Chapter 110: 110 – Never Let Evil Take Root

She could hear its slavering maw clicking just beyond the corner as she inched along the pillars, doing all she could to get away. The locust made a weird retching noise and retreated, whilst Zefaris finally slipped past the patrol when they at last continued their route.

Ever so slowly and ever so cautiously, the markswoman progressed through the narrower hallway, ducking behind every piece of cover to be found. At last, she reached the left turn at the end. A dead end, a single raised pillar with a glyph on the front and a slot in the top, holding her bayonet. The ground was even here, visually separating this small nook from the rest of the chamber.

With a disappointed sigh she approached the altar. The moment she took a step, there came a chattering noise from behind her. Then came another, and another - three drones had somehow followed her all this way without her noticing. 

“Shit, they must’ve broken off from the patrol…” she thought as she dashed to get a hold on the weapon. It wouldn’t budge, stuck stiffly in the black stone. The three drones clambered over the very cover she’d hidden behind only seconds prior, visibly spraying their pheromones with every breath they took.

The moment their feet touched the more even ground of the dead end, they lunged forward. Zefaris sucked in a breath of Fog dodged the frontmost one’s lunge, blocking the second drone’s claw swipe with her arms whilst she twisted her body and delivered a sideways kick to the third drone, which sent it stumbling back. 

An exhalation, a resolute knee to the bug’s gut, and a brief utterance.

“Move,” she said before her fist made contact. Tendrils of Fog spread out from the point of impact, and the drone came flying against the wall, its head whipping back against the stone and trailing brain matter as it slid down.

Another breath. Another invocation before the two others could reach her again. 

“Homunculus Eye.” 

Everything in her view came into focus. The first drone clambered onto the pillar and used it as a jumping-off point, leaping at her mandibles chattering, claws grabbing, vestigial wings beating. Zefaris saw it coming, and answered with an uppercut.

“Move!” she invoked again, a little louder this time. Fist met chitin, the force of impact amplified and spread out by tendrils of Fog. It sent the drone careening overhead, while Zefaris once more moved toward the bayonet, intent on pulling it free. The glyph on the front of the altar had already lit up, and it already read a message that she just barely managed to make out before she stepped around the altar, that she might not be flanked whilst she pulled.

A great deal of Fog was already fading around the words, suggesting that the altar’s entire spiel save for this final part had transpired whilst she was busy dealing with her assailants.

With this stone-blessed knife,

never let evil take root.

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Her hands gripped tightly around its handle, Zefaris filled her lungs and exhaled all at once with a mighty pull. The screeching of metal against stone resounded, and with the bayonet now in her hands, an unfamiliar strength filled her arms. The blade was heavy, unnaturally so - damn-near as heavy as a full sized war-knife. She’d pulled it free just in time, for she used the momentum to help her step out of the way of a locust drone that leapt over the altar to get at her, the two others not far behind. 

Zefaris took the bayonet in her right hand, and felt that the strength she’d felt in both her arms now fully affected the arm which held the blade. The connection was easy to make, between the blade’s history and what she caught of the dungeon’s own words - it must’ve been imbued with some variety of elemental Terra. 

It was a whole another question whether the blade had absorbed something during its time stuck in Ubul’s back or whether the dungeon had merely imbued it in a way it found appropriate.

It was also a question for a later time, when she didn’t have slavering locusts swiping at her throat.

With her index finger securely in the blade’s loop, Zefaris stepped forward and drove a forward stab into the locust’s chest. There was a moment of resistance, and when its exoskeleton gave way, she let out a small exhalation as she drove it home at full force.

“Move.”

The bayonet went all the way through and out the locust’s back before her invocation took effect, its tendrils delivering a kinetic pulse just strong enough to make the dying locust fall backward.

A turn to the left, Zef grabbed a swiping arm and kicked its owner away whilst cutting off the limb, stepping towards the drone before it could regain its bearings and crushing its head against the wall with a steel-toed kick. 

The third one might’ve gotten a hit in, as it managed to grab her knife arm. Unfortunately of it, said arm’s strength sufficed for a sharp twisting motion of the shoulder that let Zefaris break free of the bug’s grip and deliver a skull-smashing pommel strike right to its temple.

It fell to the ground, hemolymph gushing from the resultant crack. Even if their skulls didn’t have weaknesses like those of humans, severe head trauma worked on locusts all the same.

With the means to more readily defend herself sitting with reassuring weight in her grip, Zefaris made her way toward the rightward turn. Leaning her head out past the corner showed a clear path back to the main body of the chamber. The subject of crossing the gap to the other side path was a whole another matter. 

The remaining locust-men from the patrol she’d partially evaded earlier were standing in the way, as if they had fully expected her to survive the drones and try to come through here later. Four in total, they were one heavily plated, top-heavy Warrior, and three drones arrayed in a row in front of said Warrior.

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