Sacrifice Mage-Chapter 47: Greater Threat

My initial plan had been to Sacrifice the Scarthrall heart I had ripped out. I was already stronger than when I had last faced the vampire I had killed, and combined with the boost from another heart Sacrifice, it would have given me enough strength to fight off a whole horde.
It didn’t matter if Sacrifice had grown so strong that it was affecting me physiologically a little too much. I would deal with the aftereffects
after
I wasn’t dead.
Or, so I had originally thought.
Now, with the shouts of my party members ringing alongside my own, I revised my plan.
They were coming in from above. Ugnash’s bulldozing rush from the right threw down all the Thralls on top of the ledge on that side. Next was Cerea and Khagnio, zapping and cutting through the monsters on my higher left.
A manoeuvre like that had the potential to make things more troubling for me since I was all alone with the rest of the vampires down below. But the way the others had flung down their adversaries meant that the gaggle of Scarthralls in front of me lost all sense of cohesion and teamwork.
Their shocked and injured comrades rained on them, shocking and injuring several more, taking them out of the equation.
Providing me with the perfect opening.
I crashed into the Scarthrall in the lead with enough force to make Ugnash proud, Gravity really aiding my momentum by weighing my body down at the moment before impact. The vampire went flying back with a cry.
There was no time to rest. Even as my momentum slowed, I attacked. No mace this time. Instead, I used the Sacrifice rewards.
I didn’t even need to hit with my fists. Burning arcs of glowing air sliced into my enemies. An arc clipped one vampire, caught another full in the face, and sent a third sprawling backwards. The slashing blows obviously didn’t have my mace’s crushing power, but judging by the Thralls’ screaming and shrieking, their burning wounds weren’t healing anytime soon.
It made me grin. Just as we had against the Brillwyrm, we were going to win. We were going to crush
this
. Twenty-five minutes was more than enough time to deal with this rabble. Plus, I had a backup Blessed knife too. That was why I hadn’t hesitated to Sacrifice the first one.
I saw Cerea zapping a few more vampires. Her bolts dealt far greater damage to the humanoid Scarthralls than they had to the Brillwyrms.
Khagnio and Ugnash were having the same brutalizing effect. The former’s daggers slashed through Thralls, while Ugnash was crushing them with punch after punch, his body wreathed in his crimson aura once again. Another Thrall fell near me, her body spiking with the stabbing red threads of mana from Khagnio’s dagger.
As much as we were succeeding initially, it wasn’t going to last. The Thralls were numerous and they were recovering from the initial shock. My wide swings had created a little space of freedom around me, allowing me to take a second to note what was going on.
One actually began blocking Ugnash’s blows to try and counter. He didn’t have a lot of success and got pummelled eventually, but the big Rakshasa’s charge was stopped. Ugnash was needing to spend more effort to push back the vampires.
Cerea, too, had been forced to stagger back. Her initial effectiveness with her zapping strikes had lost their efficacy. The Thralls had grown wise to it. They were literally using the bodies of their fallen comrades—none of whom were actually dead yet—as shields against the sparks to try and rush her.
Only Khagnio still had the same success as he’d had from the start. Though, that was largely due to his ability to disappear and strike with deadly force as a rogue.
“We don’t need to keep fighting!” I yelled. “We don’t need to—”
“Ahh!” a Scarthrall yelled at me as he charged. “Die, human scum!”
I was able to swing my shield around just in time for the vampire to slam into the hunk of metal, essentially stopping his momentum. Gravity had helped stabilize me. Then I countered. I charged back, vampire on my shield, pushing him back harder and faster and screaming as I went, my bullish rush throwing off other vampires in my path.
We collided against the distant wall, the vampire’s body crushed between my shield and the hard rock.
He cried out. His hands scrabbled against me to free himself, and I ate a few scratches to the face, but I got him before he could claw my eyes out. My punch crush-stabbed though his eye, slicing through his skull and into his brain, dragging out another shriek.
I kicked back, catching another Thrall who was trying to get at me from behind.
“We don’t need to keep fighting,” I yelled again. “I’ve got what I need. Let’s go!”
I wasn’t lying. The vampires weren’t a big trouble. I had grown stronger than before
and
had Escinca’s Blessing empowering me. It took no effort at all to punch my new captive vampire in the throat to chop off his partially crushed head. That was more than enough evidence.
But I had gotten a little too into my goal. Several of the vampires I had injured or flung back were recovering, trying to get to me. My punches, Blessed though they were, hadn’t killed them. Only delivered unrecoverable wounds. It was hard to aim a strike for their heart in the general chaos and when they could move organs around inside their body.
One Thrall latched onto my arm, and another wrapped its rotting limbs around my waist. I knew Thralls couldn’t turn others into Thralls, but I still remembered Aurier’s warning to not let any of them bite me and I kicked out, a little paranoid.
I managed to free myself from the one trying to give me a death hug. The other had almost ripped off my vambrace to get to my arm, but I just smacked him with the head of his compatriot, which shocked him enough to let go.
My next hit was strong enough to send him flying backwards. All hail ranking up Power.
I wasn’t attacked further. Mostly because I was tired of going about it alone and just jumped, reducing my weight with Siphon enough to reach the ledge with ease. I was now behind Cerea, where Ugnash and Khagnio were fending off the last of the vampires.
“We should get going,” I said.
“You owe us
big
time after this, mageling!” Khagnio warned just as he reappeared to stab the vampire wrestling against Ugnash low in his back.
“I had no idea you guys were even coming,” I said. I looked over the ledge, where several Scarthralls were trying to climb up and get to us, growling and cursing and determined to rip us to pieces. “Not that I’m not grateful. How did you even find me?”
I would have assumed they had followed the path I had taken, but that wasn’t the case at all. They had appeared on the ledges above, not behind me.
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“We used the maps. They were pretty help—”
Cerea was cut off when an unearthly groan rolled through the dungeon. It was followed immediately by a set of heavy tremors, little quakes constantly shivering through the entire area.
“It’s done!” one of the vampires screamed. I recognized the bastard. He was the one who had been trying to egg on his fellows to attack me. “
It is finished!
”
Every single other Thrall cheered like their team had scored a goal.
“Retreat!” one screamed.
“
Go!
” yelled another.
“Get, get,
get!
”
“What in the Pits is going on?” Cerea asked.
“Beats the fuck out of me,” I muttered.
We all stood and watched as the vampires scurried away like frightened critters in jungle undergrowth. It took mere seconds before they were all basically gone.
I raised the head that I had captured. “Hey.
Hey!
What’s going on?”
The disembodied head, which still had an intact mouth despite me crushing half its head, only worked silently.
“Why aren’t you talking?” I asked. The last one had spoken fine. What was wrong with this one?
Ugnash had rushed after one of the Scarthralls too, but he didn’t reach his target in time. He had come to a hard stop. We all looked over to see what had made him pause, and with Cerea and Khagnio, I ended up freezing in place.
At the far end of the long chamber, where an opening led into another tunnel… there wasn’t another tunnel. Instead, a river of enormous grey-white scales swam through the passageway.
“That Scarseeker we were talking about…” Cerea said, her words tripping over each other. “Then that Greater Brillwyrm we saw… are there more than one of them, or is that…?”
I swallowed. When a Scarseeker bit a human, the subject turned into a vicious monster of a Scarthrall that could regenerate with next to no effort and was annoyingly strong to boot. The same went for cave-sheep. It turned from a harmless animal to one that could chomp through the scales of a high Silver-ranked Scalekin like Khagnio.
What the hell was turning a Greater Brillwyrm into a Scarthrall going to do?
“We need to get out of here,” Ugnash said with extreme seriousness. “
Now
.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying since—
argh!
”
Khagnio’s scream came at the same time that the distant tunnel opening exploded. The Greater Brillwyrm was trying to force its way into the larger chamber we were all in, screeching out a roar that was shaking everything worse than the constant, unending tremors.
I felt Cerea tugging on my arm. Her mouth moved, and though I didn’t hear her, I got the gist that I needed to follow along. They were trying to exit the way they had come to the ledges.
We dove into the comparatively smaller passageway just moments before the Brillwyrm crashed in behind us. More screaming, some of them from me, as everything threatened to collapse on us. I didn’t dare look back to check out the vampiric, monstrous serpent, even if I hadn’t gotten a good look at it earlier through the dust and crashing rocks.
Something told me we weren’t free from it yet even as we rushed through the smaller side passage.
“This is
exactly
why I was counselling that we get the Banished Gods’ arse cheeks out of here!” Khagnio said. He was just behind Ugnash leading the way, with me taking the rear behind Cerea. “Now we really are way in over our heads.”
“We could try killing it,” I said, even as I told myself that was a terrible idea.
My suggestion was answered by another roar that made everything reverberate like we were in the middle of a demolition job.
“Does that sound like something you can kill, mageling?” Khagnio hissed. “The number one rule of adventuring is knowing what job you can do and
what you can’t
. This is obviously one we can’t.
At all
.”
“Get ready!” Ugnash warned as we reached the end of the passageway.
His warning was good. We charged into another tunnel. This one was another wide, long chamber too. My heart clutched tight in my chest. Easily big enough to hold the Brillwyrm.
“What in the—” Ugnash cursed as he kept running.
“What is it?” I asked.
Khagnio was cursing too. “It’s different. The dungeon—” He muttered a vicious curse. “It’s changing its layout
actively
.”
I was befuddled. “What? Dungeons can
do
that? I thought they wouldn’t change so much because maps were still supposed to be useful—”
“Stop babbling!”
“I—” My throat clogged up on its own. He was right. I
was
babbling. It was my turn to curse, if internally.
My fears turned out prophetic. With another earth-shaking roar, the Brillwyrm crashed through and out of another tunnel, though thankfully not the one we were heading towards. The problem was that one we
were
targeting was distant.
We would meet the Brillwyrm long before we actually reached the next safe passageway.
“I’ll keep it busy!” Ugnash yelled, veering right away from the rest of the party. “Keep going.”
“Wait Ugnash!”
He ignored Cerea’s yell. The big Rakshasa thumped towards the huge, finned serpent sliding towards. I had no idea what he could actually do to stop something like that. The way Khagnio talked, it sounded like none of us had what it took to take down a Greater Brillwyrm.
But if Ugnash could hold it, even temporarily, then surely we were more of a match than the Scalekin was suggesting?
As we ran, it was the first time I got a proper look at the humongous monster. Its head reminded me of underwater dinosaurs I had seen in an encyclopaedia ages ago. Ichthyosaur? Plesiosaur? Something like that. The rest of its body rippled with scales big enough for me to raft on, its fins so large that they’d have served as sails on Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. But the worst was the wounds. The livid, oozing, zombielike gashes and spots.
It really was a Scarthrall now. Holy shit.
I couldn’t look away from the moment of impact. Ugnash had pulled out his tower shield, his red threads solidifying into a second layer of armour that almost looked solid. And then they collided.
The crack of their impact made my eardrums thrum even worse than the huge monster’s shrieking. I felt it on my skin where all my hair stood on end.
Amazingly, impossibly, Ugnash had actually stopped the huge monster’s charge. All of the Brillwyrm’s massive momentum halted by a being who wasn’t a quarter the size of its whole head.
It was only for a few moments. Still, it was enough. A few, desperate moments in which we reached the next tunnel, one that was too small for the Brillwyrm to follow into. With another ear-piercing roar, the Brillwyrm managed to knock Ugnash off his feet, sending him flying back as it overpowered the lone tank.
“Ugnash!” Cerea yelled.
He crashed into the chamber wall just as we got into the smaller tunnel. But what was the point of that? We could run, but the giant Brillwyrm would just turn its attention onto the big Rakshasa.
“Just get out of here,” he yelled through the dust, coughing even as he tried to get up and clear the cloud around him with his hand.
We did retreat instinctively deeper into the passageway as the Brillwyrm crashed into the small opening with a scream. It didn’t make it through. The passageway was way too small. The monster screamed and pushed, the walls cracking and its poisonous, acidic spit flying everywhere and sizzling wherever it touched.
But the dungeon walls held. My lungs felt frozen as I just stared. All I could think was that if the dungeon could change its layout to trap us, then what was stopping it from widening the walls and letting that thing in?
The monster stopped trying to barge into the tunnel, finally giving up. It slowly began rearing back.
“Now’s your chance,” Ugnash yelled from back inside the chamber. “Make a run for the exit. Tell the guards and the guild what happened.
Go!
”
I realized what he was doing. Heroic bastard wasn’t just giving us an order. Ugnash was forcibly dragging the Scarthrall Brillwyrm’s attention back to himself. He was giving us an even better opportunity to run.
None of us moved. Khagnio growled under his breath. Cerea was frozen in place. And me? My hand was clutching the other Blessed dagger I had managed to keep a hold of.
Khagnio cursed, then disappeared with his Stealth Aspect, just as the monster roared and set its sights on Ugnash.
“Khagnio!” Cerea said. “We can’t kill that thing.”
“I didn’t leave the mageling behind.” The Scalekin’s voice seemed to come from everywhere. “You think I can leave my closest partner behind now?”
Khagnio rushed off. It wasn’t the fact that he was hurling himself into the fray that was the problem. The issue was that we had no plan. He was basically charging off to his death. And now he was gone before we could come up with one.
“We have to—”
The Brillwyrm’s massive tail swung in. I yelled out a warning as I pulled Cerea back, but its swinging appendage struck with incredible force. Both of us were sent hurtling backwards. My heart climbed all the way to my throat as our smaller tunnel threatened to collapse on us.
But it stabilized. We weren’t about to be crushed under a ton of rocks just yet.
“Cerea,” I said, my voice shaking a bit along with everything else. I clutched the glowing gold knife tightly. “Can you create a distraction for me?”
She looked at the knife first. “I don’t know what Enchantment is on that, but it’s not going to help. It’s way too small.”
“It’s a Blessing. And yeah, it’s too small to hurt that thing from the outside. I’ve got an aura active that can attack from range, but it probably has even less penetration than the knife. But that’s why I want a distraction.” I hefted my Blessed weapon. “So I can kill it from
within
.”
Cerea stared at me for a second like I had gone mad. Then she nodded resolutely.