Summoned by Monster Girls

We stood watch at the cave entrance to make sure the creatures didn’t come back.

Kassandra alternated between studying the dead creatures and carving into several stones more of the runes to create light. The light had proved to be a more effective barrier than the wards were, and once we had a half dozen of the glowing rocks set around the cave mouth, we could finally relax.

We decided silently not to return to the tent to sleep. Instead, the three of us took turns standing watch while the other two dozed in the grass, using some of the spare blankets to keep warm.

I had suggested collapsing the cave to seal them up, but both of my girls refused. The appearance of the strange monsters only confirmed that there was something important down there and they were bound and determined to find out what it was.

Kassandra, after ensuring it was quite dead, wrapped one monster up in a spare cloth and tucked it into the dimensional sack to be examined later. This was something that creeped both Rieka and me out, but my dwarf lamia insisted it would be important to document as much as possible and the dimensional space would slow time for the remains to prevent it from rotting.

The rising sun eliminated any of the creatures left above ground. While indirect or magical light caused them to slowly break up, the light of the morning sun caused any of the bodies we hadn’t dealt with to collapse into ash and dissolve almost immediately on contact.

I decided I would need to keep a careful watch on my girls to see how they handled everything now that the night was past. I know what happened last night would leave me with nightmares. I don’t know how the girls will react, so I need to keep an eye on them.

After we had settled down the previous night, I had stood watch first, then Rieka, then Kassandra from our spot about a hundred feet away from the battlefield in the grass. Which meant that when I woke up that morning, I was curled up in the fetal position with Rieka held to my chest and an arm around her waist. Kassandra had curled her serpentine tail around both of us and draped her cloak over top of the blankets too in order to keep all three of us as warm as possible.

When she realized I was waking, Kassandra shifted to let us out, but remained close to get as much body heat as possible. My lover wasn’t anywhere as mischievous as she normally was, pointing out the results of the sunlight hitting the remains of the shadow monsters before they’d finished dissolving entirely. She was studying the process with an intense expression of curiosity.

Once Rieka had woken and we were sure that the creatures weren’t coming back out of the hole, we retreated back to our campsite. Kassandra took a moment to reinforce the barrier wards she’d put up at the burrow entrance even further before we left.

“So, what’s the plan?” Rieka asked while I set about getting the fire started to make the girls’ breakfast. Kassandra was inside the tent, ruffling about doing something, while Rieka paced between the tent and the fire pit.

“I’m pretty sure those creatures came from beyond the sealed tunnel.”

“What makes you say that, Liam?” Rieka immediately jumped on the statement, her eyes hard as she chewed on her bottom lip.

“The dust on the ground. If that many critters were just beyond the door, we would have seen tracks. My money would be that they were sealed up in that tunnel by the cave-in. We already know the lights from the station do not run that deep and they seem to hate the light. I bet they avoided us yesterday and only came out because the lights were on a timer of some kind and it was dark out.” I shrugged after that statement, carefully stirring the porridge that I was making to ensure it didn’t burn.

“But what do we do now? Do we keep delving into the tunnel? Seal it up and report it to the queen for the army to come investigate? I mean, I am curious, but I'm also second guessing going down there at the moment.” Rieka’s concern was interrupted by Kassandra emerging from the tent with a pile of folded bedding in her arms and a determined expression on her face.

“No way in hell am I giving up a find like this to the army,” Kassandra said sternly. “Those things hate the light. So we just have to make sure we have plenty of it. We easily found several gold worth of earth-aligned elemental crystals down there. Also, that samoflange thingy is oozing with power too and it’s obviously worth something from that alone.”

“So what are you saying, Kass? Go down there and keep exploring?” Rieka didn’t even sound surprised at her question now, which was good. We both knew Kassandra well enough to guess what was going to be said next.

“Damn straight. We’ve already found so much information already. Let’s get the tent packed up. If we are going to have to stand watch over that hole in the ground, then I want to be comfortable doing it. I can’t just disable the rune set I put in to open the main door easily. So our best option is to clear out the burrow, the cave, tunnel, and the station then set up on the far side of the cave-in and have Liam seal that back up. He can draw mana from one of the earth crystals and do it easily.”

Rieka and I shared a look for a moment and I shrugged. I was going to leave this up to the two of them to decide. I only needed to see the telltale wiggle of Rieka’s tail beginning to move to let me know she was just as curious as Kassandra, just hiding it better. Whatever worries she’d had before were clearly subsumed under Kassandra’s determination and curiosity now.

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“You know, we were joking about it before, back when we found the door the first time. But I feel like Rieka got it right on the head about this being a prison full of ghosts and zombies.” Kassandra’s joke echoed oddly in the darkness on the far side of the cave-in.

We’d found only one of the shadow monsters hiding on the station side of the cave-in and dispatched it with ruthless efficiency. The fact that I called for the lights to turn on ahead of us might have helped, but I wasn’t entirely sure.

I’d just finished using one of the smallest elemental crystals to fuel my earth magic to seal the narrow burrow I’d made behind us. Rather than collapse a portion of it, I’d built a plug of packed earth and large stones that was a good five feet long and sealed it into place on this side. My eyes kept being drawn to the scratches in the rock around the ruined engine of the train, and I began to wonder if it was from the ancient explosion or the claws of the scurrying shadow monsters.

“I’d prefer if you’d been the one who was right in that situation, Kass.” Rieka huffed, shifting to hold her light stone overhead.

Kassandra had worked on carving runes to make a larger stone glow while we ate. Now, both she and Rieka carried softball sized stones that glowed brightly enough to illuminate the entire tunnel for a good fifty feet around them in bright light. I had one as well and with the three, we could form a walking barrier of light as we traveled down the tunnel. The other light stones were tucked safely away in the dimensional pouch.

“What? Wishing that it was a collection of time-locked priests? Or a harem of beautiful women who would throw themselves on Liam in thanks for being rescued?” The girls’ words were doing that strange ‘echo’ thing. I could hear them, but they still sounded muffled, as if their voices refused to travel far down the tunnel.

“Either or both. Would be infinitely more comforting than the idea of those creatures being mutated ghosts or the like.” Rieka shivered and then jumped when I rested a hand on her shoulder. The platinum-blonde wolf-woman looked up at me with her sharp, ice-blue eyes and smiled wanly.

“I’ll be fine, Rieka. We just need to make sure we keep in the light. The only reason those things were dangerous last night was their numbers and because they could spread out. Just keep your eyes open and we will keep safe. Don’t hesitate to blast one of the little buggers if you see one. If we are lucky, this tunnel will be short and we won’t have to camp down here.”

“Can do, Liam.” Rieka’s ears didn’t droop, but she bit her bottom lip in obvious concern. Wanting to reassure her and willing to take another step to show her my interest, given her own blatant moves previously, I bent down and pressed a light kiss to her lips. Rieka stiffened before melting into me, the hand with her spell rod shifting to grip the front of my armor with her fingertips while her tail whipped up a storm, stirring the dust into the air.

“Hey! I want a kiss, too!” Kassandra’s protest brought Rieka back and the wolf-eared woman giggled, her cheeks pinking slightly when I kissed the tip of her aristocratic nose.

“Of course. Come here, gorgeous!” I said with gusto, turning towards Kassandra and bending down to scoop her torso and part of her tail up.

Since I was only bringing her up to my height, the weight was manageable given her long tail. Kassandra giggled and threw her arms around my neck before stealing several kisses of her own. I was proud of my dwarf lamia, as she never once let her light stone fall or dropped her spell rod, despite the pleasant distraction.

When we finally finished our motivational lip-lock, Kassandra separated and leaned back in my arms while wiggling her bottom in my hands, which had slipped under her skirt by accident during the whole maneuver. I could feel the softness of her bare skin under my hands, and was reminded of the fact that it was rather impossible for a lamia to wear panties.

“Such a thoughtful man, Liam. Rieka and I will have to make sure to reward you when this is all said and done. And I don’t mean with tea and cookies.” The heat in Kassandra’s voice left nothing to the imagination.

A quiet ‘oh gods’ from Rieka resulted in Kassandra breaking down into giggles. A glance towards the fourth princess showed her lightly pinked cheeks were now far darker, but her tail was stirring up a storm once more.

“Sounds like a plan, Kass. Let’s focus now though,” I reminded my lover, and she nodded with a sigh before slipping free of my arms.

The three of us formed a line, with me in the center and about ten feet ahead of the girls. Rieka was on my left and about six feet to one side, while Kassandra was on my right and roughly the same distance away. We kept to the center of the tunnel between the two sets of tracks, only diverting to either side when we ran into one of the large support pillars that occasionally graced the middle of the tunnel.

The deeper we went into the complex, the more sturdy the walls and ceiling got. It went from what looked similar to concrete to chiseled stone over around a hundred feet. Underfoot, the gravel remained the same plain gray color that I felt was ubiquitous to all gravel, though the brilliant light we carried would sparkle off tiny infusions of crystalline material in the rock on occasion. The problem was that the slight flash, seen out of the corner of the eye, was very similar to how the light had glinted off the carapaces of the shadow monsters. So it never failed to make one of us jump, which would make the other two whirl to check on them.

It took a bit before we made our first discovery. It was Rieka who spotted it, a different shade of glittering near the ground by one wall. Rieka called for us to stop and head over.

There, growing in the narrow space where the curved wall met the gravel floor, was another spray of crystals that was almost the exact same color as the gravel but threw out duller sparks of light.

“More earth crystals?” I asked quietly, turning to put my back to it while Rieka carefully pried them free.

“Yup. I’m not surprised, given how deep we are under the mountains right now. What’s got me thinking instead is that the air is still good down here. There must be some kind of venting system to keep the air from going bad,” Rieka murmured, grunting as she finally broke the crystals free.

All three of us were now well aware of the oppressive weight that hung in the air and pressed down to keep the silence of the caves. It was more than just the weight of the thousands of tons of stone above us. The darkness itself weighed on all of us. We’d all taken to speaking whispers when we had to talk, not wanting to disturb the silence any more than we needed to. There hadn’t been another sighting of the skittering shadow monsters, and I was glad for that. I half hoped that we’d wiped them out the previous night, but wasn’t willing to bet my life on it.

When Rieka had the crystals secured in her pouch, we continued on down the tunnel. The gravel crackled quietly under both foot and tail as we moved, but the sound didn’t seem to want to travel very far into that weighty darkness.

We’d been walking for at least an hour when the walls began to change again. The tightly bonded granite began to give way to lighter, striated layers of black shale. The gravel underfoot also changed colors to the darker shade of stone. This wouldn’t have been a problem, normally, but the ceiling and walls began to show more wear and tear as the softer stone took over now. I wasn’t sure how far into the mountains we were, but the chipped ceiling and scratched walls did not give the tunnel the same sense of stability that we had enjoyed during the first part of the trip. I was half expecting another cave-in to block our way, but Kassandra spotted another change first.

“Liam!” Kassandra’s single word hiss of surprise immediately drew my attention to her side of the tunnel and all three of us stopped.

I’d first taken the shadows on the wall to just be more scraped spots where pieces of the softer slate had broken free and indeed there were piles of the fragments all over the ground at the base of the wall. But the shadows were deeper than that. The wall on Kassandra’s side was honeycombed with what looked like dug out burrows just about big enough one could cram a good sized watermelon down them.

My mind treated me to the image of the shadowy creatures boiling out of the walls like a stirred up hive of hornets, and I immediately shifted to put myself between Kassandra and Rieka.

I’d used Shape-Shifting to extend my right arm and add several joints, turning it into the scorpion-tail configuration from before and armoring it in the chitinous plating. My leather and metal chest armor made it a little hard to maneuver as fluidly with, but I could make do.

Quickly counting them, I was not happy with what I found. There had to be easily fifty or sixty of the burrows in that one wall alone, but nothing stirred from within them while we watched.

“Can you seal them up, Liam?” The question came from Rieka and I could hear a tremor in her voice.

“We have no idea how many of them are in there, or even if there are any. But I would also feel better knowing they aren’t just sitting open.” Kassandra’s voice wasn’t any firmer than her friends, so I nodded.

I’d kept three of the smallest earth crystals in a little pouch on my weapon belt, and it only took a moment to dig out the one I had used to seal up the burrow we had used to bypass the cave-in. I had to hold it with just my fingertips because of the light stone I had in that hand, but I was able to get it in place.

Drawing on the mana in the crystal, I focused on what I wanted to happen. It took a moment before the piles of fallen slate near the wall shifted and began to flow like syrup dripping in reverse. Beginning at floor level and going upwards, the gravel and the piles of broken rock began to merge with the wall and fill in the burrows. The gravel and shattered pieces of slate merged with the wall like I was smearing putty over them, and I worked quickly to fill the holes. I didn’t have an infinite amount of stone to work with, and it was obvious that not all the stone that had been removed from those burrows was left on the ground here, but I managed to seal up each of the narrow holes. Nothing stirred from inside them the entire time.

I kept working until the crystal in my fingertips collapsed into dust, signifying that I had used all the mana contained inside of it.

“How well sealed are those?” Kassandra asked. I had to take a minute to catch my breath before I could respond.

“About three feet thick.”

“Three feet!?” Rieka’s exclamation rebounded off the wall near us and returned distorted, making all three of us flinch. “Three feet? Seriously? That had to have taken so much mana!” Rieka continued her protest, a bit quieter this time.

“It burned up one of the crystals.” I said with a shrug, and she bit her lip in concern. “Well worth it if we don’t get ambushed. We should keep going, though. There is no telling what else we might find down here.” Rieka still looked torn between astonishment and worry, and I was ready to reassure her further when a violet glow flared on the edges of my vision and text appeared.

Power Manipulate Element (Minor) - (Earth) has achieved Mastery 1000/1000.

New Power available in the System interface.

Congratulations, Traveler.

“Oh! Well…that’s cool,” I mumbled and blinked the message away.

“What happened?” Kassandra questioned, and I turned to smile down at my serpentine lover.

“Apparently, I’ve mastered the rank of Manipulate Element that I had and it’s ready to upgrade,” I answered her. Kassandra rewarded me with a broad smile. Turning back to the moment, I looked back to Rieka. “For our safety, it is better to spend the resources than hoard them, right?”

Rieka blinked at me in surprise before a small smile twisted her lips.

“Oh Liam, I wasn’t concerned about the cost. I was surprised you could do all of that with just one crystal. Like Kass, I am proud of you for it and congratulations on your achievement. Do you want to take a minute?”

“No, not here.” I waved off the suggestion, instead gesturing down the tunnel. “I’ll look at the new stuff later. We don’t want to hang around longer than we have to.” Both girls nodded, and we continued down the tunnel.

We kept walking down the tunnel and encountered another mass of burrows, this time in the left-hand wall. I repeated the same feat as before, sealing them up and burning through my second of three crystals. Since Manipulate Elements was already mastered, it wasn’t really doing anything for the skill but I also had a feeling I didn’t have nearly enough SP to buy the next rank, which I was sure was what had unlocked, so I didn’t worry about it.

Besides the burrows, the only change in the scenery came about twenty minutes after we left the second group of sealed burrows behind.

The shape loomed out of the darkness without warning and Kassandra squeaked in surprise when it did. Something large and metallic had been on the right-hand set of tracks that I guessed would have run down to the station we had left behind. Now, though, it was just a mass of shredded and quietly rusting metal shoved off to one side, not even on the tracks anymore.

“What do you think that was?” Rieka asked, peering at the roughly cigar-shaped mass of metal that was at least twenty feet long.

“Another transport, probably smaller than the big train that ran before. But what knocked it off the rails?” I didn’t expect an answer to my question, and the entire thing was too trashed to really know its purpose.

“Wonder if it has a samoflange, too?” Kassandra’s innocent question had both Rieka and I stumped, so we approached closer to inspect the ruined vehicle. A bit of digging about in the piles of rusting iron revealed a similar engine compartment to the other train, but much smaller. We found three separate growths of earth crystals in the wreckage, but no imbued metal and definitely no samoflange.

“Did you ever figure out what kind of metal that thing was made of?” Kassandra asked once we were done inspecting the wreckage.

The dwarf lamia was a bit more upbeat now. With the crystals we’d found alone, this trip was now profitable for the girls by a fair margin. So now she could focus on exploring and learning more from whatever we found down here.

“I hesitate to guess,” Rieka hedged uncharacteristically. I glanced over at the wolf-eared princess, and she was gnawing on her bottom lip. Reaching over, I gently tapped her chin. The gesture got a confused look from her.

“If you keep biting your lip like that, you are going to start bleeding. And I don’t want you to scar up your face that way.” My gentle remonstration made her cheeks pink again, but she smiled at me before sighing slightly.

“I think the samoflange is made of silver.”

“Silver? Seriously? If that’s silver…it’s gotta be several pounds of it. And it’s fully imbued!” Kassandra’s excitement was easy to see. I didn’t know the exact exchange rate, but that much imbued metal had to be valuable.

“I’m just glad we have the dimensional pouch now,” I interjected. Both girls gave me questioning looks, so I elaborated. “The pouch will look the same when we go back into town as it did when we left. Hard for thieves to target us if they don’t know what we have. Sure, this stuff is valuable, but we need to find someone to buy it.”

“Mother will.” Rieka said with confidence. “Something like that, both as a historic piece and being full of mana? She’ll buy it for the treasury at the very least. The crystals will have to go to a broker, but the Hunt and Trade Hall have that service. It’ll just take some time.”

This seemed to satisfy Kassandra, who bounced excitedly on her tail as she slithered along. Deciding to accept the girls’ word on it, I nodded and remained silent for the moment. I was curious how much they could earn from what we’d found. I knew it would cover their costs and at least a bit more, but the economy here was something I still struggled to understand.

Too bad I can’t just buy raw palladium and bring it over here, I thought with a sigh. I bet with Rieka’s contacts, I could trade it to their local mint to be made into coins and be paid in gold. Then just take that back home and find someone to buy it at a fair price. That would solve so much of my money troubles.

My thoughts were interrupted by a gasp of surprise from Rieka, who had the best vision of the three of us currently. I had used my allotment of animal types to shift and armor my arm as well as improve my hearing, as the bright light would have made the owl eyes near useless because of proximity.

What caused Rieka’s gasp became apparent almost immediately as we took another few steps and a colossal metallic wall oozed out of the shadows and into view.

Completely blocking the tunnel ahead of us was a heavy iron door that was flush with the walls. It covered the tunnel entirely and served as a barrier to block us off from the rest of the tunnel, while the stone walls crowded in close on either side.

We had reached a dead end.