City of Fallen Souls: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 3) by Jez Cajiao (fb2 epub reader .txt) 📕

in pain, then pushed up to stand on his rear feet, blowing his chest out and raising his crest in warning. The others hastily backed away from the clearly visible acid glands he pushed into view.

“Enough!” Tern snarled. “Both of you, leave it! Mattin, you’re an idiot, but you’ve got a point. We’ll cover your section, between us all, but you’ve got two hours. If you can’t make it work by then, you’ll give all your notes to Jaken, and you’ll get back on the line. Accept that, or we won’t help you.”

Two members of the clan started to snarl in protest before she hissed at them, her venom glands spraying the air where they crouched, a clear warning that she was tired of their shit.

“Fine!” the clan member who’d scratched Mattin snarled after a few seconds. “But he leaves his food here. If we have to do his work, we get his food!”

“Fine!” Mattin snapped back at the miserable excuse for a weasel. “And when I fix the shield, I’ll tell the elders how much you ‘helped’…” He bared his teeth, shifting to the edge of the small burrow they were all hidden in.

He stared out, the pulsing of the shield indicating when the S’barrr brushed against it in their eternal hunt for food. Mattin sniffed, then spat. The taste of the air was growing fouler by the second as too many creatures’ exhalations built up inside and poisoned what had once been their greatest strength, the magically purified air of the Lost City of Marauder.

“I can do this… I can…” he whispered to himself, looking over the lip of the burrow, and waiting until the nearest S’barrr moved away. Wasting no time, he dug his claws into the dirt, pulling himself forward as fast as he could. Sniffing the air and searching as he went, he drew the symbols he’d memorized over and over in his head as he waddled across the open space to the edge of the shield.

“Okay, I can do this. It’s not like I’m really doing anything heretical; I was just studying the patterns of the Shieldwall. The Elders will understand. If it works,” he muttered, pulling a sheet of Imbenim Steel free of his pouch, which he’d secreted away for just this chance, months ago. “They won’t kill me, not if I manage it… probably…” he whimpered as he laid it flat next to the port he’d uncovered.

The ports were everywhere around the outer ledge of the city, these ports. He’d always assumed they were just another part of the city, like the light globes and the wall tiles. They were simply things that were just ‘there’ in the background, until a few days ago. He’d seen the fractured plate that had been taken to Jaken, glowing and spitting, until it was removed from the port, before fading to black and becoming dead.

He thought he knew what it meant now, that it was a focal point for the shield. He’d examined the others he could find for the second ring, and found that they were all identical. That meant… he was sure… that if he could replicate it, he could fix the shield!

He’d stolen the Imbenim Steel plate from the Sanctified Stores, despite the knowledge that they’d kill him if they caught him, and now he was ready… just about.

He sat there on his haunches, rocking back and forward as he tried to build up the courage, his claw extended and his acid glands ready. He tried not to imagine what the Elders would do to him if he failed, and they found out about it.

Minutes passed as he sat, frozen in fear, until the rumble of the ground warned him of the approach of another S’barrr. He turned slowly, hoping the creature wouldn’t notice him, and began to shake.

His fear grew into bowel-loosening terror as the S’barrr stopped its endless wandering and pressed up against the shield, lighting the darkness with an aurora of blues and whites as the energy crackled, resisting the creatures attempts to pass through… for now.

The shield wouldn’t hold. He knew that. The horrible creatures still got in from time to time, stubbornly pressing their way through and melting their own skin off in the attempt. Entry left them vulnerable to the Sect of War, who protected the Holy Lost City, but never without Xon’dike losses. And there were no Warriors here…

The S’barrr hissed in pleasure at finding him and pushed harder, its chitinous exterior sliding back to expose the jagged teeth of its maw in its frenzy. Its rear legs skittered and gouged lines in the stone of the cavern as it worked.

“Mattin!” Tern hissed, and he blinked, shaking himself free of the instinctive reaction to look over at her, her beautiful eyes staring out over the lip of an old burrow nearby.

“What…what are you…” he started to ask, terrified of the S’barrr so close, and horrified that she’d seen his loss of control, the cause of the stench filling the air around him.

“Do it!” she snarled, her head poking over the rim again to glare at him. “I gave you this chance, Mattin, and by the Holy Waters, if you don’t use it, I’ll never mate with you, I swear!”

“You’d mate… with me?” he whimpered, and she growled.

“Not if you don’t fix that shield, I won’t!”

He swallowed hard, turning back to the steel plate. Blanking the skittering and hissing noises of the S’barrr out, he lightly touched one shaking claw tip to the smooth metal surface, drew in a steadying breath, and began to draw. He etched the outline first, inscribing the lines slowly and ensuring they were all correct, before letting acid drip from his claw tips to sear deeper into the plate and create the paths. It seemed to take forever, but after a measure of time he would never be able to remember later, it was done, and he took out the final component.

He heard a gasp from Tern, as he slowly, oh