5. Chapter 5 The Brood Mother
The passage opened into the largest chamber I'd seen in Cold Hollow up until this point.
Thirty feet of ceiling, at least, lost in the organic ridges that covered every surface.
The walls curved outward from the passage in a rough oval, the floor dropping in a shallow bowl toward the center.
The air was thick, wet, and warm. The deep rhythmic compression from the passage was louder here.
A pressure in my chest came with each pulse.
She was at the center.
The giant monster sat in a depression in the floor where the organic material was thickest, a nest of ridged tissue that rose around her lower body like a throne she'd grown into.
She was goblinoid. The structure was there, the proportions, the placement of the limbs.
But everything else about her was wrong.
She was massive, twelve feet tall from the floor to the top of her hunched shoulders, her body swollen and distorted, her arms thick and dragging the ground.
Her skin had the same translucent quality as the larval goblins but stretched over a frame that had kept growing past anything the species was built for.
Veins of bioluminescence ran under the surface of her skin in branching lines, pulsing in time with the sacs on the walls.
Everything we'd fought through existed because of her. The sentinels, the brood-tenders, the larval swarms, the egg clusters, all of it was her ecology. Her hive. We'd been walking through her creation for hours, and now we were standing in front of the thing that made it.
My stomach tightened. I'd told them I was nervous and I was right to be.
Bjorna stepped forward and set her feet. Her shield came up on her left arm and the longsword cleared the scabbard in one motion. She didn't look back.
"Formation. Sif, flanks. Nott, hold center with me. Liv, stay on the Mother. Daniel, stay back and keep us standing."
The Brood Mother's head turned toward us.
Her eyes were small and dark, set deep in a swollen face.
They found Bjorna first. She made a sound, low and resonant, more vibration than voice.
The walls answered. The sacs nearest to her pulsed brighter.
Shapes moved inside the closest ones, pressing against the translucent membranes.
The first wave tore out of the walls.
Sacs burst in clusters along both sides of the chamber, and goblins spilled out, wet and fast, already moving before they hit the floor. Sentinels, six of them, three from each wall, converging on our position.
Bjorna's [Imposing Presence] hit the front three and their charge stuttered. She drove the longsword through the first one before it recovered and caught the second on her shield. Sif was already gone, moving low along the right wall. Her daggers were finding targets in the dark between the sacs.
Nott raised a hand. An [Ember Bolt] crossed the chamber and hit one of the sentinels coming from the left. It dropped. She put a second bolt into the next one without lowering her arm.
"Liv, on the Mother now," Bjorna called.
Liv's first arrow hit the Brood Mother in the shoulder. The second hit her in the chest. The Mother made that low sound again and the sacs along the far wall began to pulse.
"She's calling more," Liv said. Her ears were locked forward, reading the chamber. "Coming from the back wall. A lot of them."
The second wave was bigger. Sentinels and brood-tenders together, pouring from burst sacs and from passages in the organic walls I hadn't seen. The brood-tenders were fast, the same heavy-bodied charge I'd seen at depth three, and three of them came straight down the center toward Bjorna's line.
"Nott, center. Thin them," Bjorna said.
Nott spread her fingers and a fan of [Ember Bolts] went out, three of them, catching two sentinels and a brood-tender.
The brood-tender staggered but kept coming.
Bjorna met it with the longsword and drove the blade into its chest. The impact rocked her back half a step.
She pulled the blade clear and pivoted to catch the next one on her shield.
Bjorna yelped from damage.
I cast [Mend] on Bjorna's shield arm where a sentinel's claw had caught her above the vambrace. She didn't look at me. She didn't need to.
The fight settled into a grind. The Mother kept spawning.
Every wave we killed, another formed. Sif worked the flanks, keeping the sentinels from circling behind us.
Nott dropped bolts on the creatures when they piled up and put single shots on the Mother when she had a clear line.
Liv was putting arrows into the Mother as fast as she could draw.
Each impact carried across the chamber, a wet heavy sound that meant the arrows were going deep.
"How's she looking?" I called to Liv.
"She's taking damage but she's not slowing down. This is going to take a while."
"Great. My favorite kind of fight," I replied with a dash of sarcasm.
"Quit being a smarty pants and heal Bjorna. She just took a hit on her left side."
I found it. A bruise was forming along Bjorna's ribs where a brood-tender had gotten inside her guard.
[Mend.]
Bjorna grunted. "Sif, status."
"Flanks are getting thicker," Sif called back. Her voice came from somewhere in the glow along the right wall. "She's spawning faster. I'm handling it but I could use fewer of these ugly things."
"Nott, help her when you can."
"I'm managing," Nott said. She put a bolt into a brood-tender that was closing on Sif's position and the creature dropped. "Barely."
The Mother screamed.
This scream was higher, sharper, a sound that filled the chamber and made the sacs pulse in a rapid flutter. She lurched forward in her nest, her massive arms bracing against the ridged floor. She wasn't sitting there anymore. She was coming for us.
"She's moving," Liv said. "She's coming off the nest."
"Oh, that's not good. We’ve pissed her off," I said.
"Hold positions," Bjorna called. "Same plan. We grind her down."
The Mother pulled herself free from the depression in the floor and stood to her full height.
Twelve feet of distorted goblinoid, her arms dragging, her body swaying with each step.
She took one step toward Bjorna and the floor shook.
She took another. The bioluminescent veins under her skin pulsed faster.
Bjorna planted and braced.
The Mother's arm came across in a sweep that would have cleared a table. Bjorna caught it on her shield and the impact drove her boots back six inches in the organic material. It sounded like metal on flesh on bone. Bjorna's knees bent but held.
"That's a big hit," I said.
"I noticed," Bjorna said through gritted teeth. She pushed back against the shield and drove the longsword into the Mother's forearm. The blade went in deep. The Mother screamed again and pulled back, and Bjorna came with her for a step before planting and holding the line.
I sent a heal into Bjorna's shoulder where the shield impact had driven into the joint. The magic did its thing and the damage eased under my hands. She rolled the shoulder once without looking back.
"You're good, Bjorna. Keep going," I said.
“Thank you for your permission,” she replied dryly.
The spawn kept coming. Without Bjorna calling adjustments, I'd have missed how bad it was getting. Every few seconds she'd shout a position or a warning. She was tracking the whole fight while tanking the biggest thing in the room.
Sif was out on the right flank, thirty feet from me, moving between sac clusters and putting daggers into anything that came from that side. She was fast and efficient, but the spawn was pushing wider, coming from angles she had to stretch to cover.
The Mother lunged.
It happened fast. She came off the frontline where Bjorna was holding her and swept her massive arm wide, not at Bjorna, not at the center. The arm went for the flank. It went for Sif.
"Sif!" Liv screamed.
Sif turned toward it. She tried to move. She was mid-step between two sac clusters, her weight on her front foot, her daggers low from a kill she'd just finished. The Mother's arm caught her across the midsection and the impact sent her into the wall.
The sound was bad—wet and heavy. Sif hit the organic-coated wall and dropped. She didn't get up.
"Sif's down!" Nott called. She was already casting, fast, controlled bolts into the creatures that were flooding through the gap Sif had been covering.
I looked across thirty feet of the chamber at Sif where she'd fallen. She wasn't moving.
"Bjorna, I'm going to Sif." I shouted it across the chamber.
"Go. Nott, cover the right."
I left my position at the back and crossed the boss chamber at a run.
The ground was uneven, ridged organic material under my boots, and I had to dodge a sentinel that came at me from the left.
Nott dropped it with a bolt that kissed my shoulder on its way.
The heat of it touched my cheek. Spawned monsters were everywhere around me, bodies and the wet remains of sacs.
I kept my feet. I kept moving as best I could.
I had to get to the wolf-kin before she was hit again.
Sif lay against the wall where she'd hit. Her eyes were open, conscious, but her chest rose and fell too fast and too shallow. One arm was pulled against her chest, clearly broken. Her legs bent at an angle that said ribs, or worse. The Mother had caught her clean.
I dropped to my knees beside her and put my hands on her.
"Hey. I'm here. I've got you," I said.
"Took you long enough," she said. Her voice was thin and strained and she tried to grin and didn't make it.
"Don't talk. Hold still. I’ve got this."
[Mend.]
The light came up under my hands. It went into her ribs first, where the damage was worst. I could feel the breaks through the skill, three ribs on her right side, cracked clean through, and the gold worked into the fractures and began pulling them together.
Her breathing eased a fraction as the first rib set. She grimaced as it snapped into place.