Faithful Defender by M. Coulray

Author:M. Coulray
Language: eng
Format: epub

Shit. I couldn’t even tell if I’d hurt it. After a moment, the cube resumed its advance. If anything, it had sped up.

I returned to where the rest of my group waited. I shook my head at Mika’s questioning look. “No luck. I can’t even tell if it got hurt.”

“Get us out of here, I guess. It’s all we can do.” Mika shrugged. “Just bad luck, really.”

I pulled out the talisman, and then an idea began to form in my head. “Mika. These things, they don’t eat the walls. Why is that?”

“The walls don’t move. Debris and living things, they detect that they pick it up or it moves, and they acidify their bodies to consume it. It will respond in the same way to anything that meaningfully impedes its progress.”

“So that’s why it ate my barrier. As long as we don’t move it shouldn’t hurt us, right?”

“Even breathing would trigger its prey response, and besides, how would we breathe? And that’s assuming the acid doesn’t overcome your barrier.”

“I was thinking of something else.”

I led the group as close to the oncoming cube as I could, while still leaving about ten feet between us and it. “Press yourselves again the wall as much as you can. I’m going to cast a barrier.”

When everyone was as flush to the wall as possible, I began mentally shaping the barrier I wanted. Instead of making it acid-proof, I cast a simple physical shield that extended in front of us in a gentle curve. The top, bottom and sides of the barrier joined up against the hallway stonework. I tapered the spell as much as I could. Once I was finished, we were enclosed in a bubble that was flush to the wall, ceiling and floor. The effect was to narrow the hallway, but only by a couple feet, and it was gradual enough that I hoped the cleaner cube wouldn’t notice.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s hope this works. Everyone link hands, just in case.” I pulled the talisman out again and prepared to break it the moment the cube decided to attack my spell. Kim seized my hand in hers and I gave her fingers a confident squeeze.

When the cleaner cube touched the edge of my barrier, I held my breath. I couldn’t tell if the thing slowed down or not, but it began sliding over the dome of the spell, leaving the wall, and us, untouched. None of us spoke as the slime monster passed in front of us, its strange, viscous mass inches from our faces. When it reached the other side of the barrier, I gave it the span of three breaths, then canceled the spell and collapsed in relief. The cube continued on, and we watched silently as it touched its opposite. The cubes, now merged and indistinguishable from one another, continued away from us, back the way we came.

“I can’t believe that worked,” said Mika.

“You gotta have faith,” I said.

Kim grasped my arm. Her fingers reached up to the slave collar.

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