Chapter 93 - Fractured Future

  I took to the air in a flash, darting skyward so I could get a better view of whatever the hell was happening over there. I’d only gone like twenty meters away from Sue and Kara, figuring they were both fine. Then they’d just vanished from sight.

  Now that I was airborne, I could see why.

  Where Sue had been standing was now a massive sinkhole. The dinosaur’s mass had torn right through the upper soil, taking them both down into a chamber below the ground. As I flew nearer I saw that wasn’t all. Sue’s weight had been too much for the floor of that buried chamber, so they’d punched right through it and fallen down into an even deeper level.

  Ants crawled from the hole, scurrying to and fro as they investigated the damages. That sinkhole wasn’t natural at all; the ground had been weakened by the giant ants tunneling beneath it. I weighed too little to break through, but Sue was another matter entirely.

  “Kara! Are you okay?” I shouted down to her. There was no answer, which scared the shit out of me.

  I reached out with my mind toward Sue. The dinosaur was mostly intact, at least. Both of Sue’s legs shattered from the final impact, though. My ride was in rough shape. If Sue took that much damage in the fall, Kara might be in serious trouble.

  There was time to spare a quick glance toward my troops. All the skeletons I’d Controlled had already linked up with the fire skeletons and skeleton juggernauts I’d Animated. They were moving along, slowly churning through the remaining undead up top. I left them to it, ordering the tier one skeletons to perform rear guard duties for the others. With them in place, and a little luck, they ought to be able to take down the remaining undead, as our foes were scattered and only tier one.

  Hope barked from the edge of the pit, clearly unwilling to remain behind. I turned to her before flying downward. “I don’t know if I can carry us both, girl.”

  She barked again. I sensed her urgency, that she really wanted to stay with me, and wanted to help Kara. Her loyalty was touching, so I flew over to her and scooped her up in my arms. It was a bit of a struggle—Hope wasn’t a small dog! But thankfully she was just bones, so her mass wasn’t as much as it would be otherwise.

  Holding onto her tight, I hoped for the best and took to the sky again.

  We did manage to take off, but the mana drain was intense! I wasn’t going to remain airborne very long with the extra weight. I couldn’t gain altitude, either. In fact, in spite of my best efforts I struggled to keep us aloft at all.

  What I could do was sink, so I concentrated on slowly lowering both of us to the bottom. We descended into the earth, the holes of broken ant passages showing up on the walls around us as we slowly sank into darkness. Every moment that went by, more ants surged from those holes. Some of the passages were tiny, only large enough for the smaller ants. But others were much bigger, a couple large enough for me to stand fully upright if I’d been walking. Ants came out of those, too—much larger, more dangerous looking insects.

  I needed to get to Kara now.

  I focused, and we dropped faster. About two thirds of the way down the hole, I had to cast Health to Mana to recover enough power to keep us aloft. The spell hurt; I felt the pain of my life force shifting, some of it being sacrificed to reinforce my pool of magical power. I set down on Sue’s back just in time, as my mana tapped out entirely.

  Kara lay there, not moving. I set down Hope and went to her side, feeling the side of her neck. I had a pulse, thank god. The sun was starting to sink, but it remained high enough in the sky to still cast some light down there. That let me do a quick assessment of Kara’s condition. She was alive, but she had a bleeding gash on one side of her head—I figured there was probably a concussion. One of her legs was also bent in a way that told me she’d fractured it badly. As I checked the injury, it was easy to see how it happened. Kara’s foot must have slipped between two of Sue’s ribs, and then she fell sideways. Both her tibia and fibula were snapped, and a fragment of one of the bones was jutting from her leg.

  That was so not good. With the fracture being compound—the bone breaking through the skin—there was no way I could safely reset it myself. I pushed aside my worry and focused on my medical training. Stop the bleeding, first. Thankfully, there wasn’t much. I yanked the first aid kit from our gear, where it was strapped to Sue’s back, and pulled out some gauze pads and wraps, along with a cervical collar.

  I also needed to immobilize the leg. I had something for that, too, a plastic splint. Not perfect, but it would do.

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  Ants scuttled out from small passages, crawling curiously toward us. Then a much larger one arrived on the scene. It was tier two, about twice the size of the smaller ants, and acting a lot more aggressively toward me.

  “Hope, keep them off me while I take care of Kara, okay?”

  Hope barked, then turned toward the offending ant and gave out her best howl. The magical attack stunned the ant, knocking it from the wall. Sue’s tail finished it off a moment later.

  First up was the collar. As I fixed it around Kara’s neck, she murmured something. What, I couldn’t tell, but if she was starting to come back around, she was going to be in a lot of pain in a few minutes. There wasn’t much I could do about that. I didn’t have any spells that could heal her. Maybe we needed to get Kara to learn Drain Life, too? She already had a lot of black crystals, and that would allow her to heal herself.

  That was something for another day, though. Wounded and unconscious, she was in no shape to socket new crystals.

  The skull injury was already scabbing over. No major bleeding there, so I didn’t worry about blood loss, and the cervical collar should help if she’d hurt her neck in the fall. That left the leg, which was still bleeding fast, but in a way that told me the bone hadn’t sliced an artery.

  I stabilized the leg as best I could and wrapped gauze around the slow bleeding wound to slow her blood loss. It was obvious Kara needed a healer, badly. The only place I knew for certain I could find one was the damned Guard base, and it was a good half hour away.

  While I was thinking, something cut into my leg, stabbing pain crashing through my concentration. I turned and saw an ant had snuck up Sue’s side, past Hope, and managed to bite my calf. Those pincers hurt! I’d sheathed my sword, but it flowed from my scabbard in a single smooth motion, cutting the ant in half. The bottom half fell into the dirt below, but the top half unfortunately remained attached to my leg.

  I stared at those beady black eyes. I felt sure the damned thing was dead, but it still looked like it was glaring at me. I sheathed the sword again, then reached out with both hands to pry the pincers out of my leg.

  Yeah, it hurt as much as it sounded like. I ground my teeth together, blood pooling around my fingers as it poured from the wound. Ordinarily, removing something from a deep puncture wound was a bad idea, but I didn’t have to worry about that too much. My mana was still near-zero, but I’d had just enough time to recover the power for one more Drain, and I cast it on the next ant I saw. It died, and its life force flowed into me. Watching my leg knit itself back together in real time was almost worth the pain of getting the wound.

  Hope was fending off two more ants, and more were swarming under and around Sue, who bellowed as the ants bit into dinosaur bones. I needed mana, badly. A quick Health to Mana gave me a bit, which I used to Drain another ant. I repeated that cycle a few times, rebuilding my mana as fast as I could.

  Then I dropped a Heal Undead on Sue. It wasn’t enough. The dinosaur was badly damaged. Mostly, it was from the fall, but the ants were also slowly pecking away. I cast a second Heal Undead as soon as the spell allowed me. Sue roared, staggering back onto newly-healed legs, and then sent a Fireball spinning down the passage ahead of us. It exploded, scorching a swarm of ants that had been headed our way.

  Kara and Sue were both stable now, and Sue was even helping in the fight. That gave me the breathing room to work on figuring out what to do next.

  Kara needed help, badly. I had to get her back to the Guard as quick as I could. My issue was that while I could fly out of this place, the experiment with bringing Hope down with me demonstrated that I lacked the capacity to lift other people with me. Maybe once I ranked it more, I could carry someone. But right now, I had no way to lift Kara back out of the deep hole.

  If Kara was almost impossible, Sue was completely so. Even if I’d been able to fly Kara out, I’d have to abandon Sue, which wasn’t ideal.

  No, we needed to find another way out.

  The good news was, I knew there was another way out. It was through the center of the ant nest, yeah. But if I could torch my way through this place, I figured I could eventually find my way to the exit. Some of the tunnels were very small, but others, like the one where Sue stood, were much larger. I had a bad feeling that implied the presence of bigger ants, but maybe they were just main tunnels, designed to carry more ants at the same time?

  Yeah, there was no way I was going to get that lucky.

  The other thing I couldn’t do was ride Sue to get out. As low as the ceiling was, Sue would have to move through the tunnel almost at a crouch. Anyone on the dino’s back would get scraped off by the roof.

  I could walk. It would be risky, but I was fast, strong, and had plenty of magic at my fingertips. Kara, on the other hand, was still unconscious. I needed someplace safe to stash her. But where?

  “The ribcage!” I smacked my forehead. That would work. The dinosaur’s ribs were thick and sturdy, and most of the gaps were thin enough that even the smaller ants would struggle to pass between them. I’d even thought about draping something over Sue’s ribs to turn the whole thing into a sort of covered wagon.

  For the time being, it would work as a place to stow Kara while we got out of this deathtrap. I scooped her up in my arms easily enough—that Strength stone showing its merits again! She moaned and shifted, but didn’t wake. I dropped from Sue’s back to the ground below, using my Flight to slow our descent. Then I carefully maneuvered Kara into the gap between Sue’s ribs and hip bones, essentially laying my friend down on Sue’s sternum.

  A few quick knots later, I had Kara fixed solidly to the bones with rope. It was as good as I was going to get. I turned to Hope. “Keep her safe. Don’t let anything get near Kara, okay?”

  Hope yipped. I had to trust she’d do a good job defending our friend, because I needed to lead us out of this mess. I moved up to stand under Sue’s head and gave the T.rex a pat.

  “You ready to bust loose from this mess?”

  Sue roared, the sound echoing down the tunnel.