AO 4 Ch 7 (Patreon)

Chapter 7

With another wave of my hand, I removed the spikes from the bottom of the sewer channel, the stone sliding back under the murky waters.

One of the crocodiles was alive enough to let out a guttural roar in its final moments. The roar reverberated through the sewer tunnel and rattled inside my chest.

A much louder response came from further down the sewer.

“What was that?” Miles took a step back and glanced at all of us as if we had the answers. The older Graystone mage apparently didn’t see much combat. This was nothing compared to a giant wyrm.

“How am I supposed to know? Though, it sounds like a very large crocodile.” I shrugged. “It’ll probably die with a few sharp pokes.”

“Didn’t you kill it when you fought the pirate leader?” Sienna asked. “Or was there some embellishment?”

“I mean. Last I saw it, ice ripped open its stomach from the inside. Thought that was enough to kill it. Then again, who said there was only one giant crocodile?” I glanced down the sewer. “Okay, I’m calling the anchors and we’re assuming the scaly bastards have something to do with the blockage.” Better safe than sorry.

Raising my hand, I made a stone ladder and a hole up to the surface.

Thankfully no one fell inside.

Aurelia’s head poked out over the hole. “Trouble?”

“Pretty sure we have a giant crocodile. You missed the las—“ I didn’t finish my sentence before Maribelle landed in a flurry, her blonde locks dancing around her.

“Where is it.” She flashed out two bluesteel daggers with spiked pommel guards that worked to punch things too. Once to prove a point she beat a bear to death with them.

“Feisty.” Sienna blinked as her anchor, Selina Keller, joined us.

“The one we fought before might have tried to gnaw on her like a dog with a bone.” I glanced at the carcasses floating in the channel. “What do you want to do with those?”

“Hopefully they flow out, otherwise a person with a stick can push them out.” Karen shrugged. She looked less scared now that her two anchors stood behind her. “We’re going to deal with this giant crocodile?”

There were more splashes up ahead. A lot more.

“Let’s deal with what we can. Sienna, I love you and you are very capable. However, I’m taking the lead.” I strode forward. “Maribelle, stay close, I know you want to stab them, but Aurelia’s got the reach with her sword and fire that you don’t have.”

Sienna smiled at me. “I just fix things. Feel free to take up the lead.” She pulled on her magic and a little castle rose from the stone beneath her before floating in orbit around her.

Last time she had used that castle, it fired little cannon balls that blew holes in walls. Even if she focused on building and repairing, she was still a mage.

Aurelia took the lead.

“Did you say fire? Perhaps avoid that down here.” Miles said. “There’s enough gas down here that you could set the air on fire.”

“Excuse me? What?” I blurted out. “Set the air on fire?”

“Don’t use concentrated light either.” He pointed to the sphere of light floating over Karen’s head. “Nothing more than this.”

“Hear that, Manticore? Keep the heat down.” I made sure Aurelia acknowledged the statement with a nod. “That means no lightning too? Damn, I almost fried that one in the channel.”

Sienna patted my arm. “Good thing you didn’t. Sorry, this is common knowledge for Graystones, I didn’t think to mention it.”

Before I could say anything to that, the splashing grew in volume as a dozen crocodiles swam down the channel. They had spotted us and clearly were homing in.

“Ice is fine, right?” I asked for clarification.

“Perfectly fine.” Sienna assured me.

I spun up three manticore claws in my hand. It was my adept spell, so it was starting to come to me like second nature. With the clearer realization of the spell it was faster and stronger than anything else I could summon.

The claws shot into the channel, tearing up the first few crocodiles with their razor sharp edge.

However, after that, my spell broke. I frowned. That was odd. Normally my spell could go through the entire group without fail.

The crocodiles sped up and shot out of the water, their tails whipping back and forth to propel them up out of the channel and onto the walkway as their jaws yawned open.

I was fairly certain that was abnormal for a crocodile as well.

Aurelia shot forward, her sword cleaving the head off the first one and spinning around to impale the second with a stab of her blade.

That last one stalled her for a moment while she retrieved her sword from its gut.

Sienna filled that time as her stone fort fired off a salvo of little cannon balls that packed a big punch. Each of them cracked as they hit the monsters.

Even then, I expected the crocodile to be riddled with holes.

Instead, it bounced off the collision and flipped back into the water with enough twisting that it was clearly still alive.

I broke from my moment of surprise and threw up a wall of stone to buy us time. “Is it me or is magic not as effective as I expected it to be? Is that the sewer gas too?” I really hated this idea of sewer gas.

“No Ard. It’s not.” Sienna made spikes that slowed the crocodiles down further as they moved with far more agility than I expected out of their stubby little legs.

Aurelia had her sword free again and caught a crocodile slipping around the other way. Her blade cut only part way through its snout before she snapped a kick that knocked it off her blade and back into the muck. “They are far more durable than I’d expect. A bluesteel sword should go right through them.”

“I bet an axe would.” Maribelle muttered.

“What was that?” Aurelia glared at her. “Axe blades require more metal, and then you have to thread it through the shaft or you can’t channel from your hand to the blade. That means more bluesteel. Of course then it’s completely susceptible to failure because of the threads.”

I glared at Maribelle. She needed to stop snooping in my belongings and would definitely be in trouble if she ruined the surprise for others. I bet she shook her present boxes before her birthday.

Suddenly the idea of screwing with her that way entered my mind.

Unfortunately I had to let go of that thought and focused on the new crocodiles rushing the group.

Opening my fox sphere again, I summoned three claws that zipped out around the barrier, hooking the closest crocodile and using it to shovel the rest back into the channel of sewage.

They went down with heavy plops into the water before the Graystone mages started making spikes in the water.

I wasn’t idle, using ice magic to sharpen a dozen spears above the channel. When the spikes revealed a crocodile, the spears shot down at their mark.

The anchors moved to the edge and were ready to smack down any that tried to get back up on the walkway.

Maribelle didn’t get a chance to brutalize any of them, so instead she stood demurely by my side with her daggers behind her back as she swayed from side to side. It was like she was just an innocent maid and not an assassin trained woman who’d deliver me a bag of heads as a present.

“Bored?” I asked, stabbing down another set of spears.

“Never by your side.” She answered with a slightly too large smile. “Kill them though. Make them bleed for me, Sir.”

I chuckled and waved my hand to make more of the spears, peppering the channel in search of any more of the monsters.

At this point, I was certain they were some sort of monster and not just simple beasts.

“Nothing.” Sienna said, glancing up and down. “Dear, I don’t suppose you could remove all the spikes?” She batted her lashes at me.

“There’s a necessary payment for that.” I teased.

Sienna stepped up next to me and planted a soft kiss on my neck, the kind that got my heart racing trying to get my blood moving south. “If need be, I’ll pay with my body.” She kissed my jaw and then I took her lips.

We kissed for a moment before Miles cleared his throat. “We have a sewer full of monsters to deal with…” His voice trailed off to a whisper at the end.

I broke the kiss to find Aurelia and Selina glaring daggers at the mage. “It’s fine and he’s right. Let’s keep moving.” With a wave of my hand, I reset the channel and cleared the stone spikes.

The three Graystones didn’t have near the magical output that I had.

Speaking of, I pulled Aurelia closer and kissed her hand, flooding her with all of my built up magic. “Maybe lose fire for the moment?”

She closed her eyes and heat washed off of her as her hair danced, but not a spark of flame came off her body.

Those blue eyes opened in a flash and there was a supernatural chill around her. “I’ll use ice.”

“Sticking to the fox sphere?” I asked as we continued, a little curious why that would be her choice. She fought recklessly enough that I figured life would be preferred.

“During training as a Virel you get tested in many ways. The testing said I would be most effective with fire. There is something for flexibility and if I went for a mage with the fox sphere particularly for fire, the only other element I could reliably get would be ice.” She explained.

“Ever prepared.” I commented, doing my best to keep all sarcasm from slipping into my tone. Even if I thought it was often too much, she was very effective at her job, which was keeping me alive.

“That’s why Virels are such favored anchors.” Miles looked towards Aurelia with a little jealousy. “Then again as a four sphere mage it’s only natural that you have one of the best.”

There was a little extra pride in Aurelia’s stride after that statement.

I knew that she took her role very seriously, so much so that I was concerned there wasn’t any room for actual love between us.

Sure she probably enjoyed being around me, who didn’t? But was there any actual love? I didn’t think so.

Probing her soul for answers wasn’t the right way to go about answering that for myself either.

Instead, I’d just wait for her to figure it out herself. It wasn’t like I wanted to replace her; she was quite good at keeping my head on my shoulders.

Speaking of.

“Given these seem to be a monster rather than a simple beast, any ideas?” I asked the resident monster hunter.

Aurelia had a thoughtful expression on her face. “After the pirate raid, I penned the family back in the capital about the giant crocodile. I don’t have much experience with aquatic monsters, but they sent back descriptions of three potential monsters.”

“You think this is one of them?” More information was always helpful.

She nodded. “I haven’t narrowed it down just yet. Hopefully, we’ll get a few more answers up ahead. Though it seems to be magically resistant.”

“That’s unfortunate.” I said before clarifying. “The magical resistance, not that you haven’t narrowed it down yet.”

She nodded sharply, her sword still out and at the ready as we moved through the sewers. Her eyes kept darting back to the channel in the center.

And it appeared she wasn’t the only one concerned. Everyone was warrily keeping an eye on the murky water and their ears open for more splashing.

It didn’t take long for us to come across a major blockage in the channel. Some dead vegetation was strewn about in a ten foot wide area and matted down into the flow, causing the sewage to lap up at the edge of the walkway.

Some of the water was getting through, but much of it was backed up as solid waste in the sewer piled up.

The nest was filled with broken egg shells.

Aurelia rushed over and examined them, putting several sections back together to make an egg the size of my head.

“That’s a big egg. The thing that laid it…” I trailed off my imagination wondering just how big the monster down the sewers might be.

“I think we are dealing with a Creslin.” Aurelia said, putting the shells back down.

“That’s good we know what we are dealing with.” I encouraged her.

“Not good.”

“Right, not good.” I corrected myself. “Why is it not good?”

Aurelia moved the shells around looking for something else in the nest. “Because they are very dangerous. I don’t think what we fought in the ocean was a Creslin. It matched more what my family described as a Voraguard. However, our information on both is based on only a few encounters.

“That the pirate had both is interesting. He must have collected crocodile-like monsters.” Aurelia found what she was looking for and pulled out material to reveal several more unhatched eggs. “Thought there might be more.” She stabbed each of them quickly to ensure they weren’t going to hatch later.

“What’s so troubling about the Creslin?” Sienna prompted her to continue.

“The adult female that’s producing all of these eggs is going to be very difficult for us to injure. In the records by my family, the one they encountered was very difficult to injure with magic or swords. Even more troubling, it doesn’t stand and fight. The Creslin will basically make as many eggs as it can by feeding.” She shook her head.

“So we don’t feed the thing.” Miles added hopefully.

I already knew the answer. “There’s a bay that this thing likely has access to that’s full of pirate corpses.”

Aurelia glanced at me with a smile. “Exactly. It has a buffet right on its doorstep and is likely using this sewer as shelter to produce more.”

I let out a whistle. “So, it followed the crocodile pirate, but likely was mass producing offspring rather than being part of its forces. Now that the pirate is dead, we are left with a big magically resistant monster that’s going to try and overwhelm us with monsters.”

“Baby monsters.” Sienna added, not that it was a particularly helpful distinction.

Those things could easily snatch up people from the docks or outskirts of the city.

“There is a piece of good news.” Aurelia stepped off the nest and back onto the walkway. “The young don’t turn into breeding adults while the main female is around. We don’t know the mechanism, but from a repeated culling that lasted several years, a second egg laying female never appeared.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Good, because I was imagining these multiplying worse than rabbits.”

“They’d overwhelm any ecosystem of prey to feed on.” Aurelia explained. “Monsters often go against the environment, but rarely do they kill themselves off by overfeeding.”

“If we see it, I’ve got one shot to really try and put it down?” I asked.

“Put all you’ve got into it.” Aurelia agreed.

Karen raised her hand. “Don’t ignite the sewer gas though, please?”

“I’ll use death magic.” It was the most lethal, but its range was short. “Anything in your records about the best kind of magic?” I asked, realizing there might be a better answer.

She shrugged. “They killed it with a bluesteel tipped lance. Broke it off in its gut and then the mage used the lance to drive their magic into the Creslin’s body. Only their exterior was magically resistant.”

I let out a whistle.

Fighting a new monster was probably a rather exciting event for a Virel. Maybe one day I’d get a chance to put something in that bestiary of her family.

“Ard, can you break up this nest?” Sienna asked.

It was easy enough to make several fingers of stone running opposite of each other along the channel floor and grind the nest up.

The vegetation appeared to be seaweed pulled from the ocean for the material and was tough at first, but once I started breaking it the rest crumbled under the might of my magic.

“Having a four sphere certainly makes this easier.” Karen said while Miles nodded in agreement.

“We could have done this.” Sienna still had her pride as a Graystone. “But yes, Ard is like cheating. I’m glad I asked for some magical muscle.” She hung onto my arm. “We thought we were going to be dealing with collapsed sections. Now that it’s monsters, I’m even happier with my decision to get you stuck on sewer duty.”

I hooked a thumb at Aurelia. “You mean glad that I come with a Virel who can help us make sense of this. I shudder to think what would have happened if I wasn’t here.”

Sienna huffed playfully. “I could handle the first few, then I would have promptly left the sewers and demanded that Brighthavens send someone to deal with it.”

With the nest broken up the flow resumed. The channel seemed deeper here than before. “Is it deeper?” I asked.

“Yes, it gets deeper the further to the ocean you go.” She said as I paused.

Up ahead, there was a partially collapsed tunnel. “Well, that’s part of the problem.”

The water level was continuing to rise up towards the walkway as we went.

I raised my hand to deal with the situation.

“Careful.” Miles cautioned me as my magic flowed out. “I think on the right side is a junction to another part of the city.”

“Oh. That’s where one of the overflowing vents is.” Karen seemed to piece the puzzle together and  turned around probing out with her earth magic.

I did the same and felt a tunnel on the other side of the collapsed side of the sewer. “Got it. So if I unplug that, will a big torrent of sewage come out?”

“Yup.” Sienna nodded. “Let’s take a step back.”

“Or maybe fix it on the way back?” I offered. The last thing I wanted was to flood the pipe that I was about to use to fight an aquatic monster..

“That makes the most sense.” Aurelia agreed. “Let’s keep moving and see what’s up ahead.”