Generally speaking, once a person has a form of corruption take hold, future corruption will follow the same pattern. It is unlikely that one would grow scales on their right arm and fur on their left, though as with everything involving corruption, there are exceptions.
- Tercia Lazarova, Level 34 Weaver of Life, A Healer’s Primer
Dead gods… I just slaughtered a bunch of children. Shot them in their little fucking faces. My stomach heaved, and I grabbed the table to steady myself as my gun vanished into my Inventory. My eyes landed on the last dwarf, the one whose throat Raylan had cut, and the only one with a face still intact.
Its dead face was still contorted into a snarl, but now I knew why they were so much shorter than Vale, even if they had the same broad build. I lost control of my stomach and vomited onto the table, a gross pool of thin liquid. I hadn’t eaten in hours and now I felt like I never wanted to again.
Raylan put a hand on my shoulder and guided me out into the hallway where Zaire shot me a concerned look. Elin looked disgusted, but I ignored her.
I nodded shakily. Zaire went into the room and emerged a moment later, holding my expended shells. With trembling fingers I reloaded from my bandolier and slipped the used shells into its leather loops. Seeking comfort in the ritual, I checked my resources. Down to 21 mana now…
I gave Zaire a grateful nod as he reached back and shut the door behind him. We waited in uncomfortable silence for several minutes as I gathered myself. It was impossible to reconcile those horrible snarling faces with the idea of children. They’d acted more like…
We briefly debated opening the remaining doors but ultimately decided that the potential rewards outweighed the risk of another disturbing encounter. The next room was uninhabited but no less disturbing for it. It appeared to be a playroom, though it was eerily neat and organized, small toys sitting on wooden shelves. Zaire, seemingly unbothered, went around the room, opening several boxes in search of something valuable.
The toys themselves appeared to be just as high quality as everything else we’d found in the dwarven part of the cavern. There were wooden and stone blocks, small dolls, and even a few carved figures of different creatures.
I bet RaeRae and Dustin would love these… We never had anything this nice. Even Yuna might secretly enjoy a doll like one of these. There’s no way I would give them anything from this room, though. I don’t care if they’re worth eagles, I’m not taking shit from here.
Fuck, I miss them already, those little brats. I wish I could get out of here and just give them all a big, big hug - and never tell them anything about this part of the dungeon.
I definitely did not cry a few silent tears as Zaire finished searching the room, not taking anything. Thankfully, the rest of the group wasn’t interested either. Zaire explained that he had only been looking in case there was another Spell gem or something hidden among the toys, but his search had turned up empty. Even Elin didn’t so much as touch any of the toys. I suppose even she has some limits. Bleh.
The last room was another disappointment. It looked like the ceiling had collapsed somehow and the space was just a pile of rocks and debris. Leaving it behind, we started down towards the end of the corridor where we could see the bottom of a large staircase rising up out of sight through another arched opening, Elin slightly ahead of the rest of the group.
twangtwangtwang
In a split second, three crossbows fired nearly in unison, and Elin collapsed with a scream. Her barrier had stopped one bolt, another had ricocheted off the bottom of her shield, and the third had driven itself deep into her lower right leg. I froze for just a moment before storing my gun and reaching down with both hands to grab her by the shoulders and yank her roughly back down the corridor.
Zaire hurried to join me, and we swiftly started pulling her further back towards the playroom as she screamed. Raylan, incredibly, chose to dash forwards instead, and quickly took cover to one side of the arched doorway.
He ducked his head out for a moment, looking up the stairs, then yanked it back as another crossbow bolt shattered on the stone.
he reported,
“FUCK!!” Elin screamed out loud, “get this fucking thing out of my leg! I need a potion!”
She was bleeding through her robes, which were pinned to her leg by the bolt.
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We managed to get Elin into the relative safely of the playroom, a trail of blood marking where we’d dragged her along the carpet. Zaire pulled out a healing potion and offered it to Elin, but she shook her head, wincing.
“You need to get it out first, otherwise the potion will make my leg heal around it!”
I pulled her dagger from her belt - my shortsword too large for the task - and started cutting away the robes around the wound. Below her robes, she had on thin leather greaves over jeans, neither of which had done much in the way of stopping the bolt. Caster armor is sometimes like this… the robes are technically the baselayer, only they go over her armor components instead of underneath them. No one back in Sunland seemed to know why.
The bolt had punched through robe, leather, denim, and the flesh of her calf, before stopping with the head partially emerging from her calf muscle. Blood was flowing freely from both sides of her leg, soaking through her pants and robes. I swallowed. At least it had missed her shin bone. My tourniquet was still wrapped around Raylan’s arm, though we’d loosened it a while ago.
I looked at Zaire, and he pulled out one from his medkit. Opening the loop wide, we managed to get it over the short bolt and in place around Elin’s lower thigh, just above the knee where there was no armor in the way.
I looked at Elin grimly. “It’s almost out the back of your leg. We either need to push it out or pull it back though, but either way it’s going to hurt.”
She was quietly crying but managed to nod.
“Push it through,” she replied through gritted teeth. “If it’s barbed, pulling it back out would just make it much worse.”
“All right.” I handed her a handful of the robe I’d cut away. “Bite down on this.”
We tightened the tourniquet first, then Zaire held her leg in a strong grip. With surprisingly steady hands, I grabbed the back of the bolt and pushed, forcing the head the rest of the way through her leg and out of her jeans. A bit more blood trickled out of the wound as she spasmed in pain, but Zaire fought to keep her leg steady. Seeing that the iron arrowhead was indeed barbed, I used her knife to roughly cut the head free as Elin screamed through the cloth.
I braced my left hand on her leg and pulled hard with my right, withdrawing the shaft from her leg with a spurt of blood. The moment I finished, she spat out the cloth and downed the healing potion. I watched in horrified fascination as the trickle of blood slowed further. Over the next few seconds, the wound visibly closed a small amount, though it was far from fully healed.
Sighing in partial relief, Elin instructed us to cut away more of her jeans from around both wounds, then clean them with alcohol and wrap the whole thing up with bandages from her large medpack. Once we’d finished, she fed some mana into her robes, which regenerated swiftly, covering up any sign she’d been wounded.
he replied.
Zaire suggested.
I tried to consider the situation objectively. Shit, I hate being in charge right now. I don’t fucking know anything about attacking a bunch of heavily-armored Arbalists up a long flight of stairs. I stopped momentarily, reviewing my thoughts.
OK, what I know is that it sounds like a Wasted terrible idea and it would probably get at least one of us killed. Especially since I doubt Elin can run right now and Raylan still has an injured arm. Could Zaire and I pick them off from the bottom of the stairs?
I decided we might be able to, but even with my slugs and Zaire’s powerful Earth Spikes, their better armor and numbers could easily take one - or both - of us out in the process. I sighed in frustration. The fact that they weren’t advancing suggested they could be protecting something valuable.
I wanted it - and had no way to get it. I definitely did not have a competitive streak that was demanding I complete the dungeon despite Mason’s clear orders to the contrary. Ruthlessly suppressing the non-existent drive, I opted to do the smart thing instead.
No one objected to my plan. Leaving Elin to rest for the moment, Zaire and I headed out into the corridor. At my signal, he cast two Earth Walls, one on top of the other, filling most of the left side of the doorway where Raylan was hiding. A couple of bolts plinked uselessly off of the walls and Raylan sprinted towards us.
twangtwang
Raylan blurred as he Quick Stepped, the two bolts sailing behind him and deflecting harmlessly off the stone wall. A few long strides later and he was safely out of harm's way, breathing hard as he ducked into the room with us. I kept watch down the hallway as Zaire and Raylan went to help Elin up. Despite the potion, she was unable to put much weight on her injured leg.
Raylan offered to help her walk, but I refused, pointing out that would leave us with only two effective combatants. His next idea was to make a crutch, but a look around the room left us frustrated. The wooden shelves were narrow, making them too short for the purpose, and so were the table and chairs in the dining room, not to mention the gore all over them.
I started mentally running through the things in my Inventory. The dwarven weapons, plenty of water, rope, my jacket, extra potions, and - the training bow Hassan had given me! I’d entirely forgotten about it until now. In hindsight I supposed probing with it might have worked better than throwing an orc femur into the water, but I would still almost certainly have been hit by flying debris from that stupid trapped chest.
Either way, when I pulled it out, Raylan grinned and retrieved the one he’d been given as well. Some not-so-quick knife work later - the wood was surprisingly tough - and a fair amount of rope and we’d cobbled together a crutch for her. She practiced moving around the room a few times until she started to get the hang of it.
We started down the corridor, Raylan leading the way, then Elin limping along on her crutch, with Zaire and I in the rear, walking carefully backwards with our eyes on the stairs. As far as we could tell, the Arbalists never made a move to follow us, and soon we were back at the spiral stairs down. Raylan scouted ahead as Zaire and I helped Elin down to the landing.
Raylan disengaged the heavy bolt, then carefully pulled the door open as I stood with my gun raised. The narrow, bare stone hallway beyond only ran for about ten feet before stopping with another identical door. As we approached the second one, I heard faint sounds from beyond.
It sounded like wolves howling, mixed with some shouting. Hoping whatever was happening was distracting anyone outside, I gestured for Raylan to open it and the volume jumped dramatically as soon as it cracked open. There was definitely a fight going on outside.