They made the rest of the way to the cave accompanied by the endless stream of Halp's chatter. By this point Tage had well grasped the trick of paying only enough attention to what Halp was saying that she would be able to respond in brief if the teenager asked her a question, while otherwise drowning out everything he said. Ripley seemed to have gotten a hang of the trick as well, or, at least, he wasn't trying to keep up with Halp. Perhaps it was simply that the AI still couldn't find a way to get a word in edgewise.
They reached the cave without interruption, and Halp was quick to let out a bellow of excited rage, pulling out his battleaxe and charging into the cave to start, just as he had said, waving the thing around like a lunatic. Ripley followed after him, neat little fireballs appearing at the tip of his staff, flying like little glowing homing missiles towards weevils that appeared from holes in the wall.
Tage was about to follow after them when she suddenly felt herself hesitating on the threshold. Consciously she knew that there was nothing in this cave that would pose any sort of danger to her or her friends. This was a level one cave. Nothing would be able to hurt her. However, for a moment, her mind was back to that cave, as she had stared down into the burning firelight, already covered in the wounds that the shadowy creatures of the forest had inflicted upon her. Facing that entrance she had desperately wanted to flee, to give it all up, but the thought of that child, NPC or no, had driven her down into the depths.
Her thought process was suddenly and violently interrupted by the body of a dead weevil, flying at her head. She let out a yelp of surprise, batting the thing away with a squeal. The sound of Halp's laughter drifted up to her out of the cave.
"HALP!" Tage screamed, drawing out the dagger and shortsword at her waist. "I'm going to kill you!" She artfully traced the point of the dagger in the air, creating the rune for a fire cloak, which immediately enshrouded both dagger and sword. Casting magic using her own weapons was one of the few tricks Tage had up her sleeve, and she was quite proud of it.
"Not me!" Halp yelped as Tage charged in after him. "Get the rats!"
It would have been a well designed cave, Tage had to admit, had the three of them not all been level nine. Normally it would have been remarkably boring, wandering into a cave that posed no real threat, one-shotting little demons that popped out of holes with glowing red eyes and an irritating chatter. However, it was hard to be bored when Halp began gathering together the bodies of all of the dead weevils, getting a confused but obliging Ripley to set them on fire, and then lobbing them like makeshift grenades into the holes, trying to get one of the weevils to set itself on fire, or pop out with one of its dead fellows on its head.
After nearly thirty tries on Halp's part, he finally managed to succeed, only to fall over laughing as one of the demons materialized underneath its dead fellow, only to suddenly have its head set on fire. Tage took her revenge in that moment, picking up one of the weevils by its tail, still living, and throwing it onto Halp's giggling figure. The thing promptly bit him in the face which was, of course, exactly what Tage had wanted
At that point the quest quickly devolved from being "kill fifty of the weevils for the baker" to "see what kind of torment Tage and Halp could inflict upon each other using the weevils, both living and dead". Ripley, willing or not, was dragged into their schemes as they hacked their way deeper and deeper into the cave, when Tage finally decided to bring him in on the fun by tossing a live weevil at his face. He roasted the unfortunate thing before it could even get close to hitting him, but finally seemed to catch on to the game. While Halp was turned around, desperately attempting to shake off three weevils that were scrambling their way up his leg, Ripley used a flash of light to stun one of the creatures, before sneaking up behind Halp and placing it on his helmet. When the stun ended, the creature squeaked, before dropping down right in front of Halp’s face.
He yelled, nearly falling over backwards at the jump scare, before whirling around. “Tage!” he objected, only to see the object of his indignation on the other side of the room, stabbing weevils on her sword like a kabob, and Ripley standing nearby, a small but satisfied smile on his face.
Halp gaped for a moment, before an evil grin spread across his face. “Oh, it’s on!”
The three devolved entirely into a makeshift war at that point, almost forgetting the purpose for which they’d come as they turned the weevils from enemies into weapons. Ripley quickly proved adept at the task, trapping a couple of weevils in a whirlwind to fling them at both Tage and Halp. Finally, Tage took a leaf from her opponents’ book, and began to use magic in her ‘attacks’. While Halp distracted Ripley, Tage wove a simple confusion spell, before casting it upon a large cluster of weevils. They wandered in a circle for a moment, before stampeding forward, which happened to be right in Halp’s direction. Pursued by easily fifteen of the little rats, he let out a shriek, racing down the corridor as fast as he could.
That was, of course, until he hit something in the darkness, and a sudden burst of purple lightning erupted from the wall, shocking Halp and causing him to jolt backwards. In an instant Tage was all business. She raced over, quickly disposing of the few weevils still alive after the burst of magic. "You alright?" she asked, obviously concerned.
"Yeah," Halp replied. "It was a low-level trap."
"But what’s a magic trap doing in a den of demons? That was something only a mage could cast, and I'm pretty sure weevils haven't suddenly become wizards."
"No clue," Halp replied. A grin split his face. "Let's go find out."
After setting off that first trap, things began to get a bit more serious. Of course, nothing in here really posed a threat for them, but the weevils began to come in larger and larger numbers. Long before the little group reached the second trap they had killed easily quadruple the number of weevils they’d encountered before the first trap. Ripley once again proved his value to the fight, his fire spells accurately taking out the weevils that Halp and Tage’s close-quarters charges missed.
"No wonder the level 1 characters always turn around," Tage said a while later, panting slightly. It wasn't like it was hard to kill the them individually, but it still took some effort to get rid of them when they came in such large numbers. "They'd get overwhelmed."
The group of three didn't come to a halt again until they reached a set of massive wooden doors, buried in the back of the cave. "Definitely not demon-made," Halp muttered. "Well! Let's knock, shall we?"
"You might want to..." Tage began. Halp, however, ignored her, swinging his battleaxe forward with a yell to send it crashing into the wooden door. The thing splintered, and, from the other side of the door, another dark lightning bolt sprung forward, hitting Halp full in the face. "Check if it is trapped first." Tage finished, helping her slightly smoking friend back up.
"Gee, thanks."
"No problem."
