The path ended abruptly at the lip of a wide, sandy bowl. Below, old sand riddles, finely crosshatched wire, and wooden frames stood skeletally in the gloom. The fog within was even denser and carried a damp, mineral scent, dark silhouettes of further structures barely within sight.
There was a monster out there in the pits somewhere, and the bow in Dalliance's hand seemed a flimsy defense against whatever lurked out there in the dark. From the look of the others, he wasn’t alone in feeling that way.
"I'll go first," Sterling said in a loud, slightly uneven voice.
The tall boy readied his shield at belt level, his blade held at his waist, anticipating a rush from something shorter than he was. "Stay behind me. We're making a V."
His footsteps were eerily quiet on the sand.
He stepped forward, taking point. Pants and Lackey trailed him on either side, followed by Matters and Immaculate. Behind them were Dalliance, Prudence, Charity, and Effie, and behind them, the rest. Dalliance, without much else to contribute, readied a skill:
[Prediction unsuccessful.]
Dalliance winced. The earlier work had been a drain. He had received three points from the Games, but he regretted the Acuity expenditure. He should have thought ahead. He felt the halfway-sick feeling of disconnection between body and mind already.
The worst part was the certainty that it wasn't going to get better before it got worse. He tried the skill again.
[Prediction unsuccessful.]
He had to try again, he knew that. His fellow classmates, none of them aware of what he was doing, streamed around him, though Charity and Effluvia stayed with him: a little pocket of dedicated ranged fighters. At least it made it look like he was doing it on purpose. He focused again.
[Prediction successful!]
Sterling’s formation had seemed like such a good plan. But as the sight came up, it all went to hell.
The visions snapped into place: the possibilities a whirling cloud of overlapping figments. Charity firing arrows at half a dozen partially seen figures, hitting her teammates as often as not. That wasn't ideal. Effluvia’s future selves were even worse, lightning arcing out to touch friend and foe alike.
"It's underground!" he said sharply. “Stay off the sand! We have to stay off the sand!”
"Are you insane?" Sterling asked. "This is a goblin, not a wyrm." He stepped forward anyway, and after a slight look of what could possibly have been regret or a mute apology, Pants stepped forward after him, as did Immaculate.
It happened when, but not exactly as he had pictured it: there was an eruption from the sand a thick woven mat that looked to be made of reeds sent spinning away like a discus even as the sand which had been covering it showered down, a curtain of falling earth casting odd shadows on the blur of a creature scuttling out from its hidden tunnel.
It was fast, seizing Matters by the foot and yanking him into the splits, his front foot falling into the tunnel even as it finished rolling out of the way, sideways on the sand. There was a cracking sound and a scream, but Dalliance couldn’t focus on the boy; none of them could.
Sterling darted forward, shield raised. The creature moved, one knobbling hand grabbing the rim of his shield even as its other hand snatched the spear from Prudence. With a quick twisting motion, the haft described a blistering arc ending at Sterling's forehead, even as the boy’s own blow clipped through a scrawny green shoulder. Dark blood splattered out onto the pale sand.
Both took their distance, a half-step, seeking in unison to regain their balance, and Dalliance saw the next few seconds, saw Charity’s arrow hitting directly in the back of Sterling’s skull—she’d probably rather that not actually happen.
“Aim for its legs,” he advised, suiting action to advice and drawing an arrow himself. She’d listen.
It was the oddest thing: as he tried to aim his arrow while predicting where it would fall, the end result changed consistently; whenever he got its arc to intersect the leg or knee, the part in question would shift just enough to be out of line and render the prediction useless.
Charity shot, and the goblin smoothly moved one leg just enough for the missile to pass without touching.
It has [Prediction] too, Dalliance realized.
Pants was gone, pulled into the dark with a muffled shout and a shower of sand. Dalliance had even seen that possibility; he’d just lost track of it in the chaos.
"It's made traps! Nobody move!" he shouted, and they all paused, silent except for the mewling cries of Civility and the circling paces of the goblin and Sterling.
"You just hold on now," said Circe. "I'll be there soon, and I'll take away the pain." The burly boy's eyes were tearing up, his body heaving.
"There's something else down there," he sobbed.
"Help him!" Sterling ordered. Woebegone Lackey stepped forward, further into the pits alongside Servility Immaculate, each taking one of Civility's arms, putting their shoulders beneath his, and lifting upward. As they raised him out of the hole, focused on their single task, believing themselves safe from whatever was still under the ground, the second goblin breached the surface.
A dark-tipped spear of shaped flint pierced Woebegone through the groin.
A mouth filled with dark teeth and glittering saliva latched onto Lackey's shoulder.
Dark claws raked up the lanky boy’s chest and onto Civility's face.
Effie lit up with [Shocklance], brilliant power lashing out at the goblin, who disengaged instantly, thrashing, then leapt for the holes.
It was all so fast. And then it was gone, back into the earth.
“Two?! Fook,” said Earnest, accent broadening the vowel.
“Were you planning to help, or what?” yelled Sterling, brandishing his sword at the larger goblin. His opponent, Prudence’s spear in hand, darted forward, point flashing for Sterling’s face, meeting and sinking into the rough wood of his board shield. Sterling's riposte drove cleanly into its leg beneath the knee.
It howled, an ululation of raw, primitive hate.
Several answering howls rose around them in the darkness.
Charity's arrow rebounded harmlessly from Sterling’s mail-clad shoulder.
The creature was a blur of greenish skin and apelike limbs, its football-sized mouth a nightmare of shark's teeth as it kicked a rug aside, revealing another hole, and disappeared back into the sand before anyone could get a clear shot.
The newly bloody and disturbed sand was all the evidence remaining topside. “Someone’s got to save Pants,” said Dalliance, trying for resolute and sounding terrified instead.
Nobody replied.
Dalliance gathered his courage and stepped up to the hole in the ground, but inside was only darkness. “Pants?” he tried.
Nothing.
“Whatever happened to the ‘lone goblin’?” demanded Earnest.
Dalliance glanced around the sand pit, at the undisturbed sand, the sheds, and the standing sieves. They were out there, somewhere.
“I don’t bloody know, okay?” snapped Sterling. The spear handle had left a bright red line across his face, which was quickly purpling.
Earnest took a stab at prying the spearhead free, but gave it up as hopeless, taking his own spear back up.
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Prudence, herself holding an axe at the ready, didn’t react.
“We’re going to die,” moaned Woebegone, trousers dark with blood. His voice was thick, and he was already beginning to slump into a faint.
Circe was kneeling next to him, a nimbus of light suffusing confident, calloused hands as she directed a stream of healing energy into him. She didn’t correct him, though.
“We are not going to die,” said Sterling, shortly. “Okay. I hate that I’m doing this mid-battle, but it’s our best shot: quick, someone watch my back.”
Effluvia and Dalliance stepped forward as one.
Sterling closed his eyes and changed.
Slender, if muscular, arms thickened with corded muscle. He gained at least two inches of height. The baby fat around his jawline receded, just a touch.
When his eyes opened again, there was a new confidence within them. “Might to two. Tier-up in three, though.”
That . . . wasn’t good. The knight’s son was speed-running his way to the next tier, where every stat point cost twice as many experience points. It seemed wrong-headed, to say the least, by Topaz’s teachings.
"By the way, Troubles,” the knight’s son's eyes were hard and challenging. "If you shoot me, it won’t always bounce off. Do not shoot me again."
He approached the hole. “Light, someone,” he said without looking away, hand held out for a torch. Earnest provided his own, the spear somewhat unwieldy while holding it anyway. Sterling tossed it into the hole—but there was nothing at the bottom.
“They moved him.”
Someone started sobbing.
“We should move on, too.”
The sand pits continued further on than just the bowl-shaped portion. There were two elevated, angled roofs over equipment storage for wheelbarrows and mobile sieves, racks of shovels, and cement floors, currently piled high with various grades of sand. The work yard was nearly empty, just more sand and sieves, but one of the roofs connected to a tall storage room with multi-story walls, currently closed.
Dalliance watched, confused, as Sterling and Effie, by mutual agreement, and by everybody else’s common unwillingness to argue the point, moved deeper into the pits.
“What are we doing?” he whispered to Earnest.
“Bravely running away,” his friend said snappily. “If you want to go down there, be my guest, but it’s a terrible idea. You’ll die.”
They know I can predict them, Dalliance thought. They know we have two archers who can’t hit anything, a timid spellcaster or two. Someone has a spear.
Honestly, he couldn’t rid himself of the impression that the top three targets would be himself, the would-be knight, and Effie.
Dalliance glanced back at the holes in the ground dwindling in the distance, as Earnest went back to stabbing the ground ahead of them with his spear, checking for tunnels.
They moved forward a little.
He stabbed again.
“They know how many of us there are,” said Dalliance in a low voice, thinking aloud. “They tested us and know who can do what. They took Pants. We know all that. But what’s their strategy?”
“Shut up.”
“No. What’s holding it together? Think!”
“SHUT IT, RATHER!” shouted Prudence, tears in her eyes. She did talk to the portly boy a lot, he realized. “Nobody’s interested!”
“I’m listening,” growled Sterling.
“They’re comparing notes. How long could that possibly take?”
Stab.
Shuffling footsteps.
A reluctant nod.
“A good leader would be done by now,” he said. Thoughts flickered across his face. “Okay, fine—we run for the cement. Okay? There, we can at least choose our angles of attack.”
Effie was already in motion, as was Servility and even Charity, before Dalliance processed and put thoughts to action.
Within that beat, the first arrow came out of the mists, missing Effluvia’s liver by scant inches.
“RUN!” roared Civility. The poor boy had been limping alongside Woebegone, the shorter boy supported against his shoulders, but now began to stumble forward, Lackey’s limp form across his shoulders, taking big stumping steps over ground they’d already traversed.
A twang. Dalliance had been sure one would be for him, sooner or later, and dove for the ground. A line of hot pain flashed across his back, but after bouncing off the ground and scrambling to his feet, he continued, puffing with effort, for the relative shelter of the sheds.
Even Civility had passed him, the ground-eating lope having managed its namesake. The burly beanpole dropped his load abruptly, letting Woebegone’s limp form splatter off the top of a cone of graded sand, flopping bonelessly down the back slope of the same, as he himself ducked behind a storage shed’s protruding shelter.
Dalliance felt cement beneath his thin leather soles, and another arrow pinged off the stony surface on his left, steel striking sparks.
He dove behind a tall sand cone where Effie was already crouched, her outstretched hand beginning to fill the air with the sharp buzz of voltaic energy.
His hair stood on end from the static.
Some of it grounded itself in the metal frames of wheelbarrows or the bolts on the ceiling, but most of it hit the first goblin through the door in midair, dropping it smoking to the floor.
Two more arrows hit their sand cone as he engaged [Prediction] again.
Once again, he felt the strange floating, compensation thing happening, but not as strongly, and he found he could then predict the new location. Whoever was predicting him now was weaker.
He pulled Effie out of the way of a shot with an ill-considered tug on her curls, but otherwise focused on counting.
Four.
“Four of them!” he called out.
A harsh, tinny zap rang out, along with Sterling’s voice yipping. “Early, watch it!”
She hissed. “I can’t hit them with you louts in the way!”
“Get high,” said Dalliance.
They both glanced around. Nowhere to go.
“Have Civility pick you up, then stay past the doorway where the archer can’t get you. We’ll fight in front of you, you’ll have a clear shot. We’ll hole up in the shed.”
The roof was easily tall enough for three of them stacked atop one another—to his mind, the mental image made perfect sense. Make a killing box.
“Dalliance Rather,” she said somewhat severely. “No one will be picking me up.”
A flurry of arrows—three nearly at one time—struck the sand pile in front of Dalliance, one going through and through, hitting his skull hard enough to hurt. Three dark shapes scuttled in through the door, Effluvia’s storm having stopped with her startlement. Another two arrows, at him this time, which he hastily rolled back to avoid the foreshadows of, and then shapes were circling to flank them as one was ghosting across the ceiling! Effie’s lightning lashed out, raking, and it dodged and loosed a spear, Dalliance having no choice but to scramble backward, his dodge being compensated for, the ghostly spear nearly hitting him until a last-second compensation for that.
It was the dangerous one again. Clawed hands and feet dug into the thin wood slats of the roof, leaving holes behind but moving confidently and quickly.
“That’s a hobgoblin,” Effie noted, voice clinical. He could barely hear her past the zapping staccato of her spellwork. “I’m going to run for the shed.”
“Okay.”
“Da— . . . I’m saying run!”
He ran, the sand slipping under his shoes.
Focus, focus.
He could see the ghostly shapes of diving goblins intersecting them: Effie, Charity, Sterling. Woebegone was lying there, ignored.
Poor guy.
He dodged, and the prediction vanished. Oh, it saw that.
“Charity, left!”
She moved right, and an arrow passed through the air just ahead of her head.
“I meant go left!”
Effluvia was almost to the door, and no matter what, he didn’t see her making it.
Fine. It wasn’t quite how the skill was meant to be used, but . . . .
[Deflection successful]
The archer’s arrow hit Dalliance in the rump, stealing the strength from his leg. He crashed into the sand, Earnest’s arm hauling him up as the last of the others entered the storage shed.
“It’s trying to hit him, he must know something we don’t! I cannot believe I am explaining this to you, you useless lump, PICK ME UP AND PUT ME ON YOUR BACK.”
Dalliance and Earnest entered the shed with a goblin on their heels, the lightning scorching it to death, literally singeing Dalliance’s hair as Effie’s hasty cast struck down from above, only her angle giving her line of sight. And then there was silence outside.
Do we actually care about other people's stats? (I do, I have them tracked: but do you care to know about them?)
