The ashes before Strife

Episode 7 : Stone and Bugs ; 3

Cayde Barbaten POV:
3 days later Ulter held an assembly in the guild standing atop the staircases wooden railing with Albert, I, and a brown-haired archer beside him.

"Thank you all for gathering here to combat the coming threat to Entrana." Ulter scanned the crowd with sadness knowing he'd be sending several people to their death

"A two-day carriage journey away in the plains of Thistle in the south, an ice attribute wyrm has made its nest right next to a red mantis underground swarm."

There was a flurry of mixed reactions from the crowd. Some where excited, some where nervous, while some acted as if it was old news.

"The scouts have all reported the same thing on the wyrm characteristics. It's got a long body that's roughly 50 meters long and 15 meters in width and most likely an adult with dark brown scales. Supposedly it's using an old underground cavern as its nest!"

Many muttered in fear at this information but the Fuden brothers looked to be taking this with no worry making me think they weren't taking it seriously enough

"I would like to introduce gold high ranking adventurers Eloy the arrow of fire and Incursik the battle demon who have both agreed to lead this adventure."

Many stared at me subjectively as I stepped forward alongside the archer and asked what right a child had to lead this, to answer them I briefly crushed them beneath my magic aura and they seemed to acknowledge me afterward.

Eloy was a regular human with brown hair and average looks, before speaking he politely cleared his throat readying to speak.

"I Eloy, alongside incursik promise to keep as many of you alive as possible during this. I know many of you have your own reason for doing this but please keep one thing in mind. We all want to be able to go home after this, so let's kill that overgrown snake and get our money's worth!" The crowd resounded at his simple speech making a good start.

We then all climbed into a row of wooden carriages waiting outside the hall ready to take us to the nests' entrance. I saw Albert and Ulter see us off outside making their worry for everyone visible on their faces as they talked about their concerns for the operation.

The carriage ride was silent as we had very little information to go from other than its location but the group I was with did exchange a few pleasantries on the way.

In total there were 43 people who ended up signing up for the subjugation including the haughty Fuden brothers and the son of Nallos who said it was his duty to help as a noble.

In the carriage, he had sat next to me and I gave him advice with his fire magic which he greatly appreciated, thinking it would be good if he owed me one I told him to stay close to me and away from Rory and Maarten as they're the most likely to run away.

As we neared the nest entrance into a dark cave we could all feel the strong colds bite making us hesitant to go in until Eloy in thick leather gear took the initiative to head in.

"Try not to get cold everyone!" He said acting brave. Quickly I followed after.

He and I stood close to the front expecting any small monsters that had been hiding in the nest to avoid the predators outside, we came across a few gooey crablike creatures that didn't have any pincers but gooey tentacles sprouted from their flaccid bodies they were called "crell seem to have already infested this place. Any good ideas to deal with them quietly incursik?"

"I can kill them easily if I make a type of grinder with my dark magic going forward. but I'll be depleted of mana if the cave goes on too long since we don't know its length."