It tries to squeeze through the spikes now blocking the door, but gives up after its attempts fail.
[Hah! Thanks Fir.]
{Don’t mention it.}
Feeling cornered, the Compy hisses, cautiously sidestepping while keeping its eyes on us.
Gloria doesn’t waste any time, running at it as soon as she’s able. The compy responds in kind, staying low to the ground as it dashes forward.
I don’t trust this, this thing is crafty. Let’s put an end to this
We don’t have much mana left, but we should have enough for one more rock spike.
I begin channeling the required mana into the ground. As expected, we have enough, but it’s a close shave. I try to work quickly, I can’t end this before Gloria and the Compy clash, but I can at least cut it short, before we sustain any serious damage.
At the last second, the Compy ducks off to the side, and jumps towards us. Gloria tries to block the incoming attack, but she doesn’t manage to ready herself in time. The Compy lands directly on our back, and begins desperately scratching at us. We’d probably be getting some bad gashes, if it weren’t for our scales.
Gloria tries to shake it off, but its grip is strong, and it manages to stay on.
Unfortunately for it though, I’m ready.
{Gloria, roll over!}
[Huh? I’m not a do-]
{Just do it!}
Gloria leans over to the side, and the added weight of the Compy on our back makes us completely topple over. Even now, the Compy continues its assault on our back.
But now, it’s completely exposed to the ground!
I activate the rock spike spell, and a pillar of earth shoots up from the ground, directly through the body of the Compy. It flails and screeches, but soon goes silent.
Yes! My first successful use of magic as an attack!
{Good job!}
Gloria doesn’t respond, instead quickly righting our body and running over to the Mushle.
It doesn’t look like it’s in good shape. I don’t know why this small room isn’t completely filled with spores with how badly hurt it is.
[Fir, heal it!]
{H-huh? I don’t know if I can, we’re getting pretty low on mana.}
[You have to!]
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
{Well, I can try…}
I apprehensively begin casting low heal. It doesn’t seem to be having much of an effect, certainly not enough to save this thing before our mana reaches zero. I cancel the spell.
[What are you doing? Keep going!]
{No, it’s not enough. Even if we use all of our mana, it’s not enough.}
[No… I need to… I need to save him…]
Suddenly, I feel our mana being drained again, but I’m not the one constructing a spell.
{Hey hey hey, stop it! I told you, there’s nothing we can do!}
A soft, dim green light emanates around the Mushle. This… isn’t low heal?
The Mushle’s wounds begin to shrink before my eyes. Is this low restore?
It stops, and the light vanishes before the wounds are completely recovered, but they’ve been healed to the point where it doesn’t look unrecoverable anymore.
{Wow… good job. I didn’t even think of that.}
But it seems my praise came too early. A deep ache runs through the very core of our body, and we topple over, unmoving.
Ah, we’re out of mana.
{Good job, regardless. It should be fine now.}
[No. He needs to eat. Out of food. Swallowed it during the fight.]
Ah, that’s what the goop in our mouth was.
{I don’t- nhh…}
I’m cut off by a deep pain in my head. So this is the effect of running out of mana?
{I don’t think we can do anything. We’re- ow ow ow… We’re barely managing to stay conscious right now. You need to free him, so he can get food himself.}
[But…]
{It’s the only way.}
With tremendous effort, Gloria reaches towards the restrains binding Mushthew, and with slight difficult, cuts them.
The ropes fall to the ground, leaving Mushthew unrestrained. He looks at us and tilts his head.
[Go… Go, you idiot…]
After a minute, he finally begins trotting of towards the entrance to the den. He looks back at us once, before pushing himself through the make-shift rock bars, and walking out of sight.
With that, Gloria stops focusing, losing consciousness, and mine goes with her.
Phew!
I promptly stop forcing my legs to carry me, and collapse into soft grass.
Ever since that Compy attacked, Gloria’s taken a keen interest in my magic. She’s even given up half of her time to me entirely so I can spend it training.
I’m not complaining of course, it’s been great. It’s still a bit hard to do it for long periods of time with the mana costs, but it’s been getting better. As our levels in certain magic types and spells within those types increase, the mana cost goes down. It’s only a very small amount, but it’ll add up over time.
What is annoying is how Gloria’s been making me shut us in our den with rock spike every night. I mean, it’s a bit more training, sure, and we got a level on tunneling from breaking ourselves out every morning, but it feels unnecessary. What do we have to be scared of? I doubt a Compy could take us out.
Well, it’s not like I really care that much. If it makes her feel better after what happened, I’ll oblige.
I think she’s been taking everything kinda hard. I don’t get it, but apparently she felt quite strongly about that Mushle.
Well, even if I don’t get it, I still hope it’s doing alright out there, for Gloria’s sake.