Chapter 78: 5.2 – What Lies Beneath

Robin dove for a nearby stalactite, slamming into it and scraping his left hand in the process. Reflexively he wrapped a [Lesser Phantasm] around himself before looking up to try and spot the source of the strangely familiar sound. When he found it he froze in shock.

The little beasties that had first assaulted him on his arrival were back! And this time they were all grown up.

They were fucking massive, actually.

Massive, umbrella-like forms floated and spun through the stalactites above, barbed tentacles dangling evenly all around their bodies. What had the system called them? Shadowmantles?

These were definitely not juveniles. They had to be mature.

If they were adolescents, Robin definitely didn’t want to meet the mature ones.

‘Shadowmantles!’ he called out in warning. ‘Watch out for those tentacles. They’re sharp!’

‘Never heard of them,’ Jhess shouted back. ‘They’re not something that’s usually described as living in the undercity.’

That was a good sign, actually. It meant they were close to something unusual.

‘Come down and face me, beast!’ Khavren roared, sword in hand.

As if in answer, one of the shadowmantles pulsed, the motion rippling through its flesh until a blob of utter darkness shot out from the underside of it. It shot toward the party and exploded into a sphere of impenetrable shadow.

Well, almost impenetrable. Savra’s magelights had vanished in the dark but Robin was pleasantly surprised to find he could still see.

‘It’s one of the [Utterdark] line of spells,’ Drev called. ‘We need a light spell of a higher tier to counter it.’

‘I don’t have any,’ Savra shouted back.

The shadowmantles dove, taking advantage of the confusion beneath them, lashing out with their tentacles as they flitted past. Crimson lines of pain opened up along most of his party members’ bodies, with the exception of himself and Wulfram.

Robin was warded with an illusion, but that didn’t seem to matter to these things. One headed right for him. Wulfram’s hammer impacted it before it could make its attack, however, sending the thing flying in another direction.

Rerebos took refuge in the shadows in the tunnel. Robin sent him a quick flash of approval. There wasn’t a great deal the little dragon could do against beasts of this size, yet, and the last thing he wanted was a dead or injured familiar.

And while the rest of the party took some damage from the shadowmantles, the beasts paid for it. Khavren’s sword lopped a tentacle off of one, and Jhess’s daggers removed another, even in the dark. The two of them had good instincts.

‘They hunt by sound,’ Robin called. ‘They drop darkness on their prey and use echolocation to guide their attacks.’

‘Echolo—what?’ Jhess called. ‘How do we fight these things when we can’t see them?’

‘I’ll try to disrupt their senses. Brace yourselves, this sound is not going to be pleasant.’

Last time Robin had used the sound it had driven off the horde of juvenile shadowmantles. Hopefully the mature forms would hate it just as much and leave. Or at the very least find it disrupted their echolocation.

Robin flexed his hands through the passes of [Lesser Phantasm], recalling the pure sonic hell he’d produced with the cantrip last time he’d faced these things. This time he was several levels higher, and his abilities were boosted even further by [Illusion Focus]. He could generate as much volume as a crowd of 81 people.

The sonic hell he unleashed would have given any choirmagister worth their salt an aneurysm. Cacophonous, discordant, and nerve-jangling, the high-pitched sound exploded through the cavern. It was just sound. Just a cantrip. It couldn’t do any direct damage.

But it could play merry hell with the senses of creatures that relied on sound to navigate.

The shadowmantles almost staggered in the air as they floated around. Their tentacles began to writhe and lash out randomly. It wasn’t enough to send them fleeing, like it had the juvenile versions, but it certainly disrupted their echolocation.

And it clearly made them angry.

They banked around, occasionally slamming into stalactites as they went. The shadowmantles were coming in for another attack!

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But their echolocation was clearly compromised. And if it was, they might be relying on vision. And vision Robin could fool even more easily.

The bard dropped the illusion of darkness over the [Utterdark] spell covering the party. The shadowmantles, even if they could see through the darkness as well as he could, wouldn’t be able to see through that, and their echolocation wouldn’t be able to find their prey as long as the discordant shrieking Robin conjured still filled the air.

He couldn’t kill them all himself, but at least he was providing cover for the party. He flicked his hands through [Lesser Phantasm] again to shout a warning at the rest of the party with the force of eighty-one voices shouting in unison. He had no other choice. It was the only way to make himself heard over the horrible noise he was producing to mess with the shadowmantles.

‘They’re coming in for another attack! Be ready!’

Hopefully Khavren and Jhess could lop off a few more tentacles. If the beasts lost enough flesh, maybe that would drive them off. Robin certainly didn’t have enough spellcasting energies left to deal with this threat alone. He’d exhausted almost all of them in earlier fights, like the one against the tuvyux.

At least he had his cantrips and his at-will use of [Visual Phantasm]. That would have to see him through. He couldn’t even make effective use of [Cutting Words], not with the species barrier on top of the horrible noise he had to maintain to keep the things from picking them off like sitting ducks on a pond.

‘There are four of them,’ he called using his cantrip again. ‘Attacking…now!’

Khavren slashed around himself, wild, powerful swings. They weren’t well targeted, but the shadowmantles couldn’t see their prey either, so it was a wild wash. In this case, Khavren and Jhess came out a bit better in the exchange. The shadowmantles lost more tentacles and the party received only a few small scratches.

Drev had cast some kind of protection spell. He’d managed to find Savra in the darkness and was covering them both with some form of magical shield spell. Too many spells required a line of sight to be effective, even if the mage and the cleric weren’t nearly tapped out, magically speaking.

Robin wracked his brains, trying to wring a bit of useful knowledge from his [Bardic Lore]. It was to no avail. He couldn’t think of any legends or ballads or past lives that had anything useful he could use to combat these things.

He had to settle for shouting out when the things attacked, and Jhess and Khavren attacking blindly, relying upon their combat instincts. When the opportunity presented itself he flung [Lesser Witchbolts], the flaming cards leaving scorch marks on the stalactites as often as on the shadowmantles themselves.

It was a slow, grinding battle. Both Khavren and Jhess were covered with scratches and stinging welts, their skin liberally painted with their own blood and the ichor that sprayed from the shadowmantles’ severed tentacles.

Robin’s hands began to cramp with the effort of casting and recasting the illusory sound that so confused their enemies’ echolocation. The sound itself grated on the nerves and added another level of exhaustion to the endless battle.

Wulfram, frustratingly, made no move to help them. He defended himself just fine, and Robin kept him shrouded in illusion as he did the rest of them, but the massive warrior didn’t set one foot out of place to end the conflict.

He must have very specific orders from Guildmagister Zahn.

Their first break came when Khavren landed a lucky blow. It took one of the shadowmantles directly through the pillar-like head. The thing shrieked as it expired and sent the other three shadowmantles into a renewed frenzy.

The things might have given up and fled earlier had Robin’s sound not been driving them mad, but if he had not used the sound to confound them they would have probably killed a member of the party by now. Not an ideal situation, but they were all short on resources and no better solutions were at hand.

The next lucky break came to Robin. He managed to score a hit on the underside of a shadowmantle as it flew overhead. The flames from his [Lesser Witchbolt] sizzled into something vital and it spasmed, falling from midair and impaling itself on a stalagmite. It writhed in agony before finally expiring, put out of its misery by a blow of Wulfram’s hammer.

Interesting. That small act of mercy didn’t exactly square with the Wulfram in the ballads Robin knew, but he supposed that made sense. Famous people in his world weren’t often the same as the persona portrayed in gossip magazines or biographies, after all.

The distraction of the dying shadowmantle allowed Jhess to find the edge of the darkness effect and slip out of it. As soon as she had a clear line of sight, she launched a succession of daggers into the air. Each of them found their mark, skewering vital organs and bringing down the third shadowmantle. With its death, the magical darkness enveloping the party flickered and died as well.

That was too much for the remaining shadowmantle. Its fellows dead or dying, it keened and began flapping away as quickly as its tattered form would let it. It was noticeably slower than it had been before but still more than capable of outpacing the brutal prey-things on the ground that had so wounded it.

‘Let them go!’ Jhess shouted. ‘There’s no point to chase the thing.’

‘We need to rest and recover,’ Drev agreed.

‘No! I will not let a single one of those beasts live!’ the knight proclaimed and dashed off after the fleeing shadowmantle.

He had little hope of catching the flying creature on foot as it flitted through the stalactites. Yet Khavren persisted, running along the open path between the pillars of stone on the cavern floor. Drev called for him to wait, but Savra suddenly held up a hand.

‘Let him go!’ The seeress’s voice was both intense and strangely distant. ‘He’s going to—’

The ground beneath Khavren’s feet suddenly ceased supporting his steps and he vanished through the floor!

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