Acid midair construct barrier destroyed physical barrier melts partial neutralisation-.
Mr. Yao sings and the acid looses all momentum and falls back to the ground. The worms aren't bothered by it but the material covering the floor begins bubbling.
Marvellous trick! And
of course they're immune to their own weaponry.
"Back, beasts!"
Abednego raises new witch-signs, each the size of kit shields. He gestures at the closest worm, which responds by lunging out of the ground and chomping at him! I yank him back, the sign attached to his left hand passing through the worm's maw with no noticeable effect.
And they're immune to Columbian spellcraft too. Or at least ignore the commands implied.
"Ha! What fun."
Melmoth has a cup of tea and is sitting watching us, the-. The console appears to be immune to the acid.
Might make a nice shield if it comes down to it. A bludgeon, at worst.
Leonid blasts the door, which distorts slightly but then holds fast. His next shot hits one of the walls to even less effect.
The worm that failed to grapple Abednego burrows back underground as two others-.
Fricking burrowing enemies. No way to tell if you've got them all until they stop coming...
The room tilts measurably. We're being undermined.
Strands of orange light connect my right hand to the console, causing it to briefly glow-.
Melmoth looks mildly disappointed as the console decays and his illusion project fades away.
Up yours too, yah git. No getting to watch your opposition painfully killed today.
The new worms spray acid upwards Mr. Yao sings acid keeps coming! He twists aside, acid burning through his robe but missing his body. His song changes and the temperature of the room drops, frost forming on the worms and walls.
The worms appear unaffected. The two new arrivals lunge for Peter, forcing me to pull him towards the top of the room to dodge their mandibles. The two original worms spray acid in a wide arc, splattering Leonid's construct armour-
And of course they're immune to cold as well. Sheeda bullshit again. Which makes sense, as they stole or inherited Human bullshit.
Hunger.
-which holds, which I'm pleased about. I form a construct railgun with the same rune work, load crumblers, point it at the door and fire. The hit causes a hole about forty centimetres across, which Peter might be able to squeeze through but is far too narrow for the rest of us. I reload and fire again as Leonid literally chances his arm my punching a lunging worm. It gets slammed back into the now-gelatinous floor with a quiet splat, Leonid jerking his fist back as the construct gauntlet gives up the ghost.
Please don't do that again... You might not pull back a
hand next time.
Vitriol.
Vitriol containment procedure requires countermagic or feeding it base until it's neutralised. There isn't an easy way to deal with it. With the worms being a constant source that won't work. Killing the worms might, but escaping is a priority. I've got a range advantage while their spit-pressure appears to limit them to shots of about three metres.
Too bad the room isn't more than four metres high... Cramped quarters are never fun to fight in.
Second railgun shot fires, and-. The door is somewhat abraded, but it's still very much whole. Worse, the door appears to be regenerating the damage of the original shot by shifting material from the rest of it.
Alright, be clever, then. I fire strands at it with the aim of assimilating-. They're turned aside by a magic effect. Fine, assimilate-.
This is getting ridiculous. OL really needs to work out arcane options other than mage-slayers.
Buh-?
Leonid shoves me aside as acid sprays past where I was, droplets splashing on my construct armour anyway. I twist in the air, letting them spray off and shoving an x-ionised sword at the worm's neck as it lunges for me! The blade goes through its grey epidermis, shearing its three-pronged head from its neck, acid dribbling from wound. The blades a write-off so I drop it, and-.
Well, one down, far too many left...
The worm-corps explodes! Fragments of hits armour and blobs of highly acidic floor gunge spray outwards in all directions!
Sonnuvabitch! That's just getting cheeky now.
I try to interpose barriers and Mr. Yao howls a wave of kinetic energy, but all of us are hit! Anarawd's face is a rictus of pain as his right leg gets coated, the glutinous blob dripping down having eaten down to the charred bone! Peter frantically tries to wipe what he can off with the tattered remains of his travel cape before it can eat through his armour, but I can see the point where it gets through on the left side of his stomach.
"YAAAAAGHHH!"
...Ow. OL's going to have a
lot of healing to do when they make it out of this...
Leonid copies my action in shaking the stuff off his construct armour and uses precise energy blasts to knock the worms' heads away from us. Mr. Yao shouts the.. same note he used when Klarion mind controlled him, break-breaking the universe around the door and carving a hole out of the surrounding walls. Abednego flies through immediately before turning small witch-signs on himself. His clothing appears to have protective spells bound into it, but the acid has eaten its way through and has badly burned the flesh beneath.
Can't break the door apart? Aim for the wall! Clever.
Leonid grabs Peter while I grab Anarawd and we both head for the door while Mr. Yao turns his doom song on the console room. What's left of the console evaporates, along with the floor and the visible parts of the worms. I-.
Mr. Yao doubles over in the air and coughs, small flecks of blood-.
Overstressed his vocal chords, by the look of it. Possible tearing...
I yank him out and put up a hungry construct wall between us and the console room.
"Physician?"
If his voice is out of action, shit just got much harder.
I don't say anything stupid like 'can you heal yourself?', because he'll tell me if-.
"Purple…"
Ah, useful, if painful.
I draw my purple healing ray and-
On the other side of the barrier I see a new work breach the surface and launch a spray of acid. The construct is thicker than our armour and can take it for now, but that's a temporary thing and I need to do something nice for Wallace when we get back.
Eh? Buttering him up for some manner of counter-agent, perhaps?
-shoot Mr. Yao in the mouth. Sonic scans…
"More worms coming. We need to go."
The joy of healing in combat timeframes... It's never long enough.
"Yes." Mr. Yao straightens with a nod, and I offer Peter the purple ray. He takes it, his breath unsteady from the shock. "Starfire, lead the way. Lantern, rearguard."
I nod as Leonid takes-
This would be a good time to start transitioning, and damn the consequences...
The building shudders and the walls tilt.
-off down the corridor towards the stairs.
Talk about bringing the house down! Melmoth is
literally flipping the table.
"The acid's sinking the building."
I float backwards, holding Anarawd in a construct while the worms alternate between spraying acid and ramming my construct barrier. It looks like their innate magic isn't restricted to their acid, because those impacts shouldn't be doing that much damage.
Great, corrosive touches too? Let's hope once they get some distance, they can cut loose.
Abednego helps Peter get moving, and a low hum from Mr. Yao tells me that he's listening to the vibrations of our surroundings. Pulls back pull back-.
I transition myself and Anarawd back as a worm explodes in from the left wall, squirting acid in all directions! The others take immediate advantage of my barrier vanishing and surge forward, cracking the construct-.
Dammit, coming through the walls? Cheap add spawns. I hate boss fights like that.
I drop the construct, lash out with x-ionised blades, then create a new-.
The blast hisses through the air! No sludge this time, but super hard fragments wreathed in acid annihilate my barrier construct and eat into my armour construct and-.
Seriously, it's like a Venom Cannon now. Talk about overdesigned.
Oh. No, that's gone through my regular armour as well.
I take advantage of the momentary respite as more worms pull themselves up to remove melting lumps of my own flesh from inside my armour, disintegrate what the acid hasn't and then heal myself. Then I create a new barrier and continue to pull back.
Thank you, pain-blocking facilities. Makes it a lot easier to concentrate through injuries.
