IWUAaDNW: Growth 3.9

Cirys and Samel left the wooden path about halfway through, each going in their own direction with their bows out; Cirys to the left, Samel to the right. Their feet fell into the sand deeper than their ankles, with the younger boy ending up buried almost to his knees, but they struggled through and kept moving away from the path. Their job was to weaken Atlas with arrows, then Samel would stand back while Cirys would close in with his spear. Gwen, Horzel and Nedagg were to distract Atlas in the meantime. Not a bad plan, there was something good to be said about simplicity, but it had several flaws, which I intended to demonstrate for her.

I moved Atlas’s body to their right flank, toward Samel and away from Cirys. I lowered his left legs, so that his heavy carapace was angled toward the boy, and in that position, moved to attack the melee attackers. From where they were, both Cirys and Samel were out of my range, so I would need to take out the adventuress and the tamer if I wanted to get to them. But then, if everything went according to my plan, I wouldn’t need to.

The boy fired his first shot. The arrow, tipped with some kind of bone head, flew true and hit Atlas. Unfortunately for him, his thin arms and short bow didn’t have half the power they needed to actually get through my beetle’s natural armor, and so the arrow just bounced off, leaving just a scratch in the chitin.

“Aw shit––fuck,” Cirys grumbled as he lowered his bow and tried to walk, knee-deep in sand. “I don’t have a shot! You’re in the way!”

Gwen and Horzel tried to step to the sides so he would have a good shot, but had to step back when the beetle’s antennae whipped at them both, keeping them contained in front of my boss and inside Cirys’ line of fire. Even though Atlas was taller than Gwen, never mind the much smaller Horzel, Cirys was still not going to shoot when there was the remote possibility that his friends might get hit.

Gwen cursed, and moved to attack, shield shining with mana. She met with Atlas' mandibles, which closed around the edges of her shield, and tried to hit my beetle in the face with her mace, but found herself getting lifted off the ground by Atlas' great strength instead. She winced as her arm got wrenched in an awkward position, then yelped when, with a flick of his neck, my boss sent her flying backward.

Then, it was me alone against Horzel. Another arrow bounced off my boss' carapace.

"This isn't working!" Samel called out.

I walked up to Horzel, who was frozen in terror. Nedagg stood in front of its tamer, trying to be menacing, but... well, I outweighed it by a significant factor. It tried to stand up on its hind legs to bite at my beetle's neck, but at its tallest, it was barely able to reach my beetle's underbelly. I bent Atlas' head down mandibles first and grabbed it by the head, applying just enough pressure to inform it that it was dead.

It didn't stop wiggling. Hm. That was awkward. Did it not understand the rules?

Gwen came to my rescue as she pushed herself up on her feet. "Horzel, make Nedagg stand down, it's been killed. Calm down, it's still Taylor."

The boy didn't answer right away, he instead watched his ant continue struggling for a moment. I gently put it down, which seemed to calm him down a bit. His eyes narrowed in concentration, and the ant, slowly, hesitatingly, stopped fighting and, once I released it, stepped to the side.

Gwen used that time to come back to Horzel's side, rolling her shoulders and hefting her mace as she did. "Okay, round two. Let's dance, big guy."

---

About a minute later, Gwen was trying to push her face up even as her hands plunged into the fine sand, all the while cursing, breathing and spitting out sand in equal proportions. Samel had run out of arrows. Horzel's shield had wound up somewhere in the sand, his dagger near the middle of the arena, and the boy himself was perched atop Atlas' head with a wild, disbelieving look on his face.

Cirys hadn't fired a single shot during that entire fight, and as he walked up to Gwen to help her up, he looked decidedly grouchy about that.

"So, that was a wash," he said.

"She knew what we were going to do," Gwen said. "We didn't know we had all this sand––if you'd been able to move at a wider angle..." At Cirys' frown, she shook her head. "I'm not blaming you. We didn't know, and this fucking sand!" She kicked the sand, or at least tried to. Cirys had to step in to help her, otherwise she would have fallen on her butt. "Thanks." Shaking her head, she finished, "Well, this sand basically sunk our plan."

I bent Atlas' head down so Horzel could climb off and rejoin his team. He went to Nedagg's side instead and checked it for injuries.

"We lost again," Samel said. "I hit every shot, but it didn't do anything."

The arena was sprinkled with little bone-tipped arrows. Atlas' shell was scratched here and there, but none of the scratches were even a quarter of an inch deep. Beetles had hard shells.