Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

Chapter 318: Slow and Steady

Chapter 318: Slow and Steady

I woke up in a panic, stone inches away from my face. I instinctively tried to lash out, my arms hitting more stone that surrounded me like a coffin.

This is where I’m supposed to be. This is right. I reminded myself, which did absolutely nothing to calm the panic and claustrophobia threatening to overwhelm me. This is the plan. Mole people! We’re mole people!

The thought had a small jolt of hysterical laughter try to go through me, which was an improvement.

Control. I reminded myself. I have enough mana and power to kill everyone here if I lash out. Control.Lashing out does nothing.

I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing on my breathing. Hearing the crackle of Auri’s flames as she slept near me. Hearing Artemis shift slightly on watch, Amber’s deep breaths as she slept peacefully.

I wasn’t alone. This wasn’t the Below Levels. We were following Julius’s plan.

I hated being trapped. I hated being wrapped in stone, unable to escape, to get out. Oh, I knew I could probably get out if I needed to, but I’d spent too many months alone in the Below Levels. Woken up to the crushing weight of mountains above me, woken up to too many creepy crawlies congregating on my shield.

I reminded myself I was Sentinel Dawn. I’d been trained for this. I had discipline. Focus. This wasn’t nearly the worst thing I’d ever encountered, nor would it be the last.

Slowly, I regained control, shifting myself around to my belly. I couldn’t stand up, the tunnel Artemis was making was too low for that. Standing room was expensive, and being fast was better than being comfortable. For an extremely loose definition of fast.

Crawling along as Artemis got enough mana to expand the tunnel was the name of the game.

I was the rearguard. I awkwardly scrunched up as much as I could with my inflexible armor, and reached behind myself to grab… food.

It’s food. I reminded myself as I used Radiance to lightly warm up the already-cooked food, ignoring the sharp bristles on my hand. Food. I chowed down, not thinking about it.

Although food wasn’t the worst topic to think about.

Time didn’t hold much meaning here, and my shifting around and crunching slowly woke everyone else up. I passed more food up to Amber, then gave a few small bits to Auri, who happily flew them down the tunnel to Julius and Artemis. While she was doing that, I passed heftier pieces to Amber, who passed them up in turn to my two former teammates. My apprentice - I hoped she still thought of herself as my apprentice, I still had so much to teach her - had classed up as well during one of the endless stretches of waiting for Artemis to regenerate her mana. She was somewhat cagey about what she’d gotten, but had started insisting that we play various games of chance, with a mental list of IOU’s traded around instead of money. Her eyes were still Celestial, so she’d either gotten a Celestial [Merchant] class, or stuck with a basic element.

With limited entertainment options during our long breaks, I was all too eager to agree to play the games. It was much better than being left alone to stew with my thoughts. I’d already fixed my [Persistent Casting]again, making a wonderful image to permanently heal myself, and any elvenoid that touched me. I’d also made a crude image for Auri, linked through our companion bond.

“Brrpt! BRRPT!” Auri broke the morning silence.

“You’ve done a most wonderful job as always.” I praised the little phoenix. With us not desperately needing a particular class for a specific job, Auri had decided to grab her second class. To absolutely nobody’s surprise, she’d taken a second Inferno mage class. It gave her a number of free slots - she didn’t need conjuration, authority, or manipulation again - but it was low-level, and she was still filling in all the skill slots.

“Brrpt!” Auri preened herself, which had my mind sharply veering into just how disgusting I looked. It started with dirt under my fingernails, and ended with dirt in places where the sun didn’t shine. My haircut was awful, a poor hack job with my knife. I didn’t want to think of the tangles and snarls in it, and I reeked of gore.

I loved my companion bond with Auri, but it did steer my mind in poor directions at times. I knew I had no options but to shut up and put up with it, so with some effort, I put it out of my mind.

“How’d everyone sleep?” Julius asked, and I grunted back.

“Brrrpt!” Auri had slept well, but the nest was only so-so. I didn’t translate that for everyone else, but they got the general tone.

“Glad you slept well.” Julius told Auri.

“MmmMMMMMMMMMM.” Artemis groaned. With how we were positioned, she’d had to pull an all-nighter to properly do a watch. The air holes were next to her, and we couldn’t quite shuffle around.

“Come here.” I told her, to Amber’s audible groan of protest. Auri had enough room to fly around, the tiny little hummingbird shape perfect for this sort of thing, and her energetic, excited zipping around kept the area well-lit.

She was invaluable for keeping our spirits up, if nothing else. To her this was ADVENTURE! EXCITEMENT! Like all of my stories! The rest of us knew better. Didn’t stop Auri from keeping us happy and sane.

Artemis and I gave her a glare in unison, and she knew when to shut up. Reaching over and past everyone else, squishing Amber and Julius in the process, we touched our fingertips together, and I jolted her with [Sunrise]. It wasn’t perfect, but it’d keep Artemis going until we next decided to sleep.

“This next sleep, I need sleep.” Artemis emphasized. “None of this waking me up frequently to expand the tunnel.”

Julius caressed her leg.

“I totally get it. Doing it once or twice is one thing, but endlessly? Sleep, Artemis. You’ve earned it.”

I got a grateful look from her.

“Hunting time?” I asked hopefully.

Artemis rolled her eyes, and started ticking points off her fingers.

“High level Sentinel. Bonded with a powerful companion.”

“Brrpt!” Auri totally agreed with that assessment.

“Cares about appearance. Likes to go hunting. Are you sure you’re Dawn, and not Hunting in disguise? Did you two, like, swap minds or something in the fae realm?”

I flipped a finger to Artemis, then stared in horror at Auri forming a similar image out of flames.

“Auri! No! Bad!” I yelled impotently at her, as she flew away from me. I swear she was laughing.

“Well, when you show kids Bad Things, they’ll copy you. You shouldn’t do that.” Amber lectured me in an all-too-smug tone.

I groaned.

“Just… lemme out, ok?” I asked, shuffling back a bit. I then passed forward the bag of remaining food we had, and waited. Action stopped me from thinking about all the people I’d lost. My mom. Dad. Brother. Albina. Ocean. Hunting. Maximus… the list was endless.

Almost everyone I knew and loved was dead. Again. I was almost enough to make me want to curl up in a corner and die. What was the point. Wh-

“Brrrpt!” Auri realized what was about to happen, and started flying towards me at top speed. I shot her my best evil grin, as Artemis slammed a layer of stone down between me, and everyone else.

For a brief moment I started to panic again, since now I was well and truly trapped in a coffin of stone. No holes. No air. Nothing but thick stone all around me, suffocating me, pressing down on me.

Then AIR! LIGHT! Glorious freedom as Artemis shifted the stone on top of me away, granting me glorious unfettered access to the sky above!

A few clouds were trying to hide the sun away, and the trees of the forest reached out and tried to shade what remained. But the sun, the glorious sun, the bringer of all life, wasn’t to be denied. The rays broke through, and I let them play across my face, feeling freedom and life once again.

I only allowed myself to be distracted for a brief moment. Even then, I knew deep in my bones that it had been wrong to drop my vigilance like that. However, it had been good, needed, for my soul and sanity.

I looked around, and didn’t spot any major threats. Just typical animals, with a slightly higher concentration than normal of spiders. I snapped my wings open, and lifted myself straight up, all while looking around me.

The base butterfly way of flying, combined with studying Auri’s flight, let me pull off neat tricks like that. I half nestled into the crown of the trees, a relatively safe spot to be. Low enough to still see the forest easily, high enough to be a good vantage point, and low enough that I wasn’t broadcasting a beacon to everything in the forest. We were almost out of the spider’s home, and we’d probably need to have a discussion later today about the merits of stopping the tunneling method, and just legging it.

Speaking of tunneling.

It was interesting to see Artemis’s tunnel, just a low ridge of stone in the forest, the only thing giving away that it was unnatural was how smooth and uniform the entire thing was. That, and its length. Shuffling stone from the ground was a bit cheaper than conjuring up new stone, which made a long, zig-zagging tunnel through the forest, our path “bouncing” off of trees as Artemis hit each one.

We were like extra-large moles. But we were people.

Fear us, the mole-people.

Ideally, I’d range far out, and not bring angry spiders down on our safe spot. Not fill the air with the stench of burning hair and dying creatures. We’d discussed the relative risks and benefits of it, and had decided that a fight over our heads was a lower risk than me getting lost.

Auri occasionally joined me on these outings, but not this time!

I waited, my head on a swivel, looking down at potential prey, up at the sky for potential hope. I marked a few spiders that looked… well, promising was a bad word for it, but could provide sufficient calories worked, and prayed hard that something tasty would wander in the short timeframe I was here.

Unlikely.

Meanwhile, more of my attention was brought towards the sky. I’d seen a number of people fly by, high up, and I kept hoping to catch their attention. That maybe they could drop down and give us a hand, or directions.

By myself, I couldn’t go far.

Two people? Now we were talking! Artemis and I had discussed making a tall stone tower to use as a base, but for various reasons we’d decided just getting out was a better idea. Now that the spider population was decreasing though, it might be worth thinking about again.

Of course, there could be fewer spiders here because something else was acting as an apex predator, and had their own territory.

I scanned the sky, and spotted a few tiny dots, moving fast. They were far outside the range of [Long-Range Identify], but I tried to flash harmless Radiance beams at them, maximizing the brightness I could summon.

It was brighter than a second sun, but I had no idea if the angle was right, if I was even hitting them at the distance, if there wasn’t too much haze, if they even wanted to bother checking in on whoever was flashing them, if they even recognized it as a signal for help, if…

Either way, nobody came this time either.

I dropped back down, now on a timer. I had lit up our location for anyone to see after all, and while I was hoping for intelligent, helpful life, there was no question that hostile monsters might’ve seen it as well, no matter how tight and well-controlled a Radiance beam I’d summoned.

I blasted a few spiders and a pair of rabbits, carefully drilling through their heads to optimize the amount of edible meat left. There were no obvious berry bushes or fruits in this spot, and I quickly loaded everything back into the open part of the tunnel, the airlock that Artemis had made for me.

Surrounded by still cooling meat, I laid back down in the tunnel, and gave a quick series of knocks on the stone. I heard Amber shouting from the other side of it, and a few moments later, the stone slid back over my head, once again entombing me.

I gave one more impatient knock, and the wall of stone between me and everyone else opened up.

“Success?” Julius asked, and I pushed my loot in front of me.

“Success.” I confirmed. “Three fliers, no help. Artemis is about to hit a tree, and we’re going to want to take a left.”

We ran a serious risk of going around in circles otherwise.

Julius nodded.

“Also, things are starting to clear up a bit. Fewer spiders, some other animals.” I gestured to the rabbits. “I want to discuss just… getting up and walking out of here.”

Julius frowned.

“Alright. We’ll discuss it when we next stop.”

“Speaking of, I think it’s clear enough for a bio break for everyone.” I said.

“Oh gods please yes.” Amber’s relief was palatable. “Please.”

“BRRPT!” Auri was annoyed that I’d gone OUT without her! It was soo unfair.

Another day, another few dozen meters tunneling.

I was so sick of it.

“Hey Elaine!” Artemis didn’t have to say anything else. Her gleeful, happy tone was enough.

Well. We were all stuck here with nothing else to do. It beat stewing in my own thoughts or crying to myself, and I was the sucker at the table with the games Amber played. I owed everyone… way more than I liked to think about. Good thing they were just pretend IOUs!

“Once upon a time, in a land far, far away…”

I’d started hanging out with Julius and Artemis by telling stories from Earth.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

======================================

I’d been soundly outvoted on the whole “walk out” thing. Being surrounded by stone didn’t bother Artemis, Julius made excellent arguments about safety and how we weren’t in a rush, Amber wanted to stay alive and her top speed was “limping”, so what was the difference - although I still maintained that Julius could just carry her- and Auri, the traitor, wanted to vote on the “winning” team. I wasn’t nearly so cold and heartless as to abandon them all, so I put up with it.

I was out hunting once again, feeling my beloved wind around my arms and legs. Would love to feel it in my hair, but taking my helmet off would be stupid.

Today, I flew up high, straight up from where our tunnel was currently at, seeing if I could spot anything interesting.

And spot interesting things I did.

Two notable things jumped out at me.

The first was a clear break in the trees to the west of where I was. A slash through the forest, which just screamed “road” to me. A place for us to head towards.

The second was some sort of fight. There were trees falling, dirt spraying into the air, and a single large spider getting an impromptu flying lesson, sans half its legs.

Anything killing a bunch of spiders was OK in my books - although I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of encountering whatever apex predator marked this area as their territory - and I judged the distance to be in the goldilocks zone. Or reverse goldilocks zone. Whatever. It was close enough that I was concerned it might end up over our tunnel, which would be bad, but far away enough that I felt like I could participate in the fight safely. Well, as safely as any fight could be.

I flew over, and spent a few moments observing the fight. I had no vested interest in the outcome either way, and if things looked like they wouldn’t boil over to where we were holed up, I was going to leave it alone.

My first thought was Thank goodness we didn’t try fighting the spiders. They were swarming the poor creature stuck in the middle, all of them biting, skittering, webbing, and generally throwing down with this one creature. I even spotted my old friend the [Tyrant Tarantula], down a leg, leaking ichor, locked in mortal combat with whatever that thing was.

I gave it a once-over.

[Vorler - 480]. [Long-Range Identify] brought back.

The more I looked at the thing, the scarier and nastier it looked.

The base body was like a gigantic scorpion, as thick around as I was and maybe two meters long, with a nasty curved tail over its head longer than it was. It had thick segmented plated scales, colored in splotches of dark greens, light browns, and a dozen other forest shades, perfect for natural camouflage in the woods. Barbed spines jutted out from its back, making it hard for a creature to get any sort of footing on it. The other end of the scorpion-like vorler ended in two snapping claws that sheared right through a spider. Its mouth was circular, with dozens of razor-sharp triangle teeth compulsively opening and closing. It skittered around on five barbed legs, although it looked like it was missing one. It had what looked like four eyes on one side of its head, although to the spiders’s credit, it looked like they’d blinded two of them.

There were dozens of spider carcasses surrounding the vorler, and I spent a few moments watching the fight, realizing with trepidation that the level 480 vorler was fighting toe to toe with the level 764 [Tyrant Tarantula] and all its friends, and not folding like wet cardboard.

Stats and levels improved what was there. A level 10 elephant could easily crush a level 200 mouse under its feet if the mouse wasn’t careful. It was why we still had to train and practice, in spite of having skills and stats. A fit, physical body could do so much more than a lazy, wasting body, even with the same stats.

The giant spider looked to be no slouch with its body, but the vorler had to be in a league of its own. As I watched, one of the spiders pried off one of the vorler’s armor plates, dying to a lash of its tail, only for a second layer of the large, almost scale-like chitin to appear. Another giant spider got onto the vorler’s back and bit down, only to scream and writhe as ichor exploded in its face, eventually curling up in the classic way spiders did when they died.

I never wanted to hear a spider scream again in my life.

The spiders tried to web it down, shooting sticky strands at it, but they just seemed to dissolve when they touched the vorler’s body.

The vorler spun, its tail lashing so quickly I could barely follow, its claws snapping and its mouth biting. Occasionally dark clouds would billow off of it, only for a wind to pick up and blow it away. An Ash skill against a Wind skill? Hard to tell.

Oookayyy. I never thought I’d wake up and say this, but I think I was on Team Spider here. That thing looked fifty different shades of nasty, and the final tiebreaker?

Better the evil I knew. I knew the spiders mostly left us alone. I had no idea what the vorler would do, and everything screamed danger.

Well, it was going to be a little hard to deal with the vorler without a bit of friendly fire, but given how indiscriminately the spiders were throwing themselves at the thing, given how they were getting in each other’s way, I hoped they’d forgive me a bit. Or not notice, but that was a stretch and a half.

Also, it’d be a lie to say I wasn’t going to enjoy getting some experience off the spiders dying.

Still flying high - I had no desire to get in close enough to the mess to use [Radiance Conjuration] - I dropped a number of [Kaleidoscope] butterflies, effectively carpet-bombing the area. I made sure most of the butterflies hit the vorler, briefly wondering if I was helping the creature by killing a number of spiders that were on it.

I spent a few seconds carpet-bombing the vorler, letting up after using about 40% of my mana, dismissing a dozen spider-kill notifications.

Its entire head was charred black, turned to charcoal, and it wasn’t moving nearly as much. The spiders continued to swarm it, then [Bullet Time] activated.

I reflexively threw up a shield under me as the world slowed down. I looked around me, seeing if a giant eagle or something was interested in an extra-large butterfly dinner or something, but there was nothing. I refocused below me, now spotting an entire barrage of vorler spines, made almost invisible by the fact that they were all pointing right at me.

I started to straighten myself, presenting a smaller target. Unfortunately for me, my bare feet were the first thing in the way, and not one of the solid metal pieces of my armor.

They crashed against my shield, the vast majority of them getting stopped cold and falling back down, before the last few broke my shield. I then unleashed a powerful wave of burning Radiance below me, burning away the remaining projectiles, turning them to ash before they could hit me.

Didn’t even hurt with [Center of the Universe] killing my pain.

I did send a few more butterflies the vorler’s way, getting the notification a moment later.

[*ding!* You have assisted in slaying a [Vorler (Decay - 480, Ash - 470)]]

The spiders were still shredding the body, and I decided to leave them to it.

I left and headed back to everyone, ready to give them the good news about the road.