It had been, ultimately, a disappointment to Fife. When the tunnels had turned to twisting labyrinths that had made Ludmiller curse every time she had to backtrack to them, Fife had expected things to turn nasty.
What Ludmiller told her, of the boss room ahead, wasn't an exciting fight. The boss hobgoblin shaman had a small group of other shamans with it, but there was no big fight otherwise. "Okay, this looks simple, but I don't want any chances. Jack, be ready to freeze everything. Astrid, bring your wolves in and pull back as you need to. Katelyn, babe, I want this place to be so hot that that hobgoblin can't respawn for a month without immediately burning to death again. Keep an eye out for surprises and"—moving fast, Fife grabbed up Breath of Spring and gave her a kiss—"we got this."
Making herself visible again, Ludmiller shook her head. "I can't check if there's more. That whole place is full of spores. This must be where they grow all their fungus."
Holding her clawed hand out to Jack, curled in a fist, Katelyn got a bump from him as they stepped around the corner. The room ahead of her seemed to still as rime formed on the walls and all the moisture in the air condensed and then froze. She had to admire how much work he'd been putting in to develop his magic to use the expanded mana they had now.
Practically able to feel the grittiness in the moisture he'd frozen—the spores that'd been suspended in it—Jack snapped off his mana and clicked one claw on the floor of the dungeon tunnel to signal to Katelyn it was her turn.
Taking a breath of chill air, Katelyn reversed the process and turned the frozen moisture to steam by flash boiling it. The goblins within screamed as the air itself ignited for a moment—the delicate spores fuel for the flames.
Jaw half open, inhaling the last clean oxygen she would until the room was nothing but ashes, Fife let out a growl of excitement and jogged into the inferno. The flames brought her armor up to an uncomfortable temperature, then a painful one. The leather straps on it were not burning away, though, which was something she could be thankful for.
Standing with her staff held before her, Katelyn poured mana into her evocation, but she deliberately kept the flames to a soft yellow rather than the radiant blue she could produce. When she spotted two trolls entering the boss room from side chambers, she focused her flames on the left one and was pleased to see Fife charge at the right.
Trolls, Fife knew, weren't the brightest sorts. The two that had jumped into her little fight with the dungeon boss proved themselves pretty far down on the scale of mental adepts when they'd walked into an inferno.
Around Fife, the flames seemed to dull a little, but a quick glance reassured her that they had intensified around the shaman and the other troll. It wasn't going to be a problem, after all, because the wolves were behind and covering for the others.
When Fife felt a cough bubbling up from inside, she knew something the shaman had done had probably gotten to her. Exhaling, she opened her mouth wide and drew a deep breath. Pain seared down her windpipe as the fire poured into her. The tingling need to cough more was gone, but she figured so was her ability to breathe until the next heal kicked in.
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> One of your boss minions gained a new talent!
"What the heck?" Travis jerked away from the project that Robert was working on to check the message again. "Okay, it's not Pen, Wild, or the cave scorpion… That leaves Fife. Of course it would be Fife. They should be done in that dungeon soon."
No one answered him, of course, since he'd been yelling into the void of his own head. "Pen, Felna?" Travis asked, feeling a silly metaphoric grin as both jerked their heads up at the same time and made mrrp sounds—though Penelope's was far deeper than Felna's. "Sorry to wake you both up, but I just got a new, weird notification. 'One of your boss minions gained a new talent,' it said."
"Uh." Penelope stretched her wings and shook, feeling the afternoon sun pour its warmth into her. "Wild and me are here, right? So it has to be Fife."
"Exactly," Travis said. "Whatever they're doing in that dungeon, seems to be affecting her in some way."
Finding a warm patch of Penelope's wing, Felna reached up with her hands and took a firm grip on it and pulled it down to her. "It wouldn't surprise me. There isn't any information about what's happening?"
"No, and if they're in the bottom of that place, and don't take the fast ride out, it will take a week or more for them to get back given the last estimate of its depth."
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Not only did her breathing become easier, but Fife felt the pain of the fire fade around her. She felt a little constricted, though—as if she'd grown taller. Ignoring the strange feeling, she engaged with the troll that wasn't in the process of being turbo-roasted by Katelyn, and surged against its attempts to stomp and smash her. Her shield seemed to find every hit before it landed, deflecting it, while her sword took payment from the troll for every sloppy movement it made.
"How are you feeling, big guy? That left arm doesn't look so hot." Fife could tell her cocky barbs got to the troll when it repeated three telegraphed swings for her head. She dodged the first two and then met the third with her shield. With the momentum of its weapon broken, she stepped into the troll's guard and traced her adamantine sword down from the troll's sternum to its waist, following the joints in its armor to open the beast up. "Ugh, that smell," she snarled as she stepped back to admire her work.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Wanting to push her attack, Fife felt an urge grow inside and went with it. When she opened her mouth and pushed up from her stomach, a blast of hotter flames poured out and engulfed the troll. The huge monster dropped its hammer and tried in vain to put itself out, but unlike Katelyn's fire that simply licked around its body raising the temperature, Fife's flames consumed it.
Stepping back and letting the troll go about trying to put itself out, Fife turned to the hobgoblin—just to see it run from the room. "Ah dammit! This always happens!"
Turning back to her party, Fife shouted, "Hey! They ran… away." She trailed off because Katelyn had snapped off her flames and let the wolves do their thing on the remaining troll. Walking over to them, Fife noticed something more than her familiarity with fire and strangely useful bad breath—she was taller. The wolves previously towered over her, though now she judged herself around the height of a normal human. "Uh, I think something weird happened."
Walking over the hot floor, Breath of Spring looked up at Fife with her hands on her hips. "What did you do? You're taller now!"
"It's weird. I was trying to deal with something that hobgoblin cast by inhaling some fire to burn it out of me. Next thing I know, I'm breathing fire back out and I don't even feel the heat of the flames anymore." Fife shrugged.
"So," Katelyn said, walking over to Fife and around her, "you don't know how you grew bigger, breathed fire, or have wings?"
"I've got wings?!" Fife turned around in a circle and didn't manage to catch a glimpse of her wings or how they had grown out through her armor—so turned in another circle. When a small hand grabbed hers, Fife stopped turning and looked down at Breath of Spring.
Doing her best to suppress her giggles, and somewhat succeeding, Breath of Spring said, "Stop being silly and give me a hug."
Remembering back to a book in Travis' library that had given her so much great advice, Fife reached down and picked up Breath of Spring and said, "This is how you talk to short people." When the target of her affections opened her mouth to complain, she was engulfed in a hug that made her sigh in bliss instead.
Katelyn, watching the air of the chamber for any hint of spores still active, asked, "Are we going to chase that guy down?"
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It shouldn't have worked as well as it did. Forerunner watched over several days as her pack were given tools and set to work cutting down trees. At first the non-dungeon people were cautious of her pack, and for good reason—each gnoll towered over them. Her kin were bigger, stronger, and she was under no illusion that if they tried to attack, they'd all be cut down by the noisy weapons the humans carried.
The status quo was maintained by payment. Wagons of timber, gold, food, and more adamantine equipment. Her pack were more than satisfied that a little time chopping down trees and ripping their stumps from the ground got them armor and weapons.
Right now, that was enough for her gnolls. They ate well, they grew stronger, and didn't need to risk their lives doing it—but that itself was a problem. Stephan had said that his dungeon's main fighting force would return soon, and that they would gladly spar and fight with her pack, but she was a little nervous that they might start a fight before those sparring sessions could be organized.
And that's why she was out here, in the open, watching over her pack to make sure none of them got carried away. They seemed surprisingly at ease, the rhythm of their axes striking the mighty trees mirroring that of the great drums in their home. That's when an idea hit her. "Fetch the biggest drums you can. Drag them out here if you need to," she told a nearby gnoll and, when they looked down at their axe, she took it in her own big hands. "I will cut in your place. Fetch the drums."
Hefting the axe, Forerunner swung it with enough strength that the adamantine head bit hard into the tree. The resounding strikes of the other gnolls around her set the pace, though she hit her tree far harder than any other.
Even after bringing the tree down, Forerunner felt relaxed by the work. She moved on, starting on the next mighty trunk, oblivious to the people around her breaking up the first and dragging it away. When the drumming started, she felt it thudding in her chest like a heartbeat. Swinging her axe to the rhythm of the drum, she tilted her head back and let out a slow whooping sound.
After four beats of the drum, when Forerunner repeated the sound, other voices raised and came in perfectly in sync with her. The song, as it ebbed and flowed around her pack, empowered their limbs and spurred their axes on. Trees collapsed at an increasing rate as they carved a deep wedge into the forest and then pivoted and followed the contour of the woods.
Such was their pace that Forerunner barely noticed the people behind them were falling back further and further. All through the day she kept up her song, supporting the tune despite the drummer having to move and keep pace with them. Finally, it was the sun itself fading from the sky that stirred her out of her march. Sinking her axe into the stump before her, Forerunner sang the last ululating cry and then let silence fall.
Slowly, a few of the gnolls around her let loose chuckles of wordless joy. She barked along with them and hefted her axe onto her shoulder. Turning, Forerunner nodded to the people dragging logs back from the swathe they'd cut. They were far behind her gnolls now, but the determination on the people's faces told her this would become a challenge both groups would become locked in. She whooped out a laugh to get her pack's attention, and their drummer led their legs on a dance that brought them home to their dungeon.
The joy she felt on entering was like a warm hug. Forerunner marched all the way to the bottom of the dungeon, her pack following along with yipping and cackling excitement. Gathering together in the expanded heart room, she told the story of their day so that their home would be able to feel it too. When she spoke of drums, a gnoll began to play, and soon enough they were all dancing, wrestling, or singing along to the music.
Hope grew within Forerunner. Hope that this could work and they wouldn't be wiped out for the first transgression between her pack and the people of Northridge.
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This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, Damaged, is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.