by Jez Cajiao
The Drow had been wearing a conical silver helmet that ran down its cheeks, leaving its mouth exposed, and it was there that the missiles struck, one after the other.
The first smashed his lower jaw open and down, lips blasted free, teeth shattering, and its tongue was blown backwards, its foremost roots tearing free. The second missile tore the lower jaw free of the cheek muscles that tried to restrain it and sent its teeth slicing into its face as they shattered under the force of the impact and subsequent explosion into miniature bony fragmentation grenades.
The third and final missile shredded the last remnants of the lower jaw and punched downward, piercing its throat and burrowing deep before exploding. The resulting blast sent the Drow onto its back, blood fountaining upwards from the severed jugular.
It thrashed frantically, discarding its blades and grabbing at the pouch at its waist, desperately yanking a ruby red potion out, even as others fell from the torn fabric, followed the tinkling sound of glass breaking and bouncing across the floor.
It pulled the vial up, its head unable to rise on its own, as damaged as the muscles were, and it frantically checked the potion, before tugging the stopper free… its eyes widening in sudden horror in the split second between Lydia’s mace swinging into view, and the weapon smashing into its face. The full might of her now-two-armed swing battered its hands aside and crushed its skull in with a final, wet crunch.
The arms fell back and its right leg spasmed twice, as final signals sent from the remnants of its brain spread through the corpse. Then it was still, silence falling as the party turned to look at the still-settling rubble that marked where I’d been seconds before.
Silence filled the cavern for several heartbeats, until a groan of effort burst from Bane as he ripped the top from the small cage that held Oracle. She burst free in a flare of light and fury, flashing across the cavern to disappear into the pile of rubble, vanishing from sight.
“Cam!” screamed Miren, rushing to him and dropping to her knees, desperately tugging a healing potion out of her bag, and pouring it into his mouth, pulling his head up to stare into his lifeless, glassy eyes. The potion ran down his throat but did nothing, the life already gone from him. Stephanos crouched next to her, pulling her free and wrapping her in a grieving hug, tears running down his face as he rested a hand on his dead friend’s shoulder and squeezing once in sorrow.
“Jax…Barrett…” Lydia said, then coughed, dust entering her lungs as she forced herself to her feet. Staggering over to Barrett, she saw Jian moving to where Bane lay. A puddle of rapidly spreading blood lay beneath Barrett, and as she rolled him over, she winced. He was alive still, but his skin was ashen white with blood loss, and the multiple daggers that had sunk into him had been driven deeper when he’d fallen atop them.
Lydia went into automatic mode, the basic first aid she’d learned running through her mind as she worked to remove the blades. They were slowing the bleeding by blocking the damage, she knew, so when they were removed and the bleeding intensified, she moved as quickly as she could, pouring a healing potion into Barrett’s frozen open mouth, and then spreading another out, pouring it into each of the bloody wounds.
She frantically wrapped as many injuries as she could, desperate to stabilize him, before she dared move to the pile of rubble. A pile that slowly shifted, as something moved beneath it.
Arrin staggered toward the demolished structure, a mixture of desperate hope and fear filling him as he went.
He had no mana left for another spell, and the dagger he held in one shaking hand was little better than a glorified letter opener, but he was the closest, and the only one that was neither injured, trying to save a life, or comforting a grieving friend.
Stephanos and Miren forced themselves to their feet, readying arrows, and Lydia tugged bandages tight on Barrett’s prone form, then stood, leaving several wounds still slowly leaking blood. She moved forward, hefting her mace, and Jian joined her, his remaining healing potions used up on Bane, who lay slumped next to the remnants of the cage he’d freed Oracle from.
As they closed on the rubble, it shifted again, and they spread out, weapons at the ready.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I shifted, pain tearing through me, and I froze. I felt cold, so cold, except for my right foot. I could feel it pulsing with a familiar warmth and pressure as I slowly shifted my toes, which let me know that my boot was full of blood. Well, it was that, or I’d pissed myself, so I was kinda hoping it was blood, really.
I groaned again as something shifted close by, and the weight I felt pressing me down grew suddenly heavier. I tried to take a deep breath and found that I couldn’t. Whatever was pressing down on me was too heavy.
I closed my eyes for a heartbeat, consciously slowing my breathing, and forced myself to focus. I slowly re-opened my eyes and began taking stock of my situation.
I remembered aiming my naginata at the Drider as it fell. I’d charged it with the remnants of mana I had left, and I’d seen it pierce the bitch’s chest. The impact of her body slamming into me had smashed us both through the roof, with stone falling atop us, then the walls had toppled inward, and that was the last I’d seen for a bit. I’d blacked out, I guessed.
I could feel a lump on the back of my head, and when I brought my fingers forward, I could see something dark on them. It could be blood, it could be mine or hers, or it could be from the cut on the back of my hand. I swallowed hard and slowly reached out to brace myself as I figured out where I was.
I was face down, my legs were lower than my chest, and I was laid at a shallow angle. I had a mound of stone under my chest, and I couldn’t move my left leg. I was bleeding, according to the symbol on my HP bar, and I was down to thirty-seven points left, losing four a minute.
I had nineteen mana and figured just a few more points, and I could give myself a little healing, when it vanished, a mana migraine flaring to life and making me gasp with the suddenness of it.
I saw my health drop by the same, and I grunted in shock, my situation suddenly far more precarious than it had been.
It was… at least, until Oracle flashed through the rubble to appear before me, and I felt her tiny arms become solid as she pressed herself against my cheek.
I sagged, a tension I’d been filled with, for what felt like forever, dissipating into nothingness as I lifted one shaking hand to hold her.
She was safe, she was free, and she was okay, I laid there, rocks pushing into my skin, blood seeping from a dozen wounds, and pain radiating through my body with every breath, as broken ribs scraped against each other, and I felt tears slowly making their way down my cheeks,. she was safe, and nothing else mattered in that moment.
“Jax, I’m sorry,” she whispered, and I gazed down at her, a smile briefly lifting my lips as she moved back so that I could see her. The gentle light that she emitted was enough to change my vision from the greens and blacks of DarkVision to actually seeing her properly. She rested there on the palm of my hand, drawing her knees up to her chest and staring into my eyes. Her perfect face was a tear-streaked mess, her hair looked like she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, and her clothes were simply weird. She always summoned them on a whim anyway, and she’d clearly not put any thought into make them, so her body was covered in a mixture of the outfits she normally wore, a yoga pants leg, a jeans leg, a low cut top that abruptly transitioned into a fully decent shirt halfway across her chest. I stared at her, and I couldn’t help but smile fully.
“Why?” I asked her quietly, trying not to move too much, even as another point of my health dropped away.
“This was all my fault. I saw them, the Drow, and I remembered. I remembered them taking me before, capturing me and taking me from my family, selling me to the Empire, to be bound to the Great Tower, I hated them so much, and I tried to get closer to them, to see what they were doing. The next thing I knew, I was trapped. They were laughing at me, they…they…!” Tears streamed down her face, and she see
med to suddenly realize where we were, and the condition I was in. “No! No, you’re not leaving me!” she snarled, and she blurred away from me, leaving me in darkness.
My DarkVision slowly reactivated, though my exhaustion and injuries were impacting even that, as I heard her voice somewhere beyond me.
“…inside! He’s bleeding out, move it!” she snarled, before diving back down to me, slipping and flitting through gaps in the stone.
“Oracle…” I whispered, and she was there, one tiny hand reaching out to stroke my cheek. “Is it dead?” I asked her, and she frowned, her expression changing to one dominated by hatred as she flashed away. She sank deeper into the rubble as she searched, twisting around the enormous form I could dimly see part of, though most of its bulk was covered by the stone nearby.
Oracle returned to me a few seconds later, fear on her face.
“She’s alive. She’s injured, badly, but she’s alive, and conscious. We have to hurry.” She slipped around the rubble, vanishing up to the surface to warn the others, before returning and disappearing down toward my waist. I couldn’t twist around to see her, trapped as I was, so I whispered to her, a grin on my face as I pictured her face.
“Really, Oracle? Now? Can’t you control yourself?”
I heard her snort, and I groaned as half of my slowly regenerating mana was used up again. A second later, she was there flitting back into view before me.
“I’m sorry, Jax. I know how much it hurts, but I need to use your mana to move things, I’ve got a potion out of your pouch, can you move your right hand down?”
I shifted slightly, pushing my hand downwards, only to shift one of the rocks I was pressed against, causing those above me to shift and press in against my chest tighter. I groaned, huffing out a breath; then I thought about the creature that was slowly shifting above me, testing the stability of the wreckage nearby, and I growled in fury at the thought of that fucker surviving all of this and capturing Oracle again, not to mention harming my friends.
I drew as deep a breath as I could, then I twisted, feeling the rocks shifting over me, and their weight increasing as things moved. I forced my hand down, and I felt my potion pouch being pressed into my hands. The world was white with the flaring mana migraine as I yanked the pouch up, my left hand being trapped and fingers being clearly broken only drove me to greater effort, as I yanked the first potion out with my teeth.
“Drink it!” Oracles voice came to me, and I felt a flare as she used my mana to pop the cork. I guzzled it down, the headache dying in seconds as my vision cleared. Oracle blazed with power as I saw my mana bar jumping, thirty points appeared in seconds, then vanished as she started to heal me, I tugged out another potion, seeing the red I needed, and I chugged that as well, groaning as I felt bones shifting, realigning, and healing at tremendous speed.
“Again!” Oracle said, and I obeyed, tugging another potion out, only to have it slapped from my hand.
“No!” she cried, “This one.” And I did as I was told, my heart beating faster as I heard the Drider shifting nearby.
My mana jumped again, and I pulled out my final health potion, Oracle popping the cork and grinning as I felt the improvement to my health flooding me.
I saw my mana and health were both over fifty and I shook my head at Oracle as she went to heal me again.
“No.” I said to her. “Get back and get the others back; this isn’t over yet.” She started to argue, then saw the look in my eyes, and decided to trust me, flitting back up through the mess of stonework to tell the others to fall back. Then, because she knew me so well, she also told them to search the corpses for anything I could use for healing, because I was going to need it.
I braced myself, peering through the bricks and fallen stonework, and I saw the Drider shifting, gathering herself to do the same, hearing the clatter of the stones.
I took a deep breath and forced my mana back into my body, flooding myself with strength and vitality. Slamming my back against the stone that held me in place, I heaved, straining. I could feel it shifting upwards, slowly, oh so slowly.
This was draining my health and mana with every second of use, and I needed more. I still wasn’t strong enough. I gritted my teeth and remembered Tommy standing over me, his hand held out to me as a gang of lads surrounded us. His nose was broken, his shirt ruined with blood, his tooth chipped. I’d been hit from behind with something, then they’d all moved out to surround us. Seven on two. All of them carrying something, a length of wood, a broken bottle, a brick, and Tommy and I had been out on the lash all day, drunk as rats, barely able to stand, we were that wasted.
He looked down at me, holding his hand out to help me upright, and said the words.
“Go hard or go home…” I whispered, then screamed as I forced my mana channels to flood my body even further, doubling the rate of use and the effect, my health dropping even faster.
“LEEEEEEROY JENKIIIIIINS!” I screamed, surging up through the stone; slabs that a normal human couldn’t have budged, flung aside like cardboard.
I saw my rapidly plunging health; mana that was leaking out of me like beer from a shattered bottle, and I moved, pushing upright and lunging forward. Staggering across the uneven ground, I locked my fingers on a section of rock the size of a desk, and I heaved!
I lifted it above my head and looked down to see the suddenly uncovered Drider glaring back up at me, her face a mess of scrapes, blood and bruises, her fangs chipped and broken, her hair matted with blood.
I’d skewered her through the lower chest with my naginata, but missed most of her organs, and she floundered, trying to get to me, hatred clear on her face.
I slammed the slab down hard, driving it edge-first into the space I’d uncovered. The rock smashed her humanoid form and made her spider thorax burst.
I stepped back, the skull symbol I’d managed to hardwire into my HUD somehow floating up before me in unequivocal proof of death, and I screamed down at the body of the creature that had tried to take Oracle from me, that had tried to kill my people, that had managed to kill Cam.
“BOOYAH, BITCH!”
Then I turned to the cavern, seeing my team circled out around me, Bane and Barrett sitting up, the prisoners gaping at me in shock.
“WHO’S YA DADDY!” I roared at them all, grinning and flexing my insanely big muscles that were even now bulging through the torn remnants of my top, like Schwarzenegger flexing as Conan…before my mana bottomed out and I fell forward, the world going black, my health dropping back to single digits that were ticking away like a gas pump’s counter…
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Jax!” I opened my eyes. The world tilted and swam as I tried to focus, my Health, Mana and Stamina bars all pulsing a deep, warning red. I blinked and felt hands lifting me and setting me down on something hard.
Shapes were moving above me, and I looked up, seeing them resolve into faces, faces I knew I should know, but as fast as they swam in and out of focus, I just couldn’t get my brain into gear.
“JAX!” I blinked again, focusing on a face that hovered over my own, emerald green eyes holding my gaze. I tried to make sense of what she was saying. I knew her, knew she was a woman, and important to me…but…
“Argggggh!” I roared, thrashing, as pain ripped through me.
“Jax!” The voice came again, those eyes holding my own. “We need to set your leg. It’s going to hurt. I’m so sorry…this is all my fault…” she said, reaching out to stroke my cheek. I felt soft fingers caress my skin.
They felt cool, and strangely familiar, even as I saw my Mana bar blare another warning, the migraine that depleting my mana always caused flaring again.
“I’m sorry!” The voice said, and this time, I recognized it. “I shouldn’t have used our mana…I just needed to touch you, to…”
“Oracle…” I whispered, and with that one word, the dam seemed to burst. Everything that had happened suddenly seemed to catch up in one go, and the noises around me fina
lly started to make sense.
“Yes! It’s me. I’m so sorry, Jax…” she said, and I forced myself to shake my head, as I remembered everything.
“It wasn’t your fault. I asked you to scout, I sent you out there, Oracle. It was my fault,” I whispered to her, closing my eyes, and trying to breathe through the pain as my leg was fully straightened and someone braced it in place.
“No, I…”
“I could tell you it’s both your faults and neither, if that would help?” Came a croak from my side, and I turned my head to find Bane watching me.
“Well, don’t you look like hammered shit,” I said to him, forcing a smile as Oracle disappeared off to the side.
“I hope I look better than you,” Bane said, and I snorted.
“Never gonna happen, dude.” I muttered. “Hate to break it to you, but you’re not exactly a pretty sight… more of a Picasso.”
“I’m not going to bother to answer a man who shits himself when he sleeps,” replied Bane, and I sat up quickly, the sudden movement making the world spin.
“Seriously?” I asked, my mood plummeting, until I saw my pants and I felt…normal. No unexpected additional space taken up down there…so…. “You asshole,” I growled, looking over at Bane, who let loose with a subsonic ‘thrummm’ of amusement.
“You’re such a dick, Bane…” I told him, shuffling myself upright and wincing as Oracle returned to my side, leading Lydia to me.
“You need to relax, Jax,” Oracle said, landing on my shoulder, I smiled at her, and nodded at Lydia.