Broken Lands

Sophia scanned the cavern. There wasn’t anything coming towards them in the air, above them, or on the walls. That wasn’t particularly reassuring; while the beetles were clumsy and slow, the grasshoppers were aggressive and fast. They weren’t the nastiest monsters Sophia had ever fought, but she didn’t want to fight anything like them again until she figured out what was wrong with her Skills.

She tried to reach for them again, like prodding a sore spot to see if it was still sore. Any Skill would do.

Nothing responded. She couldn’t even bring up her Status, and she’d been able to do that since she was old enough to know what that was!

She knew there was something here that was like the Voice; it’s spoken to her. Or, well, more accurately it had thrown a feathered screen in her face. Even though it had responded when she told it to go away, there didn’t seem to be anything to call back.

She had to deal with what was in front of her. She could worry about her Status when things were safer; worrying at it wasn’t helping.

Sophia glanced down and saw that, unlike the earlier tunnels, the floor in here was clearly manmade. It was made up of individual stones that had been mortared together; she was fairly certain they were stone and not tile, this time, because they were only approximately square and they weren’t all the same size. They’d apparently cared more for making the floor all the same height than making certain it was perfectly symmetrical.

If this whole place was man-made, or more likely man-altered, how long had it been here? She didn’t remember how quickly cave formations grew, but she vaguely remembered that it wasn’t fast. The only place where they grew quickly was in dungeons, because the dungeon could make them grow. Was this place like a dungeon in that way, too?

While Sophia was examining the entire cavern, Dav moved a few feet forward. After a look around, he stepped forward again, then pointed. “Over there, on the rock to the right, just past the stalagmite. Is that what I think it is?”

Sophia didn’t see what he was pointing at until she moved as far into the cave as he had, but once she had a clear line of sight it was obvious in the cave’s bluish radiance. “If you think that’s a man-sized butterfly, with even bigger wings, then yes. I see what you do.”

“Think we can sneak up on it?” Dav asked, but he must have been talking mostly to himself because he didn’t wait for Sophia’s answer. He moved to the right, along the cavern’s wall. He moved relatively quietly, but he wasn’t able to stop his steps from splashing in the inch of water that covered the floor of that part of the cavern.

In the distance, past the butterfly, Sophia could see an area where the floor dropped away. It was mostly hidden by the stalagmites, but it sort of looked like a canal or other man-made streambed, unless she was being fooled by the reflections on the water, and she didn’t think she was. It was something to keep in mind if they ended up fighting the butterfly, and she was fairly confident they were going to. Either it would attack or Dav would attack it.

After the grasshoppers, Sophia didn’t blame him at all. Truthfully, she didn’t blame him for the beetles, either. Even if they were manmade, making something that looked like a bug that crawled on a wall was just asking to get it smashed.

Dav and Sophia covered most of the distance to the butterfly before anything changed. It started with a clicking noise that made them both freeze and look around. It was hard to tell where the sound came from, but when it changed to a whirr, Sophia thought she knew the origin. “The rock under the butterfly isn’t a rock. There’s that metal plate and the side closest to us has something that looks a lot like a circle. I think that’s where the noise is coming from.”

Dav whispered back, “I think it has legs, too. I don’t think it can move, maybe a stand?” He leaned forward as if it would help him see or hear better. “What do you think it’s doing?”

Sophia shook her head. “No idea.”

Speaking while they were that close to the butterfly seemed to be a mistake. It flapped its wings and seemed to hover vertically up. Unlike the grasshoppers, which seemed to mostly hop and only used their wings for maneuvering, the butterfly didn’t seem to use any sort of normal method of flight at all; it simply floated up, like it was being picked up by a string.

“Too late now,” Dav said. This time, he didn’t bother to whisper. “Think you can get it from behind?”

Sophia wanted to object, to say that she’d be the one to draw the butterfly’s attention and that he should surprise it from behind. She was wearing better armor and had a higher Tier. He was also supposed to be under her protection. Unfortunately, even with his worse armor, he was probably right that he’d have the easier time attracting its attention and dealing with its initial assault; he was larger than she was and had the better weapon. It would have been different if she had a shield, but she didn’t.

Sophia moved away from Dav. That way, it would be clear which one of them it went after and would make it easier to surround the butterfly. She just hoped it would come low enough for her to hit it.

The butterfly charged directly at Dav, but seemed to shy away from his sword. It didn’t move far enough; while Dav didn’t get a clean strike on its body, he managed to hit the butterfly’s left wing near the middle of its span. Despite the slowing caused by the butterfly’s shield, its own momentum pushed the wing onto his sword and pulled it along, shattering the wing with a sound that was eerily reminiscent of a car crash. Bits of broken glass tumbled from the wing as the metal holding it in place tore.

Almost immediately, the butterfly began to plummet. Unlike during its earlier flight, it tried to move its wings, but that only made it spin.

Before it hit the ground, Sophia dashed through the water towards it. Every step included the hope that she wouldn’t slip on the wet ground, but it seemed that the builders had deliberately left the stone rough enough for the soles of her shoes to grip and there didn’t seem to be any moss or silt to make her slip. She made it to the butterfly and tried to do exactly what she’d done for the beetles and the grasshoppers: stab it in the large section and make its gears grind to stop it.

It was a good hit, but not an excellent one. More importantly, despite the fact that Dav’s earlier hit had penetrated its shield, her strike didn’t. She still didn’t know exactly how these things’ shields worked, but either the shield was weaker on the wings or there were different shields for different body parts. Neither one matched the shields she was used to, but it wasn’t like she’d actually fought against them. She wasn’t high enough Tier.

Weirdly, even though the shield stopped her knife, it didn’t stop the rest of her momentum. She kept moving and suddenly the floor that seemed so grippy during her sprint to the butterfly didn’t catch her. She skidded directly into the butterfly’s central body. Her knife hit her in the chest right before all of her weight landed on the butterfly.

Sophia desperately tried to catch herself, but all she managed to grab was the broken end of the butterfly’s wing. It slowed her fall only a little and she landed hard on her knees, half-draped over the butterfly.

The butterfly bucked under Sophia. As it twisted, it slapped her with its good wing and sent her spinning away. It stung more than it should have, too. The wing seemed surprisingly massive, but perhaps she should have expected that. It seemed to be made of glass, after all. Even if it was thin, that much glass had to have a good bit of weight.

As Sophia reeled backwards and tried to regain her feet, she had the odd thought that this wasn’t actually a butterfly; its antennae were much more like a moth’s, and wasn’t that how you told them apart? She pushed the thought away as quickly as it came; first of all, it was a monster or a manmade drone and that meant it didn’t have to observe the rules of real creatures. Second, who cared if it was a butterfly or a moth? It was aggressive; they needed to kill it!

Hitting Sophia distracted the butterfly just long enough for Dav to do exactly what Sophia tried to do, only with more success since she’d drained the shield. It was getting a little annoying always doing the assist rather than the kill, but Sophia reminded herself that both were needed.

Anyway, she’d be fine again once she figured out the Skill situation. If she had to, she could rebuild them as spells. That wouldn’t be as useful as Skills; they’d be either incredibly slow or far weaker. That didn’t mean it wasn’t possible.

The whine from the box the butterfly had been guarding stopped and was replaced by a scraping noise. Sophia and Dav turned towards it just in time to see why it had been making all the noise as a new mechanical bug squeezed out of the circular opening that faced towards them.

Before it could get all the way out, both Sophia and Dav charged, racing against time to reach the box before the new bug had the chance to attack. Sophia wasn’t certain which of them got there first, but as it squeezed the last of its body out of the opening, they both struck. The newly-made mechanical critter didn’t even get a chance to charge before the pair of blades bit into its clockwork innards and stopped it forever.

It was ugly, far uglier than the beetles. They were at least symmetrical and the blue balanced the brass. This thing wasn’t immediately recognizable as any specific bug. Instead, it looked sort of like the abdomen of a grasshopper, only fatter and with a single malformed rear leg and a single pair of wings that attached directly behind the arms; they were completely in the wrong spot. There was no separate thorax or head; instead, something that looked sort of like a faceplate was attached directly to the abdomen. The faceplate didn’t even look like an insect; instead, it looked like it was supposed to resemble a stylized human skull that emphasized the bright blue gems set behind the eye sockets. The forelimbs were also wrong, long and clawed sort of like a predator’s, nothing like a grasshopper’s legs at all.

Sophia had the distinct suspicion that it was intended to be a larger grasshopper, but that their early attack meant that it came out half-baked. She was definitely just as happy about that; a larger, nastier grasshopper monster was not something she really wanted to face. She was even happier that they hadn’t given it time to attack.

Sophia didn’t stop there. She could already hear the fake rock clicking like it was trying to start making something else. Stabbing a rock seemed like a great way to break her knife, so she went with the next best option: it was a machine, wasn’t it? Maybe she could take it apart. She started at the top; the brass plate had to be there for a reason.