I did not reply, as I needed all my breath for screaming.
“Huh, wait-how’s this?” Instead of being on fire, I felt as though a colony of soldier ants had taken up residence inside my spine and was currently exploring its new territory. Thousands of ants marching along under my skin, along my veins, burrowing into my muscles, crawling around the inside of my ears…
“Tolerable,” I said through clenched teeth. At least it didn’t hurt.
“Itching uses the same nerves as touch/pain-that’s why scratching works, did you know that?”
“Yes, I did,” I said. “And thank you so much for mentioning scratching.”
But at least we were mobile, which was fortunate, given that the magma scorpions had already rounded the collection pool and were nearing flat ground behind us. I ran with not only every ounce of my own energy, but with all the mana I had left. There was no point saving it for later until I found some indication that I would have anything resembling a “later.”
The curious residents of the neighborhood gave back as I ran toward them. It seemed no one was interested in stopping, or even getting significantly in the way of, a large naked running man covered in fermented shit.
“Aren’t you gonna warn people?”
“Of what?”
“Uh, giant, killer rock-bug monsters that set everything on fire?”
“I believe,” I said, “the situation is self-explanatory.”
This was amply demonstrated as people around us began to not press away from us so much as run after us, presumably on the assumption that having survived one of the beasts, I might actually know where I was going. This was a development of which I thoroughly approved, as a large mob of people at my back might slow the magma scorpions enough to let me reach a sculler skiff before they could overtake me-which was why I was astonished and no little amount dismayed to find myself stopping and turning back to the swelling crowd that followed.
“They’re after me!” I shouted with all of my considerable natural lung power. Amplification would have expended mana that I could not spare. “Stay out of their way and they will not harm you! They’re after me!”
They must have gotten the message, as they scattered in all directions, leaving me with a very clear view- vividly illuminated by the great swathes of fire that roared up from everything they touched-of the two remaining monsters coming after me faster than ever.
I turned and, excuse the expression, streaked away.
“Oh, sure, when I want to warn people, the situation is self-explanatory-”
“Shut up.”
There was very little I could do to evade them here in Tidehollow, besides which they were almost certainly tracking the etherium that had triggered their summoning-etherium I had no intention of abandoning. Ever. My best remaining idea was to run tiny hair-thin wires out of the etherium on my back, and stab them into my hamstrings and buttocks, using the etherium’s innate energy to add strength to my failing muscles and send us along at a very brisk clip.
“This is good. This is fast,” Doc said. “How come we didn’t do this before?”
“Because you never stayed quiet long enough for me to think of it.”
“Awww…”
“If you shut up now, I might be able to gimmick a way to fly.”
“Seriously? Because that’d be really-”
“Shut up.”
He actually did, for a brief interval, during which I did not endeavor to think up a way to fly; I was too busy trying to think of a way to kill him.
All too shortly, I ran out of ground. A lightning detour during a second or two that I was out of their line of sight sent me skidding down a steep and slippery path that ended in a salt-caked bank of an utterly, utterly still pool. Only a few yards beyond the shore, the pool and the cavern overhead faded off into dank and impenetrable night. The bank around me was featureless save for the sculler’s cleat of worn-smooth moonstone, glowing with a soft pearlescent light that did nothing to hold back the gloom.
“Awesome!” Doc said. “Now all we have to do is swim-”
“No.” I clapped a hand to the back of my head, and as I had expected, the exertions of the chase had reopened the scalp wound with which Bolas had so considerately supplied me. I took the handful of my blood and smeared it into the slightly concave summoning dish on the top of the sculler’s cleat, hoping that the admixture of sewage wouldn’t interfere with the cleat’s magic.
Then there was nothing to do but wait.
“We’re not swimming? I can make you-”
“Do you know what sluice serpents are?”
“Are they as bad as magma scorpions?”
“Not remotely. But they are entirely bad enough to kill me.”
“You mean us.”
“There are also three distinct species of kraken that use these tide caves as their spawning ground. Kraken are viviparous, and the young are born hungry.”
“Uh. Yeah. I get it. We can wait.”
The clatter of armored feet announced the approach of the magma scorpions even before the tunnel showed the light of the fires they left in their wake. I waded out into the tide pool as deep as I dared, salt water doing such unkind things to my varied array of cuts and scrapes that for a moment, the sting overwhelmed the itching.
The magma scorpions moved toward me from the tunnel mouth with gratifying caution. One stayed on the bank, scuttling back and forth to cut off escape in that direction, while the other went to the cavern wall and began to climb.
“Where’s he going?”
“She.”
“You can tell? How can you tell?”
I glanced up to the erosion-pitted limestone of the cavern’s ceiling. “That’s where she’s going.”
“What’s she think she’s gonna do from up there?”
“Fall on us.”
“Um…”
“Summoned creatures usually accomplish their bound task or die in the attempt. Or-like this one-both.”
“Uh… can you unbind them? Send them home?”
“Not today.” To avoid more whining, I offered a scrap of hope. “But this kind of trigger-based summoning has a fixed amount of mana attached to it. Without a mage to maintain their presence, they’ll return to their own plane when the fixed mana is exhausted.”
“Which will be when?”
“No matter what everyone says about me,” I said, “I don’t actually know everything.”
“Oh, ha ha. Ha. So what’s the plan?”
“You need me to say it again?” A sudden stabbing crick in my neck forced my head back and turned my face toward the ceiling, where the magma scorpion was picking its way in our direction. “Stop that.”
The crick only intensified. “I want to see.”
“I need my eyes for something else right now.”
“More important than dying?”
“How about instead of dying?”
“Fine.” The pain vanished. “I’m in.”
“Thanks so much.” I turned away from the bank and, as I had hoped, caught sight of a silent, spectral shape approaching through the gloom, gaining solidity as it came. Having a great deal less to fear from scullers than most, I have availed myself of their services in the past. Familiarity, however, did nothing to put me at ease as the creature poled its skiff toward us out of the darkness.
The skiff had witchlight globes hanging from both its upcurved prow and similar stern, but while these lights were easily seen, they did not actually illuminate the shroud of shadows within the craft. The sculler itself was visible only as a thin drape of hooded cloak in the darkness. Its sleeves draped along skeletally thin arms fleshed with corpse-pale skin as it leaned on its pole to drive the skiff forward.
