“Where are you going?” Jason asked.
“To find Ryan.”
“Micah, no. It’s dangerous out there. Ryan said—”
“Yeah, it’s dangerous. So I have to go find him.” He jerked his arm away. “He doesn’t have his jacket.”
Jason’s exhausted smile slipped and he glanced down. He seemed to catch on to the accusation. Micah would have insulted him, but Jean cut in.
“Guys? We’re kind of wasting our distract—”
Spears shot out of the walls. Micah broke one with a surge of strength and stepped behind Jason to cover the other side. The others dodged what they could, being used to the placement by now, but they were still nicked where there was no room to dodge.
“We need to move,” Silas told them.
The others followed his command, but Micah looked back and hesitated. He had his strength and a stamina potion. He could run?
If he should have, he missed his chance because Kyle groaned and stormed back. “Oh, you fucking hypocrite. You threw a fit when I even looked the wrong way, forgetting that just yesterday you abandoned the rest of us to go chase after your stupid— after Ryan. And now you want to do the same thing again?”
“He’s out there alone,” Micah said, pointing past the cloud of ash and sparks. “He could be hurt.”
“So? Screw him if he is. It’s his fault, then. They’re hurting right here.” He gestured at their allies but not himself.
Micah could have sworn he saw Kyle be cut by a spear. He was still so arrogant and stubborn about what he needed and what he could do, but he did have a point.
“So I treat you,” he said, “then go after him?”
“And abandon us right before the attack? Well, it’s nice to know where your priorities lie, and how little you believe in your supposed ‘best friend’.”
That was a low blow. This had nothing to do with belief. It was just, any number of things could go wrong when you were on your own. That’s why they were supposed to stay together.
“Micah,” Jason said in a softer tone, “Ryan said it sounded like you needed help and he was right about that. He can outrun any number of Prowlers with ease—”
Not if he misses a trap.
“—that’s why he gave me the coat. Because I would have to help you fight. I believe him?”
When he said it like that, Micah did, too. Of course, he did. This was about more than just tactics, though. Things weren’t that bad here. There was no way Ryan could hear well enough to know for sure. So why would he break his promise to his dad and repeat the same mistake from yesterday, as Kyle said, on a hunch?
Something was wrong.
“Micah?”
“Let’s go.” He stormed past Jason and Kyle, keeping a wary eye on the spear traps, and when he had enough space, skipped sideways. Stupid as it looked, it was the quickest way forward.
They had an infestation to exterminate. The sooner they did, the sooner he could be sure everything was fine.
“Wounds,” he told the others in the nearest intersection. “Treat them in pairs. Clean, check for type, and heal anything up to deep cuts with middle-grade healing potion but not non-flesh wounds. We don’t know what else they have up their sleeves. Kyle and Jason?”
“I’m fine,” they both said in quick succession, the former with a grumble and the latter as if to reassure.
Micah had his doubts, but his words held true for him as well. If Kyle was wounded and didn’t say anything, that was his own fault. Screw him.
“Then help the others.”
He got his own supplies out and noticed Kyle frowning at him. Jason had chosen to help Lea.
“Check my back?” He stepped away from the wall to give him space to look and went to cleaning his leg wounds. He had a cross-shaped cut along his calf that bled far too much to have gone untreated for this long. Sometimes, ignoring pain wasn’t so helpful. The mud made it hard to notice the wet sensation, too, but he found it hard to care. It wouldn’t have killed him.
He carefully poured the potion and used a hint of mana and influence to shape it into the wound, refilling his form. That familiar tight sensation set in, where his skin felt like it was being held together by clamps. He grimaced and washed it off to make sure the surface was even.
“Don’t know what you see in him,” Kyle mumbled, crouching to be at his height as he checked his back.
Micah looked. “What?”
“Ryan.”
Kyle didn’t look at him as he said, aside from a glance in the corner of his eye, and moved to the other side.
Micah mulled it over for a moment before he said, “Kyle?”
“Hm?”
“Shut up.”
He walked off with another grumble, “Your back seems fine. You got cuts along your sides and neck, though.”
Micah knew that. He gladly treated the rest of his wounds on his own—scratches along his forearms, shoulder, and hip—using copious amount of healing potion even as he made use of every drop.
By the time he finished, his entire body felt like held together by belts. “Good to go?” he asked the others.
“In a manner of speaking,” Silas said. “Our maps are sparse here, but this is where the traps get bad. Jean?”
He showed the way from behind, the route his familiar had traveled, and Silas went ahead.
Rather than just use darts, the Kobolds had set up tunnels full of spears. There were almost no breaks in their attacks, either because they had the numbers, secret shortcuts, or because they knew where they were headed. They couldn’t outrun them, this close to their heart.
Micah’s sideways skip was only so useful with his luggage. His backpack was large enough to snag on spears and almost sent him stumbling into the tip of others. He had to do this carefully, while darts pattered off his armor, the itching started anew, and Prowlers would soon be herded back to them. While his allies fought alone.
It irked.
The next fire potion trap they ran into, they had less luck avoiding. The Kobolds had waited for them and started the shower the moment Jean and he stepped closer. It splashed off their shields and the mud below, soaking the hems of their pants.
He wouldn’t have cared so much, but the hail of darts turned blurry in the corner of his vision. It took him a moment to realize it was because they were burning.
Jean’s armor caught on fire ahead of him. Something hot struck his leg and Micah twisted mid-step.
They were shooting [Firebolts] through the holes. Jean cursed and slapped his arm to himself out. Micah looked up, following the long stripes of heat essence that tore from the world.
A staff shot out of the ceiling, crystals aglow, and it clacked against the stone as the Kobold spun it around. More flame caltrops?
He could shoot it, break the crystal, and stop its spell, but that would only take its weapon away when he would rather have a permanent solution.
The staff wasn’t the only wooden sound. He knew what would follow after the darts had done their jobs.
Fire potion splashed against his back and Kyle cursed at him to move. Micah slipped into a gap between holes, chucking his luggage off, and the moment the spears shot out, he used two like a rickety ladder to throw himself at the ceiling.
He grabbed the staff and its crystals burned against his wrist like a hot iron, but the Kobold couldn’t hold his entire weight on its own. The staff jerked down, slowing his fall for that brief second, and he wrenched it away.
His landing threw up a splash. The spell fizzled out, but he wasn’t done yet. How did you react when an unknown person wrenched your belongings out of your hand through a hole?
He got his slingshot and snapped a metal ball, then a poison shot at the darkness. Smoke sparked and the Kobold cried out. The poison basked the fresh wound before it went dark again.
It was probably too much to hope it would disrupt them. Guessing by the amount of [Firebolts] they were firing, there were more than enough mages around to coordinate.
“Nice one,” Jean still said as he helped steady him, “but your pants are on fire.”
Micah blinked, then frantically tried to slap the fire out. He remembered his tools and broke a pink shot over his pants instead, rubbing it into the material with his gloves.
The fire died.
“Do you have more of those?”
Micah frowned, but more burning darts erupted around them, now that the others had walked through the shower, and he snatched the staff up and jogged after them. “Later,” he told Jean. “Any of you can do anything with this?”
“Maybe?” Jason said, then admitted. “Not really.”
Lea shook her head.
He dropped it and moved on. The scouts could come pick it up later. They were only allowed to collect monster parts as per their agreement … which he hadn’t done much of yet.
Busy. It would slow them done. Hopefully, someone else had?
Besides, there weren’t many monsters as they moved. Spears and darts harried them.
“How much further?”
He asked and rolled the issue of the stone essence over and over in his mind like a puzzle he had to crack to get through those walls and at their throats, rolling a poison shot between his fingers all the while.
“Only a few tunnels,” Jean panted. “Six or five?”
He almost stumbled. “Wait, really?” That was not the answer he had been expecting, being used to his family saying ‘soon’ over and over.
Silas stopped at the corner. “Yeah, but that means we’re getting that much closer to the threshold. Is Max close?”
“Still catching up. Being safe about it.”
“Do we even want to get too close?” Lea asked.
They stopped, pressing themselves against the nearest corners with their shields up. It was a good question.
The plan had been to draw the Kobolds’ attention and turtle up, fending off waves of traps and monsters until they realized something was wrong and headed back. It would have cleared a path behind them—especially if Lisa flooded their tunnels—and bought the others time.
But then the Kobolds had committed far more resources than anticipated and they’d been forced to run.
Did they run right at the camp? Did they wait here until the monsters came back or they pulled something? The latter was close to the original plan, but it might go awry—the Kobolds could just send a signal for them to retreat, this close to their camp.
The sooner they took out their camp, the sooner Lisa could secure the tunnels to disarm them so they could safely find Ryan …
Ryan was quick, though. What if he caught up to them? The other part of the original plan had been that Lisa would attack the Kobolds from behind, distracting them so their team could get past the worst of the traps. Without that, could they even make it there in the first place?
Too many options. His patience only went so far.
“Lea’s right,” he said. “Sort of. We need to prepare anyway. Let’s take a moment to breathe and decide after.”
Jean glanced back. “That pink stuff?”
“On it.” He hadn’t really considered what to do with his flame retardant, thinking of his poison shots when Lisa had told him not to use his breath attacks. But he might be able to make a salve for their things.
He sorted through his pouch and tossed individual ones in a jar, then glanced up and said, “Jason? [Protection]?”
“Huh? Oh yeah, on it.” He had to raise the rain jacket to get his wand. It would help a lot here, even if the effect only held for a few minutes, whether it was monsters or traps they faced.
“And have you drunk your fire potion yet?”
“Nope. Doing that next.”
“Here. I can start on the [Protection],” Lea said and enchanted herself first while he downed the contents of a bottle.
Micah filled some water and leftover powders from yesterday into the mixture just to give it some consistency and scooped a bit of the resulting gunk out to slather over the hem of his pants.
He passed the jar on and got to working on a poison mixture next. Jason traced the wand over his limbs and body haphazardly, but a soapy sheen spread. He could almost feel his armor become more resilient around him, but it didn’t stiffen. Why couldn’t his body do that?
He understood there was a difference between armor and flesh, but Golems could move, right? So he should be able to do the same, even with stone essence … if that made sense?
Something to think on later. Part of him still thought Lisa had been fundamentally wrong about something, but the answer must have been so obvious it eluded him.
His eyes trailed after the bone wand for a moment before he returned to the task at hand.
An echo in the distance made him look up. A few of the others perked up as well, but if the Prowlers were close, it would have sounded different.
“Move on?” Silas asked.
Were they done already? Kyle handed him the empty jar back and he put both away, glancing the others up and down to see how well they’d done. Kyle and Jason had used the least, the other three only a little as there really wasn’t much to work with. Still, better than nothing.
“Slowly,” he said. “Fits and bursts.” C’mon, Ryan. They rushed through the next and that same resistance of spears, darts, and spells. He weathered it all and asked, “Is Max here yet?”
“Almost. Just a second— There.” Jean smiled and the tiny bat appeared at the top of the tunnel behind them, then carefully climbed on the ceiling in their direction.
If it had noticed Ryan, or something else of import, Jean would have said something, right?
Damn.
“Okay, then let’s go.”
“The others haven’t secured the tunnels yet,” Silas said. “If we go now, we have to deal with the gateway traps on our own. You know that, right?”
“I know. I have a plan.”
The scouts hadn’t managed to press and stay this far in, with the entire camp bearing down on them, but they had managed to sneak Max in and scout a few of the entrances and traps.
They’d discussed it last night and chosen this path as their best way in, because it was the second-best option and the others needed the easiest one. Second-best was still difficult. They reached the first trap soon enough.
Another small stone jutted from the ceiling, but it wasn’t nearly large enough to hide the hole that extended left far along the ceiling behind it—large enough to fit boulders that could block the entire path.
Not that they knew for sure what was up there. It was too dark to see in a scrying bowl and Jean understandably didn’t want to make his familiar explore the area where the guards sat. But if they illuminated it up close …?
More screams echoed and Micah hurried. “Can you guys make a light spell reach or do we need to use torches?”
“What’s the plan here?” Silas asked. “If we screw up and something really does block this path, we’re going to have to go all the way around to find another way in.”
“The first step of the plan is finding out what’s up there,” Micah said, “the second step is adapting to that information.”
He itched to get closer and see for himself, but he would rather not be hit by a giant log swinging down from the ceiling.
Lea got her own wand and said, “I can try something, but it would only last seconds?”
He checked with Jean. “Can Max make it out in that time?”
“Maybe?”
“We have literally nothing better to do in the meantime,” Micah told him. “Either we do this and figure it out or we wait around for the Kobolds to herd more Prowlers at us.”
“Alright, alright.” He threw his bat up and it fluttered up to crawl along the ceiling and avoid the darts.
A glowing staff shot from the hole and Jean put an arrow through its crystal before any of them could react, shattering it into shards. He kept a hand near the bow and one eye on his familiar as he set up.
Objectively, Micah knew that monsters would still harm any animals you brought into the Tower. But seeing like this still came as something of a shock.
“Now?” Lea asked. When she got the go-ahead, she flicked the wand. Three bolts of light shot out and curved into the darkness.
Max fluttered around, smoke trailing off its wings, and stared into the light for as long as it shone. The Kobolds tried to shoot darts or throw rocks at it. One nicked its wing, but the edge of its arm just broke into smoke that reformed with the next flutter.
It hadn’t reacted to the bright light, though, which made it different from the Coldlight Bats.
Mich focused on the bowl. The result was clear enough: logs, yes, but not wooden ones. They were half as long as the tunnel and shoulder wide with grooves that showed they had been shaped from stone. Three or four of them were stacked up, secured by ropes on either end.
They would fall and either swing or tumble from left to right, depending on the ropes. It wasn’t rigged to any kind of trap he could see, so the guards had to be the one to set them off. If they really had waited for Lisa to take them out, they wouldn’t have had to worry about that.
Nevermind. It was good enough.
“We use Spike.”
“What? I don’t think it can break all those logs—”
He shook his head. “Not break. Delay. Like it did with the Prowlers? Get some spikes in the walls, some in the logs, and hold them until we can pass through.”
Max dropped from the ceiling and settled on its owners’ wrist, where Jean inspected its wing with small soothing noises.
“That kind of strain would break it.”
“So yank it back by its leash? Look, do you guys want to help the others or sit around until the Prowlers come back?”
Even if the latter option was closer to the original plan, he wanted to take matters into his own hands.
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“We might not have to wait that long,” Silas said as another echo ran along the stone around them.
“Then we go.”
Lea frowned. “What—”
“If we get wrapped in a fight, we won’t have the chance to go because we’ll be too distracted and make mistakes, or we’ll be forced to go through and make mistakes all the same.”
“Or we kill them and go through after?” Kyle asked.
“And what if the others need help? Now’s our chance. We won’t have the luxury of choosing afterward.”
“He has a point?” Jason said. “This is proactive.”
“From the image,” Lea said, “the cavern is too big to stop the logs with Spike. It won’t work.”
“Which is why we’ll use the tunnel wall,” Micah said, “and trip it first.” He pointed as if he could measure the distance in the air.
“And how are we going to do that?”
He got his own rope out and held up for them to see. “Yank me back before the stone crushes me?”
“No—” Lea and Jason both started.
“I’m the lightest.”
“Even ignoring how ridiculous the idea is, I thought you didn’t want to hoist luggage duty off on us?”
He almost laughed. That was what she went with?
“Only for now.”
He could sense they would draw this out. The screams were getting closer and the Kobolds had been suspiciously quiet.
Micah tied the rope around himself with enough confidence to make it seem like the argument had been settled. “Someone grab my pack. Form a line. Lea second so she can swing Sam. Whoever pulls me goes third. As soon as we see Spike has secured the path, we run.”
This would be dangerous, but being a climber in general was dangerous. There were always risks. It was about striking a balance.
Kyle grabbed the trailing end of the rope. Jason shuffled back in line and Jean and Silas took up the middle spots. He didn’t know if that was the wisest order, but he didn’t have time to figure it out. If they didn’t do this before the Prowlers arrived, they wouldn’t get in at all.
Kyle stifled a chuckle as he finished up the knot.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just thought for a while now someone ought to put you on a leash. Frickin’ attack dog.”
“Fuck you.” He smiled.
“This better work,” Lea told him and began to swing Spike in circles.
“It will.” It had to. He didn’t want to be crushed by giant rocks a second time in his life. Or third or fourth, counting Maria and the Golems. Did him crushing into a floor count?
He took a deep breath to calm his nerves and headed down the tunnel. A few steps and nothing shot from the walls. Suspicious. Had the Kobolds gone back? They were close so it would have been a short trip.
Either way, he acted as if they were still there. Once he got close, he sped up as if to run and trick them. At the last moment, he came to a skidding stop.
Something snapped and the large and heavy sound of stone cracking against stone shot through the halls like a lightning strike.
“Duck!” Lea said and he did—at the same time as a dozen spears shot out at them in bulk.
Kyle yanked him back. Spike’s rope snagged on a speartip, bending the rope at an angle, and the hedgehog flew short. He was just about to curse when his own rope snagged on something else—a spear pulled back?—and Micah fell on his ass, far too close to the giant hole in the ceiling.
The second log cracked as well as it tumbled down. Without Spike there to stop it, the first tipped into the tunnel toward him—and the emerald spikes shot out late and pinned it to the wall. They grated against and through the stone, cracking with minty light as they found purchase.
The log stopped, hovering a meter over his left leg, and Micah told himself he would have jerked it aside in time.
He was about to say something when a stretching sound drew his attention: one of the spikes had grazed the twine rope securing the log. The second one above it rolled off the edge and cracked onto the first and it snapped. The stone crashed into the mud.
He scrambled back and hauled himself up, but Lea pushed him forward and shouted, “Go, go, go!”
He almost ran on all fours as he scrambled through a gap in the emerald thorns, two giant stone logs and peering Kobold eyes looming to his left as more cracks spread.
They started poking the logs with their staffs and he wanted to climb up there and throttle them.
Lea was right behind him and practically shoved him around the corner when they were in the clear, then turned around and pulled Kyle out.
The guy grumbled something. Micah and she both just shoved him aside and helped drag the next person out.
The others had to hunch to fit under the spikes. Jean and Silas were quick enough despite their luggage, but it slowed them down just that bit as they navigated the bulks through the maze of thorns and Jason had to wait on them and nearly crawl because of his height.
He lagged behind.
Spike twisted its head around to peer over its shoulder at Lea, nose twitching. Cracks spread through its shell.
Her hand shook, impatient. The Kobolds threw spells at the spikes instead. The moment Jason stood, Micah pulled on his arm and Lea on the rope. Spike burst in mid-air and the logs fell—
Right over and away from Jason’s leg, as easily as a dandelion seed slipped through one’s fingers.
He didn’t even seem to notice. Micah had leaned forward to haul him back and froze. The others stared with wide eyes as the stone thumped on the mud right next to them.
Jason heaved a smile, looked around, and asked, “What?”
Silas sagged back against the corner and caught himself, laughing with one hand to his chest. “What the hell is that jacket you’re wearing?”
Jason turned. “Huh?”
Micah mirrored the [Scout] against the other wall. He needed a moment. That had been way too close and his legs were shaking.
“Dude, the entire log just slipped past you.”
“Oh?” The fear that had been missing in his face was suddenly all there at once, and faded just as quickly to be replaced by wonder. “Ohh? Awesome!”
“Awesome?”
“I knew it!” He pulled on the jacket as if he’d spilled something, but wore a wide smile. “This is a relic.”
“Not officially,” Micah heeded him, though he remembered the scene he’d seen in its appraisal—a helpless kid in an alien city under flood, the coat guiding giant chunks of debris around them like they were nothing.
The Yellow Fleece was meant to protect a single person from disaster. Which was why Ryan was supposed to wear it, though he supposed he was happy Jason had worn it just this once.
The guy turned to him with a mixture of astonishment and disappointment. “Really? Why not?”
He shook his head. “They didn’t know what to expect from the changes, so they told us to come back in half a year or so. Soon, I guess.”
Although, if Ryan hadn’t given the jacket away, Jason wouldn’t have come in the first place so …
Lea frowned at them. “Where did you get that—”
“People,” Silas interrupted them, though he eyed the jacket himself. “Focus. We have company.”
He turned back the way they’d come and familiar screams punctuated his statement, but when Micah looked, it was Teacup Salamanders and oversized insects who descended from the darkness above.
Silas drew a blade and met the charge. Behind the red and black bodies, a few grey Prowlers squeezed their way through the gaps in the rubble and charged monsters and them alike.
“Fall back?” Jean suggested and made a clicking noise to get Max to come. He made a series of gestures with his fingers, fumbling with a ring of twigs, and a blue flame sparked.
Micah glanced left and right, their only two options. The right side looked dug. The mud on the ground led into packed dirt and the walls were rough. On the right, the mud was cracked and dried.
Weird.
Silas shook his head after cutting another monster down and asked, “Why? This is the— perfect spot to make a stand.” He grunted.
The blue flame in Jean’s hand had split into six parts. He tapped his familiar on the nose and those shifted over its head like a halo of circling foxfire, hoving a few centimeters up.
A defensive measure, hopefully?
Jason had joined the fight. Kyle helped here and there, but between the two of them, they had already formed a chokepoint of sorts. The monsters had to run down the rubble to get to them and it slowed them down while the Prowlers stabbed them in the back. Perfect.
He checked their backs. They could avoid most of the traps’ here, too. It was good, but—
Something roared in the distance and he perked up, swiveling around to look behind him.
“Another fireball,” Lea mumbled.
He smiled on reflex, as if to reassure himself. But a [Fireball] meant Lisa was fighting, which was both reassuring and worrying at the same time.
“Wait, ‘another’?” When had the first one sounded? But Lea looked distracted and he shook his head before turning back. It didn’t matter.
He almost joined the fight. This was the perfect place to cull the enemy, if the Kobolds were willing to let themselves be distracted. And since the camp was busy, they were unlikely to be attacked from behind. He checked. The coast was clear left and right for now, but the left tunnel still irked him. It seemed somehow ominous, though he didn’t know why. It wasn’t just dry, it was dim. There were grooves in the wall, but they weren’t mining marks. Perfect hollow roots went through the walls where normally, red crystal veins would have shone.
He stepped closer to inspect one in Jason’s yellow light and there weren’t even scuff marks from tools. The crystal veins were just gone.
Micah tapped the guy on the shoulder and asked, “[Light]?”
He needed a moment to find a pause in the fighting, but held an arm out and cast the spell.
Heat essence rolled in the tunnel like an oven, building up toward the curve. Just a single step further made his throat feel dry after having spent over a day in this heat.
No fire or spell could cause heat like that and dry the mud so evenly, but something else could. He had wondered where it was when it hadn’t been in the scrying bowl.
At the same time as the thought came together, he noticed how even the fire veins in the ceiling had been eaten. That changed things.
“Fire slime,” he said and repeated himself more loudly, “Fire slime.” He stepped back and tapped whoever was closet on the back to get their attention. “We need to leave. Now.”
The others fought and glanced over, but they could only see a dim tunnel. They didn’t take it nearly seriously enough.
A true Salamander was bad enough, but Micah remembered the slime’s fire breath and that pulse it had made. In this tight space without a ward …?
A wall of heat pushed over them and like a gust of wind and a subtle blue glow rolled around the corner, followed by the first hints of its actual body, glistening like resin.
“C’mon, people. Move.” He grabbed up all of his luggage on his way through, making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything.
Thankfully, they disengaged from the fight and followed. Monsters spilled around the corner as they retreated. In the few seconds it had taken him to cross the intersection, it had appeared in the distance.
The slime filled the entire tunnel, side-to-side, head-to-toe. An impassible wall that guarded one way into the camp. It seemed to pause for a moment when it spotted them, just as the baby slime had paused when it had spotted him. Then, just as hungry as the first, it sped up.
“It eats fire, right?” Jean asked with a shaky voice. “Any chance we can engorge it enough to get it stuck in here?”
Not a bad idea.
“Uhm, yes? Do you have the fire spells?”
As if in answer, Max squeaked on his shoulder in the direction of the slime and one of its six blue flames shot from its crown to travel the distance.
It hit like a raindrop in a bucket.
Jean cuffed the bat with one finger. “Max, no. Don’t waste your fire on that thing.” It ducked its head down, abashed.
“I would have to get close,” Jason said, one eye on the little bat. “Lea?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been using a lot of mana this morning. Not sure how Spike would fare against a slime, either.”
“That settles that then, since we’re not wasting actual crystal on it if we don’t have to. We might find vein chunks in the camp or—”
“Guys. Behind us,” Silas warned them.
He had been focusing on the monsters and the slime, reserving his glances for the traps at their sides, but immediately spun at the tone in his voice.
Like rising up out of the water, a true Salamander pushed its head around the corner on the wall. It turned to them with smoke streaming down one side of its face from a ruined eye.
It had been hurt already? By whom? It must have been the attack group, but then the beast had … fled? That didn’t fit into what he knew about them, unless their teammates were doing that well even true Salamanders fled in terror, which he wouldn’t put past them, with Lisa on their team.
Either way, two beings that could flood tunnels with fire were on both sides of them now.
Great job leading your team where they can’t escape, he told himself. He was doing what he’d done on his very first trip into the Tower but dragging others down with him.
It was just one, though. So Micah said, “Attack! Before it can—”
He’d barely said anything when Kyle charged. The beast sped up for a few steps and he almost hoped it would mirror him, but it was angry and opened its maw to let out a stream of red.
“Behind me!” Jason called and yanked Micah back as he pushed to the front. Silas broke off and stumbled back as the rest of them raised their shields.
Kyle held his axe in front of his face, one hand on the back of its head, and parted the flames around him. He swung it down when he got too close and broke them around his torso as well.
The Salamander broke off when he got close and jumped down to bite at him. He shifted direction from one step to the next without a stumble and leaned into its body away from its twisting jaw.
He planted his feet, brought the axe up, and swung it down with a [Power Strike]. The edge hit at the same time as the beast hit the ground and cut into its neck, threatening to sever it, but the momentum carried the beast through the mud, saving it from the worst of the hurt.
Until Jason poked its other eye out. He kicked its maw aside when it tried to bite him. It thrashed around blindly and the rest of them hopped over or slipped by it flush against the wall.
Silas patted Kyle on the shoulder in praise and switched his sword for his bow before he turned.
Micah kept on running and belatedly noticed nobody but Lea was following him. He spun and stopped. “What are you doing?”
Tamed monsters flowed around the blinded Salamander, giving it space because if they got too close, it would snap at them. The fire slime was just moments away from the intersection. It was smaller than the last had been, probably half its size, but all the quicker for it.
“We need to go!”
“The slime has to kill them to get to us,” Jason said. “We’re slowing them down to make sure as many of them as possible get caught.”
“It’ll slow the slime down, too,” Kyle grunted. “Feeding it bodies.”
“Not if it uses its fire breath? Then it will get all four of you at the same time.”
Kyle groaned and cut another monster down, “We know!”
“Go check on the others?” Silas suggested and threw Jean a loot sack. “You go with; protect our stuff.”
Micah considered his options, something to help them before he left, but he’d already equipped them with as many of his alchemicals as he could and most of his other tools had been taken from him.
What would he have done half a year ago, when he hadn’t had these tools to begin with? It was so hard to go back to that mindset when he was used to having more options to work with. But he supposed he would just have to trust them, as he had Ryan back then.
“C’mon,” Lea said, impatient for some reason and Micah nodded and told them not to screw up.
They turned the corner as Jean caught up. The sounds of fighting surrounded them on both sides and the tunnel turned dark, but there was a light at the end that led into the camp proper and the battle, and there was a blurry red speck on the wall just before it.
“There!” He broke into a smile. “Lisa.” It was one of her lizards, scuttling toward them.
Micah sped up as he ran toward it. And halfway down the tunnel, his boot snagged and he stumbled onto uneven ground. “Wha—” he started as he glanced down. Rope?
The net flung dirt up around him and suddenly, he was being dragged up through the dark.
“Micah!”
He didn’t know who called it. He tried to reach out, but his glove smacked against rocks as the net pulled him through a hole in the ceiling and further up. It jerked to a stop in a tunnel, hovering in the air, surrounded by snarling Kobolds with spears.
Everything was spinning. It wasn’t much brighter up here. But the first of the Kobolds moved—
“Shit, shit, shit,” he cursed under his breath and tried to move but the twine limited his range of motion. He needed to get out of here. He needed to leave.
The first spear stabbed him and he tried to block, but his shield got stuck and the tip thrust into his side. He hoped his climbing shirt would help. He really missed his armor right about now. He felt exposed without it, more like the Micah who had gone into the Tower the first time instead of the reflection he had seen in the window after getting his hair cut with Garen.
But even if his shirt stopped the spear from penetrating entirely, or Jason's enchantment helped, he still felt the thrust and grunted, then immediately jerked to the other side when another Kobold stabbed him from there.
There were eight of them and they didn’t stop.
“Micah!” someone was calling. Lisa or Jean. If they could help him, but they were too far away—
“Max!” he called down. A rope slipped into his mouth when he pressed against the net and muffled his voice. He spat it out and said, “Burn the rope!” He almost felt a greater fear when he said that, but it was his only option.
“What—”
“Just do it!”
More spears struck him and went for his face, because that was the only part that was uncovered, and he hid behind his arms and the makeshift coif. They still sliced through his glove and wrists, and he knew this wouldn’t work. One unlucky cut and he would bleed to death.
Micah tried to use what little movement he had to slip a knife from its sheath and started sawing at the rope. The twine frayed and broke easily enough, but that only served to widen the holes he could reach through.
A squeak made him look down. A hazy blue bolt smacked into him with more force than he had anticipated and set the rope next to his shoulder on fire. A little close and a little too hot for comfort. A second one joined it and along with the holes he had cut, the area between the two points gave. With a snap, he lurched shoulder-first out the bottom.
His shield and boot still got stuck in the rope and kept him there, hanging with his ass and pack down over the hole.
The Kobolds started stabbed at his back where his shirt had run up, pressing into his neck and armpits, and he swung his arm up to cut his shield free, then threw the knife into the tunnel and grabbed the rope.
“Micah?!”
He heard another voice through the blood pounding in his ear. They must have been calling all this time.
“I’m fine! Go, go!” he called it just as another spear stabbed him. He got his boot free and swung left and right to gain momentum, then hurled himself and let go.
The Kobolds tried to stop him, but he twisted his luggage around and tumbled across the ground, knocking at least one of them down and making another stumble back.
It tried to run, but he had more than one knife and stuck one in its throat, slipped out of his backpack, and went for the next. Its spear caught him in the shoulder and he surged up to slam it against the wall, stabbing it in the gut a few times before he threw it over his leg into the hole.
It knocked from side to side and cried out as it tried to hold onto something, but burst halfway down.
Someone called out below.
The other six wasted no time in surging at him and Micah fell back counting knives. Only three more, plus the one in his hand.
He planted the first in one’s forehead, making it stop, and threw the second at the one next to it, then slipped into the hole he’d made into their midst, shield out to cover his side, and cut down the last one on the right.
The others tried to stick him and one cut past his knee, but he kept on running onto the other side of the hole.
Putting it between them and him. They had to move carefully around it to get to him and he had time to collect his knives.
At least one of them seemed to catch on, because it hesitated when it saw that and glanced back. The tunnel stretched on for a while and curved in the distance. Light streamed in from holes in the wall every few meters, almost like a gallery of sorts, and a red Kobold hid next to a hole as it prepared a spell.
Once it was done, it spun around and thrust a hand out, firing curving bolts of fire at his allies right in front of his eyes.
Micah laughed and ignored the hot stinging in his side as he stood up. “Oh, you are so dead.”
He planted two knives in the first tan Kobold to finish the job and drew his slingshot as he stumbled back to kill the second, then shot down the fleeing third.
It cried out a warning though, and the fire mage turned to him with a hazy spell in its claws.
Micah limped as he ran around the hole and raised his shield. Bolts pattered off the wood and one slammed into his knee, making him lurch with a grimace just before he threw himself forward and tackled it to the ground.
It tried to resist. He had the upper hand and better weapons. He rose from the red smoke of its passing and limped toward the window, then hesitated and held his shield out for a few seconds before showing himself.
There had to have been a reason why the Kobold hid behind the wall in-between its spells. Better safe than sorry.
He stepped around and looked out to find chaos below.
Lisa stood in the wreckage of the summoner’s throne, flanked by summoned Teacup Salamanders in a chain that enveloped the Kobolds’ hoard. Alone amidst colorful streaks of smoke, the scene looked like some kind of nightmare summer festival.
If so, she was the nightmare. Kobolds rushed her summons in groups of two or three and the beasts fell on them like rabid dogs, but here and there, one slipped past and bent down to scoop up arms full of loot—until the next Teacup Salamander or Lisa herself killed them.
But her attention only went so far and when she was distracted with one side, more Kobolds on the other side tried to sneak past.
Each time they tried, they failed and pulled the loot a few steps further back. But they kept on trying over and over.
And nobody helped. Two of the scouts, Adrian and Parker, killed a true Salamander and stumbled out of the smoke. The third, crouched next to a pillar, spotted him and gave Micah a thumb’s up before he planted an arrow in another red Kobold. He was picking them off?
“Scouts!” Lisa called them to her.
They didn’t move but instead searched the chaos. For what? Or who? Why wouldn’t they help secure the loot?
No wonder why Lisa hadn’t flooded the tunnels with summons yet.
Below and to the side, Jean and Lea stumbled onto the scene and turned to the wall, heads craned up. He saw Jean say something, worried, insistent. Help him? They were still looking for him?
He started waving just as Parker called out with the answer to his question, “Where’s the summoner?!”
He froze. With Lisa standing where she was, he’d assumed she’d usurped it, but they hadn’t killed it yet?
“I don’t know!” Lisa called back. “Kill some of these Kobolds first and then—”
Parker turned to Adrian, ignoring her, but still spoke with a raised voice, “It must have fled.”
Adrian looked around and his eyes caught on a stream of fleeing Kobolds. He pulled on Parker’s arm and pointed, saying something else he didn’t quite catch.
“Parker!” Lisa called when a Kobold almost got away with … a guitar case? She had been smiling when he first saw her, but now there was only anger.
Adrian and Parker ran toward the tunnel of the fleeing Kobolds. The last thing he said was, “We can’t let it escape!”
Then he was gone. And he was right, but—
“Micah!” Lea called below him. “Are you alright?”
He was bleeding from a dozen fresh stab wounds and cuts where they’d gotten past his armor just a few minutes after healing.
“I’m fine,” he said. “It was just a net trap. Help Lisa secure the loot. Tell Nick to focus on the Kobolds on your way there. I’ll fight my way over to you.”
If he could find a way down.
“Got it. Stay safe,” she said and ran off with Jean and his bat behind her.
Stay safe?
He frowned, stepped away, and the moment he was out of sight, sagged against the stone with an exhausted breath. He inhaled, let it all out as a deep groan, and fumbled for a healing potion.
Freaking tan Kobolds with their stupid spears. He almost preferred the fire mages.
Well, not really, but still.
His hands shook as he poured the potion over as many wounds as he could and he didn’t have the state of mind to guide it. Unlike before, he felt relief when the clamps took hold.
Stay sound. That was the better thing to wish someone. Safety was a relative state, soundness the summit to strive for.
He got up and headed back to collect his daggers. There was no way he was staying safe. He already knew what he had to do. The same thing Lisa would have done if things had gone right.
But first, he collected the Kobolds’ crystals. One of his loot sacks was still stuck in the net, too. He had to pick up a spear to pull it over to himself and throttle the net to get it to let go.
He limped back around the hole and headed for the next fire mage. With any luck, he would disable a trap that would let Ryan in, so he could find him. Or, he hesitated, and called out, “Ryan?”
With any luck, Ryan would decide to come find him.