14) Flanked [ Smoke gets in your eyes ]

  Several things happened in quick succession.

  First, a screaming Ratling went down underneath the Earth Spider as the arachnid first ran up, knocked over, and then settled down on top of the invader. The Tamer’s minion had gone down face first into the ground with a shrill shout as its hammer went flying out of its hand and across the floor while my Spider struggled with the squirming creature. With some effort, my Summons did its best to try to bite down into the space between the creature’s shoulder and neck.

  Second, as my Skeleton leaned over to pick up one of the stones still sitting in a box next to the shaft that led down to the drainage channel, the hammer came skipping along the ground and struck the box, nudging the rock container partly over the top of the shaft.

  At the same time, the Undine leaped onto the back of one of the two Lizards and began tearing at it with the Summons claws and biting at the top of the reptile’s head in a more distracting than damaging way.

  Third, down below the shaft, a slightly stunned Fire Snail used one of it’s heads to right itself from it’s fall as it’s other head twisted around, looking in all directions at the Ratling all around scrambling to get clear of the Snail’s fiery aura after my Summons had taken many of them down to the floor with it as they had flinched away from the flames.

  As all of that happened, some distance away, the Goblin Tamer, still clutched up against the animated chair under his control, hung in the creature's arms, panting, before seeming to look around him with his glowing green eyes.

  With a hiss from both the Tamer and the other, unengaged, Lizard up in my outer hall, the Tamed reptile directly under the Goblin control leaped toward the Undine and knocked it off of the first Lizard’s back before getting a hold of my Fish man’s arm and beginning to shake my Summons about the outer hall.

  Just before taking a blazing sword in the eye from Viola.

  “Get off of Nemo Scaly Face!”

  As Ceaser rushed into the room from the stairs, and the Air Hawk came in, flapping its wings wildly to slow itself down, the Skeleton, with its newly acquired hammer in hand, came striding up to the still two eyed Lizard, which had recovered from Nemo’s attack well enough to turn to attack the Undine.

  The hammer went up, and the hammer came down.

  Several times, with the Skeleton finally having to take a knee to finish the Lizard off.

  The one eyed Lizard, scrambling backwards, nearly fell backward down the shaft as it whipped its head around in an effort to dislodge the Fairy who seemed intent on clinging to its face as she twisted her sword about inside its eye, nearly fell backwards down the shaft.

  But instead, its rear hit my box of rocks, sending them all tumbling down the shaft. Followed by the box itself.

  The falling stone dropped and tumbled down directly onto the heads and shoulders of several Ratlings who had managed to jump past the Fire Snail and had begun trying to climb up the shaft again.

  Viola, tugging her sword free and flying back from the Lizard’s face, noticed the yelling coming from below, and darted over through the air to glance down the shaft.

  “Neat! … and I meant to do that. Yay me!”

  -...of course you did.-

  The Fairy's head whipped around. “I did! And I totally didn’t get my sword stuck in its eye.”

  Viola pointed at the now fire engulfed remaining Lizard as Caesar bathed it in flames.

  Two lizards, in check. What else is happening? Who else do I need to set in motion?

  The Spider had torn out the throat of the Ratling, which had been hammering in the spike, while down below, a group of bruised Ratlings were approaching the Fire Snail, which was racing back and forth in an effort to free itself from being underneath the wooden box which had fallen down the shaft and somehow had ended up falling on and trapping my Summons.

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  I’ll get to that in a moment.

  The Undine was wounded, its leg torn up badly. The Skeleton was taking a position by the top of the shaft with a hammer in one of its bony hands, and one of the remaining good sized rocks in its other hand.

  Caeser was inspecting the now collapsed and scorched Lizard, while Viola was flying back from the smoldering corpse, waving her free hand in front of his nose.

  ...and my Roach in the shaft leading to the surface was watching a wooden tube with a string sticking out of one end fall down the shaft in front of my Summon’s eyes. The string was burning at its tip with dull red sparks shooting out into the air as the tube tumbled past.

  That doesn't seem good...

  -Viola, they are coming down from above. Pull back, we are about to lose the outer hall.”

  I mean, probably. Even if we don’t lose it right away, fighting from two sides is a losing proposition. I would also like to see what would happen if I let the Tamer regroup in a position where it would be harder for him to flee.

  In the outer corridor, the Fairy spun around in place and saw the tube hit the floor. Her eyes went wide as she abruptly spun around while throwing her arm up and pressing it across her eyes.

  ...Not good.

  Skeleton down shaft, Unsummon the Fire Snail, summon the Undine over-

  The outer hall suddenly vanished from my sight as it was replaced by a bright light, and a loud noise, like what my Innate knowledge said was the sound of thunder, echoed throughout my Domain.

  “Viola!”

  -I’m okay Fell, I’m okay.-

  Dam, I was hoping Nemo could throw whatever that was down the shaft right into the gathering Ratlings. Instead, my entire outer hall was now filled with a white smoke that was even gusting up the stairs and into the inner hallway outside of my library.

  Good thing I don’t need to breathe.

  Down below, in a burst of pieces of cheap, scorched wooden crate, the Skeleton arrived at the bottom of the shaft, Fear Aura blazing as whips of darkness seeped out of its bones.

  Even as my Summon slowly tipped over on one leg to lean against the wall, unable to stand on its own two feet after most of its right leg had shattered after jumping down the shaft, the Ratlmen still fled in terror from the Skeleton’s Fear Aura.

  The embodiment of undead terror took a few swings at the fleeing Ratling with his hammer as they ran, but the Tamed minions didn’t even seem to notice the Skeleton’s attacks in their efforts to get away from it.

  I was not entirely sure how many of them were fleeing from the aura as opposed to just not being all that into the fight while not directly controlled by the Tamer. Some of them seemed more relieved as they ran than terrorized.

  Under my command, the blinded Spider was feeling its way along the corridor to meet whatever might be coming down the shaft to the surface as Viola appeared next to my Core in a glimmer of swirling orangish red and lavender smoke.

  The Fairy blinked and grinned as using her Familiar link to transport herself to appear next to my core appeared to have restored her sight. She then abruptly yelped and dropped nearly to the floor before fluttering back up into the air on her gossamer wings while rubbing at the back of her head with a chagrined look on her face.

  “Heh. Forgot that I need to keep flying if I showed up still in the air.”

  Hrmmm… “I, understand?”

  As Viola thanked me and then began to go on about how nice it was that I was so understanding, I tried something new.

  In the thick drift of white smoke, which seemed to hang heavily in the air rather than rising upward, the Dire Roach I had placed in that shaft could see an uncoiling rope drop down the shaft before a group of four Ratlings began half sliding, half climbing, down the rope.

  Unlike the rest of the Tamer’s Minions, these Ratlings were wearing armor made of cut to shape leather with metal plates over their throats, forearms, and shoulders, similar to what the Stick man and his fellow mercenaries had worn.

  And as opposed to the crude scrap stitched together with knotted string that seemed to make up the bulk of the other Ratling defenses.

  The ones coming down the shaft also had matching long knives and hatchets sheathed at their belts rather than the almost random junk carried around in hand by the Goblin’s other Tamed Ratling.

  So, I Resummoned Caesar from what I could see through his eyes to be a slowly thinning cloud of white smoke, to another slowly thinning cloud of white smoke.

  But the second cloud my Innate Summons found itself in had the trailing end of a knotted black rope dangling on the floor beneath what had to be the shaft above. The shaft containing the true second wave of invaders.

  Tilting his head back, the Fire Salamander stood poised to breathe flames upward at the sight of the first Ratling's feet.

  Down below, all the fleeing Ratlings stopped and slowly turned to face my Skeleton, each of them with a glowing set of green eyes.

  A shrill voice screamed at me from some point well past the horde of Ratling.

  “You have cost me too much Fell! Those Watcher Lizards were rentals. But, now, I have you flanked!”

  I had the skeleton whip its rock vaguely in the Goblin's direction, then it clenched its fist at him. Before slowly raising one bony finger.

  A green eyed Ratling stumbled into the drainage channel after the errant stone bounced off of its head.

  …I meant to do that.

  Hrmmm. “I think, that I got this...”

  From beyond the crowd of Ratling, a green skinned first rose and shook in the air.

  “The book will be mine Fell. And your Core too!”

  The directly controlled crowd of Ratlings parted as the gray muzzled one eyed Ratling mounted on a Boar's back pushed its way past the other Minions.

  While his mount was under the Tamer’s direct control, the Ratling rider was staring at the Skeleton whose bones still simmered with embodied Fear. The rider’s one remaining eye was clear of any green glow.

  Viola laid her hand on my Core.

  “I think that one feels like he gots this too Fell.”