by Jez Cajiao
The other one fell quickly to the combined assault of all three.
The Drow guard, seeing the way the fighting was going, swore viciously and fired one last arrow, then turned to run. He only made it two steps before a red and black blur the size of a Pitbull leapt from the wall above him. As Horkesh landed, she bit down hard, her fangs sinking deep into the unarmored section at the junction of his neck and shoulder.
She forced her venom into him, pushing it hard, then leapt backwards, landing near the flowers and disappearing as fast as she could into the undergrowth.
He screamed, staggered, and started to run, tugging at his belt and trying to get a potion to his lips, but as he collapsed forwards, he knew it was too late. He hit the floor hard and watched the potion slowly pour out into the soil, inches from his face.
I laid there on the ground while the battle raged around me, frantically flooding my mana into the healing spell as I tried to outpace the damage, and I stared at the timer, ticking down. I could see the Drow mage refreshing the spell, channeling more mana into making sure he killed me.
Bane and Cam ran at him, forcing him to back up, growling in anger at them.
While Arrin hammered at the Drow with spell after spell, Magic Missiles exploding against the mage’s hastily raised shield, I breathed a sigh of relief as he switched from pushing his death spell on me to maintaining that instead.
The spell backlash of terminating his channeling so abruptly staggered the Drow, and Horkesh was there, ready to take advantage of the disruption. The shield the Drow had cast was directional, as she bit down hard on the back of his leg, causing him to scream and bat her aside.
I let out a relieved groan as the spell vanished. My healing spells, which had been barely holding back the onslaught, suddenly raced through my body, repairing and refreshing at an incredible rate.
I rolled over, forcing myself to my feet and staggering toward the fight, only to see Arrin blast the last Drow from her feet, the mage rolling on the ground screaming as Horkesh’s venom did its work.
In seconds, it was over; the only living Drow lay by the exit to the tunnels on the far side, paralyzed.
I stumbled over to the group; my breathing ragged as I tried to come to terms with just how quickly everything had gone wrong. I saw the others gathering around, most of them with minor wounds. Cam, being the exception, had two arrows sticking out of him.
I made it to him just as Lydia slapped him.
“Hey!” He complained, grabbing his cheek with his uninjured left hand, and Bane ripped the arrows out of his right shoulder and thigh.
Cam gasped in pain, collapsing backwards. Stephanos caught him, lowering him gently down, as Lydia popped the top off a healing potion and poured it down his throat, grinning at him.
“Got you!” she said, and Cam glared at her, shaking his head, and gritting his teeth as the flesh reknit.
“Next time just kiss me. Fuckload less painful,” He muttered, then went bright red as he realized what he’d said. We all burst out laughing, and Lydia stiffened, her eyes blazing, even as her cheeks reddened.
“I think he got you back, there…” I said, clapping her on the shoulder. Everyone started checking over minor wounds and their gear, while I scanned the cavern. “Horkesh?” I asked, and I saw several spiders moving into the tangle of roots under one of the larger flower beds nearby.
I moved over, the flowers coming to life for my approach in a way they didn’t for the spiders, so I sliced the head off the first to move too close, and the rest pulled back…exposing Horkesh crumpled on the ground. Half of her legs were broken, and a thin green ichor dribbled from her mouth, her breathing labored.
“Shit!” I said, moving forward quickly. The others gathered around, slicing through the flowers until the plants got the message to back the fuck up.
I crouched by her, checking the little spider over, and quickly cast my healing spell on her. It brought her back from the brink of death, but before it could do more, I ran out of mana. I tried giving her a healing potion, but when she almost bit me, I gave up on that, instead chugging a mana potion.
Bane darted off down the tunnels, but came back a few minutes later, shaking his head; the next tunnel led into a deserted cave system, and there was no sign of any more Drow nearby.
I waited until my mana reached fifty before pouring it all into her again. The tortured little sounds she made as her legs popped back into place were drowned out by the howls from the Drow guard, as I’d sent Bane to ‘discuss’ the cave system with him, and what they were doing here.
He’d dragged him out of sight of the rest of us and stripped him before his paralysis wore off. Now and then we’d hear him cry out, but most of the time, we only heard occasional quiet words.
Eventually he returned, and Horkesh was healed. I discussed quietly with her why she shouldn’t rush off to attack, and she agreed to wait for my lead in future.
We gathered and rested, waiting on mana to refill, while a much more cautious Horkesh sent her drones out to search the surrounding area. We examined the loot from the six Drow; everyone who wanted one now had at least a sword and a dagger of Drow design, and most had more than one. Jian was experimenting with the twin scythes and looked to be loving every second of it.
I grabbed the alchemical kit, finding it to be considerably higher quality than the one I’d had before, and I disassembled it with familiarity, slipping the alembics and tubes free, and stashing them in my bag. I also ‘Examined’ one of the flowers that lay on the table.
Deathbloom Flower
Further Description Yes/No
Details:
This flower from the rare Deathbloom plant can only be grown in darkness. Light from any source other than its own bioluminescence will cause the plant to begin to decay. Deathbloom plants must be fed on a mixture of fresh soil, decomposing flesh, and highly oxygenated blood to ensure the greatest chance of the plant putting forth flowers.
Uses Discovered:
1) Poison
2) Increased Virility
3) ?
4) ?
Rarity
Magical
Durability
Charge:
Rare
Yes
99/100
N/A
My improved ‘Examination’ skill and increased alchemical skill meant that I now saw two uses for the ingredients, and I sniggered at the fact that such a deadly plant could also be used to put a little peck in the pecker. I looked around at the corpses of the fearsome Drow and grinned as a new thought came to mind: maybe the reason they were such assholes was that, as a race, they suffered from whisky dick?
It made their general hatred of all other races and their massive superiority complex so much more understandable. I decided to pass around the good news and got a wide variety of grins in return. The conversation changed to reasons the Drow were such assholes immediately, such as why they were all so skilled with their weapons… after all, they had to be used to ‘handling things’ and trying to do the most with what little they had…
We rested for a few more minutes, all of us feeling a little better, and I checked over the notifications I’d been ignoring so far.
I just looked at the bottom line; having had little real effect in that last fight, I’d gained a huge 1600xp in total on my own, and as I was in a party, I’d gotten a further 2000xp from that.
It wasn’t much, considering how hard the fighting had been, and I casually asked Miren about her gains, biting my tongue when she happily admitted to rising by three levels in the last few days. She and the rest of the squad were gaining bucket loads of experience more than me, including a quest to protect me!
Everything they killed gained them more than double my experience, then they got the same again in bonus!
I sat there, my jaws aching from clenching them so hard, as they all chatted happily about how hard, but rewarding, the fights were.
I was getting hosed with the rewards! I knew th
at Jenae had said I was going to get far less experience than I should, due to the injuries I’d sustained in using all the Spellbooks, but fuck, seriously? I was going to be leveled past by my own team soon.
I forced a smile… I was happy for them all, I really was I just had to get a healer up to the level I needed sooner rather than later, or this was going to get embarrassing.
I started stripping the flowers in the cavern while I waited for my mana to regenerate. The rest of the team, seeing what I was doing, spread out and helped, netting me eighty-seven flowers, which improved my mood considerably. The real prize, though, was that the Drow mage had a rather nice silver bracelet that increased the wearer’s maximum mana by fifty points, as well as a much more impressive Bag of Holding than my own.
I’d hefted it when Lydia had passed it to me, looking it over nonplussed, until I ‘Examined’ it.
Bag of Holding
Further Description Yes/No
Details:
This Journeyman level Bag of Holding provides 50 spaces for storage. Each slot is capable of holding up to 99 identical items before filling a second slot. Weight reduction is 84% and there are 47 slots currently available.
Rarity
Magical
Durability
Charge:
Rare
Yes
82/100
N/A
I couldn’t help but let out a whoop as I checked the grid, finding there were thirty-six gold coins, two magelights, and a trio of vials of Deathbloom poison.
Deathbloom Poison
Further Description Yes/No
Details:
This poison is one of the most reviled in the realm. Not only does it commonly kill its victim, doing 100 points of damage on contact, but it also lowers the target’s health and mana pool by 10 points per second for sixty seconds. This reduction is permanent and cannot be healed.
Rarity
Magical
Durability
Charge:
Special
Yes
100/100
1/1
I knew straight away this was a weapon I didn’t want to fall into the wrong hands, and by that, I meant any hands but mine. I called across to Arrin, and tossed him the bracelet, getting a grin in return, and I went through the rest of the loot, finding that the two bags of ingredients held a combination of Sweet Thyme and Chamomile.
Knowing they’d obviously been planned for use with the Deathbloom meant I either had part of the recipe for that poison, or possibly a way to give someone a hard on they could beat a dragon to death with.
I shrugged and figured I’d find out when I had time and gathered the rest of the loot together.
I chucked the guard’s bow and arrows to Miren and told her and Stephanos to sort out between them who got it, spread out the weapons so that anyone could take what they wanted. Jian was allowed to keep both scythes, as the panic on his face had been comical when he realized he’d just grabbed them, and he thought he might have them taken away.
There was also a ring of health, which boosted someone’s HP by a whopping twenty points, and a ring of improved sneak. I gave the sneaking ring to Lydia; it wouldn’t fit on Bane’s fingers, and she was undoubtably the loudest of the group, and needed the most help.
I left the others to argue over the ring of health as Bane and I walked off to discuss the information he’d gotten from the guard.
“There’s an hour to go to get to the main settlement,” he told me without preamble. “You said there was thirty-five in total, according to your quest, right?”
I pulled the details up and found that the locations had been updated as well.
You have received a Quest from your Goddess: ‘Keep your Word’
You have given your word to an ancient Cave Spider Queen, kill her enemies, grant her and her brood safety and food, and she will consider her Broken Oath to be renewed, binding her and all her brood to your orders and laws. You must kill thirty-five (35) Drow and their leader.
Drow Killed: 19/35
Locations Cleared: 1/3
Drow Leader Killed: 0/1
Reward: Oracle’s Freedom, Sworn Allegiance of One (1) Greater Cave Spider and her Brood, access to Cave Spider Silk, Cave Spider Nest Treasury and 50,000xp
Clearly the garden had been one of the areas I had to find and clear, so that was a relief. I told Bane and he nodded.
“That fits with what the guard said; he called this the ‘Bloom Garden’ and said there were dozens more Drow in the main settlement, I think he was trying to scare us, as he kept on about how they’d almost killed us with six. He did let slip that this was their only mage, though, and I believe that, considering how I ‘asked’ to be sure.”
“What are the other locations?” I asked and he shrugged.
“He said that there were only six of them in the bloom garden, some in the stables, and the others were spread out across the settlement and the paths leading to it. Maybe there’s something that the quest considers a location, which the Drow don’t?”
“Yeah, it’s from Jenae, so it’s probably more that the Drow don’t consider it, but that we would. Anything else you managed to get from him?”
“Just that they’re only an exploratory force, so they’re made up of fighters and scouts mainly, a single mage and leader, no noncombatants.” I let out a sigh of relief, having not even considered that the Drow might have their women and children with them.
“Wow dodged a bullet there, then,” I muttered and led him back to the others. “Okay people, according to the quest I have, there’s only sixteen left to face, plus the Drow leader. We’ve killed nineteen so far, but this is likely to be the end of the easy fights now; anything you can do to make yourself more deadly, now’s the time to do it. Here!” I said, passing the vials of poison to Stephanos, Miren, and Bane.
“This stuff is nasty shit; it’ll permanently lower your HP and Mana by ten points per second for sixty seconds, as well as doing a hundred points of damage when it first enters your victim. Be incredibly careful when you use it, unless you don’t mind losing seven hundred health and mana permanently. This shit is for the boss, and I suggest you dip your arrows and coat your daggers with it when the time comes.”
I passed around the rest of the potions I had, making sure to restock those who had used their health potions already. Thankfully, a few of the Drow had some as well, meaning we were all back up to three potions each. I also had four mana left after Arrin and I had shared what we had equally.
Lydia got the only Stamina potion we had left, as she drained hers the fastest, fighting in heavy armor.
We took a few minutes to talk, getting ourselves ready before setting off, Horkesh leading the way with her drones.
We passed though caves that showed more recent signs of passage now, the older occasional cart marks or long abandoned camps disappeared below the signs of regular footfall. Small side caves occasionally popped up. These were ignored out of hand, the spiders having searched them before we reached them, and we went on, the party occasionally muttering to each other as we progressed. Horkesh warned us that there was a branching in the tunnels up ahead, one path leading down, and the other up. The path that led down had much more movement along it, as well as signs of life. She dispatched spider drones to explore the two tunnels and skittered along the wall with us as we crept along.
It didn’t take us long to reach the split in the tunnel, the foul air rising from the lower tunnel, along with the majority of kobold prints that led that way, making it clear who was most likely to be down there, as opposed to the tunnel that rose instead.
We waited, and after nearly half an hour, the spider drone from the lower level returned, chittered at Horkesh, and then rushed up to join its brethren on the ceiling above us.
“There are more of the smelly ones down there, many more,” Horkesh relayed. “There are three of the Drow down there; they keep the smelly ones in cages.”
“What does the
room look like?” Bane asked her and got a confusing jumble of words in reply.
The room was apparently both long and short, with lots of hiding places, and none. Bane looked at me and I facepalmed.
Apparently, spiders didn’t look at a room the way we did.
Bane slipped into stealth and crept down the tunnel, leaving only a series of swearwords lingering in the air behind him.
I really liked Bane, especially considering the fact that, as an amphibian with highly limited contact with the outside world, he’d usually be expected to be a bit stunted in his conversational style. He’d picked things up with amazing speed, and his creativity knew no bounds, considering the lack of the internet in his past.
“Ass-eating fuck-nuggets” floated back to me before he went silent, and I grinned at the darkness. Those hours spent in quiet discussion of insults from home hadn’t been wasted in the slightest. He was gone maybe fifteen minutes before returning and hurrying to me.
“We’ve got a problem,” he said, shaking his head. “There are only three Drow down there, but there are easily fifty kobolds. They also have either the creatures the Drow used to carry their goods here, or the smuggler’s caravans were using weird mounts.”