Chapter 147: First Kill

Helen’s hand found Daniel’s sleeve and closed on it.

Neither of them moved forward. Garen and Isolde moved instead, stepping wide to either side of the shelf where they could reach anything that came out of the stalks. Alice nocked an arrow and kept the point aimed at the moss.

Logan put his hand on Grimlord’s Blade and left it there.

’We killed a hundred Warlords,’ he thought. ’I fought Rakhan Vurel with one arm that worked. I have never once been this afraid in a fight.’

He was not even in this one.

The clicking came closer, and then the stalks at the back of the shelf parted.

The creature that pushed through was about the size of a large dog. It walked low on six jointed legs.

Its shell was covered in glowing green caps exactly like the ones on the stalks around it. They were stuck to its back in a thick crust, so that when it stood still it looked like one more patch of growth.

Its mandibles were as long as Logan’s forearm. It opened and closed them as it walked, and every time they met they made that dry click.

[ Lanternback Crawler ] [ Level: 2 ] [ Rank: Normal ]

"Nyriel," Logan said.

The constellation flickered above the shelf and came back almost at once.

[ Attack: 14 ] [ Speed: 6 ] [ Constitution: 25 ] [ Arcane: 0 ]

’Speed six,’ Logan thought. ’It is slow, just like he said. But Constitution twenty-five means that shell is going to be hard.’

Daniel let go of Helen’s hand and stepped in front of her.

Logan was not sure his father had decided to do it. It looked more like his body had simply gone where it always went, which was between his family and whatever was coming.

"Daniel," Rishin said. "Feet."

Daniel planted his feet.

[ Rooted Stance (Lv1) ] [ While standing still, cannot be knocked back. Damage taken reduced by 20%. ]

The brown lines ran down from his ankles into the moss. The crawler stopped. Its mandibles opened wide, and it tasted the air with two short feelers.

Then it charged.

It was slow, but it was heavy, and it hit Daniel at knee height with its whole body behind the blow. Daniel did not move an inch. The crawler bounced off his shins, recovered, and clamped its mandibles shut on his left forearm.

Daniel made a short, hard sound through his teeth.

[ Daniel Wolf: HP 74% ]

Helen did not move.

Alice saw it from where she stood. Helen’s hands had come up, and her palms were pale and empty. Her eyes were fixed on the blood running down Daniel’s wrist, and her mouth was open with no sound coming out.

’Come on,’ Alice thought. ’You did it in the garden. You did it with Rishin’s hand bleeding into yours.’

"Helen," Rishin said. He did not raise his voice.

Helen’s palms lit green-blue.

[ Mending Spring (Lv1) ] [ Restore HP to one target over ten seconds. ]

She did not wait to be told what to do with it. She put her hand flat on Daniel’s back, and the glow sank into him.

[ Daniel Wolf: HP 74% → 79% → 83% ]

The crawler was still chewing on his arm, but the number had stopped going down.

Daniel pulled back his free hand and punched the crawler on top of its shell.

It was a real punch with Daniel’s whole weight behind it, and it landed square in the middle of the glowing crust.

The crawler did not notice. Daniel shook his hand out and hissed.

"Like hitting a curb," he said.

"Then stop hitting it," Garen called from the side. He sounded like he was trying very hard not to step in.

The crawler let go of Daniel’s arm. It scuttled sideways around him and headed straight for the group behind him.

It was making for the foot of the stair, where Vina stood at Rishin’s side.

Logan’s blade was halfway out of its sheath before he knew he had drawn it.

Rishin’s hand came down on his wrist. There was no strength in it at all, and Logan could have pulled free without noticing.

He stopped anyway.

"Wait," Rishin said. Then, without changing his tone at all, "Down."

Vina hit the moss flat with her arms over her head.

She did not look first and she did not ask why. Solveig was standing over her before her elbows touched the ground, with his burning blade angled low and his back to her.

The crawler saw the knight and stopped.

’He trained her for this in the garden,’ Logan thought. His wrist was still under Rishin’s hand, and he could feel his pulse hammering against the old man’s fingers. ’He made it a game. And she did it exactly right, the first time it counted.’

"Daniel," Rishin said. "What did I tell you in the garden?"

Daniel had turned around. He was breathing hard, with his bloody arm held against his chest, and he did not take his eyes off the crawler.

"Watch the feet," he said.

The crawler was lifting its front legs. Its mandibles rose with them and spread wide to threaten the knight, and all its weight shifted onto its back four legs.

Daniel knew that shape. Rishin had put him in the grass the same way, with one foot behind the knee while all his weight sat wrong.

[ Snaring Roots (Lv1) ] [ Roots erupt beneath one target and bind its legs for three seconds. ]

The moss under the crawler split open. Brown roots shot up out of the stone and wrapped around its back legs, and Daniel yanked them forward.

The crawler went over. Its front legs were still in the air and its back legs had gone out from under it. It rolled onto its shell with its six legs thrashing at nothing.

Its underside was pale and soft, and there was no glowing crust on it anywhere.

"Helen," Daniel said. "Now."

Helen raised her other hand.

[ Spring Lance (Lv1) ] [ Fire a narrow jet of pressurized water at one target. ]

The jet was no thicker than a finger. It came out of her palm with a sharp hiss and hit the crawler dead center in the pale underside.

It went straight through.

The crawler’s legs jerked once. Then they curled inward slowly. The green glow on its shell went dim one patch at a time, until it looked like any other dead thing lying on its back.

[ Lanternback Crawler slain. ] [ Helen Wolf: +10 Tower Points ] [ Helen Wolf: Level 1 → 2 ]

Helen sat down.

She did not fall. Her knees just folded under her, and she sat on the moss with her hands in her lap and stared at the thing she had killed.

Then she wiped both palms on her trousers, hard, even though there was nothing on them.

Daniel knelt down beside her. He was still holding his arm against his chest. Helen saw the blood and reached for it without a word, and the glow came back into her hands.

This time nobody had to say her name.

"Your kill," Daniel said.

"Ours," Helen said. Her voice shook. "It was ours."

Vina got up off the moss and ran to them. Solveig followed two steps behind her.

Rishin let go of Logan’s wrist.

Logan looked down at his hand and found that it was shaking. He slid Grimlord’s Blade back into its sheath and made his fingers open.

"You would have killed it," Rishin said. "You would have saved them, and they would have learned nothing, and we would have to do this again on a worse ledge with a worse animal."

"I know," Logan said.

"I know you know." Rishin’s voice gentled. "That is why it is hard."

Alice came across the shelf and stood beside him, looking at the panel still hanging over the crawler.

"Ten Tower Points," she said.

Logan had already done the arithmetic.

’In the Warlord match, one summon cost a hundred Tower Points,’ he thought. ’If the circles here cost the same, that is ten of these for a single pull. And my mother nearly lost her nerve over the first one.’

"Ten," he agreed.

Isolde had come over to kneel beside Helen, one hand on her shoulder. Garen stood behind them with his arms folded. He was grinning at the back of Helen’s head and pretending he was not.

Rishin walked past them all to the edge of the stalks.

He stood there with his head tilted, listening. Then Logan heard it too. The same dry click was coming from deeper in the growth, and it was not coming from one place.

It was coming from three.

"Good," Rishin said. "Get up, both of you. Now you do it again."