“Is it still behind us!?”
“YES! KEEP RUNNING DAMN IT!” Fel screams as she pumps her legs, quickly catching up to Laz’s fleeing back. The half Hobbit is still screaming his head off and running with everything he has. The lungs on this guy!
“What the hell are those things?! What the hell was that thing!? Where did it come from!?!?”
“I don’t fucking know, just RUN!!!!” Gerald curses.
Looking back, he sees as those things round the corner, still hot on their tail and slowly gaining. The insect is even running along the walls as the horned girl on its back laughs and giggles like she is riding on a pony, holding onto the thing with two of her many arms as her messy black and grey hair flows in the breeze.
“Ahahahahaha! Come back humans, I just want to talk with you! No need to run! Hahahahahah!”
Bullshit! Is the only thing they can think in response to this cackling little Demon that has been pursuing them for the past couple minutes. Every time, she says stuff like, “Just want to be friends!”, “Let’s get to know each other better!”, or “I just want to talk! I promise I won’t hurt you!” But the Mad Dogs are too smart to fall for anything like that. Such obvious lies won’t trick the Mad Dogs! They want to live, damn it!!!
And so, they run, and they don’t stop running. Just running with everything they have as they are chased through the halls and waterways of the Dungeon by a psychotic little Demon on the back of a skeletal insect monster that looks like it belongs somewhere in a child’s worst nightmare. Not out here in real life! Not chasing after them as it clicks it dozen blade-like feet against the bricks and runs on fucking walls like some alien creature!
“If you won’t stop running, I’ll just have to catch you~” The little Demon happily calls out to their backs, her lovely sing-song voice full of teasing and delight.
Gerald hears the sound of air being cut and immediately ducks on reflex, the skeletal batlike creature just barely missing him as its clawed feet grab empty air and it goes flying past. Andrew turns and tries to swat it out of the air with his cudgel, but the thing just flaps its wings and dodges around the blow like a fish swimming through water. It tries to go for Laz next, but an arrow has it dodging again just before it can snatch the little thief by his shoulders.
Being continually harassed by the flying thing, the adventurers run and run and run, the little Demon laughing all the way as she continues to chase them through every turn and down every slope. They don’t stop running, even as minuets pass and the humans begin to grow more and more tired and desperate, their lungs screaming for air with every breath.
“She’s fucking endurance hunting us!” Fel screams through raged breaths as the party takes another corner at a full sprint, nearly slamming into a wall as they turn hard.
“What the hell is that?” Gerald asks as he tries and fails to smack the flyer out of the air with his buckler, the skeletal thing leaving scratch marks running down the small shield as its claws are forcefully pushed away.
“What the fuck does it sound like!? She’s – ha, ha, fuck… She’s chasing us till we run out of energy! Those things… can probably go forever! We’re screwed!”
Making it to another crossroad, they turn left, and the Demon practically sings out, “I wouldn’t go that waaay~”
Up ahead, rounding a corner further up, they spot the shambling, half-skinned corpses of the Lizard Men they had been processing just earlier. The Undead things are already sprinting their way, flaps of hanging skin flapping in the wind as they run. Without them noticing, the Demon must have raised the dead lizards and sent them ahead to cut them off!
Feeling desperate, they spot a turn up ahead between them and the charging lizards. If they can just make it their first!
Despite already being winded, a fresh burst of adrenaline pumps through them like fire and the adventurers nearly double their speed, just barely making it to the turn before the Undead Lizard Men can try and tackle them.
They don’t look back, but behind them, there is a great crash as skeletons collide with zombies and plow through them like so much trash. The little Demon curses as she almost gets hit by a flying body, but this doesn’t stop her chase in the slightest. If anything, it just seems to make her even more excited.
Rounding the corner in hot pursuit, a still wriggling zombie impaled on the massive tusk of the beast skeleton, she is laughing and practically bouncing in her seat as her skeletons slowly gain on the humans.
“Catch them! Catch them! Hurry up and catch them, hahahahaha!!!”
“WWWWWhhhhhHHHHYYYyyyyyyyyYY~!!!!” Cries Laz as he runs with everything he has, his face as white as a sheet and poring with sweat and tears as he runs for his life from a troop of spooky, scary skeletons. When he nearly trips, Andrew quickly grabs the screaming Hobbit and scoops him up under one arm like a bag of potatoes, Laz still kicking his legs in the air like he is running and screaming the whole way as he is carried by the big tank.
Looking over his shoulder, Gerald sees how the Undead are gaining on them again, the collision at the turn only having delayed them for a short moment.
“We can’t keep running like this, we need to fight!” Gerald yells.
“Right!” Fel answers back as the others nod. Laz keeps screaming…
Turning on the spot and jumping back as she keeps moving, Fel draws an arrow from the quiver on her hip and fires it in one smooth motion before her feet can even touch the ground. The arrow flies straight and true, cutting through the air like a bullet as it heads straight for the laughing Demon’s face.
But what happens next has her gawking for a second, Fel’s mouth left open in shock as she lands on the ground and quickly jumps backwards again to keep pace with everyone else as they continue running. Instead of getting shot in the eye like Fel hoped, the little Demon had simply reached up and snatched the arrow, flying faster than most eyes can see, out of the air with one hand.
The little Demon looks at the arrow in her hand and then frowns, the joy dropping off her face as she looks back up at the fleeing humans.
“Oi!!! I said I just want to talk; you don’t have to try and shoot me!”
While they are still running, trying to find a good place to turn and fight that won’t end with them just getting ran over, Fel is the only one that is still watching the little Demon as she is about to draw another arrow and fire. Unfortunately, when she sees the angry Demon girl reel back her hand that had just caught the arrow, Fel didn’t immediately understand what was about to happen. Not until it was already too late to yell out a warning that is.
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“I said, STOP!”
With an angry shout, the girl throws the arrow from her hand and in the next instant, moving almost as fast as if it had been fired from a bow, the arrow is suddenly stabbed through Blanes leg, having shot him through the back of the knee and pierced out the front.
Scream of pain, the spear man trips and falls forward, clattering and rolling over himself as his momentum carries him forward. Somehow, he had managed to keep his spear in his hands through the entire fall, and relying on years of survival experience, he manages to quickly stop his tumble and roll over onto his back, aiming the spear forward, planting the butt of his spear into the ground so as to impale anything chasing him.
This all happens in a matter of seconds and is done almost entirely off instinct, and against a living foe, or a dumb animal, it might have saved him. Unfortunately, the enemy is neither of those things.
In a flash, the insectile abomination of sharpened bone is already on top of the fallen spear man. The near foot long blade of Blane’s spear clangs uselessly against the armored bone plate of the insect that covers it like a chitinous shell. In a flash of white bone, the shaft of the spear is smacked aside with one bladed limb before a second is stabbing down and piercing him through the chest. Layers of thick leather armor and chainmail are run through like a needle through fabric, pinning Blane to the floor.
With a pained gasp for air and a cough full of wet, hot blood, Blane drops his spear and frantically tries to grab at the bladed limb that is impaling him, to try and pull the heavy thing out of his body. In his frantic attempts to grab hold of the blade, his hands become more bloodied as his palms are torn apart and sharped bone cuts into his fingers, the white of the bladed limb being steadily painted in more red as he continues to struggle.
“Blane!!!”
The others scream out their friend’s name, their feet dragging on the ground as they skid to a sudden halt and turn to fight. Fel is drawing three arrows and lines them up on her bowstring, firing all three arrows at the same time. The pursuing skeletons don’t even bother trying to get in the way of her shot, instead heading straight for the frontline fighters.
With a wave of a massive wing, the little frowning Demon simply bats aside the arrows like they are nothing but twigs that got thrown her way, their steel arrowheads failing to pierce her green scales and clanging uselessly like they just hit a solid wall.
Andrew quickly throws Laz to the back, the poor Hobbit still screaming as he soars through the air. With Garald and Andrew charging forward, weapons raised, they try to reach the Demon and her hellish mount, to try and free their friend, but the beast and two of the large demonic skeletons step in the way and block their attacks with large taloned hands and lance like tusks, frost radiating off of their bodies and chilling the men as they get close.
Gerald curses as he pulls back his sword and swings again, but the one before him simply takes the hit head on, letting the blade sink into the thick bones of its arm before quickly grabbing the sword with its other hand. Feeling danger, Gerald lets go of the blade and jumps back. A smart decision, as not a moment later, the entirety of his sword is now covered in a frosty layer of traveling ice, growing all the way to the pommel where his hand used to be not a second ago.
To the side, Andrew isn’t fairing any better. The large beast skeleton is slamming against his shield and knocking him around, his heavy cudgel doing little more than clanging against the things hardened bones and big thick skull. At best, he is leaving cracks here and there as he hits repeatedly, but the Undead is attacking without a single heed for the damage it is taking and firmly keeping him on the defensive lest he get gored by a tusk.
In the back, Fel curses as she jumps back, one of the skeletons having pushed past the vanguard to pursue her. Dodging its grabs, she tries to fire off arrows at the Demon as quickly as she can, firing one after the other as fast as she can draw them. But the frowning girl, who seems to only be growing more upset as the fight progresses, is too fast. She doesn’t even have to move to defend herself from the arrows, simply snatching them out of the air or blocking with her wings.
Feeling desperate and quickly losing ground as she is being chased, Fel resorts to pulling out a trick that she has been practicing for months now but has yet to master. The others always told her she was wasting her time with practicing it, but she never gave up.
If she is going to do it, it needs to be now! Gerald is being pushed back against a wall, nothing but a buckler to fight back with. Andrew is on his knees, a massive hoof pushing down on his shield. Blane is still alive and struggling. And Laz is still being a little chicken shit!
She needs to do this!
“Ricochet Shot!”
Fel doesn’t know why she felt the need to shout out the name of her attack in that moment, but when she did, she already knew that she had pulled it off. That it had worked!
Firing three arrows again, but this time aiming at the ceiling, Fel watches as her arrows unnaturally bounce off of the ceiling at different angles, hitting the walls and bouncing again, and all somehow then flying straight for the Demon from three different directions.
I’ve got her!
The Demon certainly looks confused, shocked even, at the unexpected attack. But in a moment that will shock Fel for the rest of her life, she watches as the Demon manages to quickly slap the arrow heading for her head out of the air, while two of her other arms move and take the ones intended for her chest and gut.
With two arrows sticking through her arms and the palm of her hand bleeding badly, the Demon looks utterly surprised. For a moment, all the fighting stops, the skeletons standing stock still and in mid attack like mannequins positioned on a podium.
In a heartbeat, just as everyone is about to ask themselves what is happening, the Demon’s look of surprise morphs into one of rage. With a wet tearing noise, she rips an arrow out of one of her arms, the one intended to hit her heart, and then snaps it in half with a clenching fist, the two halves clattering noisily to the floor.
“ENOUGH!”
With a shout, she explodes with pressure and the cold, dead, Field of a Mage. Suddenly, her presence is filling the hallway and bearing down on everyone like a physical weight on their shoulders. In a wave of chilling cold that feels like Death gripping your bones, ice spreads out in every direction around her, the water running though the waterway in the middle of the hall is instantly turned to serrated ice as angry icicles grow upward like crystalline stalagmites and frost begins to climb up the walls like ivy.
The humans nearly trip as the pressure of a strong Mage hits their bodies like a hard shove, fear involuntarily filling them as Death itself seemingly arrives to laugh at them and await their demise, his presence wrapping itself around them like an old friend coming up behind you and throwing an arm over your shoulder.
But they manage to quickly shove it off after a moment’s hesitation. The Mad Dogs have faced death before. They are used to this! With a roar, they fight back. Gerald smashes his buckler into a still frozen skeleton, pushing it over in a clatter of bones, his feet carrying him towards the Demon and ready to tackle her off her mount! Andrew shoves aside the hoof that was pushing down on him and runs around the beast before it can react, his cudgel raised, and kite shield held forward! Fel draws another arrow, her bow string creaking as the frayed thing is stretched for probably the last time! If they can just regroup and come up with a plan. The Demon can be wounded! If they just keep fighting, then they can-
“Inflict Pain!”
“AAAAAAAAaaaaaAAaaaHHHHHahahhhhhhhhhAAAAAaaaa!!!”
A deep pain. A piercing pain that goes all the way to the very soul. To think that this would be how they would gain awareness of the presence their own souls?
With the snap of a bow string and the clattering of a dropped shield, the humans collapse on the spot and writhe in complete and utter suffering. Gerald, Andrew, and Fel, rolling on the ground, all they can do is scream as they lose control of all motor functions, their entire bodies feeling like they had been trampled by a cavalry charge of horses wearing spiked horseshoes and then tossed into a pit full of cactuses and snakes and then given a tasteful spritzing of fresh lemon just for good measure. Clawing at their faces as if they could somehow dig the pain out of their flesh, they roll around on the cold hard floor and cry out in utter suffering, begging for it to stop.
Laz, seeing all of this, with tears in his eyes and his whole body shaking like a leaf, quickly tries to get up and run away from where he was cowering by the wall, to abandon his friends as he sees that everything is lost. With nothing more than a finger pointed at his back by the Demon, he is quick to join the others in screaming on the floor as he trips and lands face first, hard on the ground, busting up his nose.
No matter how much they scream, and beg, the pain doesn’t stop. Not even as the skeletons descend upon them and pull away their remaining weapons from their hands and tear away daggers from where they hang on their belts can they do anything. Still, they are strong adventurers. They have unfortunately built up a tolerance for pain. So, their suffering lasts for quite some time as the Demon lords over them, pointing down at their writhing forms like a judge declaring them guilty.
Eventually, it becomes too much, and they all pass out…