by Demi Harper
The spider’s puffball grenade landed hard in the midst of the shamans, bursting upon impact with their tough scales at the same moment my torch-carrying boulderskin finally broke through to them.
The world ignited.
Fire filled my vision. A maelstrom of flame roared through the cavern, devouring everything in its path. The inferno raged for only a few seconds, but what it lacked in duration it more than made up for in sheer destructive ferocity. I winced as Octavia was engulfed in a shrieking ball of flames, along with the kobolds and my other god-born.
It died down as abruptly as it had started, and I surveyed the damage.
The shamans and surrounding kobolds had been coated in the dust-like puffball powder, and the air itself had been thick with spores. In my last-minute change of plan, I’d gambled on that being enough to ensure the enemy’s destruction. I hadn’t realized it would practically annihilate everything in the surrounding area.
Cracks had appeared in the cavern ceiling, though thankfully it hadn’t quite caved in. Steam hissed from the surface of the lake. Crumbling piles of blackened bones were all that remained of the kobolds. Of my god-born, there was nothing left.
Once again, I felt a twinge of guilt at having so readily thrown away the lives of my god-born. This feeling was quickly subsumed by the revelation that we’d done it. We’d defeated Grimrock’s army, and my gnomes hadn’t even been at risk!
I laughed aloud, delighted and barely believing our good fortune.
Ket laughed too, but she sounded less ecstatic than I did. ‘Corey, why didn’t the shamans attack?’
‘Um.’ That was a good question. Why hadn’t they attacked? ‘Maybe these new shamans are less strong than the first ones he fielded, and don’t actually have any magical abilities?’
Ket shook her head and trilled worriedly. ‘No, in my experience, all kobold shamans at least have the ability to throw fireballs. They’ve shown before that they don’t care about collateral damage, and have harmed a great many of their own kin in order to also damage us. Why not this time?’
A sneaking suspicion had begun to nag at me. ‘When we killed the shamans last time, they each gave me a small mana boost.’
‘Yes. We’ve talked about that before. It’s called the Circle of Life, and it means that more advanced creatures can contribute mana when they die in your Sphere—’
‘I know, Ket. My point is, we just killed eight shamans, and yet…’
I checked my mana. After creating those forrels in the middle of the fight, it had been down to nearly nothing. It was now at barely half a globe. ‘They gave me nothing,’ I whispered.
‘They… they weren’t shamans?’ Ket said, sounding confused.
‘No,’ I said heavily. ‘They weren’t. Decoys, perhaps? But why…’
My skelemander sense twitched.
Disbelief warred with confusion, then cold horror chased both away as I watched a second army of kobolds begin their march into my Sphere of Influence.
‘It was a trick!’ Ket gasped.
That much was obvious now. With the presence of so many ‘shamans’, Grimrock had made us believe that the group we’d just defeated was his main fighting force. How wrong we’d been. Fatally wrong.
Ket and I could only stare down in numb incomprehension. How could this be happening?
‘Twenty… forty… eighty…’ Ket whimpered to herself, continuing to count as the enemy kept on coming.
‘How? How has he managed to field so many?’
‘I don’t know… that adventurer, Lila, died in his Sphere of Influence, right? Maybe she was sacrificed. Perhaps that gave him the power to increase his denizens, just like your creche can. I… I just don’t know!’
‘What have I done?’ I whispered. I’d flung my god-born away for nothing – just as Grimrock had no doubt wanted. Now I had just three forrels and Binky to protect my gnomes.
‘There’s no use second-guessing yourself, Corey,’ said Ket, though her voice was shaky with fear. ‘What’s done is done. You did the most logical thing, and now we have to focus on what’s ahead.’
The sprite was right, as always. There was a kobold army heading for our base. This was no time for lamenting past actions. It was time to focus on what was coming.
It was time to save the Grotto.
Sixty-One
Survive or Fall
The Grotto was dark and eerily silent.
This was it. Our final stand. We would survive, or we would fall.
My denizens were in position. The kobolds’ first contact would be with our ranged warriors, of which there were eighteen in all, including the half-dozen recently matured gnomes. They were arrayed atop the two palisade platforms arranged in a V-shape just inside the entranceway. Led by Drill Officer Bullet, armed with slingshots and pouches of polished stones, the slingers were prepared to make the enemy pay with their lives for every step taken across the Grotto’s threshold.
When the kobolds did eventually break through, the slingers would retreat through the shroomtree field to the second set of palisades. Due to the position of the stream, the kobolds would be forced to follow the slingers across the shroomtree field in order to push further into the Grotto.
However, at the second palisade, my thirty melee warriors would be waiting for them. They were there now, red and white spotted shields held in one hand, spears in the other, forming a shield wall three rows deep.
I really hoped the kobolds wouldn’t manage to make it past those, but in the event that they did, I’d placed six of my eighteen militia fighters at each of the palisades on the far side of both bridges. The remaining six militia – along with Granny, and Ris’kin, who I was keeping back from the fight until Snagga’s inevitable appearance – were stationed atop my hillock, there to protect my acolytes. And my gem, of course.
Moonlight splashed through the hole in the cavern ceiling, illuminating the acolytes themselves, who, led by High Cleric Gneil, would spend the battle worshiping constantly. Their dedication would ensure I had sufficient mana reserves to repeatedly execute Possession and remain in control of my forces.
In fact, the area around my shrine was actually a bit crowded. Although they were warriors, not militia, Swift and Cheer had somehow ended up flanking Granny instead of joining those at the palisades. Their disobedience still irked me, but given how vital Granny had been to our overall success – improvising, disciplining, and even training the militia – I was more than happy to permit her a couple of bodyguards.
Bruce and two of the other badgers were also snuffling around the hilltop. They clearly sensed the coming danger, and although I did not have direct control over the black-and-white creatures, Bruce had taken a liking to Gneil and apparently deemed him worthy of protection.
The smallest badger, Flea, was pacing back and forth in front of the entrance to his former sett, which we were now referring to as the Refuge. The tunnel in the wall led to the unused badger den, where the non-combatants among my denizens would be hiding out for the battle’s duration. I’d assigned Binky to guard it; he’d spun a web over the entrance, and was now hunched on the ceiling above it, waiting to drop down onto any kobold foolish enough to try and enter.
I took it all in at a glance: the slingers on the palisades; the steadfast shield wall; the ragged but determined militia; the motley assortment of defenders surrounding my gem. Despite the tension, I felt a surge of pride at the determination in my gnomes’ expressions and stances.
A glance at my mana globes showed that Gneil and the five acolytes’ worship was already beginning to bring my mana levels back up; my first globe was almost full. After seeing the new kobold army arrive, I’d poured nearly all my mana into creating a twice-evolved boulderskin, which I stationed in the Passage with my remaining three forrels. They were the last line of defense between the kobolds and my gnomes, and I’d figured I may as well try to take out as many enemies as I could with my most powerful melee creation. I tried to forget how strong this army was.
I’d counted a hundred or so kobold warriors, as well as a handful of shamans, and my skelemanders were keeping watch for any more.
There was no time for elaborate plans or clever strategies; the arrival of the second kobold army had completely knocked me for six, and it was now a case of simply throwing obstacles in their way for as long as I could. After that, it was entirely up to the gnomes.
I watched the army approach and tried not to think about what would happen if we failed.
The boulderskin and the forrel pack fought ferociously, but the four god-born were vastly outnumbered. Though they used their surroundings to good effect, the boulderskin’s size keeping the kobolds bottled up in the Passage while the forrels darted along the walls to harry their flanks, attrition eventually took its toll. One by one, the forrels were cut down by obsidian blades.
My boulderskin fought on, ravaging the stabbing kobolds with its knife-sharp claws and crushing them against the Passage’s walls with its bone-plated bulk. But the kobolds soon got smart about it, and a couple of their shamans launched fireballs at the battling forces, engulfing the boulderskin – as well as a handful of kobolds – in orange flames.
Though I compelled the armored amphibian to continue fighting in spite of its fiery agony, the magical flames were fierce, and without the cool comfort of the lake to take refuge in, the creature finally collapsed from the heat. The kobolds swarmed the injured, smoking boulderskin, stabbing at the unarmored parts of its legs and stomach that its prone position had made vulnerable.
My mana hadn’t yet refilled to two globes, and so I was out of god-born options. That last fight, and the shamans’ careless use of magic, had seen the deaths of a dozen or so kobold warriors. It was not enough.
The hundred-strong army of kobolds made their way down the Passage unhindered, their aggressive barks and yips a promise of pain and destruction. Those gnomes closest to the Passage, the slingers, tightened their grips on their weapons and swallowed hard. I used a small amount of mana to possess their leader, Bullet, and urged them to remain calm and remember their training. The gnomes seemed to relax a little bit, which made me relax a little bit.
At least, until the enemy made it to the Grotto.
The front-most kobolds paused just inside the entranceway, their shadowy forms hidden behind the hill of broken rocks and other detritus that the builders had used to half-block the passage. There came a series of hushed yips, echoing ominously off the surrounding stone.
‘They’re reorganizing,’ Ket said after a few moments’ observation, though I could see it just as clearly as she could. ‘The front ranks are moving backward, and now others are moving forw—SPEARS!’
A hail of spears arced through the opening. At the same time, sword-wielding kobolds advanced between the spear-throwers and began to slowly climb the precarious barricade of rubble.
The obsidian-tipped missiles whistled across the gap toward the gnome slingers, who simply ducked behind the protection of the palisade at mine and Bullet’s command. Speartips shattered against the shroomwood defenses with a series of crunches and tinkling glass. A few of the weapons went soaring overhead to thud harmlessly into the dirt behind the palisade.
As soon as the spears had landed, the slingers stood from behind their barrier and let fly with their bullets, aiming for the kobolds attempting to cross the no-man’s land between the rubble and the slinger’s palisade.
Days of ceaseless practice, along with the fact that the kobolds were grouped tightly together as they stumbled across a small, easy-to-target space, ensured that most of the stones hit home, sinking into scaled flesh and bone and dropping two of the enemy in the first barrage. The gnomes quickly reloaded their slings and launched a second volley, then a third.
As more kobolds began to fall, the rest drew back, abandoning their climb and disengaging from the rubble with difficulty until they were beyond reach of the slingers. Half a dozen bodies were sprawled atop the rubble, obstructing the tunnel even more effectively than before. It was tempting to create a god-born creature or two to throw in there with them; even a single forrel could do a fair bit of damage to the milling kobolds, bunched up as they were in such a small space. But they were too close to my denizens, and I didn’t want to risk distracting my warriors with the god-born’s presence. Besides, I needed to conserve my mana.
In the end, I decided we’d simply wait until the kobolds came forward, then attack them with missiles again.
Or at least, that was the plan.
‘Shaman,’ warned Ket.
Damn it all to hell.
Kobold shamans were the worst. Their fireball abilities had caused so much havoc: collapsing tunnels, destroying my most powerful god-born. Though we were ready for their fire this time, and although these new shamans did not seem capable of causing the acid-fire rain that the first army had all those weeks ago, that didn’t make them any less of a threat.
A large kobold with a leather-fringed kilt was stalking toward the entranceway. Kobolds parted to make way for it down the length of the tunnel. It was a real shaman this time; the beginnings of a fireball spell were already lighting its clawed hands, making the obsidian daggers hanging from each of its hips glint menacingly in the orange glow.
We had to move quickly. I pushed my mana into Possession and once again took control of Bullet. I gestured and called out instructions, and all the slingers removed the stones from their slings and replaced them in their pouches. Half of them climbed down from the platforms and began running through the shroomtree field toward the next pair of palisades, where they took up the same positions on the platforms.
Meanwhile, the shaman was coming closer. The orange fire in its hands lit up the entranceway in a sinister reddish glow. Back at the first palisade, Bullet and the other eight remaining slingers had loaded their cradles with new, special ammunition, which they flung toward the entranceway.
The puffballs struck the barricade, landing among the broken rocks and kobold bodies where they erupted in the now-familiar dusty clouds. The mushrooms’ spores hung in the air in a gray haze.
The shaman threw its hands out and unleashed the ball of fire into the barrier.
I had no doubt the shaman had intended for the barrier to explode, clearing the enemy’s way into the Grotto. However, what it certainly hadn’t intended was for every single puffball spore in the vicinity to catch light as well. The spores detonated in a million tiny simultaneous explosions, blasting the shaman and the surrounding kobolds backward in a flash of light. Flames whooshed out from the blast in all directions, almost engulfing the gnomes’ first palisades and licking hungrily down the tunnel toward the enemy.
When the smoke cleared, the rubble barrier was gone. And so were fifteen or so kobolds from the front ranks, including the shaman.
‘That was incredible!’ I shouted to Ket.
Though I had no eardrums to speak of, apparently I still felt the need to acknowledge the effect the force of the spore-fueled explosion would have had on them.
It really had been incredible. I struggled to comprehend the fact that just eighteen gnomes had felled more than twenty of the enemy – over a fifth of their attacking force. And my melee warriors hadn’t even seen action yet! Of course, we were still outnumbered, but far less so than before. Now it was fifty speargnomes and slingers, not to mention the eighteen militia, against eighty or so kobold fighters and three or four remaining shamans.
My denizens had already far, far exceeded my expectations, and I suddenly felt dizzy with hope. Perhaps we would survive this after all. Grimrock didn’t have an unlimited supply of kobolds, after all.
At least, I hoped not.
Sixty-Two
Killing Field
Taking a deep breath, I focused my attention on Bullet. The gnome was leaning against the palisade, sling loaded once more with a regular stone, waiting for the kobolds to show themselves again. In an eyeblink, Possession had me there on the palisade again, looking out of the officer’s eyes.
The slingers instantly pocketed their weapons, disembarked the platforms, and sprinted for the second palisade as though all the hounds of hell were after them.
And not a second too soon. The kobolds came pouring eagerly through the now-clear entranceway, yipping and barking, their weapons bared and their eyes gleaming eagerly in the light from yet another shaman’s hands.
The shaman blasted the first palisade to fiery splinters. Thankfully, my nimble slingers were already halfway across the shroomtree field, and weren’t caught in the blast’s deadly radius.
With the palisade now smoldering at their feet, the kobolds caught sight of the fleeing gnomes and howled excitedly. Those still carrying spears planted their feet and launched their weapons.
But I’d ensured Bullet’s orders to flee had been thorough, and the running slingers smartly zig-zagged between the shroomtrees’ colossal stalks, making them difficult to hit.
Difficult, but not impossible.
A spear took the rear-most slinger between the shoulder blades. She lurched forward, sprawling limply in the dirt. She did not get up.
‘No!’ Ket and I cried at the same time.
One of the slingers who’d withdrawn to the second palisade earlier also gave a cry. It was one of the recently matured gnomes who’d grown up in the creche. The young gnome scrambled down from the platform and raced past the retreating slingers in the opposite direction, heading for the fallen figure.
Hammer and Graywall were both shouting at the young gnome, but he ignored both officers, dropping to his knees beside the impaled slinger. A moment later, a kobold spear took him in the throat, and he toppled sideways, convulsing. Blood spurted, and a few moments later, the gnome was still.