25 – Horde

  When the pain faded and Andy’s senses returned, he leaped to his feet, irritated as much as he was disoriented. He wanted to be angry at the System for taking his “yeah” as consent to change his class when he was clearly talking to Bella, but he couldn’t. The truth was that his thoughts had been all over the place. When he’d heard the cry for help, as he’d begun to stand, he’d wished he’d changed his class already; the System might be in people’s heads, but that didn’t mean it could make sense of jumbled, urgent thoughts.

  Looking around, he saw nobody nearby, only the lanterns hissing with their butane brightness. He could hear yells in the distance, so he launched into a run, sprinting for the tunnel opening. On the way, he glanced toward the other shore of the lake, the one where Casey and the others had been making bricks, and he realized they were still there. He saw three people, one of whom was standing on a boulder peering his way—Madi, he thought.

  “Stay there!” he shouted, then he ran into the tunnel toward the sounds of chaos. He didn’t get far before he came upon Dwayne. He sat on the ground, back against the stone wall, blood-soaked leg held straight out before him. He was panting raggedly, eyes closed, and Andy could see half a dozen other wounds on his arms and torso. “Dwayne!”

  His eyes snapped open, and he looked at Andy. “I’m sorry, man. I tried to stop them.”

  “Who? What happened?”

  “The rat-people! Dozens! They took Frank, man!”

  “Stay here!” Andy took off. As he ran, he channeled mana into his Smoke Lance spell, wrapping his spear with caustic black smoke. When he charged past the room Bea had cleansed, he almost tripped over Benny and his sister. Janice wasn’t in much better shape than Dwayne, and Benny, crouched on the ground beside her, was applying pressure to a gushing puncture wound on her thigh.

  When Andy skidded to the side, slamming into the wall, Benny looked up at him, shaking his head. “Never saw this many. They must be pissed off. Never saw them taking prisoners.”

  “Who’d they take?”

  “That guy back there said they took the medic, and I saw them throw nets over Bella. Omar and that girl with the bow drove ’em back, but there were so many, dude.”

  “Can you hold this position? Keep them from getting to the lake?” Andy peered into the dark. What happened to the lantern? Without thinking, he cast Smoke Sight, and the world shifted into shades of gray, punctuated by the bright glow of living things—in this case, Benny and Janice. “I don’t think the girls back there are ready to fight a bunch of rat people.”

  Benny nodded, raising his blood-stained hatchet in one hand, still pressing on his sister’s leg with the other. “Nothing’s getting past me in this tunnel.”

  Janice, who’d been silent thus far, tilted her face up to Andy and growled, “Kill those shit grubbers!”

  Andy nodded, face grim, and slipped into the shadows, advancing up the tunnel. He could still hear shouts and the clangor of weapons clashing and slamming into stone. He figured he’d be hitting the rats’ flank. To capitalize on his surprise, he cast Unseen Stalker as he went. Mana poured through his body, and he felt the warm tickle of the smoke as it surrounded and obfuscated his form. With an almost feral grin, he slipped out of the tunnel onto the stair landing and glanced left and right.

  The stairwell was awash with brightly glowing lifeforms. To his right, down the steps, he saw dozens of figures—mostly small humanoids, but also giant, dog-sized rats. To the left, he saw more of the same. Further up, across the open stairwell, he saw bigger figures, and he knew they were his allies. It looked like the ones below might be carrying things, but they were so jumbled and there were so many that he couldn’t be sure.

  There had to be twenty rat-like enemies between him and the others—Lucy, he hoped—so Andy leveled his spear and advanced, climbing the steps toward them. The creatures were heaving against each other, crawling over one another and the fallen corpses of their comrades to get up the steps. They screeched and chittered as they did so, their eyes, glowing in Andy’s enhanced vision, fixated on their goal. That said, it was child’s play for him to land well-placed blows, piercing spines, hearts, lungs, and other critical organs.

  Hot blood sprayed onto him, and the steps, already slick with the stuff, became treacherous as he fought for footing among the twitching, writhing wounded and dead rats. Andy hardly noticed; he was on automatic, driving forward, letting his instincts manage his steps as he focused on delivering his lightning-fast spear blows into the weak spots his critical mastery found for him. He was halfway through the horde, a maniacal whirlwind of death, before one of the bipedal creatures finally noticed him, whirling with its short knives and screaming out a rat-language warning.

  Andy was fighting uphill, but his spear, size, and skill more than evened the odds. He killed another giant rat, then delivered his spear into the thigh of the ratman who’d noticed him. Caustic smoke did its work, and the creature, screaming its guttural chitters, fell off the side of the stairwell, plummeting into darkness. Andy pressed on, and then a silver-glowing missile of some sort ripped through the air and slammed into something behind him. Andy whirled in time to see that he was being stalked by dozens more of the creatures, creeping up the stairs behind him.

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  He backpedaled until the stone of the stairwell was at his back, and then he crouched into a defensive posture and, breath growing ragged from his constant fighting, he let them come at him. More silver-shining missiles—arrows?—ripped through the air, slamming into his assailants, and Andy continued to stab and stab, driving his foes back and delivering the harsh poison of his spear’s enchantment with each cut and puncture.

  He lost track of the number of rats and ratmen he killed. It wasn’t just him, though. The number of enemies above him had thinned to almost nothing, and he could see the glowing silhouettes of his allies descending, pushing against the rats, killing and driving them back. Meanwhile, Andy defended himself, and the horde below him began to thin—he could see the end of it across the stairwell, two turns of the stairs below.

  The vermin didn’t retreat; they were wild and mad in their desire to get to him. They leaped over each other; they climbed atop each other in their frenzy. Andy’s arms ached, his lungs burned, his legs were aflame with the pain of a dozen cuts—claw marks, stab wounds, even bites. They were wounds the rats had delivered when they had managed to break through his guard.

  “Die, you little fuckers!” he screamed, driving his spear into the open mouth of a rat that dove over the corpses of its fallen brethren.

  That was when Omar’s voice came to him, ragged but loud: “We’re here, Andy!”

  Andy whirled to see a bright glow—a lantern—and four human-sized silhouettes. That close, the lines of his strange Smoke Sight filled in enough details for him to make out Lucy, Omar, Tucker, and Hector. Before he could reply, Lucy launched another silver-glowing arrow, and it dawned on Andy how strange it was to see the silvery color in his gray-scale vision. It had to be magic.

  “They took Frank and Bella. Maybe more!” Omar yelled.

  Andy nodded. “Where’s Bea?”

  “Behind us. Healing someone. She’s coming,” Lucy replied, her voice shrill with the stress of battle.

  “Let’s go! Push!” Andy yelled, kicking off the wall, ignoring his wounds and burning muscles. He started down the steps, driving toward the last of the horde. With everyone backing him up, especially Lucy’s deadly arrows, the rat army crumpled before him. The fact that they were fighting downslope made a big difference, and Andy’s long spear was just too much for the little creatures. When any slipped past his guard and managed to approach, Omar or someone else was there with an axe, arrow, or another spear.

  Soon, they stood on the first landing, and Andy looked down the tunnel toward the lake to see a human-sized figure standing over several cooling corpses—Benny. “Keep going!” he grunted, taking a deep ragged breath.

  “Just a sec,” Omar replied, grabbing his shoulder. “That’s the last one for now. Let’s get our wind and give Lucy a chance to collect her arrows.”

  Andy looked up the steps to see Lucy stooping over a body. She grunted, jerked an arrow out of a corpse, and droplets of pale, barely glowing liquid splashed into the air—cooling blood. “We gotta hurry, though. Bella and Frank—” His words died on his tongue as the System chose that moment to award them for their victory.

  ***Congratulations, Andy! You’ve helped to slay a Horde of vermin. A “Horde” is a term for swarming, vermin-type enemies that can number in the hundreds or thousands.

  You’ve gained 3 levels in your Brimstone Stalker class, earning you 3 Improvement Points and a new notable spell, Brimstone Breath.

  Brimstone Breath – Bound: By expending a large amount of mana, you can project a jet of caustic, scorching smoke from your lungs. This is a cone attack that will damage creatures in front of you, possibly even setting them alight. Mana cost: 100.***

  ***Andy, you have a new quest opportunity: Rescue the prisoners of the rat horde. This is a time-sensitive quest and should be undertaken with haste if you wish to succeed. Do you wish to accept? Yes/No.***

  “Yes,” he grunted, just as everyone else around him did the same. He looked at Lucy, and even in the strange vision of his Smoke Sight, he could see her fierce smile. “We good?” he asked.

  “Good,” Omar replied. “One minute while I improve a skill.”

  “Same,” Lucy said.

  “Yeah, good plan.” Andy had seven points, and he wasn’t going to mess around with his friends in danger. He didn’t know how good Brimstone Breath was, but it sounded awesome, and for a hundred mana, he hoped it would pack a punch. Without a second thought, he dumped two points into it and tried to add a third, only for the System to tell him it was capped.

  While he was at it, he did the same to Smoke Cloud, an ability he’d utterly forgotten about in the last fight. The thought made him grit his teeth in irritation; not only would it have made it harder for the rats to hit him, but they would have suffered from the “caustic” smoke. Now that both skills were up to rank three, he read their descriptions again:

  Brimstone Breath – Bound: By expending a large amount of mana, you can project a wide jet of caustic, scorching smoke from your lungs. This is a cone attack that will damage creatures in front of you, igniting flammable materials and burning flesh. Mana cost: 120.

  Smoke Cloud – bound: Expending mana, you can manifest a cloud of hot, caustic smoke that erupts with you at the epicenter. The smoke will obscure the vision of all caught within it, save the caster’s. Furthermore, the smoke will burn the eyes and lungs of those caught in it. Mana cost: 30.

  He smiled at the results. The spells had each gotten more costly, but they’d also gained effectiveness. The Smoke Cloud spell used to say it would harm the eyes and lungs of people who “remained in it for more than a few seconds,” and Brimstone Breath no longer said “possibly” when it came to setting things on fire.

  “Goddamn,” Hector grunted. Andy looked at him, saw he was pressing a hand to his stomach, and that blood was seeping out past his knuckles.

  Andy put a hand on his shoulder. “Do you mind waiting for Bea? She can patch you up, and then you can tell her where we went.”

  The burly former trucker looked at Omar, whose eyes glinted yellow, even in Andy’s Smoke Sight. He nodded. “Good idea, Andy.” He clapped Hector on the shoulder. “You gotta get that bleeding stopped, brother.”

  “All right. I’ll wait for her.” Hector might not have wanted to, but he sounded relieved.

  Andy looked from Omar to Lucy. “Ready?”

  They both nodded, and Lucy shook the quiver hanging off her hip—an addition to the one on her back. “Got twenty of my arrows and dozens of those rat arrows.”

  Andy started down the steps, his mind drifting back to the kids at the school. “Let’s do this, then. I’m not gonna be too late again.”