Semiautomatic Sorceress Boxed Set One: includes: Southwest Nights, Southwest Days, and Southwest Truths

by Kal Aaron

  Familiarity and constant exposure protected her stomach a little, but she suspected this latest sensory experience would haunt her nose for weeks. She’d need to go to Tricia’s place and roll around in the flowers until she forgot all about the snake-roach stench.

  Ah, the glamourous life of an Illuminated Torch.

  Lyssa didn’t fail to notice the near-constant scratching and skittering noises echoing from the tunnel ahead of her. Nor was it easy to ignore the increased number of tunnels going off in different directions. Many of them were far rounder than the tunnels and passages near the front of the mine.

  Slime trails marked almost all of them, but she tromped along her original path, following the largest group of trails and tracks, which happened to line up with the biggest tunnel. That one could accommodate three or four people standing side by side.

  Picking off monsters one by one would be tedious, and she’d die of old age before it was done. She needed to find their central nest or hive and take that out in one extreme and brutal burst of overkill.

  The number of monsters pointed to possible reproduction. That meant she needed to find a queenlike creature to kill or destroy enough of the snake-roach pairs so the population couldn’t replenish itself. She couldn’t be sure they were reproducing, but she was far from ready to assume the opposite.

  One observation continued to bother and distract her: the tunnels were far larger than any of the creatures she’d fought. The implications hung heavy in her mind.

  Fighting monsters presented unique challenges. Shadow or Illuminated, people were people, and she understood where and how she needed to wound them to kill them.

  That wasn’t always the case with monsters. Every new monster hunt turned into an impromptu anatomy lesson on the most extreme things possible with flesh and bone. Once a Sorceress learned their weaknesses, they were easier to beat than a rogue or a well-equipped Shadow, but that initial learning curve could be steep.

  The noise from ahead grew louder as Lyssa advanced until it’d become a constant din of scratching and squelching. A shiver of anticipation wracked her body. Almost there.

  She followed the current curving tunnel until it widened. It opened into a huge, sprawling chamber, warm and humid, filled with fetid mounds covered with slime and thick white-green fungus. Snake-roaches crawled all over the mounds, some surrounding opaque and moist spherical eggs. Her educated guess had become an awful reality.

  The smaller type of monster Lyssa had fought near the entrance of the mine dominated the room, crawling over one another and streaming in and out of the hatchery from different tunnels. Larger snake-roaches, some nearly the size of a horse, scuttled amongst their smaller family members. Like her first test subject, they didn’t pay her shadowy form any attention.

  Lyssa blurted, “Okay, that’s about the most awful thing I’ve seen this year.”

  Half the horde pivoted in her direction. All the legs moving at once made her skin crawl.

  “Okay, that was dumb.”

  “Perhaps a temporary retreat is in order,” Jofi said.

  Lyssa stepped into the chamber, her boots sinking into something soft and squishy. When she took a step, there was a loud pop. Packs of small monsters skittered off the mounds and spread out in a wide arc surrounding her. Monsters came from the tunnels.

  “No, Jofi.” Lyssa drew her other gun and dropped the wraith form. “It’s time to clean up the mess.”

  Chapter Ten

  Lyssa swept the pistol loaded with normal rounds in front of her, taking down the small charging snake-roaches as quickly as she could pull the trigger. Their larger cousins remained farther back, clustering near eggs but still facing her.

  Male drones? Monster hatchery guards? It didn’t matter. None of them would be leaving this chamber alive.

  Green blood splashed everywhere as her bullets found their marks. More than one shot penetrated a snake-roach only to continue through and nail another. The sheer density of the enemy was making it easy to take them down. She could have closed her eyes and shot without missing.

  Her confidence grew. She hadn’t been sure they’d be as easy to kill as the earlier monsters. Despite what she’d said to Jofi, she was ready to run if overwhelmed.

  Lyssa snickered as she aimed at three monsters lined up in a neat row. She fired through the first one’s mouth and smiled in triumph as the bullet passed through the two creatures behind it. The shot skimmed the next-closest monster but didn’t finish it off. That was her record thus far.

  The monsters had charged, but none had gotten close enough to worry her. Their continued mindless behavior kept their movements easy to predict.

  That was another common problem with rogues who made monsters. They focused too much on hideous features and not enough on their practicality.

  The press of angry fangs and legs limited Lyssa’s ability to take many clever record-setting shots, but she managed more doubles and triples. As with her first battle, the monsters didn’t react to their heavy losses as they continued their relentless surge toward the invader. In some cases, they tripped and stumbled over the bodies of other snake-roaches, oblivious to the deaths of their allies.

  Lyssa emptied her regular magazine before aiming her other pistol and squeezing off three quick shots spread out along the closing monster line. The thunderous blasts from the explosive rounds shredded the monsters and blasted bits, slime, and sludge all over.

  The horde stopped and began moving back and forth as if confused. She didn’t think it was fear, but she’d take any distraction to reload while trying to not worry about them demonstrating another more aggressive charging behavior.

  Lyssa tossed her other pistol in the air and yanked out another standard magazine before catching the falling pistol with the mag. She slammed them both against her leg to force the magazine into the weapon.

  The click from the gun snapped the horde out of their daze. They returned to their mad charge, but she was ready for them.

  “Eat this,” she shouted.

  Lyssa carved a path through the chamber by emptying half her explosive magazine into the monsters. The thunderous echo assaulted her ears. Hot chunks blasted from the rocks at the center of the mounds, cutting into the snake-roaches like shrapnel, wounding some and killing others. The enemies' numbers were plummeting rapidly.

  The horde slowed but didn’t stop. After a moment, they scurried toward the opposite end of the chamber, forming a writhing, angry mass. She growled in irritation. This encounter was starting to lose its charm.

  Lyssa stepped forward so she’d have more room to maneuver. She peppered the chamber with shots, concentrating on small snake-roaches. The larger ones had yet to move toward her, but her explosive rampage hadn’t yet damaged any of the eggs in the center of the chamber.

  With the cessation of the blasts, the swarm surged toward her again. She emptied the rest of her explosive magazine to disrupt their front lines. This time her attack also blew apart two of the eggs. A group of large snake-roaches leaped off the mounds to join the attack.

  Every creature had its limits. It was bittersweet being right about their trigger.

  “Fine!” Lyssa shouted. “Let’s do this. Join the party, you freaks.”

  Although they were bigger, the new threats were slower, and to Lyssa’s surprise, their opened mouths combined with that same size made them not much harder to put them down than their smaller cousins. It took two bullets down the gullet instead of one to send them to their twitching demise, but the first at least slowed them. Their size interfered with them lining up for easy combos.

  Lyssa’s gun went dry, and she loaded her pistols with her last two explosive magazines. She waited for a moment as the snake-roaches rushed toward her, their angry fangs waiting to chomp on a new meal.

  Their numbers were dwindling, and they’d not gotten a nip on her. This battle was hers.

  “Come on,” she shouted. “Get closer together, you slimy bastards. Make it worth it. This is ge
tting expensive, and I’m going to have to air my regalia out for a week!”

  Lyssa moved toward one of the few sections of the wall without tunnels. No more monsters had poured into the cave after the start of the battle, but she didn’t want to take the chance of an ambush from behind. A controlled defensive position was key to her current strategy.

  Large and small snake-roaches rushed toward her side by side, all but crawling over one another. They’d lost their fear of the explosions from earlier, but she had enough ammo to take them down. It was time to finish this cleaning job.

  Lyssa pointed her pistols toward the center of the horde and fired. The large blast born of both rounds incinerated a group of monsters and knocked over those nearby. The first blasts had barely finished before she added new ones. She drew an arc with both pistols, taking a shot every few yards. The entire chamber rattled from the near-constant explosions. It’d been a long time since she’d used this level of force.

  Flames ripped through the creatures, leaving crispy, twitching monster chunks on the ground. Shockwaves and fire tore into the eggs, blasted them apart, and splattered their milky contents over the remainder of the monster horde.

  Smoldering rocks rained down all over, some smacking into Lyssa and stinging but not doing much damage to her regalia. She completed her first arcs and swept her guns back toward the center, continuing to fire.

  Scorched, half-burned monsters tried to move forward. Their undamaged brethren surged over them, pressing them into the ground as they tried to close on the source of their doom.

  The percussive drumbeat of death continued until her gun ran dry. The final fall of rubble striking the chamber offered a clear coda. Her ears rang.

  Acrid smoke filled the area. Lyssa coughed and waved it out of her face. She ejected her magazines and slapped in fresh standard magazines, believing it was over but unsure.

  She peered into the chamber through the smoke, looking for any sign of movement. On the off-chance the enemy couldn’t see her or was trying to surprise her, she decided to lure them out.

  “I don’t like this new smell, but I do think it’s an improvement over the one before,” she shouted. “Anyone who’s still hungry should come get a taste while you still can. Tasty Sorceress! I probably taste just like chicken.”

  “Is this wise?” Jofi replied. “And do they know what chicken tastes like?”

  “Probably not wise, and they probably don’t know what chicken tastes like. Even if they do, maybe they don’t like it.” Lyssa shrugged. “But I think that might be all of them. That wasn’t as hard as I thought. Expensive and obnoxious, but not hard.”

  “Didn’t you say that before?” Jofi asked. “Only to find a much larger number of enemies?”

  Lyssa groaned. “No one likes a smart ass or someone who says ‘I told you so.’”

  She kicked the smoking decapitated head of a large snake-roach out of her way and crept forward. Small fires burned all around the chamber, fueled by the bodies, slime, and whatever strange fungus the monsters farmed for food. She’d blown enough of the area clean of anything to not have to worry about getting trapped by flames, though she doubted if hanging out in the area was recommended by the Surgeon General.

  “It’s good to be thorough.” Lyssa waved more smoke out of her face while keeping one gun in front of her at all times.

  She circled the chamber, her lungs challenged by her attempts to not breathe through her nose but take shallow breaths to avoid inhaling too much smoke. The air in the mine had been stale even before she started trying to set fire to the whole place.

  “Huh,” she murmured. “If there is a nest here, maybe they’re newer than I thought. That many of them could have dug to the surface easily in a short time.” She looked around. “But I’m not feeling any sorcery. Whoever did this isn’t hanging out with their pets. The question is whether he’s going to come back.”

  “Perhaps he had an issue with the smell,” Jofi replied. “If it’s as bad as you claim.”

  Lyssa snickered. “Could be. Maybe this whole thing is an abandoned mistake.”

  Her explosive barrage had rearranged the topography of the chamber, flattening most of the mounds and leaving charred rubble mixed in among the plentiful piles of dead monsters. Before, the ground had been soft, but now it crunched under her boots as if she were walking on dried twigs.

  “Yet another reason for a gas mask.” Lyssa nudged a pair of monster legs to her side. “You know the one thing I’ve managed to avoid as a Torch?”

  “I can’t say,” Jofi replied. “There are too many possibilities, and I’m not familiar with all the potential ones.”

  “Having to go into a sewer.” Lyssa shuddered. “But this was close. I’m not sure if it’s worse. Obnoxious.”

  Two complete circuits of the room followed before Lyssa nodded to herself, satisfied she’d destroyed the nest and all the eggs. Just as she lowered her guns, loud skittering sounded from different sides of the room.

  “Of course,” she complained. “They’re going to make me work for it.”

  Lyssa jerked up her weapons and pointed at the sound. It was coming from the tunnels. There couldn’t be many monsters left alive, but she couldn’t risk leaving even a single survivor. She’d not spotted anything that looked like a queen, so for all she knew, any of them might be able to lay eggs, or a breeding pair had survived. Maybe the size differences were based on gender.

  A snake-roach emerged from a tunnel halfway up a wall, and Lyssa put a bullet into its head before it landed on the ground. It landed with a thump, its green blood splattering around it.

  Another monster emerged right after the first and suffered the same fate. She emptied a gun, picking off the snake-roaches that were trying to flood the room. The deaths created a temporary waterfall of dead slimy horrors piling up on one side of the chamber, with none of the enemy showing any restraint or concern. Whatever lesson the others had learned hadn’t been passed on to the rest of the colony.

  Sometimes luck played out in odd ways. That day, it was represented by monsters not rising to hamster-level intelligence. Something approaching doglike intelligence might have been too much to handle without help.

  A second and third group of snake-roaches erupted from different parts of the chamber. Lyssa reloaded her first gun and aimed both weapons in different directions. This job had long ceased being a simple exercise.

  She opened fire and killed the reinforcements, including a handful of larger snake-roaches. Their face-first emergence from the tunnel made them easy to eliminate.

  Lyssa’s guns fell silent again as the stream of reinforcements abated. The battle left three gore-covered mounds spread around the edges of the room and the walls covered with green blood. The new deaths had also brought back her least favorite smell. She hissed in irritation.

  Reloading again, she took stock of her ammo situation. She had a couple of conventional rounds left in one gun and a full magazine in her second, but there were no regular magazines left. Even the most ruthless cartel or terrorist group didn’t have enough expendable lackeys that running out of ammo was typically a concern. Her last monster hunt had been far more straightforward.

  Among her remaining enchanted ammunition magazines, the explosive rounds were spent, but she still carried three magazines each of ablative and penetrator rounds, along with the always present dark temptation, a single mostly empty magazine containing three showstopper rounds.

  “Next time I go on a monster hunt,” Lyssa said, “remind me to bring more ammo. I liked it better when we took down that big alligator thing on Santa Catalina. He was a lot tougher, but at least there was only one of him. Right now, I wish I had an exterminator suit.”

  “It’s hard to know what might be necessary for any given encounter,” Jofi replied. “But your efforts appear to have been sufficient in this case.”

  “That remains to be proven.” Lyssa smacked her lips. “These guys keep demonstrating that they have a large family.”


  She frowned when she noticed a hint of white in one of the tunnels. The earlier destruction had cleared bodies and a mound out of the way to reveal newer exits, but this one appeared to lead to another chamber.

  Lyssa aimed at the egg and fired three times in the center. Her shots ripped through it, leaving it leaking.

  “That must have been where they all came—"

  A loud rumble shook the walls and ground. Lyssa frowned and looked around. She couldn’t spot a cause or feel any sorcery to explain it. It’d be annoying to defeat a horde of monsters only to be killed by a random earthquake, especially not that long after leaving California.

  A huge thud resounded from behind one of the stone walls, and her heart rate sped up. Pieces of rock flew from the wall.

  Lyssa pointed her guns at the wall and ran to the other side of the room. “Looks like we’re not done, though I wonder if whoever made these things made them that purposeful about guarding the eggs.”

  “Does it matter?” Jofi asked.

  “If I kill them all, I guess not.”

  Another thud sounded. A huge hole blew open in the wall, and a large dark pointed leg came through. It looked similar to what she’d seen on the snake-roaches, but the curved tip alone was the length of an entire leg of the egg guardians. The monsters came in small, large, and super sizes.

  The chamber shook as something pounded the wall, raining down dirt and rock. An avalanche buried one side of the chamber as the wall gave way and a massive snake-roach crashed through to reveal a vast cavern beyond the hatchery. Unlike the other monsters, this one had a bulbous end. At least she’d found the source of the eggs.

  “They keep you locked up in another room and just carry the eggs out?” Lyssa looked over the length of the creature. “It sucks to be you, Your Highness, but hey, we all have our problems.”

  She looked behind her. The tunnel she’d used to enter the hatchery was partially buried, leaving a narrow slit. The necessary spells would take too long to cast with a monster going after her. She needed to finish off the queen with what she had available.