Grumph adjusted his grip and turned to the next one. Magic was well and good, but only a fool ignored all the assets at their disposal. Besides, it was a magic weapon, so this counted as wizard’s work.
Gabrielle’s trajectory sent her into a large cluster of other adventurers, along with a sizable number of the clawed and scuttling demons. With no time to wonder just what she intended to do, Gabrielle whirled her axe around and charged a group of the smaller demons. Their long tail-blades clinked off her axe with a dull, tinkling sound, and they skittered away when she drew close. One was a bit too slow and she swung long, driving her own weapon’s blade through the thin carapace on its back. She heard a sickening splatter as the small demon was rent in two. With that, its legs ceased to scuttle.
“They’re weak,” Gabrielle called to her fellow warriors. “Fast but weak. They go down easy.”
The others nodded comprehension, some moving to assist her, while more dealt with what they perceived to be the greater threat: the clawed demons. One of her nearby assistants, an archer, judging from the confident way she held her bow, unleashed a flurry of arrows on the moving horde. Not every demon hit was killed, but they were at least slowed. Another at her aid was a dagger thrower, the man who’d made it to the final round with Thistle. Each blade he launched through the air pinned a scuttle demon to the ground. Their struggles stopped almost before the hilt finished quivering.
A different pair of adventurers joined Gabrielle in the melee, one wielding a halberd and the other, a staff. Halberd did ample damage, clearing the vermin away with pinpoint accuracy, while Staff laid down small spells that didn’t kill but certainly wounded. Gabrielle took up a defensive role, since her range was shorter. She kept the scuttle demons from swarming any of the others, often having to dash between spots in order to draw attention and keep the others safe.
The five of them worked seamlessly, teamwork fostered by the universal desire not to die. Within minutes, they’d cleared out over three-fourths of the scuttle demons and none of them had taken significant damage. That changed, not because of any failing on their part, but because of an ill-timed death on the other team.
A swordsman who had been part of flanking and containing the clawed demon missed his step, causing him to stumble. The demon pounced on this opportunity, cutting the man in half with a single motion, then racing forward to assist the Scuttles. Even if what was left got free, they would surely distract the adventurers fighting the Claws, allowing the demons to overtake the group.
This Claw was particularly smart: instead of attacking one of the people on the offensive, it opted to go for their only defensive member. Gabrielle, back turned as she swung her axe through another Scuttle’s body, never saw the monster coming. The only one who did was the dagger-thrower, momentarily turned around to grab more blades from his pack.
He moved on instinct, no time for consideration. With one hand, he whipped out a blade, aiming for the charging demon’s eye while his feet carried him forward to cut off the path to Gabrielle. Only one of his attempts succeeded.
A choked scream drew Gabrielle’s attention momentarily away and she swung around to see the dagger-thrower with a claw jutting out of his torso. The demon had impaled him and was now trying to shake the corpse loose. Its eyes glared at her as it swung its arm, flecks of blood flying all over the increasingly red ground.
Figuring out what had happened didn’t take more than a little bit of mind and Gabrielle had far more than that. She understood that this man, whose name she’d never known, had put himself in the way of an attack meant for her. The bubbling of rage that was becoming so familiar surged as she watched his body finally slide free of his killer’s arm.
So stupid. Why did he do that? Why did he feel the need to protect her? Gabrielle’s anger wasn’t at the man for his action, or even at the demon for capitalizing. Gabrielle was mad at herself, for still seeming like the kind of person who needed to be protected. She didn’t want to be weak; she didn’t want to be kidnapped. She didn’t want to be a damsel, and the fact that she’d just become one again really pissed her off.
Fortunately, there was a clacking-clawed outlet for her aggression mere steps away.
“Back!” Thistle ordered, flinging one of Sierva’s daggers forward and impaling a Scuttle that had popped out from under a seat. The children squealed in terror, nearly falling over as they scrambled away from it. Thankfully, Thistle’s blessed blades sundered the smaller demons with any hit on the main body. Its twitching had nearly stopped by the time the dagger reappeared in the sheath at Thistle’s side, and he motioned for the children to move forward once more.
While most people in the vicinity of the monster’s exit had been sent flying off to the side of the arena, Thistle’s central position and gnome stature meant the force was powerful enough to hurl him into the stands. How he’d emerged from the pile of splinters unharmed was thanks, most likely, to Grumble, either directly, or through the divine perks of servitude. Thistle’s first instinct had been to leap back into the fray; however, the sounds of terrified tears had drawn his attention.
Under a nearby seat, clutching each other and crying softly, were Mayor Branders’s children. It seemed a reasonable guess that they had been separated from their father in the confusion and opted to hide. With a weary sigh, Thistle called them forward and assured them everything would be all right. Whether it was his paladin’s aura, or just sheer desperation, the children immediately latched onto him and agreed to come along.
Navigating their way out of the stands proved tougher than Thistle expected. Between damage from the explosions, groups of other people trampling about, and the roving Scuttles popping out all over the place, he’d nearly gotten everyone, himself included, killed twice before they made it out of their original section. Thistle noticed that the bulk of others he saw were moving west and that almost none were coming back in the other direction. That meant either there was a way out or certain death. Fifty-fifty was better than his chances if they stayed put, so the group pressed onward.
The one blessing of their journey was that the Scuttles they encountered moved singularly rather than en masse. A group of them easily could have overwhelmed Thistle and the children, yet they encountered no more than one at a time. Such behavior bothered Thistle, who had seen them moving as a unit earlier. Even without his blessed daggers, outside of their group these creatures were weak. It made no sense for them to spread out like this. Assuming they weren’t as intelligent as the Claws, sheer instinct should still have kept them bunched together.
Thistle wished he could have seen how the fight below was going; unfortunately, between the debris, constant movement, and fact that his own height was barely greater than that of the children’s, he had to resign himself to listening to the ordeal below. From the sounds, it seemed like things weren’t entirely lost. The majority of the shouts he heard were ones of direction, not terror or surrender. Hopefully, that ground demon was built more for intimidation than practicality.
Another Scuttle popped up, this one letting out an odd, chittering screech before Thistle’s dagger chopped it in two.
“I don’t remember the others making a noise,” he mumbled after calling back his blade, staring at the spot where the demon’s remains were oozing onto the wood.
Before he could say anything else, the wooden chunks blocking his sight to the arena below fell away, and he immediately wished they hadn’t. The wood, along with the entire section of stands where they were situated, had been smashed away by the giant ground demon that was now waiting below with an open, salivating mouth. The floor, no longer supported by anything other than habit, fell away, sending them falling toward the waiting mouth.