20 – Betrayal
***Quest Opportunity Upgraded! Andy, the assault on Tanque Verde isn’t over! Help the settlent fend off the attackers, and your rare System-generated treasure will be upgraded!***
The System threw the ssage into his vision even as Denise tugged his arm, pulling him back toward the barricade. He could see why: hundreds of gigantic insects were skittering down the street toward them. So were the size of dogs, but many were bigger than people. They moved with alarming speed, and the sound of their hard-shelled appendages clattering on the pavent was enough to send shivers up and down Andy’s spine.
They ran a few steps, then Andy paused to turn, trying to get a better idea of what the things were. They ca like a tide, but the behemoth’s corpse slowed them—they dove into it with abandon, ripping and tearing with razor-edged mandibles. Andy couldn’t work out what they were. They weren’t ants, nor spiders; they weren’t anything long like a centipede. Grayish brown, with eight legs—that did make them spiders, didn’t it? Were they so kind of mite—sothing that was normally too tiny to fear, but horrifying under a microscope?
Arrows streaked through the air, so of them glowing with magic, but it was like trying to hold back an ocean wave by throwing rocks at it. The bugs just kept coming.
“We’re not gonna make it!” Denise cried, and Andy felt a swell of mana from her. “I’ll try to—”
“Just run!” Andy growled, placing a hand between her shoulder blades and propelling her toward the gap in the bus-wall. Then, as she stumbled away, he spun, inhaled, and cast Cinderstorm Blast. The insects—spiders?—were closer than he’d thought—two leaped at him even as he cast the spell—and his hot, fiery cloud hit them with full effect.
The tide of monstrous bugs was thirty yards across, covering the full width of the street and the sidewalks, too. Andy tried to angle his cone of fiery smoke left and right to fill as much area as possible, but he only managed to engulf a fraction of the wave—maybe twenty percent. Worse, as his cloud took form and had its effect, burning and confusing the creatures, the ones pouring in from behind peeled off to the right and left, swarming around Andy, piling onto the buses, climbing over and around.
Andy was left in the middle of the swarm, surrounded but hidden in his fiery smoke.
###
Omar lowered his blazing mace, smiling as the cheers died down. He and about twenty archers were standing on top of one of the buses. Amazingly, none of them had fallen off when the behemoth fell and shook the road enough to make the vehicle bounce.
“Did you see that frickin’ lightning?” one of the archers howled. “Denise is bad-ass!”
Omar chuckled, nodding. “Not bad at all.”
***Congratulations! You’ve helped to slay an Elite Boss-tier monster! The System has noted your achievent, and a rare treasure will be awarded to you when you rest in a safe area. You’ve earned experience toward your next Warden of Cinerath level.***
Omar brushed the ssage away, happy he’d earned a treasure for helping the settlent and not at all surprised he hadn’t gained a level; he hadn’t done a whole lot. He started for the ladder leading down from the bus, but then soone cried out.
“What the hell is that?”
Omar looked up, eyes falling on the behemoth corpse and on Andy and Denise still standing near it. Then movent drew his attention further down the street, and his blood went cold. Thousands of insects were charging, piling over each other, toward the bus barricade.
Another archer cried, “Where the hell is the alarm?”
Omar looked toward the top of the school’s main gym, where a guard station of sorts had been set up. Earlier, while Andy had charged the behemoth, Omar had learned that their night-watch crew had failed to alert the community about the incoming behemoth. Now this…
***Quest Opportunity Upgraded! Omar, the assault on Tanque Verde isn’t over! Help the settlent fend off the attackers, and your rare System-generated treasure will be upgraded!***
“Run!” soone below shouted, and the archers started to bail out. Omar instinctively raised his mace, casting his upgraded Bolster the Spirit.
As the weapon flared with brilliant white light, and the effects stirred the confidence in the people nearby, stiffening their spines, he shouted, “Hold! Fire into the front of the swarm! Give your leader a chance to escape!” He knew they’d respond to that—a quick reminder that Denise, whom they all respected, was relying on them. To his satisfaction, the ten archers all turned toward the swarm and began firing.
Andy and Denise were running, and though the arrows didn’t have much of an overall impact, Omar saw quite a few front-running insects collapse, giving the two precious seconds to escape. Still, the swarm was gaining on them. Then, the front wave reached the behemoth and slowed long enough to dive into the flesh, devouring the massive carcass in a frenzy. Omar felt even his stout heart skip a beat as the air erupted in a pink-tinged mist. “Co on, Andy!”
The two were about thirty yards from the buses when Andy shoved Denise and turned, imdiately blasting a cone of thick, billowing smoke out of his mouth. It was a hell of a sight from that vantage—a man exhaling a cloud of cinders and black, roiling smoke that would have given the smoke-stack on a coal-fired power plant a run for its money. Omar whistled appreciatively, watching as the cloud overwheld a huge swath of the bugs, but then they poured around it, charging the barricade, and he had to pay attention to his own battle.
Unfortunately, it seed the Tanque Verde settlent had focused heavily on bow-users. Considering the wealth of bows they’d scavenged from sporting goods stores nearby, the strategy had served them well. Goblins and vermin didn’t fare well against magically enhanced arrows, but it seed the current invasion was tailor made to display the weakness in the strategy; the archers just couldn’t keep up with the waves of insects.
“I’m out!” one of the n shouted, turning to run for the ladder. By then, the insects were piling up the sides of the buses, and Omar ran forward to smash his mace into a probing, chitin-covered limb. It shattered under the blow, and the bug fell back. Unfortunately, from his new vantage, Omar could see the surging, pulsating throng of hard-shelled bodies climbing over one another to reach the top. Dozens were already pouring through the shattered bus windows.
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He could see their position wasn’t defensible, so he shouted to the archers, “Retreat to the school!” As they hurried to climb down, Omar stood his ground, batting away insect after insect. So were small enough to kick, others were the size of people, but his mace had no trouble shattering their shells and sending them flying.
His shield was as much a weapon as armor, too. When he’d advanced his shield skill to rank five after his last level, he’d gained a mana-empowered bash ability called, imaginatively, Power Bash. When three of the larger insects mounted the top of the bus and ca at him, he used it. He felt the rush of mana roil out of the center of his being, into his left arm, and then he flung his shield out, swiping it in a small arc. It glowed with a red-gold nimbus, and when it hit the incoming bugs, they shrieked as their carapaces shattered and they were sent flying off the bus, taking half a dozen of their friends with them.
Omar took the lull in battle as an opportunity to regroup and turned to leap off the bus, chasing after the fleeing defenders.
###
Inside his cloud of burning smoke, Andy was untouchable. The mites—for he’d decided that’s what they were—didn’t combust imdiately from the heat, but they suffered. They grew frantic, panicking to get away from the fiery smoke, but Andy pursued, laying waste with his spear. Their armored flesh was hard, but his spear, laced with balefire, pushed through easily enough, driven by the might of his arms and his deft eye for finding weak points.
Andy could feel his smoke cloud with more than just his senses; he was aware of its mana, of its strength, and he knew it was beginning to fade. He checked his mana: 435/705. He hadn’t had enough ti after the behemoth fight to recover everything he’d used, but he wasn’t in bad shape—yet.
With the mites inside his cloud mostly dead or driven away, he turned back toward the barricade and ran to the edge of his smoke. When he reached the point where there was more clear air than black, he faced the throng of clamoring, skittering enemies pouring through the gap in the barricade and exhaled another Cinderstorm Blast. There had to have been two or three hundred mites in that gap, and the fiery, caustic smoke poured over them like a flathrower on an ant nest.
Cloaked by his fiery smoke, Andy watched as the mites erupted into a frenzied panic. They surged with renewed intensity into the gap, clawing and snapping at each other in their desperation to get through. Andy couldn’t see much beyond them; he hoped any defenders were already falling back, seeking shelter in the concrete-walled buildings of the school. All he could do, he decided, was keep up the pressure and kill as much of the swarm as he could while his mana held out.
Despite his mastery of his environnt, the scene inside his smoke cloud was pure chaos. The mites, desperate to escape, leaped in all directions, and while Andy stabbed as many as he could, the act of attacking left him vulnerable to accidental retaliation. Mites, leaping and blindly attacking, managed to land so hits, and Andy’s wounds mounted—cuts from mandibles and painful punctures from claw-tipped legs.
Most of the wounds were on his legs; his drake-scale coat provided good resistance to the mites’ natural weapons. He was up to his knees in their corpses, so of which were beginning to burn. Still, he pressed on, fighting his way through the swarm, pushing past the bus barricade, and, once again, to the edge of his smoke. That was when a horn—loud and deep, like the kind you hear in Viking movies—began to blow.
At first, Andy thought it was yet another attacking force, that the school-settlent was surely dood, but then he saw balls of fire falling down from the taller buildings, smashing into the charging insects with trendous whoomph sounds, igniting them by the dozens. He fought clear of the dying throng near the buses and, leaning on his spear for breath, he surveyed the scene.
Piles of dead mites littered the roadway, and hundreds more were scattered about the parking lot. He saw dead mites against the gym walls and in front of the doors where, even as he watched, Andy saw a blaze of white light and knew it was Omar defending there. More streaks of fire fell from the rooftops and more mites went up in flas.
Unfortunately, as he looked past the gym where Omar fought, Andy’s eyes fell on one of the larger school buildings—low and long with regularly spaced windows—and he saw mites climbing over each other, surging through broken glass into what had once been classrooms. How many people were inside that building? How many mites had gotten in? Judging by the surging mounds of the giant arachnids, it had to be a lot.
Scowling, Andy turned back to the gap in the buses and the mountain of dead mites he’d killed, and the hundreds beyond where he’d thrown down his first smoke cloud. He didn’t see more incoming enemies; it seed the defenders had turned the tide—at least outside the school. Unfortunately, the toll had been steep; everywhere he looked, Andy saw partially consud, dismbered human bodies. Near the buses alone, he counted nineteen, though he couldn’t be certain with the state of the corpses.
As he started for the parking lot, stabbing wounded, straggling mites along the way, he counted another dozen dead people. He shook his head. Even if they won, how could Tanque Verde continue to survive, let alone thrive?
He jogged around the battlefield, looking for surviving people, but it seed everyone had either made it to shelter or succumbed to the swarm. Still, he killed another twenty mites and watched as the fireballs continued to descend. One of them struck a group of mites not far from him, and he heard the clatter of shattering glass. “Alchemy,” he guessed.
He worked his way to the infested building, aiming toward the side with the broken windows, but when he got there, he was t with the grim, bloody faces of a pair of defenders peering out.
“Any more?” one of them asked, a young man, maybe still a teen; the side of his head was covered by a sheet of dried blood and his ear was missing.
Andy shook his head, looking with horror through the window at the carnage beyond. “None coming that I can see.”
The kid nodded, wiped so blood out of his eyes, and turned without another word. And walked back to the parking lot. Standing there, his wounds throbbing, he looked around for sothing to fight, but he seed to be the last thing still mobile outside the school. He decided to go check on Omar, but the System decided the battle was won and interrupted him with a ssage:
***Congratulations, Andy! You’ve helped to overco a deadly arachnid swarm, saving the Tanque Verde Settlent in the process! The System has noted your achievent and upgraded your rare treasure to epic. It will be awarded to you when you rest in a safe area. In addition, you’ve earned enough experience to reach level 32 in your Brimstone Stalker class. As a result, you’ve gained an Improvent Point.***
“Hah!” Omar’s barking laugh alerted Andy to his presence, and he turned to face the gore-covered warrior. “I knew you’d be okay. Denise thought you were a goner.”
The woman in question wasn’t far behind Omar, limping as she leaned on her copper staff, her face filled with despair as she looked around at the carnage. Seeing her stricken expression, Andy didn’t smile at Omar or make light of his survival. He just nodded and bumped blood- and gore-covered knuckles with him. “Glad you made it,” he said.
Omar nodded. “Yeah, but this was bad.” He looked at Denise. “You people can’t live like this.”
She looked at him, her mouth opening and closing as she fought to choose the right words. Her response failed to materialize before another figure burst out of the gym, leaping over the mound of twitching, oozing corpses. It was Kent, and he looked furious.
“Soone killed Hank and Xander! Their throats were slit!”
Andy looked from Kent to Denise as she absorbed the news. He didn’t know who Hank and Xander were, but he could take a guess. “Your night watch?”
Kent nodded. “Yeah. They were on tower duty.”
Omar frowned, stepping closer to Denise to put a hand on her shoulder, but her eyes, already red and caked with dried blood, filled with tears as her lips twisted in a snarl. “Soone inside. This was a coordinated betrayal!”
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