Backwoods Dungeon

Chapter Sixty-One

Bedlam

Rio

Terror was still running through me, making it hard to move. Even hard to breathe. The demon was here. The greater demon. The one we’d been hoping to avoid. Perhaps that had been inevitable, though.

I’d been able to ignore the sinking feeling in my gut, telling me that none of the people I’d abandoned had survived. Now, seeing this monstrosity, I gave up all hope.

We could save these people, at least. Or… try to anyway. I was no longer certain any of us would make it out alive. The demon had just spoken, and it had been enough to make a gibbering mess of me.

Luca thought this one was weak?

That didn’t seem to intimidate Theo in the slightest, though. He charged it like… well, like a bear. Even as the grizzly rushed down the hall, he began throwing out his totems from somewhere like he had extra invisible hands ready and willing to act while he was busy chomping.

I cursed as I realized we’d lost most of our equipment, as well as all of my potions. Nick was recovering, having managed to get a potion before all of our bags were snatched. With Nico was busy healing him, and he wouldn’t be any help for a while. McCarthy, his gruesome job removing Nick from the spike done, screamed a warcry that invigorated me and filled me with health.

One enterprising civilian had managed to catch a gun that had been cut off of Nico’s belt before the warping effect stole it and was taking potshots at the demon that clinked off its carapace with little effect. The rest of them were scattering.

“Theo! I need a portal stone!” I cried.

Theo was obviously too far away to hear me, and I couldn’t really think of a way to help without charging forward myself. Four people had managed to escape through the portal stone, but that left six cowering and one actively trying to help with no class or abilities. The woman with the hard eyes. Unfortunately, it seemed Theo was the only one who still had portal stones, and he was lost in a rage.

Bear form was a bit of a double-edged sword.

The demon stood with its cockroach legs before flashing its tail in an arc in front of it. A series of barbs, the same as the ones that had cut the straps on my pack, flashed toward Theo. The bear juked to the left but was too slow to dodge most of them. At least three of the sharp projectiles sliced into his shoulders and chest, buried there like jagged knives protruding from deep brown fur.

They didn’t even slow him down, and suddenly, the bear was upon the cockroach demon, swiping with claws just like he had against the knight.

The demon took a step back, dodging Theo’s first strike, and its massive scorpion tail descended, its sharp stinger seeking to impale my husband's head.

Theo dodged to the right this time, taking a small grazing blow on his shoulder before sinking his jaw into the tail just above the stinger.

The demon seemed undeterred as the four claws extending from its cockroach back flashed forward, each of them launching the smaller carapace spikes into his chest with small sprays of blood.

“Theo!” I screamed. I’d already been running towards the fight, and when I was finally close enough, I began throwing ice traps. I didn’t think the Frostbite Trap would be useful here since we were only facing one opponent.

Icebolts began pelting the demon, passing through Theo like he wasn’t there. The demon, occupied with holding the bear, was unable to dodge as the ice bolts slammed into him, tanking them all. It screamed, but it seemed more frustrated than pained.

Slowed by the bloody holes in his stomach, Theo was unable to continue biting. The demon wriggled its tail way free of the bear’s jaw before it again tried to skewer the grizzly’s head.

It would’ve succeeded, but McCarthy was there. He intercepted the tail in a great leap, the sharp end of the blade slicing through the stinger just before it could strike.

The demon howled as the blade bit deep into the stinger, finally showing a hint of pain as it backed away.

Even as we fought, occasional bullets still echoed from behind us, clinking off the demon’s carapace with surprising accuracy but little effect. How? It was a fucking shell! I didn’t care how tough it was. A bullet of any caliber should be able to smash through it with no problem! At least the knight had been wearing metal. Was greater demon skin magic or something?

The demon suddenly backed away, skittering on its four huge insectoid legs.

Theo fell with a defiant roar, having the sense to fall on his side to not further impale himself on the spikes still embedded in his shoulders and chest. He lay on the ground, battered but not broken. I watched him try to remove the spikes with clumsy bear claws. His healing was already working on the wounds I could see, and he hadn’t taken a potion yet. He must be trying to ration them.

The demon stepped onto the wall, then onto the ceiling, ignoring Gravity with hardly a care as it disengaged.

Ice bolts followed the demon, and I could see him grin as he brought out a familiar-looking geode. It was open now, exposing the purple and red crystalline structure within. Small. So small compared to what I’d seen in the vision. A piece of a piece left, but it still held.

It glowed with a holy light, and I felt invigorated at the sight of it. The source of the classes. The original focus for all of these powers we’d been granted and the reason we were able to fight this demon at all.

The seal. The demon’s curse.

The demon held it forward and began blocking my fucking ice bolts with it, each one splashing off the crystal with a burst of ice shards.

I caught the slightest glimpse of a yellow light out of the corner of my eye. The wall to the left. With no time to dodge, I activated phase a moment before the spike would’ve cut right through me.

Spikes, terrain manipulation, poison or paralysis of some sort with the stinger, the terror ability, claws, and a skin that was resistant, if not outright immune, to bullets, and it was using the seal to absorb attacks. A shield that we didn’t dare break.

The person who’d picked up Nico’s gun didn’t seem to care about that, firing wildly at the demon until the pistol began to click behind me. I breathed a small sigh of relief at that, not at all confident in the woman’s ability to avoid hitting me in the back.

Theo had managed to gnaw the spikes out of his chest, and the wounds seemed to be closing as he got back to his paws, staring up at the ceiling where the demon hung upside down. It wasn’t a tall hallway, but it was disorienting. My traps finally ran out of ammo and vanished.

The demon’s tail was healing, but McCarthy, Theo, and I were all ready for a second round. Still… we could use more time than he could.

“Why!?” I screamed, trying to get him to give us a moment and maybe learn a little more in the process. “Why are you kidnapping us!? What the hell did we ever do to you?”

The demon grinned, its mouth unnaturally wide. The creature had red skin like an imp and horns, but its jaw held more teeth than should be able to fit inside it.

“All of the fodder asks the same question. Why, why, why? As if you do not know, deep in your tiny bones. Without the curse, you would already be broken. You strive for power you are not meant for. At least the Valam had their own strength. You…? You exist to be our meat. Your fear, our spice. All creatures borne of this plane are ours. Left to roam free for countless eons without your creators, you began to believe you had a higher purpose. You were grown. Like crops. All creatures who feel fear are borne of us, and to us all eventually shall return.”

I blanched.

Honestly, I hadn’t expected it to respond.

“That’s fucking bullshit!” I shouted. “Humans and the Valam beat you back only a thousand years ago. I don’t know where we came from, but it sure as hell wasn’t you!”

The creature smiled. “Do you not feel malice? That is Borugos, who loves the taste of rage. Do you not feel despair? That is Polkiss, who revels in the end of hope. Pain? Murad’Dal, the demon of Claws. All borne on this world experience these things. You have forgotten in our long absence. You have grown brave since Umbris slew Diared, and fear waned.”

I shuddered at the thought. Umbris. Umbris Valian and the giant buglike demon he’d pinned to an altar to curse the entire demon race in the vision Luca had shown me. Had that been the demon of fear?

“You speak now. Language. You are cows who learned to talk to one another and tell each other how good the grass tastes. I am pleased. A breadth of understanding makes the taste all the sweeter. You are fodder. It is only at the touch of the Valam that you do not fall and worship at my claw.”

“Then why are we on the surface while you live in a fucking cave?” I hissed back. “Why are your lessers so fucking stupid that they killed themselves with our weapons?”

It was a calculated gamble, but seeing the demon frown showed me that I’d scored a hit, probably more deeply than any actual damage we’d done so far. He had told his imps to start stealing guns, and like the assholish little shits they were, they’d killed each other, paving our way to this place like a bloody blue carpet.

“The lessers take time to become more. Time the likes of which you could not fathom with your pinprick lives. If anything, they are more chaff than you. Their deaths mean nothing, for there are always more.”

Lies. He hadn’t expected the sheer carnage we’d seen outside any more than we had.

“Except here, now, I bet you really could’ve used an army to protect you while you keep trying to break that seal. But you can’t, can you? You’re too weak. All those big names… but they aren’t here, are they? It’s just you. The demon of stupid-fucking-choices.”

The demon scowled. “I am Cimigda. I am Poison. I am Doubt. And I am smarter than you.”

The demon suddenly sunk into the floor, disappearing with an echoing laughter that made goosebumps rise on my flesh.

Theo’s wounds were healing. He was drinking a mana potion. He probably needed to top off his healing aura. The time I’d bought had been worth it. I heard Nick getting back to his feet.

I had just a moment to wonder if the demon had run away before tiny, ghostly, semi-transparent hands seemed to appear through the walls. Ghostly hands holding…!

“Oh fuck!” I screamed, eyes widening as I realized that there were a multitude of guns pointing at us.