Chapter 12: The Bandit Queen and the Barricade

Grayfang Canyon was a grim, rocky scar carved into the earth. The entrance was blocked by a crude but effective-looking fortress. A twenty-foot-high wall of sharpened logs and scavenged metal stood before us, manned by bandits who looked as rough as the rocks around them.

"Halt!" one of them yelled down at us. "This is Graveljaw territory! Pay the toll or get filled with arrows!"

"We're adventurers on an official quest!" Kenta shouted back, trying to sound important. "Let us pass!"

A chorus of laughter answered him. "Adventurers? You look like a couple of lost kids! Get lost before you get hurt!"

Kenta turned to me with a smug look. "Time for Plan S."

"I hate that you call it that," I grumbled.

He performed his grand summoning, and once again, the earth trembled. The Snail King materialized behind us in all his colossal, slow-moving glory. The bandits on the wall, who had been laughing moments before, went dead silent.

<I... HAVE... ARRIVED,> the Snail King's voice boomed in our minds.

"Okay, big guy!" Kenta pointed at the fortress. "Full speed ahead! Smash that wall!"

<ACKNOWLEDGED.> The Snail King began his majestic, ponderous advance. He moved so slowly that one of the bandits on the wall had time to pull out a sketchbook and start drawing him. Another one started taking bets on which year he would arrive.

"Uh, any century now, Your Snailiness!" Kenta yelled encouragingly.

Just then, a new figure appeared on top of the wall. It was a woman with fiery red hair tied back in a messy ponytail and armor made of mismatched leather plates. She held a heavy, spiked mace in one hand and had an expression of pure, undiluted exasperation on her face.

"What in the blazes are you idiots doing?!" she yelled at her own men. "Stop gawking and fire your arrows!"

Her bandits, jolted into action, let loose a volley. The arrows soared through the air and plinked harmlessly off the Snail King's rock-hard shell. He didn't even seem to notice.

The red-haired woman slammed her mace against the wall in frustration. "Useless! All of you! Can't you see it's a diversion?" She squinted at us. "What's your game, kids?"

Before Kenta could answer, my LUCK stat decided to join the party.

The Snail King's slow, rhythmic advance, while not a threat in itself, was sending tiny, consistent vibrations through the ground. High above us, on the unstable canyon cliff-face, one of those vibrations was just enough to dislodge a single, precariously balanced pebble.

The pebble rolled, knocking into a slightly larger rock. This rock tumbled down, hitting a small ledge and causing a minor rockslide. This rockslide slammed into a much larger, unstable section of the cliff, which had been waiting for an excuse to fall for decades.

With a groan that echoed through the canyon, a massive chunk of the cliff-face broke away. It didn't fall on us. It didn't fall on the Snail King. It fell directly, and with pinpoint precision, onto the bandits' fortress.

The world became a chaotic mess of splintering wood, screeching metal, and panicked bandit yells. When the dust settled, the fortress was gone. In its place was a mountain of rubble. The bandits were scattered, groaning, and their leader was standing on the one small section of the wall that had miraculously survived, staring at the devastation with wide, disbelieving eyes.

The Snail King, having advanced a full three feet, finally reached the spot where the wall had been. <THE... BARRICADE... APPEARS... TO... BE... GONE. SHALL... I... PROCEED?>

The woman hopped down from the remnant of her wall and stalked over to us, her mace resting on her shoulder. "Okay," she said, looking from us to the Snail King and back to the crater where her base used to be. "I give up. Who are you people?"

"We're adventurers!" Kenta said proudly.

"No, you're a walking natural disaster," she corrected. She looked us up and down, a strange glint in her eye. "My name's Rina. I was the leader of this sorry lot." She jerked a thumb at her groaning ex-minions. "Frankly, I was getting tired of managing these morons. Your thing… whatever it is… is way more interesting. You got room for one more?"

Kenta and I exchanged a look. She was tough, she was clearly a capable fighter, and she seemed completely unfazed by our brand of chaos.

"Welcome to the party," I said with a sigh. "Try not to get hit by any meteors."