Overly Sickle

Roko covered his head and body as well as he could but the monsters were already biting into his body, drawing blood at numerous points of his body. He was bleeding out and losing strength faster than he could think of a way to get out or try to build up enough willpower to break free. At some point, his mind had given up and retired itself to their fate before a bolt of lightning blasted the group apart and he could feel someone pull him up and run away.

When he came back to consciousness, Roko could feel a cold chill in the air and someone panickily dressing his wounds.

"Stay with us, Roko!" Corissa cried as she wrapped up his wounds, "Don't go towards the light!"

"In the Valrin tribe, we believe in a river that floats the souls of the dead to an island." Aida said.

"Not the time for cultural exchange right now!" Corissa frowned, "What the hell were you thinking, going in there all by yourself?!"

Roko coughed as he tried to use his voice again, "It was Aida's idea."

"I told you to fire magic at it! I didn't tell you to go solo against the literal monsters!" Aida protested.

"You're the one who gave the order." Corissa said crossly as she tightened a bandage so tightly over an arm wound that Roko crumpled up in pain, "And don't go trying to shift the blame to a little girl! What are you a child?"

"My head hurts." Roko moaned.

"You lost a lot of blood." Corissa dug around in the backpack, "There's some food here so maybe you can have some biscuits or cheese?"

"We're not on a picnic." Aida frowned.

"Well that's all I have!" Corissa sobbed.

"Enough." Roko struggled to push himself up, "I'm fine."

"You don't look fine." Aida scoffed.

"That doesn't matter." Roko gasped as he finally sat himself up, "Status report."

"We're surrounded on all sides with enemies." Aida sighed, "Our defenses have held up well and Varis is good at holding back the few that get inside but they've begun chomping through the ice to get to us."

At this point, Roko became aware of the ice crunching sounds echoing around them. From what he could tell, there were also sounds coming from above as well.

"We're barely holding on." Corissa looked down, "Everything's on Varis' shoulders right now. I don't know when our defenses will fail and we'll get overrun. It could happen at any point now."

"Can you call for help?" Roko asked.

"No, I don't have a connection this deep into the cave." Corissa bit her lip.

"Of course." Roko sighed.

"...We're gonna die aren't we?" Aida whimpered.

"Nonsense." Corissa and Roko replied at the same time nonchalantly.

"What?" Aida seemed confused by their flippant response.

"I don't think you get how strong Varis is." Roko smirked, "I've seen his stats. He can blast a hole into their ranks straight through to the exit. He could destroy this nest by himself. The only reason he hasn't is because we're here. Fire would just make the monsters into moving torches that could latch onto us and lightning would cause the cave to collapse if it was fired at a high power level."

"I've been with Varis for years!" Corissa smiled, "He's never let me down!"

Aida just stared, dumbfounded by the pair's confidence, "...One of you is more convincing than the other."

"Which one?" Corissa blinked.

"At any rate, what are we going to do then?" Aida asked, ignoring Corissa's question, "Are we running?"

"...How much time do we have left?" Roko asked.

"It's...about time for the sun to set." Corissa gulped.

"...If...we can get one of the other teams to assist us..." Roko sighed, "We might be able to make it."

"You don't sound happy about that." Aida scoffed.

"Roko doesn't like the idea of giving up." Corissa giggled, "He's not the type to retreat, even strategically."

"Yeah, I kinda got that from him already." Aida smirked.

"Retreat means letting your opponent attack without retaliation." Roko muttered sourly, "Who knows how many casualties we'd take before getting to safety?"

"What was that Roko?" Corissa grinned.

"Nothing." Roko snapped as he pushed himself up, "Varis, we're retreating!"

Varis looked back, turning his eyes from the few monsters climbing through the gaps in their frozen blockade. He nodded and made one more slash to dislodge any monsters hanging on the edge before raising one hand outward, electricity gathering in his palm.

"Get your axe ready." Roko grimaced as he propped himself with his sword.

"I can help you-" Corissa moved to prop Roko up on her shoulder but Roko moved away from her.

"I can still walk by myself." Roko said, "The pain's starting to recede with my adrenaline kicking in. I can fight. Just make sure to keep in between the three of us."

Corissa bit her lip. Her frustrations showing clear on her face but she nodded as she picked up the backpack and slung it over her back, "Okay. Let's go."

A blast of lightning broke out from the icy fort, disintegrating the monsters in a line as Varis rushed out into the field, enhancing his curse spell to force all attention to him once more. As soon as he was in front of the exit, he fired off another bolt of lightning to clear the way out. Roko, Corissa and Aida ran out and gathered behind Varis, taking up defensive positions around the snarling monsters as they began to rush towards their only means of escape. Roko slashed away at anything that came close to him though with his injuries, he couldn't really put that much strength in his attacks. But these monsters were by far the weakest of any kind he's faced before. A targeted slice between the teeth, cutting at the jaws that made up the majority of the body was enough to unbalance the monster's entire body. It's jaw muscles were really the only thing keeping the entire creature functional since it was literally just a mouth on tentacles. And even those muscles weren't all that strong. Even the monster seemed to understand this as whenever he cut one down in such a manner, it would collapse onto its back and stop moving even though its motor abilities shouldn't be affected, as if it understood it no longer had any ability to deal damage.

"We're almost there!"

Corissa's voice broke Roko out of his thoughts as he turned his mind back to their escape attempt. Like Corissa had said, they were only a few feet away from the exit. From what Roko could see, the monsters had not begun to group together into the escape tunnel, remaining in the cavern and swarming them instead of maintaining a perimeter around them. There was a slight hope that they wouldn't chase them past the cavern exit but Roko doubted it. There was a feeling of situational discomfort but before Roko could muse on it, his eyes caught movement in the ceiling. More tentacle monsters from what he could see but they didn't seem to be prepping to drop on top of them. No, they were skittering past them, through and around the web towards the tunnel. And between the shadows of the webs and stalactites, Roko could see the glint of...something in the dim light.

"Watch out!"

Roko's warning came out before he could even process what was worrying him. Aida, Corissa and Varis all stopped and turned back to look at him and not a moment later, Roko could see a thick thread, camouflaged against the rest of the webs, cut by the monsters and a giant slab of rock, disguised right above the tunnel exit, slammed down inches from flattening Varis and blocked their only way out.

"NOOOOOOOOOO-" Corissa cried in terror as their only means of escape was locked solidly behind a sizable boulder.

Varis reacted immediately, forming an umbrella of ice above them again and trying to form an ice barricade like he had done before but this time the monsters leaped right over the ice before it could fully form, attacking them before they could collect themselves.

"Roko!" Aida cried as she frantically began killing the invading monsters, "R-Roko! What do we do?!"

As panicked and scared as everyone else was, Roko's head was struggling with much worse discord, dismay and frustration. Fighting aches and fatigue along with his dismay before he could come up with a proper plan. All the while, there was now a sharp ticking noise accompanying the crunching sound above them. This last thought was was what caught Roko's attention as he stopped slaying the small group of early invaders and turned his head up at the ice barrier that Varis had created for them. Beyond the glazed ice, he could see moving tendrils working their way across the surface, biting away at the ice like before but there was a different movement among them this time. This movement and sound was something Roko recognized but couldn't understand how it was being made by the monsters. As if in response to his confusion, a large, sharp black claw suddenly punctured the ice above them, nearly scratching Roko's face.

"Everybody out!" Roko called.

Varis seemed to understand immediately as he threw out a wave of fire to dispatch a few remaining monsters before grabbing Aida by her collar with one hand and wrapping one arm around Corissa's waist, lifting her up. Varis wrapped his other arm around Roko, lifting him up under his arm before jumping and breaking through his own icy defense and up into the air. The three normal people began screaming, partly in shock, partly in terror and partly from excitement as they soared, briefly, in the air. Varis raised one armored boot, gathering electricity underneath it as he stomped back down onto the earth, causing a giant blast around them on impact and clearing the area around them. Before the dust even settled, frost was gathering around the black knight and in a blast of cold air, Varis created a pillar of ice that pushed everyone up into the air, stopping only when they drew close to the stalactites. Below them, the monsters alternated between trying to climb the structure and biting through the base while some more began to climb walls to try and reach them from the ceiling. The ones already on the ceiling were already making their way towards them but their numbers were much lower. Varis set everyone down on top of the ice pillar and turned his attention to the monsters crawling on the ceiling, sniping any that he could find with a thin bolt of lightning. Finally free from the constant assault, everyone took a moment to catch their breath and recollect themselves.

"What happened?" Corissa moaned, "We were so close..."

"They had a slab of rock hanging above the exit." Roko scowled as he turned to look at the now blocked tunnel, "Did they set that up? No...they don't have the ability to make webbing to hold a slab that big up. Then that means this must have been set up by the grave spiders. Did you know about this, Aida?"

"Me?!" Aida cried, "How could I?! I never came anywhere near here! The elders only told me enough to keep me away from them!"

"Some sort of method to trap any creature powerful enough to attack them." Roko mused, "Anything strong enough to make it this far would end up in a life or death fight anyway. Making a blockade like this would mean that they could trap the opponent if the spiders ever got the advantage and their prey tried to escape."

"Can you focus?!" Aida cried, grabbing Roko by the collar, "We're trapped in here now! There's no way to escape!"

"Varis can blast that rock apart with a strong enough lightning bolt." Roko replied calmer than his mind actually was, "We can still escape. Varis just needs some time to charge it up."

"You're putting a lot of faith on this black knight." Aida frowned, "Can you do anything yourself?"

"What do you think I've been doing?"

"It's okay, Aida." Corissa drew the small child into her arms, trying to comfort her but still leaking a bit of shock and fear in her voice, "We'll get out of here."

"That said." Roko continued as he looked down the edge of their ice tower., "This really isn't a good point of defense. It's working for now but if they manage to chew through the base we're going to come crashing down which isn't good."

"It's okay, Aida." Corissa hugged the child tighter, "We'll get out of here."

"I'm perfectly calm." Aida replied, more composed than the increasingly nervous princess.

"What do we do, Roko?" Corissa asked.

"...Escape is still our top priority." Roko sighed, "But from this distance, it's risky to destroy the boulder. There's a high chance that blowing it up recklessly will cause the entire cavern to collapse. A close ranged, short blast is preferable. Avoid using more power than is needed."

"What if we had more of that powder thing from the tombs?" Aida asked, "Could we blow it up ourselves with that?"

"The only reason why that worked was because we found enough of that powder to fill the limited space in the tomb and then lit them all at once. The powder wasn't explosive, it was just flammable. Filling that limited space up all at once with fire was what caused the explosion which is not applicable here."

"Well, I didn't have any of those anyway." Aida muttered.

"More importantly..." Roko picked up the sword by his side, "We have to get off this thing soon."

"Because it's going to collapse?" Corissa asked.

"That. And because we're not quite safe."

A sharp cracking of ice came into everyone's attention as it seemed to climb up the side of the ice tower. Before long, a large black claw suddenly hooked onto the edge of their ice tower. Corissa yelped and Aida drew her knife as the monster pulled itself onto their little pillar. The monster stood on two of its tentacles with the rest of its many arms wrapped together to grip two sharp looking claws behind its back.

"So they've learned to use weapons. The tips of the legs of the grave spiders, I presume." Roko mused, "That's how they managed to cut the webs and moreover, how they cut through our defenses so easily before."

"And now they're using it to scale the ice." Aida gulped.

The monster stared at the group with an almost smug grin as it seemed to be deciding on which of the three it would attack first. It seemed to recognize Roko as the threat and lunged at him. Roko began to raise his sword up to impale the monster in midair but a bolt of lightning blasted the monster in the face, frying it and pushing it back before its charred corpse plummeted off the pillar. Roko turned around to Varis who had been dealing with the monsters on the ceiling and just now nonchalantly dealt with the clawed monster now had gone back to blasting away at monsters, turning his attention to the monsters that were climbing up the pillar as well.

"Varis." Roko tapped the black knight on the shoulder, "Widen the top of this pillar. It'll stop the climbers from reaching us. Take a break and measure out the amount of power you need to break the boulder blocking the exit. We can handle the few that get to us."

Varis nodded and sat back down, the floor below them widening to form a broad ceiling over the rest of the pillar, blocking any climbers with a sheer horizontal tip that they could not scale.

"Good job, Varis." Corissa smiled gently as she patted her knight on his helmeted head, "We've only gotten this far thanks to you."

"I'll give you a piece of chocolate." Aida offered Varis a bit of chocolate she had snapped off.

Roko watched the monsters on the ceiling crawl towards them. With the suckers on their tentacles, the monsters may be able to crawl on the ceiling but the stalactites were proving enough of an obstacle course to hinder their progress. At least, the ones he could see through the webbing. None of them seemed to be carrying any leg tips as weapons though. Presumably because they needed multiple arms to carry them and thus did not have enough free arms to allot to climbing ceilings. Roko stood up, looking around them to check up on the progress of all the monsters. As he did, he noticed a slight tilt in his ankles. Something that none of them could quite tell when they were sitting down on top of their tower and even standing on two legs, the change was barely perceptible. But Roko noticed and the meaning of it soon hit him.

"We need to get off this!" He shouted.

Corissa and Aida turned to him in confusion but Varis reacted immediately, grabbing onto the two girls and heaving them up under his arms again. Just in time as a large crack sound broke out from underneath them and the entire tower began tilting. Roko exchanged glances with Varis and both agreed to the same unspoken plan. Varis leaped off the collapsing tower and Roko quickly began running towards the edge of the platform, fighting the tilting as much as he could until he could no longer scale the increasingly vertical surface and he jumped, grabbing and clinging onto the edge as everything fell away. In his mind, he knew he had to grab onto something to prevent himself from free falling to the ground but now his mind actually registered the angle in which the tower was falling and realized it was going to crash directly into the side of the cavern with him clinging onto the outside. With no real time left to correct himself, Roko just braced for the moment that he would smash into the wall.

When Roko regained consciousness, he was lying face down on the ground, his body pulsing in pain and mind felt like it was at the bottom of a trench, barely able to see past every cell in his body trying to shut themselves down. Only the knowledge that he needed to survive kept him conscious. Roko slowly moved his head, the only thing he felt like he could move, turning his head around to lay on its side. What Roko saw in this new position was the pillar of ice that had crashed against the cavern wall and snapped in half. Turning his head around to the other side, Roko found the platform at the top where he had clung on to. Part of it was broken off after impacting the cavern wall but most of it seemed relatively intact. So much so that Roko realized that the edge of the platform had hit the cavern and snapped off from the rest of the pillar before he could get crushed against the wall himself. He remembered getting thrown off as the platform rotated and being flung through the air before hitting the ground. After realizing that his body hadn't been crushed against the wall, Roko's pain actually abated a bit, enough for him to push himself up onto his knees as he suppressed the remaining soreness in his body. Glancing towards where the base of the tower was, Roko could see a collection of monsters celebrating briefly over their toppling of the icy structure. A large collection of leg wielding monsters seemed to be collected there.

"Roko!" Corissa ran up to him with Aida close behind her, "Are you okay?!"

"Better than I thought I'd be." Roko grimaced, "Nothing broke as far as I can tell."

"You were right about the tower." Aida gasped, "That thing really wasn't stable."

"It was for a good moment." Roko said as he pushed himself onto his feet, "But my plan to stop the legged monsters from climbing up to us meant that they just shifted their efforts from climbing to cutting down the pillar. Making it collapse much faster than it would have."

"That's not your fault." Corissa gulped.

"Well, that doesn't matter now." Roko sighed, "Where's Varis?"

"He's holding point close to the blocked exit." Corissa nodded, "It might take a short while before he can prepare an adjusted bolt to let us escape."

"Well it'll go faster with our support." Roko nodded, "Let's go."

Corissa and Aida nodded back and they began to run down the cave. Roko had fallen close to the side of the cave, past one of the rivers of poisons and behind some of the webbed homes. It seemed like there was enough blocking their path that the monsters haven't quite gotten around to swarming them but most of them seem to converging near the front of the cavern where Varis was holding them all back with magic. The path around the edge of the cavern was clear of monsters so they continued running close to the wall to avoid getting swarmed by monsters.

"Watch out for the traps!" Aida called as she lead their escape, dodging in between the collection of trap holes in the ground.

Roko and Corissa followed Aida, barely able to recognize the traps themselves in the chaos. That said, the covers should be pretty sturdy if it was able to hold Roko's weight. That also said, these lids were also made of detritus and webbing so solidity might vary.

"Duck!"

Corissa's cry cut into Roko's mind and he immediately lowered his head as a tentacle monster soared over his head.

"Pay attention, Roko!" Corissa grinned as she ran out ahead of him.

The monsters had now caught onto their positions and were launching themselves at the trio even as they closed in towards Varis. Corissa noticed another monster preparing to lunge at her and quickly stopped in place as the monster soared in front of her, past her head once more. The monster smacked itself against the wall and fell onto the ground. Onto the lid of a trap door that broke apart under its weight. It's weight as well as Corissa's. Corissa yelled out in terror as her left foot lost its footing and she began to tilt, falling into the trap hole. Roko's perception seemed to slow as he propelled himself forward, quickly closing the distance and grabbing Corissa's wrist. With a twist of his body, he threw Corissa backwards, back onto safe ground, saving her. Even as he had no way of stopping his own momentum and Roko fell into the trap hole himself, dropping into the vat of poison below.