Originally, they’d planned for Nym to help with ghoul disposal only if needed, but Babkin was showing no signs of slowing down and they already couldn’t keep up with him. Nym was spending all his time scrying to find wights and relaying locations as best he could through the communication link. That assassin woman, whose full name was Tiramaya, was working overtime to take out wights as fast as he could locate them.
“Babkin could slow down a bit and make this a bit easier on everyone else,” he muttered to Leaf again.
“He could, but he won’t. That’s just not how berserker magic works. He’ll go at full speed until there’s nothing left to fight or he drops dead on the spot. I’ve seen him bedridden for weeks after a particularly hard fight, but the magic won’t let him slow down, not when he’s this deep in it.”
“Who built a spell like that?” Nym said. “Why would anyone want that?”
“Ask Veran later. Maybe he knows.” Leaf turned to Stelton. “Can we get a few more army mages in here to help clean up these ghouls?”
“I can put in the request, sir.”
“Good. Do it. At least… I don’t know? Three more? Four? How many do we need?”
“As many as we can get,” Grom huffed. “We’re not going to last another ten minutes at the rate we’re going.”
Behind him, his burn team groaned in agreement. All of them were putting out… well, to Nym it didn’t seem like very much arcana, and he was stealthily adding a bit of heat to the same spot as their spell, but he was sure it was full power to them. The spell wasn’t too complicated, but it was draining and he didn’t think he had his intent filter exactly right.
Probably half of the ghouls Babkin cut apart managed a full recovery without ever being touched by the fire team, which honestly wasn’t that far off the normal ratios in a combat scenario with ghouls. The problem was this wasn’t a normal scenario. The ghouls weren’t retreating to patch themselves up at a wight’s command. They were just climbing back to their feet, after having reattached those same feet completely uncontested.
Babkin was surrounded on all sides by ghouls, with more coming at him every second. He probably should have retreated to at least a tunnel where they’d only come at him from one direction, assuming the rest of the group could incinerate everything behind him. He wasn’t doing that, of course. He wasn’t even making an attempt.
But Nym couldn’t honestly say the berserker was losing. Eventually he’d fall over dead, but right up until that moment, he was killing ghouls faster than they could overwhelm him and if he’d taken any wounds, they weren’t slowing him down in the slightest. Tiramaya was assassinating wights fast enough that none of them made it to the fight, though it was debatable if any were even trying. If they were smart, they’d be retreating somewhere more defensible. Ghouls were far more replaceable and far less useful than wights, after all.
Babkin was deep enough into the tunnels now that as ghouls picked themselves back up, they started targeting the rest of the group instead of chasing after the berserker. Leaf kept in front of them, and Nym started splitting his attention between scrying and helping out with his mage blades. Both spells demanded too much of his attention to continue subtly buffing Grom’s incinerator or keep perfect sight going, and since he wasn’t keen on sharing how he’d managed to copy the mage, disposal got a bit slower and his vision was limited to what Stelton’s light spells could reveal.
Fortunately for their backup, the tunnel was still a straight shot and there were no ghouls behind them. Two more army mages showed up, conferred quietly with Grom, and went to work. All three of his original assistants bowed out, and Grom himself wasn’t looking too good. He doggedly kept the spell going, though very little of the arcana was coming from him now. The efficiency of their ghoul incinerator took another hit.
[Three wights coming in from the tunnel north of Babkin. I don’t think they’re earth mages,] Nym sent through the link.
He took a moment to reflect on the communication spell Sleton was powering. It was a handy little spell, though of limited use in his everyday life. As always, Nym saw it and wanted to learn it, even if he didn’t see himself using it all that often. It would probably make those group meetings with the sensitive information easier to organize, plus they wouldn’t all have to gather in one room. On the other hand, it was nice to get all his friends together in one place and have a meal while they talked. He’d have to see if there was a copy in Archmage Veran’s library.
Refocusing on the matter at hand, Nym discovered he’d been lax in providing new ghoul limbs for the incinerator spell. He scooped up a few dozen more with greater telekinesis and started feeding them in again while the army mages gave him dirty looks. A few minutes later, one of the original trio came in to replace Grom, who was panting and sweating.
After that, the spell lost so much efficiency that Nym was confident he could do it better by himself than the army mages were managing together. “This isn’t going to cut it,” he said. “We’re still falling farther behind.”
Stelton shook her head. “They won’t send anyone else in. Ghouls have started coming out of the side tunnels behind us. I’m actually kind of surprised we’re not getting hit from both sides now.”
“Shouldn’t have said that,” Leaf said with a grunt as he decapitated a ghoul coming at him. “You good to hold the back, Nym? Should be a bit lighter than the front.”
“Might lose the scry if it gets too busy,” he warned. “But I’ll keep an eye behind us.”
It actually took a few minutes for the first of the ghouls to show up, despite Leaf’s dire prediction. The soldiers stationed in the cave must have been doing something to attract their attention, but Nym couldn’t spare the time to scry behind them and find out what. Whatever it was, at least it was keeping the numbers down.
Stelton put up another light behind them so that Nym had a bit more lead time to cut down incoming ghouls. He didn’t necessarily need that time, but it was nice to have the buffer just in case anything went wrong. No one in the group had the healing skills to patch someone up if a ghoul got through and tore into one of the burn team.
The added pressure of ghouls coming in from the back slowed them down even more, of course. It was already slow progress, and now it was becoming untenable. They’d killed more than thirty wights, well, Tiramaya had at least, but even with the reinforcements, they couldn’t dispose of the bodies fast enough to keep them from getting back up. Leaf was probably good to go for a while, and Nym suspected he could keep the back clear as long as the numbers didn’t pick up.
But they would pick up. He had no doubt about that. When more than one or two ghouls started coming in at once, there’d be problems. He’d have to pull out stronger magic, and he would get tired faster. Then he’d need to teleport the team out, except now there were eight of them, not even counting Babkin and Tiramaya.
Bringing Babkin in had been a mistake. He was undeniably effective, quite impressive, really. But he was causing problems now by pushing forward by himself, and they had no way to bring him back. Eventually he was going to die if they couldn’t get him to retreat. There had to be thousands upon thousands of ghouls packed into the tunnels, and no matter how many Babkin put down, they’d just get back up once the burn team was fully exhausted.
“What was the plan to extract Babkin?” Nym asked. At the same time, he sent through to Tiramaya, [A wight just came onto the killing floor from that east-bound tunnel high up on the wall.]
“Let him keep hacking through them until he comes back out another tunnel into the forest,” Leaf said.
“That’s a bad plan.”
Nym couldn’t believe he’d gotten in the ring with the berserker. He’d trusted Babkin’s self-control, thought the man could deactivate the magic. Maybe he could back then, or maybe he could if he only used it in short bursts, but they’d been underground for half an hour and Babkin had been running at full strength the entire time.
“Tira will make sure Babkin gets out alive,” Leaf said. He sounded confident, but Nym noticed he didn’t mention any specifics about how that was supposed to happen. Maybe this wasn’t an unusual strategy for the group.
“How do we get out?” Nym asked. “This is too many people for me to teleport.”
“Walk back to the entrance and kill any ghouls between here and there.”
Nym slashed about another ghoul coming up from behind. “At least it’s simple. When do we retreat?”
“We need you down here calling out wights for Tira for as long as possible. That’s the whole point of this mission.”
“I don’t have to be down here for that!” Nym protested.
Leaf actually paused for a second and looked back at him. “You don’t?”
Nym shut down a ghoul coming at the man with an undead stunner. “Pay attention!”
“Right, whoops.” Leaf got back to work. “But you can scry through the ground? I didn’t think that was possible.”
“It’s not,” Stelton said.
“I’m pretty sure I know how my own scrying spell works. I’d lose a bit of range, but we’re only,” Nym paused and sent his scry anchor straight up, “fifty feet below the surface.”
Suddenly he was wondering if he should have admitted that. Every now and then, something like this tripped him up, where he realized he had built a unique spell that no one else had ever seen. Analia had told him months ago that his thermal barrier was unique too. Other spells heated a person up or cooled them off, but Nym’s actually prevented a change in temperature instead.
“We’ll stay until we can’t dispose of ghouls anymore,” Leaf decided. “As long as Nym can keep scouting for Tira from above ground, our usefulness down here ends as soon as the burn team is exhausted.”
“Won’t be long now,” Grom said. He’d rotated back in a minute or two ago when Nym wasn’t paying attention. At this point, between guarding the back of the tunnel, scrying for more wights, and feeding limbs to the incinerator, he didn’t have a ton of attention left to spare for which mage had shuffled in or out of their little ritual.
Three ghouls came in at once, leaving Nym scrambling to hold them back. Stelton gave a surprised and undignified squeal as she jumped away from the ghouls, and four of the burn team echoed her sentiments. Grimly, Nym cut down the first one while he blasted the other two with stunners.
A wave of dizziness hit him, but he shook it away and cut up the remaining two. “We should probably go now,” Nym said. “They’re starting to come in groups of two or three regularly on this side.”
“Is that all you can handle?” Leaf said, teasing him. “I’m doing three or four over here.”
“Are you also scrying and cleaning up severed limbs at the same time?”
“That’s a good point,” Leaf acknowledged. “Alright everybody, let’s back it up.”
[Tira, we’re retreating now. Nym says he can continue to support you from above.]
[Understood. I’ll flank Babkin for now and keep him alive. I’m going to try to steer him out of here in a few minutes.]
The group fought their way back to the cave entrance, leaving Babkin behind. It would be more accurate to say that Nym and Leaf fought their way back while the army mages huddled up between them. The burn team wasn’t even trying anymore. Every single one of them was wavering on their feet, which Nym couldn’t logically blame them for, but he still found it annoying.
Then they were through the unit holding the cave mouth and out into the fresh air. They’d spent less than an hour underground, torched probably two hundred or so ghouls, and killed at most forty wights. Hopefully the other probing teams who’d gone in had done better, else it was going to be a long, long campaign fighting to the center of the tunnel network.
Originally, they’d planned for Nym to help with ghoul disposal only if needed, but Babkin was showing no signs of slowing down and they already couldn’t keep up with him. Nym was spending all his time scrying to find wights and relaying locations as best he could through the communication link. That assassin woman, whose full name was Tiramaya, was working overtime to take out wights as fast as he could locate them.
“Babkin could slow down a bit and make this a bit easier on everyone else,” he muttered to Leaf again.
“He could, but he won’t. That’s just not how berserker magic works. He’ll go at full speed until there’s nothing left to fight or he drops dead on the spot. I’ve seen him bedridden for weeks after a particularly hard fight, but the magic won’t let him slow down, not when he’s this deep in it.”
“Who built a spell like that?” Nym said. “Why would anyone want that?”
“Ask Veran later. Maybe he knows.” Leaf turned to Stelton. “Can we get a few more army mages in here to help clean up these ghouls?”
“I can put in the request, sir.”
“Good. Do it. At least… I don’t know? Three more? Four? How many do we need?”
“As many as we can get,” Grom huffed. “We’re not going to last another ten minutes at the rate we’re going.”
Behind him, his burn team groaned in agreement. All of them were putting out… well, to Nym it didn’t seem like very much arcana, and he was stealthily adding a bit of heat to the same spot as their spell, but he was sure it was full power to them. The spell wasn’t too complicated, but it was draining and he didn’t think he had his intent filter exactly right.
Probably half of the ghouls Babkin cut apart managed a full recovery without ever being touched by the fire team, which honestly wasn’t that far off the normal ratios in a combat scenario with ghouls. The problem was this wasn’t a normal scenario. The ghouls weren’t retreating to patch themselves up at a wight’s command. They were just climbing back to their feet, after having reattached those same feet completely uncontested.
Babkin was surrounded on all sides by ghouls, with more coming at him every second. He probably should have retreated to at least a tunnel where they’d only come at him from one direction, assuming the rest of the group could incinerate everything behind him. He wasn’t doing that, of course. He wasn’t even making an attempt.
But Nym couldn’t honestly say the berserker was losing. Eventually he’d fall over dead, but right up until that moment, he was killing ghouls faster than they could overwhelm him and if he’d taken any wounds, they weren’t slowing him down in the slightest. Tiramaya was assassinating wights fast enough that none of them made it to the fight, though it was debatable if any were even trying. If they were smart, they’d be retreating somewhere more defensible. Ghouls were far more replaceable and far less useful than wights, after all.
Babkin was deep enough into the tunnels now that as ghouls picked themselves back up, they started targeting the rest of the group instead of chasing after the berserker. Leaf kept in front of them, and Nym started splitting his attention between scrying and helping out with his mage blades. Both spells demanded too much of his attention to continue subtly buffing Grom’s incinerator or keep perfect sight going, and since he wasn’t keen on sharing how he’d managed to copy the mage, disposal got a bit slower and his vision was limited to what Stelton’s light spells could reveal.
Fortunately for their backup, the tunnel was still a straight shot and there were no ghouls behind them. Two more army mages showed up, conferred quietly with Grom, and went to work. All three of his original assistants bowed out, and Grom himself wasn’t looking too good. He doggedly kept the spell going, though very little of the arcana was coming from him now. The efficiency of their ghoul incinerator took another hit.
[Three wights coming in from the tunnel north of Babkin. I don’t think they’re earth mages,] Nym sent through the link.
He took a moment to reflect on the communication spell Sleton was powering. It was a handy little spell, though of limited use in his everyday life. As always, Nym saw it and wanted to learn it, even if he didn’t see himself using it all that often. It would probably make those group meetings with the sensitive information easier to organize, plus they wouldn’t all have to gather in one room. On the other hand, it was nice to get all his friends together in one place and have a meal while they talked. He’d have to see if there was a copy in Archmage Veran’s library.
Refocusing on the matter at hand, Nym discovered he’d been lax in providing new ghoul limbs for the incinerator spell. He scooped up a few dozen more with greater telekinesis and started feeding them in again while the army mages gave him dirty looks. A few minutes later, one of the original trio came in to replace Grom, who was panting and sweating.
After that, the spell lost so much efficiency that Nym was confident he could do it better by himself than the army mages were managing together. “This isn’t going to cut it,” he said. “We’re still falling farther behind.”
Stelton shook her head. “They won’t send anyone else in. Ghouls have started coming out of the side tunnels behind us. I’m actually kind of surprised we’re not getting hit from both sides now.”
“Shouldn’t have said that,” Leaf said with a grunt as he decapitated a ghoul coming at him. “You good to hold the back, Nym? Should be a bit lighter than the front.”
“Might lose the scry if it gets too busy,” he warned. “But I’ll keep an eye behind us.”
It actually took a few minutes for the first of the ghouls to show up, despite Leaf’s dire prediction. The soldiers stationed in the cave must have been doing something to attract their attention, but Nym couldn’t spare the time to scry behind them and find out what. Whatever it was, at least it was keeping the numbers down.
Stelton put up another light behind them so that Nym had a bit more lead time to cut down incoming ghouls. He didn’t necessarily need that time, but it was nice to have the buffer just in case anything went wrong. No one in the group had the healing skills to patch someone up if a ghoul got through and tore into one of the burn team.
The added pressure of ghouls coming in from the back slowed them down even more, of course. It was already slow progress, and now it was becoming untenable. They’d killed more than thirty wights, well, Tiramaya had at least, but even with the reinforcements, they couldn’t dispose of the bodies fast enough to keep them from getting back up. Leaf was probably good to go for a while, and Nym suspected he could keep the back clear as long as the numbers didn’t pick up.
But they would pick up. He had no doubt about that. When more than one or two ghouls started coming in at once, there’d be problems. He’d have to pull out stronger magic, and he would get tired faster. Then he’d need to teleport the team out, except now there were eight of them, not even counting Babkin and Tiramaya.
Bringing Babkin in had been a mistake. He was undeniably effective, quite impressive, really. But he was causing problems now by pushing forward by himself, and they had no way to bring him back. Eventually he was going to die if they couldn’t get him to retreat. There had to be thousands upon thousands of ghouls packed into the tunnels, and no matter how many Babkin put down, they’d just get back up once the burn team was fully exhausted.
“What was the plan to extract Babkin?” Nym asked. At the same time, he sent through to Tiramaya, [A wight just came onto the killing floor from that east-bound tunnel high up on the wall.]
“Let him keep hacking through them until he comes back out another tunnel into the forest,” Leaf said.
“That’s a bad plan.”
Nym couldn’t believe he’d gotten in the ring with the berserker. He’d trusted Babkin’s self-control, thought the man could deactivate the magic. Maybe he could back then, or maybe he could if he only used it in short bursts, but they’d been underground for half an hour and Babkin had been running at full strength the entire time.
“Tira will make sure Babkin gets out alive,” Leaf said. He sounded confident, but Nym noticed he didn’t mention any specifics about how that was supposed to happen. Maybe this wasn’t an unusual strategy for the group.
“How do we get out?” Nym asked. “This is too many people for me to teleport.”
“Walk back to the entrance and kill any ghouls between here and there.”
Nym slashed about another ghoul coming up from behind. “At least it’s simple. When do we retreat?”
“We need you down here calling out wights for Tira for as long as possible. That’s the whole point of this mission.”
“I don’t have to be down here for that!” Nym protested.
Leaf actually paused for a second and looked back at him. “You don’t?”
Nym shut down a ghoul coming at the man with an undead stunner. “Pay attention!”
“Right, whoops.” Leaf got back to work. “But you can scry through the ground? I didn’t think that was possible.”
“It’s not,” Stelton said.
“I’m pretty sure I know how my own scrying spell works. I’d lose a bit of range, but we’re only,” Nym paused and sent his scry anchor straight up, “fifty feet below the surface.”
Suddenly he was wondering if he should have admitted that. Every now and then, something like this tripped him up, where he realized he had built a unique spell that no one else had ever seen. Analia had told him months ago that his thermal barrier was unique too. Other spells heated a person up or cooled them off, but Nym’s actually prevented a change in temperature instead.
“We’ll stay until we can’t dispose of ghouls anymore,” Leaf decided. “As long as Nym can keep scouting for Tira from above ground, our usefulness down here ends as soon as the burn team is exhausted.”
“Won’t be long now,” Grom said. He’d rotated back in a minute or two ago when Nym wasn’t paying attention. At this point, between guarding the back of the tunnel, scrying for more wights, and feeding limbs to the incinerator, he didn’t have a ton of attention left to spare for which mage had shuffled in or out of their little ritual.
Three ghouls came in at once, leaving Nym scrambling to hold them back. Stelton gave a surprised and undignified squeal as she jumped away from the ghouls, and four of the burn team echoed her sentiments. Grimly, Nym cut down the first one while he blasted the other two with stunners.
A wave of dizziness hit him, but he shook it away and cut up the remaining two. “We should probably go now,” Nym said. “They’re starting to come in groups of two or three regularly on this side.”
“Is that all you can handle?” Leaf said, teasing him. “I’m doing three or four over here.”
“Are you also scrying and cleaning up severed limbs at the same time?”
“That’s a good point,” Leaf acknowledged. “Alright everybody, let’s back it up.”
[Tira, we’re retreating now. Nym says he can continue to support you from above.]
[Understood. I’ll flank Babkin for now and keep him alive. I’m going to try to steer him out of here in a few minutes.]
The group fought their way back to the cave entrance, leaving Babkin behind. It would be more accurate to say that Nym and Leaf fought their way back while the army mages huddled up between them. The burn team wasn’t even trying anymore. Every single one of them was wavering on their feet, which Nym couldn’t logically blame them for, but he still found it annoying.
Then they were through the unit holding the cave mouth and out into the fresh air. They’d spent less than an hour underground, torched probably two hundred or so ghouls, and killed at most forty wights. Hopefully the other probing teams who’d gone in had done better, else it was going to be a long, long campaign fighting to the center of the tunnel network.
