Chapter Five-Hundred Eleven (Patreon)

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Pul

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Silhouette points out the cracked wall a heartbeat too late to stop anything.  It feels like everything is falling at once, squeezing the magma through the opening in the wall and forcing them all along with it.

“Keep together!” shouts Pul before the rushing magma makes it impossible to be heard.  It’s easier said than done.  The changeling reaches for his mana, grabbing his friends and setting himself as their personal down.  It mostly earns him more bumps and bruises, but it's still better than them getting separated.

He remembers how poorly that went for the parties in the raid on Poe, and he doubts it would go any better here.  He can’t tell if it’s a few seconds, or a few hours, but somebody manages to grab him, and he grabs them back.  Then he feels another set of hands, then another.

They manage to somehow stabilize themselves as the magma carries them, and Pul can see something ahead, like a refined version of the trap they just swam past.  The spikes ahead aren’t simply embedded into a wall, but are sticking out from a thick stone grate!

Freddie sees them and manages to call out to the Shield, summoning probably a dozen to help protect them all.  Fiona grabs one to reinforce, and the others quickly follow her lead.  Pul, Silhouette, Rhonda, Rezlar, even Lucas and Rose grab a handle and try to hold on, everyone knowing Freddie draws power from everyone working together!

The spikes still knock the breath out of him, but the shields hold, even as the magma continues to try to press them in.  After a few heartpounding seconds, Pul can feel the flow start to lessen, thankfully, and soon the magma runs itself out.  They all collapse into a pile as the shields vanish, everyone taking a moment to appreciate the simple fact they all made it, before getting to their feet.

Silhouette and Pul get up first, and the two get a better look around as the others recover their feet.  They appear to be in another tunnel, presumably deeper in ‘the Betrayer’.  Hopefully they won’t need to deal with more magma.

He can hear and see more movement, thanks to the thundersight hood, which makes him wish for the return of the magma.  Especially since it seems Silhouette sees movement on the other side of the grate.

“Denizens,” he says.  “Get away from the grate!”

The others scramble away, just out of the reach of several verdant skeletons and their grasping vines.  Wolves charge from the open direction of the tunnel, and Pul falls back as Fredie and Rezlar step forward.  Pul reaches for the bow he got from the raid, but doesn’t aim at the wolves.  His class is practically screaming at him that staying put and fighting will not work.  They need to break through somewhere.

The tunnel walls aren’t an option, even if any of them had the proper affinity.  Who knows if there’s more magma on the other side?  No, he wants to get through the grate.  The skeletons are playing the part of what should be the lesser, if Pul remembers the older adventurers right.

Long, weirdly segmented, tentacles, and seem to enhance the least in some way.  Ordinarily, he wouldn’t try shooting a skeleton with an arrow, but they still have skulls he should be able to hit.

“Rhonda!  Can you take out the skeletons through the grate?” he asks as he nocks an arrow, pulls it, and releases it, just like Yvonne showed him.  He’s still not sure if a skeleton actually needs its head, but it’s still a good representation of the weakpoint of a lesser… if they even have those.  They still have flesh and stuff, and the skeleton still goes down and stops moving, so he's going to just accept it and prepare another arrow.

“Frost chrysanthemum!” calls Rhonda, Lucas digging through the reagents he has tucked into the center of her hat.  It only takes a few moments for him to find it and hold it out for her to take.

As she works, Pul sends arrows through the grate, shattering skull after skull and wondering just how many are actually back there.  He can hear quite a few.  He just hopes they’re not getting reinforced.  He takes a quick glance behind and sees that Silhouette is joining the frontline, slipping in to slice at the legs of the wolves, helping keep the others from getting overwhelmed.

He can feel Rhonda’s close to finishing her spell, the two orbs of fire and frost are pretty obvious.  Then he feels something wrong, and it takes him a moment to realize what it is.  Something is coming out of the darkness, right behind Rhonda!

He drops the bow and grabs his cleaver and karambit, Silhouette suddenly at his side.  He recognizes what it is once the head is through, and he only has a few moments to deal with it before it's too late.  A puffball zombie, stepping out of the shadows by Rhonda.

The cleaver gets buried between its milky eyes, but that’s only half the problem.  He needs to move it, get it away before it can explode!  His face goes blank as he focuses, his mind picking out the pieces of his training that will solve this.  It hurts to just drop the cleaver, but he needs a good grip for this.  The karambit he can keep around a finger, thanks to the ring on the end.

He grabs the zombie’s arm and reaches for his gravity affinity.  The zombie is still heavy, but it’s much easier to do the odd style of throw Thedeim drilled him on.  He doesn’t remove the pull of gravity on the zombie, he just redirects it to work for him.  He gets his shoulder into it for leverage and lifts with his entire body, muscles and mana working together to move the zombie as he needs it to.

Silhouette shoves it through a new shadow, forcing it to come up in the middle of the wolves before it explodes, giving Rhonda just the time she needs for her spell.  “Frostburn Bane!” she declares, fire washing over the wolves as ice encrusts the skeletons.

“Rezlar, though the grate!” shouts Pul as he grabs his cleaver, and the elven fencer smoothly steps back, giving Rose a better angle to adjust the distance in the grating, enough for them to pass through it thanks to spatial tweaking.

The group hurries through, the skeletons completely incapacitated from the spell, and they don’t stop there.  Pul and Silhouette lead the way, though something continues to tickle the back of his mind.  They spot several traps and go around, but Pul feels like they’re only working themselves even deeper into a deadlier one.

It’s not until he feels another twinge in the shadows that he realizes what’s wrong.  The emerging twinsnake makes it difficult for him to do anything about it, though he still shouts the problem to the others, even as he takes his cleaver and karambit in hand.

“They can step through shadows!  And we don’t have any light!”

Freddie raises his shield, and though Pul can’t see it through the hood, he knows the area is bathed in brilliant light from the young paladin.  They engage the snake quickly and efficiently, with Rezlar using his water to guide the electricity, Freddie intercepting the attacks, and Pul and Rhonda whittling it down.  Its scales are strong, but the karambit is good at finding the gaps, and Rhonda’s ice and fire attacks are uniquely suited to hurting it.

It goes well until another puffball zombie forces its way out of Rezlar’s shadow, and Pul can’t stop it in time.

Freddie gets a shield in the way, and Rezlar and Rose deflect most of the explosion, but he’s clearly injured.  They fall in around him, the twinsnake hissing weakly from the many wounds.  Rhonda gets him a potion as Freddie does his best to light everything, but Pul gets the cold feeling that it won’t work.

He’s played with candles, trying to eliminate shadows before.  All it does it make more shadows, even if they’re not especially deep.  If the denizens can leap from any shadow… what can they even do?

Silhouette slashes at random shadows, working her affinity to try to lock them down, but she can’t keep it up forever.  If every light makes a shadow… are they doomed?

He frowns at the thought, refusing to entertain it.  They need to keep the shadows at bay, so how?  Magma would work… if they had any.  With the glowing molten rock, there’s actually no place for a shadow to form.  Freddie’s shield are impressive, but they’re still sources of light, and so sources of shadow.  They just don’t take up the space like magma does.

Then two thoughts ring together in his head.

First is Onyx, telling him that shadows hide best in the dark.  Second is Teemo, telling him to think more metaphorically about shadows.  What is a shadow?  Teemo said something about the traces and disturbances.  If there’s actually no light, are there shadows?  If there’s nothing to disturb, is there a shadow?

Part of him says it’s obviously true, since they’ve burst out of the total darkness a few times already… but how true is it, really?  Think metaphorically.  Fight shadows with shadows.  Is total darkness an open door for a shadow affinity user, or is it like forcing your way through a wall?  They can both be done, but one’s a lot easier to do.

And one’s a lot easier to defend against.

“Freddie, kill the lights!”  Everyone turns to him, surprised.  Even Silhouette looks confused.  After a beat, though, Freddie nods and dismisses the shields, and Pul focuses on the darkness around them.  No disturbances… no useable shadows.

He repeats that in his head as he taps into his mana, enforcing his will on the darkness.  He can feel something trying to push through, then a lot of somethings, but it’s working!  He just doesn’t know how long.

“Rezlar… secured camp?”

The elf nods and draws his rapier, and starts going through his forms.  Water spreads across the floor around their feet, feeling deeper than it should, even as it fails to even rise above the soles of their shoes and boots.  The somethings in the darkness press harder, trying to force their way through, before Pul feels them suddenly stop.

For a heartbeat, he wonders if they gave up.  Then he can hear the movement, see them emerging further away, too far for him to impede.

But they’re too late.  “Still Waters Run Deep,” says Rezlar, and the group vanishes down into the puddle that’s suddenly as deep as the ocean.