Chapter 246: Warm Blooded Greetings (P2)

Long, agile and a sick shade of green, two monstrous lizards skitter across the floor, approaching me at a rapid pace as they zigzag through each other's paths to confuse. With each snap of my finger bolts of blood, green and blue in colour snap out of the globules suspended above my head.

The bolts miss their slippery targets and I'm forced to push back. One makes it close enough to lunge and with an angry wave of my hand a bone spears through its thin chest, taking it out of the air. 

My defense is breached by the other that'd lunged lower, tackling me to the ground. I snap out my dagger and desperately try to keep it from digging its fangs into my shoulder. It's a bigger struggle than I thought it would be, its teeth bare against me, my hands pushing its long, razor sharp filled mouth away from my face with all that's left of my arm strength. 

It's fortunate I'm a multitasker. Wispy green tendrils wrap around its long thin body and grip. It hisses in pain, necrotic mana eating away at its scaly skin. With a heft my tendrils toss the beast aside, slamming it into a wall hard enough to loosen rocks. My attack doesn't end, before it can shake off the dizzying effects of the bash I skewer it, pinning it to the wall with perhaps more green blood shards than necessary. 

Huffing and panting, I pick myself off the floor and gulp, "Jungle, Shaco, get out of there."

Shaco, Jungle and Anselm all combat the same horde of long, slippery monster lizards the size of a large dog and several times the length of anything I've seen. Walking on four limbs these things prioritize speed, it's not easy to pin them down, or get away from their chase. The bastards.

Releasing a small, contained blast from the tip of his spear, Jungle momentarily blinds and scalds three of the monster lizards plaguing him and retreats. Shaco slithers around the lizards, proving to be just as slippery and even more so given his ability to control his size and species. Delivering some final doses of venom into their necks he enlarges himself, large enough he can smack two of the three aside and slither away from the last.

Anselm turns intangible and gives me the go ahead, this single ability rendering him invulnerable to the swipes and gnashing maws of his set of monster lizards.

My two large globules of blood, green and blue gathered from differing monsters, fuse. Spinning the fusion the result is a large ball of cyan coloured monster blood, I set it in front of me and my allies. The lizards make haste to recover and continue their relentless attack but we're in a narrow space, it's to my advantage when I say

"Blood Series; Blood Shower!"

Cyan blood rattles out of the globule, tiny shards of blood hardening as they tear through the air and hopefully through the flesh of our enemies, I keep up the attack, the sound of blood shards breaking through rock, the screeches of the lizards and the gurgling sounds of more blood being spilt. 

By the time I let up my attack my globule of blood is half the size it was at the beginning, I huff and look back at Jungle and Anselm, "That should be enough."

Pulling it away from my sight, setting it back to hovering behind me I see that it is enough. The attack has somewhat changed the open landscape, broken through rock pillars, torn open large tears in the ground and littered the place with fresh corpses of these lizards.

"Seems like it, yes." Jungle mutters through laboured breaths and pants, his step weak and his grip on his spear loosened with no danger around.

Falling on my ass I groan. We've been at it for hours, each few steps through the cave brought on a new scaly beast or a familiar one. We left the tunnel hours ago and walked into an open underground with a ceiling higher than I believed it would be. With us at the mouth of the first tunnel Anselm scouted, we believe there's several layers more of this chaos to comb through in search of the Beast Mother.

The reptiles aren't the only things trying to kill us though. When we tried to navigate through some bushes to get to the wall on the other side and climb into the next layer, we were beset by the flora and fauna. Not too dissimilar to the way the Shambling Mound appeared out of the shrubbery to pound us, except unlike the Mound, many of these plants have teeth. And by the tears and gaps in our clothing, burning digestive acid.

But so far we've made it through three levels but several more, more than we can handle as is await us. And the Beast Mother is nowhere to be found.

"I don't think we can go any further." I gasp. Shaking my head at the bleeding twitching corpses of our latest foes. "We haven't seen a normal snake in hours, this place is more than what you said it would be, Jungle."

The man sits beside me, laying his spear on the ground as he lowers himself with a grunt, "Of course it is, I have no true scope how the Beast Mother has adapted this place to suit its needs, by the look of things, it's likely the one pulling all these monsters into submission, this ecosystem is dominated by her and her children."

Shaco slithers into my lap, coiling quiet around me and Anselm floats forward, the only one not plagued with fatigue, "I'm a bit glad we haven't run into more of those children of hers, Asher is more or less useless against them and they can use magic in ways none of us can anticipate, the further we go the more beatings we take."

It wouldn't be such a problem if we had the numbers to hold against theirs, a bit I'm more than a bit ashamed of as a Necromancer. As of yet I've only managed to control some hordes of lizards, but each time we come across a snake, the large ones with wide, large hoods, tough hides and sometimes fucking wings, my horde has been promptly dispatched by their magic and quick fire attacks.

It'd be something if I could raise their corpses when we kill it, but that's not the case. The piles of white dust we met at the entrance are indeed their remains. I don't know how its done or how it's even biologically possible, but the moment life drains out of them, either from a well placed stab, a boulder of ice crushing their skulls, a blast of fire taking their insides or even giving it up to the venom Shaco fills them with. Whatever the method is, they always turn to white powder.

"Jungle, we can't keep this up, we're going to lose." As much as I hate to admit it, I'm outmatched, outnumbered and if this is the challenge we can expect from the Beast Mother's underlings, I'm also outclassed.

He growls and snaps at me, "You promised, Mage, you said you would aid me in this, in ending the Beast Mother."

"Can we even kill the Beast Mother?" Anselm starts, voicing my deep inhibitions, "Look at what her children are capable of, and those aren't even the strongest we've faced. If there are more of the larger, fire breathing regenerating snakes like the first one we fought to be met ahead, then I doubt we can manage against the Mother, at least not without something powerful on our side."

Jungle gives me a side glance, his clean green armour worn and torn from acid, bites and bashes. It's been a tough journey. Through gritted teeth he asks, "And what about the orb you found? Can you not do some wicked magic with it?"

In truth, I can. All this fighting has not been in vain, in fact, its the opposite, there are new spells to try out and a shiny new ritual that promises a trusty undead should I give up ten souls to it. But this isn't a situation to test out new spells, not when these monsters are an inch away from snapping my head off my shoulders. It is not the time for experiments. 

I am also going to hold off on rituals. At least until we leave the confines of the Spriggans reach and psuedo realm, I'm not sure if these undergrounds count as part of its Forest, but I'm not going to take the chance that it is and make an enemy of the fucking land.

"I need time." I say, shaking my head, "And control, I clearly don't have that here, if not we'd be winning. We retreat for now, fill up on food, get some rest and practise new skills and share what we've learned from the battles. Then we return, this doesn't end until the Beast Mother is dead, I keep my word, Jungle."

I don't need to see his face to know that he isn't the happiest about the plan, I offer him a hand up and he stares at it for a moment, but he takes it in the end and squeezes hard.

"You better."