5. Chapter 5 The Brood Mother #2
But she needed more than my magic on one injury at a time.
Her arm was broken, her ribs were broken, and I could feel deeper damage, soft tissue trauma from the force of the hit, internal bruising that [Mend] would take minutes to work through one area at a time.
The bleeding was internal, not fast but steady.
Behind me, the fight was getting worse. I could hear Bjorna taking heavy hits, the shield ringing, Nott casting faster, Liv's bow going nonstop. Without Sif on the flank, the spawn was coming from angles nobody was covering.
I needed to cast [Mercy.]
I'd used it before, in places where I had time and space and nobody was swinging at me. Never in a boss fight. Never with creatures closing in and my hands on a patient and the chamber shaking.
I took a breath and reached for it.
[Mercy.]
Gold came out from me in a low, even wave, radiating outward in a pulse that filled the space around me and kept going.
It hit Sif first. The ribs I'd been working with [Mend] got a second surge and the remaining breaks pulled together.
The arm fracture closed. The internal bruising faded under the gold.
It hit her all at once, everything, the triage-scale heal doing what it was built for.
It kept going. It reached Bjorna at the frontline. Her accumulated damage eased, the bruised shoulder, the strain in her knees from bracing, a dozen small cuts she hadn't told me about. It reached Nott and caught a cut on her palm. It reached Liv and cleared the fatigue in her drawing arm.
The gold faded. I was still on my knees beside Sif.
[Mercy] took more out of me than [Mend]. The hollowness settled behind my sternum, a weight like I'd sprinted a mile. My hands were steady but I was pulling air harder than I had been.
"Stay down," I told Sif. "You're stable but you're not fighting anymore."
"I can get up."
"You can stay down. That's what you can do. Your ribs just finished setting. If you take another hit like that, I'm going to be angry."
Her blue eyes were bright and focused. The pain was still there, banked down under the heal but present. She hated every second of this.
"I hate this," she said.
"I know. Stay down anyway."
"Fine. You’re the doctor."
I got up. The chamber was still going. The Mother was still standing, still spawning, and the fight had changed shape without Sif.
"Bjorna, Sif's stable. She's out."
"Understood. Nott, you have the full right side. Liv, keep shooting. Daniel, get back to center and keep healing. I’m going to stand between the boss and Sif."
I moved back toward the center of the chamber.
The spawn pressure was worse without Sif.
Goblins and brood-tenders came from the right flank unopposed now, and Nott was splitting her attention between the Mother and the flanking creatures, casting faster than she had all day.
She was winded, her dark hair plastered to her temples.
Bjorna was taking everything the Mother gave her. The longsword rose and fell. The shield caught blow after blow. She hadn't stopped since the fight started. Her arms were shaking but her feet stayed planted.
I healed Bjorna's forearm where the Mother's claws had torn through her. I healed Nott's hands where the sustained casting was starting to crack the skin. I healed a gash on Liv's cheek from a piece of debris the Mother had thrown.
[Mend.] [Mend.] [Mend.]
The hollowness from [Mercy] was still there, but the healing kept coming. Every cast cost a little more than the last one, a slow accumulation in my chest and my shoulders. I kept going.
"I've got you, Bjorna. I've got everyone. Just keep fighting."
"What do you think we’re doing, Outworlder?" she growled.
The Mother was weakening. Liv's sustained fire was doing real damage. Her arrows stuck out of the Mother's body in clusters, and the bioluminescent veins under her skin were dimming, the pulse getting slower and more erratic. The spawning slowed. The waves came thinner.
Nott hit the Mother with an [Ember Bolt] that sank into her side and stayed hot. She followed it with a [Static Shock] that ran through the heated flesh and the Mother lurched sideways, screaming. Her legs buckled for a second before she caught herself.
"Nice shot, Nott," Liv said between draws.
"She's close," Liv called. "She's slowing down. Keep hitting her."
"Press forward. The bitch is dying," Bjorna said. She advanced.
Bjorna drove into the Mother with her shield up and the longsword back.
The Mother's arm came down and Bjorna caught it on the shield, the impact driving her boots into the floor.
She held. Every wave, every depth, the whole fight, Bjorna had been the one between the Mother and the rest of us. She held the line and she didn't break.
Nott hit the Mother with another bolt. Liv put two arrows into her neck. The Mother screamed, a sound that cracked and died halfway through. Her legs gave.
Bjorna drove the longsword up through the Brood Mother's chest.
It sank in to the hilt. The Mother seized around it, her massive body locking, and went still. The bioluminescence under her skin flickered once and went dark. Sacs along the walls dimmed. The pulsing in the air stopped.
Spawn stopped.
Every remaining creature in the chamber stumbled and collapsed, their bodies going limp as the connection to the Mother severed. One by one, the sacs went dark until the only light left was the residual glow of the organic walls.
Bjorna pulled the longsword free. She stepped back and her shield arm dropped to her side. Her chest heaved. Her legs shook. She stood there looking at the Mother's body, then at us, and didn't say anything.
Then she sat down.
Everybody followed suit. We were all exhausted.
The ground was organic and warm and disgusting and nobody cared. Bjorna leaned against her shield with her eyes closed. Nott sat with her hands on her knees, her chest slowly settling. Liv set her bow across her lap and pulled the string of her quiver over her head.
I went to Sif first. She was still against the wall where I'd left her, sitting up now, her back against the organic surface, her arms resting carefully in her lap.
"Let me check you."
I ran [Mend] through her ribs again. Breaks holding. Bruising gone. Everything I'd fixed was staying fixed, but the exhaustion sat deep in her.
"You're solid. How's the pain?"
"Manageable. Everything hurts but nothing's broken anymore." She paused. "Is it completely dead? It looks dead."
"Bjorna put her sword through its chest. Yeah, it's dead. It’s not going to hurt you anymore."
"Good. I didn't want to die in a hole in the ground covered in goblin gunk."
"That would have been a bad look for you."
"Terrible. Very unattractive.” She grinned despite her clear discomfort. “But enough about me, go check everyone else."
I went to Bjorna next. I put my hands on her shoulder and ran healing magic through the damage she'd taken. There was a lot of it. Small cuts, deep bruises, strain in every joint. She'd absorbed the worst the Mother could throw for the entire fight and she hadn't said a word about any of it.
[Mend.]
"You held the line for that whole fight. That was incredible. I knew you were a badass but damn," I said honestly.
She opened her eyes. "That's the job."
"It's more than the job. You held that thing by yourself. I don't think we’d have made it without you doing what you did."
Her expression shifted. Something behind the tired look on her face softened. She nodded once and closed her eyes.
"It took all of us. We’re a team. I’m fine. Check the others."
I checked Nott and Liv. Minor damage on both, already mostly cleared by [Mercy]. Nott's hands were raw from casting and I ran [Mend] through them until the cracked skin closed. She watched the golden light do its work with a focused look.
"Thanks. That’s much better."
"Your hands did a lot of the heavy lifting. The least I can do is make sure they're still in one piece."
Nott's pale cheeks turned pink. "I was just doing my job. I was holding my position like Bjorna told me to."
"You saved our asses is what you did. That combo you pulled saved us twenty minutes, and then you picked up Sif's entire flank when she went down. Don't sell that short."
Nott looked away. Liv caught the exchange from where she was sitting and grinned.
"Are you going to flirt with every woman in the party or just the ones who blush when you talk to them?" Liv said.
"I'm not flirting. I'm expressing genuine gratitude for excellent performance under pressure."
"That's the corniest line I've ever heard," she replied, rolling her eyes. It was undeniably cute.
"I’ve heard worse from Sif," Nott said.
Sif laughed from against the wall, then winced and held her ribs. "Don't make me laugh, you bitch."
“Ladies, ladies, no more name-calling,” I said, chuckling.
“Bastard,” Sif said with a smirk.
Bjorna stood. She looked steadier now, the shaking gone, her breathing back under control.
She went to the Mother's body and knelt beside it.
Her hands worked through the organic material around the nest, and she came up with a handful of crystals, bright and clear, larger than anything we'd seen from the regular creatures.
She began putting the items in her Ring of Holding.
Coins, silver and gold, mixed with flat discs of a dark metal I didn't recognize.
"Good loot. We’ll look at it closer later," Bjorna said.