18. Chapter 18 The Splits #2
The stone on the other side was darker, almost black, and veined with something that glowed a dull orange. The air was hot, dry, and tasted like heated metal. The ceiling was higher and the walls were scorched, long blackened streaks running across the stone.
[The Splits. Depth: 2.]
"Well," Sif said. "Left was definitely the warm one."
"Nott told you," I said.
"Nobody asked for your validation."
"You're getting it anyway. From now on, where Nott goes, I go," I replied.
“Psh, I thought you went wherever I went. I mean look at my little cute butt.”
The first salamanders came around a bend in the corridor thirty seconds later.
There were five of them. Fast, low to the ground, each one the size of a large dog, their bodies a dark red-orange with scales that caught the glow from the walls.
They moved together, spreading across the width of the corridor, flanking, cutting off retreat routes.
Coordinated predators hunting as a pack.
They breathed fire.
The first burst came from the lead salamander and it hit Bjorna's shield. The blackstone held. The dark metal rim glowed dull orange where the flames licked across it but the fire didn't get past. Bjorna braced and pushed forward into the breath, driving the lead salamander back.
Sif came in from the side and the boots did their job. She closed on the flanking salamander faster than it could redirect its fire, her daggers punching through the scales behind its skull. It dropped. She was already moving to the next one.
Liv's broadheads punched through the hide of the one hanging back. It took the arrow in the shoulder and its fire breath sputtered. The poison-laced tip went to work. The creature's movements slowed, the coordination draining out of its body, and the fire in its throat guttered and went dark.
"The poison kills their fire," Liv said. "That's extremely useful information."
Nott dropped the last two with targeted [Ember Bolts]. The irony of killing fire-breathing lizards with fire wasn't lost on me, but Nott's bolts hit harder than the salamanders breathed. “Fire killing fire is illogical.”
“Believe it,” I replied to the raven-kin.
The second pack was deeper into the floor. Four regulars and an elite. The elite was half the size of the others, had thicker scales, and its fire came in a wider arc that covered most of the passage. The heat pressed against my face from twenty feet behind Bjorna.
Bjorna braced against the elite's breath. The blackstone shield took it, but the heat bled around the edges and she winced as it caught her right forearm above the gauntlet. I was there in three steps.
[Mend.]
The gold went in and the burn faded under my fingers.
Bjorna didn't stop fighting. She pushed into the elite's fire and drove her longsword into its underbelly while Sif flanked and Liv put a poison broadhead into its haunch.
It went down hard, thrashing, the fire going out of it in stages as the poison spread.
"I could fight these all day," Sif said, cleaning her daggers on a dead regular. "The boots make them slow."
"They're not slow," Bjorna said. "You're fast."
"Same result. I'm very attracted to these boots."
"You should bond with them," Liv said. "You two seem very happy together."
Sif looked down at the boots and then back at Liv. "Don't give me ideas. I'd bond with these boots before I'd bond with some of the men I've met."
"Low bar," I said. "I've met some of the men in this town."
"You're exempt from the comparison," Sif said. "You're actually useful."
"Thank you. That might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
"Don't get used to it."
Bjorna had turned toward the descent. "Enough. We go deeper."
***
[The Splits. Depth: 3.]
The heat was worse. The orange glow in the walls had brightened and the stone under my boots radiated through the soles. The corridor branched and reconnected in a web of passages that the salamanders used to flank, hit, and retreat. It was a predator's playground.
The first group hit us from two directions.
Six regulars, fast and aggressive, pouring from a side passage while a second group came from ahead.
Bjorna couldn't cover both angles. She took the front group and Sif covered the side passage, but the corridor was wider here and two regulars slipped past.
One went for Nott. She dropped it with a point-blank [Static Shock], the bolt catching it mid-lunge.
The other went for Liv, who put an arrow through its eye from eight feet away and it skidded to a stop at her boots.
"I love this skirt," Liv said, stepping over the corpse. “I’m so flipping cute and deadly.”
We pushed deeper. The passages narrowed and then opened into a chamber where two elites waited with a pack of regulars arranged behind them.
The elites were bigger than the ones from before, their fire hotter, their coordination tighter.
One engaged Bjorna directly, trading fire for steel.
The other hung back with the regulars and breathed fire at the backline.
A regular broke through while I was watching the elite's fire pattern. It came from a side passage I hadn't seen, fast and low, and it hit me from the left. My feet went out from under me and I landed hard on my back on hot stone.
The creature was on top of me. Its weight drove the air out of my lungs and its claws raked across my chest. The stonethread took some of it, the fabric resisting the first two swipes, but the third set of claws found the gap where the robe overlapped and cut into my side.
The fourth caught my forearm and opened a line from elbow to wrist.
The pain was bright and immediate. Blood ran down my arm and soaked into the stone.
The salamander's body was burning hot against my chest and its mouth opened, heat building in its throat, getting ready to breathe fire directly into my face from six inches away.
I was going to die unless I did something fast.
I got both hands on its body. The cold came up from my chest, the opposite of gold, pulling in where healing pushed out.
[Smite.]
The creature seized under my palms and then it was gone.
The body came apart in a burst of cold light, disintegrating into ash before I could take a breath.
The heat in its throat, the claws in my side, the weight on my chest, all of it vanished.
Nothing left but gray dust on my chest and the hot stone underneath.
I stayed on my back for a second. My hands were gray with ash. Blood ran from the cuts on my side and my arm. The stone under my back burned through the stonethread.
"Daniel!" Liv's voice.
"I'm fine." I sat up. My arm was bleeding freely and my side stung where the claws had gotten through, but I was alive and the creature that had been about to cook my face was a smear of ash on my robe.
Sif had stopped mid-fight. She was ten feet away, a dead beast at her boots, her daggers in her hands, her blue eyes locked on the gray dust covering my palms and the empty spot where the salamander had been.
"Gods," she said. “Did you almost die or something?”
"I’m perfectly fine. Keep fighting," I said. "There's still one elite up."
We weren't done. The second elite was still breathing fire at Bjorna and the remaining regulars were pressing from two passages. I got to my feet and a regular came at me from the right. I caught it by the neck and the cold came up again, faster this time.
[Smite.]
It was easier the second time. Nothing left but gray dust on my fingers. I knew what I was doing now.
The remaining elite and four regulars coordinated.
They spread wide, the elite backing up until all five creatures were arranged in a line across the passage, their mouths open, heat building.
The glow in their throats synced up. They were going to breathe together.
A wall of fire wide enough to catch every one of us.
Bjorna pulled her shield up, but the arc was too wide. The fire would wrap around the edges and hit Sif and Liv on the flanks.
I stepped forward and threw everything I had outward.
[Bubble.]
Golden light went up in a dome around the party. The fire hit it a half second later.
Five salamanders breathing fire simultaneously into a barrier that didn't bend. The air outside the Bubble turned white-hot. The stone floor beyond the barrier glowed red. Heat washed over us in a wave that would have killed us twice over.
Inside the bubble, we felt nothing. The air was the same temperature it had been a second ago. The fire broke against the golden surface and ran off it like water off glass. I held it for three seconds, four, five, until the fire died and the salamanders' throats went dark.
I dropped the magic.
Bjorna drove her longsword into the elite while its throat was still dark. Sif finished the regulars in two seconds, the boots carrying her through them faster than they could scatter. Nott put a bolt into the last one as it tried to retreat down a side passage.
The corridor went quiet.
I healed my own cuts while the party stood there. The gold closed the line on my forearm first, then the gash on my side. The stonethread robe was torn where the claws had gotten through, three parallel rips across the fabric, dark with blood.
"You got your pretty robe torn up," Liv said. She was next to me, her hand on my shoulder, checking the cuts I'd already closed. Her fingers ran along the healed skin on my forearm, tracing where the wound had been. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm good. The cuts are closed. I'm more annoyed about the robe, honestly. Sif is going to want to take me shopping again."
Sif hadn't moved. She was still standing where she'd been, daggers at her sides, staring at me with her lips parted and her chest rising fast.
"That," she said. "I heard about Vaughn Strom. I heard you describe it at the apartment. Hearing about it and seeing it are very different experiences."
"I was on my back getting clawed up. That's not exactly heroic."