The Paths 2: Pest Control

“It’s quiet,” Beth remarked. “Too quiet.”

“Just a bit, yeah,” Vivian agreed as the pair made their way down the dark corridor.

Beth shot the redhead an unbelieving look then shook her head. “Really? No telling me off for invoking doom on us?”

Vivian turned her attention to her short companion, confusion in her eyes. “Why would commenting on that trigger something?”

“You really aren’t genre savvy at all,” Beth lamented. “When someone in a movie says it's too quiet, that’s when they get attacked.”

“I’m not much of a movie person,” Vivian confessed. “Even when I put something on, it’s usually just for background noise as I do something else. Since most of my magic needs either prep or design time, I have to put in a good amount of upkeep to stay sharp. It's not really all that different from the physical training I’m sure you do to keep in shape, just more about how to fit different formulas together instead of running or the like.”

“You need some downtime,” Beth deadpanned.

“It’s not Iike all I do is work,” Vivian deflected. “I have hobbies.”

“I can think of two that might be distracting for ya,” Beth slyly said, prodding the redhead’s side with her elbow.

“Y-yes,” Vivian stuttered out, easily catching Beth’s meaning. “But I think we should focus on the task at hand.”

“What task?” Beth asked, spinning around, her outstretched arms waving about to highlight the emptiness around them. “We’re completely alone.”

A clicking sound echoed through the hallway and Beth looked down. Her foot had depressed a pressure plate, and now a series of grinding noises reverberated in the dark beyond their light.

“Well, fuck,” Beth cursed, gingerly lifting her foot off the trap trigger. “Guess I was asking for that.”

Vivian sighed. “At least now we know there are traps set around. But what did it trigger?”

The answer to that question came a second later as the grinding ended with a dull thud, and a steady rhythmic tapping announced an approaching enemy. From out of the darkness, two specks of purple light burned, stalking closer. They soon moved into the light, revealing a lean feline form, crafted of course out of light brown wood. It stood around a meter tall and looked more like it had been carved out of a solid piece of wood as opposed to the more organically grown form of the trevolk.

“I wonder if this looks like the other wooden enemies John can summon?” Vivian pondered as the creature neared.

“Is that really what we should be thinking about right now?” Beth shot back, pulling her sword from her back.

“I suppose not,” the redhead conceded, pulling a vial out of her choker. “Although, do you think you could bind it? Studying it may give us some insight as to what else is waiting for us.”

”Was kind of looking forward to just fighting it,” Beth groaned. “But I guess without John’s all knowing eye, we do need to figure things out. One pinned cat, coming up!”

Beth shot forward, and the wooden cat lunged at her, claws extending from its paws. Smirking, Beth suddenly dropped into a foot first slide, gliding effortlessly over the rough and worn stone pathway. As she passed under the leaping cat, Beth swung her blade at its underbelly, lightly scarring its wooden flesh.

Without stopping, Beth shifted herself back to her feet, sliding further down the hall in a crouched stance. The cat landed, purple eyes flaring as its claws scraped over the rough floor as it adjusted its footing. It darted at Beth, keeping low to the ground to protect its wounded belly.

“Let’s see if this works,” Beth muttered to herself, letting her mana flow from her fingertips into the stone, reducing the floor’s friction to the level closer to that of ice. The sudden shift broke the wooden feline’s momentum, causing it to pitch forward and slam into the ground.

Beth quickly inverted the flow of her magic, rapidly increasing the adhesion between the floor and the cat. The wooden animal flailed about, but with its flank stuck to the stone, its twitching movements amounted to nothing.

“Got it locked down,” Beth announced with a cocky grin as she stood from her crouched position. “Should hold for about ten minutes.”

“That will be plenty of time,” Vivian said as she approached. “You didn’t show that off yesterday.”

“Had a breakthrough earlier,” Beth remarked. “John was just spitballing over how my powers could get better and I spent most of the rest of the day working on it. First time trying to spread out over an area, but it worked out pretty good. Never really put much thought in how I use my stuff. Always just went with what was easiest to do.”

“Your mana does have a strong water component,” Vivian pointed out. “In theory that means your magic naturally wants to follow the path of least resistance.”

Beth shrugged. “I guess charging up something’s a bit harder to do than just making a connection between my hands or feet and the floor or wall. Not that much harder though.”

Vivian smiled as she crouched down over the pinned monster, opening the vial she had taken from her personal pocketspace. The Shine Dust within flowed out as Vivian willed it into shape, forming a circle above their captive.

“So, what exactly are you doing?” Beth pressed, as the redhead added lines and sigils to the circle.

“I’m trying to recreate, at least on some level, John’s scrying ability,” Vivian answered as she worked. “I think I should be able to make something akin to a ground penetrating radar. Send a pulse of magic into something and get back an impression of it. Won’t get us a summary, but it’ll let me get a good read on the magic animating it. From there, I might be able to create an array that can weaken them, or even shut them down.”

“Think pulling the plug counts for a kill?” Beth inquired.

“Hopefully,” Vivian muttered, brow creased as she weaved her array. “We’re doing this to gather useful or sellable materials for Teri. If cutting their magic doesn’t count, then the same array could be tweaked to simply depower them. Then you can just attack them when they’re down.”

“I know trying to make things easy is a good thing, but I kind of wanted to get used to actually fighting with this,” Beth said, giving the sword a small wave. “Playing lumberjack isn’t really going to help.”

“It’s still a good card to have on hand,” Vivian countered. “Until I get more on how these guys run, I won’t know how much mana it’ll take to hack them. Fighting them the old fashioned way may end up being our only option.”

Beth nodded and let Vivian focus on her work. The silence stretched on for several minutes, Vivian occasionally erasing a portion of her array to start that section over. As they neared Beth’s estimation on the limit of her binding, Vivian nodded as she moved some symbol into place.

“Okay, that should be it,” she announced, pushing a loose strand of hair out of her face.

“Cutting it a bit close,” Beth remarked. “My spell’s only going to last like two more minutes.”

“Sorry,” Vivian apologized. “I underestimated how much time it would take.”

Beth shook her head. “It’s fine. Don’t need to beat yourself up. How long is this scan going to take, anyway?”

“It depends on the complexity of the magic,” Vivian answered. “We might want to recharge your spell, just in case.”

“Right,” Beth sighed and dipped down, fingertips brushing against the edge of the affected area. With a small surge of mana, she refreshed the spell. “Charged up for a few more minutes. Let me know if it needs another shot.”

Vivian nodded and fanned her hands over her array. The suspended dust began to softly glow, and a number of the glyphs began to shift around, an indication of some reaction Beth couldn’t read. She kept quiet, recognizing the redhead’s look of concentration. Habitually, she rubbed her magically marked wrist, bitter memories flowing to the front of her mind.

‘No time to think about that,’ she thought, shaking her head and forcing her hand away from her wrist. The silence stretched on for another three minutes before all the symbols stopped shifting and Vivian let out a pleased sound.

“Okay, readout worked,” she announced. “Looks like this guy has a central core powering him. Not that surprising, honestly, from what I know about golem-like constructs.”

“Does that mean you can flip the kill switch?” Beth asked, prompting Vivian to shake her head.

“If I had the time and reference material, I could make a counter pulse,” the redhead said. “But I don’t think the others would like it if we took a few hours to get through this. I should be able to quickly whip something up to weaken anything else like our friend here though.”

“So you can make a dampener but not something to just turn it off?” Beth questioned.

“It’s a matter of power,” Vivian explained, already making the adjustments to her work. “To overcome the spellwork letting constructs like this run is several magnitudes greater than just tweaking the mana flow regulations. Since I don’t have massive amounts of mana to just smother the core, I’d have to make a very complex array to manipulate the magic subtly, worm my way in. Depressing the mana is far less work. Think of it like this: it takes a lot more work to tear down a building, but it's easy to block its entrance.”

“If you say so,” Beth said slowly. “I don’t think I could understand any of this.”

“It did take a lot of study to reach where I am,” Vivian said. “And there is still a lot of stuff I don’t know. There’s always new magic and new understandings.”

“Yeah, definitely going to leave this stuff to you,” Beth announced. “Getting a headache just thinking about it.”

“The hard work makes it worthwhile when I can do stuff like this,” Vivian announced, snapping her fingers. Her array pulsed and the stuck feline’s struggles became languid, as if the animal-like golem was suddenly exhausted.

“Each pulse should depress their magic for a few minutes,” Vivian explained. “Should give us plenty of time to deal with them.”

“Time to get chopping then,” Beth said, lifting her blade up. “Any weak points I should aim for?”

“I think hitting their core would be the best target,” Vivian theorized. “We saw that head damage didn’t do much to put down the trevolk from earlier so going for anything else is a bit of a waste of time and effort.”

“Shot to the heart, got it,” Beth nodded, hefting her sword high over her head. The sluggish and prone golem had no way to defend from her hacking slashes. A few blows later, Beth had carved a wedge shaped hole into the feline’s flank. At the bottom of this depression, a darker colored wood stood out, a small scratch upon its surface emitting purple sparks.

Beth, slightly winded from the unfamiliar activity, paused when she saw the core.

“Want to look at this before it goes poof?” she asked Vivian, who peered over her shoulder to inspect the golem’s powersource.

“I would need to look at it in detail to get anything useful from it,” Vivian remarked. “And the effort to do that would probably end up just killing it.”

“So go ahead and make with the stabbing?” Beth asked.

Vivian nodded. “Hopefully, the core is part of this creature’s loot table. But if it isn’t, then there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Beth shrugged a shoulder, hefting her sword once more. “If you say so, boss.”

She brought her blade down hard on the exposed core. Alchemically forged metal bit into magically charged wood, sending out a weak spray of sparks. The golem shuttered as Beth reeled back, flipping the sword so its point was aimed at the damaged core and plunged it down.

A flash of purple emanated from the core and the feline golem vanished. Beth barely managed to arrest her momentum, stopping just short of stabbing the ground, her lithe body bent at the waist.

“OK, next time, we stick them to the wall,” she said in a joking tone as she righted herself, slipping the sword back onto her back. When she noticed Vivian’s pensive expression, she cocked her head and asked, “Something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, just thinking,” Vivian replied. “I believe that sword has some spell canceling properties and I’m just trying to remember the wording. Something about being able to cut through magic. It might mean that zilhavrum weapons have an advantage against things with central power cores.”

“Nice,” Beth intoned. “Guess that means I should focus on going after that when the next one pops up.”

“Sounds like a good strategy,” the redhead agreed. “Oh, and you don’t have to call me boss.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” Beth replied cheekily.

Vivian sighed and shook her head. “You’re going to call me that more because I called it out, aren’t you?”

“Probably,” Beth said with a sly smile. “It’s not like it isn’t the right thing to call you. I could go with ‘chief’ or ‘captain’ if you like.”

Vivian groaned. “If you have to call me something, ‘boss’ is enough. Come on, we should probably get moving.”

“You going to carry that circle around the whole time?” Beth asked as they began to proceed further down the dark path.

“It wouldn’t be wise to break it down,” the redhead explained. “Even if I had a perfect recollection of the design and could write it up with no mistakes, it would still take time. The dust has enough stored mana to hold its form without my input, so we should be fine. Charged it up last night while I was doing some research into your problem.”

Beth blinked.

“Anything on that, then?” she asked, failing to hide her hopeful demeanor.

Vivian sadly shook her head. “Not much, I’m afraid. I made a little headway in decoding the outer security but it's written in a style very different from what I’ve studied.”

Beth’s face drooped slightly, but she quickly **** it back into a neutral expression. “I guess a day isn’t enough to crack the code, huh?”

“No, it isn’t,” Vivian answered. “But it’s not something insurmountable. Just need some time to poke around. It’s the least I can do for a…”

“Employee?” Beth joked, cracking a smile.

“I was going to say friend,” Vivian corrected, returning Beth’s smile.

“And now I feel like an ass teasing you over the boss thing,” Beth lamented.

“You can call me ‘boss’ if you really want,” Vivian consoled her. “Just, maybe don’t overdo it.”

“Sure thing,” Beth said. “Think a nickname would work better for you?”

Their trek further down the path had been somewhat uneventful. They remained vigilant for traps and only set the ones they came across once they were ready to deal with whatever appeared. While some released more feline golems, others summoned tavaren-like ones from the walls and others dropped simian shaped simulacra from above.

Despite the somewhat random direction of attack, numbers and appearance, the disruption array and Beth’s adhesion ability proved to be a good combo and the pair managed to avoid taking any real damage. And then the passage opened up to a wide oval chamber.

A number of the glowing trees illuminated the space and Vivian felt a tension she hadn’t noticed leave her. The pair cautiously made their way through the underground grove and reached a door at the opposite side of the chamber. It appeared to be sealed tight with no visible handle or mechanism to unlock.

Vivian took hold of the light around her and concentrated some of it to better examine the door, noting a number of intricate patterns inlaid on the smooth stony surface.

“I think I have to unlock this to proceed,” the redhead said, tracing one of the glyphs. “It would be easier if we knew how these elves did it, but I think I should be able to hack the magic keeping this locked.”

“Think this is the only way forward?” Beth asked, turning away from the door to give the surroundings another look.

“It seems likely,” Vivian replied. “And even if it’s not the path, there must be something beyond worth keeping shut away. Perhaps the totem we’re supposed to find.”

“Yeah, but there could be a horde of zombies,” Beth joked.

“I don’t think John’s powers would throw a curveball like that at us,” Vivian remarked as she began to let her mana flow over the carvings.

A second later, the sound of creaking wood caused the pair to whirl around. One of the trees, a gnarled and twisted specimen, was pulling its roots out of the stone. As it freed itself, the leaves on its four limbs dimmed and fell to the ground, revealing branches that looked like a close approximation to hands. It reached one of its arms down, picking up a long, slender piece of wood, carvings upon it bursting into violet light as it brought it to bear.

“Think that’s the thing we need to get?” Beth asked as the walking tree began to advance, pulling the sword off her back..

“I would presume so,” Vivian answered, putting her weakening array in front of her. “I’m not sure if this will even work.”

“Won’t know if we don’t try,” Beth muttered. “Same play as before, right? Slow it down and slice it up.”

“Just be careful,” Vivian cautioned. “If this doesn’t work, we should fall back and come up with a new strategy.”

Beth nodded and darted off as Vivian aimed her array at the trevolk. She let her mana fuel the array, her reserve dipping below half as the magic flew from her spell circle. It flew out like a wave and crashed into their enemy. She felt her spell take hold, though it had a harder time disrupting the tree’s mana flow than the animals they had faced prior.

“Looks like we’re in business,” Beth shouted as she ran straight at their foe. “Time for part two!”

She dipped under a sluggish swipe and slapped her free hand on one of its root feet for a second before quickly slipping away. The tree tried to pursue, but its root remained affixed to the ground.

“Okay,” the acrobatic girl said, wheeling about to face the stuck enemy. “Now we just have to pin down those arms and…”

She abruptly stopped as the trevolk lifted its staff, purple light blazing from the carvings on it. Vivian felt her magic fluctuate before being wiped away. Then, staff still alight, it moved with surprising speed to attack Beth.

“Fuck!” Beth cursed as she dropped to avoid a wide swing, sliding over the stone like it was an ice sheet. Vivian’s thoughts raced as she watched Beth evade the trevolk’s attacks, the dark haired girl’s attempts to trip her pursuer failing under the purple glow of staff.

“Glow,” Vivian said under her breath, a plan crystallizing. “Beth, keep it busy! I have an idea. And when I say so, get far away and close your eyes! Trust me on this!”

“Got it!” Beth shouted back. “Not like I’ve got any ideas how to beat this magic canceling shrubbery!”

As Beth played mouse to the trevolk’s cat, Vivian closed her eyes and reached out to the light filling the chamber. Compared to the sunlight of the natural barrier, the tree born illumination was softer, for lack of a better word.

‘It won’t be as spectacular,’ Vivian thought. ‘But this should be enough to do damage. If I focus it right, I can burn away its bark and expose the core.’

When she reached her limit of control, Vivian cast her attention back to Beth, finding her and the trevolk from where there was a negative space in her perception of the light.

“Beth, get it to face me and be ready!” Vivian ordered.

“Right!” was Beth’s response and the shadows shifted towards her.

Once the trevolk was in position, Vivian shouted, “Duck and shield your eyes!”

Beth’s shadow dived to the side and the redhead concentrated the light onto a point on the trevolk’s chest. The trevolk was illuminated brilliantly for a second and the scent of burning wood tickled Vivian’s nose.

“I can see why you wanted me to close my eyes,” Beth remarked as Vivian opened her eyes. The trevolk looked as stunned as a creature with no face could. Its steps had stopped and a large amount of its chest was smoldering and black. Beth was quick to take advantage of its stunned state and launched herself at it, running up a nearby tree before jumping straight at the burn, her blade raised high above her head.

She landed on the trevolk, and drove the sword down, the zilhavrum blade easily piercing through the charred wood. A shower of purple sparks shot out from the wound as the weapon sank into its chest, a sign that Beth had scored a hit to the core. In a fluid motion, the acrobatic young woman pulled her sword back and thrust it back in with all her might before the trevolk’s flailing limbs could dislodge her.

The purple sparks turned into a torrent for a moment before the trevolk faded away, the staff it carried hitting the ground with an echoing thunk. Beth landed in a crouch, her petite chest heaving as she took in deep breaths. Then she turned to Vivian and gave her a thumbs up.

“Good work, boss.”

Thanks again for reading this little story. If you liked the chapter, please hit that thumbs up, and if you want to support my writing, check out my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ScrapCrow. Get access to my chapters before they’re published here and join my private Discord.