Castle Takes King (1/2)

They had made a mistake. They had assumed that since it hadn't displayed any sensory organs upstairs, that it had none. Threadbare and his crew had overlooked the possibility that it could, in fact, manifest these things elsewhere.

But Threadbare did know that two things, for certain.

The first was that he was dealing with a predator who was fairly cunning, but not really SMART. Its tactics and actions upstairs, complete with the fact that it hadn't discovered the secret passages despite who knows how many years of expansion throughout the fortress, testified to that.

The second thing Threadbare knew was that he wasn't the creature's typical prey. So he stood still in only the way that a golem could. Patient and unmoving, yea even unto oblivion.

And it worked.

CHA+1

Your Stealth skill is now level 36!

The thing's eye shifted from the peephole, and Threadbare, moving as slowly as he could, made the RAGS-taught hand motions that indicated everybody needed to be silent. Though he couldn't be certain that it was Buttons' noise that had set it off or the vibrations of her climbing along the wall, he thought that ears were probably easier to create than eyes. If he were this kind of creature he'd definitely have a few lying around for occasions like this.

But he wasn't. He was a toy golem, and his friend was in danger. He watched as they eye directed its gaze around the chamber, and the piles of flesh that infested the place pulsed, slowly extruding tendrils and beginning to tap around, feeling in the areas where the flesh didn't cover.

They still steered clear of the runes, though, and that gave him an idea.

Threadbare moved slowly, slow as a glacier in winter, until his muzzle was below the edge of the peephole.

“Dracosnack,” he whispered, and paused. But the eye didn't change its track, steadily shifting back and forth on its hunt.

“Yes?” the dragon toy whispered back.

“Activate your magic fingers spell, take this cloth mouse, and when I say 'now,' take my place in the peephole and throw the mouse right in the middle of the red sparky rune.”

There was a pause, then he felt Dracosnack squeeze his shoulder in silent acknowledgment.

And then, because he was a wise bear, he let Buttons in on the plan with a wind's whisper. “We're arranging a distraction. When the red rune blows up, get back in here please. We'll find another way.”

There were a lot of things to try. There were many ways to approach this problem. This was a terrible and dangerous foe, and the trick would be finding a way to manage the risk and find a safe way out after their quest was over. Because fighting the creature head on was a sure-fire way to die.

So Threadbare waited until the creature's eye was past him and starting its sweep in the far corner, and then he told Dracosnack “Now!”

He ducked away, Dracosnack muttered “Magic Fingers,” pushed the mouse through...

…and just as it touched the red rune, a strange yell came from up the southern staircase.

“Fucking yeah baby yeah! Get it get it uh-huh!”

A yell shortly followed by the sound of claws madly scrabbling on stone. Followed by a cat growling its head off.

“Pulsivar!” Threadbare said, forgetting himself.

Followed by a very, very large explosion that shook the room.

Followed by a sound that though he had never heard it before, he knew at once what it could be.

This was the mimic screaming, as for the first time in a very long while, something had hurt it.

Threadbare shook his head as one of his mouse-eye views vanished from his gaze. But the other one was moving, tumbling, and in the split-seconds where everything happened at once.

Buttons was not trying to get back to safety, he realized.

Buttons was leaping from the wall, to one of the pillars, to right in the middle of the yellow rune that did nothing to her.

In the background he caught a glimpse of Pulsivar scrabbling madly down the stairs, leaping through the flames that puffed out around the southwestern quarter of the room, madly trying to find footing where the mimic wasn't. There was more now, because the mimic was burning and trying to pull its bulk into itself, smothering the flames...

...and then Threadbare's view whirled and shifted again.

She's throwing the mouse, he realized.

Over and up. Up past a tidal wave of flesh, and he had a view of her standing proud and still and saluting as the Mimic came crashing down on her. And then the mouse was tumbling down the stairwell in the center, right past the eye, right past the whipping tendrils that snapped down at it... snapped down and sizzled, as some unseen magic flared to life and drove it back.

That's why it didn't occupy the stairwell, Threadbare thought to himself.

Behind him he could hear Fluffbear squeaking “Open the door! Open the door and get her in, quickly! Godspell Mend! Godspell Mend!”

Shaking his head, knowing the mouse was where he needed it, and that his skills were better used to help his friends, Threadbare let the dollseye slip back into inactive state, and ran to join Fluffbear as she tugged at the secret door. It was stuck, but the two of them were strong, and the two of them tugged it open to let in a roaring wave of flame and smoke and charred mimic meat that the others hacked at and kicked away. They were trying to clear a path.

“No!” yelled Apollyon. He surged forward...

“Mopsy! Pounce!” Fluffbear commanded her mount, and Apollyon went ass over teakettle as the big cat knocked him over. There was a smell of burnt fur and Mopsy howled.

The howl was answered by a yowl from within the room. Pulsivar charged through the open secret door, just as Dracosnack shouted “she's dead!”

A moment of silence, as the mimic's groaning wail filled the smoky air. And the sound of its thrashing contractions smothered the flames.”

“Close the door,” Fluffbear decided. “She's gone.”

Apollyon sobbed. Glub sighed. And Threadbare, with that old feeling in his heart, the one he hated with a passion, threw his strength into swinging the secret door closed once more.

They almost made it.

Then the door shuddered.

It started opening again.

“It's trying to come through!” Dracosnack yelled. “Orders, please?”

Fluffbear growled, low in her throat, and the anger in it surprised Threadbare. She had come a long way, since those early years under the foundation of Caradon's house. A long way since they had been innocent.

But he wasn't surprised, when she said simply, “We fight. Hold it here!”

The team snapped into action.

And something on Pulsivar's back, something the size of his head stirred its six legs and looked up at him. “Oh hey! You're my job!”

“Your job?” he said, popping out his claws and moving into place next to Pulsivar.

“Yeah! Garon sent me! I'm your secret weapon! Gotta waystone home for you if it gets too deadly boss!”

And then there was no more time for talking.

The upside to fighting the mimic down here was that after the explosion, it was coated with a thin layer of ash. It wasn't sticky at all, and they could hack into it without fear of getting stuck.

The bad news is that it was still enormous. And even though it was burned, it was clear that it had quite a long way to go before it was out of HP.

With the angle that they were at, it couldn't get a clean angle for a strong hit, but that was changing, Threadbare noticed. He was slashing for all he was worth, and his brawling, dodge, and claw swipes skills were going up steadily, but after every sixth or seventh strike he had to take a step back as the mimic's oozy flesh crept closer and closer.

There was simply too much of it.

Next to him the tiny creature, which upon closer examination was some sort of golem, was digging into the mimic with its forelegs and shouting “Who's your sixth cousin twice removed!” Across from him, Apollyon tanked hits on his shield, swiping with his flaming blade whenever he got a second to swing without sacrificing his defense. A shell of stone surrounded him, cracked in a few places where a tendril had gotten through here or there.

Dracosnack sat in back, directing a wall of fire up and down the mimic's flesh, searing it at a safe distance from his colleagues. Glub occasionally threw water into the fire, making bursts of steam that sizzled and seared the mimic, while he sang a war chant to boost the team's strength. And Fluffbear held the line with Mopsy right next to Apollyon, defending his knees and slashing away as they could.

And about this time, Fluffbear came to the same conclusion as her brother. “Threadbare!” she squeaked. “We'll hold it here! Do what you can to complete the quest, or look for another solution!”

“And here, take this so it doesn't get smashed!” said the little thing, tossing a waystone his way as Threadbare fell back from the line.

Once he was safe and Pulsivar was licking his face, Threadbare called up the dollseye on his sole remaining mouse, and sent it skittering down the stairs.

It wasn't a far trip. The corridor below dead-ended quickly. There were no other doors or archways leading out from it. It was a simple stone room, with a stone pedestal in the center, the remnants of campfires around it, and what looked like graffiti on the walls. Something like a jar with dragon's heads poking from it sat in a bowl on the pedestal, and as he watched, one of the dragon's heads spat out a marble-sized crystal. Threadbare scanned the graffiti and frowned, a human expression he'd picked up from Celia over time. He chanted “Evaluate,” just to be sure, as he stared at the jar. Then he shook his head.

“I found out what happened to the survivors,” he called out to the others. “They're not here! There's an item in there called a Vessel of the Horizon Walker. It makes lesser waystones. From the writings left behind, everyone who survived the mimic made it down here, was trapped, and used the waystones to leave.”

“Should we do the same?” Glub asked during a pause in his chant.

“No!” Fluffbear said. “We've no idea how far away we'll be! And it has to be pretty far, if they haven't come back home yet! We'd just be leaving the problem to the next group, and they might die!”

“And I don't think we'd survive getting through this thing!” Apollyon called out through the breathing hole in his stone mask. “It's... angry!”

Angry and getting more worked up, Threadbare saw. Now that he'd stepped back from the line it seemed to be taking his absence as a sign of weakness. It was pushing forward through the flames, forcing more of itself through. The ceiling and walls, the entire level was shaking, and he knew that it was pulling in more of its mass to try and destroy the things that had dared to hurt it. It was almost like an earthquake, and a small miracle the ceiling hadn't fallen on them. He had a feeling that the only thing holding the ruin together was the builder's decision to make a skeleton of iron rods throughout the entire structure.

And that's when the idea struck him. The beautiful and horrible idea.

INT+1

“Apollyon, I'm going to be on your back. Don't overreact!”