“Fall back!” I ordered him, and Arrin stepped up to take his place, firing a Firebolt into its face.
Where Lydia’s and my weapons had barely registered on the creature, the fire did. It spread quickly, flashing across the surface of its flesh as the acidic slime burst into flames.
The creature making a high-pitched mewling sound as it shook itself from side to side, trying to shake the fire off.
I grinned as I channeled my own firebolt spell, not into my hand to throw, but instead into the naginata.
It immediately burst to life, the length of the weapon glowing a red that cycled all the way from a dark red as it began, to a bright blazing white as I plunged the weapon deeper, then slashed it from side to side, eviscerating the creature and cutting its head free.
I stepped back, pulling my mana back into myself and letting the naginata return to its normal color as the creature collapsed to the ground, seemingly dead.
The remains twitched as the flames still coating it caused pockets of fat to pop and crackle, but as soon as I saw the small death’s head float up from the corpse, I relaxed. For all of a second.
I could hear whimpering from behind me, and I spun to see Miren laid on the floor of the tunnel, Stephanos holding her arms down, as Jian poured a healing potion over the raised and bubbling skin of her face and neck.
Whatever caustic shit the creature had spit at her, it was steadily burning through her skin, making it bubble away as it sank deeper.
I had a few potions I’d made when we’d been experimenting, but as I frantically checked them, I saw there was nothing that would act to counteract the acid, and I growled at myself, mentally adding more potions and counter agents to my list to learn. I cast ‘Battlefield Triage’ on Miren, channeling it for over a minute before the crap burnt out.
Barrett luckily had a spare shirt and had wiped the majority of the slime off his hand with it before it dissolved, He was using a healing potion on it and didn’t need my help.
“Where’s Bane?” Arrin asked, and my blood ran cold. There was no way that thing should have been able to get past him, so something must have happened.
“Fuck.” I whispered, looking at the corpse that filled the tunnel before me.
It was slumping even lower to the ground now, as whatever muscles had kept it in its semi inflated shape released in death, but it was long, and whatever had burned Barrett could still be covering it, despite the flames that had spread.
“I’m going after him.” I said after a second, only to have Barrett and Lydia speak up immediately.
“No, you can’t…”
“I’ll go...”
“No,” I said cutting them off. “I’ve the best chance to get around there. I can run, jump off the walls, and…”
“And probably die when you fall on its back and dissolve.” Barrett finished for me. “We’ve no idea how long the thing is; what if it’s hundreds of feet long?”
“I…” I broke off, knowing they were right, but Bane was out there somewhere, and something must have happened for this thing to get past him. I needed to get to him; I needed to get to Oracle!
“I’ll burn it.” I turned to see Arrin standing next to the corpse. I regarded him thoughtfully, and he grinned at me. “You gave me FlameShield and Magic Missile, remember?” I nodded.
“So, all I’ve got to do… is walk forward while I channel into the shield, right? It’ll burn the corpse, wont it?”
I paused for a second before grinning back at him and passing a mana potion over.
“Do it!” I told him, and he started to cast, walking forward as we moved back, his gestures describing a circle around him, three feet out from the ends of his fingers. As his hands moved faster and faster, the flames that appeared at the tips of his fingers began to drip, falling and flowing in the air as he moved. They began to swirl, drawn into a pattern as though being blown by the wind to coat the outside of an invisible bubble, and he slowly began to walk forward.
The minute the outer edge touched the corpse, it began to blacken and shrivel, the skin crisping up and curling back as fats inside the body began to pop and crackle.
Arrin moved slowly, a single step, then a pause, and a second step. I had to resist the urge to shout at him, but I knew he was going as fast as he could. Long minutes passed as he took the corner, finding another dozen or more feet of the corpse ahead of him, only partially burnt.
I exchanged a long look with Barrett and nodded, admitting that he was right.
“Glad to see we agreed, Jax,” he whispered. “Just think how lucky you are that Oren isn’t here; he’d be telling you ‘I told you so…’ but not me. I don’t need to say it. I’m a bigger man than that.”
“Not by fucking much you’re not, mate. He’s a bloody dwarf, and you’re still only what? A foot taller?”
I whispered back, grinning at the black look he gave me. “Don’t worry, though, just like you’d not say, ‘I told you so’, I’d never draw attention to your shortcomings…”
With that, Arrin released his FlameShield, the corpse withered and blacked to such a degree that we could walk across the top safely, and he started chugging the mana potion I’d given him.
“Let’s go!” I said, pushing forward. I clapped Arrin on the shoulder in congratulations and started to run, taking the twists and turns of the tunnel at speed. My meridian-enhanced vision worked in concert with the Tracking Skill to occasionally highlight Bane’s distinctive three-digit toes where he’d left a print.
It was only a handful of minutes before we passed a side tunnel that the creature had clearly come from, and
