Chapter 65 - She Wasn’t Ready

“Darcent, help!”

I swore and wrapped the rope around myself, quickly lowering myself through the chute. My lamp illuminated a chittering swarm of something winged harassing my partner.

I scowled and pulled out my knife, spitting one of the flying creatures on the blade and examining the dead creature.

“It’s just a salt-mite, Annalisa.”

I turned up my lantern, shining the brightened light on the swarm, who screeched and flew away down the tunnel. The light-responsive lichen clinging to the walls and ceiling glowed in response. My partner calmed down and started lifting off her shirt.

“What are you doing!?” I asked.

“Checking for bites!”

“You won’t find any,” I said. “They don’t have teeth.”

“What? Really?”

“Didn’t you read the undercity primer Alondalis gave us?” I demanded. She looked askance, and I sighed. I held my light up to the tiny mouth of the creature on the end of my knife to show Annalisa the distinct lack of bitey instruments. She peered down at the tiny orifice, but it just made her more distraught.

“Aww, Darcent, you killed it!” she said. “It wasn’t even hurting anyone!”

I groaned. “Annalisa. You literally just called for help. I saw you surrounded by a swarm of tiny monsters. Surrounded. Swarm. Monsters. I think that’s enough key words to merit an immediate lethal response.”

“Well, maybe I just got startled. But you didn’t have to kill it!”

I flung the body off my knife down the tunnel its compatriots had retreated through. I could still hear them screeching. Great. My partner, the tough as nails, orc-smashing, devilborn gangster, already with a body count, had hangups about killing tiny monsters. A fact which I wasn’t privy to until we were already in the undercity.

“I just think that—”

“Quiet,” I said. Something in the air had changed. The salt mites in the distance had gone silent. I put my fingers on my deck, and sure enough, the towers were abuzz with caution. They acted almost as a divination ward themselves, and I’d be a fool to ignore it. I unbound the deck and fanned it out.

Annalisa, immediately on the alert, dropped into her stance and slid on her new spiked knuckles. I raised my lantern high, shining it down the tunnel, but seeing nothing.

“Darcent, what is it?” hissed Annalisa.

“Where did the salt-mites come from?”

Annalisa twisted toward another of the tunnels leading to the room beneath the chute. She lifted her finger to point, and I reoriented the lantern. The light glistened off dozens of tiny sets of eyes, shining in the dark.

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“Aww, more salt-mites?” asked Annalisa.

I took a step back. “No. Salt-mites don’t have eyes, either.”

A wave of skittering crustaceons pushed forward on spined legs. They tapped a staccato rhythm on the brick and stone as they came, small claws snapping and shoving things into their vertical slit mouths filled with needle-like teeth. They were somewhere between a crab, a shrimp, and a pirhanna in appearance.

“Aww, they’re kind of cute!” said Annalisa.

One of the most forward ones spotted Annalisa, hissed, and leapt at her—much further than I would have thought those spindly legs capable. It spread those legs and claws, ready to latch on to whatever it caught. It probably expected her startled screech. What it didn’t expect, was Annalisa’s uppercut smashing into the bottom of its shell and sending it into the roof of the ruin like it had been shot from a crossbow. Pure reflex, on her part. It hit the ceiling and exploded, showering the area with guts and bits of shell. I ducked under my cloak. Who knew what vile diseases and parasites these things carried.

Its compatriots didn’t concern themselves with matters of hygiene. They rushed the remains, devouring every morsel as we watched in horror. I looked down at my cloak, which had taken some of the gory rain, and then back down at one of the other diminutive monsters, who, finding the floor clean, shifted its little glistening eyes up to me.

“Anna?”

“Yes, Darcent?”

“Run!”

I didn’t wait for her answer, taking off in the direction the salt-mites had retreated. Annalisa soon followed, and I heard an angry chorus of skitters and snapping teeth in our wake. Running blindly from a swarm of small carnivorous creatures not five minutes after leaving Brokier. This delve was going fantastic.

The tunnel led us to a wider gallery, large enough that our light failed to reach the other side. I could hear the salt-mites above us in the rotted eaves of whatever this structure had been. But if we didn’t want it to be our tomb and these stupid things’ dinner table, we had to make a stand.

I turned at the entrance, suffusing my deck with the two of knaves as I projected it forth in a wide arc of cards. The keen killing edge hit the crustaceans on their shells, and the enhancement shattered. Instead of slicing them into crab-cakes, it simply bowled the first rank back, but there were dozens behind to replace them while the fallen scrabbled back to their feet. One of the furthest up leapt at me, and its legs wrapped my outstretched hand. I grabbed the top of it and tried to pry it off, but the thing was surprisingly strong for its size. Annalisa chopped it with the edge of her hand, and the thing let go, clearly dazed. I let it drop to the floor and continued the retreat.

If it were just one at a time, Annalisa would surely prevail, but these small monsters threatened to swarm us by the dozen. I looked around, finally spying a column that hadn’t completely crumbled, and a ledge just above it.

“Annalisa, you have to tunnel us!”

She followed my gaze, eyes widening. “I don’t know if I can do both of us at once.”

“You have to try,” I said, calling the three of dragons to my hand. I slapped it to her forehead, and she looked at me, stunned for a second. But I channeled everything I had into the card, and her black eyes gleamed with celestial depth. This direct connection burned through my willpower at an alarming rate, and I could feel myself already flagging from the stamina I fed through the link. But Annalisa thrust forth her hands, and a portal opened wide enough for a person to get through.

She went first, and without hesitation, I followed her. A blast of unimaginable cold washed over me, and I came out the other end of the tunnel, teeth chattering and eyelashes covered in frost. I had kept my momentum, and smashed into the wall above the ledge, nearly rebounding back enough to topple over. Annalisa grabbed me, having wrapped her tail around one of the rotted eaves for balance. My arms windmilled above a sea of grasping claws and chittering, spiked legs. But she managed to pull me back up, and also rip away one of the creatures that had followed us through the tunnel by clinging to my backpack. She threw it back down to its companions.

I looked down from the shelf. “Anna, you did it! We’re alive!” I said. I turned, just in time to see her vomit over the edge onto the floor of the ruin.

“Anna!” I shouted, kneeling down beside her. I glanced down, nearly wanting to spill my own breakfast. The creatures, it seemed, were not picky about where their food had been.