Aether Engineering

Chapter 46

Hydrabridge

The Voidlands North of Maston

Kate was still disoriented from waking up in what appeared to be a massive stone cave. A group of miners was moving a huge mound of boulders, largely ignoring her as she stumbled around groggily.

The last thing that Kate remembered was trying to follow Paulo into the depths. She had assumed he was a harmless old man. Based on the conversation that she had woken up to though, that was not the case.

None of those things concerned Kate at the moment. What did concern her was what was behind the massive pile of boulders. Whatever it was, Kate was going to be face-to-face with it soon.

With each boulder removed, the remaining pile was knocked back further and further. The monster on the other side more than willing to bust its own way out. Already, Kate felt like the monster would emerge any minute.

She wracked her brain, trying to come up with some idea of what the monster might be. None of the possibilities were good. As they increased in size and strength, monsters also tended to gain in threat level. The size of the creature she imagined must be behind that mound was quite simply not something she had a chance to handle.

That meant that the only choices available to her were to run or to stop the miners from clearing any more of the boulders. Before she could make up her mind, she felt a familiar feeling behind her. Pain, but just the right kind of pain, the right pattern of bruises.

“Kate!”

Kate turned around and saw Silas running towards her, followed close behind by Myles. Kate couldn’t help but feel a wave of relief. She had been afraid that her friends had been injured somewhere, or, had run into a group of monsters and been overcome.

“What’s going on?”

“No time,” Myles shouted, “we need to keep that mound in place.”

The three ran towards the miners, but just at that moment, the mound burst open. The beast that emerged was wholly unfamiliar to Kate. The closest thing she could associate it with was a chimera, but while chimera’s shared the body of a goat, a lion, and a snake, this beast was altogether different.

Most of its traits resembled that of a mountain goat. Kate had only ever seen a painting of the animals, but she knew they were well known for their climbing ability. The mountain goat part of the beast had a pair of horns that seemed altogether more threatening than what she remembered from the painting. Two pairs of what looked to be antlers seemed to grow out of each side of its neck, intertwining around the neck after which they wove around the rest of the beast’s body. The things visage was quite like that of a goat wrapped in woven armor.

If the monster’s strange traits ended there, Kate would have been comparably pleased, but unfortunately they did not. Right behind its neck, a great pair of wings rose. To Kate’s eyes, the wings looked to be those of a small dragon’s. While they weren’t covered by the antler armor, they looked to be covered in scales that if they were anything like dragonkin scales would be virtually impenetrable.

Where the goat’s body should have ended, a great serpent rose. This too was covered in scales. Taken as a whole, the beast was smaller than Kate had anticipated, it was likely small enough to fit through the main tunnel that led into the chamber at the very least.

That didn’t diminish its strength in the slightest though. As it emerged, it sent the boulders that hadn’t been moved sailing through the air. Some of the more unfortunate miners were crushed. To Kate’s surprise, some of these tried to evoke what looked like earth mana to stop the boulder. The boulders simply had too much force behind them though.

The monster set about itself. It used its horns as a weapon and as she watched in horror, one of the miners was bitten in half by the thing’s tail. Before long, none of the miners stood before them. Even Samuel, the man Paulo had spoken to was skewered through by the beast’s horns. Before the monster, none of them had stood a chance.

The monster didn’t stop with them. The moment the last miner had been killed, it turned its attention to Kate and her friends.

“We must get rid of the wings!” Kate shouted.

“If it can’t fly, it may be stranded here.” Silas agreed.

Kate wasn’t entirely sure if that was the case. The monster was literally half goat after all, but she wasn’t keen to dash the one hope they might have at survival.

Kate wasn’t given much of a chance to think. The monster charged towards Silas, contemtously leveling its horns at him in a charge. By rights, Silas should have died instantly. The creature was far faster than Silas.

Fortunately, they had a trick for dealing with speed. Silas stepped forward to meet the charge and Kate knew that he would be evoking an almost imperceptible barrier of pure mana to guide himself unexpectedly to the side. Sure enough, Silas snake stepped forward and to the right, just barely getting out of the way in time to avoid being impaled.

In the next second, Silas attempted to use his spear to slash at the beast’s side as it changed the direction of its charge. The spear caught on the antler armor, failing to pierce through. Caught on a ridge in the armor, the spear was pulled in two directions as the beast moved past Silas. The spear splintered. The stress was too much.

Silas had forgotten about the snake behind the beast. Kate had not though. Even as it reared up to bite at Silas, Kate landed a falling javelin. The kick wasn’t nearly enough to actually hurt the snake, but it managed to hit with enough force to send its attack wide. The snake bit into the ground, angrily tearing up a chunk of stone.

In the next moment it was gone, chasing after Myles. For his part, Myles had moved away, obviously trying to line up a shot with his spear construct. He hadn’t been given nearly enough time though. He was forced to abandon the attempt, adopting the same starategy Silas had used before.

This time though, the monster was ready. As it ran towards Myles, its steps slowed, coming to a dead stop as he tried to snake step. The only thing that saved Myles was a well-timed dive over its horns. Even still, it connected with his foot mid-dive.

Myles was commuting his armor at full strength, so the glancing blow was weakened considerably. Still, when Myles tried getting to his feet, he gave a cry of pain and fell.

At that point, Kate reached the beast. With its attention on Myles, the goat head ignored her. The snake was ever-present, watching the goat’s back. It struck like a bolt of lightning, too fast for Kate to even attempt to dodge, so, she moved into the iron turtle, evoking pure mana at just the right spot.

The defensive position saved her, but it came at the cost of most of her mana. Kate found herself being flung through the air by the remaining force of the attack. She hit the ground hard and groaned.

This was not working. Silas had rushed to Myles’ defense, bodily throwing him out of the way of an attack before dodging backwards himself. Even with two targets to distract it, the goat was very nearly landing killing blows.

Kate threw herself back onto her feet, again charging towards the beast’s back. This time though, Kate made the charge with a series of consecutive snake steps. The snake struck again, but wasn’t able to lock down its target. Kate jumped onto the beast’s hind leg and clambered up faster than the snake could recover.

The beast felt her as she pulled herself onto its back and it freaked out, bucking its legs into the air to throw her off. Kate kept ahold though. The antlers that wove around the creature’s body to serve as armor also served as a great handhold.

Myles forced the beast to back away by threatening its eyes with the point of his spear. It quickly realized that the spear was no threat to it though. As if in an automatic response, ice mana was evoked in thick sheets over its eyes, too clear to block off its sight.

Kate took the moment of opportunity she was afforded, leaping her way towards the wings higher on the creature’s back. For the first time, the monster showed what those wings were for. In just three beats of its wings, Kate found herself clinging to the monster’s back as it soared around the top of the chamber.

There was nothing to do except cling desperately to the antlers. Kate’s commuted armor managed to prevent any of the sharp protursions from piercing into her body as she was tossed about. Eventually, Kate was able to make it to the beast’s wings. She clumsily tackled one of wings, holding on to it for dear life as the monster took an uncontrolled spiral from the sudden interference.

As they came in for the landing, Kate realized that the beast was going to roll on impact. She threw herself out from under it, coming into an unctorlled roll herself. She had been flung free of the massive beast, avoiding being crushed underneath its bulk.

Taking to the air had been a mistake for the monster. Unable to recover, there was little it could do as Myles dashed towards it, spear at the ready. He thrust at one of its wings but found as Kate had feared that the scales were too hard for the weapon to penetrate. Myles wasn’t deterred.

He hastily found a chink in the armor where the wing came out and made a second thrust. The goat howled in pain. A moment later, Myles activated the construct. A fireball came out of the tip of the spear which had been embedded in the beast’s flesh.

At point blank range, the construct did considerable damage to the area around the wing. The snake had reacted to the pain that radiated throughout the beast’s body and it twisted itself around, making an attempt to tear Myles off it.

Kate evoked the last shreds of her pure mana to block the attack. Her mana slowed it, but it would never have been enough if Silas hadn’t had the same idea. As it was, the snake’s head striking as it was from an awkward angle came to a dead stop against the evoked mana.

The group didn’t stick around after that. They had already used up most of their combat resources. Without another charge from the spear construct, they would likely die before doing the slightest damage to the monster again. All three of them made a dash into the tunnel.

The goat was on their heels quickly. Despite its injury, it remained faster than them, and it closed the gap quickly. As it did, Kate felt Silas reach out and grab a handful of her shirt, dragging her sideways.

“This way!” Silas shouted, dragging her into a narrow crevasse, a thin path that Kate would have obliviously run past.

Kate and Silas both pushed themselves further down the path. Myles was a step behind them. The blow to his foot slowing him down considerably. Kate felt the pain radiating out of it with each step and realized he must have broken his ankle.

Before he could squeeze into the crevasse, Myles was forced to turn and face the creature again. Kate’s heart leapt into her throat as the beast barrelled down at Myles in ffull rage.

The rage was what blinded the monster though. Where before it had been able to think and slow down to counter the snake step, this time, it continued down the tunnel at full gallop. Myles evaded its horns by a hair. The snake struck as the beast roared past, but by that time, Myles had managed to leap into the crevasse.

The three moved quickly through the maze of cracks and small tunnels, quickly moving away from the monster. All three of them were panting, the fast pace of the encounter too much for them. Kate did what she could for Myles’ ankle which didn’t amount to much.

She noticed with some surprise that Silas remained quiet. He looked to be thinking. “What are the odds that thing can climb out of here?”

“Are you afraid it will attack the mines?”

“Yes.”

Kate nodded. It made sense. The monster would be looking for any human it could find. That would naturally lead it to the mines above. That was provided that it could climb. Kate was confident that Myles’ construct had done enough damage around the base of the beast’s wing to prevent it from flying, at least for the time being.

That left the crucial question though. Could the beast climb?

Kate hesitated for a moment. “I think there’s a good chance it can climb.”

Silas cursed. “We need to warn the soldiers above before it starts out. If we can get to Rolance, we may be able to get a proper defense mounted before that thing gets out.”

Myles shook his head. “I have another idea.” From his pocket, he took out something that glimmered with a deep blue. It was the monster core from his pocket.

Kate protested. “We need that to get out of Hydrabridge.”

Myles shook his head. “This is our best chance to kill that thing without casualties. It can’t fly so it will have to climb.” Myles gave a grim look. “What do you think would happen if something caused it to fall off?”