DF255 - There She Goes (Tyla) (Patreon)

“I suppose you want some kind of reward or something?” Kelsey said.

Tyla watched as Suliel scowled at their host. Thus far, Tyla had kept her involvement to a minimum. Much as Anton had done for her, allowing Suliel to fight the lower-levelled skeletons provided more benefit than it would to Tyla.

“I did just clear the floor,” Suliel stated coldly. “I don’t believe a reward would be showing favouritism.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kelsey said, gesturing to where a small stone chest was rising out of the ground. “Just remember, we’re still on the second-tier floors, so you won’t be getting anything befitting your exalted status, my queen.”

“What did you get?” Tyla asked. Legendary classes belonged in myths and fairy tales, but there were two of them in the world now.

“Queen of Death and Duty,” Suliel said, walking over to the chest. “A foreboding title, to be sure, but my previous Class was hardly cheery.”

Tyla glided over to join Suliel at the chest. Suliel pushed the lid open with a grunt of effort. Inside was a bundle of violet fabric. Enchanted violet fabric.

“Wait!” Tyla said, trying to make sense of the magic she was seeing. “The enchantment… it destroys people?”

“It’s safe,” Kelsey said. “You need to work on your identification skills. It destroys people’s products. Or maybe byproducts would be a better word.”

“What does that mean?” Sulile asked, cautiously pulling the strange garment out of the chest. It was all of one piece, and human-shaped. If it was a garment, it would be very form-fitting. It also looked a little small for Suliel.

“Sweat!” Kelsey exclaimed. “Or spit, or blood… grime, basically. It’s self-cleaning! It’s made from Tier Two spider silk, so it offers some protection, and it stretches for a comfortable fit.”

“It’s indecent,” Suliel declared.

Kelsey rolled her eyes. “It goes on under your normal clothes. There’s a hole for… biological activities, so it is suitable for sexy times. But no one’s expecting you to wear just that.”

Suliel just stared accusingly at Kelsey.

“Well… maybe Anton, when he sees it for the first time. But that’s wins all around, right?”

“I suppose that’s… acceptable,” Suliel allowed. “But how am I supposed to put it on now?”

Kelsey’s eyebrows rose. “I’m… pretty sure you know how clothes work. You’ve got maids—and Anton—to take your clothes off, but they just help, right?”

“I know how clothes work!” Suliel snapped. “But you can’t be expecting me to undress here!”

“Why not?” Kelsey asked. “You can make your skelleys look away, if you think they’ll be weird about it. Tyla isn’t into girls, and I’ve seen it all already.”

“I’m not into girls either!” Mel shouted. “I don’t have any sexual feelings at all! Ever!”

Suliel blinked at the interruption, but Kelsey kept talking.

“Seeing it all, actually,” she said. “Right now, I’m looking at your colon, and we should have a discussion about the amount of bacon you have for breakfast. Would it kill you to eat more fruit?”

“Ah,” Tyla said, raising her hand. “What is a colon?”

“It’s the tube that poop comes from,” Kelsey answered.

“Oh,” Tyla said. “Oh.”

“I just… here… Fine, then, Fine!” Suliel said.

Tyla did not think it was fine.

“I can look away as well, unless you need assistance,” Tyla said.

“Kelsey can assist me, since she never stops looking at my naked body, apparently.”

“As you wish,” Tyla said, and turned to look at the chamber walls. Suliel quickly ordered the skeletons to do the same. Then there was just the rustling of clothing and the occasional verbal interjection.

“Just sit on the chest.”

“I can’t sit on cold stone!”

“Here, then, a cushion for your Royal tushie.”

“This feels even more indecent than it looks!”

“Good, isn’t it? The sad news is that your brain will just filter it out after five minutes, like most constant sensations.”

Suliel didn’t let them turn around until she was fully dressed again. The only visible sign of her undergarment was the violet flashes on her wrists and neck.

“I asked for armour, but I’m not sure armour is what this is,” Suliel said, testing the limits of her movement.

“Eh, there’s only so much you can do at this tier,” Kelsey told her. “It’s about as good as ordinary leather, but it’s extra protection without the bulk. Believe me, you’ll be glad almost every inch of skin is covered on the next floor.”

Suliel shuddered. “The next floor is spiders, was it not?”

“The spiders have been moved down and upgraded,” Kelsey said. “The next floor is rats!”

“Almost as bad,” Suliel complained.

“Undead rats! Also known as corpse rats!”

Suliel narrowed her eyes. “I hear they explode now.”

“Has that got out already? I wanted it to be a surprise!”

“I interviewed that Shadow Thorn who made it out,” Suliel said. “I suppose there’s no sense in waiting longer.”

“Don’t forget to grab some rats when they show up,” Kelsey suggested. “Your cap should have gone up when your Tier did.”

Suliel nodded and had her skeletons precede them down the stairs. Tyla sent her light down first, of course. The tunnels it revealed were… small.

“We have to crawl?” Suliel asked.

“Not necessarily!” Kelsey objected. “You can crouch down, or…”

She made some kind of contraption made of steel appear. It was like a small cart, but it only had three wheels. Kelsey sat down in the middle of it and grabbed the steering mechanism—a metal yoke attached to the front wheel.

Seated on the contraption, she was low enough to pass through the tunnel.

“You want one?” Kelsey asked. She put her feet on pedals attached to the front wheel and made the whole thing roll a few feet forward.

“I can’t possibly defend myself while sitting on that thing,” Suliel said.

“I’m not here to fight,” Kelsey said. “And you’re here to give orders. Those are traditionally given sitting down.”

“Um,” Tyla said, raising her hand again. “I can cast spells sitting down.”

Suliel looked at the contraption, and then at the tunnels.

“Alright, fine! We’ll do it that way!”

Tyla did not think it was fine, but Kelsey grinned happily. She squeezed a bulbous device on the steering yoke, and it made a very silly sound.

*

The tricycles, as Kelsey called them, were ridiculous. Tyla could rest her elbows on her knees, had she desired to. The rats, though, were very serious. Suliel had claimed the first few to arrive, which was all that saved them from losing skeletons. They weren’t at their best in the tunnels.

They could only proceed on their knees, and even then they had to bend down. Tyla winced to see their bare kneebones scrape along the tunnel floor, but magically animated bone was tougher than her bare knees. Even so, they lost a lot of their agility, and the rats were merciless.

They were level fourteen, higher than most of the skeletons, and much more suited to the environment. Their small mouths could crush bone. Tyla didn’t want to think about what they could do to her.

The initial encounters were mostly ambushes by small rats, who leapt out and tried to latch onto a skeleton's bone before the skeletons could skewer them. A few of them managed to slip through the clumsy defenders, but these were the first ones that Suliel bound. Once she had a few rats, Suliel could send them out ahead, flushing out the ambushes and turning the struggling rats into easy prey for a rapier blade or Suliel’s binding.

Suliel had managed to bind eight rats and had yet to find her new limit when Kelsey changed the rules of the game. At the very edge of Tyla’s light, a single rat ran into Suliel’s horde… and exploded.

Suliel cursed in a most unladylike fashion. It wasn’t a large explosion; it only took out four of Suliel’s rats. But that was half of them.

“Why can’t I make them do that?”

“They don’t control it,” Kelsey said. “I make them explode with a radio signal.”

Tyla didn’t know what that meant, and from the look on Suliel’s face, neither did she. Kelsey looked back to where Mel was floating with a sulky expression on her face.

“Just to set expectations, I’m not planning on blowing up the tunnels this time.”

“You can do that?” Suliel asked warily.

“Eh, I don’t like to,” Kelsey said. “The wizards were a special case.”

“They were cheaters!” Mel called from the back.

“Sure, that,” Kelsey said, shrugging. “Don’t worry, though; these are all anti-personnel rats. I just didn’t want to make this floor too easy.”

Without even looking down the tunnel, she blew up one of Suliel’s rats, taking out the last of her corpse rat forces. Tyla and Suliel both tensed, knowing this could only be a prelude to another wave.

They were soon proven right, and this time the rats were coming from ahead and behind. Suliel had kept her special guard skeletons behind her, but they could only skewer one rat at a time.

“Rats! Maintain as much distance between yourselves as you can! Don’t clump!” Suliel ordered. “Stay away from the skeletons as well! Tyla—”

But Tyla didn’t need orders. She knew what to do. Despite being undead, the rats were still animals, and Tyla had plenty of that kind of magic. What’s more, she didn’t need to worry about it affecting the others.

Control and Animal magic swirled in her stone, and she used it to push. An expanding ring swept out, both forward and back, sweeping away rats whether they were undead or corpses.

“Rats,” Kelsey said sardonically, “I was hoping to surprise you by detonating a corpse.”

That made sense, Tyla supposed. If the rats didn’t actually control their own detonation, there was no reason a dead rat couldn’t explode.

“Push on while the spell holds,” Tyla advised Suliel, who nodded.

“Forward,” she ordered the skeletons. They started awkwardly shuffling ahead, and Tyla pushed on her pedals to follow.

The spell ended, but Suliel had used the time wisely, Binding as many of the rats that scurried at the edges of the barrier as she could see. Kelsey kept exploding them, but nowhere near as often as she could. She was toying with them, harassing Suliel enough to keep her from amassing her full force but stopping short of causing injury.

It was a relief when the tunnel opened up into the final chamber. The ceiling was still too low to walk upright, but it was a little higher. Tyla was less happy to see the giant rat charging at them, but at least it meant the end of this floor.

She hoped.

Suliel had amassed eight rats again, and she had them all charge forward and latch on to the boar-sized rat.

“Try blowing them up now,” she snapped at Kelsey. “You’ll take out your own boss.”

Kelsey raised an eyebrow. “The second monster that can give you real experience, and you want me to take it out? Bit counter-productive, don’t you think?”

Suliel snorted and ordered her Skeleton Nobles forward. The giant rat was far stronger than his lesser brethren, but they were not something that could be ignored. Their greedy mouths tore off chunks of flesh and muscle and hampered his movements. While he didn’t feel any pain from being devoured alive, his attempts to destroy his harassers injured him as much as them.

The skeletons crawling forward didn’t care about friendly casualties. Their long, thin blades surrounded him, pressed forward and sank home. He let out one last monstrous squeal… and perished.