Chapter 96 - The Flood of Decay

  Our attacks sped toward the column in almost perfect sync. Two lances of Lightning arced through the air, one from me and one from Alex. Dara added a Fire Bolt to the mix as well. Our attacks crossed the glowing green haze that filled the cavern, all aimed straight for the column that I was increasingly convinced was the architect of all this rot.

  The boss reacted fast and raised new defenses. A quick pulse caused a wall of pods to burst open in a synchronized bloom. The fungus cats inside them flung themselves into the paths of the spells, bodies convulsing and bursting into flame as they absorbed the hits. The air filled with the smell of burned rot and ozone as they took the hits intended for the boss.

  But my bolt got through. It smashed into the side of the column with a sizzling sound, sending sparks of foxfire up and down it.

  The column’s outer layer rippled. Fungal flesh blackened and smoked where the lightning struck home. The Architect let out a deep, resonant noise, a bass tremor that made the stone floor shiver under our boots. Cracks spread outward from the wound along the length of the column, leaking dark fluid that sizzled where it touched the floor. The glow inside the column flickered like a candle in a breeze.

  “Nice hit!” Dara shouted. “We actually hurt it!”

  “Don’t celebrate yet,” Alex snapped. “Look!”

  The light inside the fungus turned red again, but darker this time, a deep and almost blood-like crimson. I got the strong impression we’d successfully pissed the thing off. The cracks along its side bulged outward, and for a second I thought the whole structure might explode. Instead, it did something worse. The column emitted a second deep thrumming vibration.

  It was a signal. Moments later, every pod in the chamber pulsed once, then they all began to open.

  “Oh, that’s not good,” I muttered. Dozens of pods burst, then hundreds.

  The Architect’s top split open like a giant flower, breaking away from the ceiling and releasing a cloud of golden spores that sparkled in the flashing red light still pouring from its body. The spores mostly remained near the boss monster, slowly drifting toward the floor nearby. A final line of defense, perhaps? I had a bad feeling that we didn’t want to be anywhere near those things.

  The floor turned into a nightmare as the giant wave of fungus cats charged. Behind them came new shapes, lumpy, crawling things like centipedes made of mold and stone, dragging trails of black ichor. Others were bloated sacs on tiny limbs that pulsed and hissed, spraying acid in wide arcs. The entire chamber came alive in response to the Architect’s call.

  I started backing up toward the entrance. I noticed Alex already had, as well. We needed to get back together, to fight this menace as a group, or we weren’t going to all survive it.

  “Form up!” Alex yelled, his orders echoing my thoughts. “Get back to the entrance, tight formation! Keep Marion in the center! Don’t let them take down the healer!”

  The tanks re-formed around Marion instantly, shields and weapons ready, but there was no way to cover every direction at once. The monsters poured in from the walls, ceiling, and floor. Each time we killed one, two more replaced it.

  I leapt forward, punching through a wave of the smaller creatures. They splattered like rotten fruit, but their fluids hissed against the stone and burned my legs. I gritted my teeth and kept going, smashing, tearing, and Draining every enemy in front of me. Every time I cast Drain Life, it bought me another few seconds of vitality, but my mana was almost gone.

  Behind me, Alex and Dara stood shoulder to shoulder, blasting spells into the crowd. Lightning, fire, and ice crashed through the darkness in blinding bursts, filling the air with steam and smoke. Marion’s healing light glowed in constant pulses, her magic patching wounds faster than most people could even feel them.

  Still, it wasn’t enough.

  “There’s just too many!” Ruiz shouted, swinging his sword through a pair of lunging cats. One went down, but the other bit deep into his arm before he tore it free.

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  “I’ve got him!” Marion cried, ducking under a spray of acid to reach him. Rodriguez and Carter moved to cover her, hacking at the crawling mass.

  The Architect pulsed again, and gave off another sound, this one more high-pitched, almost like a piercing scream. The tone vibrated through my chest, and all the monsters moved faster. They surged forward in unison, a tidal wave of claws, teeth, and fungal growth.

  “Fall back!” Alex shouted. “Regroup at the tunnel entrance!”

  No one argued. The order came just in time—Ruiz was bleeding, Alex was coughing from the spores gradually drifting our way, and even my lungs burned. I grabbed two of the bigger beasts and hurled them aside, clearing a path for the others. Alex fell back step by step, flinging Lightning and Ice Bolts over my shoulder.

  I’d never seen him cast that fast. He was just chaining the spells together as quick as the timers ran down, one after another. It was impressive, but he wouldn’t be able to keep that up forever. Even his mana would eventually run out.

  Johnson went down to a knee under the weight of the swarm. I yanked him back up before the mob could drag him under, punched through another crawler, then punted a fungus cat across the room.

  We made it back to the entranceway, but the tunnel we’d walked through to reach this nightmare room had been extra wide, which gave the monsters plenty of room to maneuver. None of them seemed to be able to fly, thank God, but they came scurrying down the walls to attack us from the sides. One dropped from the ceiling, trying to land on Marion’s head. Carter stabbed it with his sword before it could attack her. One of the pod-things exploded right beside us, showering everyone with caustic spores, burning exposed skin. The smell of sulfur and rot was everywhere now, sharp and choking.

  My vision started to swim. I wasn’t sure if it was the spores or the adrenaline.

  The Architect pulsed again. Passing new orders, I figured. Ahead of us, the fungus cats weren’t just charging anymore. They were merging. Dozens of them collapsed together to form something larger, meaner, and infinitely worse.

  “Oh, hell no,” Dara breathed.

  A new creature rose from the merging heap, a thing of claws, tendrils, and mouths. It stood twice my height and screamed with every face it had.

  “Cam!” Alex yelled. “That’s your target!”

  I was exhausted, my mana gone, my lungs burning from the spores drifting on the air, but what else could I do? He was right. This new monster was tier nine! None of the rest of the party would be able to stand against something that strong.

  There was only one answer I could give. “On it!”

  I launched myself at the beast, slamming into its chest with a burst of power. The impact shattered a few ribs—or whatever passed for ribs in something like this—but it didn’t slow down. It swiped me aside with a limb that felt like a steel cable. I hit the wall hard enough to see stars.

  When I stood again, it was already charging Marion.

  “Not today!” I roared. I activated Flight, using a tiny bit of mana I’d regained, and streaked back into the fight. Closing with the giant beast, I grabbed one of its limbs, tore it free, and drove it like a spear through its core. Then I yanked the limb back and stabbed it again. The second blow was enough, and the creature shriveled and died.

  The wave faltered, seeing their champion fall, but they only stopped their charge for a moment before rushing back in again. I stumbled back toward the group, chest heaving. The Architect’s red glow filled the whole cavern like a heartbeat. Each pulse seemed faster than the last.

  Alex wiped sweat from his brow. “Out of man!”

  “Got you covered,” Ruiz said, stepping between him and an attacking fungus cat.

  “So what do we do?” Dara shouted as she blasted another one with a spell.

  Alex’s gaze flicked to me. “We survive the next few minutes while I think of something!”

  Not the most reassuring plan. If Alex was out of ideas, what was there left to do? I launched myself into the middle of the attacking wave. Fungal bodies shattered. Acid burned my arms and spores burned my lungs, but their claws and teeth weren’t terribly useful against my Natural Armor. I pushed ahead, ripping apart one foe after another as quickly as I could grab hold of them.

  One tier three enemy wasn’t a threat to me at all. Ten of them might be worrying. Fifty or more, and I was in trouble even with all my fancy magical upgrades.

  I kept going because if I stopped, even for a heartbeat, we’d all be buried under this living tide of decay. The swarm pressed in, driving us farther from the Architect, deeper into the tunnel we’d followed to get here. In spite of all the monsters we’d slain, there still had to be almost a hundred more of them, and we were getting worn out, run down by the constant barrage of attacks.

  A group of the creatures tried to drive me to the ground, piling atop me. I jumped as hard as I could, throwing the enemies back as I leaped high into the air and activated Flight to stay there. For the moment, I was relatively safe. They couldn’t easily attack me up there.

  The Architect still flashed crimson in the distance. Between us, the room was nothing but a wasteland of empty pods. They’d all been released, and the entire wave was crashing against our party’s meager defenses. Alex was tapped out, down to using his sword. I hadn’t seen Dara use a fire spell in almost a minute, so my guess was her mana was tapped out, too. Marion would be next, and once her mana was gone, we were done for. Her Heals were the only thing keeping everyone in the fight.

  I was about to dive back in and help as best I could when I saw something critical, a deep flaw in the enemy defenses.

  All of the pods were empty. They’d all been sent rushing our way. Which meant just maybe, there might be a way to survive this after all!