Play 2 Wage: Linked

I stepped back from the hoard of approaching enemies, still nothing more than pinpoints of reflected light slowly advancing towards us in the darkness. I kept hold of the writhing armored slug in my grip and managed to keep my voice down to a false whisper. “ Look, something’s out there!”

Lokralda spun around, looking ready for a fight while Lurbolg’s eyes went wide. Sallis regained her feet, and each of the dwarves let out a spray of light in a different direction that left the dark stone surrounding us looking like a lumpy and uneven cosmic-themed rave dance floor. A smattering of glowing specks revealed the outline of a large pillar in the darkness about 30 feet distant, and created enough collective light to show the ceiling to be about 40 feet high and covered in sparkling stalactites.

The hundreds of eyes loomed closer in the darkness and slowly resolved into more of the slugs, more than I could count. A slow moving flood of them came oozing towards us from both sides of the cave.

“What do we do? Are they actually harmless, or like… mostly harmless?” I hissed at the group.

“They’re… mostly harmless.” Lurbolg half-answered, starting to look a little nervous himself.

Sallis and I both snapped our heads in his direction at the same time to glare at him, while Lokralda backed up a step and tightened our little group in the bullseye of the circle of light we had painted in the darkness.

“They can’t bite, and while they’re acidic, as long as you don’t let one latch on to you for hours you’ll be fine so… we just can't let them bury us.” He finished.

Sallis's voice was small yet filled with a terrified resolve. “That looks like enough to bury us, Lurbolg. Pull back, or punch through?”

We exchanged looks between each other and the hole we had climbed through as the slugs closed in on us. Lurbolg spoke up first. “We should try not to hurt them, they’re valuable.”

Sallis grimaced and shook her head. “They’re f’n creepy and gross is what they are.”

“So we pull back?” Lokralda added.

I tossed the slug in my hands out at the approaching group and snapped a nearby stalagmite off of the ground, thinking to use it as a last ditch improvised weapon if I had to. The fragile stone would have made a terrible weapon, yet the urge to have something, anything, in my hand was too powerful to ignore. “I think we pull back and report.”

Lurbolg grumbled, but nodded in agreement. “Okay, we pull back. I’m pretty sure there is a way to control them but I don’t know it. Someone message Bomilik and ask about it, I think he is more familiar with these things.”

Without needing any more convincing, Sallis immediately ran over and jumped down the hole we had just climbed up, she flipped the finger at the slowly approaching tide of slugs just before she vanished into the floor. Lokralda followed after her and Lurbolg and I reached the exit at the same time. He shook his head and waved for me to go ahead of him.

“I’ll go last, you message Bo.” He said.

“Got it, be careful.” I replied before jumping down the narrow chute myself. The top portion was still lubricated with the dimly glowing light that Sallis had smeared against the walls, and after a short bumpy slide I landed on top of Lokralda. Sallis helped us both to our feet just before Lurbolg came slipping down after us headfirst a moment later. We quickly regrouped and retreated back down the narrow corridor to a wider patch, leaving a few smears of light near the entrance and along the way.

I opened my UI and scrolled through my friends list looking for Bomilik’s name as I pushed along the narrow passage. We had only ever exchanged messages once, and I had to go near the bottom of my list of recent messages to find him. I briefly considered paying the cost to get a group chat server of my own so I could create a thread specifically for my Row, but the 25k yearly price tag continued to scare me off of it. If we could get through the trials we would have access to the Clans server, but as of yet were mostly locked out.

Kaninak: Southern path from the fork leads to an upwards chute, large chamber above filled with–

I broke away from typing my message for a second to ask the group. “What are these things called? Copper slugs?”

“Copper smolsquam, or squams.” Answered Lurbolg as he kept watch in the direction we had retreated from. I thanked him and refocused on my chat UI.

–filled with a hoard of copper squams, hundreds of them coming. Please advise

We watched the glowing smears of light start to dim as we waited for a reply, which came after a long moment attached to a crude diagram of a few different molecules.

Bomilik: Have someone spray that formula, it will put them into a sleep state. Harvest what you can and bring the rest to your first chamber. Good find, brothers.

“Bo says to spray this- “

Sallis cut me off, “We all got the message. I’m not crawling back up there, they’ll be in the chute by now. We should wait here for them.”

We all exchanged glances, and a metallic ping-ping-ping sound filled the tunnel. The squam were a little smaller than the main body of a classic round barbeque grill when they rolled up into armored balls, and dozens of them bounced out from the small crack in the ceiling at the end of the hall. With the momentum from the fall, they rolled nearly halfway to where we had retreated before unwinding from their shells to continue squirming their way towards us.

We all scanned over the formula. The three dwarves prepared to mix the chemicals themselves with their specialized glands, while I saved it to my own database with a note on its supposed effect. I wished to help, but until I could start gathering a stockpile of chemicals of my own to carry, my gauntlets were effectively just fancy armored gloves.

Lokralda was the first to finish mixing the concoction, which she let us know by letting out a massive steamy burp in the direction of the slugs, and as a group we all blew and waved the fog towards the advancing slugs.

Once we had filled the tunnel with the oddly smokey and sweet smelling pheromone, the squams ceased their advance on us. Yet more and more came tumbling down from the chute and adding to the growing pile, many of them not even managing to unfurl from their ball shape before lapsing into a comatose state.

“Dusted slimy scum. Does anyone know how we harvest these things?” Sallis swore as she eyed the still growing pile of animals.

Lurbolg shrugged when everyone looked at him. “We get the plates off of them somehow, they're supposed to grow back if they’re fed the proper stuff.”

Wanting to be useful and feeling the need to act, I tossed the broken section of stalagmite I had in my hand and squeezed past Lurbolg in the narrow tunnel and approached the edge of the pile, reaching out and grabbing one of the sleeping slugs. I carried it back to the group and set it down on the floor to examine the dark articulated plates that covered the whole back of the thing.

From the top view it reminded me of a slimy armadillo, or maybe a massive pillbug. I started to probe and test around the edges of the plate to see how easily they might lift off from the soft squishy main body of the thing.

“Do I just rip it off? I don’t really want to hurt it.” I mused aloud to the watching group as I wedged my fingertips under the edge of the plating.

“No clue, brother.” Answered Lurbolg hesitantly. “I’ve heard of these things, and seen a few of them in the deep pens, but never have shorn one.”

Sallis stepped closer and nudged the squam with her bare foot. “Just try pulling it off, we don't have time to teeter back and forth on it.”

I grimaced and nodded, also not really wanting to hurt the beast. I took a firm grip and steeled myself, worming my armored fingers between the hard shell and the slimy body of the slug and trying to get a feel for how securely it was attached.

Lurbolg rushed to my side and put a restraining hand on my arm. “Wait! Don’t hurt it, let’s ask Bo first. He probably knows. I’ll send him a message.”

I chewed my lip in indecision, but decided to side with Lurbolg. While I did not have too much of a problem taking what we needed from the bugs, a part of me held onto sympathy for the creatures.

“Alright, message him.” I released my grip and leaned back, sitting down on the ground with my back to the wall, still watching the sleeping bug. Lurbolg nodded distractedly, his eyes dancing as he navigated his UI to send the message.

Sallis huffed and sat down next to me. “We shouldn’t waste all this time. I say Lokralda and Lurbolg stay here and we go scout the northern passage.”

I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye and shrugged. “I’m game, but we should carry a load of these things back first.”

She looked over at Lokralda, who was watching us with her ever present sour look. The red headed dwarv narrowed her eyes in thought for a few seconds before she replied. “I agree, you two carry a load back and move forward. If you’re right about the vents it’ll be worth finding them sooner. Just be careful, okay, Sallis?”

Sallis smiled back at her. “We’ll be fine, Lock, if things get dicey we’ll pull back and let ya know. I’ll send a message every 10 ticks to keep ya in the loop.”

“I mean it Sallis, now's not the time to take risks.” She replied with a serious look.

Lurbolg snapped out of his UI and rejoined the conversation. “Yeah, we can handle it. You’re not afraid of getting a little slimy are ya?” He nudged Lokralda with his elbow, his signature little grin returning to his face.

Lokralda rolled her eyes and pushed his arm away. “Not at all, you just worry about keeping your soft prettyboy hands on the work.”

“Oh, you think I’m pretty?” Lurbolg grinned, his purple eyes flashing in the dim light of the cavern.

“Bah, shut it.” Sallis said as she rose to her feet and kicked some dust and debris from the floor at him, then she looked to the pile of squams that had built up down the tunnel. “How many of em’ do ya think we can haul?”

I rose to my own feet, my head nearly scraping the low ceiling. “I don’t know, they’re pretty heavy. Maybe 4 each?”

Sallis nodded, huffed, stamped her foot and then sighed. “No, no. We can do more than that…” She paused for a moment more before giving Lurbolg a warning scowl. “I don’t wanna hear a peep outta you. The next words out of your mouth better be about how to harvest these slimy bastards.” She then started towards the pile of slugs. As she approached the beasts, she pulled the coarse and loose robe up over her head and off, revealing her stocky, nearly naked, and muscular body.

Underneath she wore a sort of stiff leather-looking and riveted together harness, almost like an outline of what I would consider proper underwear. Keeping her back to a rapidly reddening Lurbolg, she tied the top of the robe off into a knot and started to fill it like a giant sack.

“Not a dusted word, we all knew it’d come to this.” She said tersely as she worked, without looking back.

I gaped at her for a moment before I got a hold of myself and followed her lead, pulling off and tying up my own robe and stuffing as many of the limp slugs as I could into it. We made quick work of stuffing our makeshift sacks full, and each fit a half-dozen of the beasts into our bags. I hauled my bag up onto my shoulder, and tossed a few more of the placid slugs up on top of it. They were roughly 30 pounds each, and slick with cold gross feeling slime, but stayed stuck in place as I grunted with the strain of lifting them all.

Sallis huffed again as she watched me load the extras onto my shoulder and back, hesitant to drape the things over herself as I had, but followed suit after a moment. “This deepwork ain’t for me. I belong on a ship in the sky, not nekkid covered in ooze in the dark, yet here I am, hauling nasty livestock in my knickers with a smartass and an alien.”

I couldn’t help but grin at her grumbling, but quickly changed my grin into a grimace when she looked over at me. “All set?”

“Ah, shut up ya pale-assed ceiling scraper. I can handle it.”

I laughed and glanced at Lurbolg for support, who was too busy blushing and switching between averting his eyes and stealing glances at Sallis. We pushed past the two still sitting dwarves in the narrow tunnel, having to drag and squeeze the large makeshift bag-o-slugs we were hauling over them as they flattened themselves against the floor.

“10 clicks! I just sent the first message and started a timer. Don’t forget!” Lokralda said after us.

I looked back over my shoulder at her and replied. “We won’t forget, and good luck with the squams, Lokra. We’ll come back and help clear out the room as soon as we find the vent.”

She nodded back at me, giving me an awkward smile before turning back to Lurbolg and elbowing him in the ribs. I caught her hushed voice as she scolded the still blushing dwarv. “Grow up ya larvae, or have ya never seen a lass without her covers? Wouldn’t surprise me for all yer talk.”

I shook my head and chuckled softly as I followed Sallis back to the first room we had found, thankful that the massive bulging bag she carried blocked out my view of her backside, grateful to be spared for now from having to deal with whatever thoughts that might bring up.

I hiked my own sack a bit higher onto my shoulder and pushed on, already starting to think about where would be the best place to deposit our burden and wondering how long until the squams would wake up.