Reggie struck first, plunging his shortsword into the chest of an approaching Nequese. Blood began to soak its cloak as its body fell limp. Reggie shuddered but quickly removed his blade and readied for his next target. Katherine took an offensive stance and dispatched a trio of attackers with a single strike, severing limbs and splattering blood across the cave. I dodged to the left as a Nequese tried to gut me, then I extended the blades in my glove and slashed the face of my attacker. They cut through his head like butter, and bodily fluids flew right into my own face. My nose was filled with the scent of blood, guts, and faintly of something else I was too distracted to identify. Gus crushed two with his maul but in addition to the expected SQUISH! There was a loud shattering sound. Broken glass flew from the near liquified remains of the crushed Nequese! “They plan to cut us up!” Gus shouted in a voice nearly as cracked as the glass itself. “A sad attempt! A little glass will just be a minor inconvenience to clear away when we leave!” Krimsun responded as she seared and sealed another tunnel.
The fight continued on for what felt like hours, Nequese after Nequese would throw themselves at us, and the glass bottles in their cloaks would shatter leaving broken glass all over the ground. In spite of their numbers, it was clear that they were no match for us. Their daggers couldn’t even get through Reggie’s leather armour, much less Katherine’s plate, and they couldn’t land a single blow on me as I magically enhanced my agility. Soon the ground was littered with glass, blood, and bodies. For a moment, we thought it was over, and I tried to think about what that other smell was to distract myself from the scene, but another wave came, with ropes instead of daggers. Katherine took out a couple with a blast of magical force, but some of them got close enough to wrap their ropes around her legs and pull her to the ground. They did the same to Reggie, but Gus was too heavy for them, and I was too small. Katherine’s armour protected her from the broken glass, but her helmet was not properly fastened and came loose and she hit her head on the ground. Reggie fell properly and got back up with some minor scrapes, but his clothes were stained in blood. I saw the Nequese tried to swarm Katherine as she was down so I threw a portal onto the ceiling above a stalagmite and then one in front of Katherine. Several Nequese jumped towards her only to find themselves impaled on a pointed rock. Dazed, but conscious, Katherine managed to get up and we eliminated the remaining Nequese.
“Well done!” Krimsun praised as she moved on to the last tunnel. “I thought you would need help, so I started sealing them without the fire, but it looks like you held your own quite well.” We all looked at each other for a moment, not even Reggie was especially thrilled over our victory. “Well, we might as well finish this and head out.” As Krimsun spoke she began to enflame her hand and I realized what the other smell had been. How could I have been this stupid? I yelled out, “The bottles were filled with Gas!” But it was too late. Immediately Katherine tried to make a shield of earth between us and Krimsun, but it was quickly blown away by the explosion. We went flying backward through the, now opened, exit to the cave. All I saw as I faded from my consciousness, were flaming Nequese corpses flying through the air.
I awoke to a familiar dark feeling. A headache, the smell of death, and pure panic. After building up the courage to open my eyes I was met with a harrowing scene. Charred and mangled bodies, some still alight, scattered on the ground and in the trees. The sky was threatening rain and several meters in front of me was Katherine, motionless on the ground. I tried to run towards her but fell flat on my face, pain rushed through my body from my left leg, I had a compound fracture. Bits of bone were poking out from my leg, making it impossible to run, so I crawled. Dragging myself across the ground I eventually made it to Katherine. I called out weakly, “Katherine! Are you alright!” but I received no response. I made my way to her head and placed my hand over my face. “Oh Katherine, you can’t be dead! Not you too!” my hand trembled as I waited for her breath. My mind was being pulled back into the darkness when a small gust of air snapped me back to the present. Her breathing was slow but steady. Katherine was still alive.
I felt a cold drop of water on my nose, then another on my shoulder, and then on my tail. It was beginning to rain, I had to get Katherine to shelter. I tried to no avail to wake her up, it was clear that I needed to move her. Not knowing if she had sustained any injury to her neck, I pulled out some supplies from my portal and fashioned a makeshift brace to keep her head in place. But that was the easy part. My leg was broken, and I was ten to twenty times lighter than Katherine when she wasn’t in full plate armour. But I needed to get here back into that cave. There was no way for me to pull her by myself. I tried using the claw strings to grappled onto a tree branch, then I tied the other end around her arm. She moved a few feet, but it put a strain on her neck brace. “What am I going to do?” There was no sign of Krimsun, Reggie, or Gus anywhere. Were they unconscious or dead? Would I find their mangled bodies still in the cave? Or worse, more Nequese ready to finish us off?
Fear began to creep up on me once again and threatened to consume me, but it sounded like something else wanted to beat it to the punch. A long, high pitch hissing sound. “Wolfsnakes…” I whispered to myself, in an almost sarcastic tone. Their horrible, hairy, limbless bodies slithered across the ground and began devouring the corpses of the Nequese. I couldn’t fight them in this state, and I couldn’t run away. Or… Could I? If I focused my agility magic into my left leg, I might be able to escape while the wolfsnakes were distracted. The wagon was still at the bottom of the hill, several kilometers away, but if I got on top of a tree, I could use my glider… My eyes turned to Katherine, after all of this, after all, she and her family has done for me, I was still focused on saving my own skin. No, there had to be a way to get us both to safety, “I just had to think” I said to myself as it started to drizzle.
The wolfsnakes had already devoured six of the two dozen or so Nequese that were between them and us, I had to think fast. Wolf-snakes lock onto the vibrations of their prey’s footsteps and pursue them relentlessly. And then I saw some of the logs that the Nequese had used to try and crush us. “Of course!” I thought to myself loudly, as shouting in this situation would have resulted in my swift demise. I threw a portal below the end of one of the wider logs and placed the other portal above her head. Now came the hard part, or rather one of the many hard parts of an especially difficult day in an especially difficult life. Gravity magic was a challenging type of magic for even some of the greatest mages. Much like portal magic, the magical strain of lifting something was directly proportional to the square of the mass of the object. All I had to do was lift Katherine about a foot in the air for a couple of moments so that I could get the log under her. I glanced over at the wolfsnakes who were slithering their way through the now wet ground to their tenth Nequese. I took in a deep breath.
ARRGH! I tried to muffle my sounds of exertion as I tried to lift Katherine’s body. It had to be all at once, lest I injure her more. One inch off the ground, eleven to go. Magical stress, is similar to emotional stress, often resulting in the resurfacing of traumatic memories. As she got to three inches off of the ground, the scenery around me changed to that of Trodthrew. I saw the face of Dralp and Krob in every Nequese, the wolfsnakes to on the form of Pestak that slaughtered them. Katherine dropped half an inch, but I steeled myself and continued pushing. Six inches, halfway there. Flames swirled around me, my skin was burning and Katherine’s face changed to that of the Inferno, and he began to mock me. “I slaughtered your family and now you serve me murdering them by the dozens!” Eight inches, the Nequese join in with the voices of Dralp and Crob. “You stood there and watched us die, then abandoned us! You killed us! You killed us!” I had only an inch to go, but I broke. “No! I didn’t!” I shouted, breaking my concentration on the spell. I fell to the ground in agony, crying, slamming my small fist into the muddy earth. “I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
ns 15.158.61.12da2
