Chapter 4
Dearth
Dearth, Elven and Eostre didn’t get the chance to wait for the rest of their party before combat broke out. As they were standing near the edge of the cliff an arrow sliced through Eostre’s left arm, embedding itself up to the fletching.
“Ahh, Fuuuuck.” Eostre said, jumping behind Dearth. “Something shot me!”
Dearth quickly brought his shield up as Elven also stepped behind Dearth for cover.
“Where is it?” Dearth asked, as the cave went dark very fast, with the sunlight not reaching more than a hundred or so feet into the cave.
“I can’t see anything, it’s outside my range.” Elven called out as another arrow plinked off of Dearth’s heavy kite shield.
“How’s the arm Eost?”
“Not good, can barely move it. Can still sling spells for now though.”
“Good we can’t sit here forever, if they flank us we’re fucked.” Dearth stated to the group. “Gotta push forward just us three. Running on three, stay behind me.
“Got it.”
“Understood”
“3” “2” “1”
He started running, hoping his party would keep up, it’s wasn’t a full speed charge as an injured Eostre would certainly not be able to keep up, but it also wasn’t far off from one. As they charged the arrow attacks sped up, as if there were three or four archers now. After around three hundred feet Elven called out “Got them, four targets at the edge of what I can detect, five hundred feet out.
Eight hundred feet was a long way to charge – thankfully the cavern narrowed as they ran forward so the archers wouldn’t be able to flank them after all, however the concentrated arrow attacks smashing into his shield had turned Dearth’s arm numb. His reinforced shield could take the damage but the soft tissue on his arm needed some assistance. Around the four hundred foot mark Dearth activated the skill *Toughen Up* which gave a temporary boost to his toughness stat and he felt tingling pinpricks in his arm as it started to regain feeling.
The sides of the cavern were closing in on them, however around the six hundred foot mark some of the archers had enough of angle to start shooting past his shield. He heard Elven behind him start cursing as he had to duck to avoid an arrow. Eostre wasn’t as quick as Elven though and had started to fall behind which wasn’t helped when she took another arrow to her right leg.
Eostre cried out again and Dearth full bore sprinted to the archers, Elven hot on his heels. Eostre wasn’t without an ace up her sleeve though, a moment after getting hit by the second arrow she erected a massive wall of intense fire to cover her. Arrows that entered this flaming wall burst into fire and were naught but ash as they came out the other side. As the wall of fire went up Elven grabbed his sort bow and started with the return fire, the enemies now very visible thanks to the light from the wall.
Three arrows later one of the archers fell, Dearth heard Elven cry out behind him as he took an arrow to the leg, causing him to stumble and roll over. Elven lost no time though, he notched and fired three more arrow in rapid succession dropping a second archer. The two remaining archers were focusing on trying to stop Dearths rapid approach, but were unsuccessful. Thanks to the extra toughness from his skill he was able to power through all the blows to his shield and bash into one of the two archers, knocking it off its feet and back some. Dearth then roared as he took an arrow to the shoulder and finished off the archer on the ground.
Shield now bearing towards the final archer Dearth charged the last few feet and slashed it down with his sword, delivering a killing blow to the lightly armored plant creature. As the last archer fell a loud screech could be heard above where Dearth was standing. He looked up and saw two beady red eyes looking back at him in a vast darkness that spread out twenty feet above him. A second screeching sounded as the eyes started rapidly drawing closer, wind kicking up in the cavern.
Dearth didn’t have time to register the creature as he brought up his shield to block a tremendous blow from something large, the blow knocking him off his feet and sending him flying back ten feet. The large plant creature turned mid-air swooping back down at Dearth before he could climb back to his feet but was discouraged by Elven’s arrows which saved Dearths life. Taking the life line and standing up Dearth planted himself, ready for the next attack he was able to see what was attacking.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
A large vulture like creature made entirely of vines, leafy greens, roots, and dark purple flowers that budded all along the creatures wings. The plant of prey circled Dearth while being pelted by Elven’s arrows, seeming not to be too bothered by them after their initial surprise. As the creature started its swooping attack towards Dearth again it did find something that bothered it as Eostre had limped close enough to deploy a potent fire burst directly in front of the creature, which it flew into and caused it to veer off course as a wing was now on fire.
Dearth, recognizing a target switch when he saw one, activated *Draw Attacks* and slammed his sword into his shield making a loud racket which garnered the scavengers attention once more. This time, however instead of a straight swooping attack on Dearth the condor performed a fly by and dusted Dearth with a heavy dosage of pollen, causing an immediate sneezing reaction from Dearth. The pollen was a visible cloud hanging in the air around Dearth, obscuring vision through it.
The plant buzzard circled around and started to swoop again and once more took a blast of fire to the face for its troubles, however the fire caught the tail end of the extremely thick pollen causing a chain reaction. A MASSIVE fireball erupted as all the spores caught fire and burst sending Dearth flying out of the blast, shield and sword clattering to the ground near where his unconscious form fell. “Shit” Elven cried out from his position on the ground, his arrows still doing little as they would fly straight through the aggressive plant’s root-filled body dealing practically no damage to it.
The creature seeing that its initial target was down turned towards the mage, spread its wings and started to rapidly glide towards her.
“Shit shit shit” Elven cried out and he broke the arrow in his leg in half and poured a healing potion over the wound. As the flesh started knitting back together he charged towards Dearth, pulling another potion out of one of his bags.
Eostre barely dodged the Vulture as it swooped her way, she threw another fire burst at it, angled to hopefully cause the bird to dodge to her left while she threw herself to her right. Her gamble paid off as the bird used its powerful wings to dodge to her left, the two missing each other by about a foot. She was not as lucky the next time the plant circled around though as it swooped and ignored her fire burst this time, powering through it – taking a big hit and losing all of the purple flowers on it’s wings.
The plant of prey swooped on Eostre and used its powerful beak to rip off the left arm she presented to it at the last moment. Blood sprayed out as flesh was torn and Eostre screamed. The plant vulture did not let up though, hovering in place it swiped out with its claws and tore through her legs, ripping them to shreds as it used the force of the strike to propel itself back up. Eostre lay on the ground, bleeding out, but not completely down for the count - she put all her remaining effort into summoning a swirling vortex of fire around her, burning so hot the fire shifted rapidly from red to blue.
She maintained that spell and activated another, burning through her energy rapidly, *Cauterize Wounds*. As the swirling blue vortex tore through the air around her small sparks flew off of it and hit her wounded legs and the stump of her arm, heavily singing the flesh stopping the bleeding. She was not in good shape though, down an arm and her legs useless strips of flesh – she was left immobilized, stuck inside this vortex for as long as she could keep it up.
---
Eostre
Eostre could hear the condor outside the swirling fire, screeching and circling – the powerful beats of its wings fanning the flames as it looked for an opening to finish her off. The seconds ticked down, she wouldn’t be able to hold this vortex for much longer.
‘I’m… I’m going to die…’ she thought. ‘This fucking bird is actually going to kill me.’
As her strength flagged and she started to loose consciousness, the effort becoming too much, the screeching plant was interrupted mid screech, the vortex dropped in time for her to see the plant of prey knocked to the ground with a brightly shining knight and his halberd sticking out of the top of the monster. Eostre smiled as she faded into darkness.
---
Chadwick a couple minutes prior.
The remaining members of the party were slowly bringing themselves down the cliff side when Wulf exclaimed “Wait, where are Dearth and the others? They aren’t below us.” as the cave came into view. As the party looked around a large tornado of fire appeared roughly a thousand feet in the distance, with some large plant looking bird circling it.
“Can’t be good.” Leoma claimed.
“No it very well can’t… I’m going ahead” Chadwick stated, and pulled himself out of the loop of rope he was sitting on, using it as a platform he activated *Jump* and leapt horizontally off the rope and falling four hundred feet to the cave’s floor – landing with a roll he ended on his feet. Without his *Fall Damage Reduction* booster he likely would have died there, but instead he barely noticed the fall and was back on his feet at a full sprint before Leoma and Wulf knew what was happening.
The vortex started to flag as Chadwick ran, pumping his highly developed legs to their maximum he got within fifty feet of the flying plant and *Jumped* high into the air at an angle, bringing him much closer to the creature. As he reached the apex of his leap he leaned forward, angling his weapon directly at the scavenger and he sped up, accelerating greatly before slamming into the thing. It was mid screech as he hit it and he knocked the wind out of its plant lungs before the two collided heavily with the ground – the vortex failing and dissipating a fraction of a second after he hit the monster.
Chadwick tumbled with the creature to the ground and he rolled, pulling his weapon from it and rolling off it. He spun around and activated *Inferno* immediately after turning and caught the beast in a massive torrent of flame. The skill had a long cool down, he could only use it once an hour, but it dealt significant fire damage. The monster was on the floor and had not recovered enough to dodge and it just so happened that this no longer a plant of prey was weak to fire - with the damage Eostre had dealt to it over the course of the fight it couldn’t withstand the inferno that Chadwick submitted it to.
Chadwick immediately ran to Eostre and pulled out a healing potion from one of the bags he had tied around his waist and forcefully poured it down her throat, hoping to stabilize her long enough for their healer to get to her. “Come on kid, hang on.” He said while keeping Eostre’s head supported. It took another few minutes for Leoma and Wulf to catch up with Leoma heading directly for Eostre and beginning to cast a boosted *Cure* on her. It would take a while to get Eostre back on her feet.
---
Dearth
Dearth regained consciousness and bolted immediately upright as he remembered the fight. Elven was there though saying “Fights over boss, the thing is dead.”
“Shit, the fucker knocked me out…” He said as he took stock of his party and the situation. Glancing around he saw Eostre on the ground with Leoma over her glowing in that yellow sunlight that most healers seemed to glow when casting healing spells. “Is Eost ok?”
“No, but she will be, nearly lost her.” Elven stated “I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t even distract the damn thing. It completely ignored me.”
“Can’t win them all Elven… Thanks for picking me back up.” he said as he started to stand up a little unsteadily, his head pounding.
As the two of them walked over Elven appraised Dearth of the rest of the fight, filling him in on what happened after he had lost consciousness.
