Chapter 16

Xyver entered first, both shields raised, with Caren right behind him, his dual swords drawn and at the ready. Vandra had her staff clenched in both hands, a hungry look in her eyes. Olennah and Bryna came up last, the archer with an arrow nocked and the witch just looking… bored. She still held her broomstick at the ready, but clearly didn’t expect to need to use her spellwork immediately.

The candleman in the kitchen turned to face the group. Zaria had armed this one with a simple club it held slung over its shoulder.

Xyver grinned. “Only one mob. A nice warm-up.”

Then he charged.

The candleman bellowed and surged towards Xyver, swinging its club. The cultivator blocked with his left shield, and then again with his right when the candleman’s tongue lashed out for Xyver’s waist. Xyver stepped forward, head-butting the mimic right in its waxen face, followed by a swift knee to the jaw in the candleman’s chest, a two hit combo that knocked the mimic back a couple steps.

That gave Caren a chance to get around behind the mimic and lash out with his swords, drawing two deep cuts in the creature’s wax. Against a flesh and blood foe, those cuts would be lethal, severing arteries and possibly even a spine. To the amorphous mass of the candleman, however, it was a nuisance, and the mob whirled to face this new threat.

Then Xyver shouted.

The sound wasn’t like anything Zaria had heard before. It wasn’t something she thought a human throat could produce, a physical force that demanded attention. The candleman whipped back to the cultivator like it had completely forgotten the Runeknight at its back, and swung hard at Xyver’s skull. Xyver moved like lightning, once again using both shields to block the candleman’s counterattacks.

“Line of sight, you lemon!” Olennah shouted.

Xyver rolled to the side, and the candleman turned to face the cultivator. “Sorry!” Xyver responded, bringing up both shields to block another overhead strike.

Olennah grinned and fired three arrows in quick succession into the Candleman’s side, the arrows biting deep into the wax.

Then Vandra charged forward.

Since she was the group’s healer, Zaria had expected her to hang back. But she hadn’t been kidding. With a maniacal laugh to rival Maw, Vandra swung her staff like a club, bashing the candleman against the side of the head over and over again.

If it had just been the candleman here, the fight would have ended in a few moments.

But the crate mimic, lurking in the corner of the room, still had to act.

Its tongue lashed out, wrapping around Caren’s ankle and yanking hard. It completely caught the Runeknight off guard. Caren barely even had time to gasp before he slammed into the ground, the air driven from his lungs. The sudden shock loosened his grip, and his swords fell from his grasp. He tried to choke something out, but couldn’t manage more than a grunt that was lost in the sound of the fight. That silence nearly cost him - for a moment, it looked like the mimic was going to get a nice bite in before anyone could react.

Then Bryna pointed her broomstick at the crate mimic and said a single word. “Nymot.”

One rune flared to life, followed by the entire room being filled with a cracking peal of thunder that shook Zaria’s wall. A bolt of lightning struck the mimic’s tongue, charring the creature’s flesh and making it shriek in pain. Its tongue fell slack long enough for Caren to kick himself free and grab his swords. Meanwhile, Bryna found her voice. “Pickup!” she shouted to Xyver.

Xyver leapt back from the candleman. “Slow!” he shouted.

Olennah activated a single rune on her bow and fired an arrow into the candleman. When it struck, the mimic moved like it was walking underwater.

The crate mimic lashed out towards Byrna, now that the witch had aggro, but Xyver was there, intercepting its tongue with his shield and knocking the limb upwards. Then, catching Zaria off guard, he rolled forward, bringing himself right up in front of the Mimic and slamming down hard with both shields on the crate’s back.

Before the mimic could react, the agile cultivator had leapt back. The brief slow on the candleman wore off, and now the mimic was in melee. As fast as Xyver had been, the two-pronged assault presented more attacks than he could easily block, and the candleman’s club got past his defenses, slamming him across the shoulder blades and sending him stumbling forward - to where the crate mimic waited, opening its jaws with hungry anticipation.

A resounding crack filled the air. In the chaos of the fight, Vandra had slipped through unnoticed right next to the crate mimic, and brought down her staff across the top of the crate with all her might. The wood cracked under the blow, and the mimic fell limp just before it could bite into Xyver.

The party rounded on the candleman. Badly damaged and now truly alone, they made quick work of it.

The sudden voice in Zaria’s head would have made her jump if she’d been in her body still. Thankfully, no one could see her reaction. Penara had returned, and was hovering by one of the second-story windows.

Penara nodded.

Zaria recounted the fight quickly for the wisp. The bodies of her mimics were dissolving, and the party was picking up the shards they dropped - as well as a few copper coins. Zaria had seen in the Dungeon Instructions that they would be expected, so she’d just made simple disks and hoped she got the size right.

From the way the party exclaimed, Zaria may have overestimated how large they needed to be.

As the party picked up their loot, Zaria finished her story with

Penara shook her head.

Zaria opened a window, and the Wisp fluttered down to Zaria’s core. she said, landing on what had once been Zaria’s bed.

Zaria projected the image of a nodding head to Penara. Zaria asked, feeling a bit disappointed at the prospect.

Penara held her hands to her mouth to stifle a laugh. Probably for the best. In such a small space, the party would easily hear it.

Zaria’s excitement returned.

Penara nodded eagerly.

Zaria checked back to see what the group was doing.

Penara said.

Penara rubbed her hands together in apparent glee.

Before Penara could answer, Xyver had charged into the next room, going for two quick shield slams to the candleman’s head, then whirling to smack the obvious crate before it could lash out in surprise Like Zaria had hoped, he hadn’t noticed the other crate that lay in hiding. The moment he’d hit both mobs, Xyver let out another one of those screams that seemed to draw the mobs to him like flies to honey.

Penara said.

The group was going in hard. Even Byrna was joining in now. She’d reversed her grip on the broom, and was wielding the handle like a staff. Even though the witch didn’t seem to have much physical strength behind her attacks, every bit of damage helped.

Their healer remained the largest surprise of the group. Vandra had an insatiable bloodlust that Zaria would have expected from a Primalist’s rage, but without any augmentation. Just bashing mimics with unbridled fury. Although this time, someone equaled her in terms of sheer fervor.

Zaria asked, finding it shockingly easy to split her attention between Penara and the fight.

The one who matched Vandra was the Runeknight. After being tripped earlier, Caren was attacking like he had something to prove. While he didn’t seem to enjoy himself to the, quite frankly, worrying degree Vandra did, he certainly was striking which much more ferocity than before. It meant he dealt more damage - but also made him reckless.

The candleman focused on Xyver since the cultivator, in his role as tank, was keeping the mob’s wrath on him. But Caren was chipping away at the candleman with such force that the mob’s attention was turning back to the Runeknight.

Penara said, then she sensed Zaria’s excitement and fell quiet.

The candleman’s attention snapped to Caren in a sudden fury, catching both Runeknight and cultivator off guard. The mob sunk its fangs into Caren’s wrists, drawing blood. Olennah’s arrow punched through the mimic’s center of mass, felling it just before it could do more damage, but Caren still withdrew with a scream of pain.

Then the second crate mimic struck, its tongue lashing out to grab Bryna. Instead of going for the ankle, this one got its tongue around Bryna’s wrist, pulling hard. It gave the witch a chance to scream a warning to her party.

Xyver cursed and rolled back, putting himself between Bryna and the mimic, then kicked out with one foot to catch the mimic on the top of the jaw. His shields came up, and he pressed them hard against Bryna’s stomach - becoming a physical barrier between the mimic’s maw and Bryna’s arm. “Deal with the weaker one!” he shouted. “One rune each!”

He didn’t need to say it twice. Olennah let loose with a flaming arrow as bands of frost wrapped around the blade held in Caren’s uninjured arm before he brought it down in a deadly overhead strike. The two blows impacted back-to-back, rapidly shifting the mimic’s temperature.

The mimic may be a semi-living being, but its skin was still wood. Having its body rapidly heated before the temperature dropped precipitously caused the material to splinter and crack all along its form. When Vandra brought her staff down, the mimic practically shattered.

A good tactic, but one that cost the group two runes - and gave the mimic behind Xyver time to work its mouth around the Cultivator’s foot, sinking its jaws into Xyver’s ankle. Per Zaria’s instructions, it didn’t sever the foot immediately, but the bite went deep.

This did provide one benefit to the party - Byrna’s wrist was now free, letting her bring the broom to bear on the Mimic. She shouted, “Fymot!” and one of her runes flared to life. This time, she didn’t hurl lightning, but let loose a stream of acid that hissed and bubbled against the mimic’s wood.

Then Vandra stepped forward and pointed her staff at the mimic. It was her turn to shout a command, activating a copper rune, and apparently the commands need not be a fancy language.

“Fuck all the way off!”

A beam of light leapt from her staff, shearing the mimic in twain in a single strike.

Immediately, Vandra turned to her party members and flipped her staff. She had wrapped this end of the weapon in leather over some kind of fabric to make it softer. Before Zaria could quite process what she was seeing, Vandra blatted both injured members of her group. This time, the runes that flared to life had a familiar component to them - each had the trigger of “Upon Impact.” It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the runes probably said something like “Upon Impact, Heal.”

Zaria asked.

Penara sighed. The Wisp shrugged. Penara cast Zaria a sideways glance.

The party seemed relieved, and sure enough, their injuries were healing before Zaria’s vision.

Zaria found that hard to believe, but… Penara probably knew this woman better than Zaria’s brief acquaintance.

That was the first two rooms cleared. One rune from Olennah and Caren each, two from Bryna, three from the Copper Vandra. The cultivator didn’t seem to use runes, so there were fewer resources for him to burn through. But… if the goal for Zaria was attrition, which it seemed to be, she was happy with how this run was going.

The group gathered at the base of the stairs, and after an unspoken look between them, began to climb to face the next room - and after that, Maw waited hungrily for them.