“Are you sure this is…even possible?!” Baturu almost shouted. She was holding a rope wrapped around one of the boulders at the top of the hill.
Ah, rope: Never leave home without it! The grappling hook was secured firmly to the rock, while the party members held the other end.
“If you can win by doing the impossible or the ridiculous, then it’s no trouble at all…,” Priestess said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, while she tugged on the knot to make sure it was firm.
High Elf Archer jabbed Goblin Slayer in the side with her elbow.
“Hrm,” he grunted.
“Couldn’t you teach her anything more helpful?” she said. Then she added grudgingly, “Granted, it’s a little late now.”
Goblin Slayer grunted again. “That is helpful, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” High Elf Archer knew that. She sighed in resignation, then chuckled (not without a note of fondness) and grabbed the rope. “Why not say something to her, too, then?”
There were Lizard Priest and Dwarf Shaman, prepared to the utmost. Across from them stood Silver Blaze, with Baturu beside her, looking anxious. The strangest thing was that Silver Blaze, the former prisoner, appeared to be the most vigorous of them all.
Goblin Slayer spent a moment in thought, then said, “I’ve heard deer can do this. Would it be difficult for centaurs?”
“…We’ll do this, all right!” Baturu exclaimed, freshly invigorated, practically baring her teeth. The message was clear: Don’t mock me.
Naturally, he hadn’t had the slightest malice in mind; he had meant only and exactly what he said. Still, no one could expect a centaur to stand by quietly when their kind was compared with deerfolk.
For her part, Silver Blaze laughed—“Ha-ha-ha!”—as if she was genuinely enjoying herself and held tight to the rope. “We’ll have to run as fast as we can, then.”
“Huh? Wait! Princess…?!”
“I haven’t run in days! I need to get practicing again!” She sounded like a child excited about her first game, and it brought a breath of relief from Priestess.
The rope was secure. The party was all together. And the other two…
They look like they’re going to be just fine.
Once she had double-checked everything, Priestess turned to Goblin Slayer and nodded.
“All right.” Goblin Slayer grasped the rope where it was secured at his own hip and braced his feet. “Anytime!”
At that, Dwarf Shaman scrambled up onto the boulder with his stubby arms and legs. He might have wished for a rock big enough for all of them to ride on, but you couldn’t have everything. Even if Lizard Priest had managed to fit his great bulk atop the stone, getting two centaurs up there would have been awfully tricky.
Gotta work with what yeh have, Dwarf Shaman thought. Then he slapped his palm down on the great rock and drank the very last drops of wine from his jug. “Ready to roll, Scaly!”
There at the figurative tail of the party, secured to the rope just like the rest of them, was Lizard Priest, who howled: “O my forbears who sleep under layers of rock, with all the time that has piled upon you, guide this object!”
The sound was like a landslide. Touched by Lizard Priest’s prayer, the great boulder that lay at the base of all these stones that had been piled up over countless ages buckled and crumbled under the vast weight of time. The obo became like a huge pile of pudding collapsing under its own weight. The rocks that made the tobacco stone, built up over so long, scattered in every direction, raising a cloud of dust. One stone smacked into another, cracking it, smashing it, sending it rolling away in some other direction.
To someone watching from a distance, it probably wouldn’t have looked that fast—but that was an illusion created by the size of the stones. If you were right there in the middle of it, you knew exactly how fast it was happening.
The hail of stones was like a storm; they were like great war hammers and terrible blades. If you were sucked into the maelstrom, you would be torn apart, battered to pieces; your life would be forfeit. And it was all happening much too fast to run away from…
“Come out, you gnomes, and let it go! Here it comes, look out below! Turn those buckets upside-down—empty all upon the ground!”
However, the adventurers, and the great boulder they were tied to, flew at an impossible speed. Yes, flew. It didn’t roll but shot straight downward, sliding along.
“Eep! Yikes, yikes, yikes!”
Priestess suddenly found herself kicking her legs, trying to hurry along with the rock. Of course, the footing was falling out from under her as she went; it was like pushing off the hillside and jumping. For indeed: The adventurers tied to the boulder were, like the boulder itself, under the influence of Dwarf Shaman’s Falling Control spell.
Priestess clung to her cap lest it fly away, focusing only on not tumbling.
This is a lot like…!
When they had skied down the snowy mountain or when they had ridden on the back of the sand manta.
Are we going to die here?!
This felt dangerous enough to bring the thought to her mind—which made it all the more striking when she heard the giggling of the unseen faeries.
Ah, but…I’m not so afraid.
Not so afraid as she had been when faced with the red dragon, or in the water town sewers, or on that very first adventure…
The thought somehow brought a smile to her face. Even if it was a smile strained with a certain amount of terror.
“Is…everyone…okay?!”
“Orcbolg…has to be the biggest idiot…!” High Elf Archer shouted back, which Priestess took to mean she was all right. Even with the tips of her long ears pressed firmly back against her head, the high elf still managed to look elegant as she slid along. Priestess couldn’t even picture her tumbling unceremoniously down the hill.
“Agh! Yipes! Argh!”
In contrast, the look on Baturu’s face could be summed up in one word: desperation. She was gritting her teeth—she was hardly used to climbing rocks, let alone sliding down them.
Then again, none of them was exactly used to this. How could they be? All the same, Baturu kept running—if she stopped, she would die. Anyhow, she had her friend, Silver Blaze, beside her. Baturu saw Priestess look at them, but she didn’t have the wherewithal to shout back. She settled for meeting the cleric’s eyes and nodding. That was enough for Priestess.
“Goblins…ahead!” Silver Blaze shouted at that moment. She saw the green shadows lurking along the path of the rolling stone. “Still plenty of them…!”
“It won’t be a problem!” Goblin Slayer called back.
The first enemy they made contact with was a goblin who had just happened to avoid slipping away in the earlier fighting. He had slid a short distance but—happily or unhappily—had managed to stop himself with his weapon. That, however, did not change the fate that awaited him.
“Hmph!”
“GROORGB?!?!”
As Goblin Slayer came hurtling down along with the boulder, he literally kicked the creature to his doom.
“GBBGR?! GBGBGRRROGB?!?!”
The monster slid down on a diagonal, breaking his bones, tearing his flesh, and shortly dying.
Nor was that goblin the unluckiest of them.
“GBBO?!”
“GOBOOB?!?! GBOGOBOGOB?!?!”
Several of the others became fodder for the hail of falling stones. Their death rattles didn’t even reach Goblin Slayer’s ears, for the great, ceaseless rumble drowned out their cries, the sounds of their flesh ripping and their bones shattering.
“Keep us going, dead ahead!” Goblin Slayer shouted. There went another one. It had tried to grab onto the rock in hopes of escaping. “If the rocks fall on us the moment we reach the bottom, this will all have been for nothing!” Gravel went pinging off the metal helmet. Elf or centaur ears could presumably pick up the individual clinks as the stones went flying around.
Priestess, likewise, felt rocks stinging her through her cap. She didn’t have the courage to look up.
“Just keep a close eye on how our rope’s doing!” Dwarf Shaman bellowed. “If it snaps, we’re done for!”
“Right…!” Priestess didn’t know whether he could hear her—she could barely hear herself or anyone else. They were all pushing as hard as they could. Trampling goblins, running along, thinking only of survival.
Priestess thought of her party members. She thought of them all going home together. She thought of her friends.
All those thoughts filled her head, so that she completely forgot about the sorcerer.