The Witch's Relay

Chapter 56: The Storm

Heather doesn't give me any time to get over my initial shock, and while the cyclops steamrolls towards the center of our formation, my training kicks in.

Before the monster even has a chance to do any damage however, it is immediately intercepted by our main defense.

Lifting its massive club, It makes an attempt to crush the man rushing the monster ahead of everyone else. Prince Cedric.

Realizing I don't have any time to think of anything else, I pour my full attention into the moment.

With my eyes glued to the prince and the cyclops, I nearly miss the carnage just behind the opened port.

While you couldn't see it before, since the cyclops squeezed through the doors the moment it had enough space, now fully exposed a pile of monster corpses can be seen, and with that revelation I notice the club of the monster completely soaked in blood and on each spike, bits of skin and monster flesh.

At the gruesome sight, even some of the more experienced adventurers take a step back in horror.

But not the prince, nor his party. Just inches from getting crushed, Cedric leaps to the side, and with only the slightest margin he avoids the hit, but nearly gets knocked off his feet by the blast from the impact of the club hitting the ground.

While now in a bad position himself, his party members closely behind immediately take advantage of the situation, one of them plunging their axe deep into the cyclops' forearm, getting the monster to release its grip on the club.

The second man behind does even more damage however. As the cyclops reels back in pain, the man whom I previously thought was the prince follows, and with a large jump and his sword in both hands, he buries it deep into the monster's gut.

"Bloodlust and carnage. That's what the drumming was." I quickly spin around to see Linda calmly observing the scene beside me. "Every drum was one of those getting crushed." She nods towards the pile of bloodied corpses.

"But why?.. Aren't they all supposed to fight us? Why would they turn on each other?" Seeing how one-sided the cyclops fight is going, I figure I have time to ask these questions.

I glance back once more towards the spot I saw Grace disappear.

"I don't know. Perhaps they just don't have the intelligence to see that. Or maybe this one simply couldn't wait for the fighting to start."

The cyclops lets out a loud and desperate roar as its fate is sealed by yet another fatal wound, causing me to flinch and cover one of my ears with my shoulder.

All those around the monster jump back to avoid its death throes as it desperately tries to hit anything and anyone around it, until the cyclops finally collapses with a loud boom.

"It is good for us anyhow." Heather says after hearing what Linda and I said. "All of those monsters would have come out at us as well, which would have been trouble."

And now, as if there aren't enough sounds and things going on already, the sound of a deep horn blowing from behind our formation rings through the air.

The signal for the expedition to begin. It is time to delve in.

Just like planned, the prince and his party immediately recover from the fight and press onwards, taking the helm, and the moment they enter, it is our turn to fall in behind.

I feel a sting of regret as I take one last look towards camp. "Now isn't the time for that" is what Heather would've told me if she could read my thoughts, which admittedly I feel like she can half of the time. But not this time. We are all too focused on the task at hand.

And just like the plan goes, we fall in line behind the prince's party, so quickly that I don't even fully realize what has happened until we already are enveloped by darkness. Our only light source being the intense glow from the torch in Vanessa's hand.

It feels almost like a fever dream as our party makes our way through the tunnel, our feet slapping against the damp cave floor with every step.

Before us we see the torches of the group ahead of us, and behind you can still see the dungeon entrance letting in the daylight that quickly falls off. But the longer we go on, the more that light gets smaller, until the path turns and the outside world vanishes completely, but in its place we can see the torch of the party behind us.

As a rule, you always want to have at least two torches lit per group as a precaution in case one goes out unexpectedly for any reason, but since we currently aren't at the vanguard, we should be fine. Once we inevitably split from the rest of the group we will light a second torch.

While I can't be entirely sure, I believe the tunnel is slowly but surely getting lower, mostly because my steps feel lighter than normal, and a thought comes to my mind.

"The journey back will be a pain." I say without realizing.

Linda chuckles and Heather covers a smile, and Vanessa is too focused to even notice.

"That it will be, over time we will probably descend as far as the foot of the mountain." Linda answers shortly.

"Yea.." I heard something about that before. We will also probably be here for several days, but we have been instructed to turn back once we burn through a third of our torch oil, and in total we should have enough for an entire week.

Without anything to add, we just continue following the light up ahead for what feels like several hours, but in reality it is probably just closer to one.