Escape hatch

“Where is it?” Terra demanded. “Gil, this is no time for jokes or games! I can feel the mist blowing into the caverns! Where is the exit? Something is coming for us and I don’t yet know what!”

Gil paced for a short time, trying to figure out how to get them all out. He wasn’t quite sociopathic enough to effectively **** these two for credits on purpose, not after spending an afternoon with them. He couldn’t just snatch up either Terra or Noa and move on; they’d probably die if separated. That's how this kind of story tended to go. He also didn’t have a tremendous amount of extra credits to splurge on fancy tricks. He briefly stepped onto the skyblock to see if anyone else was present; nobody was at that precise moment.

When he re-emerged from the portal he rammed directly into Noa, who was directly in the middle of some kind of tirade.

“- a liar!” She yelled at the empty tunnel over the objections of her companion. “A meanie and a liar! Oh. Oh, I’m sorry, I-“

A loud electric hum echoed down the hallway, and Gil looked over to see a vaguely stingray shaped creature floating through the air towards them. It was oriented like a shield, its twin stingers hanging limply beneath it and a crackling electric glow engulfing its body.

Gil responded in the manner he’d trained himself to react to obvious approaching threats across many years in many lives: he immediately shot it with whatever weapon he had on hand. In this case, that was a bolt of frost from his palm. The creature staggered briefly, giving Noa time to strike.

The girl struck far faster than Gil expected, dashing a short distance and then lunging with her left hand forward. She struck with the full **** of her body, and if the creature had not been floating she might have killed it right there. It went flying down the passage and fell to the ground. Noa shifted her weight into a cartwheel as it started to struggle to an upright position. In a single fluid motion, she brought her heel down on the Seru monster, splattering it against the floor.

She turned and giggled, looking to Terra for praise. Neither of the people with actual field experience smiled. That wouldn’t be the last one, and if there was some kind of hive mind or communication at play there might be more coming very quickly indeed.

“That wasn’t so bad.” Gil said, though he could feel that frostbolt had taken nearly a fifth of his mana. “I was worried they would open with something bigger.”

“The night is young, and these tunnels are narrow.” Terra reminded him. “If you can protect Noa, I can make my way through the wilderness alright.”

“Nuh uh!” Noa objected. “I’m not leaving you behind!”

“Quiet, quiet.” Gil said, “I have only one idea that springs to mind. If it works, it works. If not, I’ll do what I can to ferry you out of there, eh? I only have one requirement. Terra, I’ll need you to bond to me or one of my companions for at least a few hours so I have the power to get Noa out of here.”

In theory, Gil had enough credits to pull off the plan without completing that mission; that didn’t mean he wanted to burn his whole account on a volunteer charity mission. He released Silky and Blackpaw, causing woman and wolf to appear in a flash of red light.

“That may be difficult.” Terra said, “it’s a painful process to jump from host to host. It can be very hard on the body, when the host and the Ra-Seru are not in perfect alignment.”

“Let’s see if step one even works, then we can decide whether or not to risk step two, eh?” He pulled out the free Beastmaster sphere from Nuzlocke Rules, “Just let it happen. If this doesn’t work, I’ll help you get out just as well as I can.”

He figured it was reasonably likely that the sphere would reject Terra the Wolf due to Terra the Ra-Seru. They seemed like one creature, so bonded together after most of the wolf’s lifespan. He carefully lined up his string to bring the nuzlocke sphere directly onto the Ra-Seru’s big crystalline eye.

He thought there was a pretty good chance that it wouldn’t work, but what he absolutely didn’t expect was for it to work partially. The wolf vanished in a flash of light, and even as the sphere shook and shuddered the green chitinous symbiote shrank into a green coffin shaped appearance the length of Gil’s arm and fell to the ground.

Gil felt, rather than heard, a pained wail emanating from the Ra-Seru.

“Terra!” Noa cried, “what happened? What did you do? Did you hurt Terra!?”

Noa stared at Gil dropping into an aggressive stance, until Silky stepped in and placed a gentle hand on her chest.

“Please, there is no time to argue.” Silky assured her, “Your friend may be hurting, but Gil is a wise man. He has seen many things and is no doubt coming up with a solution even as we speak.”

Gil hoped, with all the fervor he’d ever mustered, that Silky was right.

••••••••••

And another poll, this one for our next destination. Just getting it out of the way.

https://strawpoll.com/3RnYXd5d9ye