Mark of the Ranger

IX. Jewel Scorpion, Too.

Three days ago...

          "So, this is where we've been sent for our mission," David, who was now our makeshift leader, said as he glanced down at his pocket watch. Along with being a message receiver, it turned out the pocket watch could be a pocket compass. Jeff cracked his knuckles. "Doesn't look to deep. And we're just fighting a centipede, right? It won't be that hard."

          Elena tried to run her fingers through her hair, but it had been cut right before our first mission. I thought that the short haircut looked better, but no one asked for my opinion. "Aren't jewel creatures especially large? Like, they could eat us whole? I'm not sure if we should do this."

          Jeff waved off her comment. "We'll be fine. Right, Ko?" Ko gave a thumbs-up, but I had realized that Ko had no fear capacity. He would have cut open the stomach of a dragon, then walked into it if someone would pay him ten or twenty gold.

          With that, we walked into the cave. The cave was large enough for us to fit through, thankfully, or else this would have been significantly more difficult. We climbed down one sloping hallway for quite a while before I saw tiny purple crystals lining the halls. The end of the slope ended in three hallways. "Which way do we go?" Jeff asked nonchalantly. We looked through each hallway. As far as we could tell, it all looked the same.

          "Time to use my makeshift leader decision-making abilities," David answered. He spun around a few times, the beak of his crow's head mask nearly hitting Elena. When he stopped, he pointed towards the hallway on the left. Confident in his makeshift leader decision-making abilities, we all headed down that way. 

          More purple crystals lined the hallway. "How much do you know about jewel creatures, Elena?" I asked. She was behind me, as we had gone in single file, since the hallway was thin. David was in front and Jeff was in the back. "I know quite a bit, and in case you're wondering, these purple crystals are basically a sign that we've chosen the right cave. Maybe if we had watched for which hall had the most plentiful crystals, then we could have figured out which way the centipede's lair was," Elena explained, nocking an arrow on her bowedge.

          The rest of us followed suit with our weapon, though I had my lances facing straight up, since we were kind of compacted. I couldn't be very useful in a fight unless we spread out a bit. The hallway was thin, not short. I decided that a centipede really couldn't combat us in this thin of a hallway, since I knew that jewel centipedes were larger than this.

          "Well, at least we're not going against a geovore, right, guys?" Karen spoke up for the first time in a while, trying to lighten the mood. Everyone grunted their agreement. A geovore was a terrifying creature. At full size, they grew to be over sixty feet tall. It was a mostly muscle creature, with a single eye that was like a ring. It had tentacle-like hair on its head that hung back, like dreadlocks. The tentacles were banded with purple light, and the creature had purple rings on its slimy skin. Geovores had claws and teeth made for tearing rocks apart and eating them. 

          "Plus, a geovore could only fit in a chamber like this," David said, stopping. I looked around him to see what he was talking about. The hallway opened up into a chamber definitely large enough to fit a geovore inside. Spanning from the chamber were tunnels from every direction. I knew just from looking at them that a jewel centipede could fit through one of them. The floor of the chamber was a bit below us, so we had to jump. 

          We landed with relative grace. The Ranger Gear enabled us to fall from some height and not feel pain or get anything broken. The Ranger Gear, however, did not make us gymnasts. At least we all landed on our feet. I looked around. There seemed to be tunnels coming from the top of the dome, too, which concerned me. Perhaps this was the hub of the centipede's lair?

          Elena's and Ko's ears perked up. "Do you hear that?" Elena asked. Ko nodded. "That rumbling?" Elves, whether they be snow or wood elves, had exceptional hearing. We didn't hear that until a few seconds later. "It's coming from there," Ko and Elena said, pointing to a tunnel to my right. I could definitely hear that the rumbling was in a staccato pattern, like skittering legs. I looked into the tunnel. A jewel scorpion.

           The jewel scorpion had to have been fully grown. Its deep black body barely fit in the tunnel, even with its tail folded down. Purple crystals lined its sides, and it had large violet jewels for claws and mandibles. I guessed the same was with its tail, but I couldn't see it.

          "Jewel scorpion!" I cried out to my friends, running to join them. The scorpion leaped from the tunnel, right on top of us. Ko threw his daggers to the soft underside of the arachnid. The jewel scorpion howled in pain and missed landing on us, but it didn't die. David charged the scorpion, his echo blade held high. With one swing, he lopped a claw off.

          That just seemed to tick it off. The scorpion hopped back onto its feet and hissed at David. It brought up its tail, and I could see now that I was right: the tail's tip was a large violet crystal. It stabbed at David, furiously striking again and again. I leaped into the fray with Ko, not one--or two--to leave a man alone, fighting a jewel scorpion. Those ones didn't pass the Academy's trials.

          I threw Ko one of my lances, as he had used his daggers. He seemed to have trouble with it for a second, but he adjusted to the weight and size pretty quickly. "So, I just stab with this thing?" he asked me. I opened my mouth to protest that no, a lance was in fact a much more delicate weapon and required finesse, but the real answer was: "Yeah, pretty much, actually."

           Ko and I joined David. As the jewel scorpion struck again with its tail, I jabbed with my lance. My lance went right through the jewel of the scorpion's tail, shattering it to pieces. The scorpion was infuriated. Before it could channel its rage, however, Ko impaled the scorpion's shoulder, and David sliced its head. Since the head was more armored, Karen, Elena, Ko, Jeff, and I had to help him destroy it. Jeff smashed the core with his hammer.

          "Can't let it regenerate and mutate, now can we?" Jeff asked jokingly. We all gave at least a snicker, remembering the thunderbird that had regenerated and mutated, gaining the ability to summon tornadoes.

          "Well, let's go find the centipede," David said. He asked me to take out the sonic drill and see if we could lure it in.

          I really wish we had known about the spider.