Salcis/Shahala Part 3
Hi all! This is the finale of Salcis/Shahala’s introduction! Again under a read-more to keep my players from getting spoiled. Please ask questions and I’ll rant about them!
-Mod Mom Friend
After managing to ward off the Coleoptids and get them out of the dome, Salcis took the rest of the day to pay respects to the dead and recover emotionally from having buried just about everyone he knew. Elekas was buried in front of their house, a structure he’d built himself, and Salcis stood vigil at the grave until the moon was high in the sky. And as he knelt at the grave, he looked at the ring that Elekas had given him, and was struck by a jolt of fear. What if the Mutaphraen deteriorated his memory so badly that he didn’t remember Elekas?
Well, he wouldn’t let it.
That evening, as the moon was high, Elekas knelt, with the holy symbol in his hands and the ring balancing atop it, and whispered to himself. “I am Salcis, and I live for Elekas. I live because he is the love of my life, and he gave himself for me. I will always love him. I will never forget him.” His tears flowed, dripping onto the holy symbol and his ring, but he continued repeating the words, over and over again until the anxiety diminished.
The next morning was a Shahala morning, so after a quick braiding of the hair, Shahala stood, shouldered her pack, and moved around what was left of the town. It wasn’t viable anymore--many of the buildings had fallen to the Coleoptids--so as much as it broke her heart, Shahala had to loot what was left. Hopefully she’d find something she could use. And though there weren’t many resources, the dome would at least hold for a little bit longer. It was severely weakened, but it would hold until Shahala figured out her next move.
Shahala’s first move was to do what she did best--scavenge. Putting emotion out of her mind, completely ignoring everything, she reverted into her survival instincts. Run. Stop. Look. Grab. Look. Run. There was little danger of Coleoptids at this point, but Shahala was not about to take another risk. Soon, she’d gathered a large assortment of gears, springs, pipes, and various other materials that he’d watched Elekas put together into weapons innumerable times. She hid those, and then grabbed a new weapon (Shahala had sworn that she’d never touch the other one again), ready to practice fighting against the Coleoptids. They had to have some weakness, and she needed to find out what it was.
Already, Shahala knew that the Coleoptids were weak to attacks to their sensitive underbellies, but there had to be something else she could do. Some experimentation showed that the weapon didn’t matter--the mace she was using worked about the same as the sword in effectiveness. But after grabbing her holy symbol as a newfound nervous tic, she managed to cast a spell. It shot a heavenly flame that caused the Coleoptid to let out an unearthly scream and crumple to the ground. Somehow, that didn’t exhaust her--she felt absolutely ready to do it again, and after some more experimentation, she learned it wasn’t strong enough to destroy a Coleoptid on its own, but it at least incapacitated them severely. With a little experimentation, Shahala learned that just about anything with divine energy had the same effect, but she could only cast so many spells before she became faint, something that could not happen around the Coleoptids. So...there had to be another alternative.
Shahala headed back to her house, and looked through everything she’d managed to scavenge. Lots of gears, some pipes. A spring, a few potentially useful metal pieces...yes, these would do nicely. She just had to see if this would work. Night started to fall outside as Shahala forced the pieces together into something that she knew would work--and eventually, after hours of work, she had something that resembled a large-ish gun. She’d enhanced the spring to coil tightly enough to circumvent the need for a propellant, so it could push something out of the gun’s barrel at a decent speed. Experimentally loading a gear into it, she shot, and with a clang, the gear flew out and shot into nearby wood so quickly that it stuck in. Perfect. Time to get sleep and see if the next part of her plan was viable.
The next morning, Salcis let his hair down and immediately started experimenting with some of the many glass jars that Elekas had in their home. Hopefully, if he tried hard enough, they could hold some of his radiant spells. Time for try one. He tried to channel a holy flame into one of the jars. It held for a moment, rapidly expanded...and the glass shattered, providing him with a few shallow but bloody cuts. But after a few tries, Salcis had about four jars with the flames trapped within, being fed by holy magic. These would be perfect. The added volatility of the contained flame would make the damage much greater, theoretically, but there was only one way to test.
Salcis ran out of the dome, gun hoisted over his shoulder and jars of fire attached to his belt, and searched, hoping, for once in his life, to be attacked by a swarm of Coleopti. And sure enough, he found a swarm fairly close to the town. Shoving his arm down the gun to load it, Salcis prepared. He gently dropped one of the jars in, and took aim. When the first Coleoptid noticed him, he shot, and it worked better than expected. The jar exploded, the area lighting up with beautiful, heavenly flames. The air filled with the sound of screams, screams that sounded too human to be coming from insects, and the few Coleopti that survived fled. Salcis looked at the scene before him with satisfaction. He’d travel, help humans avoid being hurt by the Coleoptids. He’d be able to do it.
“I’m going to do it, Faeli. This is for you. I hope...I hope I can help make you proud.”
