Rogan's Monsters 2: Below, page 13
As I surveyed them all, I wondered if I should offer Ash or maybe Zera my cloak. It would serve as a blanket for the butterfly girl, or Ash could bundle up for a pillow.
But before I could make any concrete moves, I saw one of the plants close to Ash move.
Despite how far underground we were, there was always a slight breeze, as if the cave system itself was breathing. Not forcefully, but just enough to notice. In, and out, forever moving the air just a little. But certainly not strongly enough to make the plants move.
My blades were out in a heartbeat, and I was ready for action. But I needed to know what I was facing, so I sent a controlled smidgen of chi into my AC lens and toggled the settings to infrared.
And saw that the cave floor was swarming with snakes.
Class: Snake hybrid
Level: II
Armor: Natural scales
Weapon: Venomous fangs
“Wake up!” I bellowed into the cave as I left my boulder. “We’re under attack!”
The floor was thick with reptilian creatures as thick and as long as my leg, or longer, and each and every one of them was a deadly threat. The girls were quick to wake and scramble to their feet, but I was already in battle, carving snake creatures into bits with every swing of my sword.
“Get to a wall!” I bellowed, and went into a spin, my arms angled like the rotor blade of a helicopter moving at full speed, each swing taking care of a scaly, slithery creature, if not more than one. More than once during our time in the caves, I had lamented the ease with which I had faced the revenants controlled by Vesh D’Agon. Out in the open, with so many foes to face, I had simply let myself go, spinning my oversized blade through the air and any flesh that happened to get too close. In such a manner, I had sliced my way through dozens, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of opponents, cutting through them like wheat before a scythe.
In the caves, I’d had to change my fighting style to suit each opponent, and the results had been more cumbersome than I had wished.
I’d lost a portion of my fluidity and my effectiveness. And while I had managed to dispatch not one but two giant spiders, as far as I knew, the worm creature still roamed through the caves, none the worse for wear.
But this was different. The cavern we were in was big enough for me to use the Divine Steps, and while I chose to keep my smaller blades rather than merge them back into my primary weapon, I could still make use of my preferred fighting technique.
I was a whirlwind of death for the snakes. A line trimmer, cutting through the bioluminescent plants if they were in my way in order to get to the snake things on the ground. I spun around and around, my feet finding sure purchase on the ground as my blades did their grizzly work.
My first job was simple, and I did it as swiftly as I could. I cleared a route for the girls to head to the wall, to give themselves a better defensive position.
And after the briefest hesitation as she sought to wake up, Ash was back to her bludgeoning best, using her club with strength and finesse, crushing heads and bodies with each formidable below.
Camille had drawn two of her knives, and darted in and out as quickly as a viper, making sure that the snake creatures didn’t have a chance to hurt Gamma or Zera.
As for Gamma, she had been slower to shake the remnants of sleep away, but when she did, she spent a moment or two searching for those potions she had managed to save. Yet when she brought one out and saw how little there was, she hesitated.
“Do you need help?” she yelled, aiming her question at me.
I was enjoying myself, cutting through the snake things with unfettered joy, reveling in the simple perfection of that combined blade.
But as the AC lens had shown me, these weren’t just snakes. They were creatures of stealth, and apparently cunning, as well. They had meant to sneak up on us while the girls were asleep, and inject their venom before they could wake. But with that opportunity no longer available, they started acting in very un-snake like manner.
They launched themselves at us through the air, flattening their bodies out far more than any normal snake could, and flying toward us, jaws open wide and fangs dripping and ready.
I could cut down ten of them in the space of two heartbeats. And, with a little more time, I could cut down a hundred, giving none of them a chance to get through my guard.
But there were thousands of these creatures. Like the bats, they were coming from every direction, and I have no doubt that it was contrived.
Something was guiding them, the same something that had guided the bats, the worm creature, and the rest. Perhaps not the spiders, because we had stumbled into their domain. But I didn’t need Ecco to tell me that the others had been sent.
There were so many of them that I doubted I could keep them all back. Even with Ash and Camille doing their share.
“If you have something that might help, now is the time!” I bellowed to Gamma as I continued to leap about and spin, hacking heads from reptilian bodies with murderous swings of my swords, ignoring the sounds of snakes as they fell from my blade.
It was all Gamma needed. She downed the last of whatever potion she had found and cast the empty vial aside. Then she stepped forward and gave out an order.
“Step aside!” she commanded, and even if the compulsion had given me a choice, I would have done as she asked.
As much as I didn’t much like the haughty princess, I had seen how effective she was in a fight when she chose to be.
As I stepped out of the way, I kept swinging my blades, reaching for all the reptiles I could get to, my kills adding up with every breath I took.
At the same time, I kept Gamma in view. I needed to know what she wanted to do, so I could know how to work with her. I saw her draw in a deep breath, just as I saw Edda do the same, the monkey creature having appeared not on Gamma’s shoulder this time, but at her feet.
Then she blew out, and just as when she had fought the worm thing, it was like she was a dragon.
She blew a great gust of flame toward the snake things, engulfing hundreds of them in her breath. It was impressive. Like she had swallowed a flamethrower with its setting on high. The cavern was perhaps thirty yards across, but Gamma’s fiery breath crossed that distance without any problem, to spread itself over the far wall.
The heat was incredible, like standing next to an open furnace, and I felt a moment of relief that I wasn’t caught in the blast.
And it was effective. Dozens of snake creatures, hundreds, perhaps even thousands were caught in the blast. I could see them, writhing for a few seconds in pain, and then turning to ash. The flame caught those that were flying, those that slithered on the ground, and even those still hidden among the bioluminescent plants. All caught fire and burned into dust within just a few moments.
It was remarkable. An impressive display, and I doubted that I could have done as much even with my chi blast.
Somehow, Edda managed to do it, too, and I remembered that the monkey creature had done her best to help out with the worm thing.
My brain couldn’t comprehend the mechanics. Had she ever taken a swig of the potion, and I had just failed to notice? Or was there some surprising dynamic going on that I just didn’t know?
But there wasn’t time to figure it out or even ask. Lady Gamma’s fiery blast had engulfed a wedge of the cavern equivalent to fifteen or twenty feet. Everything in that radius was gone, burnt to a crisp, leaving nothing but the odor of burnt flesh and smoke in the air.
But there was still much of the cave that remained.
I continued my work, spinning about like a top with razor blades sticking out, cutting and slashing, not letting any poisonous fang come close. And Lady Gamma drew in another breath.
Again and again, she exhaled a stream of dragon fire, burning anything and everything in its way. Again and again, she took out a section of the attackers, burning them all to a crisp.
With Edda at her side, she effectively cleared the caves of the reptilian threat, with me, Ash, and Camille reduced to no more than bit players.
A small part of me was disappointed that my own efforts were less consequential, but at the same time, I knew that what mattered was our survival.
And finally, with large parts of the cave reduced to nothing but ash with only a few pockets of bioluminescent plants, Gamma ran out of fire. She had done her job well, scorching more than enough of the snakes, and leaving only a few for me and Ash to clean up.
I knew I could have done a similar thing with my chi, but if I had, I would have needed to recharge. What Gamma had done had proven at least as effective, and she looked around at the end with an expression of satisfaction.
I sent a little more chi into my AC lens, just to make sure we were no longer in danger, and stepped over to a small patch of green that held the last of our foe.
A quick slash with my blade, and a reptilian head separated from the last coiling body, and we were officially done.
Gamma’s fire had warmed the stone of the cave, and even if I hadn’t spent the past several minutes spinning and twirling, expending huge amounts of energy, I would have been hot. I could see the sweat forming on Ash’s brow, and even Camille, who was more at home in the heat of the Wastes then I would ever be, didn’t seem to be comfortable any more.
As for Zera, the butterfly girl was practically wilting.
I drew a deep breath, and willed myself to relax. “Thank you, Lady Gamma, for your aid,” I said, offering the woman a bow which seemed to do wonders for her disposition. I swear that she almost smiled. “But I think we should make our way from here, and perhaps find a corner with some water where we can wash some of this soot off.”
The girls were in agreement, with one exception. “What about Ecco?” Zera asked.
“I’m sure she will find us when she wants to,” I replied. “And anyway, I don’t intend to go far.”
34
Ecco did turn up a couple of hours later, after the rest of us had broken our fast, and I had practiced my steps. Except, at first, I wasn’t completely sure it was her. Before, she had appeared to us as a leopard girl, with beautiful, luminous eyes and perfect skin, combined with the tail of a leopard. Not unusual for this world where it seemed few could claim true human ancestry. Even in our small party, we had mergings of all sorts.
But after we dealt with the snakes, Ecco appeared not in her regular form, but in the form of a deerkin, complete with delicate antlers, slight mottling of her skin, and even a cute little tail.
Ash was also uncertain, and still a little on edge given our recent experience with the snakes. She turned to Ecco in a pose which wasn’t exactly aggressive, but which exuded strength and determination.
Camille reached for her knives, and even Gamma seemed to have lost whatever trust she had invested in the unusual woman.
“Who are you and what do you want?” Gamma demanded.
Ecco looked around us with surprise on her features, and tilted her head in that characteristic gesture as she tried to fathom what was happening.
“My name is Ecco,” she said. “I want to continue to guide you to the seed.”
“Ecco?” Camille asked.
But I had been studying her face. The skin color had changed, as had the color of her eyes, and everything else. But the features remained much the same. I was willing to believe that this was indeed Ecco.
“Or are you her sister?” Gamma demanded.
At this, the deerkin who called herself Ecco burst out laughing. It was genuine and open, but it did nothing to put the rest of the party at ease.
Sensing the growing hostility, Ecco gained control of herself. “I am not my sister,” she said.
It still wasn’t enough to satisfy the others. “Prove it,” said Ash.
At this, the deerkin seemed uncertain. “I’m not trying to kill you. Isn’t that enough?” she asked. Then she considered. “As far as I know, my sister has yet to learn how to form a corporeal version of herself.” She looked at us, and reconsidered. “But you only have my word for that.” Again, she seemed uncertain.
“Before, you looked different,” I said. “Why did you change your appearance?”
“Oh!” the deerkin said. She smiled broadly. “You mean, like this?”
In the blink of an eye, the deerkin changed into the leopard girl we all knew, and while Zera seemed to relax, Camille and Gamma both seemed uncertain. Then Ecco changed back to her deerkin form.
“I am not limited to a singular form,” she said. “So why should I not try something new from time to time?”
“It would be less confusing for us, for a start,” Camille returned. At the same time, she put her knives away. She at least seemed satisfied that Ecco was who she claimed to be. But Gamma was still uncertain, and because of this, Ash still stood on guard.
“When I first met you,” Ecco said, “it was in the cavern of the dead.”
“The what?” Gamma asked, full of suspicion.
“Where the large creatures that spin sticky web leave the remains of those upon which they dine. I gave you counsel as to which route to take, but you chose a different option. My sister wasn’t with you at the time, and wouldn’t have known that.”
Gamma decided to accept Ecco’s words. At a signal, Ash relaxed, and even though I could see the flaw in Ecco’s words, I decided not to mention it.
We only had Ecco’s word that her sister couldn’t know of our first meeting. We didn’t know who or what this sister truly was. As such, she could have been capable of anything.
But I was mostly certain that it was still Ecco. Her mannerisms were consistent. They defined her just as much as the shape of her face did, even though it appeared she could change that at will.
Ecco saw the acceptance, and offered the party a smile. “It seems that my sister’s attentions are largely elsewhere,” she said. “The way is less convoluted now than it has been. Are we all ready to continue our journey?”
The caves provided no true sense of distance, direction, or even depth. We traveled from smaller chamber to bigger cavern, along narrow, twisty passages and tunnels that were almost too narrow to squeeze through. Throughout it all, there were no clues to our location in relation to where we had entered.
There were no handy plastic signs saying that we were now two hundred feet beneath the surface, or that we were halfway to our goal.
And yet, I felt certain that while we turned this way and that, we were by and large heading in the same direction we had traveled out in the Wastes. Call it intuition, a sense of direction, or maybe an attunement to the world I hadn’t possessed more than six hundred years previously. Whatever it was, I knew that we had descended deep into the caves.
How deep, it wasn’t possible to know. But I wouldn’t have been surprised if there were mountains of rock above us.
And we were going deeper. With each passing hour, there was more and more rock above us.
The only evidence I had to back up my assumptions was the small streams of water we passed. In all cases, it flowed swiftly, and more than once we were treated to waterfalls of varying heights.
In addition, there was an associated sense of oppression, of malignancy in hiding, that seemed to grow the further we went.
It didn’t feel as if the world was collapsing around us. But for me, I knew that the weight of the rock was there, just waiting for an opportunity to bury us.
It didn’t seem to matter whether we were passing through the narrowest of tunnels or the broadest of caverns. That weight, that oppression remained.
35
At first glance, the next thing we encountered didn’t look like much of a threat. It was just a boy, maybe eight, nine years old, dressed in leathers that looked to be made from the hide of the bat creatures. He carried a spear made of bone, tipped with a sharpened rock, and smiled at us as we approached.
I had been walking with Ecco in the lead, and at the first sight of the boy, the deerkin froze in place and sucked in a lungful of air between her teeth, grabbing hold of my arm to stop me as well.
“What is it?” I asked. “It’s just a boy–”
“Look more closely!” Ecco hissed, and I did as she said.
At first glance, the boy looked more human than practically everyone else I had met in this world. More than Vesh D’Agon’s waste walkers, more than the hybrid creatures I had fought when I had woken up in this new body. More than Zera, Ash, Camille, and Ecco herself.
The boy had paused as we had, and looked at us through large, dark-colored eyes, completely at ease in a world full of threats.
“Hello,” Zera said, stepping forward a little. “Who are you?”
“Stay back,” Ecco said, her voice a lot more assertive than usual.
And I was beginning to understand why.
There was something wrong about the boy. The color of his skin was pale, which was to be expected if he lived his whole life in the cave. But as I stared, I saw that it was a little too pale. Almost inhumanly so. And his smiling expression didn’t seem quite right. At first glance, it had seemed normal enough, but now… Now it looked as if his mouth was wider than it should be. It was like he was grinning even more broadly than before. Broadly enough that his mouth seemed to stretch from one side of his face all the way to the other.
And if that wasn’t enough, there seemed to be a glistening sheen on his skin that didn’t quite look like sweat. It was yellow, and I would have sworn it hadn’t been there even a moment before.
Perhaps Ecco’s caution–if not outright fear–was contagious. I found myself staring at the boy with more than my share of anxiety. I wanted to know more precisely what I was dealing with and sent a tendril of chi through my AC lens.
