-Blade-
I heard them coming, but thankfully I also used their horrid screeches to locate a tunnel leading outwards and up. The spider warrens loosely connected to the city above, how else were thestrals here going to get their spider meat?
Giant arachnid meat was tasty, as were the bugs that garnished the dishes alongside said meat prepared in various ways with a nice mushroom sauce. I like this place, but the ODD faction soured me on wanting to stick around for any longer than Kuril’s family will.
Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to stay by myself and being on EVEN’s payroll was not something I was looking for. I protected Kuril because I liked her, not because she showed me that my cutie mark has more than just violent applications. Learned a lot about myself here.
I moved forward and pointed over Kuril’s shoulder, we needed to go that way.
“Huh… okay!” Kuril figured out almost immediately what I was trying to do, she turned us in the right direction. “Fizzle follow Blade’s directions and teach her how to drive this tank, she can echolocate our way out of here.”
“Why, what are you going to be doing?” At Fizzle’s question, Kuril started to slide her sleeves up and she quietly pulled out a full chaos candle in her right hand.
“I’m going to keep them off of us of course.” Kuril turned to her tired bird daughter who spent an hour on making sure the engine was operational again, the engines efficiency had plummeted drastically and it was noticeable when Fizzle charged it. We were barely moving above half the speed the tank had previously been capable of. “Jacky whatever ammunition you have left, use it.”
Kuril climbed up the ladder and onto the tank with a look of determination, she was either brave or stupid. Maybe both… I’d follow Mayor Kuril, 'The Witch of Good Taste', anywhere. She stopped at the hatch and was staring at their numbers she closed it behind her, why could I hear the beginnings of music?
We crushed several spiders as we started picking up a little speed, Jacky did good work. We only lost about twenty five percent engine efficiency.
-Kuril-
“Come and show what you’ve got, you’re not going to stop us now~. Even though you have a lot and we are completely outnumbered anyhow~!” I started up as I lit the chaos candle and blasted a spider dropping down from above and I swung the flames the candle generated around burning the webbing before it could stick to the tank and slow us down. “I don’t really care, that you really think you can get a meal, but there’s something inside my heart that makes me feel that we are getting out of here~!”
Smaller spiders leapt from the large ones and started to climb onto the tank there sure were a lot of them, I blast one off with a magic missile from my left hand, even as I swept the candle to the right while sustaining the blaze and smoke that was disabling a number of spiders giving chase to our tank.
“We will survive the webs and waves and we can fight for several days~. You monster really don’t have any idea what you’ve really just set ablaze~!” I sang with my heart flaring with power as I started forcing the horde back with a single sweep of the chaos candle going full burn. “My heart is burning for my family and it’s really quite a powerful feeling, there’s nothing surpassing a caregiver in an unstoppable battle haze~!”
This was my heart song, the real one for me. The tank entered a tunnel and started climbing upwards, meanwhile I filled the entire tunnel behind us with candle smoke and fire and even then the spiders kept coming for us.
“I will kick you down, if you try to climb on top of the party tank, there’s no room for danger or the likes of you horrible mangy things~!” I slugged a small spider the size of my head with my left fist and sent a blaze to stop them from crawling under the tank. I’ve already almost burned through one candle and I have several more. “I will be the shield, for my family and my friends~. You have no idea who you’re messing with, and you will most likely meet your end~!”
The tank blasted the horde knocking them back in a shower of confetti, it seemed Jacky was taking my words to heart.
“Come now all you monsters show me what you have, I will take all my own power and it I will grab~!” I burnt out the candle, there were just so many of them climbing on the walls and the ceiling. Black chitin bound monstrosities by their size and aggressiveness alone. I pulled out a second candle, these eight legged monsters are not going to hurt anyone I care about. “I don’t care if you think you are strong, I will show you just how much you are very wrong~!”
A large spider knocked me onto my back and I moved my head out of the way of the stinger and scrunched up into a ball before kicking out with both feet. After knocking it off me and the tank, I igniting my second chaos candle and immediately burned out a quarter of it pushing the hoard of spiders back.
“How are you doing, are you really alright out there~?” Jacky ask through the cannon. The tank leveled out and I saw light filtering in from behind me and saw… oh dear. This mountain was partially volcanic, the tank rolled into a cavernous space and along a narrow ledge and it was swelteringly hot out here.
My body was sweating and it could barely keep up with the heat, using my fish scales here would likely kill me. With a glance over the ledge I could the molten depths below. I turned back to the spiders with narrowed eyes as we trundled along the ledge.
“Don’t worry dear, I can take much more heat than what you fear~!” I had two daughters to protect, also a friend and coworker, I will not falter as a good witch!
“Are you sure, it’s getting really quite dangerous and isn’t that too many spiders to be fair~?” Jacky sang out with a worried chirp.
“There’s nothing to worry about~.” The many eight eyed red glints climbing along the wall and floor behind us were trying to spray webs all over us, but they were failing as I burned my candle to about a quarter left destroying them. I sent another magic missile at the smaller ones trying to climb up and get me. I palmed a salamander scale and cast it at the ground and wall between us and the approaching horde. It caused a blazing wall of fire to erupt and light many of the spiders ablaze. “You’ll just have to wait and see, I’ll show these spiders what a witch with flare can be~!”
That slowed them down immensely, but it didn’t stop the spiders from coming at us along the ceiling. The tank moved and turned into the next tunnel going up. We were pulling away, when a small spider almost got me in the back only for a blast of magic to knock it away.
I watched as Fizzle turned around and her horn lit with lightning, it surged into several other small spiders I had missed and they fell away from the tank twitching or dead.
“We are all in this together mom, you’re not doing this alone and I will see to it that each and every one of us gets all the way to home~. You matter to us and we care, as we all have a stake which we placed when we decided to roam~.” Grabbing Fizzle before she could fall off the tank as it straightened out, we entered a really dark cavern and the spiders stopped giving chase, but why? “We are people of Airship Mauled and we are no quitters~. With danger we all laugh with titters~. It’s worth all the trouble if in the end I get to eat some of your fritters~. We’ll show all and any violent kidders~! We won’t lose even if we aren’t the winners~. We’re certainly not about to become anyone’s dinners~. You hear that all you gluttonous bingers~!”
The darkness seemed to pull a lot tighter around the tank.
“Something’s is not quite right, something is very wrong out here~. The darkness is too thick, and even for me to see I fear~.” A claw made out of what could be described as shadows erupted from around us and tried to swipe at the remains of my second candle trying to extinguish it. I flared the last of its burning strength and saw a pair of growing solid grey eyes rows of endless jagged teeth pointing in all directs, whatever it was screeched and disappeared into the darkness with a blink and Fizzle lit her horn as brightly as she could with wide eyes. “Thankfully we have a thestral driving the tank to lead the way, otherwise I might have led us to danger and completely astray~.”
“Please tell me that you saw that too~. I don’t want to think about the fact that, that we might have just seen actually seen a real and actual grue attack~!” The shadows gathered and started to shift towards us at a high speed, Fizzle tried to keep her horn lit even as she cowered behind me and I was fumbling for another chaos candle. A murky three fingered claw of shadows reached out for us, or more specifically my daughter’s broken brightly glowing stump in an attempt to snuff it out.
The tank fired a burst of bright light from its cannon and the creature was lit for a second. I could see a floating gaseous mass of blackness made of more teeth then I previously saw and there were about five more grey eyes than previously counted. My little tom cat was correct, Grue’s were absolutely terrifying and possibly a formless mass of deadly darkness that was never meant for mortal eyes. I could barely comprehend what I was looking at before the darkness built up again.
“Hey, back off my sister you murderous beast, none of us here are willing to be your fleshy feast~!” In conjunction with Jacky’s words, I fired a magic missile into the darkness and hit something. I don’t know what a Grue was with a hundred percent accuracy, even knowing what I just saw, but I can certainly hurt it well enough with a magic missile. “We’re the heroes of our lives, we’re all quite incredible and that may even lead to your demise~!”
“We’re mercenaries to our core, with all of us you better bore~! Otherwise we’ll all fight you to the last even when while we’re all quite sore~!” I sang loudly as I stared downed the darkness, there’s was nothing to fear. We’d get this tank back to EVEN, even if the apocalypse has to happen we’d do this thing. “There’s no fighting the toughs, we’re toughest of any meal you’ve ever had and that’s what you really won’t be able to make of us~!”
I finally got a hold of my candle and aimed it dead center where things were darkest and fired a blast of powerful fire, heat and light dead center into it. The screeching noise it made as the darkness started lightening was horrific and whatever it was, it was dissolving in agony and excessive amounts of pain. I poured every ounce of the candle I had into it.
With the candle gone and the music from my heart slowly fading out, the darkness around us lightened up by quite a lot and in fact things started to get brighter as the tank slowly crawled up the next tunnel and we could see the light of Fright Night Grotto City.
I blinked back tears, I had just done something incredible. I just killed a grue, a manifestation of pure darkness, malice and evil, my daughter is never going to believe this and it was a notch in my belt as a heroic witch. The thestrals no longer had to deal with it at the very least and their access to spiders may have become a bit more problematic, given the hole in the square and lack of spider eating grue.
The light of the city was beautiful and soon we came up to the thestral checkpoint. Jacky pointed the cannon at the thestrals. We moved to the front of the tank, Fizzle lit her horn slightly and pawed a hoof at the metal while lowering her head. I just gave the thestrals a calm look and palmed a chaos candle and tossed it up lightly twice.
“Excuse me, but can you give us directions to EVEN. We’re not in the mood for another fight and we will kick your asses if you attack us, so please... be a dear and help us innocent folk out?” My words were calm, but my eyes bored into the thestral who started sweating and whimpering. “In fact, get me something to cook with, me and my family are hungry. I’ll make you the best meal you ever tasted once we get back to EVEN with this party tank, we have a celebration to make.”
-Thirty minutes later, Jade-
We were sitting outside of EVEN when the PATTCAKE Seventy Seven, splattered in arachnid gore and weird bizarrely colored blood, rolled up with several thestrals flying escort. It came to stop and parked itself. Soon my mom hopped out and smiled at me, she smiled even wider when she noticed the flying turtle that flew up to hug her.
“You’re alive?!” Wow Back Stalk, you didn’t have any trust that my mother was a sleeping dragon that you shouldn’t ever mess with. Mom, was far more dangerous than I was, she knew how to make explosions that couldn’t kill anyone. Rub her the wrong way and those ‘safe’ explosions wouldn’t be 'safe' for that much longer. “You were in the whole square collapsing incident and ended up in the Spider Warrens. Hollow Heart even bragged about your demise, how are you even still alive!?”
Mom would be worse when she eventually finished that frogifying potion she was working on to deal with rude people. Mom always liked the classics of what witches were known for. Turning someone into a mouse was too easy for her, or at the very least making someone the size of one and that was scary when you were dealing with a bipedal cat that was a witch. Turning people into frogs was the real hard stuff apparently.
“Hey, kitten, are you hungry?” My reaction to mom’s words were to sit up and move into a begging position on all fours and wag my tail back and forth wildly, my eyes started to become big and watery. Mom shifted her, half witch, pirate hat and walked inside. “I’ll take that as a yes, thank you all for the lovely escort. Stick around, I’ll get to work on that food immediately. I may be exhausted, but I’ve still got enough in me to cook up something delicious.”
“Say, who’s your friend Jade?” Fizzle eyed the lithe figure next to me curiously.
“Well her name is…” I looked around suspiciously. “Velvet I. Deer.”