Ripple (Part 2)
Idris charged the nearest of the creatures. To its credit or complete stupidity, it brandished its spear and screeched in defiance of the large human that charged it.
The Imbued Strike that connected with the thing caused it to explode in a spray of gore that spattered the faces of several of the things. But rather than stare in continued shock at the death of another in their group, the creatures attacked.
Not sure what to do, Eana did the only thing she felt she could to gain some small understanding of just what they were up against. She cast Assess on the nearest creature.
Forest Imp
Level: 3
Health: 40/40
Status Effects: None
Description: Where there’s one, there’s ten. Tribal, vicious, and suicidally aggressive, what the forest imp lacks in intelligence and size it makes up for in ferocity and numbers.
She blinked away the prompt as she saw the health of the imp she was assessing drop from forty to five. Idris stood over the downed creature, foot poised to stomp the life out of it when a thrown spear slammed into his chest.
“IDRIS!” Eana screamed.
But the weapon only stuck momentarily. Idris’ face transitioned from shock to fear to surprise to anger in the time it took for the weapon to fall away, leaving a superficial gash. Eana recalled the description of the Toughness skill from her Warrior path.
Name: Toughness
Classification: Class/General/Passive/Advanced Attribute
Description: It is only through repeated physical strain that the flesh can be tempered into something harder. Acquire the ability to turn the lessons learned in physical injury into enduring power and become truly hard to kill. Advanced Attribute - Toughness is not limited to five levels of proficiency and can be trained to level 100 as an attribute.
So Idris had become “hard to kill.” But he wasn’t invulnerable, and he was still wounded. As Idris turned to face the next threat, Eana charged forward with her free hand glowing with the healing light of Recover. The refreshed heal over time effect might be enough to keep him from sustaining too much damage if the fight dragged on, and Eana didn’t intend to sit back and heal only.
The imps seemed to have decided to do away with caution as well and charged forward in a screeching mass.
Eana swung downard at the one closest to her. Unlike every other creature she had fought to this point, the imp was the first to show some level of fighting intelligence.
It raised its spear horizontally and blocked the attack.
Invoking Psych Up, Eana growled at the thing and as her strength reached its peak she imbued her staff and struck again. Shattering the spear and breaking through the block, her attack connected with the shoulder of the imp. It screeched and tried to grab the staff away from her. Though she wasn’t as strong as Idris, with her enhanced strength she easily freed the weapon and struck twice more.
Not bothering to see if the creature was dead or simply unconscious, she turned to see Idris fighting a few feet away. Another imp was dead at his feet, but two more clung to his body and raked at him with their claws. A third circled, thrusting at gaps with its spear.
Though he bled from a dozen small wounds, scrapes and scratches, Idris paid them no attention. He sent his hammer into his inventory and grabbed one of the creatures from his back. He hurled it into another that tried to come close, then grabbed the spear of the one trying to jab holes in him.
He swung it at the shocked creature, breaking it over its head and sending it sprawling into the bushes. The imp on Idris’ back had climbed to his shoulders and clinging to his hair with one hand had started slamming its fist into the side of his head
With a grunt, Idris reached back with both hands and caught the imp, crunching its wrist in one hand and managing to grab its scrawny neck with the other. But too late, Eana saw the danger now charging in to take advantage of Idris’ split focus. With both hands above his head Idris stood tall in the clearing among the circling imps, completely open to attack.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Two of the things darted in and thrust their spears into his vulnerable stomach. Idris gasped as if all the air had suddenly been thrust from his lungs. The wooden spears had dug deep despite his Toughness enhanced skin. He dropped to one knee and, looking desperate, crushed the windpipe of the imp he still had in his grasp before trying to pull the spears out.
“Hold on!” Eana yelled, sprinting forward she struck both imps, still intent on driving their spears deeper into Idris’ belly. With both attacks imbued and her enhanced strength she sent them sprawling, out of the fight for now but likely not dead.
Sweating, Idris pulled the spears out and dropped them. He tried ineffectually to staunch the wounds with his hands but blood still flowed freely through his fingers. For the first time since the fight began Eana saw terror growing in his eyes.
Her hands glowed with light as she invoked Minor Heal. There wasn’t time for anything else. The imps were closing in.
Wounds seeping and no time to wait, Idris swung his hammer in frantic, wide sweeping arcs to keep the imps at bay, his original aggression tempered by the still closing holes in his stomach. Not all the fight had left him, but the flow of the battle had shifted dramatically.
“What now?” Eana said. She too was swinging her staff with as much distance as she could, just keeping the remaining imps back. Some of those left were wounded, but Eana still counted seven of the things.
“Could use… another… heal,” Idris said through gritted teeth.
Eana obliged. Though Idris straightened, refreshed, Eana felt the telltale tightness around her temples that signaled she was near the end of her mana.
It was such a strange thing not knowing how much remained in her pool, but this signal could always be trusted. She would normally have had more available to her, but despite wearing her charoite bracelet, only her capacity had increased. She had been casting almost continuously since the fight began and hadn’t had time to refill the extra reserves given by the magical purple stone.
One of the imps got brave and charged her. She imbued her staff and sent it back, cringing and sputtering around broken ribs. And then the headache was on her, sharp and dull at the same time.
That was bizarre. Imbued attacks didn’t take mana, not like spells.
But there was no time to think it over. Behind her Idris had killed another of them, and rather than being cowed the remaining imps charged en masse.
Eana was barely conscious of the next frenzied seconds. She was swinging wildly, head pounding, hands blistered and bleeding, Idris somewhere behind her bellowing out his defiance. All around her the shadows of the things sprayed across the trees, a strobing mass of exaggerated limbs and teeth and claws.
And then she was down. Screaming. Pain blazed through her thigh and she stared down at her unenhanced, normal skin turned pale as blood blossomed around the wooden spear stuck deep into the meat of her leg.
She reached desperately for her healing but found it locked, unavailable with her mana not yet recovered. Fear turned to panic as the imp withdrew the spear with a feral grunt and pulled back to thrust again, bearing sharp, yellowed teeth.
The entire front of its face suddenly vanished in a swipe of red energy encased wood and steel. Idris followed through with his imbued swing, stepping over her protectively as he used the momentum of the attack to take down another scrabbling imp.
He bellowed, a monster himself in that moment, and finally, mercifully, the last few imps eyed their dead and dying companions and fled into the trees.
Idris turned rapidly, checking for more attackers as he sent his ball of Radiance around the clearing to expose anything hiding in the deep shadows.
“Yahn?” he said, bending to take her hand.
“Ow,” Eana moaned, her breathing labored. Tears leaked from her eyes and she felt a sob forming. Not now! She didn’t want to cry about this. She would live. Some part of her was still the Healer and she had seen much worse. This was a flesh wound, dangerous if left untreated but she could take care of it with a few casts.
“Heal it,” Idris said, making to help her to her feet. She glared at him, but a few moments later, mana recovering and headache gone, cast Recover. In her state she needed some time to regain her mana and make sure they were both ready to fight again if they had to, and Recover offered better healing than Minor Heal provided it had time to run its course.
The spells she had cast on Idris were still providing benefits, his smaller cuts having ceased bleeding were quickly moving along in the process of healing. He was still hurt though, probably worse than her.
“I can get us back into fighting shape if we can wait a few minutes for my mana to recover,” Eana said.
“No,” Idris replied, “There could be more. We have to go. Now.”
He helped her to her feet. She tore the sleeve of her ruined blouse off and tied it around her wound, then repeated the gesture with the other sleeve, binding Idris’s stomach. It wouldn’t hold forever but it was better than nothing.
Holding onto Idris’ arm, they limped out of the clearing in the direction where they could still hear the river. If they could follow it, eventually they would reach the bridge and the magical protection of the Chaos repulsing Node of Order surrounding Irondale.
It hadn’t even been a full minute before Eana was panting with exhaustion. Limping at Idris’ pace with his much longer legs was hard enough. Adding the bleeding and the rough terrain of the woods only made it worse.
She pulled hard on Idris’ arm signaling a need for a rest. They stood there in the woods, listening, but it was hard to hear much over the sound of the river through the trees, labored breathing, and the pounding of her heart in her ears.
For a minute it seemed like she might actually get a chance to catch her breath and heal up. Then a screeching war cry echoed through the trees. In answer, countless others joined it.
“Heal that leg,” Idris said, impatient.
Eana dashed off another Recover on Idris and Minor Heal on herself. Again her head felt like it was going to split open as she exhausted her mana reserves, but it should be worth it. In another couple of minutes Idris should be fully healed, Recover imparting ten points of healing per minute over three minutes.
The ten points of immediate healing from Minor Heal should be enough to get her limping with less effort and that was what she needed right now.
They rushed off into the trees, Radiance illuminating their path, clearly showing them every rock, branch or root they would have been tripping over otherwise.
A spear struck the ground in front of Eana. Idris whirled around, hammer ready.
“That couldn’t have come from behind…” Eana said, noticing the angle of the shaft.
Ahead of her, the imp that had thrown the weapon came charging through the brush. “They got around in front!” she yelled.