NOVEL WEB Ch. 24: The Escape
Cass’s eyes went wide. What!
In the cavern below her, she heard clicking. She glanced out to see the young centipedes were moving. They had left their corpse piles and were slithering down the corridor toward the temple and her.
That was bad. That was very bad.
She glanced around the temple again. No secret escape hatch had manifested since last she’d checked.
She could fortify a position here. Elemental Manipulate the opening closed so only one centipede could approach at a time.
Except, the entrance was too wide. She could still only move about a basketball’s worth of stone at once at the best. She would never fill the entrance like that. And there was nothing but the stone of the walls that she could use.
Besides, no fortification she built, no matter how long she had to build it, would stand against the Herald. If she tried to make a stand here she would be caught and killed by that monster.
She had to run. She shoved the orb in her jacket pocket and gripped her staff, trying to steel her nerves.
One look down the corridor and she all but gave up. It was crawling with centipedes. Two man-sized ones were already at the base of the stairs. Three more were just behind them. Yards past them was another wave of nine, then more and more.
Her knees felt weak. If not for her staff she might have collapsed. But she couldn’t collapse. She couldn’t get caught. She couldn’t die.
Time slowed around her as her thoughts raced. She might make it through the first two before the next wave could get to her. The wave after that she wasn’t sure she could beat, much less beat before the next arrived. She definitely could not take more than one wave at a time.
It was too late for Stealth. Dodge would help. There was not enough wind for Wind Step. Elemental Manipulation she still couldn’t use as a weapon…
She couldn’t use it as a weapon, no… But she didn’t need a weapon.
She lowered her staff, remembering the feel of mana she’d observed from the roaches’ wings.
The first pair of centipedes were two steps down.
She activated Elemental Manipulation and swung her staff up between the two bugs.
A wave of wind shot off guided by her mana.
The centipedes reared back to strike.
Cass leaped after her wave of wind, activating Wind Step and hoping for the best.
She phased out of existence as the mandibles snapped down on her.
Wind Step has increased to level 3.
Wind Step carried her through the air on her self-made wave of wind. She could barely manage both Wind Step and Elemental Manipulation at once. But she needed to hold both. This was her only chance. Just 18 seconds. That was Wind Step’s cooldown at level 3.
She’d never used Elemental Manipulation on wind for that long. She wasn’t sure if she’d used it on anything for that long. Definitely never while multitasking. But she had to do it.
She could feel both skills slipping. Elemental Manipulation was losing its grip on the wind. The wind was sputtering out. Wind Step was losing the wind to ride. She had to hold it.
She fell.
Elemental Manipulation has increased to level 8.
Cass rematerialized ten feet up, thirty yards down the corridor over the course of seven seconds. Not nearly far enough. Not nearly long enough. There was a sea of foot-long centipedes below her. The big ones were behind her, swarming the temple still. Not clever enough to realize she was already gone.
It wasn’t going to matter. The little ones were going to swarm her if the fall didn’t kill her first.
Focus.
No time for doom. Solutions only.
She only had one option.
She swung her staff down as she fell.
Elemental Manipulation!
A gust of wind burst from her staff, buffeting the small centipedes back and slowing Cass’s fall just enough that she didn’t snap her ankles or knees as she collided with the stone.
She rolled up, sprinting before the bugs could regroup.
There was an endless number of them ahead of her and too many more behind her. The Herald was out there somewhere too. She had eight seconds remaining until she could use Wind Step again.
Cass sprinted down the cavern.
She swept the path ahead with blasts of wind from Elemental Manipulation. A two-foot-long centipede resisted the blast. It grabbed onto her boot, climbing up her leg, biting through her fleece pants.
Cass screamed as the thing’s venom shot through her leg. It burned. Her vision went white. She swatted it off as she stumbled forward. She couldn’t stop. It hurt but it would hurt more if she got bit again.
She pushed forward, through the pain and the fear.
Elemental Manipulation!
She cleared another wave of the little ones.
A four-foot one slithered from a hole in the wall, sliding between Cass and the exit.
Hundreds slithered behind her, angry and eager to catch up.
There wasn’t time for debate. She ran straight for the four-foot monster, every step agony.
Staff Mastery slammed her staff down on the monster’s head. The bug slipped to the side, its head flying forward to bite her. Dodge engaged, its momentum carried it past her, and she bolted forward.
She ran. Her vision swam from the pain. Every step a new spike as her foot hit the floor. Wind Step was ready again, but she was saving it. She could still blast the small ones away. She could flee any single larger one.
She ran. All there was in her world was pain and running. The venom coursed up her leg, like fire in her veins.
She dodged another little ‘pede. Swatted away another. Blasted away another wave.
She could barely see. The pain was all.
Through the haze of pain, she reached the end of the corpses and bones. She could barely breathe, but there was nothing in front of her. They couldn’t catch her. She was the wind, she would fly.
Skill Earned: Sprint (lvl 1) (Wind)
[Run! Run like the wind!
Passively increases your running speed.
Actively consume additional Stamina to further increase speed.
Association with the Concept of Wind passively decreases the Stamina cost of all running-related activities.
Modified by Dex.]
She gusted down the cavern, her feet barely touching the ground beneath her. For a moment the pain was drowned beneath the elation and the adrenaline.
She hit the crossroads moments later, just in time to see the Ancient Centipede thundering toward her. It filled the cavern path she had come from earlier, its head thrashing, its beady eyes glinting with unbridled malice. It let out a chitterous roar. The sound echoed through the cavern, vibrating Cass’s bones.
Even more centipedes poured from the smaller passages. They slithered silently behind her.
Without waiting to see what else the giant centipede had in store for her, she Sprinted off down the third path.
Sprint has increased to level 2.
She could hear the Herald gaining on her. It was huge, its millions of legs tireless. How could she escape this thing?
Her stamina was in the gutter. The pain was eating through the adrenaline again, piercing and hot with every flex of her muscles.
Atmospheric Sense told her the Herald was immediately behind her. She could feel the rush of air as burst forward to bite her.
She took a chance.
She stepped onto that gust, phasing out as it snapped around her. Only the fact that its head was so big and that it displaced so much air made that maneuver at all feasible. But if she did nothing she’d phase back barely a foot in front of it.
She grabbed the gust with Elemental Manipulation and pushed it forward. She willed it faster. Faster. Away from the monster behind her. She pressed with all she had.
She heard the Herald roar behind her, but all it did was add to her gust of wind.
She fell out of the wind a couple seconds later, rolling to her feet. She’d barely held on for five seconds that time. But between her rising exhaustion, the writhing pain, and the strain of two skills it was all she could manage. But her wind blade combined with the monster’s roar had sent her far further this time. She’d gotten a whole 100 yards that time. A sizable buffer. It had to be enough.
She set off Sprinting again. She had to get away. There was barely enough Focus left for one more Wind Step. The next Wind Step would be the last. And if she had to use Elemental Manipulation again there was a good chance that last Wind Step would bottom out her Focus pool.
Cass had run another five seconds before the centipede gave chase again. Had it lost her when she’d Wind Stepped?
She grinned through the pain and her burning lungs. She might just have a chance.
She scanned the walls. It needed to be high. Really high. A break in the ceiling would be better. Atmospheric Sense said there would be one eventually, but she could tell she was still quite a ways off.
The centipede was catching up.
There. She found a ledge just below the ceiling. Barely taller than she was lying down. Barely wider than she was tall. She slowed as she passed it.
She could feel the Herald preparing another strike. Again, the creature’s head snapped forward in an attempt to bite her. Again, she Wind Stepped on the rush of air as it snapped down on her.
This time, however, she used Elemental Manipulation to redirect the wave of air as soon as she was incorporeal. Holding tight, she pressed the wave into that crevasse between the ledge and the ceiling. The wind slammed into the back wall and she slid out of the wind feet first.
Cass rolled to the back of the ledge, pressing herself as far back as she could and holding her breath.
Below her, she could hear the Herald howling in frustration. She was gone. It couldn’t find her.
She grit her teeth, the venom in her leg pulsing. Her head pounded with it, the side effect of single-digit Focus. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to faint or to scream. But she clenched her mouth closed. She stayed awake. She was dead if it found her.
She had to do something for the venom. She was dizzy, her thoughts slow. But didn’t she have something for poisons? She rummaged through her pockets. Sorrel.
Sorrel countered toxins. Was venom a toxin? Did it matter? Cass shoved a handful in her mouth. Anything had to be better than doing nothing.
The seconds ticked by. It was still below her. Her head hurt too much to try to make out what was going on with Atmospheric Sense. All she could tell was a lot was moving.
Minutes went by. Five. Ten. Twenty.
Finally, things were still below her.
It didn’t matter. She was too tired to move. She didn’t have the Focus to Wind Step out of her hole.
She’d camp here.
She’d finish her escape tomorrow…