Chapter 20: The Lair

The ground happened to burst directly between Hima and Miro, sending the two mages sprawling in opposite directions. One of the razorbacks was on Miro instantly, pinning him to the ground with its paws that were, much to Miro’s dismay, as sharp as the metallic scales that covered its body. His instincts to first fight with his hands betrayed him, as Miro punched the beast in the side only to cut his fingers on its sharp scales, but as it opened its maw to get a grip over his throat, he regained composure and sent two fireballs in rapid succession down its gullet.

The razorback whimpered and fell to the side. Miro had neither the time to revel in the additional experience boost that came with one-manning the razorback, nor to regret wasting two fireballs on one creature – another razorback had immediately snapped at his leg from the side and he hit it with a fireball in its cheek. Miro was out of mana, as the alarming message flashed before his eyes.

He turned to Hima as she thrust ice spikes at the advancing razorbacks with one hand, while separating the others with a wall of ice to shepherd them into a single attack point.

More of the grey bristly beasts burst from the ground, some on their side of the wall, and Miro remembered the rocks that he’d slipped into his pocket earlier. What seemed like a ludicrous amount when Hima first handed them to him now didn’t look to be nearly enough. He targeted the razorbacks’ heads, his aim better with the stones than his fire powers.

Six of the metallic beasts advanced on him carefully, squinting and growling whenever he’d hit them on the muzzle, but were otherwise undeterred. There was little else he could do after he tagged all of them, and the creatures seemed to sense it, ready to strike. Throwing his head behind his shoulder he called for Hima. The icewinder turned, ice spear jammed into the mouth of an attacking razorback that was refusing to die but was instead gnawing on the weapon, and used her other hand to create a wave of jagged ice in the path of the razorbacks as they pounced on Miro in unison. Some had been impaled, while others were simply knocked back much like the one on Sgobor’s farm.

The momentary distraction let the razorback that had been snapping at Hima’s spear get the upper hand, breaking the weapon and pushing the icewinder back. Hima fell with a grunt as the beast came upon her, the only thing keeping its teeth away from her throat being the broken spear held sideways across its mouth. Miro stood frozen, feeling every ounce the meatbag he’d been joking about to himself hours earlier. But then he found that his experience bar filled up, a new level notification came up and his mana was maxed out at its new peak of 15.

He immediately fired off a fireball at the razorback on top of Hima, missing by a wide margin and hitting Hima’s ice wall, creating a hole that in moments was filled by a gnashing head of a frustrated razorback. Cursing his aim, Miro had no choice but to run towards the beast attacking Hima, rapidly firing all four of his remaining fireballs with only one hitting the creature in its side. That blast did allow Hima to finally get enough leverage to kick the razorback off her, sending it flying into two others. Getting up to her feet, she created another ice spear and tossed it to Miro.

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It shocked him how frigid it was and he almost dropped it immediately, but between potential frostbite and the bite of the jaws snapping at him, he willed himself to hold on, trying to emulate Hima and stabbing the pointed end towards their open mouths if they got too close.

The razorbacks did, much to the chagrin of the mages, possess some measure of intelligence, and while three occupied Miro’s spear, two others cautiously flanked him.

There were too many of them. Miro’s shoulders stung and he was vaguely aware of the wetness on the front of his shirt. The ice spear in his hand started to feel like he was holding onto the business end of a hot poker, and the razorbacks, sensing weakness, picked their moment.

“Hima!” he shouted, and before he even got the second syllable out, a wall of ice sprung up between him and the razorbacks. The wall expanded quickly, frosted sides building into an enclosure that separated him from the scene entirely. “Hima!” he shouted again, pounding on the wall, but it was a solid immovable block, opaque, so that he had no idea what was going on the other side, the only clue being the experience bar that twitched forward sporadically for a couple of minutes and then stillness. Had the icewinder survived? And if she didn’t, would her magic fade, releasing him from the ice cell, possibly to the mercy of the remaining razorbacks, or would he simply suffocate in due course? He wasn’t sure which ending he would have preferred.

His philosophical musings, spurred on by a conviction that he was already running out of air, were cut short as a section of the wall before him lightened and then melted away, revealing Hima standing on the other side, breathing heavily, but otherwise silent. She blew a loose strand of hair from her face, and then tucked it behind her ear.

“You’re alive,” Miro said as the rest of the walls dissolved and then settled in the form of a blue cloud back into Hima.

“You almost sound not disappointed,” Hima answered, her voice one step above a whisper, raspy and disinterested. “Do you have any mana left?”

Miro shook his head.

“That’s too bad.” She gestured with a nod towards his right shoulder. “You could have cauterized that.”

Miro touched the wound with his left hand. It wasn’t as bad it felt – the cuts, though long, weren’t deep, and the blood was already drying.

“Let’s go,” Hima said, “I don’t want to stick around to find out that we’d missed any.”

Several dozen of the razorbacks lay strewn about the ground in a scene that looked like a stampede of rampaging glaciers ripped through here moments earlier, encasing, frosting, or shredding the animals as it went.

“At least these ones weren’t endangered, right?” Miro joked, even though really all he wanted to do at the moment was lie down and never get up again.

This elicited no response from Hima except for the briefest of blank stares that plunged them into silence for the next half hour. At that point, with enough distance between them and the razorback nest, Miro said the only thing that felt appropriate, “I’m sorry.”

“We need to work on your aim,” she said without slowing. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

For what it was worth, advancing a level seemed like a measure of success to Miro, and he had skill points to allocate. However, he thought better of bringing up the question of where to allocate them just then or of making that decision himself.