When Fife stepped into the huge cavern where the hobgoblin dungeon boss had been last delve, she sighed. There were two bipedal wolves unmoving on the floor, covered in white mushrooms with blood-like crimson dots. The gnoll woman was busy smashing at a small army of trolls, while Astrid and her remaining fighters harried the hobgoblin and its orc guards. "Fuck." As she uttered the word and prepared to take action, another wolf went down when its own fire was a hair late in catching a cloud of spores. As she freed her shield and sword, Fife bellowed, "Katelyn! Fire!"
Even before she got halfway across the room, Fife felt the heat bear down on her from Katelyn's magic. It'd never been so welcoming as since she had gained her wings—it was like home to Fife. The three dead wolves, covered in mushrooms and mycelia, seemed to burn, but Fife could see it was only the fungus that couldn't abide the flames.
With only herself and Hreti still standing among her pack, Astrid didn't like her chances of beating through the mass of orcs before the hobgoblin's spores finally found hold. Beside her, slamming his axes into the huge shields of the orcs, Hreti had a spreading mass of mycelia on his face. She drew up a deep breath and exhaled it over him.
Heedless of his close call, Hreti went into a frenzy of swings. Orcs were dissected, decapitated, and ripped apart under his assault. The weapons of his enemies were denied no longer by his own axes, however, which meant his armor was the only thing between himself and death. The armor was good, great even, but the orcs used tactics to find chinks in armor and exploit them, and even as he cut them up and down, one finally got a filthy blade up into his chest.
Astrid only feared being unable to take the kill she'd been promised—the dungeon's heart. When Hreti went down, her heart sank and she prepared to go into her own berserk fury when a new fighter took her flank. Fife didn't slash and strike wildly, she shoved and killed like a force of nature. Several Orcs were shoved out of her way, giving room for Astrid to work at Fife's side with Fife's shield between them.
The wave of flame hit them both in the back a moment later, cleansing them, the orcs, and soon the hobgoblin—and burning the latter two. None of the orcs fell, though, leaving the pair much more work ahead of them.
Laughing for the pure, violent joy of it, the gnoll swung about left and right with her heavy flail, ripping weapons from hands and flesh from bones as easily as it crushed bones. She had been coughing up monstrous amounts of phlegm for some time, but her body rejected the right of the diseases to take hold—helped along by the hobgoblin not focusing on her.
Her laugh caught on a note, however, when she was down to one last troll. The beast stood taller than her and had huge hunks of metal in hand of each tree-trunk-like arm. Her mouth curled into a manic grin and her laugh began anew. "Come! Dance! Die!" she managed to scream at it between her laughter.
The crash of the troll’s weapons on her shield-arm drove the gnoll back a few paces, spurring her excitement and hunger to overcome her combatant. The troll was relentless, though, and the best she was able to do was swing her flail at its weapons to fend them off and hope they might wrench one from the troll's hand—but it seemed to have too good a grip.
It was a standoff. The raw violence she faced sparked joy within the gnoll, but she wanted the troll dead. With every passing second her hunger for victory increased until, when the troll drew back both arms at the same time, she could control her blood-thirst no longer.
Remaining with the group at the entrance, the male gnoll watched his mate execute a feral rush within the troll's guard, and thus he began composing an epic song of the fight in his head. While the troll's weapons dug deep into the elbow-gap in her left arm, she clamped her jaws around the huge muscles of the troll's neck and ground her teeth down. His heart soared as her shield arm hit the ground—severed. His hands found a drum at his side and he started to play while her jaws clamped ever tighter, until finally a loud crack echoed through the cave.
As the troll buckled at the knees, its muscles no longer obeying the commands its brain issued through the severed spinal column, the gnoll jerked back and tore its head free of its body with her teeth. Panting hard, she looked at her arm with vague interest. Blood was pouring out of it at a worrying rate. Letting go of her prize, she felt her legs wobble under her before she fell to the ground as well.
Gasping her last few breaths, feeling the chill of death swelling, the gnoll woman could feel the spores finally start to take hold and dig their fiendish mycelia into her flesh. She coughed one last choked laugh, and then was still.
Forestalled from rushing to his mate, the male gnoll looked at the tiny hand on his shoulder and its owner—a dryad dungeon boss sitting atop a big wolf.
"She'll be okay. If I can't save her, I'll see she's brought back," Breath of Spring said, guiding her mount forward with her toes. Rubbing the wolf's neck, murmuring her thanks to them for the ride, Breath of Spring jumped down when they reached the sight of the troll massacre.
The fungus now sprouting in the troll corpses was spurred on by Breath of Spring's presence, but since it had accepted her influence, it became bound by her. It tried to reach for the gnoll body, but the will of the hobgoblin was far away and it wouldn't defy the source of all life walking among it.
"Oooh. No more blood." Breath of Spring looked at the huge gnoll limb that was missing from its body with her hands on her hips. Letting a little huff out, she walked over to it and wrapped her hands around it, pulling it over to the rest of the corpse.
Shaking her head when she got the forearm against the ruined elbow, Breath of Spring crouched down and smiled. "It's too early to rest, Miss Gnoll. You have yet to hear the song your mate will sing. Come, stand back up and promise him you'll hear it."
Breath of Spring didn't have a god to pray to. She instead acted as a funnel for the might of her home, pouring Breeze's power into the body of the gnoll. There was no outward sign the magic worked, at first, but a jolt in the gnoll woman's chest was a sure sign that it was taking hold. Moments later, her mouth opened and her big lungs took a breath—then another. Walking along the body to the head, Breath of Spring leaned down and kissed the gnoll's cheek. "Wake up."
Snapping her eyes open, the gnoll looked up at the beatific angel that took up half her vision. Her breathing was steady and her heart pumped hard. She gulped and stared into the soft green eyes.
"If you get up now, I think there are still some orcs to kill."
The words, spoken softly and with a slight giggle, nonetheless stoked the gnoll's joy for combat. Careful of her savior, she lifted herself back to her feet, took stock of the broken armor around her shield arm's elbow, and checked the weight of her weapon. "Thank you," was all she managed before her laugh started once more. Spotting where Fife and Astrid struggled with the wall of orc bodies around the hobgoblin, her laugh launched into fits of giggling glee as she found enemies still living.
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Seeing where things were going, gnoll-wise, Katelyn narrowed her flames and increased their intensity—focusing them around the hobgoblin and leaving the rest of the area clear.
Beaming at the gnoll charging across at the fight, Breath of Spring dusted her hands and sought out Astrid's downed wolves. Each looked like a mess of fungus trying to eat away their corpses, but all she had to do was dig her own life magic into the weaponized mycelia and then draw away all of it—and the mass died. She blew a gentle breeze across the first, Trygve, and what was left of the fungus was scattered as dust. "Brave warrior, now is not the time to rest." Pouring all the life back into Trygve, the circle it made by being returned to him was very fitting in Breath of Spring's view. She leaned down and kissed him, on the lips, and his eyes snapped open as he took a deep breath that had been her own exhalation. "Welcome back."
By the time Trygve got his head straight and got up, Breath of Spring had already left him and was focused on Liv. Reaching for his weapons, he heard a huge commotion and looked to see Fife and Astrid battling a dwindling group of orcs as the gnoll fighter had apparently slammed into two orcs, her flail swinging over their shields to catch on flesh and armor and tossing the two behind her.
Running over, Trygve reached the first of the tossed orcs before it could get up, and quickly buried a hatchet in its skull. The second gained its feet before he could finish it off, but as it squared off against him, Liv moved up behind it and swung her axe in a double-handed twirl that took the green beast's weapon arm off at the shoulder.
With the gnoll on her flank, Fife was finally able to push through the orcs enough to threaten the hobgoblin. When the huge flail ripped away the final line of enemies and revealed her target to her, Fife dropped her sword, drew her revolver, and sent four shots into the dungeon boss.
Seeing the barrel alight on him, Short Claws snarled and gestured with a broad sweep of his arm and breathed life into the spores he'd hung in the surrounding air. A thick web of mycelia grew, burning through his magic to make a wall of fungal matter that could have repelled even the gnoll's heavy flail.
As the bullets hit Short Claws' shield one after the other, they exploded and sent huge chunks of the improvised barrier with them. The third, however, punched through the last of the barrier and exploded behind it—and the fourth connected with Short Claws before detonating.
The double-echoes of the explosive rounds shook the room, but none more than the goblin dungeon's defenders. In the chaos of their lines, Astrid and the gnoll worked like butchers. In only a few short seconds they cut down the last of the orcs and both surrendered to their own vocalizations at the victory.
"Right." Fife rounded on the pair, one howling and one yapping loudly. "Which of you two didn't know when to stop?"
Snapping her mouth closed on the howl, Astrid tried to dredge up some feeling of remorse, but completely failed to. "It's her fault," Astrid said, pointing at the gnoll, who bit back her own raised voice to look at Astrid curiously. "She makes this way too much fun."
"Good fighting!" the gnoll said. "Killed many!"
Seeing a losing fight when she faced it, Fife focused on reloading her pistol while the rush of battle still carried the two. She was, therefore, surprised to have her girlfriend rush up to her. "Wait I'm cover—" Her attempt to spare Breath of Spring getting filthy died in her throat as she realized the dryad was already sporting blood and gore on her light armor. "What happened?"
With Fife crouching for her, Breath of Spring was tall enough to deliver a good hug. "Had to bring those wolves back. And the gnoll. They should wait for their support next time."
The tone hit Astrid in a way Fife's rebuke hadn't, and she finally realized that she'd lost all her pack in the heedless attack on the dungeon boss. She let out a final huff and squared up. "Sorry."
Fife shrugged and stood, hefting Breath of Spring up with her. "Understandable. I should have kept a closer eye on you all. The job isn't done yet though." Looking at the tunnel leading out of the boss room, Fife shivered at the task ahead. "There is one more thing we need to deal with."
Giving Fife one last squeeze, that Breath of Spring doubted her girlfriend felt but was worth it anyway, she jumped down and climbed back onto the bloodied wolf she'd been riding before, giving him lots of patting and telling him he was the best.
Astrid's heart thudded faster and faster as Fife led them down the side tunnel, a green glow growing brighter the further they went. Her voice was actually shaking when she asked, "I get to kill it?"
"You get to kill it, but our allied dungeons will get to hurt it too. I hope they have quests or get some kind of bonus out of it." Fife turned a corner and spotted their target—a huge crystal. It was big, as hearts went. It pulsed softly, but from her experience with Travis, she knew it could now see and hear them. She marched right up to it and said, "Sorry about all this. If you'd stayed a bug dungeon, we could have worked with you, you know? Bugs are kinda cool, but your goblins are too dangerous and there's no way to stop 'em without stopping you."
"Huntress?" Fife asked.
Walking up to the heart, Huntress reached back to the gear she had slung on her equine half and unhitched the big sledgehammer. Judging the weight of the weapon, finding it a bit unfamiliar, she nonetheless brought it back, up, and then down on the heart.
The scream of the dungeon caused Huntress to fall back a step. She felt the walls closing in around her and was ready to turn and run—before a strong presence engulfed her. Her nerve restored, she looked down and at Breath of Spring. "Thank you."
"If there was anything for Home to take from this, it should be done. Give the nice gnoll lady her swing." Reaching out with one hand, Breath of Spring patted Huntress on the foreleg while the dungeon heart before them wailed.
Looking at the big hammer offered to her, the gnoll shook her head and held up her flail. She hadn't expected to be offered an attack on the heart, but it felt like a fitting end to the fighting leading up to here. Limbering up her shoulder, she brought her flail up and around, the heads of it slamming into the heart once, then a second time as she brought the weapon back up. Like with Huntress, she felt her own kin rush to her side.
Looking down at her mate, the gnoll woman swapped her weapon to her off-hand and reached down to rub his head and ears. "Safe. It can't hurt you."
Astrid held out her hand to the gnoll and saw she was more focused on reassuring her mate than the ceremony this had become. "Let me end this."
Jolted a little, the gnoll looked down at her left hand and the almost weightless (to her) hammer in it. She nodded and held the weapon out. "Destroy it."
Taking the hammer, Astrid braced her feet and readied to swing. "Now it's time to end this hunt and claim these grounds as our own." She ignored the screech the heart made and held the hammer in her right hand.
Raising the hammer as if it were nothing but a tool for securing nails into wood, Astrid brought it down with a crash on the heart. Again and again she struck, her strength driving the hammer into the crystal as her folded-back ears tried to ignore the wail of the heart.
Feeling the dungeon rumble around them, Fife heard the screech of the heart reach a fever pitch, and then the regular smashing of hammer into crystal changed, a sour note echoing through the chamber. One more strike from Astrid and the heart shattered.
The rumbling took on a more urgent tone. Fife raised her voice, "Let's get out of here! Run as fast as you can and don't leave anyone behind!" She didn't like their chances of making the surface before the structure fell apart and the magic unraveled, but hoped they'd make it anyway.
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