Chapter 88 - Burning Out

  The pain in my hands was spiking further. A bit of grey mist rose from them, and the faint hissing was turning into a sizzling sound that reminded me uncomfortably of cooking bacon. I needed to get my hands free, fast. Fortunately, I wasn’t entirely without options.

  Strength alone wasn’t going to work here. If I lifted both hands, I’d just pick the entire cocoon up from the floor, and pulling my hands in opposite directions made it feel like I was going to rip my own flesh apart. Using Lightning wouldn’t help, either. It might kill the monster, but it would almost certainly finish off Kelly, too. His jerking movements were growing slower and more sporadic, but he was still alive. We wanted to keep him that way if we could.

  I had one other tool in my arsenal that might just work, though. I cast Drain Life, pumping the spell out directly through my savaged hands. Blackness radiated out from my palms, spreading across the tough strands which made up the cocoon. As the dark hit them, they shriveled, thinning out. It was working! Best of all, the spell was healing my hands, too. They still felt like I was holding a pair of hot coals, but the sizzling stopped, and the pain had dropped down a lot.

  “Whatever you’re doing, keep it up,” Alex said from beside me.

  “Trying,” I replied. “Drain Life has a cooldown.”

  “Use it again, quick as you can,” he replied.

  “I am. Cut those damned strands free from the creature’s base, if you can!”

  He stood and drew a sword, then sliced through one of the tendrils near to where it vanished inside the open ‘chest.’ The loose end whipped about a bit after he cut it, but everyone stayed clear. Alex went to work cutting the other strands, slicing through them one after another.

  Beside me, Ruiz was trying to work a small knife blade through the strands without touching them. It was tricky work, doubly so because his knife stuck fast to the stuff almost immediately. “I can’t cut it!”

  “Hang on, let me help,” I told him. I cast Drain Life again, and this time the effect spread even further. Now, a good chunk of the strands covering Kelly’s upper torso were thinned out. They looked fragile enough to snap.

  I flexed my arms and pulled, yanking my hands in two different directions at the same time. This time, there was much less resistance. The strands came apart, snapping under the pressure. I was free, finally! A few bits of dead tendril still stuck to my palms, but I was loose at last.

  My palms were bright red, like the color of new skin under a burn or blister, and there were a few open sores in spots, but mostly my Drains had healed the damage I’d taken.

  That only helped Kelly so much, though. This creature wasn’t like an octopus or squid. Killing the tendrils midway down their length didn’t stop them from continuing to stick to Kelly like glue on either side of the dead patch. We were going to have to remove each tendril.

  Wincing, I realized I was going to have to do this the hard way.

  “Marion, I need you to be ready on heals. I’m going to start ripping the damaged tendrils away from Kelly’s body, but they’re stuck on hard and they’re covered with a nasty acid. I’m going to do damage to him when I pull them off, and I need you to heal him, okay?” I asked.

  She was pale, but nodded. “I’m on it. Hurry. He doesn’t have much time.”

  I ground my teeth together and grabbed hold of the dead ends of the tendrils toward Kelly’s head, wincing as the stuff started to singe me again. Another Drain Life spread the desiccation further up the strands. My palms were stuck fast to the strand, so I pulled, ripping it clear of his body. He jerked a bit, the first movement I’d seen in a few seconds, and blood poured out of the small area I’d just cleared.

  “Marion!” I called out.

  “I’m here,” she replied, touching the skin I’d just cleared. The wound closed.

  I pulled away more of the stuff, casting Drain Life as often as I could. Each time I did, more of the strands wilted and shriveled up, but I realized it wasn’t lasting long. I had to pull the tendrils away from his skin right away or they’d begin healing themselves. I was Draining them, but they were sucking the life out of Kelly at the same time. We were in a race.

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  We rolled Kelly’s body as I unraveled the stuff, unwinding it from him. It must have launched itself from the trap with lightning speed to wrap around him so completely, so fast. I turned him onto his belly, unwound more tendril, then rolled him onto his back and unraveled more. Another cast of Drain Life to suck more vitality from the strands, and then we repeated the process.

  Each time we pulled away more tendril, blood poured freely from the wounds I made. The acid the things put out had dissolved a lot of his skin and cut deeply into the tissues beneath. Kelly was a mess. Without my Natural Armor, my hands would have been in a similar state, but between the Armor, Regeneration, and Drains to heal me, I was doing okay.

  “He’s not breathing!” Marion warned. “I think his heart’s stopped, too! We have to hurry!”

  She sounded exhausted. I knew how she felt. I’d cast Drain Life how many times, now? My mana was very low, and with all the heals she’d cast, she couldn’t be in much better shape. I did as she asked, though, hurrying the process along as best I could. I ripped more of the stuff away, tearing tendrils free in big chunks. A lot of the cocoon was dead now, thanks to my repeated casts, allowing me to rip it off that much quicker.

  “How’s he doing?” I asked Marion as I tore away another chunk.

  “He’s…fading,” Marion replied. She was fading herself.

  We’d cleared most of the man’s upper torso. The wounds left behind from the stuff were awful, but Marion quickly closed up the worst of it. Each time I ripped more of the crap away, she reached in and touched the injuries left behind, closing up the wounds, stopping the flow of blood.

  Then we reached the neck. I winced, knowing this was going to be do or die time. With all the damage he’d taken to his body, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what his exposed neck looked like, but there wasn’t time to hesitate. I cast Drain Life directly on the stuff surrounding his neck, weakening it. With the tendrils badly damaged, I was able to remove it more easily. It came away in several big chunks.

  Marion gasped when she saw what was beneath, but reached in and cast her best Heal anyway. Blood pumped out of awful wounds as she desperately tried to close off the wounds, restoring tissue and sealing blood vessels in rapid fashion right before our eyes.

  Then she passed out.

  Marion almost flopped forward, which would have been beyond bad. If she’d fallen on Kelly’s body, gotten stuck in the strands herself…! But Alex caught her just in time, lifting her up.

  “I’ve got her,” Alex said, hauling Marion off to the side. “She’s just over-stretched her mana. She’ll be fine after some rest. Ruiz, get in there with the heals!”

  “On it, boss,” Ruiz said. He’d already stepped up, even before Alex spoke, laying a hand on Kelly’s torn and burned throat. Then he shook his head. “He’s gone, guys. He’s gone. I can’t repair this much damage. I’m close enough to his head that Heal is telling me there’s nothing left to save. I’m sorry.”

  I ripped my hands free of the strands, leaving a little of my skin behind, and hit them with another Drain to heal the damage. Feeling almost as wiped out as Marion, I staggered back into the wall behind me and slid my way down to the floor.

  “You all right, Cameron?” Alex asked.

  I nodded. “Will be. Same issue as Marion.”

  “Understood. We need to make sure the source of those things isn’t still a threat, though,” Alex replied. “Dara, think you can make sure nothing else comes out of that chest, ever?”

  “You know it,” Dara replied. She raised both her hands and vented a sheet of fire at the ‘chest.’

  As the flames gushed over the thing, more little tendrils rose from it, thrashing about in the air like sentient whips. One tried to lash out toward Dara, but Alex was there with his blade before it could reach her. He sliced the tendril in half, but more rose to replace it.

  “Again!” Alex shouted. Dara did as he asked, blasting the thing with more flames. Alex joined in, aiming his sword at the ‘chest’ and blasting it with a Lightning Bolt.

  I reached out a hand and launched a Lightning Bolt of my own to join the others’ attacks. It used up pretty much all the mana I had remaining, leaving me weak as a kitten, but the double Bolt coupled with multiple blasts of flame did the trick.

  The ‘chest’ shattered, sending burning chunks several feet in all directions. People near enough to worry about it dodged the flying bits. Chunks of flaming tendril spattered on the ground beside the cavern wall.

  Alex walked over to where the remnants of the thing still jutted from the wall and hit it with another Bolt. Nothing fought back. Nothing moved to attack him. He reached in and touched a chunk of the creature where it met the wall, and I saw something appear in his hand.

  “It’s dead,” Alex called out.

  “Thank god,” Anderson replied.

  “Too late for Kelly, though,” Clark added. “Poor guy.”

  “Kelly was given direct orders to leave that thing alone for precisely this reason,” Alex spat. “This is why we were avoiding it. A chest, stuck halfway into the wall like that? I warned him it was probably a trap. He tried to open it anyway, didn’t he?”

  Clark nodded, his face grim. “Yeah.”

  “This place will chew us up and spit us back out, if we’re not careful,” Alex warned. “We need to stay together and remain focused. If Kelly hadn’t disobeyed my commands, he’d still be alive right now. Instead, he’s dead, and we’re down one fighter who could have been critical in the battles yet to come.”

  I could tell Alex was upset. I levered myself back to my feet as best I could and made my way to his side, resting a hand on his arm. “It’s not your fault. He made the wrong call, and he paid for it. That’s not on you.”

  “I’m the leader of this expedition,” Alex replied. “That means everything that happens in here is on me. The good and the bad.”

  He turned away from me and went to check on Marion.