Chapter 53

Day 11 since entering the gnomes’ warren…

“Wait, don’t go yet. Let me try to get her awake,” I said quickly to the gnomes. All of us were momentarily stressed out. If we left her she could die, but if we brought her with us she would be vulnerable too. Then there was the need for her skill to help out.

“Are you sure it’ll work?” the gnome lieutenant asked. He bent down and listened to her breathe, which he confirmed for me.

I shrugged, “I’d rather have the paladin holy light than not have it,” reply.

The gnome lieutenant who was the one who could speak through the enchantment nodded, “Yes, if there’s a chance for that let’s do it. We can’t stay long so please hurry.” His voice sounded impatient and afraid, but his eyes were tenderly worried about the survival of the other gnomes more than himself if we were delayed.

He barked something to the other gnomes the new orders. They fell back into order quickly. Some of them helped us move her. It was another irony that the small gnomes were strong for their body size and could help me carefully move her as if she was made of glass.

We both gently laid down Vira onto the ground flattening her against the floors finally in a spot of even ground over bare rock. The gnomes checked her pulse and vitals while also accounting for their wounded and dead. She was breathing fine. But it just was a hard head knock it seems.

Sadly there were a lot of gnomes that hadn’t made it…

They also used the time to gather more troops and consolidate their strength. While we were working on Vira they managed to get another ten newly armed and fresh, but extremely scared gnomes. They were even more worried when they saw the bodies on the floor of those that had been slain while helping to defend this area.

I could see some of them point at some of their friends. The others cried out to or would offer pity. But order barked through the ranks and they all shut up fast through some threat. Some of them weren’t as effective as others in coordinating their next strategy steps.

I would have to probably cut the paladin light mana feed before I tried to heal her. I wouldn’t know what would happen yet with both that spell going on and trying to do a heal. It might have bad consequences since I wasn’t that strong.

But strangely it feels like the Paladin light uses less mana than a heal spell. That was my next observation. But the problem is would I be able to get it turned back on? What if she didn’t wake up on top of that? We definitely needed the paladin holy light. I didn’t think I could replicate it on my own without her. So I had to memorize what the paladin mana flow felt like the best I could under intense pressure to move quickly.

But it left me questions for Fox Girl to work out.

Holding my breath finally turned it off. I think the gnomes were holding their breath too. It was deathly quiet.

“I sure hope you can get that turned back on,” the gnome lieutenant said. His eyes were wide with fright. We deep inside, all of us felt that there were still more spiders around somewhere in the warrens. It was left unsaid.

I didn’t reply right away because I was more scared than he was.

I felt weak but still risked another heal where Vira had cracked her skull against the other gnome. The light of the heal pulsed and suddenly there was a burning sensation in my arm.

What?!

Ouch!

Was that like a rebound of mana feedback backfiring on me of some kind? Something didn’t feel right. What was that? I felt very worried, while the pressure was still growing.

I wanted to be a man, but inside I felt like crying. How could it be like this? I hated spiders too and anything that resembled things that might come out of your closet at night when you were a little kid. Still I managed to pull off the heal, but now it felt like something had shocked my arm leaving my fingers numb.

Was it because of trying a new type of magic? I began to worry…what did that mean?

But my attention was ripped away from the tingling over to the new girl that had coughed and spat up something like water as her head was turned to the side. Then she sat back up after blinking a few times. Was that like when CPR takes effect on someone? When you did it right, they’d do that too.

She panicked though when she remembered the last thing she’d seen. “The spider? Where the fudge is it?! Gosh I hate spiders! To hell with them! But how could they get so damn big?!” she looked about frantically. She was having trouble calming down. Most people would though if they found out nightmares could become real.

“It’s gone. You’re safe for now,” I said.

“What? Where am I? I don’t believe anything is safe now if they can get that big. For the rest of my life I’m going to smash every spider I ever see,” Vira got up.

“We got the spider but there are others not far from here within the warrens,” the lieutenant said. “We need your help to go to their aid to save the colony.”

“Eh? There are more of them?” Vira asked.

Some of the other gnomes said something in Gnomish, but we couldn’t understand it. The lieutenant said something to them in return, and turned to us. They kept working and a few of them were signaling other gnomes spaced throughout the caverns behind us.

He nodded, “we can’t let our guard down until we search and scour every inch of the warrens. If even one of them hides in here alive without our finding it…it won’t be good. And it only takes one of the clever ones to cripple the colony.”

Gulp*

“How soon do we move?” Vira asked.

“Right now if we’re going to save anyone,” he said.

“We need to move quickly,” I added.

The gnomes packed up their gear quickly. They also set the scent box on fire now brightly lighting up the cave, since it had become too dangerous to use anymore. Even now while lighting it they were afraid something would come out and eat them. Then I’d noticed the reinforcements had also brought new big crates with them which were taller than the gnomes themselves, being carried on each side by special handles which two men worked together to lift.

Despite the large size they didn’t seem to have much trouble lifting it. Still there was a bit of strain on their faces.

Near us the torchlight flickered. Was there movement in the tunnels then?

One of the gnomes said something we didn’t understand and then all the gnomes were really alarmed suddenly. They looked scandalized. No wait; it was like the gnomes were very terrified beyond reason suddenly.

“What? What’s going on?” I asked.

The lieutenant was angry and upset but remained calm. He had to bark orders to the others in gnomish to get them calmed down. Some of them were openly tearful and looked afraid to fight while others were starting to get looks of revenge. They were grinding their teeth piteously now. I didn’t think they could get even more riled up than before, but it was happening before my very eyes.

The lieutenant then explained it to us, “there shouldn’t be a breeze going through the cave like this. We keep the underground entrance sealed. If it’s got a breeze this strong then the gate must be open,” he said.

“Is that bad?” Vira asked innocently.

“This planet is filled with thousands and thousands of underground tunnels, caverns, and layers. Most of them are filled with terrible creatures that should not exist. Predators beyond the ability of men to fight, things that make orcs and goblins sound like weak kittens. That’s why we fear having the gate open for any length of time.”

That’s scary.

With Vira up, everyone was almost ready to move out. They even had a nice tight formation. They tried to move as one with less noise and glared at each other when anyone broke the silence. But even with that it would be tough to beat the spiders.

“What are those?” I asked pointing at the big crates that had newly arrived.

Vira nodded at it, “they showed me their emergency plan a few days ago when I volunteered for their militia. Those are ammunition crates for the dwarven crossbows up ahead. We’ll take them with us on our way searching the caverns till we hit the front gate.”

“Hmm, so it’s like that,” I said.

“Yeah, if they got this far, I wonder how bad the front door is?” she said sullenly.

I declined to comment.

Actually I’d been so busy with trying to help people that I hadn’t even gotten a chance to go check that place out. I had seen it marked on the maps though.

“OK, let’s move out,” the leader gestured. He had a couple scouts moving gingerly and noiselessly about ten feet in front of the squad. They were trying to prevent an ambush, but I bet they hated being exposed up front ahead of us.

With everyone up and ready we were now back to about 18 of us counting both humans and gnomes together. The gnomes were still looking like they didn’t have enough weapons despite many of them being weighted down significantly.

Around us we could hear the sounds of terror and war in other parts of the cavern. There were also torches signaling different areas where fighting was taking place. We heard terrible dying screams too but the echo effect in the caverns was so bad it made it hard to pinpoint the locations they were coming from. In some instances it sounded like they were coming from two tunnels at the same time.

Moving quickly but staying in formation we were led down the tunnels again with Vira and I at the back, but with two rear guard gnomes behind us in case spiders tried to come at us from behind. Vira was fearless and even wanted to be on the front but the gnomes wouldn’t let her since the paladin light was like a trump card for them.

We came to the first corridor after several minutes of traveling, which was a four way section where four different tunnels from north, west, south, and east all met together. It had lots of turret fire positions on high areas in the rounded room.

But all of them were in complete ruin. There were dead everywhere and body parts and gore staining everything. It looked like a scene from a ravaged tunnel from hell.

Even with many defensive advantages and lots of preparations on the part of the gnomes, things didn’t go very well here.

“This looks like where most of the fighting took place,” Vira said.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

She shrugs. “Who knows? But it was a bigger battle than the one we were just in. See, look,” she pointed.

“They had to hold this room as long as possible since it branches tunnels into every part of the warren. If it fell then other areas in the warren would be easily ambushed,” the lieutenant explained. “It’s a tragedy.”

It wasn’t hard to see why.

There were at least five spiders dead and broken into bits everywhere. There were dead gnomes here too. At least twenty seven gnomes were all dead and shredded to bits, but this squad didn’t have human support it seemed. They did look like they were an elite type though with better equipment than our squad. Actually the number of dead gnomes was more of a guess. When the bodies are all torn up like so, it’s hard to count what parts belong to whom.

But that made me queasy, not only from the smell but also from what I saw. I bent over a rock trying to avoid vomiting. After counting to like twenty I seemed to be OK, and recovered myself.

If our squad was the light squad and this was the heavy squad…not good at all. My courage was threatening to evaporate.

But five spiders dead was good. We’d only barely managed three. But the cost for killing that many was terrible. They also didn’t have the advantage of a controlled flow to break them up into manageable parts.

“But did it work? I don’t see anyone here left alive from either side?” I voiced my question aloud.

The lieutenant nodded, “two other squads are already searching the side tunnels. My job is to take you and my squad with the paladin’s light to the front gate. That’s where the real battle is taking place and that’s where it will be determined if our colony dies out or lives to see another day.” I didn’t like the grim look in his eyes.

“Don’t worry another squad relieved the position behind us guarding the young lings,” the lieutenant said.

Only the middle of the room looked different with a strange pyre with a fire on it; a signal fire in the middle of some kind with special chemicals used inside it to color the flames to denote a certain color. It didn’t take a genius to know that the signal fire meant trouble. But the idea of coloring the flames was interesting. But the fire was in neglect now that there was no one left to feed it.

“They probably did that with chemistry right?” Vira asked.

“I haven’t had chemistry yet, but I’ve heard of such things in how they make fireworks sparks different colors using small amounts of other elements that are burning,” I said shrugging.

“I like chemistry. Would be fun to find out more,” she said. “It’s a pity I had to see it in this death cavern.”

“Are you ready to move?” I asked.

“This is one of the worst spider attacks we’ve had in nearly fifty years,” the gnome lieutenant said again.

“So what happened last time?” I asked.

He shrugged, “they killed almost everyone and only about thirty percent of us survived. We had to focus on making babies after that for awhile to recover our numbers.”

That last part was too much information.

We didn’t respond to that right away. When he said it, it was like he was dead to the world.

But now all the sudden it made sense why the warren was so big. There were a lot of empty housing tunnels too. That would be the case if there was once a lot more of them living here than there were now.

We then began moving towards the net section.

“It seems like we’re moving towards the underground colony entrance,” Vira guessed.

“True,” The leader confirmed.

The tunnel was starting to get bloodier as we moved forward.

At twenty paces from the last corridor there were a couple of civilian gnome bodies.

Then at fifty paces more blood spatter concentrated in a large pool around a particular area but no bodies. It seems they’d been eaten while on the run. The blood spatter continued before that spot but with less intensity than this place.

It felt evil, just seeing that much blood. I didn’t like it here. Nor did I want to stay.

That was we continued to move but suddenly made new discoveries. There were a few severed gnome arms, some legs, and a few other parts. But mostly even bones weren’t left behind, though there were freshly made bone chips. Even the bits of the marrow were sucked out.

It made us queasy to look at.

I could hear the lieutenant swearing even though he was trying to hide it and his tears.

“So spiders need calcium too I’m guessing?” Vira asked.

The gnome lieutenant scowled but didn’t answer.

Finally we could see the scene below us as we came around the bend where we were overlooking a chasm below us where the path was leading in a series of switchbacks all the way down below us. This whole area seemed to be like killing chasm designed to channel enemy forces in easily snipe able positions and easily defend-able rock clefts and half caves that were built about the size of a standing up gnome or two behind camouflaged crenelations designed to look like normal earth.

It was a really ingenious camouflaged mini-fort.

The gnomes were trying to hang on for their lives. There was a huge semi-circle crossbow sniper line of men on the back row farther out from the main up front block of gnome men firing at the engaged spiders down near the front. Because of the gnomes’ short stature they could easily fire over them with the bulky big spider bodies.

Gnomes were fighting at the front gate trying to keep the spiders back. There was a block formation of shielded pole arm fighters in heavy armor, and others with buckler type shields and crossbows in the back, also in heavy armor. Each spider needed at least five or six gnomes pushing it back with pole arms to keep them pinned down because of the spider’s great strength.

These must also be elites it seems.

It was a huge iron-works type gate that looked monstrously heavy and tall on a series of springs and with a chain system that used a pulley and a turn table that had to be pushed by four gnomes at once to open and shut the gate mechanism.

It was a weirdly interesting invention except for the fact that somehow it wasn’t able to shut right. It had part of the top bent open about two and a half feet at the widest part of the gap while the bottom of the iron-works gate was shut. It was so big on the actual gate pieces that with them bent open like they were I could see the iron was almost a foot thick. Good hell that must be heavy! It was the kind of heavy iron you might see in a highway bridge.

How did small peoples on a medieval planet manage making it? They must be really diligent.

“My hell…” the gnome lieutenant gasped. “How was the iron-works gate bent open like that?!” he gasped.

Not only was it bent open significantly but some smaller spiders were still getting in.

The place was getting swarmed.

“I guess that’s bad if it’s hanging open like that,” Vira said.

“In over a hundred years nobody has ever bent the gate open like that. Those doors weigh over several tons each,” he said.

Even as we talked about it the gnomes were killing a couple spiders with their crossbow volleys. But to do so pole arm fighters had to pin down the spiders and sacrifice themselves in the process.

There were still at least a dozen spiders alive and then some while gnome bodies were all over the whole chasm.

Gulp*

At least five alone had killed a room of nearly thirty in the cavern we’d previously explored! And there were more than double that number of giant spiders here.