Chapter 66 - We’re With the Guild
Six hours later and our new friends were still with us. We remained up on the shelf, waiting for them to tire or grow bored. But neither seemed to happen.
I pried loose a chunk of old masonry and idly chucked it down at the milling creatures. They scattered around the impact, then rushed in to see if the half-brick was edible. Finding it not-so, they quickly returned to milling about and occasionally chirping up at us in a ripple across the room.
“Fuck you!” I shouted back down, and then couched my chin in my hand. I glared over at Annalisa. “This was a great way to get magic items.”
Annalisa said nothing. She had dozed off after over exerting herself with the tunnel. Even having borrowed my stamina and will to do it, moving two souls through the plane of frost had taken a lot out of her. I riffled through my deck and considered. Annalisa and I were well-suited to individual opponents, but had nothing to deal with swarms of enemies. I set aside everything but the dragons, towers, and storms and considered. The stone skin from the flesh of towers was, as far as I could tell, purely defensive. I had no reason to believe any of the other cards in a suit steeped in isolation and denial would kill the ‘little crusties’ as Annalisa had taken to calling them (and since they were not in the undercity primer, I could think of no better alternative)
I still had four cards left to bond with in the suit of storms, but they were earily silent. Lancaster’s manual suggested that the storms were all about quelling chaos through a violent rebalancing, but the crusties moved as one mind, and there was a strange order to their actions already. Either way, storms were notoriously difficult to bond with, made even more difficult to manifest the ability in the ordered, structured institution of the academy.
Of the dragons, I still had the two and the five with which I’d yet to use. The flame of dragons and the forming of dragons. Frustratingly, the flame of dragons seemed amenable to my will, having bonded to me during the fight in Kindledown. For obvious reasons, I’d avoided using a card called the flame of dragons in the matchbox district. It’s just that feeding power into it seemed to do nothing other than make the card glow. Triple frustrating because, in theory, what could be better at clearing a swarm of enemies than a dragon’s flame?
I did a quick one card reading. Sure enough, the two of dragons emerged at the top. I reshuffled and did another. Again, the two of dragons. I picked it up and looked at the roaring beast wreathed in flame inked bright silver against the dark wood. The message couldn’t be clearer. This card was our ticket out.
I held the card out toward the creatures below and sent my will into it. It glowed a faint orange and got a little warm but cooled in seconds. Then, nothing. I sighed. Maybe it was like the three of dragons and bestowed a blessing on someone else. But that seemed oddly generous for such ravenous, selfish creatures. Still, worth a shot. I tapped Annalisa with the card, but she just mumbled in her sleep. There was no difference in the card or myself to suggest it was siphoning power into her.
Useless.
I sighed, restacking my deck. The dragons in my deck flared, affronted at my jab. They wanted to be unleashed against my enemies.
Well then work! I shot back. Their rage subsided to a dull, sulky grumbling. I’d read about masters communing with the Wills before. I’d never read that they could be so damn petulant. That’s a five-cunning word I learned at the academy that means fucking petty. Still, that their feelings were coming in more and more clearly spoke to my progress with the Wills.
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A different tone of chirp alerted me that something was going on below. The warbling cry propagated through the group, and the herd became a scuttling, scrabbling mass of spike legs and eyestalks. I shook Annalisa awake, and we watched in fascination as the entire swarm crowded themselves into nooks and crannies until not a single crustie remained visible.
“What the hell?” I muttered. The beasts were certainly still down there. Not every one of those crevices could have led out of the room—some of them were simply overgrown slabs of fetid furniture, long-rotted and covered with lichen. But then I spotted it: a flickering light down another tunnel. A pair of voices followed it, and a group of five figures entered the gallery. I smacked Annalisa’s boot to wake her up and then cupped my hands around my mouth.
“Hey!” I yelled down.
They stopped and squinted up, holding their lamp against the gloom. I could see two humans, one with a spear and the other a wand, and a trio of drakkyn pistoliers behind them. One of the drakkyn pointed up at us and the spearman cupped his hand.
“What are you doing up there?”
“Get off the ground!” yelled Annalisa, beside me.
The two looked at each other confused, and came closer. Perhaps it was to better hear us, or perhaps to get a better look at the two shelf gremlins.
“No!” I yelled. “Don’t come any closer!”
“It’s alright!” said the mage. “We’re with the Guild. You’re safe, now.”
They must have crossed whatever invisible threshold signaled the horde, because the crusties rushed from their hiding spots as one, swarming toward the two adventurers and the drakkyn gunners on a tide of skittering legs.
The adventurers shouted in alarm, and the ear-splitting reports of the drakkyn pistols, set off by sparks of their living lightning, began to ring out. The spearman stepped forward, sweeping the leaf-shaped spearhead from side to side to make room for his partner, who leveled the battle wand and blasted at least a dozen of the crusties to bits. That slowed at least twice their number as they stopped to feast on their fallen, but it was a small fraction compared to the mass that continued to surge forward. I heard the sizzle and snap of at least one of the pistoliers discharging his entire reserve of living lightning at the leaping crusties.
“Hear that, Anna?” I shouted over the racket. “They’re with the Guild. We’re Safe now.”
She shot a glare as sharp as a keen-slick blade at me and I sighed. Of course she would want to help them. I sighed. How did I end up with the only bleeding-heart devilborn in Dragonmaw for a partner?
Who was I kidding? I was lucky to have her. But she was at least as stubborn as any of my dragon cards.
“Fine,” I said, fanning out my deck, “buy me some space. On three.”
Annalisa pushed herself off the shelf, landing hard on a pair of the crusties, and, shouting at the top of her lungs, cracked the shells of two more with a pair of quick spiked jabs.
“Three,” I muttered, dropping down to a low hang and letting myself fall to the floor.
It took the swarm a moment to realize we had joined the fight behind the majority of its momentum, but a series of clicks and chirps propagated through the mass of legs and claws, and I saw the entire thing shift, like a school of fish. The ones in the rear reversed direction, and it wouldn’t take long before we were overwhelmed.
I sent out a handful of cards with as much force as I could muster, bowling over a half-dozen of the little creeps not unlike the adventurer mage with his blasting wand. Unfortunately, unlike the wand, it didn’t tear the things to shreds. It just stunned them. Annalisa swatted a pair of leapers out of the air, and roundhouse kicked another against the wall with her heel. But the numbers arrayed against us increased every moment.
I pulled out the two of dragons. “Work, damn you!” I muttered, feeding my will into the card. It glowed and warmed and did nothing else. What good was a dragon-fire card that made no fire?
“Darcent!” shouted Annalisa. One of the leaping crusties managed to latch onto her arm and clamp its claws down. If she hadn’t been hardened by the plane of obsidian, the thing would have cut straight to the bone. As it was, she cried out, swatting at the little beastie, but lacked the leverage to hit hard enough to crack its shell.
The adventurers across the gallery from us weren’t faring much better. The spearman cut crustie after crustie from the air with measured sweeps and thrusts, but they would soon be overwhelmed. His partner stepped forward, pressing the fingers on his left hand to his own chest. They glowed blue, and when the man breathed out, a cone of frost shot from his lips that froze a dozen of the little beasties solid.
I widened my eyes. Of course. I felt like such an idiot.
The dragons readily agreed.