Risha: Chapter 52

A smack echoed out. A small pale goblin flew and rolled on the ground, she then got to her knees, shivering with fear. “Masters! Monsters! Take crystals! Hurry.” 

She whimpered as the monster raised its hand again.

“Wait.”

The creature who’d hit the small goblin paused, then looked over to its leader. The leader stepped forward, gazing at the small pale goblin. The leader was massive, as large as a Black Lupus Kobold, its veins shined through its skin like lava through molten rock, and it had two massive horns on its head which curved in towards each other.

The four creatures who surrounded the leader were smaller, having only single horns on one side of their head. Still, they carried well-forged weapons and armor.

The two-horned leader leaned over the tiny goblin, “Something takes our crystals? What fool dares to anger the almighty Koliekan?” 

“Many!” the tiny goblin held up its quivering hand, showing four fingers. “Ola good goblin.”

“Show us.”

The tiny goblin slowly rose from the ground, nearly fainting as she came face to face with the monster who stood over her. His eyes were two black orbs, with barely any white visible, and red triangle tattoos sat just below his eyes on his cheeks.

The goblin slowly turned away, then hurried along the path as fast as her tiny legs could carry her. 

The monster turned to his companions, then motioned for them to follow. Behind them a hundred legged monster followed, climbing up the wall as it readied for its next meal.

***

On one of the pillars leading to the ceiling, a large purple spider huddled near the top, a familiar goblin holding tight with her legs as she pulled the string of her bow back. 

Risha breathed in, then let it go, her anger leaving her as her mind focused on the battle to come. Across the ceiling, and hiding amongst the pillars, Risha’s spiders waited in their webs.

The patter of tiny feet slowly approached, followed by the clink of metal, and further in the distance, a taptaptapap that Risha didn’t recognize.

Risha fully drew her bow as the tiny goblin stumbled over her steps and walked into view. 

“Soon masters! Ola good goblin.” The goblin babbled as she approached their hiding spot.

“Quiet! Your words scratch at my ears.” 

“Yes Master.” Ola glanced up, and spotted Risha, then stepped around a pillar, her voice carrying towards the five monsters who followed her, suddenly gaining distance as her form shifted. “Follow Ola!”

Risha drew her arrow back.

A screech grated at her ears, rattling her body as she loosed the arrow without meaning to. 

Risha looked up to see a giant hundred-leggeed monster barreling towards her, its pinchers opening wide as it hungered for her flesh. 

Webs wrapped around it, glowing with purple mist. It screeched again, the webs dissolving against its body as acid secreted from its pores.

“Give me your spiders!” Klaz’zks called in her spider form. 

“Help her!” Risha said, then ducked as a sword whizzed past her ear, burying itself into the stone of the pillar. Her eyes focused on the chain attached to the sword, then she dropped from the spider she’d been riding, a second sword attached to a chain barely missing the both of them. 

Risha fell through the air, then called upon the magic within her as she pushed with her hands towards the quickly approaching ground.

Her bone necklace glowed with spirit, and the spell came to her easily as wind wrapped around her and lowered her to the floor. 

The swords were pulled from the pillar, the chains returning to the hands of the large monster. Risha briefly remembered her fight with Earth-Shaker as she looked up at the creature before her, but something about this one screamed danger to all of her instincts. Sticking out of his metal armor was the arrow she’d loosed, somehow puncturing the iron.

The demon huffed, steam rising from its skin. Then the warriors with her acted. 

An arena of silver spread around them, as Talo lowered the wraps from his face, covering the world with his light. Kyra dropped from the shadows Talo’s light had created, her dagger puncturing the neck of one of the five demons and his light shifted, creating darkness for her to step back into.

An arrow shot from far behind them where Dilo guarded the real Ola, only for one of the demons to step forward and block it with a large heater shield.  

Diel stepped up beside Risha, while Mist-Prowler was nowhere to be seen, but Risha trusted her to be nearby. 

Risha had eyes for none of it, her gaze watching the biggest threat in the room with caution. 

“Keep the others off of us,” Risha said to Diel, pulling another arrow from her quiver. 

The deathbringer nodded. 

The standoff between the two of them ended like that. Risha loosed her arrow, and a sword attached to a chain flew towards her. 

***

Klaz’zks skittered away from the fangs of the creature, webs flying forward to catch the spears of stone that followed. 

Risha’s spiderlings produced webs, giving Klaz’zks more of the material as her spirit flowed through it. Some of them tried to attack, but were quickly held back by the hundred spears of stone that the many-legged creature controlled independently.  

Klaz’zks shifted into her half-human form, her spider legs carrying her along the wall as she dodged the spears that came from the air and the wall itself.

Her ten fingers worked with the webs, drawing them and moving them to stop the centipede from joining the fight below. Even when her webs touched the creature, the acid dissolved them before her venom could pierce its hide. 

Klaz'zks jumped from a pillar as it collapsed. The centipede followed, the crazed hunger in its eyes driving away all reason.

Six more eyes opened on Klaz’zks’s forehead, helping her watch all of the points of this fight. 

Another jump as it dived at her, following her deeper into the web she crafted with the help of Risha’s spiderlings. 

A movement of magic was all the warning Klaz’zks had to move as more earth shot from the wall under her.

Deeper. Follow me deeper.

Klaz’zks chittered, taunting the monster that was larger than her. 

It screeched back, the infernal sound shaking the earth itself. 

Klaz’zks laughed, then skittered away as ten earth spears pierced the spot she’d been standing. 

“Can you hear me? Or is your brain so addled that words are lost to you?”

“DIIIIIIIEEEEE,” was the creature’s only response.

More webs wrapped around it, only to melt away with the acid, “Oh, you poor thing, so blind, so stupid.”

Another screech followed, only for webs to briefly wrap around its mouth before dissolving. “I WILL DEVOUR YOU, SPIDER.”

Klaz’zks snorted, her legs pulling her into the perfect spot at the center of eight pillars. “No, I don’t believe you will.” 

The creature jumped at her, savoring that she was finally in reach.

Spirit flooded through her, traveling through the thousands of webs that filled the room. The creature barreled into the webs, but they didn’t immediately dissolve, instead slowly disappearing. 

Klaz’zks moved her fingers, and the webs collapsed, wrapping the creature faster than it could dissolve the webs. It screeched, but this time in pain as Klaz’zks’s venom seeped through the webs into its body. 

The spiderlings climbed the webs, sinking their fangs into the centipede, and adding their venom to Klaz’zks’s. It screamed as its insides melted.

Klaz’zks didn’t care.

***

Risha ducked under the sword, as her arrow flew past their leader and pierced the neck of another one of them, black poison spreading from the bone arrowhead.

The second sword flew towards her, making her jump and push with air to dodge the destructive weapons, the ground shattering behind her. 

Risha drew her sword as she landed, then ran forward. 

The demon pulled on the chains, and Risha’s instincts saved her as she dropped and rolled away from the returning swords. 

Risha jumped forward, using wind to push her forward into the demon. Her sword swung forward.

The demon scoffed as he stepped away from the swing, easily dodging it.

Risha smiled as magic followed the slash, slicing forward in the trick she’d learned from the orc chief. 

It cut into the demon’s face and armor as it barely dodged, leaving a line of blood and dented metal. 

Risha twisted and jumped as the demon’s swords immediately sliced towards her, cutting through the air in a maelstrom that didn’t allow her a moment to rest as she danced through it, blocking with her sword where she was forced to. 

Slowly, cuts made their way through her defences, slicing her legs and arms, as the sharp swords never seemed to stop moving.

That was fine with Risha. As the fight continued, Risha felt one of her abilities pick up the slack.

[Mother’s Ferocity]

As the battle continued, the demon started landing less and less attacks, her sword deflecting the chain swords with greater and greater strength, as she returned her own swipes of purple sharpness.

The demon frowned, and then something shifted. 

A heartbeat thrummed through the cave, and the chain swords lit with unnatural fire. On top of the demon’s head, his horns too, lit with the unnatural fire.

Burns followed every slash as they increased in speed, forcing Risha to retreat further and further away from the attacks. Her own slashes of sharpness dissipated on the flames before they could reach the demon, and he stepped forward.

Risha couldn’t attack as everything in her focused on moving and dodging the faster swords. 

Use the panther. A familiar shaman whispered to her.

Risha followed the words without thought, and she disappeared, the world turning to shadow as a single step took her several paces.

Risha paused as the two swords impacted the ground where she’d been standing a moment before. 

Then she smiled wide. 

A single step through the darkness, and she was in front of the demon, whose eyes widened in surprise.

Her sword cut through armor, taking an arm, as the demon twisted away.

The arm fell to the ground, the demon staring in shock.

Risha’s sword followed, cutting through the demon’s neck.

The demon’s eyes saw its body as it slowly fell to the floor and rolled away. 

Risha looked around to see the last of the demons pierced by a blade of silver coming from the light that Talo controlled. Diel stood a few paces away, breathing heavily and covered in blood, most of it not his. 

The deathbringer healed as something flowed from the dead demon into him. 

Risha bared her teeth at the corpses of the five slavers.