Dressed to Kill 25 (Patreon)

I took a final look back toward the town. It was completely obscured by the tree line; the bubble around it left no trace this far into the Wild. Besides the ever-present, minor discomfort, it wasn’t any different than a regular forest.

Birds sung and insects crawled, the whole world alive and covered in dancing shadows from the light through the shifting canopy above. Sandy walked hurriedly.

“How long will these outfits last out here?” Sandy asked, turning back toward me.

“Not sure.” I said, shrugging my shoulders and scanning the forest around us. “I’d guess a lot longer than regular clothes, though.”

The treeline broke, exposed forest floor stretching in either direction around us. The three of us stopped.

Sandy whistled.

I bent down, scraping at the moss that covered the ground, revealing a stone foundation laid over the ground.

“There used to be a wall here.” I said.

Sandy pulled the map out again, nodding and folding it back up. Then she broke off in a new direction, following along the wall without a word.

“Where are you going?” I asked while standing to follow. Gerald trailed behind.

Just around the bend, an ediface of white stone brick rose out of the ground. I recognized it immediately; it was nearly an exact match for the one that rose in the center of town, save for the wild randomness of the creeping vines that choked out the brick.

Sandy reached a hand out and dragged a finger down the brick of the dungeon entrance before pulling it back and inspecting her fingers.

The southeast dungeon entrance was dead and inert. Outside of the range of the magic bubble that empowered the town it was little more than a brick edifice.

“This is far away from the town.” I said, leaning over to inspect it myself. “Will we be able to push the border far enough to activate this?”

“I don’t know.” Sandy said. “We have to see how far the border stretches when we kill the boss.”

We turned about, Sandy reorienting before storing the map and leading us towards the resource node. The terrain grew rougher, rocky ground replacing the softer earth. Tree cover grew sparse and the terrain uneven. I noticed the smoke first.

“What is that?” I asked, grabbing Sandy’s shoulder and pointing ahead. Towers of black smoke rose into the air.

“There shouldn’t be anything out here.” Sandy said, squinting at the horizon.

“I’ll scout it.” I said.

“We should go together.” Sandy replied.

“We need to save mana. We still have to clear the dungeon tonight.” I turned to Gerald. “Unless you have a way to scout it?”

He shook his head no, filling the air with the sound of metal clashing together.

I activated [Shadow Cloak,] feeling the darkness wrap around me, and walked forward. The rough terrain was slow to navigate, but only thirty yards away I came upon the resource node.

Furnaces poured black smoke into the air, the treeline cut back into stumps in all directions.

Tiny crystal monsters roamed around the mines. They were only a few feet tall, bodies transparent and shimmering in the sunlight. Their bodies were small and nearly round, split into dozens of faceted edges that caught sunlight and threw it around the clearing. Their entire work site looked like it was under a stain glass window, brilliant colors dancing on the ground.

Each one was brilliant and distinct in color, ranging from pastel lavenders and cyan to deep red crimsons and even opaque black.

There were monsters here, right at the edge of our town. Why hadn’t Valjean killed them? The town’s border prevented them from entering, but what if a kid walked into the Wild? Almost all monsters were instantly hostile.

Maybe they just weren’t considered enough of a threat. I counted them as they meandered about. They were loading furnaces of packed earth full of metal. They were mining. They had makeshift tools, crude implements that fell apart even as I watched.

I wasn’t sure how much of that was due to the influence of the Wild and how much of it was due to the shoddy crafting of their tools.

Counting them carefully as they moved about the work site, I mentally tallied twenty-three of them. I couldn’t have been sure there weren’t more deeper in, but they weren’t coming out… and I wasn’t going to go in alone.

One of them took metal that was still burning hot, poured out in a hot pile on the ground. It picked it up with its bare hands, its jaw detaching to hang low, and bit the metal, chewing on hot iron like a snack. I did not want to get bit by one of these.

The mining seemed to be little more than a programmed instinct. They had no other signs of intelligence, no communication. They fought over the same tools, over the same iron, and tripped over their feet often.

I turned back, finding Sandy and Gerald where I left them. Sandy continued to devotedly ignore Gerald, looking anywhere else.

Gerald turned with a snap of attention as I approached.

“Gwen?” He asked.

“Yeah. It’s me. There’s a whole monster infestation at the cave.”

“How many?” Sandy asked.

“I counted twenty-three. But there might be more inside. They look like little… rock golems. Moving crystals. I’m not sure if we will even be able to cut them.”

“You gonna fix my blade if I chip it?” Sandy asked, looking at Gerald.

“If we get any metal out of this.” Gerald said, staring dubiously at the pillars of smoke. 

We walked to the edge, Sandy holding her cleaver free from its sheath the whole time. Gerald was practically jumping at his own shadow, summoning and stowing the shield nonstop.

Sandy looked down into the divot and whistled in surprise.

“Industrious little things aren’t they?”

“What are they?” Gerald asked.

“Dunno, but they can’t be that strong if they’re that small.”

The shadow cloak still clung to me, making me practically invisible as I looked over the small slide down into their worksite.

One of them raised an arm and pointed at us, making an alarmed noise. It sounded like a windchime as it spun about and pointed.

“Guess that’s our sign. Get down there.” Sandy said.

“What? Me?” Gerald asked.

“You’re the one with a full suit of armor!”

“But you have… stealth skills…” Gerald said. The monsters were picking up tools. “Okay. I got this. I got this.”

Gerald charged down the hill shouting. The dusty earth slid loose under him, sending him gliding forward until he stopped by braking with his tower shield, slamming it into the ground.

Then the monsters were on him. Sandy strolled down the hill, humming a tune as a dozen tiny golems wailed on Gerald’s armor, the musical tinking of dozens of impacts of crude iron on metal resounding through the little clearing.

The monsters let out little tinkling noises in alarm. Some others rushed back into the cave entrance.

Gerald held his shield with both hands.

“Guys?” He said, nearly yelling to be heard through the muffling of the metal helmet. “Little help?”

Sandy swung her sword.

A purple golem went flying with a crack, the body flying away and rolling. A line was rent directly into it, and it didn’t get back up.

The monsters swinging at Gerald accumulated chipping damage every time they hit him, new cracks and cuts appearing on their own bodies, but that only caused them to intensify their efforts to crack him open.

I circled around the back, stabbing at the exposed back of one of the monsters. The needle sent it tumbling to the ground, but didn’t break through the hard crystal shell of its body.

The monster rose with offended tickling noises. I heard Sandy’s next swing crack another monster open. A pink golem turned to look at me.

[Running Stitch I] [Mana: 8/10] [Cancel]

[+1 XP]

Gerald flinched in his armor as I was ripped out of stealth with the sound of crystal exploding. My sewing needle ripped through the crystalline body of the golem, sending shrapnel flying. It collapsed to the ground. The rest of the golems stopped, paused, and then collectively ran away.

Sandy laughed gleefully as she chased them, swinging left and right with her gigantic cleaver. Each successful cut sounded out with an explosion of force.

“You okay in there?” I asked Gerald.

“Yeah, I’m fine!” Gerald said. He still held his shield interposed between the two of us, being unwilling to set it down. “Did you get ‘em all?”

I looked down at the half exploded corpse of the one I had killed. The rest were being chased into the cave by Sandy, who was still swinging maniacally.

“Oh fuck — ” Sandy said, then scrambled backwards, dropping her cleaver and nearly falling on her ass. She grabbed the blade and started booking it toward me.

A monster chased her out of the cave. It had a body of burnished copper striped with shiny metallic black, a dozen wires hanging from its face, and claws as long as Sandy’s cleaver.

“Oh.” I said, staring at the monster for too long.

Three crystal golems rode on its back, the one in front grabbing the wires that hung out off the monster’s nose, whipping them around like reigns to guide it. It tore over the ground with six limbs, making a cacophony of terrible, grinding noises as it rumbled forward.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck!” Sandy said.

“It’s gonna catch up!” I shouted, about to run forward to try to figure out a way to help. Maybe I could kill it mid run?

Sandy activated [Shadow Cloak] only a dozen feet away of us.

“What’s happening?” Gerald asked.

“Oh no. How much can you block with that?”

“It’s enchanted, so, a lot, what’s happening?”

“Hold on tight!” I said, jumping behind Gerald as the monsters charge grew to a thunderous crescendo.

It sounded like a bomb went off.