Chapter 55: Extra Clever Traps
Yellow Trumpet Creeper Colony has been destroyed.
No Core Skill Points, experience, or other rewards will be rewarded. Both you and a sworn enemy claim the victory. There can be only one.
Roobazahl The Ancient has been destroyed.
No Core Skill Points, experience, or other rewards will be rewarded. Both you and a sworn enemy claim the victory. There can be only one.
Salasha, Guardian of the Egg saw the announcements and screamed, causing many immature myconids to run for other caverns in fear. The thief had somehow found a way to steal her victories! Killing him would fix that!
Tending his patches of mushrooms, Prof. Harold (Hairy) Earthtongue heard the hissing scream and wondered about its source. What had Milo done now? He picked up a large club and decided to go take a look. Now that his affliction was much diminished, he was getting restless and bored.
The rat on everyone's mind was just reaching the top of the big drop, having come up by an alternate route. He was winded, but relieved to find the Snake wasn't trying to climb up just yet. He'd received the same notifications as Salasha and was fine with the situation. It would probably anger the Snake. Not that she needed more excuses, but an angry Snake was a stupid Snake. He took out the egg and looked at it. No cracks were visible, and it seemed the same as ever. He didn't want to have the thing hatch and then attack him from behind.
As he held it, the shell became transparent and he stared into two small eyes filled with hatred. The tiny snake bumped its head against the side of her egg in a futile attempt to crack the shell. She hissed at Milo and a painful thought appeared in his head.
Milo balanced the egg on one finger and spun it around and around. When he stopped, the snake stared at him, but its eyes couldn't focus and it just hissed. He put the egg back in his back pack.
The other half of the Snake duo had finally gotten to the bottom of the drop, and was trying to climb up. She was quite clumsy and uncoordinated at it. Snakes weren't really made for climbing that way. Salasha had an advantage in size, and was able to form a coil, pressing against the sides of the shaft as she painfully made her way up. Milo thought it would be a shame if a rock dropped on her. Poor snake.
Coincidentally, there was a large rock in a net hanging above the shaft. Milo's tail flipped the release for a cable and the rock plummeted downward, hitting Salasha in the head. It did little damage to her, but the impact hurt her progress as she lost 20 feet and had to start climbing again. Milo yelled down the tunnel. "More rocks."
=*=
The Snake's hatred and anger was growing the longer she had to pursue her adversary. His attempts at killing her had been painful and annoying, but never enough to do her mortal damage. Rocks had been dropped on her. Two more painful bone spikes were embedded into her face. Dreadful itching powder that got under her scales had been dumped upon her.
The worst and final indignity had been a wickedly sharp blade that cut off the last twenty feet of her tail. It was a sloppy attack. If aimed at her neck it might have done some lasting damage, but she was too fast through the tunnels and had almost avoided the trap. She would come back later and reabsorb the copper into her body. There was no time for that now.
This was the endgame. The rat had run out of places to go. She had collapsed tunnels behind her, and sealed off where it could move. She knew where her foe was and ... and ... the cursed affliction hit her again. Her mind whirled she lay with her eyes closed on the corridor floor. What was he doing to her egg?!
=*=
The Snake was so slow!
Milo had set up traps and baited her over and over. Several times though, she had stopped to rest. The dwarves became restless so Milo had started playing games with them to keep their attention. Currently they were playing a dwarven game called 'Spin and Hurl'. One dwarf sat in a swing attached by one rope to the ceiling. The others formed a circle and pushed the dwarf in the swing back and forth, spun him around, or moving in a circle whose path often reversed. If the dwarf in the center called out, or got sick, he lost. The lesser brothers loved this game.The roots of this story extend from novell bìn origin.
Currently it was Milo's turn again. He seemed to have a lot of turns. He sat in the swing holding the pack with the egg as the dwarves spun him unmercifully around and around. Milo was used to mid-air flips and had long ago lost any sense of vertigo. But this? This was horrible! Finally, he gave up and the dwarves cheered and another took his place.
Taking deep breaths, Milo asked, "Is the snake moving at all?"
Two-screws voice came out of a vent. "No. Lazy snake just lying in corridor twitching. Poke Snake?"
Milo thought about it. "Yeah, poke the Snake. Use more of the red powder, she really hated that. I wonder what itching is like when you can't scratch?"
As the vertigo faded, Salasha thrashed in rage as more of the red powder was blown down the corridor and all over her scales. Surging forward, she determined to end this!
"Snake moving. Moving fast."
Other factors were coming into play. As the egg was tossed around by the pudding, the large Snake was becoming dizzy. Her timing was off, her coils collided with each other, and her eyes had trouble focusing. Not that her eyes were working very well to begin with after taking the brunt of the explosion from a large magnesium flare. It was easier and easier for the pudding to keep the egg from her reach.
Until, that is, a deluge of heavy, black liquid began raining down on both combatants.
Boom-Boom was happily moving from one giant storage tank to the next, turning the large wheel that opened up the valve to empty the tank. All told, hundreds of thousands of gallons of waste fluid poured down into the cavern until the copper snake and white pudding were fighting in a large black lake.
Milo looked over at Boom-Boom to check his progress. The explosion loving dwarf was yelling and arguing with three other dwarves who flatly refused to let him near the last tank. Milo was curious. "What's the problem guys?"
The three looked apprehensive and sheepish. One patted the side of the tank affectionately. Another had a tear in his eye. The third waved goodbye to the tank and then all three shuffled to the side. Milo wondered about their strange behavior as he turned the wheel and liquid rushed out of the tank.
Something was off. The tank was emptying quicker, liquid rapidly flowing down the hose. From the slanted access tunnel came a smell that was quite different from waste fluid. To Milo it smelled like wood and smoke and other things he didn't have experience with. To the dwarves it was the smell of heaven. New cut grass, sunshine, and hope for the future. All of them remembered the last time they had held a small, amber colored glass and tasted their last taste.
Boom-Boom was the first to shake off the dreamy remembrances. Terror seemed to have improved his vocabulary. "Spanners and Fiddlesticks! That's where the idiots hid the last of the whiskey!"
"Dump the load! Drop the plug! Seal the tunnel! DOOM! BOOM-BOOM DOOM!!!"
Dwarves began running to controls and tossing bags of instant stone down the access tunnel. The two huge vats of powder were dumped into the Bore Hole just before the plug was dropped. Two-screws grabbed Milo by the tail and dragged the surprised rat away from the center of the room. Opening a small door, he tossed Milo into the storage area and sealed the hatch shut.
The huge metal plug fell into the Bore and came to a screaching halt as it wedged securely in the hole. From below came an ominous rumbling.
Dwarven whiskey as brewed by the Engineering Guilds was a terrible, wonderful liquid. It was the strongest beverage known in all of the dwarven kingdoms and its recipe was jealously guarded by the clans and guilds who possessed it. Engineers practically lived on the stuff and it was with deep regret that the aging senior engineers had sealed themselves into metal suits to preserve their lives, but to never again drink the potent and tasty liquid.
The remaining bottles and casks had been stored in a locked area. Some of the dwarves, especially the lesser brethren, could still smell. They liked to just sit in a circle and inhale the aroma of a bucket of whiskey. This had led to many explosions and fires. Dwarven whiskey was highly unstable when removed from the special bottles it was stored in. It was prone to bursting into flame from the smallest spark or bit of heat, and a gallon of it could equal ten pounds of mining explosives.
Several years later, an inventory check discovered the whiskey to be missing. Not a drop could be found, and no one confessed. Over the years the lesser brethren believed the Engineer had drunk it all. The seniors thought the lesser brethren had stolen it. How it all got stored in a waste fluid tank was going to be a question that got asked a lot in the future.
Twenty-seven thousand gallons of aged dwarven whiskey had just been poured down the Bore Hole.
It rained down upon the combatants and Ooblipimux immediately felt the effects. The whiskey was easily absorbed by the pudding who became horribly drunk and confused. The snake, already dizzy from the egg being bounce back and forth, was less effected immediately. As the pudding missed a catch, she grabbed for her egg and coiled protectively around it.
More than just pudding, waste fluid, and whiskey filled the cavern. As the outer layers of the snake had been dissolved by the acid secretions of Ooblipimux, a large amount of hydrogen gas had been created that mixed with the whiskey fumes in a deadly combination. The slightest spark or fire could set it off. Even a small fire caused by a mote of magnesium lodged under a scale of an elemental could do it. That little spark, burning from an earlier encounter with a fake rat came in contact with a wisp of whiskey fumes.
Heat and light exploded into the cavern. Anything besides the Snake and the Pudding that lived within Alta-Viator's half mile long corpse was incinerated instantly as the fiery wave of destruction rolled over them. As the hundreds of thousands of gallons of waste fluid was heated it expanded, flashing into a highly flammable gas that burned long after the initial whiskey explosion.
Ooblipimux boiled and evaporated. Salasha, the Guardian of the Egg melted into a puddle. The bones of Alta-Viator began to burn.
Up above, the dwarves took what cover they could, expecting the worst. The large amount of instant stone powder falling down the shaft was met by intense heat rising up. It instantly reacted, turning first into an expanding foam and then hardening into a rock-like material. As it was hardening in place, most of the heat was absorbed, but not all. Only a small fraction of the explosion got past the liquid stone before it hardened into a blockage, but that was enough to partially melt the metal plug and force it back upwards.
A jet of superheated, whiskey scented air exploded into the room that melted flesh and metal. If it was the last thing they smelled, it was at least the best. Boom-boom was the last to fall over, a slight smile on what was left of his face. He'd felt the explosion all the way to his bones, and now relaxed as everything went black.
Milo heard the screams of the dwarves outside and felt his small area heating up. He curled into a ball and wrapped the runed cowl tightly around him. Scales of hardened bone crept up his arms and legs, covering more and more of him as the heat got worse.
Ooblipimux the Ever Pudding has been destroyed.
No Core Skill Points, experience, or other rewards will be rewarded. Both you and a sworn enemy claim the victory. There can be only one.
Salasha, Guardian of the Egg has been destroyed.
