B 3 C 14: WELL, THAT WAS A BLAST
Linti pauses our lightning-quick return, “Stop doing that,” she orders. I catch a moment’s reprieve from the furious pain of electricity coursing through my entire being.
Confused, I ask, “What?” I try not to sound huffy as I gasp and pant for air.
Her answer is almost humorous, “Thinking friendly thoughts.”
Trying to stifle a giggle, I politely point out, “Sorry, the other alternative is thinking about how we’re going to go beat up your family, and I don’t have a lot of nonlethal options, even fewer with my legs blown to pieces.”
Linti retorts, “Do I look like I even know the words non lethal?” This actually causes me to laugh, which I immediately regret. My regret is twofold, one, the pain that lances up and down inside my rib cage from the lingering lightning burn, two, I don’t want to have insulted Linti any more than I already have.
Linti cocks an eyebrow at me as a result of my laugh. Her single raised brow gives her countenance a menacing appearance that screams of the danger belied by her gorgeous face. The difference in size between her eyes with a raised brow and squinted eye is almost cartoonish in nature. I’m about to start apologizing when she pulls me closer to her chest and resumes our lightning-fueled journey. I can’t even scream in pain since I’m not sure I even have lungs or a throat as a mingled bolt of lightning.
When we are about to arrive at the tribe’s village, I can see the carnage that resulted from Mata’s visit in the distance. There’s smoldering wreckage of the huts smoking in the distance, but thankfully no signs of forest fire. I’m honestly surprised Mat hasn’t just set the jungle alight to smoke me out. Does he hold the ancient flora in the same high regard that I do? Should I stop caring if so? Hm, no. I don’t need to make myself the opposite of Mat. Maybe he knows something I don’t. Or maybe he hasn’t realized that the smoke might be able to kill me even if the fire itself can’t. I’m not sure how much he knows about my abilities, other than the fact that I returned from adventures in the Fire Biome. He could have checked out my stats panel in our mind’s eye interfaces at any time. Oh, that thought is a bit sickening.
As a new pain grips the center of my chest, I feel like I’m going to vomit lightning all over Linti when we suddenly come to a halt at the entrance of a marshy cave that angles down into the soil. This must be The Hollow. It’s a bit deeper and more imposing than I thought it would be when Linti described it as just a few spawns of giant insects. I hope her family can handle themselves, especially while their brains are addled from whatever Mat did.
As soon as this is all over, I need to lay down and let myself have a panic attack that I’ve been putting off. The longer I fight it off, the exponentially stronger and longer the panic will be. I can’t walk, or even realistically move around in tunnel spaces, so I’m not sure how much help I’ll be to Linti at the moment, especially since she has to carry me with at least one arm to even bring me along. Hm, but that arm could still be useful to her.
Resolving to loan Linti the tattoo, I state, “Linti, I’m going to give you a magic item. I’d like it back after this is over. I’d also like to beg you to be careful who you use it on, as the tendrils cause as much pain as a jellyfish sting. Not only that, but they deal enough damage to derez some weaker creatures instantly. All you have to do is touch the ink droplet to your left hand, and hopefully the magic should apply itself instantly. Since you have to carry my lame butt around, at least you’ll still be able to use the tendrils even if not the whole arm I’m perched in.”
The ground trembles, seemingly releasing the fury of a spanked newborn infant, as if the world itself were crying out in its first breaths. The way below is suddenly replaced by a black featureless expanse.
Linti begins to exclaim, “My, my family!” Yet only moments later, the tunnel below slides back into view, as if it had just casually moved aside momentarily to let a stranger pass on a sidewalk.
We exchange panicked glances, then steel our resolve as Linti enters the now-returned tunnel. The thunderous din of thousands of appendages striking ground, and buzzing wings flitting in the air reaches our ears.
Squinting towards the Lightning Hunter, I quip, “I thought you said there were just a few giant insect spawns?”
Linti retorts, “There were. Something’s wrong. The Hollow has never moved before. Let alone this.” She indicates further down where the sound emanates from.
I withdraw the tattoo needle from my inventory and hold it for Linti to inspect. She takes only a moment’s consideration before touching it to her left hand. I can veritably feel the power course along the arm she holds me aloft with as the tendrils wind and lace their way up her arm as a waveform tattoo.
Having been told what the item does, Linti manifests the tendrils and takes a few curious cracks with them, whipping the edge of their range. She nods appreciatively, commenting, “Huh, handy, that.”
I wisecrack, “And nowhere near as traumatic as the first time I used them.” Linti raises an eyebrow in response, but that’s a story for another time.
The tunnels almost seem to be breathing, pulsing, thrumming with a power of their own. Linti, Lightning Hunter, looks scared for the first time. I realize it isn’t fear for our safety, but fear for those she calls kin, her family. We both know they’re still alive, they haven’t derezzed or we’d have lost access to their stats panels. Linti looks lost in panic, frantic that there’s the sound of an army worth of creatures between us and her family.
I try to offer some additional solace, “Blossom, you’re her mentor, right? You’ll just have to trust that you did a good enough job teaching her for now.”
She tries to rebut, “Well, yes but–”
I interrupt Linti only by sharing a stern gaze. Her face is a picture of despair for a moment until she catches my gaze, then she nods in resolution. The panic drips away from her face as her expression softens towards me for only a moment. After the moment passes, her countenance is resolute once more, determined. Thankfully it seems my minor effort was enough to snap her out of her reverie.
Linti’s brow is furrowed as she passes intersection after intersection, shaking her head as if something is incredibly wrong. Further in, it seems like the tunnel is spewing up the guts of the earth. The tunnel structure itself seems to squeeze a mudslide through itself like blood pumping through a vein. Linti nearly engages her lightning ride to pass through it but I shake my head and conjure a wall of stone from my inventory. We maintain our purchase behind it as the mud passes around us.
Linti begins to ask, “What was that!? And what is this? There were never this many branches, there certainly wasn’t any of that!” That refers to the mudslide that passed us by, and this refers to my wall of stone.
I shake my head and shrug in response to the first question, as for the second, “The stone was me, using my inventory magic. It took a fair bit out of my mana reserves, which aren’t recuperating right now because Lil is stuck in my inventory. I’m sorry I couldn’t talk when you first asked. I suffer from panic attacks, and a few other things. I couldn’t get the words out to explain what happened to Lil.”
Linti looks concerned, “How many more times can you do that?”
Thinking carefully, I respond, “A few, depending on what exactly we need. I’ll try to limit my mana usage. I can do more if you leave me behind to crawl after you. I can leech the warmth from the air to regenerate mana, but I’m afraid I could hurt, freeze, or kill you if I did it while you were within arm’s reach.” The truth is, I’ve been passively cooling the air in front of us as we run to try to at least keep up with the energy drain my inventory is currently causing with Lil stuck in it.
Linti only lets out a tch in response as she continues carrying me hurriedly down the tunnels. We finally spot what was making the horrid stampeding noises. Endless droves of monstrous ants, mosquitoes, and what I assume are ticks. Each one is the size of a rhinoceros. I’m honestly more frightened of them than I was a warren full of fire-breathing crag beasts. Linti, however, simply engages her lightning ride to pass through each of them in her path. We arc from one creature to the next in a dazzling display of rapid rebounding. Each carapace we slam into is met with a shower of sparks, and is left behind as a sizzling, smoldering hole in the side of whichever insect we passed through. Their exoskeletons crack and burn under the ferocity of Linti’s lightning lunge. I’m left with the feedback of every impact, the impulse of every electron that vibrates more rapidly than my body should be able to handle. The pain of each shockwave caused by every impact is nearly as intense as the excruciation of becoming pure electricity. My neurons can’t even fire because they’re all constantly on fire. No thoughts feel like they can spark in my mind when all my synapses are alight with jolting voltage.
Linti suddenly pauses, and though we’ve cleared hundreds of creatures behind us, they’re already swarming in droves to surround her, us. I plead, “Linti, retreat to the aft of this cavern, please, then stand behind me, even better if you stand a few dozen paces back. Make sure to warn me if you spy any of your family where I’m aiming.”
Linti eyes me warily, trying to suss out my intent. Telling a hunter to retreat, and to stand behind my own crippled form is probably a massive offense. She looks as if I’ve slapped her in the face, but I can’t care about either of our feelings at the moment. I can tell that I’m ruining any chance at friendship the more we interact, but thankfully it seems we’ve built up at least some trust.
Linti zips us rearward and places me at the rear of the cavern, laying me prone facing towards the oncoming horde. She dashes back slightly and I can feel her predatory gaze peering out over the top of me from behind. She’s doing exactly as I requested, so I’d better get to work.
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I whisper into my inventory, “Sorry Lil buddy, gotta use up my mana again. I swear I’ll get you out of there as soon as I can. I love you, please forgive me for taking so long.”
Waiting as long as I can muster, I conjure a massive flash freeze storm to both top off my mana, as well as to buy additional time for my plan. The approaching insects have to tunnel through the frozen bodies of their own front line as I begin conjuring an Umbral Shot worth all fourteen hundred of my mana. The exponential nature of my space skill means I’m able to summon hundreds, maybe a thousand or more umbral duplicates of a simple object such as a spear. I flood the cavern with what amounts to a gray glowing spike wall, its velocity temporarily paused. Once it’s fully conjured, as I want to be sure there are no gaps, I release every spear with as much forward velocity as I can muster.
I immediately begin crawling forward after the spike wall to try to recuperate some mana from the warm bodies that fall to its deadly path before they derez. Linti isn’t patient enough for me to make the hopping, wing-flapping crawl, so she scoops me up as she dashes from behind. I sigh since I can’t risk drawing all the heat from the atmosphere in a massive Flash Freeze Storm while being carried, so I settle for holding a hand out to brush the wireframes of the insects, each one I come into contact with I draw in as much energy as I’m capable of. On the way through, Linti at least brings me close enough to claim all of the loot from that particular insect horde. Based on the sounds coming from further ahead in The Hollow, there are more hordes awaiting us. How far in could her family have gotten?
The Lightning Hunter seems to be conserving mana, utilizing the tendrils from the tattoo I’d loaned. As for her mana, she’s trying to regenerate it herself as well by the time we come to another oblong cavern that widens ahead of us. Of course it’s filled with insects. Linti wades directly through them, carving a path of destruction, leaving carnage in her wake, before I can warn her. There are cavities in the ceiling, and each seem to spew an endless wave of monstrous insectoid abominations to cut off our retreat.
Linti whirls like a dervish. After a few bolts from her crossbow, she abandons it entirely to its holster and simply claws, slashes with tendrils, and gnashes with fangs on her way through everything that approaches. She still doesn’t stem the tide, especially not from above, so I work to conjure Freezing Frost Shields above in as many angles as I can muster. The cold, hard air weighs down on me as it fends off attacks of the flighted insects from above.
While being supported at the small of my back by Linti’s arm, I feel like the swooning individual in distress on the covers of trashy romantic action novels. It doesn’t help that she’s the perfect figure of action hero launching attack after attack at waves of foes. I wish Lil were here, even if they wanted to make fun of me for my in-distress appearance.
There’s a static crackle in my thinkspace, then I hear, “I’m here buddy, I finally got through! Yeah, you’re totes the damsel-in-distress from those images you were thinking about, hehe. But, um, it looks super bad out there. I think I’m like, supercharged on your mana at this point. Should I try breaking out of your inventory on my own?”
I scratch my chin, rubbing my thumb along the base of my bottom lip as I mutter aloud, “It could work, maybe, but it might irrevocably damage one or the other, or both of us. I don’t feel in danger, but I’d rather go into energy debt than risk losing you, or losing my inventory magic, or both. Alright Lil, I’ll get you out of there myself.”
Lil begins to object, but it’s too late. I beg the system of our world for energy debt, which means my legs are going to take months to heal. Definitely not ideal. I could always shortcut the process with the red potion, but it may be the only one of its kind in existence based on Dehlia’s description. I’ll manage, one way or another. Now that Lil’s free from my inventory, my mana regeneration should be mostly back to normal. With it, I can risk using JT as my primary method of movement, since I recover more than I can use up with careful applications of Jettison-Thrust.
In fact, other than a throbbing pain that races back and forth from my left shoulder to my mandibular joint along that side of my face, I feel fairly good. Well, minus the fact that I can’t even feel the pain in my legs anymore, or feel my legs at all. Where did Lil go, anyway?
“Lil buddy?”
Linti gives me a curious look inbetween furious rakes of her claws at incoming insects. Then we both spy my draconic best pal. Lil’s right, they look supercharged on creamy-green-soul mana. It’s radiating out from them, threatening to flood the entire cavern. Lil looks to be in such discomfort that I worry they’re struggling to hold back an explosion. I can only think of a couple of ways for Lil to use up that much overflowing energy. The safest I think would be to layer up several self-tethers.
“Lil, were you riding my thoughts? Please buddy, try to self tether.”
Lil’s trembling, quaking, spherical form approximates a nod. Their form glows the muted gray of the umbral evolution as their silhouette extends into Lilagnewt. Their body still seems ready to virtually combust from the strain of holding in too much mana, so they adhere another layer of self-tether.
The silhouette that expands from Lilagnewt to Lildragni is a magnificent sight to behold. Such a regal dragon whose fins, spines, wings, and every other feature just scream majesty. As the silhouette drops, Lil’s new form takes up the entire tunnel they’d been standing in, and I half believe that their form would have expanded further if there was enough space. As is, they’re currently stuck. Even stuck, Lil’s new form is pure beauty to behold. Lil’s new scales are iridescent, a reflective sheen of purples and silvers and reds, all backed by an undercurrent of a mild green glow. Checking Lil’s stats page reveals a brand new skill, shapeshifting.
Lil must have felt, or seen the new skill as well, because their form undergoes a different sort of change. Not the silhouette of temporary forced evolution from mana tethers, no, something more subtle. A shrinking and reconfiguring of each of their body parts. The changes are so miniscule, but so rapid that one could almost succumb to change blindness if it weren’t for the massive differences in form from base dragon to the end result. Standing before me is a bare, androgynous human. No hair adorns their form save a shock atop their head slightly styled into a mohawk. The hair is a mixture of colors that contains my paint-bucket red, Teuila’s fiery copper, and Lu’s dark tresses. Even though I’m gawping, all of this happens in a mere instant.
Somehow I know that every pore on Lil’s new body breathes for them. Every inch of their form is capable of unleashing devastating breath attacks. I momentarily panic and try to direct Linti to once again retreat, this time behind my draconic companion. I receive another infuriated tch for my request, but Linti relents and risks using mana to ride lightning. Her movement takes us through the insect horde that surrounded us. I can tell that Lil’s senses inform them that we’ve safely made it to their rear. My heart flutters as I stare at my oldest companion, as I continue to gawp in awe.
Lil cheekily telepathically calls out, “See? What’d I tell ya buddy!? Twitterpated as soon as I’m on two legs!”
Their telepathic laughter belies how much raw power and fury they wield as they utter aloud, “Wrath of Godsbreath.” Suddenly fire explodes forth from them, cascading out every pore that isn’t facing our direction. Lil sweeps their hands back and forth, and cranes their neck side to side while looking towards the ceiling. Everything that comes into contact with Lil’s new flames is incinerated in an instant. I don’t even hear the sounds of derezzing over the roar of flames spewing forth. Lil marches onwards, seeming nearly oblivious to us following behind.
Linti gives me a “What the actual bloody eff?” look. I can only shrug as she haphazardly drags us along behind Lil who vaporizes every hostile creature in our path. With virtually no impedance, we’re able to march through The Hollow swiftly behind Lil. I’m able to claim all the loot from the insects to my inventory, it’s mostly meat. Tunnel after tunnel, cavern after cavern, Lil destroys all hostile life without a second thought.
Eventually, a mass of vines blocks our path. Lil’s flames consume the vines in rapid fashion but there’s a scream from beyond them, as of someone in terrible pain at the death of the vines. My mind instantly gloms onto the fact that Spring Blossom’s powers hadn’t fully awakened. Linti seemed to indicate she would become a force of nature. What if that was literal? I don’t recall if Linti actually said that, but that was the sensation I got. Plus we spent most of a day sleeping together on a floor with Fawns and her twin brother. During that time I just felt like there was a flowery hint to the air. Nothing tangible, especially with my lack of smell, yet a hint all the same.
I call out, “Lil, Lil buddy, you can stop, I think those vines belong to Blossom.”
Linti spares me a suspicious glance at my assertion. Lil however doesn’t stop, and the screaming grows more fearful. Linti unholsters their crossbow and I panic. I fling myself from Linti’s grasp, then JT myself into Lil’s backside. I carefully position myself to cover most of Lil’s vitals, although Lil seems infuriated at my interruption, they at least don’t retaliate. Linti’s first crossbow bolt goes wide, I think she didn’t want to hurt me. Now however, she has her wrist-mounted crossbow aimed directly through my throat into the back of Lil’s cranium. Her crossbow hums with energy as lightning begins to crackle and dance along the edges of the bolt.
Now that I’m here, topping up my mana on Lil’s Godsbreath is ridiculously swift. Even at the terrible conversion rate of atomic kinetic energy to mana, I’m full in mere moments. More than that, as I suck the heat through Lil’s body to where they’re expelling flames from their front, I can tell that my chill is reaching them enough that they need to turn their fire inward. At least, until they realize they can stop me by blasting me away.
As soon as I sense the fluctuations that clue me into Lil preparing to reverse flames, I JT Linti away back up the tunnel path. This has the added benefit of preventing her from skewering us with a lightning laced crossbow bolt. Lil’s flames lick at my body. They crack and peel my skin like a hard-boiled egg’s shell, but I persist, placing stone wall after stone wall between Lil and the vines likely hiding Spring Blossom, possibly the entire cat family.
I try to speak, but as I open my mouth the flames instantly consume the inside of my esophagus, scarring it, leaving me barely able to utter, “Lil, get, ahold.” My eyes shrivel in their sockets as even my thermal resistance is no match for Lil’s new Godsbreath. I can’t drain enough of the kinetic energy from the flames to bring it down to tolerable levels.
Still, with this much heat available, I can risk trying a few things. Like how about an umbral duplicate of several thousand liters of water worth fourteen hundred mana? As I envision it, my ‘spell’ goes off to ridiculous effect. Even though we’re suddenly awash in a flood that might be millions of liters of water, it is about to evaporate near instantly. Lil’s Godsbreath will cause the biggest steam explosion, likely in the history of any world in any of my memories. Barring something like a meteor impacting an ocean.
Even as Lil’s Godsbreath comes into contact with the umbral water I’ve created, my mana is nearly instantly refilled as I’m trying to continue my massive constant Flash Freeze Storm to draw in all atomic energy nearby. With renewed mana, in the instant before the steam explosion, I create an umbral tetrahedron around Linti, and another around myself, each worth about seven hundred mana. Hopefully Lu was right, hopefully my conjured object copies are basically indestructible. The water might change shape to steam, but it won’t disappear til the duplication of my space skill wears off. The water changing from one state of matter to another isn’t the same as an object I conjure being broken by force. These tetrahedrons should last ever so slightly longer. Hopefully.
I can feel Lil through their mindscape as they rail against their own instincts, trying to stop themselves from hurting me. Moreover, I can feel Lil’s relief as the steam explosion knocks them senseless, throwing them through layer after layer after layer of stone walls that I’d set up. Lil knows they aren’t ready for this form, nor to use this Godsbreath ability. I can feel their remorse, but hopefully no one was hurt too badly. Vines seem to cushion Lil’s impact as they’re blown through every bit of rock I had conjured, and the vines slowly dissipate after absorbing the massive wave of force caused by our horrendous explosion.
I’m pretty sure the cat family knows the insects are dead at this point, after such a massive blast. And, with all the water I conjured now condensing into a rain cloud within the tunnels, I’m pretty sure we won’t have any lingering possession issues. Whew, I can pass out now.