System Escape, page 31
Their plan was to go to the proposed site of the next Safe Zone and build not quite a camp there. Just a fire pit and some logs and rocks to sit on while they took breaks. Then they'd go through the area, looking to see if there was a better site for the Safe Zone itself still within the range for Captured area. At the same time, they'd also try to clear out any spawns or hostile mutated creatures in the area.
Even before they arrived at the potential site, there was a distraction.
“What is that? Some weird System storm cloud or something?” Rob asked, pointing.
Marc followed the direction of his finger and, off in the distance, saw a black cloud that was swirling around, bits and pieces of the blackness darting towards the ground only to reappear heading back for the main cloud moments later.
“I've got no clue,” Marc said.
Jeff whipped out his spyglass and peered through it before lowering it and shaking his head.
“Ravens, or crows, or something, but they're huge,” he said.
Marc held out his hand and Jeff gave him the spyglass, once Marc had looked, the spyglass made its way through the group one at a time.
“Crows and ravens are scavengers, right?” Marc said. “So, there's probably something dead under there. We'll need to go check it out, but lets get set up at the site first. They're probably a mile away from it, so there shouldn't be any problems.”
They picked up the pace a little bit, interest in the birds lending some pep to their step. Setting up the minimal area they'd discussed didn't take very long either, the longest part being Rob finding and bringing over a few large rocks to use as seats.
“Alright, shall we go see what's up?” Marc asked.
As a unit, they turned towards where the birds were still clustered in the sky and started walking. They'd made it about half a mile, when Marc noticed that a small section of the black birds were now heading straight towards them at speed.
He groaned when he saw movement on the ground. Beggar was racing towards the group, fully visible and at top speed. The birds seemed to be chasing him and Marc couldn't figure out why, until the raccoon got closer. Once he did, Marc saw the huge hunk of meat in his mouth.
“Beggar, drop it!” Marc yelled.
The raccoon kept racing towards them, shaking his head as he ran, but not letting go of the meat. Now that he was closer Marc could see that eight of the birds were racing after the raccoon, occasionally dive bombing towards him. Beggar kept sweeping his tail forward and under his body each time they did so and since that was apparently their target, they kept missing.
Marc shook his head and quickly concentrated on his inventory. He knew Beggar liked jerky, so he pulled out a handful that he'd recently acquired from the butcher.
“Drop it Beggar, you can have this instead,” he yelled, holding out the jerky.
The raccoon slowed for a second, at just the wrong time. One of the birds had been dive bombing at him, aiming for his tail, but with Beggar slowing for a moment, the bird's beak struck Beggar on the butt.
Beggar yelped, dropping the meat, and racing towards Marc again. When he got close enough Marc tossed the jerky in front of him, then stared at the birds.
They looked mostly like the crows he was familiar with from the area, but significantly larger. Out of curiosity he Analyzed one.
Crow (American)– Neutral (curious)
Race – American Crow, mutated
Level – 3
Commonality – Uncommon
“They're crows, but mutated,” Marc said.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Jeff replied.
“Hey, not everyone can Analyze stuff,” Marc said.
“I was talking about the mutated part.”
Marc just kept staring. The crows had a wingspan of fifteen to twenty feet and even with those wings, it didn't look like they ought to be able to fly. Their bodies were almost the size of a wheelbarrow and Marc was sure that, like bees, their wings just weren't sufficient to hoist that size body into the air. Although he knew better, since he could see them flying right in front of him.
The crows dove down, three of them landing and shredding the chunk of meat Beggar had taken and dropped. After they did, they gulped it down, then lofted themselves into the air again.
“That's just wrong,” Jeff said. “You'd think something that size would have a more ungainly takeoff, like an albatross or something, but no... They just jump up into the air and start flapping and they're gone.”
“Well, we know what they are,” Felicia said. “Do we want to keep going and see what they're doing?”
Beggar swallowed, then reared up on his hind legs, looking at her.
“Deer,” he sputtered, barely understandable. “Herd, dead.”
“Did they kill the deer though? Or are they just eating them?” Marc asked, thinking aloud.
Beggar shrugged, dropped back down on all fours, and went back to eating his jerky.
Meanwhile, Jeff was staring at the raccoon.
“Did he just bring trouble down on us?” Jeff asked.
“What, jealous because he's stealing another one of your jobs?” Rob said.
Jeff looked indignant as he turned to Rob.
“No, he didn't,” Marc replied. “My Analyze just showed the the crow was neutral and curious, not hostile. They probably just didn't like him stealing their food, but once he dropped it they were fine.”
Jeff turned back to Marc.
“Listen, I'm trying hard not to be pissy with your pet—”
Beggar snarled and stood back up, interrupting Jeff.
“Not pet, friend,” he managed to say, or close enough to be understood.
“Whatever,” Jeff said, glaring at Beggar. “I'm trying hard not to be upset with him, but doing stuff like that?”
Marc sighed.
“Jeff, now you understand why we have such a hard time not getting upset with you, don't you? Rob wasn't totally off base with his comment, even if was a bit rude.”
Rob blushed, but nodded vigorously. When Jeff turned to look at the rest of group and saw the agreement on their faces, he clamped his mouth shut, holding back whatever he'd been about to say.
* * *
The crows were apparently mollified by the return of the meat Beggar had tried to steal. After circling for a minute or so, they returned to the rest of the murder. The party moved forward, up to the point where they saw the carcasses on the ground that the crows were eating, then they stopped.
“Jeff, let's see the spyglass again. I want to see if these crows killed the deer or if something else did and they're just taking advantage of it,” Marc said.
Jeff grumbled, but pulled out the spyglass and handed it over.
“That's weird,” Marc said, a moment later, “I thought crows normally landed on the ground to eat. These are only claws on the ground long enough to tear off a strip of something, then they take off into the air again.”
“Did they kill the deer though?” Rob asked.
Marc peered more carefully through the spyglass.
“I don't think so, it's weird, but it looks like all the deer corpses are each missing a couple of legs, or at least part of the legs. That would probably be what took them down. I don't know if that would've killed them though.”
“Given time it might,” Felicia said.
Marc shrugged and handed the spyglass over to her.
“Tell me what you think,” he said.
“Gross,” was the first comment she made.
Marc had experienced a similar thought when he started looking. The crows weren't picky and there were intestines, meat, hide, and more being pulled off of and out of the corpses. But it still bothered him that the crows were flying into the air to eat.
A moment later he discovered why they were doing that. A crow landed and had a bit of problem getting the chunk of bone it was trying to take out of the corpse. Just as it was taking off again, something came lunging out of the ground at it. He couldn't make out what it was though. The crow barely made it away, losing a few tail feathers in the process as whatever came after it got an appendage onto the crow's tail. A moment later a jet of liquid shot out of whatever had attacked the crow, aimed at the escaping crow. The liquid didn't reach the crow though, shooting into the air, then dropping back to the ground which began smoking where the liquid hit.
“That was some sort of giant beetle or something,” Felicia said. “It was brown and had mandibles. Then it shot acid or something out too, that's what's making the smoke.”
“Sounds familiar,” Marc said, “from one of our games. I wonder if it's a mutant made to resemble them, like the Giant Mosquitoes remind me of Stirges, or if they are actual spawns.”
“Analyze them and find out,” Rob said.
Marc shook his head.
“I'm too far away from them right now, I don't have that sort of range.”
He looked over to Jeff, who also shook his head.
“Nah, maybe if we closed three quarters of the distance to them, but I can't do it from this far either,” Jeff said.
“Well, do we want to do something about these things? Wherever we put the Safe Zone these things are going to be close enough to be a problem, and if they expand?” Marc said. “Well, who knows how quickly or how far they would.”
“Of course we want to kill them,” Jeff said. “The only question is what's the safest way to do it?”
“I wonder how big they are,” Rob said. “We didn't see all of that one, did we?”
Felicia shook her head.
“I'm pretty sure it came less than halfway out of the ground for that attack. It was pretty quick though.”
“Well, we may need to let the crows finish eating first. Let's move closer and see if they come out again. Watch out for holes in the ground though since it looks like that's where that one came from,” Marc said.
The party moved forward at a very slow pace, scanning the ground as they went. They managed to close about half the distance between them and the crows before they started noticing holes in the ground, holes that were easily large enough for an adult human to climb down into if they were foolish enough to do such a thing.
“Hey, should I go down one of these and scout it out?” Jeff asked.
“No,” Ella snapped.
“She's right, Jeff. We've got no idea what's down there, except there's probably a massive network of tunnels. Plus, would Stealth even work on something that is probably used to low or no light? If they spend most of their time underground, that might mean they use one of their other senses as their primary,” Marc said.
“Fine, I was just trying to help.”
“You'll help more by staying alive, Jeff,” Felicia said. “There's a good chance you wouldn't be if you went down there. If they spit acid, like I think, and you couldn't dodge because you were in a tunnel?”
She trailed off and Jeff went white for a moment before finally, grudgingly, nodding.
“On the other hand, I've got a plan that might let us fight these things out of their tunnels,” Marc said.
* * *
The party slowly, and carefully, made their way deeper into the fields, avoiding the holes.
“Remember, keep an eye on the exit tunnels behind us, in case we need to run,” Marc said.
The crows were still stripping the dead deer. There were about twenty deer corpses, although several of them were almost entirely stripped by now. At this point, the party was close enough to them that several of the crows had stationed themselves, circling overhead, to watch the group.
I always knew crows were smart, but these guys might have gotten an Intelligence boost when they were mutated. Maybe not though, I think crows used to keep watch on predators and that might be what they see us as, Marc thought.
They were close enough now that the holes were getting thicker on the ground. That was what Marc had been looking for so he halted the party, then pointed out the area he intended to work on.
“That section, right there,” Marc said, “I used the spell to help dig a ditch for the Outreach Safe Zone, so I'm guessing I can strip the dirt away from some of the tunnels, opening them up, then use the wall to block a bunch of other tunnels around those. Careful though, we don't know how fast these things are.”
Marc started to cast his Earthen Wall spell, focusing on drawing the dirt for the wall from around several of the tunnels right in front of the group, and forming the wall horizontally so it filled in portions of a lot of the other tunnels in the area.
Aggravated buzzing and clicking noises started to fill the area as the level of dirt around some of the tunnels dropped. Evidently, several of them had creatures that had been waiting, possibly for the crows to come close enough to attack. Now they were exposed, and angry.
Rob had his shield and ax out. He slammed the base of the shield into the dirt, and then hollered wordlessly at the beetles, or whatever they were. The three of them that had been exposed turned to face him.
The first of them spat a line of greenish looking liquid through the air, striking Rob's shield. There was an immediate acrid scent and smoke began to rise from it.
Marc stepped forward and cast Water Jet. The first second of the spell he used to wash the acid from Rob's shield, then he turned it on the beetles. Meanwhile, Ella had already cast a Fireball, positioning it to catch two of the beetles, and Jeff was shooting arrows. Felicia had her shotgun out and was waiting for the beetles to come in closer.
“Not mutants, spawns,” Jeff yelled, “ankhegs!”
“Great, just what we needed,” Marc muttered as he began to cast a new spell.
He'd been waiting for a chance to use this one, and this looked like a good time. Casting his new spell, Dragon's Teeth, he watched as a humanoid figure, armored and carrying a sword and shield, rose from the ground at his feet.
“Protect him,” Marc said, pointing at Rob.
The figure created by the Dragon's Teeth spell trotted over and planted itself next to Rob, on his shield side. Then it turned and faced the incoming ankhegs.
The first of them reached Rob's shield and tried to strike at him, only for the summoned warrior to interpose himself and his shield between Rob and the strike. Then the summoned warrior struck back, his sword slicing into the carapace of the ankheg.
The other two ankhegs came swarming in and Marc assumed that Rob's earlier hollering had been a Taunt of some sort since they all went for him. The summoned warrior performed well, but it couldn't interpose itself between three attacks and Rob. Another jet of acid raced out towards Rob and the warrior decided to block that attack. His shield wasn't nearly as robust as Rob's though and as Marc watched, the summoned warrior's shield began to decay from the acid.
Meanwhile Marc, Ella, and Jeff were piling on the damage. Felicia had just stepped up and leveled her shotgun at the first of the ankhegs to attack Rob. It had taken the most damage so far, and when she shot it, it collapsed to the ground, twitching.
Rob's ax cleaved through another one, leaving it dead, but the third ankheg attacked the summoned warrior, dropping it. As the ankheg tried to bite down on it, the summons ended with the warrior's death and it faded away. The distinct 'Clack!' of the ankheg's teeth let Marc know that the ankheg had been trying to eat his summon.
He pumped another set of Mana Darts out at the ankheg, just as Ella was doing the same. Rob's ax came down as Felicia fired again. This time her aim was towards the rear of the ankheg since Rob was attacking the front. Between the two of them they dropped it and Marc scanned the area, wondering if any more were on their way to attack.
They weren't at the moment, but he saw that one of them had managed to latch on to a crow. It had the crow's claw in its mandibles. Marc thought this was as good a time as any to continue thinning the bugs out, so his next batch of Mana Darts flew out to strike that ankheg. He pointed and yelled for the attacks to continue.
The crows weren't leaving their flock mate on his own either, the ankheg was having to deal with repeated dive bombs that ended up with either crow claws or beaks striking the carapace on its back. At least one of the crows took to the air with blood dripping from its beak and the beak looked intact so Marc guessed that the ankhegs had a weakness somewhere that the crow had found.
A few more spells and arrows had that ankheg down as well. The crow it had attacked was limping, having problems leaping into the air to take flight.
“Felicia, can you?” Marc asked, gesturing towards the crow.
She nodded and the crow flashed gold for a moment before finding that its claw would support its weight much better. It leapt into the air, its wings beating for a moment before it flew up to join the rest of the murder.
Marc looked around again. This time he noticed that his Earthen Wall was crumbling in spots, spots he assumed were right over the holes he'd covered.
“I think we've got more incoming. I'm going to start big if I can get a few lined up,” he called out.
He positioned himself to where he had three of the crumbling holes roughly in a row in front of him, then waited, along with everyone else.
Within a few seconds of each other the three holes he'd been watching opened up, an ankheg rising from each.
As soon as they were mostly out of the holes, Marc hit them with a Lightning Bolt, the spell striking all three and leaving them blackened and quivering, but no longer moving towards the group.
There were only two more holes whose dirt was shivering in the same way. So they got ready. When the ankhegs burst from those they went down more quickly than Marc had expected.
Because these two are a lot smaller, Marc thought.
They waited a few minutes, but didn't see any other signs of activity. Meanwhile Jeff was poking around the corpses.
“Don't forget to loot them guys. Oh, and one of the loot items is ankheg carapace. Make of that what you will.”
“I will,” Marc said. “This stuff looks like it might make decent armor. I'll talk to Rudi if we get enough of it.”
He watched as the crows landed and tore into the deer. A couple of them tried to get into the ankheg that had attacked one of their number, but with limited success. Their beaks just weren't penetrating.
Even before they arrived at the potential site, there was a distraction.
“What is that? Some weird System storm cloud or something?” Rob asked, pointing.
Marc followed the direction of his finger and, off in the distance, saw a black cloud that was swirling around, bits and pieces of the blackness darting towards the ground only to reappear heading back for the main cloud moments later.
“I've got no clue,” Marc said.
Jeff whipped out his spyglass and peered through it before lowering it and shaking his head.
“Ravens, or crows, or something, but they're huge,” he said.
Marc held out his hand and Jeff gave him the spyglass, once Marc had looked, the spyglass made its way through the group one at a time.
“Crows and ravens are scavengers, right?” Marc said. “So, there's probably something dead under there. We'll need to go check it out, but lets get set up at the site first. They're probably a mile away from it, so there shouldn't be any problems.”
They picked up the pace a little bit, interest in the birds lending some pep to their step. Setting up the minimal area they'd discussed didn't take very long either, the longest part being Rob finding and bringing over a few large rocks to use as seats.
“Alright, shall we go see what's up?” Marc asked.
As a unit, they turned towards where the birds were still clustered in the sky and started walking. They'd made it about half a mile, when Marc noticed that a small section of the black birds were now heading straight towards them at speed.
He groaned when he saw movement on the ground. Beggar was racing towards the group, fully visible and at top speed. The birds seemed to be chasing him and Marc couldn't figure out why, until the raccoon got closer. Once he did, Marc saw the huge hunk of meat in his mouth.
“Beggar, drop it!” Marc yelled.
The raccoon kept racing towards them, shaking his head as he ran, but not letting go of the meat. Now that he was closer Marc could see that eight of the birds were racing after the raccoon, occasionally dive bombing towards him. Beggar kept sweeping his tail forward and under his body each time they did so and since that was apparently their target, they kept missing.
Marc shook his head and quickly concentrated on his inventory. He knew Beggar liked jerky, so he pulled out a handful that he'd recently acquired from the butcher.
“Drop it Beggar, you can have this instead,” he yelled, holding out the jerky.
The raccoon slowed for a second, at just the wrong time. One of the birds had been dive bombing at him, aiming for his tail, but with Beggar slowing for a moment, the bird's beak struck Beggar on the butt.
Beggar yelped, dropping the meat, and racing towards Marc again. When he got close enough Marc tossed the jerky in front of him, then stared at the birds.
They looked mostly like the crows he was familiar with from the area, but significantly larger. Out of curiosity he Analyzed one.
Crow (American)– Neutral (curious)
Race – American Crow, mutated
Level – 3
Commonality – Uncommon
“They're crows, but mutated,” Marc said.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Jeff replied.
“Hey, not everyone can Analyze stuff,” Marc said.
“I was talking about the mutated part.”
Marc just kept staring. The crows had a wingspan of fifteen to twenty feet and even with those wings, it didn't look like they ought to be able to fly. Their bodies were almost the size of a wheelbarrow and Marc was sure that, like bees, their wings just weren't sufficient to hoist that size body into the air. Although he knew better, since he could see them flying right in front of him.
The crows dove down, three of them landing and shredding the chunk of meat Beggar had taken and dropped. After they did, they gulped it down, then lofted themselves into the air again.
“That's just wrong,” Jeff said. “You'd think something that size would have a more ungainly takeoff, like an albatross or something, but no... They just jump up into the air and start flapping and they're gone.”
“Well, we know what they are,” Felicia said. “Do we want to keep going and see what they're doing?”
Beggar swallowed, then reared up on his hind legs, looking at her.
“Deer,” he sputtered, barely understandable. “Herd, dead.”
“Did they kill the deer though? Or are they just eating them?” Marc asked, thinking aloud.
Beggar shrugged, dropped back down on all fours, and went back to eating his jerky.
Meanwhile, Jeff was staring at the raccoon.
“Did he just bring trouble down on us?” Jeff asked.
“What, jealous because he's stealing another one of your jobs?” Rob said.
Jeff looked indignant as he turned to Rob.
“No, he didn't,” Marc replied. “My Analyze just showed the the crow was neutral and curious, not hostile. They probably just didn't like him stealing their food, but once he dropped it they were fine.”
Jeff turned back to Marc.
“Listen, I'm trying hard not to be pissy with your pet—”
Beggar snarled and stood back up, interrupting Jeff.
“Not pet, friend,” he managed to say, or close enough to be understood.
“Whatever,” Jeff said, glaring at Beggar. “I'm trying hard not to be upset with him, but doing stuff like that?”
Marc sighed.
“Jeff, now you understand why we have such a hard time not getting upset with you, don't you? Rob wasn't totally off base with his comment, even if was a bit rude.”
Rob blushed, but nodded vigorously. When Jeff turned to look at the rest of group and saw the agreement on their faces, he clamped his mouth shut, holding back whatever he'd been about to say.
* * *
The crows were apparently mollified by the return of the meat Beggar had tried to steal. After circling for a minute or so, they returned to the rest of the murder. The party moved forward, up to the point where they saw the carcasses on the ground that the crows were eating, then they stopped.
“Jeff, let's see the spyglass again. I want to see if these crows killed the deer or if something else did and they're just taking advantage of it,” Marc said.
Jeff grumbled, but pulled out the spyglass and handed it over.
“That's weird,” Marc said, a moment later, “I thought crows normally landed on the ground to eat. These are only claws on the ground long enough to tear off a strip of something, then they take off into the air again.”
“Did they kill the deer though?” Rob asked.
Marc peered more carefully through the spyglass.
“I don't think so, it's weird, but it looks like all the deer corpses are each missing a couple of legs, or at least part of the legs. That would probably be what took them down. I don't know if that would've killed them though.”
“Given time it might,” Felicia said.
Marc shrugged and handed the spyglass over to her.
“Tell me what you think,” he said.
“Gross,” was the first comment she made.
Marc had experienced a similar thought when he started looking. The crows weren't picky and there were intestines, meat, hide, and more being pulled off of and out of the corpses. But it still bothered him that the crows were flying into the air to eat.
A moment later he discovered why they were doing that. A crow landed and had a bit of problem getting the chunk of bone it was trying to take out of the corpse. Just as it was taking off again, something came lunging out of the ground at it. He couldn't make out what it was though. The crow barely made it away, losing a few tail feathers in the process as whatever came after it got an appendage onto the crow's tail. A moment later a jet of liquid shot out of whatever had attacked the crow, aimed at the escaping crow. The liquid didn't reach the crow though, shooting into the air, then dropping back to the ground which began smoking where the liquid hit.
“That was some sort of giant beetle or something,” Felicia said. “It was brown and had mandibles. Then it shot acid or something out too, that's what's making the smoke.”
“Sounds familiar,” Marc said, “from one of our games. I wonder if it's a mutant made to resemble them, like the Giant Mosquitoes remind me of Stirges, or if they are actual spawns.”
“Analyze them and find out,” Rob said.
Marc shook his head.
“I'm too far away from them right now, I don't have that sort of range.”
He looked over to Jeff, who also shook his head.
“Nah, maybe if we closed three quarters of the distance to them, but I can't do it from this far either,” Jeff said.
“Well, do we want to do something about these things? Wherever we put the Safe Zone these things are going to be close enough to be a problem, and if they expand?” Marc said. “Well, who knows how quickly or how far they would.”
“Of course we want to kill them,” Jeff said. “The only question is what's the safest way to do it?”
“I wonder how big they are,” Rob said. “We didn't see all of that one, did we?”
Felicia shook her head.
“I'm pretty sure it came less than halfway out of the ground for that attack. It was pretty quick though.”
“Well, we may need to let the crows finish eating first. Let's move closer and see if they come out again. Watch out for holes in the ground though since it looks like that's where that one came from,” Marc said.
The party moved forward at a very slow pace, scanning the ground as they went. They managed to close about half the distance between them and the crows before they started noticing holes in the ground, holes that were easily large enough for an adult human to climb down into if they were foolish enough to do such a thing.
“Hey, should I go down one of these and scout it out?” Jeff asked.
“No,” Ella snapped.
“She's right, Jeff. We've got no idea what's down there, except there's probably a massive network of tunnels. Plus, would Stealth even work on something that is probably used to low or no light? If they spend most of their time underground, that might mean they use one of their other senses as their primary,” Marc said.
“Fine, I was just trying to help.”
“You'll help more by staying alive, Jeff,” Felicia said. “There's a good chance you wouldn't be if you went down there. If they spit acid, like I think, and you couldn't dodge because you were in a tunnel?”
She trailed off and Jeff went white for a moment before finally, grudgingly, nodding.
“On the other hand, I've got a plan that might let us fight these things out of their tunnels,” Marc said.
* * *
The party slowly, and carefully, made their way deeper into the fields, avoiding the holes.
“Remember, keep an eye on the exit tunnels behind us, in case we need to run,” Marc said.
The crows were still stripping the dead deer. There were about twenty deer corpses, although several of them were almost entirely stripped by now. At this point, the party was close enough to them that several of the crows had stationed themselves, circling overhead, to watch the group.
I always knew crows were smart, but these guys might have gotten an Intelligence boost when they were mutated. Maybe not though, I think crows used to keep watch on predators and that might be what they see us as, Marc thought.
They were close enough now that the holes were getting thicker on the ground. That was what Marc had been looking for so he halted the party, then pointed out the area he intended to work on.
“That section, right there,” Marc said, “I used the spell to help dig a ditch for the Outreach Safe Zone, so I'm guessing I can strip the dirt away from some of the tunnels, opening them up, then use the wall to block a bunch of other tunnels around those. Careful though, we don't know how fast these things are.”
Marc started to cast his Earthen Wall spell, focusing on drawing the dirt for the wall from around several of the tunnels right in front of the group, and forming the wall horizontally so it filled in portions of a lot of the other tunnels in the area.
Aggravated buzzing and clicking noises started to fill the area as the level of dirt around some of the tunnels dropped. Evidently, several of them had creatures that had been waiting, possibly for the crows to come close enough to attack. Now they were exposed, and angry.
Rob had his shield and ax out. He slammed the base of the shield into the dirt, and then hollered wordlessly at the beetles, or whatever they were. The three of them that had been exposed turned to face him.
The first of them spat a line of greenish looking liquid through the air, striking Rob's shield. There was an immediate acrid scent and smoke began to rise from it.
Marc stepped forward and cast Water Jet. The first second of the spell he used to wash the acid from Rob's shield, then he turned it on the beetles. Meanwhile, Ella had already cast a Fireball, positioning it to catch two of the beetles, and Jeff was shooting arrows. Felicia had her shotgun out and was waiting for the beetles to come in closer.
“Not mutants, spawns,” Jeff yelled, “ankhegs!”
“Great, just what we needed,” Marc muttered as he began to cast a new spell.
He'd been waiting for a chance to use this one, and this looked like a good time. Casting his new spell, Dragon's Teeth, he watched as a humanoid figure, armored and carrying a sword and shield, rose from the ground at his feet.
“Protect him,” Marc said, pointing at Rob.
The figure created by the Dragon's Teeth spell trotted over and planted itself next to Rob, on his shield side. Then it turned and faced the incoming ankhegs.
The first of them reached Rob's shield and tried to strike at him, only for the summoned warrior to interpose himself and his shield between Rob and the strike. Then the summoned warrior struck back, his sword slicing into the carapace of the ankheg.
The other two ankhegs came swarming in and Marc assumed that Rob's earlier hollering had been a Taunt of some sort since they all went for him. The summoned warrior performed well, but it couldn't interpose itself between three attacks and Rob. Another jet of acid raced out towards Rob and the warrior decided to block that attack. His shield wasn't nearly as robust as Rob's though and as Marc watched, the summoned warrior's shield began to decay from the acid.
Meanwhile Marc, Ella, and Jeff were piling on the damage. Felicia had just stepped up and leveled her shotgun at the first of the ankhegs to attack Rob. It had taken the most damage so far, and when she shot it, it collapsed to the ground, twitching.
Rob's ax cleaved through another one, leaving it dead, but the third ankheg attacked the summoned warrior, dropping it. As the ankheg tried to bite down on it, the summons ended with the warrior's death and it faded away. The distinct 'Clack!' of the ankheg's teeth let Marc know that the ankheg had been trying to eat his summon.
He pumped another set of Mana Darts out at the ankheg, just as Ella was doing the same. Rob's ax came down as Felicia fired again. This time her aim was towards the rear of the ankheg since Rob was attacking the front. Between the two of them they dropped it and Marc scanned the area, wondering if any more were on their way to attack.
They weren't at the moment, but he saw that one of them had managed to latch on to a crow. It had the crow's claw in its mandibles. Marc thought this was as good a time as any to continue thinning the bugs out, so his next batch of Mana Darts flew out to strike that ankheg. He pointed and yelled for the attacks to continue.
The crows weren't leaving their flock mate on his own either, the ankheg was having to deal with repeated dive bombs that ended up with either crow claws or beaks striking the carapace on its back. At least one of the crows took to the air with blood dripping from its beak and the beak looked intact so Marc guessed that the ankhegs had a weakness somewhere that the crow had found.
A few more spells and arrows had that ankheg down as well. The crow it had attacked was limping, having problems leaping into the air to take flight.
“Felicia, can you?” Marc asked, gesturing towards the crow.
She nodded and the crow flashed gold for a moment before finding that its claw would support its weight much better. It leapt into the air, its wings beating for a moment before it flew up to join the rest of the murder.
Marc looked around again. This time he noticed that his Earthen Wall was crumbling in spots, spots he assumed were right over the holes he'd covered.
“I think we've got more incoming. I'm going to start big if I can get a few lined up,” he called out.
He positioned himself to where he had three of the crumbling holes roughly in a row in front of him, then waited, along with everyone else.
Within a few seconds of each other the three holes he'd been watching opened up, an ankheg rising from each.
As soon as they were mostly out of the holes, Marc hit them with a Lightning Bolt, the spell striking all three and leaving them blackened and quivering, but no longer moving towards the group.
There were only two more holes whose dirt was shivering in the same way. So they got ready. When the ankhegs burst from those they went down more quickly than Marc had expected.
Because these two are a lot smaller, Marc thought.
They waited a few minutes, but didn't see any other signs of activity. Meanwhile Jeff was poking around the corpses.
“Don't forget to loot them guys. Oh, and one of the loot items is ankheg carapace. Make of that what you will.”
“I will,” Marc said. “This stuff looks like it might make decent armor. I'll talk to Rudi if we get enough of it.”
He watched as the crows landed and tore into the deer. A couple of them tried to get into the ankheg that had attacked one of their number, but with limited success. Their beaks just weren't penetrating.
