It wasn’t until we suddenly came to a giant pile of what looked like dead vegetation and rotting debris along a waterway - fortunately dispensing fresh water - that my feathers rose in alarm, my [Observation] skill giving me a hint that something was amiss. I motioned for Justin to back up and I followed him without turning away from the path. I whispered, “Something is wrong ahead. I think there’s something in the mounds that thinks it is hunting us.”
He nodded, saying, “Leave it to me. I need to be a little closer to be in range.”
We eased within about twenty feet of the piles of debris, and he began casting a spell. At first, it looked like he was laying small sheets of melted candle wax over the mounds, until he cast another fire spell at the mounds now dripping with more than just water. The entire mound went up in a burst of red flames and black smoke. The stench of burning refuse and fat - I realized he must have cast the Grease spell several times - writhed to life, moaning in monstrous pain wrought without a mouth.
It was a shambler, a monster that more or less amounted to being a garbage elemental, given form by an improperly discarded and malformed enchantment, probably made by some novice. They would collect inanimate material and grow by eating the life of things. This one had a good run, given its size and fury. Justin and I backed away, as it stomped toward us, on an odd number of legs doused in flames.
Justin pulled out his spell book and began flipping through pages as I nudged him with my tail to move. He started towards a ten foot long stone bridge over the waterway, where we hadn’t explored yet. The shambler followed, mouths appearing in its mutable visage, each moaning and sharp with teeth of rusted nails and glass shards.
Justin made it across the bridge as I stood my ground at the center, planning to buy him time by distracting the thing.
One limb, fingers made of castoff bandages, stained brown with old blood, animated with animus, struck out at me. I batted it away, both of us testing each other’s defenses. I’d sheathed my daggers, knowing it would only try to rip them from my hands to add to itself. “Justin-” I said, as if reminding him to get a move on.
“Just, just a second, I need to find it.” We were backing into un-scouted territory, and I didn’t like it.
I backed up a few paces, as the limb grasped for me again. The smell of burning garbage was almost overwhelming. I wish I hadn’t had to file my claws down to fit in the guard uniform provided. The problem with these sorts of magical constructs is that they don’t really die. They need to be ripped apart by their component parts, or, in this case, burned. It was still moaning in a semblance of life.
I saw the arm was now being held together by what looked like a pair of leather straps, singed but not broken, a macabre bit of phantom muscle and bone in one. The arm reached out, and I grabbed it and pulled. It barely moved, and the fabric bandages began winding around my bracers. I flung myself into its limb, wrapping myself around it as its tendrils wrapped around my arm. My teeth and hind claws both grabbed at the chorded leather straps desperate to cut the limb off before my forearms were broken.
My movements began to feel a little desperate as I made little headway with the leather, wondering too late if it were some sort of enchanted girdle. I saw another limb migrate over the body, covered in flames but still grasping, toward me. “Jush-chin!” I spat between clenched teeth, finally feeling the leather give a little.
“Got it!” Cinders and ash fell on me as the second limb grasped for my face and I shut my eyes. He was chanting but it was taking too long and I shook my head as my talons - dull from walking on the city stone all my life - shoved hard on the far end of the leather straps hoping it might give when suddenly the leather broke I was thrown end over end, nearly off the bridge into the rushing water. I was still bound up in the mostly inanimate limb and could only see the thing groan louder and use the burning limb to pull itself closer to me.
Justin finished chanting with a shout and the air seemed to go dull and filmy - like looking through a dirty window - around the Shambler. It shuddered and collapsed, twitching slightly while Justin rushed forward to dig into its heart. It put up some cursory contests, but his fists lashed out and batted away the tendrils easily.
I continued to unspool from the rotting bandages as he grasped at the heart of the thing, a beautiful vanity mirror, its handle with golden filigree, light shining from its surface in a dim glow. He ripped it of the beast and began smacking the edge of the mirror against the stone as the refuse and detritus fell limp around him.
As the air began to become less grimy looking, the mirror shattered in a crash fit for a window ten times its size. It stopped glowing as I stood up brushing myself off.
“Wow, I didn’t think shamblers were usually this close to the surface. Sorry about my slowness, hadn’t needed to use Suppress Magic before and I need to organize my spellbook-”
“Shh. We are still being attacked.” As I said this, from a grate that led deeper into the sewers just next to where Justin had been standing, a huge centipede, bigger than Justin’s arm, slithered out and began approaching us, attracted to the smell of burning fat and noise of fighting and perhaps hoping to pick off whatever was wounded in the fight. Three more followed it out of the grate.
“Fuck, Scaleen,” Justin coughed through the putrid smell of the dead shambler. I don’t have any mana right now.”
“Then you will need to use your other weapons.” Mana would only recharge when resting and we hadn’t taken much of a break yet, in spite of my continued questions regarding his status. I backed my way across the bridge towards Justin back the way we came again, drawing my daggers.
The centipedes were unhindered by the remains of the shambler. I pressed forward, sensing Justin wasn’t eager to punch centipedes. They were quick and their pincer’s sharp, as one of them latched onto my leading hand, drawing blood even as I stabbed into its neck with my other weapon multiple times.
I dragged the centipede back as I dodged the second one trying to snap on my face. I heard Justin make a disgusted noise as he was attacked as well.
I finally managed to cut most of the first Centipede’s head off, though it still gripped my wrist. The second was rearing up and hissing at me. Justin yelped, and spun around knocking my second foe off the bridge neatly. It was swept away and I saw that Justin was nursing his forearm one of the Centipede’s gripped his tunic and was thrashing with abandon. I snuck behind it, still dragging the first corpse with my wrist, and pinned its middle to the ground.
Justin managed to dart his good hand forward and rip out the eye of his other assailant in a smooth, clean motion, which caused that centipede to hiss and retreat, deciding discretion was the better part of valor. I finished off the one latched to his robes.
A Guidance Screen had popped up for us both. Mine showed that I had reached level 24 and that my [Hand-to-Hand] skill and [Finesse Weapons] went up. Justin said, still nursing his arm to his chest, “Hey, I got level 9.”
“Very good.” I pried the pincer off my bleeding wrist. “Let me see your arm. What is wrong?”
I pulled out the basic medical kit from my saddlebag and affixed a sanitary bandage to the chunk of his flesh he’d lost to a centipede. He belatedly realized I’d been hurt as well and helped me with my wrist, which was bleeding slowly, but steadily.
“Sorry, Scaleen.” He said, while bandaging my wrist.
“Why are you sorry?”
“I should have been more careful. I keep forgetting that I got really lucky early on and have a lot of skills, but I’m so not invincible and that I can’t restore from a save point. You were right. We should have rested.”
“We couldn’t have known it had been a magical construct. But yes, let us be more careful. Let’s take a break and level up. Sound good?”
“Yeah. You go first, I’ll need to reference my notes for my feats. It may take a bit when I go.”
I offered him my flask of water and some dried pastries with bits of jerky in it. He thanked me, seeming surprised by my preparedness. It was in my nature. And I got snappish if I didn’t eat often enough, so I figured I could share. I’d picked them up at a bodega while he was shopping for spell components.
Once he settled in to watch each side of the hallway and relax as his mana refilled, I opened my Guidance Stat Panel and accepted the level.
Yay they did good. A little more practice at communication and coordination needed though
A good duo.