Chapter 95 - Cat’s Out of the Bag

  The creatures rushing at our front line were only tier three, thank God. Even a casual glance around the room told me that if the column managed to release all of the pods, we’d be facing a hundred or more of the monsters. We were good, but that was too much. Especially since we didn’t know what other attacks the column fungus might have.

  Even as I had those thoughts, the column pulsed twice more, and a pair of pods on the walls, one on either side of the entrance, swung open and prepared to disgorge more of the monsters.

  They were weird things, looking like someone had built a lynx or maybe a small cheetah, but instead of using fur and sinew, they’d glued together chunks of rotting material and fungus. Each had a variable number of legs, ranging from four to six. A tail swished behind them, dripping bits of green ichor as it moved. The creature’s fronts lacked heads, but they had mouths which dominated the front area of their bodies. Each mouth opened wide enough to swallow my head, but they wouldn’t need to swallow. They were ringed by a set of teeth, each longer than my fingers.

  “Front line, break!” Alex shouted. “Move to the sides! Engage the new ones spawning there!”

  They did as he asked instantly and without question. If there was one plus from all of this fighting, it was that our party had become a finely tuned machine when it came to working together. Alex snapped orders and everyone jumped to it. Johnson and Clark moved to the left, while Ruiz and Anderson went right.

  That left the three monsters bearing down on the second row, but we had that handled. Alex, Dara, and I all took one step forward and raised our hands. Dara let loose with a sheet of fire that washed over the monsters, setting one alight and singing the other two. Alex and I blasted away with Lightning Bolt, pumping enough juice into the creatures to finish them. They each blew apart under the force of the Bolts, sending bits of goo flying in all directions.

  “Got them!” Dara shouted. “Fried monster, anyone?”

  “Don’t get cocky,” Alex warned.

  I spared a glance to the sides, where our split tank line was engaged with the two fungus cats. They were handling the thing easily enough. Carter looked like he’d taken a nip, but Marion was already moving to cast a Heal on him. One of the ‘cats’ was already dead, and the other would join it soon enough.

  But the column was already pulsing again, a steady beat, flashing brighter with each burst of magical energy it released. One, two, three, four, five…more pods sprouted, disgorging the creatures they contained, which raced our way.

  “Front line, reform!” Alex shouted. “Prepare to receive charge!”

  I turned to him. “We need to stop the boss, not the mini mobs. If it keeps releasing more, we’re going to be overwhelmed.”

  “Open to ideas, Castle,” Alex said as he flung another Lightning Bolt at one of the oncoming creatures, obliterating it.

  “I can fly over all of this, rush the thing.”

  “We don’t know what it’s capable of, yet. That’s risky at best—“ Alex was saying when another of the fungus cats lunged through the air toward him.

  I stepped into the monster’s path, stopping it cold with a powerful punch to its front. The creature went flying, hitting the stone floor ten feet away and skidding another five before it brought itself to a stop and came after us again. I finished it off with a Drain Life spell.

  “Yeah, I get that,” I told Alex. Then I pointed at the column, which was pulsing at an increasing rate, maybe once every two seconds now. “But if that thing keeps it up, we’re going to be buried in these things. If I can finish it quickly, we can end this.”

  “Give it a try,” Alex said. “But Cam, be careful, okay? We don’t know what other powers the thing has.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said. Then I shot upward, using Flight to boost into the air.

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  I streaked forward at top speed, flying over the melee below. My friends and allies were still holding their own, but at the rate the army of opponents was increasing, it was just a matter of time before they were in a lot of trouble.

  My best shot for taking this thing down was surprise, I figured. If I could cross the room fast enough, before it figured out I was a threat, I could maybe shatter it completely. End the danger. How tough could a column of fungus be, anyway? I went in with everything I had, just in case there was a stone core to the thing. I’d hit it and drive right through.

  But I never even got close.

  By the time I’d crossed half the space between us, the column must have realized something was up, because it changed colors. It went from the pale green it had been using to a bright red. I knew that change had to be a reaction to my approach, but I kept on flying, hoping I could close the rest of the distance before it was able to act.

  Spoiler alert: I was not able to close that distance in time.

  The column pulsed again, this time flashing that same bright scarlet, but this time, it emitted some sort of shock wave with the pulse. It smashed into me, stopping my forward progress cold before bashing me backward through the air to crash into the wall above the cavern entrance. I hung there, plastered against the rock like I was in an old Loony Tunes cartoon for what felt like forever, before dropping back to the ground. I crashed to earth in the middle of the party and lay there groaning a few moments.

  I shifted my limbs. Nothing seemed broken, anyway. That was a plus. My ears rang, my head pounded, and everything hurt, but I was in one piece. I hauled myself back to my feet with an effort that worried me. I hadn’t been hit that hard in a while.

  “You okay?” Alex asked from a few paces ahead of me. One of the fungus cats was rushing him. He already had a hand outstretched to blast it, but I beat him to it, casting Drain Life on the thing to finish it off.

  A fresh flow of life force running back into me from the monster helped me feel worlds better again. “I am now. Holy shit, that thing packs a wallop.”

  “I seem to remember suggesting caution,” Alex said drily.

  “Yup. Noted,” I replied. What the heck else was I going to say? I still figured it had been worth a try. If I’d gotten through, that would have been the end of the fight. Probably, anyway.

  Two of the ‘cats’ were rushing us, and I realized with a start that they weren’t aiming at Alex and I. They were after Marion. I called out the alert. “Alex! Watch our left.”

  “I seem them. I’ve got the one on the right.”

  I aimed my hand at the one on the left and let loose with a Lightning Bolt that fried it in its tracks. Alex’s Bolt killed the other one. But it was worrying, that those two had attempted to slip past us to kill our healer. That implied a level of intelligence we hadn’t seen yet from any of these fungal adversaries.

  “It’s the column, I think,” Alex said. “It has to be guiding the others.”

  “Some sort of brain fungus?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I think we’ve found our dungeon boss. Or at least a mini-boss. Want to see if we can hit it with Lightning from here?”

  “I’m game. Mana is getting low, though,” I warned.

  “Let’s make the shots count, then.”

  We stood side by side, arms outstretched, aiming directly at the thing. It pulsed several times, rapidly, opening more pods in front of it as we prepared to cast our spells. Both Alex and I released Bolts at about the same time, the brilliant purple flashes arcing across the cavernous space toward the enemy.

  But it was ready for that! The pods directly in front of it burst open, spilling two more creatures out. The fungus cats leaped up and forward as they sprang from their pods, the jumps carrying them directly in the path of our spells. We took them both down, frying them in an instant. The column remained entirely unharmed, though.

  “Damn! This thing really is smart,” Alex said “Okay, two can play at that game. Cameron, circle clockwise. I’ll circle the other way. Hit it from two angles.”

  “And those cat things?” I asked.

  “Pretty sure you can handle a few of them, right?”

  I could. I was more worried about him. With each passing minute, there were more of them loose in the room. I saw at least a dozen of the catlike monsters racing toward us from various angles, and even as I was counting them, the column pulsed three more times, releasing more.

  “Anderson! Guard Alex!” I shouted. He snapped me a nod and attached himself to Alex’s hip. My friend cast an annoyed look my way, but at least he’d be alive to be pissy with me later. I turned to face Dara. “Get ready to cast when we do. If we can hit it with magic from three angles…”

  “Maybe we can overwhelm it. I’ll be ready,” she replied. “Go!”

  It was as good a plan as we were going to get. I dashed to the left, moving along the wall. One of the cat fungi attacked me as I ran, but I kicked it hard enough to break the thing in half without even slowing my pace. Those fungus critters were too low rank to be a serious threat to me in anything short of epic numbers.

  I stopped once I’d reached a point about fifty feet from where we’d come into the cavern. Alex was almost in position, and Dara looked ready, too. I had just enough mana for one more Lightning Bolt. That spell used up mana like nothing else in my arsenal, and even with my Will crystals giving me a boost, I was still more limited than I’d like.

  Alex’s hand was raised. I raised mine. Dara lifted both hers. Together, we all cast. Lightning exploded from my hand, flashing across the space in the blink of an eye as the column of decay pulsed more times, desperately trying to raise a defense against our attack.