Chương 98: Penicillium - Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven I had a bit of trepidation about having to fight my way through the next couple of rooms. Then again, if given the choice between fighting and drowning, I'd take fighting.

"What're we going to be fighting against?" I asked. Cavendish glanced back. I think he kept forgetting that I was around.

"Goblins, and wall-crawlers."

"What's a wall-crawler?" It was William who volunteered an answer.

"It's a kind of large, meaty spider. Maybe half a yard across. They have mouths on what would be their backs, and their legs are double jointed. They can lay web out as well, like a normal spider."

"Their bite stings like a whore's teeth, but they're not venomous, and thick enough clothes will keep them off," George said.

"They can be killed with a hard enough slap."

"Too bad about all that water earlier, or else we could have brought some rolled-up newspapers," Grace said. There were a few chuckles, and I found myself relaxing a little. The group, at least, seemed up for the challenge.

"We're rushing across three rooms, we'll stop just before the boss room," Cavendish said.

"That means making movement a priority over combat. Once we're at the end, we'll probably have a tail, which means we stop, turn, and wipe them out before we move on. Any goblins we leave behind will be someone else's problem. With me so far?" We all nodded.

"Good. Last weapons check." While everyone else checked their gear and I tugged my knife out of its sheath, Phillipe leaned closer to me and placed a big hand on my shoulder.

"You stay to my left and one step back," he said. I nodded. He looked to his son, then pointed to me and Tyro nodded as well. Was I being guarded from both sides now? I... wouldn't say no. It was a little frustrating to be guarded when I could probably fill the rooms ahead with enough poisonous shrooms to kill anything that needed to breathe, but I was mature enough to set aside any complaints. I hopped on the spot a couple of times to unlimber my legs, and left a few splatters of water on the ground beneath me.

My gear wasn't too heavy, I'd made sure of that, but having it be all soaked in water was adding a few pounds to it all that I wasn't able to handle as easily as the adults around me.

"Alright," Cavendish said.

"I'll lead, tight-v formation behind me, no more than two side-to-side, and remember, speed over kills. Any goblin left behind who doesn't follow is one more goblin someone else needs to deal with." We snuck up to the very edge of the tunnels, and I could see the room beyond. It was lit by a single large brazier made from a stack of broken stones and a few chunks of piled-on furniture. Little shadowy forms were sitting around the fire, minding their own business.

"On three," Cavendish murmured. He gestured with his hand, fist rising and falling with first just his index extended, then both it and his middle finger, then...

"Go." We stepped into the room, and much to the surprise of my beating heart, we didn't have a horde of angry goblins. Instead, we walked in and hugged the rightmost wall. The group wasn't exactly silent, and I heard a few grunts from near the fire, but we quickly slipped into another room without having to fight anyone. The moment we were through the next room's entrance tunnel though, that changed.

Cavendish grunted, and because I was a couple of people behind him I couldn't see why until a goblin's head went flying off to my right, without the rest of the creature attached. This room had two smaller fires, and a few openings in the far wall that looked like simple caves that the goblins had decorated with scribbles on the walls and some chunks of wood to serve as makeshift doors and additional walls.

I couldn't tell at a glance how many were supposed to be living down here but it was more than a dozen, at the very least. William's crossbow twanged and a goblin went down with a screaming gurgle. We didn't stop moving. I flinched back as a goblin rushed the side of our line, but Phillipe stepped to the side and swung his hammer down and around, meeting the goblin's charge with a lump of heavy steel that sent it flying back. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"Keep moving!" Cavendish called back. All subtlety and attempts at stealth were discarded as we continued to charge along, batting aside goblins and jogging through the room and into the next. This one was less of a natural cavern and had more signs of having once been a ruin of some sort. There were torn and broken columns of grey brick in the centre of the room, and a few alcoves on the edges. We didn't linger long there either.

Cavendish continued to move ahead, with Nathan stepping up when a group of goblins ten-strong roared and charged at the front of our line, brandishing sticks and rocks. Grace cursed as one rock thumped off her shoulder, then William retaliated by putting a bolt between the thrower's eyes. This room was only connected to the next at the very end. That was a good thirty metres away.

I heard goblins in one of the other rooms and was worried they'd pop over and ambush us from the side, but in the end, we made it out of the room and into the next.

"Grace, Nathan, William, cover our backs, Phillipe, your kid too. George, help me clear this one," Cavendish said. This was the last room before the boss's, at least according to what I remembered of my possibly-outdated map. It had two connections into other rooms, but I didn't worry about those yet, not when there were plenty of bigger, nastier things to worry about in the same room as we were in. William had lied. He said that wall-crawlers were only so big.

The monsters I saw now were much bigger and much nastier than what I'd imagined from his description. The spiders had long, furry legs that I definitely didn't want to be anywhere near. But what made them infinitely worse were their mouths. They weren't big, they were just wrong. They had thin lips and tiny, needle-sharp teeth, but the big problem was that the mouths were on the back. The wall-crawlers had eight eyes, like a spider, but they were spread out more, some next to their mouths, others looking ahead.

Cavendish, Phillipe and George started to cross the room at a slow, careful pace. Meanwhile, the others stayed by the entrance, creating a barricade for the goblins that dared to follow to run into. Grace had a short spear out which she was using to great effect pinning any goblin that tried something in the head while William picked out those who dared to grab a rock as a weapon. Nathan and Tyro, meanwhile, were having an easy time kicking back any goblin that got closer.

From a certain point of view, it almost looked like they were just punting back children that were even smaller even than I was. No one had told me what to do, so I sat back and waited. The goblins were losing steam, and I saw some of them backing off or running away to lick their wounds. Should I have been disturbed by their level of intelligence? They were tool-users, and they seemed to have something of a language even if it sounded like little more than grunts and squeaks.

Then Cavendish yelled and that kind of thought was pushed aside and away as I spun towards him. He was batting aside a pair of wall-crawlers, but a third had jumped onto his back and was chewing at the armour in the crook of his neck. I didn't think. I just ran across the space between us and reached up, hand wrapping around one of the spider-thing's legs. I ripped it off, then, while it was still on the ground, I sank my knife into it, once, then twice. Its legs spasmed, but it was very dead.

"Shit," Cavendish said.

"Good work, Ginger."

"No problem," I said. My hands were shaking.

"Anything to help." He grunted, then looked around.

"Well, shit, seems like we're mostly done here," he said.

"Guys, slow-back. We're heading to the boss room next. Then it's even more goblins."

"Joy," Grace replied with dripping sarcasm. I stared at the ichor-covered blade of my knife, then knelt and wiped it off on the legs of the wall-crawler I'd killed. With an effort of will, I managed to stop my hands from trembling so much.

"Joy," I repeated in a murmur.

"Yeah, this place is a barrel of laughs."

"No boss," George said from out ahead.

"Well, there's a nice surprise," Cavendish replied.

"See, this is a milk run."