Chapter 128: Chapter One Hundred and Twenty Five: Int_Sandstorm_Suck_Overload

The room was like an upside-down pyramid, with a huge sandstorm twisting in the middle of it. It towered over them, casting them into its shadow. As Qube stared up at it, all she could think was how much she wished the Chosen One was here.

 

She could hear a new song pumping inside of her, a mad beat that made her heart frantically flutter like a bird’s wings. She felt flooded with energy, and the urge to act. She had to protect the group, and keep them safe. That was her purpose as the Healer. What was the safest thing to do?

 

“Retreat!” she yelled, turning and pushing the others back into the room they’d just left.

 

“Fair Healer,” Sewer Bard protested, before she put both hands on his shoulders and spun him around. She shoved his back, just to drive home the message.

 

“I’m the leader and I say run!” she shouted, trying to project her voice over the sudden roar of the sandstorm.

 

The instant they crossed the threshold back into the poem room, the noise from the giant mass of sand swirling through the air at incredible speed dropped away, leaving only the same reedy music as before.

 

So that was battle music. It was powerful stuff. She now understood how the Chosen One could sense when violence was about to happen. It must be subconscious on the others’ part, though, as none of them would have had any trouble articulating such an intense experience to her.

 

Either that or it really was some strange side effect from [The Bard’s Ballad] that no one else was experiencing. Or she was going mad from a combination of grief and stress. Or all of them!

 

Qube was not coping terribly well with being in charge.

 

“Fair Healer,” Sewer Bard repeated in the quiet of the enormous poem room.

 

“Woman of worth!” Qube snapped, an edge of hysteria to her voice. “No, wait, yes, Healer! I am the Healer! So I can’t lead you all into a battle where you can get hurt!” She gave the group a wide eyed, pleading look. “Can’t we just go check on the Chosen One? Surely he’s woken up by now?”

 

From one of the platforms above she thought she heard a soft sigh. She glanced up, but was distracted by Sexy Screamy Spider Lady gently patting her hair with some of her claws. 

 

“My sweet little innocent,” the Hunter said sadly, “I know that you yearn only to keep us safe, but this is what we are here for. We must fight.”

 

“Not necessarily!” Qube brightened as an idea occurred to her. “What if Sewer Bard tries casting his spell on the Boss?”

 

Sewer Bard and Definitely Bad Guy exchanged looks.

 

“There is nothing lost by attempting the experiment,” Definitely Bad Guy said, tapping a long finger against his chin. “And there exists the possibility that it will reveal quite a bit of knowledge.”

 

“That’s easy for you to say! You’re not the one facing off against it.” Sewer Bard grumbled, but still pulled out his lute.

 

“Was it easy for him to say?” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady asked, looking at the Mage with mock despair. “He used so many words, I thought he must be struggling.”

 

The Mage pointedly cleared his throat, while the Bard softly laughed.

 

“Definitely Bad Guy likes words,” Qube said, firmly ending that particular digression. “Now, Sewer Bard, I’ll [Lesser Shield] you, and then if you can go to the very edge of the doorway and try casting on the Boss, maybe we can get it to calm down. Assuming the sand can even understand your song. Or can hear it. I assume it can hear. The constructs and mummies could hear us, so I don’t see why a sandstorm couldn’t.” She stopped and took a breath. She was babbling to avoid ordering someone under her care into danger.

 

No. She had to do this. She had to be strong. She had to be the leader they needed, and order Sewer Bard to sing at the sand until it became their friend. Or at least not their enemy.

 

“Should we still cover our ears, if it won’t affect us?” she asked, one last distraction before doing her duty.

 

“I think it would be safest,” Sewer Bard said quietly. “Although our friend,” he flicked a look at Definitely Bad Guy, “says that it should be fine, I would rather be safe than sorry.” He gave her a genuine, albeit brief, smile. “I would hate for anything to happen to any of my beautiful women simply because I was not careful enough.”

 

“Not yours,” Qube said automatically, “but fine, we’ll keep our ears covered.”

 

“Thank you,” Sewer Bard said, giving her a shallow bow, his free hand pressed against his chest. “Now, if you will excuse me…”

 

Qube followed him to the doorway. She might not be going into the room with him, but she still wanted to be near him, in case anything went wrong.

 

“[Lesser Shield].” She watched as her magic spilled out of her and coalesced around the Bard, offering him some protection. It looked tiny against the mammoth storm, but it was all she could offer. She covered her ears, and checked over her shoulder to make sure the others were protected. 

 

She felt the song start. Sewer Bard, having also checked on the other party members, started his spell. Red, silver, and green were plucked from his strings, then woven together as they pushed out into the air. Faster and faster his fingers moved, as the storm seemed to almost snatch the notes from the air, pulling the colours towards its centre. Qube was close enough to see that Sewer Bard was starting to sweat, as he poured more and more mana into his spell.

 

The [Siren Song], and the ballard derived from it, weren’t like Qube’s spells. There was no end condition. He could, theoretically, just keep feeding more and more mana into the spell until either the Boss was conquered, or his mana pool ran dry.

 

Suddenly a huge, pointed thing punched out of the storm and smashed into the ground next to Sewer Bard.

 

“Sewer Bard!” Qube yelled, pointlessly. It wasn’t like she was warning him of an imminent attack — the man was right next to where the thing had hit, so he clearly knew about it. She wasn’t even shouting anything supportive, so he wasn’t going to derive any strength from her just yelling his name in his ear. All she was doing was distracting him.

 

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“You’re doing great!” she hurriedly corrected her mistake. He wasn’t doing great, though. The sandstorm just seemed to be inhaling all his magic and stopping the spell from reaching its heart. Assuming sandstorms even had hearts. Well it certainly had something inside of it, given the way the limb lashed out again — oh it was a giant scorpion stinger. 

 

Now that she wasn’t splitting her attention between Sewer Bard and the sandstorm, she was able to see the full stinger as it lashed out, slamming into (and destroying) the shield around the Bard.

 

“[Lesser Shield],” Qube cast again. She’d never actually seen a scorpion before, but she recognised the sight of it from… somewhere. Probably a story.

 

So, there was a giant scorpion Boss in the middle of the very noisy storm.

 

“Oh!” Qube gasped as she realised what the solution to the fight puzzle was. Of course! The scorpion couldn’t hear the song because the storm was too noisy!

 

And she knew just the thing for getting rid of all that sand!

 

Pulling out the jam jar she’d gotten from the treasure chest, she tapped Sewer Bard on the shoulder. He paused, twisting and looking at her, revealing just how pale he was. Qube tugged at one of his poofy sleeves, drawing him back into the other room.

 

As the others took their hands away from their ears, Qube explained her plan.

 

“And then if all of us go out there and suck up all the sand, that means the scorpion will be able to hear you, and then you can start playing!” she finished, beaming at her cunning plan. The others were all suitably impressed.

 

“My darling, I knew you weren’t just a pretty face,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady cooed at her.

 

“It could succeed,” Definitely Bad Guy said thoughtfully.

 

“It would certainly explain why my spell hasn’t been working,” Sewer Bard said, relaxing. “I must confess, I’d been a bit concerned about that. I will, however, need to take a quick break to rebuild my mana. Don’t worry, though; I’ll be ready for action again soon.”

 

For some reason this made Sexy Screamy Spider Lady chuckle, as Qube hurriedly started digging around in her backpack.

 

“Of course,” Qube said, pulling out a blue potion and handing it to the Bard. “Here, take his mana potion, and it should help you be able to perform!”

 

“I — yes, thank you, fair Heal-woman of worth,” Sewer Bard said, looking at Sexy Screamy Spider Lady. “But a gentleman such as myself has no need for such artificial aids.”

 

“It’s not artificial, I made it myself from our herb garden,” Qube argued. She also didn’t see what being a gentleman had to do with mana potions, but she slapped on her best Understanding Smile and offered it again. “Please take the potion.”

 

“There’s no shame in not having enough stamina to get the job done,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady murmured to Sewer Bard.

 

“Sexy Screamy Spider Lady!” Qube said, shocked. “Don’t shame Sewer Bard because of the size of his mana pool! He’s doing very well with what he has! And I’m sure his mana pool is much larger than mine!”

 

Having temporarily rendered both the Bard and Hunter speechless, Qube gestured to the rest of the party.

 

“Now come on,” she said impatiently, “it’s time for us to suck!”

 

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While Qube dearly loved her friends, sometimes they were just the tiniest bit frustrating. It took her nearly five minutes to wrangle them all, not helped by Sexy Screamy Spider Lady and Sewer Bard making strange remarks to each other that only served to slow things down.

 

Anyone would think they were running through the hills towards Cobbletown, rather than facing off against a giant magical scorpion bent on killing them.

 

Still, in the end she was able to get them into some semblance of order. Not for the first time, she wished she had the Chosen One’s ability to just command the group into doing what she wanted. He could just snap out some words and they would jump to it. Her way involved a lot more sleeve tugging, pleading, and occasional outright pushing.

 

Eventually, however, everyone had their jam jars (except for Sewer Bard, who had his strings at the ready, poised to play as soon as it was safe) and crouched next to the doorway into the Boss room.

 

“Ready?” she whispered, despite the fact that there was no reason to be quiet. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched. The others nodded at her.

This was it. She was about to order everyone in danger.

 

“All right, let’s go!” she suddenly shouted, before dashing into the room, popping off her jam jar lid.

 

What followed reminded her a bit of when they’d fought the Boss in the Water Temple. The party swarmed through the room, dodging the one or two strikes the scorpion was able to get out before popping their lids and pointing the jars at the sandstorm. The music was incredibly loud, a repetitive, thumping beat that hammered against Qube’s mind.

 

But the group of them make quick work of the storm. While it might have been difficult for one of them to pull it off, the fact that the sandstorm was being sucked up by so many different jars at once meant it was easily captured. At some points the sand didn’t even seem to know which jar to go into, jittering and freezing mid air as it was pulled in multiple directions at once.

 

So it was only a matter of minutes before the sandstorm was gone and the giant, yellow scorpion within was exposed.

 

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