4. Chapter 4 The Descent #2
“They’re ignoring us,” I said.
“Until we touch the eggs,” Bjorna said. “They are called brood-tenders. Leave them. Clear the combatants first.”
The combatants mixed in with the brood-tenders included sentinels and something new.
Small shapes came out of cracks in the resin-coated walls, fast and half-formed, scrambling across the floor in a swarm.
They were larval, not fully goblin yet, pale and translucent with limbs that bent at wrong angles.
“Those are disgusting,” Sif said, and stepped into the dark. “I don’t want to get their guts on my pretty boots.”
The chamber had difficult terrain. Organic structures rose from the floor in uneven ridges, creating narrow passages and blind corners. The ceiling dipped low on the left side and the floor split into two levels on the right. Sif looked at it and grinned.
She drew the sentinel group into a choke point between two ridges by letting them see her for half a second, then vanishing.
When they funneled through the gap, Bjorna was waiting on the other side.
The sentinels hit Bjorna’s shield wall and Sif appeared behind them, her daggers doing fast, precise work in the tight space where their numbers meant nothing.
The larval swarm came from the right. Sif dropped off the upper level of the split floor into the dark below them, and the swarm followed her down.
I lost sight of her for three seconds. When she reappeared, she was on top of an organic ridge on the far side of the chamber, and the swarm was behind her, confused, searching for a target that had just run through them without taking a hit.
Nott cleared them with a widespread [Static Shock] from the passage entrance.
The brood-tenders came alive when an [Ember Bolt] hit too close to an egg cluster. Two of them uncurled and charged, and they were faster than their size suggested. One of them got past Bjorna’s line and came straight for the back, straight for me.
It covered the distance faster than I expected, and Nott’s bolt went wide in the tight space. I didn’t have time to move. The brood-tender hit me chest-high and drove me back a step, its weight slamming into me, and my hand came up flat against its body on instinct.
The cold came up from somewhere deep in my chest, the opposite of gold.
[Smite.]
The creature seized under my palm. Its charge stopped like something had locked every joint at once. It dropped at my feet and didn’t move again.
Nothing else moved.
Bjorna turned and looked at me across twenty feet of organic floor. Her expression was flat, controlled, the same face she’d worn in depth one. But she held the look a moment longer than she needed to.
“Nice,” Sif said from somewhere above us. “Look at you, not dying.”
“I’m full of surprises,” I said. I pulled my hand off the thing’s body and wiped it on my coat. The cold faded from my chest and the gold settled back into its usual place. “I’d rather not have to do that again today, but I’ll take it. That nasty beast was a little too close for comfort.”
“You won’t have to,” Bjorna said. “We adjust. Nott, watch the flanks for brood-tenders. Sif, don’t let them get past the line.”
“They won’t. We have to protect our sexy human, after all.”
Bjorna was right about one thing. That fight was different from the fight at the first depth. The goblins down here had structure and purpose, and the ecology was building toward something deeper in.
We cleared two more chambers. I healed a gash on Bjorna’s calf where a sentinel’s blade had caught her below the knee guard, and a bruise on Liv’s shoulder from a larval goblin that had dropped on her from an overhang.
Both were routine fixes, nothing serious.
The party was intact because they were good at this.
“Let’s take a breather,” Bjorna instructed. “It isn’t a race.”
“I won’t argue with you. I need to catch my breath a little. I’m out of practice,” Sif added.
“From the way you’ve been moving, you could’ve fooled me,” I replied.
“Ahh, so you’ve been watching me? Is it my skills or my tight leather pants that attract your eyes?”
I snorted. “Both.”
“Get your heads out of the gutter.”
Liv’s bottom lip poked out. “What about me? My pants are tight. I can buy some tighter ones. I want you to look at my ass too.”
“Your pants are fine. And are equally attractive as Sif’s pants.”
“What about my top? I’m not showing as much skin as I like but I don’t want a boob injury,” Liv replied.
I scratched the back of my head. “I don’t want you to have a boob injury either. Listen, ladies, fashion and sex appeal aren’t priorities in a dungeon.”
Nott finally spoke. “I can’t believe we’re talking about this right now.”
“Nott, no one asked your opinion. You’re a beautiful woman but are determined to wear the most unflattering dungeon gear. We need to go shopping or hope that something sexy drops for you,” Sif said.
“I couldn’t give two damns whether you think my gear has sex appeal,” Nott scoffed.
Bjorna slammed her sword against her shield. “Ladies. I think that is enough of a break. Let’s get back to it before Sif starts criticizing what I’m wearing.”
Sif shook her head. “Not at all. Your attire is quite sexy. Your cleavage is glorious.”
Bjorna sighed. “Just move your ass.”
[Cold Hollow. Depth: 4.]
The stone was gone.
The walls were organic. Fully covered, floor to ceiling, in the thick resin that had started as patches at depth two.
The texture was ridged and uneven, like the inside of something that had grown rather than been built.
There was no ambient glow down here. The only light came from the sacs, which lined the walls in dense rows, their bioluminescence casting a shifting warm glow across everything.
The air was humid and heavy, and the temperature was warmer than any room I’d been in since coming to Eldwold. I was sweating inside my coat.
I was inside something alive. The dungeon had stopped being a dungeon. The walls breathed in a slow rhythm that came up through my boots, and the sacs pulsed in time with it, and every surface had the wet sheen of living tissue.
“This is the heart of it,” Bjorna said. Her voice was low. “Stay tight. Everything from here fights.”
She was right.
The first wave came from a passage ahead and both walls at once.
Sentinels, brood-tenders, larval swarms, all of them together.
The chamber was tight and the organic ridges on the floor made footing difficult.
Bjorna planted at the center passage and took the sentinels head-on.
Sif vanished into the glow along the left wall.
Liv put arrows into the larval swarm from the right, her shots finding targets in the shifting light with a precision that made it look easy.
Nott was standing beside me. She’d been casting efficiently all day, individual [Ember Bolts], targeted [Static Shocks], clean and controlled. Every cast had done exactly what it needed to do and nothing more.
This was different.
The second wave came harder. More sentinels, three brood-tenders, and a swarm of larval goblins pouring from cracks in the walls I hadn’t seen until the pale shapes started crawling out of them.
Bjorna’s shield was ringing. Sif was moving fast but there were too many angles.
Liv was shooting as fast as she could draw.
Nott raised both hands.
The first cast was [Ember Bolts], but not the single-target bolts she’d been throwing all day.
She spread her fingers and six bolts formed at once, small and bright, and they went out in a fan across the chamber.
Each one hit a target. The bolts didn’t kill on impact.
They sank into the creatures and stayed, and heat built in the bodies, a red glow spreading under the skin of the goblins and brood-tenders, turning their bodies into conductors.
Then she brought her hands together.
She cast [Static Shock].