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74. Staunching the Surge - I
🕑 Added 2025-05-17 21:00:05 +0000 UTCAll conversation died as the cracks widened. Our plans to delay? Forgotten. We hadn’t even started, and things had already gone south. However, our hærlið took the change in stride. He sent a runner to update the company and then ordered people into a formation—a reverse wedge—to block the tunnel. No one argued as Eiræk assigned roles. No one needed an explanation. After all, the plan hadn’t changed. Even if initiated early, this was always going to be a strategic retreat.
Rægnor moved toward the front with Dorian not that far behind. Though Dorian didn’t have the martial prowess of the Ættir, his lower Projection necessitated his position near the front to collapse the traps as we retreated. However, Eiræk understood Dorian’s significance, and a few Ættir stood close to catch what slipped past the front line.
He would be fine. He’s done this before.
Dull thumps began to accompany the jets of dust spewing from the cracks. The air took on a new weight, and my hands grew clammy as the truth about what I was about to face sank in: I was at the front of a breach.
Sure, I would be in the back, the safest place, acting as a [Healer], and we had an entire company guarding our rear. However, I couldn’t help but rage at the injustice. Two Ættir with shields and spear could have held this tunnel for ages. Instead, we stood against a likely horde with mining tools.
I stilled my fear. I had a job.
Some of the logistics had already been taken care of for me. The wounded would come to me, switching out of the front line if their injuries became too great. I didn’t quite see how that would happen, but Eiræk had said it with such confidence that I didn’t dare question him. However, I could do more than take a passive stance.
I demanded that everyone give me a potion. No one questioned me, and I enhanced every one given to me. It left me woozy, but it was a risk worth taking. I should have time to recover. As I gave them back their potion, I made one more demand: only use a potion if the injury would be imminently lethal. We had to stop as many monsters as possible while in this tunnel. No one said it, but our team’s honor depended on it. The slow march backward could turn into a marathon, and only my skills would prevent building tolerance to the potions.
Then we waited, though not for long. The cracks widened until chunks of the wall crumbled to the floor. One set of red eyes, then two, peered out from the darkness. A screech, then a black blur followed. Two enraged terrorvoles pushed through the breach. They swiftly died by pick strikes made by the front of our formation, but where there’s one…
The trickle became a flood. Hungry for our flesh, more of the savage monsters broke through. Their dead they trampled did little to slow them down, and the smell of blood only seemed to whip them into a greater frenzy.
Piercing screeches filled the tunnel as the entire wall came down in a mass of black fur and pairs of blood red orbs. Arcs of crimson flew down the tunnel, bathing the end in a sinister light but only thinning the swarm. The first wave hit. The line didn’t break, but it did give.
We had only one direction to go. The question was how fast?
The Ættir at the front walked backward at a steady, though intermittent pace. However, they always moved in lockstep. A terrorvole drove a Ættar back? The other shifted with him. They created, then held a line.
It wasn’t perfect. At times, a terrorvole slipped through, but they were few. Dorian or the Ættir around him would finish them before they got too far or leapt onto the back of an Ættar on the front. Still, the tide of terrorvoles didn’t relent.
I became inured to the terrorvoles’ screams of rage and death. I had one job, and I kept my eyes darting between the increasingly wounded fighters. [Sense Injury] helped, but I still didn’t trust myself not to be consumed by its use. I soon lost track of time, and I found myself at the first deadfall far sooner than I had expected, not that I could ask others if they thought the same.
As the last Ættir passed under it, I spared a glance upward at the thin sheet of rock that held back a literal half-ton of death from crushing us. It made the skin on the back of my neck crawl...
My eyes widened, before I fixed them toward the end of the tunnel. Something rippled in the distance. In a flash, my brain processed it.
“Spider,” I yelled, or at least tried.
I couldn’t move my mouth because time had slowed. Had I triggered [Quicken Thoughts] instinctively? If so, my subconscious deserved some extra credit because time stopped just at the right point to give me an uninterrupted view of the battlefield.
I almost dropped the skill, but something nagged at me.
Between two picks coated in Energy, I found it: another visual anomaly. There was more than one spider.
Time normalized, and I screamed, “Dorian, drop the first deadfall. There’s two!”
To his credit, he didn’t even hesitate. His Mark flashed, and the ceiling above us rippled. Gravity did the rest.
The Frontline Ættir stepped back as the mass of stone fell. The crushing weight landed directly on top of one of the visual anomalies. Only a screech over the thudding falling rocks and a brief iridescent shimmer marked the existence of the crystalline spider before it became lost under a pile of stone. Unfortunately, the falling rocks only clipped the second spider. However, the hit carried enough force to break the spider’s stealth, which was all that saved the Ættar at the front.
Even with stepping back, the spider had narrowed the gap between it and its prey. The beauty of the opalescent white chitin belied its danger. Without making a sound, it lunged, becoming an iridescent blur wreathed in streaks of red. The Marks on its target exploded in crimson light, and the frontline Ættar moved at a speed surpassing the spider’s. He rotated his body, saving himself from a killing blow through his torso. However, he couldn’t completely dodge in our tight quarters.
[Sense Injury] screamed as the spider’s front leg slammed into his arm in a spray of bright red. I smothered the information before it overwhelmed me. I had seen enough to know that he wouldn’t be on the front much longer.
Before the spider could make another attack, it died at the end of Eiræk’s pick. Eiræk then stepped forward with a brutal swipe that left afterimages of a crimson and cut down anything within feet of him. His deep voice echoed through the tunnel over the din of the melee. “Switch.“
The wounded Ættar stepped back as the rest of the Ættar stepped forward in perfect synchrony. I rushed to him, but I was too late to stop him from ripping out the spider’s leg, leaving a deep, bloody hole dripping red.
I uncorked my potion and slathered it across the exit wound on the back of his arm, closing the hole. I moved his arm so the entrance wound was pointed up.
“Hold your arm here, and next time, wait until I tell you to rip it out. This would have been easier with the leg in there.”
Last night, I had developed a few strategies to deal with different types of wounds. Puncture wounds from spiders were high on the list because of their inherent difficulty. My crappy Projection limited my range making the depth of punctures wounds tough to heal. Sticking my hands into a wound would get messy fast, assuming my hand or fingers would fit at all. I needed a bridge, and the potion would have to do.
I would have pulled back the spider leg enough to seal the exit wound. Then, using gravity to assist, I would have poured the potion down the leg and healed the wound as I pulled it out. Since that leg was now caked in dirt on the tunnel floor, I improvised.
I poured a small amount to create a pool of potion at the bottom. I then put my hand over the wound and poured the potion between my fingers right at the edge. The red liquid seeped between them and down the edge of the wound to the pool below. It wasn’t uninterrupted, but I could jump whatever small gaps occurred until my power hit the pool at the bottom.
Even in that small time, microbes were feasting on the potion and multiplying with abandon.
“I am going to have to do this fast. This might hurt.”
I poured Energy into [Suppress Growth] and [Enhanced Medicinal]. The strain across my forehead increased, but flesh began to close without complications.
“Almost done.”
The discomfort disappeared as I dropped [Suppress Growth] only to be replaced by the sensation of something crawling on the back of my neck.
Time stopped as soon as I turned my head to get a view down the tunnel. It was a terrible angle, but I could see its entire length. In the time that I healed the wound, the horde had already cleared most of the rocks used in the deadfall, and a carpet of black extended to the blackness of the breach. However, that wouldn’t have triggered my skill. I squinted—or tried to—at the visual anomalies in the tunnel. Some of the shadows had ripples in them. And definitely shadows—plural. More spiders. I could pick out three for sure, but if they were intelligent enough to hunt in packs, a fourth spider could also be skittering across the floor based on the spacing of the other three.
Time frozen, I allowed myself a few seconds to contemplate just how close we had come to complete disaster. They were close. Way too close.
How has no one else noticed them?
We hadn’t discussed this, but I might need to tack on scout to my role as healer…if we survived. We weren’t out of the woods yet either, and we still needed to deal with the spiders.
The hint of an ache started behind my eyes, and I let time revert to normal. “Four spiders ringing the tunnel.”
Our hærlið responded instantly to my shout. Arms blurring, he unleashed multiple waves of arcs of red energy that spiraled in a helix down the tunnel. Not even a terrorvole would have made it in between the gaps in those blades of energy. The arcs of energy sliced straight through the middle of three spiders. They died without a sound, their bodies falling to the tunnel floor.
The fourth didn’t go down quietly. It collapsed with its left legs severed at their origins, screeching as it dragged itself toward us. Its dying screams escalated to a high-pitched whine—then suddenly cut out as my ears popped.
“By the Gods,” cried Dorian. “Get down!”
We all did. Only Dorian’s warning and the line of stone from the deadfall saved us.
An explosion ripped from the end of the tunnel, sending terrorvoles and stone flying towards the tunnel entrance.
Dorian grabbed Rægnor and pulled him back to the ground when he tried to stand. “Stay dow—”
An explosion that dwarfed the last rocked the tunnel. Above the line of rubble, blackness flared to yellow and red—then an invisible force sheared the top off the barrier, launching a hail of stone. I threw up my arms as the pressure wave slammed into me and flung me back.
Then—silence. The dust dropped from the air, and an eerily quiet filled the tunnel save the constant high-pitched buzz.
Another spider?
I jerked my head up only to find Dorian standing in front of me. He pulled me up. I blinked as his mouth moved, but nothing came out. He mouthed something again and then shook his head. He pointed to my potion and mimed drinking it. I followed his instruction, instinctively using [Enhance Medicinal].
With a soft pop, sound returned to the world, and a subtle fog in my mind that I hadn’t noticed also disappeared.
A concussion?
“Dorian, what happened?” Everything beyond our deadfall was dead. Bodies of terrorvoles, most with their fur singed and even some with parts smoking, littered the floor. In that collection, I could even make out bits of spider.
“Those strikes must have hit a pocket, which then cascaded. We need to fall back—our luck won’t hold forever. Best case, we woke up every blighted creature in there. Worst case, we also punched a gaping hole for them to come through.”
He was right because a resounding chorus of shrieks came from the now much wider opening at the end of the tunnel.
Eiræk bellowed orders. He had weathered the blast with minimal damage, but I couldn’t say the same for the other two on the front. The second line grabbed them and pulled them back toward me.
Dorian waved us back. “Get behind the next deadfall. I need to be able to drop it. I’m going to start weakening the pits as well.”
It wasn’t ideal, but we were down at least two people. It would also give me the time I needed to do my job.
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