B01DCAV4W2 (S) (34 page)

Ten kobolds were at the bottom of the slope and they were mounted!  Their steeds looked like centipedes only thousands of times larger than the small insects he had seen on Earth.  As he watched, one of the mounts opened its and Richter saw a row of needle sharp teeth.  A kobold pointed it spear at him and roared, Richter’s form easily seen in Futen’s light!  They all took off towards him. 

“Shit!”  Richter turned back towards the top of the slope and willed his legs to move faster.  Despite his stamina being near empty, his fear gave him extra strength.  He only had a quarter mile left up the slope.  He had to make it!

He risked another look behind him and saw they were coming up fast.  Too fast!  One broke ahead of the pack and raced up the tunnel.  It hit the greasy spot well ahead of the rest and the mount’s thousands of tiny legs scrabbled for purchase, but it tipped forward.  The centipede was going so fast it flipped end over end and the kobold rider flew forward and landed with a thud.  Richter started to cheer internally, but then saw the other centipedes veer to either side of the grease patch.  The tunnel was narrow enough that the ten-foot radius of the
Grease
spell covered the entire floor, but it didn’t stop them! 

The remaining nine kobolds built speed and then kept running
on the walls!
  Their sharp, strong legs found dug into the stone walls just enough to keep them horizontal until they passed the obstacle.  Once they were past the spells AoE, they came back to the tunnel floor without pause and kept running.

“Shit!  Shit!  Shit!”  Richter stared at them and then looked up the slope.  There was no way that he could cross the remaining distance before they caught him.  He wasn’t going to make it!  Praying that this worked, he quickly reached into his Bag and took out the spring wall he had found on Sonirae’s body.  “You better fucking work!” he shouted at the bar of compressed steel.  He angled the item so that the ends pointed at the tunnel walls, made sure Alma and Futen were further up the hill than he was, and then removed the latch. 

A split second later, the spring wall deployed.  Richter fell onto his butt with a startled yell.  The wall shot out along the plane he had angled it in its compressed form.  It made a loud
TING
as it released and then the sharp points along the edges of the device sunk into the stone of the tunnel walls with dozens of small
thunks
!  It looked like a chain link fence, but with much smaller holes and much thicker metal.  The kobolds roared as they closed on his position. 

Richter scrabbled backwards, slipping in the gravel as he tried to get to his feet.  The first of the centipedes reached the spring wall and tried to barrel through it.  The wall buckled under its weight and the high steel mesh bowed towards him.  The mount’s teeth gnashed as it tried to close the remaining feet between them.  Richter looked into the eyes of the kobold rider whose reptilian mouth was pulled back in a rictus of battle lust.  It clearly tasted victory, and its spear was pulled back to stab him as soon as the centipede broke through the steel barrier.  But the wall held.  The wall held!

The spring wall had flexed like a net under the kobold’s charge, but then snapped back into shape.  The kobold and its mount were pushed back and the others quickly reigned in to avoid a pile up.  Richter shouted, “Yes!” and then regained his feet.  He smiled cockily at the kobolds, but then one brought out an axe and chopped at the wall, leaving a small tear in one of the links.

“Fair enough,” he said quietly with a small nod of his head.  The cockiness faded and he turned to start running up the hill.  Then, he had one of the most wonderful thoughts he had ever had since he started thinking!  He smiled at the kobolds again.  Oh yes boys, he thought, the cockiness is back, and it's bigger and veinier than ever! 

Richter surreptitiously aimed his Ring of Spell Storage at one of the kobold’s, barely raising his arm.  He released his stored
Charm
spell.  With his other arm he enchanted a second rider.  A gold glow surrounded his hand as he cast the spell catching the kobolds’ attention.   The enchantments were only phase one.  Phase two of his plan was where the sneakiness came in.

Richter very blatantly pointed at a kobold
next
to the first one he had charmed and said in the barking language of the kobolds’, “My charmed creature!  I your master, command you to kill all of the other kobolds!” 

The male that had been pointed at, stared across the wall with surprised and widened eyes.  Before the rider could refute Richter’s claim however, the charmed kobold obeyed his master’s spoken command.   A studded mace swung down with crushing force, and the kobold Richter had singled out slid bonelessly off of his centipede. 

At the same time, Richter’s other charmed reptilian stabbed a fourth kobold with a spear.  After that, the entire mounted force began clubbing, stabbing and slashing each other in a wonderful bloody mess.  The kobolds’ natural combativeness and divisiveness made them turn upon each other in a desperate bid to preserve their own individual lives.  Only a few feet of space and a high steel mesh wall separated Richter from the slaughter, and as the Chaos Seed looked upon his handiwork, he inhaled a deep, satisfied breath. 

In the months afterward, Richter could admit to himself that he may have watched the brutal tableau a bit longer than he should have, listening happily as screams and grunts filled the air.  He would be able to concede that he enjoyed witnessing the gore and the death and black misted blood, more than any sane person should have.  At the time of the massacre however, with his nerves stretched to the breaking point, no deep thoughts were crossing his mind.  Richter just stood with a smile and enjoyed the show.   

When only three of the mounted force were left alive, Richter looked past them and down the slope.  He saw a second mass of kobolds, both mounted and otherwise, gathering at the bottom of the hill.  As this army surged up towards him, he gave one last fond look at the kobolds killing themselves in front of him, before turning and running the rest of the way up the hill.

Richter made it to the top of the incline and turned right.  Just as the charmed kobolds had described, a narrow cave connected to the tunnel and led outside.  A waterfall fell from above the mouth of the cave, leaving the cave shrouded in shadow.  That didn't matter to Richter.  He was almost outside! 

He ran towards the falling water, the roar drowning out all sound just as the falling water blocked out most of the light.  He stayed to the left of the cave and then entered a final short tunnel that led outside.  Richter ran, excitement building in his chest, towards fresh air and more importantly, the protection of the sun!  He would finally be safe from these bastard lizards that had been trying to kill him! 

He followed the tunnel as it twisted through sheer rock.  Right, left and then one last right turn.  He stepped out into fresh air… and was immediately drenched in a torrential downpour.  The water fell in sheets, the storm was so intense that barely any sunlight filtered down from above despite it only being mid-afternoon. 

Richter put his head back and screamed into the storm, “Are you fucking kidding me?  Again?!?”

CHAPTER 19

Alma wriggled into his hood and under his cloak to protect herself from the rain.  Still cursing, Richter started running again.  He accessed his Map.  From what he could guesstimate, he was about one hundred twenty miles south and thirty miles west of the village.  He hoped that the kobolds wouldn’t be able to track him in the rain, but because of his new Tracking skill, he could see animal prints even in the deluge he was running through.  It was true that because of the rain he could only make out tracks a few feet away, but he couldn’t hang his hat on the hope that the kobolds wouldn’t track him.  

“Futen!” he shouted over the sound of the rain.  A flash of lightning followed his call.

“Yes, my Lord,” came the monotone reply.  A roll of thunder followed the remnant’s response.

“You need to go back to the Great Seal.  I need reinforcements.  Tell them I am more than a hundred miles south and at least thirty miles west of the village.”  Richter checked his Map again.  Looking at both the translucent image superimposed on his vision and maintaining his balance as he ran through the forest taxed his ability to multitask, but he did his best. 

From what he could see on the Map, a large cliff was directly in his path about five miles from his location.  Several rivers crisscrossed the map was well.  “Tell them I’m going to be going further south and east until I can circle around a large cliff shaped like a crescent.  Hopefully they know where that is.”  Going south when he crossed the rivers would also increase his chances to lose any potential pursuers.

“Are you sure that you want me to leave you, my Lord?” the remnant asked.

“Go!” Richter shouted over the wind.  “I need more help than you can give!”

Futen’s light began to grow in intensity.  It shined brighter than Richter had ever seen it before, then the glare grew so powerful that he couldn’t see anything but white.  With a clap of sound, louder than the thunder, air rushed into the space that the remnant had been occupying a moment before.  Richter stared at the spot Futen had disappeared from, sunspots marring his vision, “He REALLY could have warned me that his teleport would basically summon every monster within twenty miles… What a dick.”  Alma’s only response was to shift unhappily under his cloak.  Richter cast
Night Vision
to make up for the loss of Futen’s light, then took off running again. 

The storm continued unabated.  His progress was greatly slowed by having to navigate obstacles like downed trees and mudslides.  When he came to the first river thirty minutes later, he was glad he had told Futen that he would be moving further south as he made his way east.  The rain had swollen the river dramatically.  What had been depicted on the Map as a large stream, was now a medium sized rapids. 

Richter had been planning to walk down the center of the stream for several hundred yards to throw off anyone with the Tracking skill and then exit on the other side.  There was absolutely no way he could wade across this though.  As he stood on the bank, he considered just jumping in and swimming, but the turbulent flow and large branches that bobbed around in the water made drowning a very real threat.  Richter started running south down the riverbank, looking for a ford.  After a bit, he found a tree that must have washed down from upstream and then gotten caught in a crook of the river.  It extended three quarters of the way to the far bank.

Richter stepped out onto the tree, testing it with one foot.  When it held, he pulled back his hood.  The water flowed down his face and Alma yowled in displeasure.

*
I’m sorry love, but if I fall and you’re still in my cloak, I don’t think you’ll make it.  Fly across and wait for me.*

She wasn’t happy about it, but did as he asked.  The wind buffeted her a time or two, but she made it into the limbs of a large tree on the far bank and stared back at him.

“Okay Richter,” he said to himself, “let’s do this.”

He walked out onto the tree with his arms held out to his sides.  In his Earth body, he was sure this wouldn’t have been possible, but his increased Agility here in The Land let him balance on the makeshift bridge.  The tree rocked slightly thanks to the fast moving water.  He was almost to the end of the trunk, when something hit him like a hammer in the back of his shoulder.  He cried out in pain and plunged into the river. 

Richter flailed to get above the surface, each movement of his left arm shooting pain through him.  His head came above the water and he coughed out some river that had made its way into his lungs.  He sucked in a quick breath before he was pushed under the surface again.  Over the next five minutes he was pushed to and fro in the river, but he finally got to the other side. 

He pulled himself up, hand over hand until he was firmly on solid ground.  Laying on his side, he gasped and sputtered.  Richter reached for the source of his pain and felt a metal bolt sticking out of his back.  It was high enough in his shoulder that he could wrap his fingers around the portion sticking out of him.   Getting a sure grip, he ripped it out.  The barb on the head made his health drop fractionally more than the initial attack, and blood flowed freely down his back.  He worked his other hand into a spell configuration and cast
Slow Heal.

The wound immediately began to close and the pain abated.  His fingers were also outlined in gold light though which alerted his pursuers to his position.  More crossbow bolts shot across the river towards his general position.  Alma swooped in and cast
Errant Wind. 
The spell increased Richter’s ability to dodge the projectiles and provided the edge he needed to get to safety.  Richter took cover behind a large rock and Alma settled back under his cloak. 

Richter bared his teeth and looked back across the river, but even with his
Night Vision
he could barely see across to the other bank.  Twisting his hand into a specific shape, he cast
Far Light
again and again.  Ten, then twenty, balls of light shot across the river and attached to trees, rocks and bushes.  He now had a clear view of the force arrayed against him.