31 loop 1, part 11

I cast [Bang] in the air, a foot from the Froll’s ear. 7 mana bought a burst of light and a crack of sound that rolled through the cavern. The Froll flinched mid-swing, missing my uncle and battering the ground. Chips of rock skittered across the floor, and the Froll snapped its head toward the sound.

The tether pulsed once, then guttered like a candle fighting wind. I stared ahead. The difference between rescue and being too late again was one arm’s length. I bought myself seconds. I planned to use them.

“[Ex Nihilo Caseum].”

The wheel condensed into my hand—warm, perfect, about to be wasted. And I rolled it across the floor, away from my uncle, toward the far stacks. The Froll’s head turned, tracking the wheel the entire way. Then, it dropped onto its knuckles and went after it. It picked up the wheel between two fingers, delicate as a grape, and ate it all in one bite, chomping on its own fingers in the process. It didn’t react to that at all.

I was already moving, cutting across the clearing toward my uncle. I made it maybe halfway before the Froll turned around and started walking back toward him, blue blood staining its teeth.

The cheese worked. It just didn’t hold its attention long enough for me to cross a clearing. I needed distance, not seconds.

I cast the spell again and threw this one farther, deeper into the room. And the Froll followed it all the way out of sight. The knocking, the knuckles, and its horrible bulk were completely hidden behind a section of shelves. I exhaled and finished crossing to my uncle, putting myself between him and the direction the Froll would be return from.

It came back sucking on its fingers, already having swallowed the cheese wheel. It turned its head toward me. It looked in the air where the cheese wheels had magically appeared, and then settled on me and the wand in my hand.

It grinned. I wasn’t aware Frollarts—and by extension Frolls—were smart enough to make that connection.

The Froll forgot about my uncle completely. It charged. And I learned that something three times my height covers a space very, very fast.

I went up and sideways, kicking off a shelf, and its fist tore through the space I’d just left. Books I had no time to mourn went everywhere. I was three feet off the ground and climbing, but it didn’t matter, because the thing was three times my height. Altitude wasn’t going to save me. It was just a slightly better seat to my own slaughter.

I threw [Trip] at its bandages mid-stride. The wrappings on its leading arm seized and knotted, and it stumbled half a step before the gauze tore again. Its charge didn’t even slow. It stepped over the old [Slick] puddle without slipping. That trick had already been spent.

It tried to cut me off and shoulder checked an entire stack. Books burst outward in a dusty wave, and one clipped the book under my arm. I twisted wrong to protect it mid-dodge, and the Froll’s backhand caught me across the shoulder. Glancing, but glancing from something that size still sent me spinning through the air like a thrown toy.

Because apparently, I valued literature more than my own life. In my defense, the book had been helpful, and my life had been mostly inconvenient as of late. It wasn’t a clean comparison.

I spun twice before I caught myself. I patted my chest and confirmed everything important was still attached. That was the price of the book. Paid once. I didn’t intend to pay it again.

Showing that both the books and I had severely underestimated the potential intelligence of these monsters, it stopped chasing me and started throwing things. A fistful of rubble came rattling through the stacks like hail. [Wideview] handed me every piece the moment it left the fist, arcs and all. I drifted between them with small, bored corrections, the way you’d step around puddles. Dodging was the one physical discipline I had ever respected, because done correctly, it was barely physical at all.

The follow-up was a section of shelf—it wrenched the thing off its base, stone and all, and threw the whole assembly end over end. Too big to lean past. I kicked off the nearest stack. The spin carried me over the top, and I felt the wind of it pass under my boots. The shelf missed me by an inch, and took out the row behind me in an explosion of paper and gravel.

This gave me a fresh respect for people who chose Dungeon Track—who did this on purpose, for fun, with their actual legs. And multiple questions about their sanity.

I put another row of stacks between us and hovered there, breathing, while it tore through the row in front of me like paper.

The problem I was having was scale. Almost every spell I owned cost ten mana or less and usually worked on enchanting objects. However, the only parts of this creature worth interfering with were tiny scraps of fabric that did little to halt its advance. I needed something that would hold it long enough for [Constrict] or [Trip] to actually do real damage. And while I preferred not to spend a ton of mana, most of the night, more expensive spells had been saving my ass. So it was time to try something different.

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“[Third Arm].”

[Third Arm – Manifestation]

Cost: 40 mana.

Manifests an arm and hand made of directed force under the caster’s control. The hand can act on the world, but the world cannot act on the hand.

Duration: 5 minutes or until dispelled.

The spell was intended for use in kitchens, and magical labs to make work loads easier, but most people dismissed its usefulness outside of those situations, myself included. But the fact that the world couldn’t interact with it, made all of the difference here. Honestly, sounded like a better life than mine.

A hand condensed out of the air between us—translucent, faintly blue, exactly the size of mine. I’d watched Sara use it in a match. And I kind of learned it last year, but had never bothered to use it. Because it cost a fortune and quit on me after five minutes. As beautiful as the spell was, that time limit really fucked with its usefulness.