The thought of slowly suffocating to death while entirely unable to move filled him with horror. With a renewed effort, Benin thrust his other arm in, leaning all the way down the snake’s throat and pushing through pulsing flesh and muscle to better grip the gnomish warrior.
This time, when he pulled with both hands, the gnome came slithering out. Benin fell back on his backside, and the gnome landed in his lap. Benin pulled his sleeves back down and used them to wipe the thick layer of saliva, or whatever it was that covered the little guy’s face, but he wasn’t breathing.
“Can we go now?”
Sweat poured down Coll’s face. His arms were beginning to tremble. It wouldn’t be long before his stamina gave out.
“Just a little longer.” Benin glanced at his mana globes. He was still low, but he had plenty for this. He only hoped it wouldn’t fry his target.
He held a hand out over the gnome’s chest. The emberfox climbed up his back and onto his shoulder, curious.
A spark leapt from his palm to the gnome’s chest. Its entire body jolted. When nothing else happened, Benin prepared to do it again—but then the gnome gasped suddenly, eyes opening wide. He looked around wildly, coughing and gasping. Gradually his face changed from its bluish pallor to something more closely resembling its usual ruddy-cheeked pink.
“Now can we go?”
Coll’s entire body was shaking violently. Even as Benin watched, the snake’s jaws began to force themselves closed inch by inch.
“When I say, let go and roll away.”
Coll nodded, veins and tendons in his neck standing out starkly with the strain. Swirling sparks crackled in Benin’s hand as he took aim between those monstrous jaws.
“Now!”
Benin launched the Lightning Ball. It sailed into the snake’s mouth just as Coll let go; its jaws snapped shut around the crackling ball. Benin clenched his fist and the ball detonated.
He’d been half-hoping for a dramatic explosion. Instead, the snake shook its head as if confused. Tendrils of smoke wafted from its mouth.
He had the barest sliver of mana remaining, hardly enough for the meanest cantrip. It was clear Coll was empty too. He could barely stand, let alone lift his hammer. Stamina was to a warrior what mana was to a mage, and wrestling this ancient behemoth had drained his companion almost dry.
They were both done.
We have to go, he signaled to Coll, who nodded wearily.
Benin leaned forward to scoop up the gnome, who was thankfully in one piece, snakeskin trousers and all. He was heavier than he’d expected, and clearly unhappy at being carried like a babe, but they needed to get out of here as quickly as possible.
But the snake was angry. Rather than listening for its prey, tasting the air, or resting its jaw on the water’s surface to feel for vibrations, it was snapping unpredictably at the air all around it. And Benin was on the wrong side.
As he turned to look for a different path around the snake, it twisted and snapped at him. It came so close its fangs grazed his chest, and he gasped in shock. When the snake, having confirmed his location, came back for another bite, he stood frozen.
Before it reached him, though, something shot in from the side, and its face and neck were coated in a sticky, web-like substance. It snapped its jaws closed prematurely, then found it could not open them again thanks to the sticky fluid.
Hardly able to believe he was still alive and whole, Benin scanned the heavy mist in the direction the projectile had come from. From the twisted branches of a tree only just within sight, eight eyes gleamed in the weak sunlight.
Then the spider was scrabbling at the tree, trying to resist being dragged back by some invisible force, presumably the Core’s influence.
The gnome he was carrying saluted the spider weakly. Benin found himself following suit, raising his free hand to the arachnid. It seemed to relax, and let itself be dragged away, though its cluster of eyes continued to stare back at him. He still found it unnerving, but far less so than when he’d first met the creature.
“Ben!”
Coll’s shout made him turn just in time to see the snake lunging for him yet again. Even as he stumbled backwards with a yell, lifelong instincts had him reaching for his fire, and a weak stream of flames burst from his outstretched palms into the serpent’s face. It shrieked at the heat but its skin remained uncharred.
Idiot, he berated himself. Fire doesn’t work. Its scales don’t burn!
Binky’s webbing did, though. The flames licked at it ravenously, as though delighted to have finally found a substance they could consume. The giant snake—impaled, enwebbed, and now incinerated—writhed furiously, screeching and shrieking in defeat as it sank beneath the water.
“Is it dead?” Coll asked.
“Don’t know. Don’t care. Let’s go.”
With the emberfox on his shoulder and the regurgitated gnome warrior under his arm, Benin hurried along the path in the direction he’d seen the spider disappear. Other than a tense moment in which they triggered one last shrieker shroom, their retreat was uneventful.
He couldn’t help glancing back. Smoke from the burned webbing lingered in the air, hanging oddly among the mist. The broken tree on which they’d impaled the serpent was now a distant silhouette, a vague jagged shape that could as easily have been any old log as the final resting place of an ancient reptile.
I never liked snakes much anyway.
Forty-Eight
Creature Intersection
Corey
Despite my wish to never again set foot in a marsh, sending scouts back later to harvest spores from the shriekers was a must. If we could cultivate them in our new home, the shriekers would basically serve as free guardians, with no mana or Creation cost.
Unless I infuse them with Growth… I wonder if giant shriekers would make enough noise to actually damage intruders?
My thoughts also lingered on the massive snake we’d encountered. The terrifying fact of its very existence notwithstanding, something about the Marsh
