“How well do you know the caves?” Darksider asked.
“Reasonably well… I grew up exploring them… common for us, well, up until those damn things found a way in.”
“Never liked you boys playing in there,” huffed the old lady.
“The fire needs fuel, air and heat to burn. I can’t think of anything you can do to reduce the heat. Aenara’s Arctic magic wouldn’t be enough. So you are either going to have to wait for the fuel to burn out. Probably the safest option. Or find a way to block the air. No air, the fires will go out…”
“You’ll need to keep it blocked for a while until it cools down, otherwise it might re-ignite…” I added.
“If we could flood the caves, would that do it?” one of the other men asked.
“Maybe… I'd need to see detailed maps of the caves, the source of the fuel, where it’s getting its air from… and even then, it’s not my field, so I'd just be making educated guesses,” Darksider said. “It might just make things worse…”
“How about blocking the air?”
“The air was getting sucked into the chamber where the ignition started through the passage we accessed,” I said. “So if you can find holes where the air is getting sucked in…”
“But, you would need to keep checking the different holes, block one, it might just mean another is now more noticeably drawing…” Darksider said.
“You might also find there are underground passages and cracks going for miles around, that much heat could create enough of a suction…” G said. “I wouldn’t put any money on blocking the air…”
“We should try, though,” the first man said. “Thank you for trying to solve our beast problem, but I think it might be best for you to leave.”
“Think they should help us out, Pete. Not right to cause a problem and then leave others to clean up the mess,” a third man put in.
“I was thinking they’d do more harm than good. But you make a fair point, Dave. That said, I’m still sending you five on your way. You on your way to Toreck? Good. There is a cave, about a mile out of town, not far from the road you will be following. That is one of the routes into the old mines. I have some mining explosives from a trader that I was going to use on those beasts. Use them to collapse that tunnel, and I’ll consider us square.”
“You were going to blow them up?” Dave said incredulously.
“I was,” Pete said back to him. “And I reckon I wouldn’t have survived the explosion that they described, so I also reckon I owe them a little.”
“Yeah…” Dave responded sullenly. “I’d have probably stood right next to you when you did it as well…”
“We can do that,” G said. Pretty sure he would have been in the minute they said explosives.
We stared into the cave. I could hear the air being pulled in; it had a slight whistle to it. The tufts of grass were rippling in the cave's mouth, like they were trying to pull themselves into it.
“Is blowing this one up a good idea?” Jacobs asked. “Sure, it won’t do more harm than good?”
“It’s what they asked us to do,” G said as he pulled the first stick of dynamite from his storage.
“Yeah, but is it the right thing to do?” Jacobs repeated.
“It’s what they asked us to do…” I shrugged. “And we did agree to do it… feels like going back on our word to not do it… I suppose the question is, does anyone know how to do it?”
“Light the fuses, throw them in,” said G. “Then run.”
Four facepalms.
We ended up scouting just inside the cave, finding a nook near the roof and planting the explosives there. The others gave themselves some distance. I then used a firebolt to light the tip of the fuse before Stepping out to join the others. I made sure I had my back to the cave when the explosion happened.
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“Who’s not cool now?” I said, smiling at G and Jacobs, who had both been looking at the cave when the boom happened.
“Still you,” Jacobs said.
“Think that worked?” I asked, as we surveyed the collapsed cave entrance.
“Maybe…not feeling any drafts…” Darksider said.
“Smoke’s still coming out of the mountain,” G said, nodding at the pillar of smoke rising from somewhere deep into the ranges.
“Hill…” Jacob corrected.
“Huh?”
“Not tall enough to be a mountain.”
“It’ll take a while to have any effect…if any…” Darksider said.
“Right, well times-a-wasting. Let's a-go,” Peachy declared.
The road took us down out of the valley and out onto a rolling grassland. In the distance, we could see the rear of a small convoy of wagons as they progressed along the road to the small settlement near the horizon. We shifted our pace up to a jog, and then G suggested we should start doing short sprints…100 metres every 500…
I hate that it worked to increase endurance…
When we were nearly halfway to the settlement, the convoy was about a minute ahead of us at our walking pace, when we saw the guards shift from a casual stance into a ready one. Heads on a swivel. They were all looking around for something that one of them must have sensed. Then, almost as one, their attention snapped to the left side of the road as a pack of crocodile-like creatures with scorpion tails emerged onto the road. They were somewhat distant from us, but the panic in the movements of the guards betrayed this as a serious threat to them. Not sure which of us moved first, but we were all soon sprinting at full pelt.
Darksider’s build had him moving fastest out of our party. I used
The convoy’s guards were taking a heavy beating; a third of their number had fallen before we got within range to cast any spells. The tails on the creatures were doing heavy damage to the shields, and the crocodile-like jaws were devastating anything they closed upon. It looked like the most successful of their number were dodging rather than taking the hits, but in a battle of attrition, they were on the losing side.
I Stepped into range of the closest beast to the back of the convoy and thrust my Icy Caress-enhanced ice spear into its back, severing the tail in the process. The creature responded with an angry roar, and it spun around from the young guard who had been trying to avoid its attacks to go for me.
Only to take Darksider’s Shocking Grasp enhanced lunge into its brain via its eye. I sent bolts of fire, ice and spark at three different creatures, hoping to ascertain which they were weakest to as I moved to assist the next guard along.
Darksider and I proved devastating to the creatures. I couldn’t help but grin in satisfaction as the second one fell quickly before us. I used Lightning Step to hit it from a desirable angle, and Darksider used my distraction to devastate it with a critical strike through its eye. We dispatched the third of them in this fashion as G finally got close enough to use his own charge abilities.
His manic laughter was infectious as he charged in, swinging that maul of his in a large, powerful blow that literally sent the creature flying through the air. It slammed hard into another of the creatures, bowling the pair of them over and into a heap. He followed up the blow by charging the pair of them. His blow pulped the top one into the bottom as the spiked end of his maul pierced through. That ended them both as a threat.
Storm proved to be the creatures' weakness, and I switched to sending just sparks at the creatures, using them to stun them until one of the other two got within range to finish it off. Peachy arrived promptly in time to save a couple of the guards near the front with her Taunting shout, which pulled the last of the creatures away from everything as their focus turned on her and only her. Only two of them survived getting past the guards, my friends and I, but they didn’t even last long enough to do damage to her shield.
Jacobs went to work and managed to save two of the guards who had unfortunately been hit by the scorpion-like tails and the nerve agent-like venom the things inject. Three of the guards and two of the drivers, unfortunately, didn’t make it.
The guards seemed a little more relaxed now that the fighting was over. Darksider stood watch, looking out over the deep grass for any signs, but the guards were quite insistent that after a pack the size of this one, it would be very surprising to see any more creatures willing to attack a convoy this big today.
Jacobs and Peachy took over talking to the convoy’s leader, while I press-ganged G into being my muscle. I got to work skinning all the creatures we dispatched. Initially, he was reluctant, but soon he got into lugging over the corpses. Darksider’s kills gave me the best hides, one of which my inventory reported to be superior quality when I stored it. It came with a skill up in skinning, which was nice. I also got rank 2 in butchery as I carved off meat where I could, which was also largely all I was able to scavenge from G’s kills.
We set off just as the convoy got moving, but soon we outpaced them. The guards had given us some of the hides they had skinned from their kills and promised us a drink on them in the tavern if we stopped by after they had arrived in town as a thank you for our timely arrival.
Toreck was a much larger settlement than the service station had been. From the buildings, it had once been an ancient town of some kind, but it showed signs of having been more recently fortified. A mix of stone walls and wooden barricades blocked the gaps between the buildings. Wooden watch towers had been built on top of some of the buildings, with guards looking out from them.
The road led up to a huge gate. The barrier was raised on a pair of huge vertical hinges. It looked ready to be pulled down to block the entrance at a moment’s notice. The caravan ahead of us was being inspected by well-armoured guards and was only then allowed into the place. As we got closer, we could see a second gate inside the first. This place was a fortress in comparison to everywhere else we had visited.