Esmie the Calamity Chapter 29

Fluff Link. Also, reminder that this story is actually free for anyone to read on fluff!

The muscular orb doggos that were now full of dungeon trap darts rolled into the ruined cavern and hit the rising skeletons like flailing, runaway bowling balls. They even made the big clattering sound when you hit the pins!

Their arrival was almost instantly carnage as the two factions of angry monsters decided that the other guy was for sure an asshole who needed to be stabbed or monched. I saw one skeleton get chomped by one of the two-legged orb-dogs, then thrown up all the way to hit the stone ceiling. Snapped bones and stone dust rained down on the battle, dusting my hair and fur.

An odd, gentle pain dragged my attention down to my feet. Huh? Oh! The skeleton I poured potion gunk all over was trying to nibble my toes. Its jaw was sorta melted though, so it couldn’t actually bite with enough force to hurt me.

“Excuse me, I don’t just let any random dude suck on my toes!” I squealed, and with my boot I stomped down, crushing the skull.

“I was a wooomaann…” the freed soul whispered as it left the body of the undead skeleton.

I blinked. “Oh, I’m sorry. It was hard to tell because of, you know, the lack of flesh.”

The soul was almost gone, but it managed one final sentence before it faded. “Thaaat’s faaair…”

I was still smiling, feeling good about my little chat with the soul, when a flying femur smacked me in the face. My health instantly dove down to half, and I staggered.

“Ow!” I complained, and when I looked up and saw an impending doggo, I squeaked and tried to scramble out of the way.

The orbular death puppy hit me at speed, and I flew like a starfish/frisbee hybrid until I slammed painfully into a pillar. Everything in my body hurt, and my health bar was complaining so loud. Beep beep beep, you’re low health. No shit, silly, I could feel how bad it was!

Gasping for breath, I shifted slowly, wincing as my head did a mega spinny. Oh dear. My head wasn’t supposed to be squishy. Flopping one hand down onto the dusty stone, I groaned as I tried to push myself up. Sadly, because I was so damn dizzy, I only managed to lever myself up until I fell back into a sitting position.

Blinking blearily, I tried to figure out what was going on around me. Pure Grade A craziness was what was happening. More and more skeletons were crawling out of the ground, and things were becoming very frantic as the doggos attempted to kill them all. The sound wasn’t very pleasant, either. All the skeletons were sort of rasping and groaning, while the meat-doggos were growling and howling and thrashing around. What a huge mess.

“Chat, I think I am in a little trouble,” I said, searching around on my body for anything that could help. Most of my potions were broken, but I had one that I put in a special pouch because it was actually meant to break — just, you know, when I wanted it to break.

Holding it up, I declared weakly, “Time for acid,” and threw the brittle clay potion out into the churning carnage. It bounced off the skull of a skeleton and flew straight up into the air.

I just sighed. Figures that the one time I wanted a potion vial to break, it didn’t.

Pantspeon: ???
Dribeer: Wow. Unluckiest streamer ever.

My chat and I all watched as the potion spun up into the air. Then, it reminded us that this was a hyper-realistic VRMMO and not an old tab-target one, because it began to fall.

The skeleton I hit with it initially had tried to turn around to crawl towards me, but it was helpless against the tide of its friends. Its efforts did keep it in vaguely the same place, though, and the potion hit its skull again and shattered. Fizzing, gassy green liquid sprayed in all directions, hitting all the monsters in the mosh-pit with at least a handful of droplets. They all turned towards me with rage burning in their eyes… except one.

One singular skeleton didn’t get hit by the potion because it was shielded by one of the meat orbs, so it didn’t get the memo. Jaw clacking, it finally managed to sink its teeth into the larger monster. The doggo bellowed with pained anger and spun, swiping with one heavily clawed paw. It hit like six of the skeletons, who, after taking much more damage from the claws than they did from the acid, returned their attention to the orb.

Chaos erupted again as wild swings from skeletons and monsters went wide, hit more monsters, and soon only two partially crushed skeletons were trying to attack me.

Dribeer: Luckiest streamer ever.
Opbroment: There’s a club behind you. Blunt damage is good against skeletons.

Seeing the chat message, I spun to look for the weapon. I was totally helpless, surprise surprise, so those skeletons were still a biiit of a problem. A club would absolutely help me right then.

There! I saw what chat was talking about in a small cluster of mushrooms off at the side of the large cavern and wobbled excitedly to my feet. My head was less spinny, so soon I was walking properly, then running. The club was an old leg from either a table or a big chair, which had metal banding wrapped around the thick end. It was kinda heavy, but it would probably do the trick. The skeletons were hurt, and they were slow because their busted legs meant they had to crawl. I could totally take them on!

I turned to leave, then stopped and looked back to the cluster of mushrooms where the club had been. They were mostly white, but the caps had little red speckles and dark red frondy bits on the underside. To me, they looked special — and I was absolutely an expert, for sure. It would be silly not to listen to the advice of an expert in mushroomology, so reaching back down and I grabbed like fifteen of them. They got quickly shoved into the little satchel that was strapped tightly to my back, and then I was off, feeling very happy with myself.

Warily, I walked back towards the rasping skeletons and waved my new weapon at them. “Get back, sillies. I’m armed now!”

The skeletons didn’t care. I guess I had to bash their souls out of them before they could talk?

One tried to swipe at me with its claw-like bony hands, but I dodged completely, awesomely, amazingly, effortlessly out of the way.

xX_KoolKaT_Xx: Oh my god. Did you hear the squeak she made? The way her arms flailed around too! So cute.

“I did not squeak!” I complained, staring up at the camera. Damned chat was ruining my cool, expert persona!

Another swipe from a skeleton just barely missed my unprotected thighs while I was arguing with chat, so I very pointedly ignored them and focused on the fight. I could not let my precious squish get hurt!

Since I was grumpy, I forgot to worry about things like proper clubbing form, or the right place to hit the skeleton, and just took a big overhead swing. I was shocked when the metal banding of the club impacted the skeleton’s skull with a loud crack. Shards of bone went flying everywhere, and gross dusty stuff poofed out to cover everything.

Coughing, I stumbled back and blinked to clear my eyes. Ew! Brain dust!

Through the tears, I sighted on my next mighty foe, the other skeleton-torso that was crawling towards me. “Alright mister. Your buddy here just poofed dust all over me, then dipped without even saying goodbye. So rude. Since I already re-killed him, I’m gonna—”

The skeleton ignored my monologue and stopped to throw a rock vaguely in my direction. This time, my expert dodgingness wasn’t enough, and it hit my fingers where they were wrapped tightly around my club.

Hissing, I dropped the club and began to dance around, cradling my poor, hurting fingers. “Ow, ow, ow! So rude!”

ShioriSlide: Esmie! The club! Don’t let it get the club!

Waving my finger around like it would help at all — spoiler, it didn’t — smiled at the camera. “Shiori! You’re still watching!”

ShioriSlide: Yes, cutie. GET THE CLUB.

The club? Wha— oh! My attention rocketed back into the moment, and I searched frantically for my weapon.

I saw it pretty quickly. The problem was… the skeleton had it, and it was coming towards my shins.

“Eeek! Fudge!” I squealed, shuffling awkwardly backwards to get out of reach. “You stole my club?”

This. Was. An. Outrage.

I was angry now, and that made me forget about being scared.

“That’s mine!” I shouted, grabbing for it.

To the surprise of me and my chat, I actually got my fingers around the big bashy end. So, naturally, I yanked on it, trying to get it back. The skeleton had zero intention of letting me just take it, and held on as tight as it could. It should’ve held on to its elbow too, because it gave way before the skeleton’s grip did. There was an awful, dry, soft ripping sound, and I fell backwards onto my squish with a thump.

In my lap, I now had my club, and the skeleton’s arm. What the heck? Staring at it, I absentmindedly shook the hand, then laughed at myself and picked it up by the wrist. Now I had two clubs!

Dual wielding them, I stumbled back to my feet and raising both of them, I swung down hard.

Crunch.

Breathing heavily, I threw the arm away and used the club to hold me upright while I looked back towards the main battle. It was dying down, now. Two of the doggos were dead, and the last one was looking very hurt. Meanwhile, there were shattered and chewed bones scattered like, everywhere. It was total carnage.

A little light in the corner of my vision kept blinking, which I only noticed now that I had a chance to stop and think. What the heck was tha—

“Oh, wow!” I gasped.

It was my combat notifications! I had so many kill credits. Like, because I hit most of the monsters with acid, every kill they got against each other counted as a kill by me!

I started laughing, then when chat got confused, I made it visible in the stream.

ShortAndStout: I have never seen anyone flail aimlessly into success like you just did. Holy crap.
ShioriSlide: Wait til there’s only one left then go in for the kill! You got this, Esmie!

If Shiori could believe in me, then I could definitely do this! I was going to win the big skeleton brawl!