BT II - Chapter 30 (Patreon)

Micah wiped the blood from the point of his spear, surveying the room full of dead grass monitors.  Eris was in the corner, nursing an injured arm as regeneration slowly repaired the bruising.  Meanwhile, Esther and Trevor walked around the room, thrusting their spears into the monitor’s corpses.  In the previous chamber, they had been surprised when a ‘dead’ lizard had lunged at Garrat, almost devouring the small, jittery man.

He walked over to Eris, crouching down next to her.  She looked up, a mass of curly, rust colored hair obscuring her face as she winced at Micah.

“How are you doing?”  He asked.  “I saw that monitor slap you with its tail.  You have to be careful with monsters with multiple attacks.  If you end up focusing too much on one of them, it can surprise you from another direction.”

“Sorry Uncle Micah,” She hissed, shifting her back slightly against the wall of the dungeon.  “I let my guard down because the fight was going so well.  Esther and I were in sync and it couldn’t even touch us with its claws or fangs so-”

“And that’s another lesson,” Micah cut her off, tousling her hair while he cast augmented mending on her, “if you aren’t careful, you can get hurt even in very straightforward battles. Your combat style is based on dodging and avoiding contact.  You aren’t built like Drekt and you don’t have my levels to enhance your body attribute.  If you let your concentration lapse, one solid hit is enough to take you out of the fight.”

“I know,” Eris replied, gingerly working her formerly injured shoulder.  “Worse, if we hadn’t massively outleveled the monitors, my injury could have been critical.  Neither Esther nor I are strong enough to fight one of the lizards on our own, and my misstep could have easily led to both of our deaths.  I was lucky that you were on hand to kill the monster before it could take advantage of my injury”

“That’s why you’re fighting with your Dads and I,” Micah chuckled, offering his left hand to help the young woman up.  “We might not have had the advantage of high level companions to cover for our mistakes when we started out, but I can assure you most nobles and wealthy merchants do have that luxury.  We’re here to make sure you can learn and grow as a fighter without a minor mistake like this costing you permanent damage.  So long as you learn from your error here today, I’ll consider it a win.”

“Garrat did it!”  Garrat’s voice echoed down the corridor, causing Micah’s jaw to clench.  “Thank you so much for restraining the monitor and giving Garrat a sword.  It took a couple minutes of hacking away at the same spot on its scales, but Garrat managed to kill a grass monitor without anyone else hitting it even once.  Now he is a brave and respected warrior, yes yes.”

Their guide was slightly less annoying than he had been on the six day hike to the dungeon, but it was still a bit hard to deal with him.  Somewhere around day four, even Garrat had grown tired of constantly chattering about what he was going to do when he had scrimshaw of his own.  He would still try and start conversations about birds that flew overhead or strangely colored stalks of grass, but at least there were finally moments of blessed silence.

“Good for your Garrat,” Leeka called out from where she was kneeling next to a dead lizard, cutting her arrows from its hide.  “I hope it helps with your search for love.”

“It will, orange lady!”  Garrat replied cheerfully as he ran into the room.  “Soon Garrat will be able to hold his head high when he meets a woman from another tribe.  She will have to respect him now.”

“Have you considered calming down a bit?”  Trevor asked as he finished stabbing the last of the dead monitors.  “I usually only ask a couple of questions about their interests to find some common ground.  Then, when I know what a partner likes, I try to have a conversation about that.  To be clear, conversation means that both sides are talking.  No one thinks it's sexy when you lecture them.  It doesn’t work every time, but I’ve had some decent luck with it.”

“And here I thought your secret move was doing eight shots of juusht and proposing crude sexual acts,” Drekt rumbled, a twinkle in his eyes.  “At least that was your strategy when we first started dating.”

“No no no No NO!” Eris shouted, slapping her hands over her ears.  “My parents are NOT talking about their romantic encounters in front of me.  That is simply not happening.  Not now, not ever.”

“I’m going to have to agree with Eris on this,” Micah said.  “The next room should be the boss chamber, and there’s no telling how much the Monitor Queen and her mates have grown since this dungeon has last been pruned.  I want everyone to fight cautiously.  I should be the only person confronting the Queen herself.  Trevor and Drekt should each take a myrmidon.  I’ll summon the river kraken to take on a third, and the rest of you should work together to bring down the fourth.”

“Remember,” Drekt cut in, the mirth evaporating from his voice as he put on his business face.  “Do not risk yourself.  There is no need to land an immediate crippling blow.  There are enough of us that someone will finish their myrmidon before the others.  Once you are in the clear, you should aid the rest of the party.  We’re going in blind, so team-work is our best bet.  I don’t want us to finish the battle quickly, I want us to finish it without any serious injuries.”

“The goal is to disable not kill if possible,” Trevor agreed.  “If you have to kill your myrmidon, do it, but if possible you should leave it at the brink of death.  Micah is going to need as many sacrifices as possible to power those defensive enchantments he wants to make, and that’s the real goal here.  Making sure that the rest of us don’t just get knocked out the minute we make contact with the Pontiff.  None of us can help Micah if we can be removed from the fight by a casual wave of the enemy’s hand.

“Areed,” Micah replied with a nod as he strolled in front of the door to the boss chamber and turned to face the rest of the party.  “Now gather around.  We’re going in with full buffs today.  It’s better for me to get a headache from running low on magic than for one of you to get hurt.

One by one, Micah renewed the regeneration and haste spells he’d cast on the rest of the party before repeating them on himself.  The spells were mana intensive and took some time to cast, but helping everyone in the party move at double their normal speed and heal from non-fatal injuries was more than worth the investment of time and magic.

Finally, he put his hand on the door’s handle, casting foresight on himself before pushing it open and bursting into the dungeon’s boss chamber.  The room was a massive oval, between fifteen and twenty paces high but stretching hundred and hundreds of paces away from the door.

Of more concern was the Monitor Queen.  The top of her back brushed against the room’s ceiling as she scraped past a clutch of eggs, each about the size of Micah.  Unlike her children, the Queen was a deep purple, almost iridescent.  The grass monitors might be ambush predators, taking advantage of their camouflage to surprise prey in the Grass Sea, but their mother saw no need to hide.

Micah burst into motion, sprinting across the chamber toward the massive lizard.  Angry hisses heralded the arrival of the myrmidons as they caught sight of Micah’s sudden movement, but he ignored the smaller creatures, counting on his haste enhanced body to outpace them long enough for his companions to pick their targets.

He reached up, touching one of the fangs as he poured mana into the spellform for the river kraken.  Golden mist streamed behind him as Micah dodged to the side, an arc of rainbow light betraying a glob of dark liquid that jetted from the Queen’s mouth with enough force to shatter the rock of the dungeon floor.  A moment later, the tar-like substance began to hiss as it dissolved the stone.

The kraken snapped into being behind Micah.  He couldn’t see what it was doing, but his connection to it through the armor gave him a vague sense as to its location, and Micah could only count on it to fulfill the orders he’d given it and keep the myrmidons from attacking him while he was occupied with the queen.

She lunged forward with deceptive speed, jaws snapping toward Micah.  He moved a fraction of a second before she began her attack, jumping into the air and thrusting downward with his spear so that he landed point first on the top of her muzzle as the Queen tried to recover from her attack.

The spear sucked mana from him as Micah activated its enchantments for the first time in combat.  A heat mirage of pressurized air, vibrating with sonic energy surrounded the tip of the weapon, extending almost a full arm’s length past its point and a hand’s span to either side.

Scales bent and shattered under the force of the enchantment, battered by the rapidly circulating air that rasped like a saw across the monster’s armored brow before cutting through her thick armor.  Then the spearhead itself slid into her flesh, lodging itself in the bone above one of the lizard’s eyes as the air magic vented itself, shredding flesh and scoring the Queen’s skull.

Micah grunted, activating one of the spear’s two main enchantments.  More magic was wrenched from him, but a tiny vacuum, maybe twice the size of his hand sprouted inside the wound.  He sprinted forward, letting the spell devour a small portion of the monster’s skull a half second before she slammed it into the roof of the dungeon in an effort to dislodge him.

He stabbed the spear into her flank, letting the blade of air chew through the lizard’s quick scales as he slid downward, raking the spear through her flesh.  Just as Micah hit the ground, he activated the spear’s other main enchantment.

More mana flowed out of him, transformed by the wood enchantments in the spear into a powerful neurotoxin that immediately began attacking the Monitor Queen’s nerves.  One stab, no longer how protracted, wouldn’t be enough to bring down a monster the size of the Queen, but it would hamper her movements and the attacks would add up.  Before long, the searing pain caused by the poison would transform into numbness as it began to interrupt her muscle functions, eventually terminating when it paralyzed her lungs and killing the creature by forcing it to suffocate, a prisoner trapped in its own failing body.

He landed on the ground in a crouch, springing backward to avoid the image of the Queen’s meaty tail as it swung through his location and slammed against the monitor’s side.  She bellowed, her purple scales rippling and changing colors.

Micah frowned, backpedaling while the monster transformed from indigo to red.  Her eyes locked on him.  One of them was unfocused and sightless from his first attack but the other spat hatred at him even as the gigantic lizard began to glow faintly.

“Fuck,” Micah muttered, taking a half step backward and casting wind shield a moment before the irate monster exhaled, bathing the battlefield in flames.  His spell kept the fire from actually touching his skin, but at the same time Micah could feel his hair singe and flesh blister from the unbearable heat of the attack.

He darted in again.  If the Monitor Queen could use area of effect spells to blanket the entire battlefield in fire, fighting from range was a dead end.  Micah’s entire combat style relied upon mobility to avoid enemy attacks.  With the help of the Maarikava armor he might be able to survive a number of hits from her breath attack, but he would constantly be on the back foot.

The Queen snapped at him once again, only for a lightning fast jab from his spear to cut her attack short.  She pulled back, wary of Micah’s strikes after the damage caused by their first encounter.

Micah took advantage of her reluctance to drive his spear into one of the monitor’s legs, the airblade shredding her scales and flesh until his spearhead was lodged in one of her bones.  He activated the poison enchantment, gritting his teeth as more mana flowed into the weapon.

The world around him flashed in rainbow hues as the spear delivered its payload.  Micah jumped backward, using Gust Step to help him open the gap between himself and the Monitor Queen.  With a bellow of pain, she burst into flames, clawing blindly at the spot where he had been standing.

She continued burning, tail whipping back and forth once before she slammed shoulder first onto the dungeon floor, rolling back and forth in a futile effort to kill the pest that was plaguing her.

A ghost-like smile appeared on Micah’s face.  While the fires burned, she was blind, counting on the flames and her bulk to drive him off.  A worthy strategy if the only weapon in Micah’s arsenal was his spear.

Quietly, he began reciting the words to vacuum.  Halfway through the spell, Micah felt the effects of foresight wear off.  The spell lasted a lot longer now than when he had first learned it, but he still couldn’t manage to extend the duration past two minutes.  Understandable for how powerful the effect was, but frustrating in longer battles such as the one he was currently embroiled in.

Then he cast vacuum, targeting one of the Monitor Queen’s legs.  She screeched in pain and the fires winked out.  The lizard tried to roll back to its feet, but it ended up slumping to the side, it’s back right leg a limp mangled mess unable to sustain any of its weight.

She glared at Micah with her one good eye, blood flowing freely down the side of her muzzle.  He dropped into a crouch, prepared to dodge at a moment’s notice now that he’d lost the protection of foresight.

The Queen’s scales rippled again, flashing through iridescent colors as they changed from red to a light blue.  Even from a distance, Micah could feel the temperature in the chamber drop precipitously.  He charged, fearing a new ranged attack from the giant lizard.

Micah’s prediction was right even if his reaction was wrong.  As he sprinted across the floor, his form little more than a blur due to the effects of haste, the monitor queen exhaled a blast of frosty air.  The Maarikava handled the frigid temperatures easily, but the floor beneath Micah’s feet was immediately coated in a thin layer of ice causing him to lose his balance.

Momentum saved Micah as he tumbled to the ground, rolling and skidding entirely past the Monitor Queen as her tail thundered through the air at neck level.  He made it past the area affected by her breath weapon, and the scales on his armor began to draw sparks off of the dungeon floor, slowing him enough with their friction that Micah was able to spring to his feet sporting a couple bruises and cuts but otherwise no worse for the wear.

The lizard began ponderously turning.  Even without the speed provided by haste or the injury inflicted on the monster’s leg, Micah would have been able to outpace her awkward, elongated body.  Just like the grass monitors, their queen was optimized for running in straight lines or lunging, she simply didn’t have the lateral mobility to keep up with a determined opponent.

He raced around her left side, zipping easily into the blind spot created by his opening attack.  The Monitor Queen swung her massive head back and forth, searching for Micah with her one good eye, but unable to notice him until he struck.

Micah buried his spear into the spot where the monster’s front left leg joined its body, airblade rending easily through the thinner scales of the joint.  Another wave of mana left him as the weapon transformed the magical energy into poison.   He withdrew the spear quickly and ducked toward her muzzle.

A fraction of a second later the dungeon boss whipped her head toward where he’d attacked from, seeing nothing as Micah was already beneath her field of vision, the lizard chuffed in frustration.  Then Micah struck, his spear flashed upward, slashing open the monster’s neck and depositing more of the neurotoxin directly into the arteries feeding its brain.

She staggered for a second, obviously struggling with the amount of damage inflicted on her, and Micah attacked again, stabbing his spear into the underside of her jaw.  Once again, he willed the spear to inject poison, but at this point, he didn’t even know how necessary it was.  The airblade coating his speartip severed half of her tongue, reducing the Monitor Queen’s fearsome jaws into a bloody mess of useless muscle and exposed bone.

Her scales began changing color again, flickering topaz as her body trembled.  Micah jumped backwards, slipping as his feet landed on an ice-covered patch of the dungeon.  The Monitor Queen took a tentative step toward him, her remaining eye clouded and distant as blood poured from multiple wounds.

On his back, Micah prepared himself to cast binding vines, but his worry proved unnecessary.  The dungeon boss’ legs gave out, spilling her to the floor as the venom coursing through her veins froze her muscles.  Her breaths were labored, a painful rattle ending every movement of the great lizard’s chest as tremors shook her critically injured body.

Micah slumped to the dungeon floor.  Exhaling in relief once before rolling over and carefully returning to his feet on the slippery surface.  Behind him, the battle was also over.  Only Drekt had slain his myrmidon, red and black lizard almost twice the size of the grass monitors but only coming up to their Queen’s shoulders.

Trevor’s myrmidon lay on the ground, helpless due to the disabled joints in all four of its legs.  The river kraken was gnawing cheerfully on the side of its opponent, its tentacles wrapped around the struggling lizard and holding it immobile.  As for the final monster, Leeka, Esther, Eris and the animals didn’t have the sorts of weapons that could deal crippling damage to its bulk.  Instead they had stabbed and worried at the creature until it had fainted from blood loss.

“Yes yes!”  Garrat called out excitedly, hurrying into the room now that the fight was winding down.  “A great victory.  Garrat has not seen it’s likes before.  The way the Queen changed colors in order to use new powers, so magnificent!  Garrat was especially impressed by the way the big warrior hacked his myrmidon apart, so brutal, so heroic!”

Micah touched the side of the Monitor Queen, casting coma before he began the process of healing the numerous wounds to stabilize her condition.  From his spot at her side, he called out without looking away from his peculiar patient.

“Trevor, this is a dungeon and a high level one at that.  Collect the rewards for conquering it and let me know if there’s anything interesting.”

He’d finished closing most of the open cuts, stitching veins and flesh together just well enough to ensure that the giant lizard didn’t expire, and moved on to purging the neurotoxin when Trevor whistled in appreciation.

“There’s a big haul here Micah,” Trevor said excitedly.  “I don’t think I’ve seen anything this tailored before either.  An enchanted cleaver, a magical bow and matching quiver and a book of some sort.”

“What sort of book is it?” Drekt asked, walking over to where Trevor was going through their prizes in order to inspect the cleaver.

“It looks like a text or treatise of some sort,” Trevor replied uncertainly.  “It seems the title is ‘The Practice and Principle of Magics Altering the Soul.”

Micah sighed, casting a glance over at the other injured myrmidons that needed preserving so that he could use them in his enchanting.

“Of course it does Trevor,” Micah said, his voice weary.  “Why wouldn’t there be a rare text on soul magic.  At least the gods are trying to help out this time.  I suppose that’s an improvement.”