood back up, his legs shaky and not wanting to hold him up. The headache he felt was monumental!

He turned to see Ichnick running towards him. The little kobold was forming his own flaming spike of energy after seeing how effective Dale’s had been.

Little Anna was listening to her rat. Her head cocked to the side and a cute expression of deep concentration on her face. She wasn’t excitation focused. She was vibration. When she first gained the ability, she liked the idea of making music and her familiar had helped her pick it out.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Ichnick!” Dale cried stumbling over to the little shaman. “No arrow! It needs to be blanketed in fire!”

Ichnick stared at him and after a moment nodded. The spike turned into a large ball of what seemed to be liquid fire. He floated the ball over and let it burst over the body of the shoggoth. Drops of fire rained down all over the massive blob of black slime.

Dale saw he had one mana point back. He turned and stared at the shoggoth. After a moment, he saw what he was looking for. A small patch of burning slime. Dale focused on it, pouring that point into a spell to increase the amount of fire. The patch spread an extra inch.

Dale turned and saw Xilbit, mounting the Puli. He stumbled over to the path the chief would take and waved his hands over his head. “No!” He cried out.

If Xilbit got within a meter of that monster, he’d be crushed along with the dog. Xilbit’s snout rose a little. Dale shook his head and made a sign of his finger cutting across his neck and pointed at the dog. Xilbit looked down at the Puli and finally nodded.

If Dale could sigh, he would have. Right now, his skull felt like it was splitting in half. He turned around and watched as Ichnick sent another ball of flame at the shoggoth. He’d chosen the wiser option of conserving his mana for multiple attacks.

Two more balls of fire splattered over the creature, and it started to shiver. The screams were dying away until finally, blessedly, Dale could think again. It was now a dull moan.

After what felt like an eternity, Dale watched as the slime lost cohesiveness and simply stopped being a blob. There were two burning puddles of black slime on each side of the highway barrier.

Dale walked over and reached down to a non-burning part. When he looted the monster, both puddles disappeared into puffs of smoke. Dale checked his inventory. There were now two gold coins. It appeared that they were also twenty silver a piece. The shoggoth must have been worth roughly twelve silver by itself.

Inside a formerly empty space in the inventory was an eyeball. It was labeled, “eye of doom.” That was worth holding on to Dale figured.

Ichnick walked over to him. “What was wrong with you?” The little shaman asked him.

Dale turned to stare at the kobold. “You mean you didn’t hear the dying screams?”

Ichnick shook his head while he gripped his snout in what Dale was learning meant deep thought. “Did the others hear it?”

Dale looked up at the couple and their daughter. “Did you guys hear the shoggoth screaming in your head?”

The two adults shrugged. Anna looked at the rat and then turned to look at Dale. “Mr. Jenkins told me that he was able to block my mind from it since it was after you.”

Dale looked over at his imp. “Seriously?”

The imp just smirked and shrugged. “I was trying to figure out a way to harm the shoggoth.”

“Oh, sure. Even though I spent ALL of my mana on a single fire arrow. You decided you needed to figure out another way to fight the monster.” Dale rolled his eyes. “Thanks for nothing, shit stain.”

Dale looked back at the shaman and realized something. “You don’t have a familiar?”

The shaman shook his head. “Different source of magic. Mine comes from a divine source. The-,” Ichnick said a weird hissing click word, “gives me knowledge to bring forth my magic.”

Dale nodded even though he had no idea what that was supposed to mean. He looked over the scattered group. “Let’s get back together and on the road.”

Thankfully, the cart had been left untouched. That would have truly sucked if he’d lost all the supplies he’d gathered from those stores.

Dale looked up at the sky. The sun was about halfway from mid-sky. Roughly around four in the afternoon. He sincerely hoped his son and daughter were okay. His daughter being older put her secondary on his list of concerns. His son was on one side of the freeway while his daughter was on the opposite. The newly gathered group continued north on the freeway.