16) Losing ground [ When the circle gets all broken ]

  Now it wasn’t that I trusted the four elite Ratling to keep their word and stay out of the fight… It was more than I couldn’t really do anything else with them right at that moment, with the two Lizards already up in my outer corridor. Along with a horde of Ratlings coming up the shaft from the drains right behind the reptiles.

  While trusting the elite Ratling, or trusting the Air Fish to be able to stop them, might mean letting the four invaders jump in on the fight I already had on hand, at even worse odds... what else was I going to do?

  Anything other than setting the useless Fish to guard the Elites would mean diverting my more useful forces off of the two Lizards. I was already sending the Fire Snail and Caesar from the library out to the top of the stairs to hold that checkpoint in case anything tried to rush the steps to the upper level of my Domain.

  Because I been so focused on dealing with the four Elite Ratmen, I had been surprised by how quickly the other two Lizards had rushed up the shaft from the drainage tunnels. In fact, the reptiles had moved upward so quickly that they had also surprised their Ratling riders. Both of whom had toppled off the Lizard’s backs before they had even started up the shaft.

  Sadly, many of the other Ratlings, all under the direct control of the Tamer, as a group, had jerked into motion at the same time as the Lizards. The mass of them had begun to race up the shaft right behind the reptiles. The rushing horde had been climbing up each other as much as the slots in the wall and shaft that served as rungs for climbing.

  The first Lizard out of the hole had managed to tackle the Air Hawk before the bird could take flight, while the second reptile had nearly caught Viola in its jaws before the Fairy had darted out of its reach with a startled yelp.

  Stopping just short of the ceiling, the Fairy yelled. “Fell! I need more Summons!”

  I send a deliberate thought her way, -On it.- even as I tried something new.

  Instead of letting my Summoning circle appear on the floor, which it had always done in the past, I pulled the circle up on the ceiling directly above the top of the Ratling filled shaft.

  The Skeleton emerged upside down from the orangish red circle, which had a dark center. Not a black one, mind you, just… Dark. Significantly Dark.

  My Summons emerged more or less slowly, until my bony servant’s toe bones cleared the circle, then it went tumbling down, already clawing at the Ratling down below it.

  I figured if the Skeleton could stand up to getting plowed by the Boar for all that time, then getting dropped on a bunch of lightweight Ratlings wasn’t going to hurt it that much. But for the Ratling getting body slammed by a clawing, grabbing, and biting undead Summons might cause the ones on the top of the shaft to lose their grips and fall.

  Hopefully, taking the ones below them down as well.

  If nothing else, the Skeleton might at least tie up the Ratling at the top of the Shaft for a moment until I could get back to them.

  I had also just found out that having my Summoning circles appear on the floor had just been the default. I could Summon from the ceiling, possibly walls… Who knows, I might even be able to have my circles appear on the skins of my other Summons.

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  Or inside them, since I could, in fact, see inside my own Summons along with everything else inside my Domain.

  Hrmmm… That’s right, I can do that, can’t I?

  Nope. I can’t see inside the Lizards, the Ratling, or the Boar… and I’m getting distracted. I need to give the fight my full attention.

  The idea of a swarm of Dire Roaches flying out of the Undine's mouth mid fight as something to work on some other time.

  I began to Summon the Undine behind the rear end of the Lizard, which had just managed to lunge forward to catch the Air Hawk again after my Summons had pulled free of the reptile's grip with Air Burst. But instead, the other Lizard, its eyes burning green, snorted as it twisted back from preparing to jump up at Viola to reach out and drag its claw across the edge of my Summoning Circle with Nemo only halfway out of it.

  ...oh.

  Interrupting a Summoning like that was a thing. Good to know. It would have been even better if I had known that was something people could decide to do before I had gotten into this fight.

  When I had time, I was going to have to figure out all the tactics, dirty tricks, and counters Summoner’s might need to deal with. But right now…

  The Spider, which had been making its way along the ceiling, twisted in the air as it dropped down on the Lizard that had just broken my Summoning circle, at the same time a swarm of Dire Roaches flew pass both of the Lizards to descend on the Ratling inside he shaft which were starting to struggle with the Skeleton after it’s impact had managed to take the whole mess of them a few feet down the shaft.

  This had been due to a few of the Ratlings losing their grips on the rungs and the wall. But even as they had started to fall, the rat men below them had, all at one, begun bracing each other with an unnatural level of coordination that they could only be pulling off by their Tamer controlling all of them at once.

  Hrmmm… That has to be costing the Goblin something, but I don’t know what. But he can’t keep his Tamed working together like that up forever. And trying to do so with the addition of fourteen large, black, spiky shelled Dire Roaches all over his minions was only going make it harder for him.

  I hoped.

  Checking across the room, I saw all four of the knives the Elite Ratling had dropped to the floor were now floating in the air, slowly rotating around the Air Fish. Even as they slowly circled the Summons, all four of the sharp points of the weapons stayed steadily aimed at the Elites.

  And the Air Fish was turned to one side with a tilt to its body so it could look down at the Ratmen with a single eyed glare… As the Ratmen looked everywhere, anywhere, other than back at the Air Fish.

  I let my mind note three things before I got back to my other problems.

  …Air Float can work on things other than the user of the Ability.

  …I could have been floating things around this entire time.

  ...I was so glad I had bothered to Level up that most excellent Fish.

  Back to the fight… and the issues

  Issue. The Air Hawk had gone poof as the Lizard’s jaws closed around the bird with an audible crunch.

  Solution, I began Resummoning the Hawk to drop out of the ceiling above the stairs, where none of the Tamer’s force could disrupt it.

  Issue. Trying to Summon the Undine again brought the information from my Innate Knowledge that the Totem for it was in a disrupted state since its Summoning had been interrupted.

  Solution. Let the Totem settle down again by not trying to push it, since that could crack a Totem Core. And while that wasn’t an issue for me since I didn’t have physical Totem Cores for my Summons due to my Class creating something I guess I could call a spiritual Totem, I still couldn’t call Nemo up for the moment.

  In addition, since the Undine’s Totem Core was sort of merged with my own Core, trying to force the Undine summons at the moment might mean damaging my own Core. Or it might not. Neither my Innate Knowledge can tell me that, since my Class, Core Summoner, was something brand new and unique to me.

  I needed to kill these Lizards, while dealing with them being able to disrupt any Circle they can see, and reach.

  The Hawk, Undine, Salamander, Skeleton, and even the Spider that was being torn apart by the Lizard it had dropped onto as Viola slashed at the Reptile’s snout… All of them were out and in the fight, with only Caesar and the Fire Snail left to move off the steps and toss into the fight.

  And the Earth Snake, but I have another job for it where it’s lurking behind a thin wall of stone at the back of the top slot I had left in the wall of the shaft coming up from the drainage tunnel.

  After all, the Tamer will have to come up from that way at some point, and I wanted something free to greet him.

  I would just have to hope Torb was planning on joining the rest of us up here before his forces got a hold of my Core.