The perfect unity of action that came from one person possessing three bodies could not be easily duplicated by the bonds of a short-lived team, but Jadis’ group adapted amazingly fast to each other’s combat styles as they progressed along the tunnel and encountered more magic beasts that they had to fight. It turned out that the first cave spider they had killed was only a prelude to the numbers of monsters that lay in wait in the long, mostly straight cave tunnel. And not all of them were cave spiders. At least the frequent encounters gave them all good practice working together.
Jadis wasn’t sure if the long tunnel was natural or if it had been created, but regardless of origin it apparently acted as some kind of highway for the denizens of the underground cave system. That meant there were a lot of monsters to encounter, but at the same time, they were no longer backtracking because of dead-end tunnels and cavern chambers that had no exit. It was a fairly straight path and it continued its trend of generally sloping upwards, which made it a good choice to explore in Jadis’ opinion, even if they ran into more beasts while travelling the tunnel. Aside from the abnormally large cave crawlers and the giant trapdoor cave spiders, there were other strange subterranean creatures that used the seemingly endless path to travel from one connected cavern to another. Not all of them were hostile, fortunately.
The type of beast they ran into most frequently was a huge pill-bug-like creature with a brightly colored shell. Unlike everything else that seemed to want to blend in, this giant insect purposefully stood out, its red, blue, and purple shell literally glowing with phosphorescence. The beast was the size of a small car and plodded along the main tunnel path, heedless of anything around it until Jadis got within range of its long antennae. Once it sensed she was there, it rolled up into a ball and sat unmoving directly in their way, content to wait for them to move on. Upon a closer look, the creature’s thick shell was covered in small spikes, none larger than the first joint of Jadis’ pinky finger. Which, on second thought, Jadis recognized was actually fairly large when compared to everyone else. An oily substance coated the spiked shell, making it abundantly clear to her that this beast was following the classic tactic of letting predators know that if they tried to eat it, they’d either be puking it back up in short order or worse.
Since it posed no immediate threat to any of them, the group simply passed the odd beast by, along with every other instance of the creature they came across as they continued down the tunnel. Some of the magic beasts were less passive, however, and required a firm touch.
An alligator-sized salamander with yellow skin speckled with green dots exhaled crimson flames, forcing Jadis’ bodies to back away as it slowly advanced on them, crawling along the left wall of the tunnel. Every attempt made by Jadis’ bodies to get close was met with more flames as the monster breathed a seemingly endless supply of fire. When Aila tried to strike the beast with one of her force bolts, a magical shield of flames appeared around the salamander’s body, deflecting the attack like a dodgeball bouncing off of an oblivious child’s head.
“This is why fucking no one likes exploring caves!” Kerr shouted over the roar of salamander flames. “There’s always stupidly strong and annoying ructuose like this!”
As overwhelming as the yellow amphibian’s dual offensive and defensive flames were, the answer to the problem of how to get rid of the damned thing turned out to be the most basic of solutions, one of the first Jadis had ever applied to any of her problems on Oros. When faced with a big, angry monster trying to kill you, hit it with a rock.
Breaking off one of the stalagmites from the floor was no real challenge for Jadis when she had her strength and her trusty makeshift maul to apply to the stone. With one of Aila’s magical spike traps plastered onto the wide bottom side for good measure, Jay hurled the huge rock at the beast, smashing it hard in the head. Flame shields were good for roasting flesh and deflecting magic attacks, but not so great at blocking several-hundred-pound boulders as both Jadis and the salamander quickly discovered.
The blow from the oversized rock did not kill the fiery beast instantly, but it did knock it senseless, giving Jadis and Kerr enough time to rush forward and finish it off with a few well-placed blows. Just like all the other magical monsters they had killed during their trek through the long tunnel, there was no notification from the system that they had slain the salamander. Magic beasts did not warrant notifications, same as regular beasts or people. Only demons got the system alert treatment when killed, apparently, which at least made it easy for Jadis to assess that they hadn’t yet wandered back into an area of the cavern system controlled by demons.
“Any idea what this thing is?” Dys asked, poking at the dead salamander’s corpse. “Or if its edible? I think I’d prefer eating reptile meat over insect, if it comes down to it.”
“It, um, looks similar to beasts I’ve seen in the rivers, back home,” Thea volunteered. “And if it is, it’ll be rough on the, uh, stomach. Unless the toxin is boiled out of it.”
Kerr shrugged and knelt down by the beast’s flank and pulled a large knife from her belt. She sawed into its leg, cutting the limb free of the larger whole.
“I’ve got a skill that’ll help me deal with any issues I might have from eating it. Besides,” she motioned towards Eir, “We’ve got red tits here to fix me up if it gives me the shits.”
“That’s not my name,” Eir scolded, admonishing Kerr in a passable impression of a perturbed schoolteacher. “Please use proper names and titles.”
“Yes, Eir of the gloriously bountiful red bosom, as you command,” Kerr bowed her horned head with an exaggerated flourish.
While Kerr and Eir bickered, Syd examined the head of the salamander. The spot where the tossed boulder had hit was obvious, the beast’s skull partially caved in. However, despite being dented, the beast’s head didn’t have a large hole piercing three feet deep into it, as Jadis would have expected considering the effects of Aila’s force spike trap. Double checking the base of the rock, Jadis confirmed that the trap had indeed gone off when it had hit the salamander’s head. It just hadn’t shredded its skull. Jadis couldn’t tell if the trap had done any significant damage at all, compared to what the rock alone had done. When she pointed this out to Aila, the arcanist nodded slowly, one eyebrow arched.
“This beast probably had high Resilience. High enough to repel my magic attacks, which is no small thing considering your boost has brought it up to ninety-five points. It could have had natural resiliences to magic in general or force specifically, or skills that boosted its defenses. Hard to say.”
“Probably needed it to throw around all that fire,” Syd mused, poking its yellow body with the tip of her lance. “Otherwise it’d cook itself putting out so much heat.”
"No, my force magic is countered by Resilience, magically produced fire would be countered by Fortitude," Aila explained. "Though it is very possible for the beast to have both stats at a high level in order to counter many different kinds of magical effects."
"Ah," Syd nodded in understanding. "That makes some sense. That also explains why my attacks didn't seem to do as much damage."
“In any case, it’d be nice to have a mini version of this thing,” Dys sighed, standing up from her spot by the cooling corpse. “I miss cooked food. A little fire breathing lizard we could carry around to heat our meals would be fucking awesome.”
“It’d probably set our tent on fire in the middle of the night,” Aila pointed out. “If we had one,” she added a moment later.
“So we’d have to work on training it,” Dys quipped lightly. “Let a girl dream, would you?”
“We should get moving,” Jay said, stepping past the dead monster and moving a little further down the cave path. “I don’t know how much further this tunnel goes, but we’ll have to start thinking about checking the bigger side-tunnels soon to find a spot to rest. I feel like we’re making good distance with this straight path, but who knows when we’ll actually find—”
A deafening hiss pierced Jadis’ ears, making her teeth clench and her shoulders involuntarily cringe in reaction. The sound was like a thousand pissed-off pythons had all decided to voice their displeasure at the same time. Jadis whipped all three of her bodies around to face the sound as it continued to echo from behind them and saw a nightmare stalking towards her back line.
A huge lizard-like creature that made the salamander seem small was approaching from behind, it’s massive body wide enough to take up most of the tunnel. It had thick, gray-silver scales that had sharp, squared edges covering its entire body. Squat but powerful legs carried it along, each foot sporting claws that were as long as swords. A wide tail swept behind it, sharp scales saw-toothed down its sides, the huge appendage no doubt capable of ripping and tearing its way through an ox with a single swing. The truly horrifying part of the gigantic lizard was its head, though. Or rather, its heads.
Five long necks sprouted from the monster’s broad and powerful chest, each one ending in a snake-like head sporting wide neck-flaps flared out like some kind of roided-up cobra. Giant fangs too numerous to count bristled from each of the abomination’s maws, all of them dripping with saliva. Blood-red eyes surveyed the group, a bottomless hunger plain in their gluttonous gaze.
“Get back!” Jadis shouted in three unified voices, rushing to put her selves between the hydra and her companions. She didn’t know how strong the monstrosity was compared to anything else they had fought in the tunnels so far, but Jadis knew she didn’t want anyone near those giant dripping jaws.
“No!” Thea shouted, physically shoving her shield in Jay’s way as she tried to dash past. “It’s an illusion! Look behind you!”
What? An illusion?
Jadis balked, the giant monster before her obviously real and threatening. But she trusted Thea, the woman having shown her worth and competency. And besides, Jadis had more than one attention to spare in situations like this.
Jay spun back around to face the front again, at first seeing nothing but the darkness of tunnel stretching ahead of them. Then she realized that what she saw wasn’t just the omnipresent dimness of the cave-moss lit tunnels, it was complete and utter blackness, a void with no shape or texture.
As Jadis’ two other selves turned abruptly to face back towards the fore, Jay swung her mallet into the darkness before her. The blank nothingness rippled like water and faded away, just in time to reveal the true hydra just beyond the false veil. The gigantic lizard was practically on top of her, its illusions having distracted her and hidden its approach well enough that it had gotten within striking range uncontested.
Three of its five heads, the central and inner ones, lashed out, wide mouths lunging forward to take bites out of Jay. Reacting with all the speed her massively boosted agility afforded, Jay leapt back, swinging her mallet at the snapping jaws of the middle head.
Her wooden weapon struck the scaled snout of the hydra in a glancing blow, but it was enough to keep it from latching onto her as she dodged through the air, landing several feet back and practically squashing Eir who just barely managed to get out of the way of the Nephilim’s fast-moving body. A second later and Dys and Syd were to the fore, maul and lance swinging and stabbing at the snapping heads of the beast. With the two of her selves blocking the way forward, the menacing monster could no longer easily advance, though it made every effort to either bite them or push past to easier targets.
“Fall back!” Jay ordered, sweeping her arms around and motioning her companions to back down the tunnel. “Give us room!”
The others followed orders and backed away, the convincing illusion of the hydra gone and no longer blocking their retreat. Jadis backed up as well, giving the beast ground as its many heads reared back and snapped forward, its terrible hissing still filling the cavern with its deafening howl. Jadis kept the snapping jaws at bay with supernaturally fast and strong jabs of her weapons, but purposefully backed far enough down the tunnel to give the hungry monster enough space to get to the giant salamander her group had just slain.
With any luck, Jadis hoped the hydra would be distracted by the free meal and she and her companions could escape, no fighting necessary.
That hope was squashed immediately as the two right-side heads of the hydra snapped up the corpse and began tugging at it between them while the beast continued to advance towards them. The other three heads and their beady red eyes were locked onto the tasty morsels it saw before it, forked tongues flicking the air in anticipation of a true feast. The hydra’s greedy gullet wasn’t going to let them flee without a fight.
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