Broken Lands

The Ruins Constrictor’s eyes flicked open at Revina’s words. Either her whisper was too loud or the Ruins Constrictor wasn’t really asleep. Sophia was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt; Revina hadn’t been any louder than Sophia. The snake must not have been truly asleep.

It lifted its head and tasted the air, then started to rise into the air. Its hiss somehow sounded pleased.

“This isn’t going to be nearly as easy as the others. Revina, shoot from here; Dav and I will get in close. Yell if it grabs Dav; I think I can make it loosen up for a moment, might be long enough to get out.” Sophia didn’t wait to find out if Revina got all of her instructions. She wasn’t certain they had time for that. The apparent boss snake hadn’t given them any time to prepare.

Dav was already a step ahead of Sophia, because he hadn’t stopped to plan. Sophia curved a bit to the right; she wanted some separation from Dav, just in case. She couldn’t move as quickly as he was; the stone floor was treacherous with fallen rubble. About halfway to the snake, Dav stumbled and caught himself, but he still managed to get to the snake before Sophia did.

Dav stabbed forward. He didn’t seem to spend any thought on aiming for a good spot to hit; instead, he put his back into it and hit the snake as hard as he could. The sword slowed as it got close, then skidded to the side, deflected by the snake’s shield. They needed to get past that before they could actually injure it, and Dav had clearly decided that the best way to do that was to hit it as hard as he could. From what Aymini and Vramt said, that was one of the options: just beat on it until it disappeared.

Sophia preferred a slightly more precision-based approach, but she already knew that that was harder to make work and that it would probably require supporting Abilities. For now, “just have to hit it harder” was applicable to her as well. She sliced instead of stabbing, with exactly the same result. The snake was so large that it would be hard to miss it, but its shield was clearly stronger than the one the snakes outside the Nest had. She expected that, even if she wasn’t happy about it. The only good part was that hits anywhere would weaken the overall shield, even if she couldn’t punch through it all at once.

The snake’s first strike was a bite. It snapped at Dav and caught him in its mouth. Before it could bite down too hard, Dav twisted and somehow managed to twist so that his sword smacked the inside of the snake’s mouth. It seemed startled, which gave Dav just enough space to quickly squeeze out of the snake’s jaws.

A hiss drew Sophia’s attention away from the giant snake to the back of the room, where a green snake’s head rose above the rubble. Sophia wasn’t certain if she’d missed it or if it had just entered the room through the archway behind itself. It didn’t seem to be moving quickly, but its mere presence meant that they didn’t have much time. It was far smaller than the giant snake, about half again the size of the ones they’d killed on the way in and far from large enough to eat a full-grown man, but that didn’t make it harmless if it decided it wanted to help the giant snake.

Sophia stabbed the coil in front of her. This time, her knife sliced through the snake’s skin and into its flesh, as though the shield wasn’t there. It must have been only about twice as strong as the small snakes’ shields.

Unfortunately, she must not have hit anything immediately vital; while the skin gaped and bled, the snake didn’t stop moving. She needed to either hit it somewhere that mattered or hurt it enough that it bled out, and she might not have enough time to wait for the second option. One more snake was fine, but if there was one more, who knew how many others were behind it?

Sophia glanced around and noticed a broken crossbow bolt in the rubble. Revina must have shot the snake, as well; that might be part of why the shield went down as quickly as it did. Unfortunately, while she could probably pincushion the giant snake now, Sophia wasn’t sure it would do much good. There was somewhere Revina could be very helpful. Sophia half turned and shouted. “Revina! Shoot the smaller snake, see if you can deal with it and any others that come while we’re fighting the big one!”

Revina shouted something back, but the meaning was lost in the noise of the giant snake shifting its position and Sophia didn’t have the chance to ask her to repeat it: she had a snake to deal with. As she turned back, she saw that Dav had narrowly dodged another bite by the snake. It looked like he’d given it a shallow slash on the way by, but like Sophia’s earlier stab it didn’t seem to be slowing the snake down at all yet.

Sophia jumped on one of the snake’s coils and used it to leap to another. She needed to get at the head, preferably from behind; that was the only place where she could be certain she’d be able to disable the snake well enough to actually stop it. Chopping off part of its tail would be bad for it and might eventually kill it, but she didn’t have “eventually.”

Sophia turned to jump over a third coil and found the snake staring directly at her. Before she could move out of the way, it lunged forward. It felt like everything was in slow motion; she saw the snake coming at her and frantically tried to dive out of the way, but she couldn’t move fast enough. Her movement was also in slow motion.

The snake’s jaws closed around Sophia’s left shoulder. Oddly enough, it didn’t hurt; it wasn’t comfortable, but it felt far more like pressure than pain. That was probably a combination of how the snake bit and Sophia’s still-functional shield. Before she could do more than quickly squirm, Sophia felt the snake yank her down into its coils, which parted like water before they began to wrap around her.

This was not how it was supposed to go. She did not want to make Dav have to rescue her and she definitely didn’t want to die to a snake that wasn’t even venomous!

Sophia couldn’t move her left arm, but she could still breathe which meant she could shout. She yelled out her anger at the world and at this snake in particular. She had just enough presence of mind to trigger the Stunning Roar Martial Technique; that was her plan if Dav were captured and it should work for her just as well. She had to make herself feel angry, which made it hard to trigger, but she could do it.

If anything, it worked better than she expected. The snake’s grip on her shoulder loosened and so did the coils it had around her. Sophia knew they’d tighten again momentarily, as soon as the snake overcame the technique Cliff learned from the Devouring Moss monster, but right now she had a window of opportunity.

A shift in one of the coils above Sophia told her that Dav was doing something she couldn’t see. Sophia didn’t wait for him; she pulled herself down along the snake’s jawline and plunged her knife into the side of its head. From where she was, she couldn’t get at its brain easily but she might just be able to do something about its spine, and disabling the snake’s spine at its head would make it harmless. A venomous snake wouldn’t be harmless, but a Ruins Constrictor didn’t have venom.

The first chop wasn’t enough, so Sophia tried again. She was well into the flesh in the area when her third strike hit bone as the snake seemed to come to and shook itself as hard as it could. Sophia was caught and painfully squeezed between several of the snake’s coils, even though it wasn’t trying to hold her; instead, it seemed to be trying to flee.

Sophia’s leverage wasn’t great, but she could still reach the wound she’d started, so she twisted her knife and stabbed. Either she hit something vital in that moment or Dav did, because the snake shuddered and stopped trying to move.

It collapsed on Sophia and tried to crush her with the sheer weight of its body. By the time Sophia extracted herself from the snake’s heavy coils, the rest of the fight was over. In addition to the giant Ruins Constrictor, there were four of the larger (but not giant) Ruins Constrictors scattered across the broken ground. Three of the four were pierced by crossbow bolts, while the fourth had clearly had its head hacked off by a pissed off Dav.

Sophia knew Dav was pissed off because she could see it in the way he chopped at the giant snake’s head with his sword. It was dead, but that didn’t stop him; he was far angrier than the situation seemed to deserve. “Dav? Did something -”

Dav whirled, saw Sophia, and dropped his sword.

Sophia’s eyes flicked to Revina, who stared at her in shock. Revina at least didn’t drop her crossbow, but it was clear she was paying no attention to it.

Oh. Sophia knew what was going on here. She was enough smaller than Dav that the snake was able to completely hide her in its coils; they must have thought she was badly injured or something. “Guys? I’m fine. The snake didn’t even hurt me much.”

Dav took two steps forward and swept Sophia up in a hug. She was completely shocked.

It did feel kind of nice to be hugged. She wasn’t quite sure what to do about it, but she suspected she could get used to it.

Dav didn’t hold Sophia for long. Moments after he grabbed her, he seemed to realize what he was doing and released her like she was a hot stove. He stumbled backwards with a flush on his face. “Sorry! I shouldn’t have.”

Sophia nodded. He was right; he shouldn’t have. They didn’t have a relationship that included hugs. At least, they hadn’t had that sort of relationship until now. She wasn’t sure where they stood now, but she was pretty sure it didn’t include hugs. At least, not normally. “I’m not mad at you. Just … maybe next time look for me first? I was fine, but the snake is huge and it was hard to get out from under it.”

The staring contest broke with a chuckle from Dav. It sounded a little hysterical at first, but he quickly wound down into something that sounded like actual humor. “Yeah, I’ll do that next time. After killing the other snakes, of course. Do you need a healing beacon?”

Sophia shook her head. “I’m sure I’ll want one when we get back to Fallen Kestii. For now, though, I’m in good enough shape to keep going and we need to.”

“What do you mean? All the snakes are dead.” Revina walked forward to stand with Sophia and Dav near the dead snake. “This has to be the center of the Nest.”

Sophia nodded. “I hope so, but we haven’t seen a notice yet. I assume you don’t have a Vocation, either?”

Revina’s mouth dropped open in a large O. It was clear she hadn’t realized it yet.

Dav’s expression firmed, but he didn’t look surprised. Of course, he’d been with Sophia when they cleared the Shard of Kestii; he knew what it looked like. Revina clearly didn’t.