B 3 C 36: MAKA-AKARI, GAEA’S CRADLE
Teuila’s gorgeous form is virtually almost weightless at its base gravity. Yet as she continues to slumber upon my arm, I can’t move it at all. She’s subconsciously doubling her gravity and mine as well while she cutely snores in my face. I chuckle and nuzzle my nose against hers. I wonder if I’d be strong enough to bench press her with this gravity if I weren’t stuck in a position with poor leverage. I’m certain Te could bench press me even under increased gravity.
I suppose I should plan out our day. Do I want to head back to the Nagas’ city on the way to Teuila’s cavern dungeon? I’m worried that I’d be breaking Luni’s trust if I made my way there before the appropriate time, but without her being near, how will I know the appropriate time? I suppose she’ll find some way to contact us at some point in case we need to do something with the six books.
Alright, let’s puzzle this out. Te will be waking up in a few moments, when she does, should I propose anything other than heading to the dungeon where we’re sure Maka-Akari’s head can be reached? Would Teuila want us to snag any backup before heading into a location where we’re sure to face some sort of boss creature? Who could we bring though? If we go ask Linti, that might be when she dies. Ugh, this sucks! Not being able to turn to one of our toughest, most precious allies nearing the end of everything. Heck, not being able to turn to any of our inner circle.
Then again, it must be awful for Lu and Lin and Lil. Even if they want to come help us, they can’t. They haven’t been able to see us in days, maybe weeks, and still won’t be able to see us for quite some time. I’m sorry, my beloved inner circle. Maybe we’ll be able to see each other after this trip. Teuila and I have to prepare to fight skeletons and floating nibbling whip-tailed things. Then we speak to another goddess that we hope isn’t hostile. I don’t even want to imagine what sort of substance will fill our ear canals and brain cavities if Maka-Akari tries to speak to us telepathically. I bet it’s either sap or mud or loam or silt or maybe actual blood. Maybe it’s pure mana in liquid form.
Regardless, I suppose there really isn’t any preparation I can make for such a trip. It’s weird to not have a plan going in somewhere. It’ll just be Teuila and myself fighting back to back in tight tunnels underground, tunnels that will likely barely fit those flying gnasher things. I think they probably eat soil to tunnel through it, sort of, so the tunnels will be exactly their size, and no larger. That’s what I assume anyway. When Teuila said Reptile skeletons, did she mean Nagas, draconian lizard folk, chameleon-folk, or dinosaurs? Or just tiny little lizards.
Despite our individual strengths, we don’t make an ideal team to take on this particular mission. I can somewhat prevent my area attacks from harming Teuila, if I can keep up with where she will be from one moment to the next. She’s mostly too fast for me to manage that though. Then there’s the fact that she’s a mobility specialist who needs extreme height clearance, which she won’t be getting. Should I make a sphere with a vertical split that’s interrupted in two spots? Teuila and I could stand inside of it and roll it like a hamster ball, and attack with spears through the slots. Hm, no, that feels a bit ridiculously limiting. I guess we just improvise. Wing it? Yeah, wing it.
Teuila begins to rouse, and I smooch her nose to hasten her wakening. She playfully cuffs me alongside my head and then returns my kiss.
Smiling into her eyes I greet her, “Morning, Te. Sleep well?”
She just grins at me in reply and rolls off of me, offering me a hand up. Now my arm is asleep, tingling like it’s set with dozens of pins and needles. I offer her a sly grin and shoulder bash her. She responds in kind, and then she and I repeat the bashing until we topple each other over and begin rolling around wrestling playfully, laughing.
Te calls out through her laughter, “Alright, alright, sunshine funshine kick you in the bunshine, let’s get this over with. I figure there will probably be some sort of big reveal or something after this one, right? Like, we have to win. We just have to. Or the situation with the books is suddenly solved, or something. I’m right, aren’t I, butterbutt?”
I bite my lips as I purse them, unsure of how to reply. I want to tell Teuila she’s right, that I have every confidence that we’ll solve this, and then I’ll be the future me that sends the messages back into the past, assured of our safety. I want to believe that this will be the positive end to all these stupidly dangerous adventures and that we’ll be able to relax and go on simple hunts and enjoy the rest of our lives with our family. I just don’t know though.
Finally I respond, “I hope so Te. I hope so. I love you, my beautiful, beloved Wings.”
Exiting our dugout, Te leaps us into the air and suspends our gravity. I summon forth our slightly modified Umbral vehicle, and Teuila suspends its gravity as well as its external drag. Using JT propulsion I transport us northeastward. We approach the speed of sound and then leave a sonic boom in our wake as we surpass it. Teuila describes the location in respect to her survey route, and I’m left plotting a mental map in my head as we traverse dozens of miles of identical-appearing canopy. I make slight corrections as we pass the Nagas’ city while we’re far overhead.
Teuila and I each sigh wistfully as we pass the Nagas’ city. Our dearest dragon friend is beneath it somewhere, clearing debris or tunneling with Lucky. We snuggle into each other’s embrace and I blink back tears. As we proceed into territory I’m unfamiliar with, we have to drop from our vehicle and take to the sky under our own power. We’re still able to maintain a fairly high velocity, but I can’t re-accelerate without breaking limbs as I hold Teuila aloft in my draconic form. We have to orient ourselves from Point B to the location that Teuila marked out in her survey coordinates.
When we arrive where we expect to find the cave dungeon entrance, what awaits us is a yawning chasm with a roughly angled surface leading beneath the soil. I glance at Teuila to ask if it was like this originally and she shakes her head, knowing my intent. We land some fair distance away and approach on foot.
I ask Te, “How do you want to do this hunt? I have a feeling it’s going to be more heavily populated than the last time you were here, by far.”
She ponders a bit, assuming an expression I’d once seen on Luni, her right thumb sits along her jawline while her extended index finger supports her chin. Te shrugs and pulls out her winged bow. “Just wing it I guess,” she surmises.
Fair enough. Teuila adopts her most adept fighting form, while I ponder whether or not to stay draconic. I’ll be slightly less mobile because my wings and tail will get in the way in tight quarters, but it’s more hardy than my cherubic or authoritative forms. I suppose if those gnashing flying things take up most of the tunnel, mobility might not mean anything. Draconic scales and form it is then.
Teuila leaps downwards at an angle, floating to the bottom of the chasm where it becomes a more distinct cave entrance. I follow suit by gliding down via my wings. On entry both of us can sense a massive singular presence, and the sound of numerous other presences. I drag a Valkyrie dagger along the right hand wall, marking our path as the tunnel begins to fork again and again.
Teuila motions to a spot ahead of us on the floor, and she kicks a pebble at it. The pebble disappears as it falls through the seemingly illusory floor. That’s a neat little trap. My danger wrap senses tell me the shape of the missing floor in the tunnel, but my vision clearly sees a floor covering that area. I guess an illusion isn’t going to register to my danger senses unless it provides some tactile resistance. Teuila must have sensed the same discrepancy since she has that magic quarterstaff from Cigarette that also provides a danger sense. I’m not even sure where she keeps equipped weaponry sometimes.
We each easily hop over the pit trap and continue onwards. I’m curious what lies beneath, but I don’t want to risk dropping onto poisoned spikes or anything. It’s eerie that we haven’t run into any hostiles yet. Ah, yes, I had to go and think that, didn’t I? The darkness at the end of the tunnel gets closer, and the darkness is ringed with fangs. I stumble and fall to my knees as my mind conjures up my nightmares from Day One, and I’m left clutching my chest in a panic, gasping for air.
Teuila wears a half-frown as she nocks an arrow to her bow, draws back its string, and fires in one smooth motion, a swirl of green energy following the path she fired down. The arrow perforates the darkness ahead of us, tearing through the gnashing creature upon its approach. It’s mere moments after we noticed it at the edges of our senses, and the creature is already derezzing. Teuila kneels next to me, patiently waiting out my panic episode as she wraps one arm over my shoulders.
Hell’s bells that’s not going to be good. There could be hundreds, maybe thousands of these things between us and Maka-Akari. I can’t leave them all to Teuila, even if I did, I still have to come along to be able to speak with the goddess. I guess it’s time to be blindfolded again. How many times in my life have I had to give up my sense of sight just to be able to continue pressing onward? I guess it doesn’t really matter.
Te gently prods, “You alright boogerboo? I know you think you can’t leave it all to me, but I can handle it, even if there are hundreds of these things.”
I shake my head, “I know you could, but I don’t want you to take any injuries or get too worn out before we get to the boss’s room. I have no idea if the thing within will be easier or harder for one or the other of us to handle. We both need to be at our best. I don’t think we can afford to have to limit break to beat whatever lies within. Mana is already becoming a more and more straining power source to continue to use.”
Te nods and offers me a hand up. I stand and briefly embrace her before we continue. I make sure my blindfold is tightly secured beneath the draconically transformed Valkyrie helmet. Moments after we collect the loot from the gnashing creature, we’re set upon from all sides by various reptilian skeletons. Things that seem like ankylosauruses intermingle with skeletons that vaguely resemble my semi-draconic form as they bear down on us. I fire off an experimental Umbral JT attack by launching a copy of a Valkyrie dagger from my inventory, which becomes dozens of dagger copies due to my skill levels I suppose. Sadly, most of the daggers ricochet off of their targets, or chip or shatter some bones without seeming to impede the progress of their targets at all. Teuila lets out a soft ‘tsk’ as she draws her bowstring back to its fullest. As Teuila begins charging a massive vortex of swirling wind, I set about using my FBF style to start smashing the skeletons closing in on her with SIPs, subzero ice punches.
Te yells, “Duck my dinglegoober!” I immediately oblige, dropping flat near Teuila’s ankles.
Teuila unleashes her shot, and the veritable hurricane plows through the tunnel ahead of us, but also siphons foes from behind us into the maelstrom, battering them against one another. I have to dig my claws into the ground for purchase to avoid being swept away as well. The force of the blast shatters and pulverizes dozens of foes in a single moment such that we’re treated to a massive derezzing time dilation. We’re not in the clear, however, there are still more foes closing in from behind, and only a short window of an opening ahead.
I grumble, “Would be really nice to have a dead end right now, so that we could unleash everything in one direction.” Teuila nods in agreement as we rush forward into the narrow opening in the enemy ranks.
We rush forward and are met with a tooth-encircled darkness closing in from the far end of the tunnel. It waits patiently behind its allies however. The skeletal creatures close in faster than before, and Teuila has to leap to the ceiling as she reduces her gravity to zero to evade. From the ceiling, Teuila has to continue evading by leaping in a triangular pattern. The lack of an open height isn’t hampering her as much as I thought it might have. Still, neither of us expect it when an ankylo skeleton drops its bottom jaw and unleashes a piercing howl that reverberates the very walls of the tunnel. The sonic attack sends us flying backwards into the hostiles approaching from the rear.
Annoyingly, several thunder lizard skeletons from the rear perform the same sonic attack, blowing us back forward while we’re still tumbling in the air. Thankfully, instead of having no recourse but to be eaten, I simply summon mud from my inventory in front of myself and Teuila.
Te calls out, “Thanks bubblebum, that was getting annoying. Can you handle the ones at the rear for a sec?”
I nod to my beloved Wings as I face the rear. I remember thinking how it would be stupid to be inside of a spherical construct that I sent at sonic speeds towards a line of enemies. That thought still holds true, but now launching a bolder directly down a hallway with as much force as I can muster is probably the best course of action, especially an Umbral copy of one. In my inventory I combine some fired clay, mud, and stone into the shape of a sphere, this one not hollow, and I use my space skill to create an umbral duplicate that I launch rearward down the hallway. The good news is, it manages to plow through and derez a fair number of skeletons. The bad news is, they’re packed densely enough, and strong enough, that eventually my attack comes to rest. Slowly but surely it’s reversing direction.
I’m going to be mean. If I put a wedge on this side of the sphere, and then angled braces against the back of the wedge, eventually they’re going to just force the boulder to be trapped, blocking them from getting to us from this side. That buys us five minutes or so, due to my Umbral duplicate time limit. I could of course reclaim the boulder and then replace it, but I’d rather not have it in our way at all if we end up having to escape several minutes from now.
Hm, Teuila’s zipping around right now shattering skeletons with the haft of her spear. If I want to help her without getting in her way, I’ll need to do an area attack that I can direct in a cone. Frost breath it is then. I inhale deeply and exhale smoothly once, then inhale an even deeper breath to the point where I have to puff my cheeks to contain all the air. I position myself in the center of our front line and unleash a frosty squall that fills nearly the entire tunnel up to the point of the toothy gnasher, save for the triangular areas to my right and left where Teuila is working on shattering skeletons.
Now that I’ve frosted the ones in front, she’ll have an even easier time bringing them down, so I alternate with her on my right and left to get rid of the unfrozen ones. My dagger and sword thrusts do almost nothing, my slashes rebound half the time, but my bare fists crack and pulverize the bones of these skeletal creatures when coated with SIP, subzero ice power. As I turn to help Teuila on the right side of the tunnel, a massive time dilation hits. She already slew all the rest of the skeletal beasts in the hallway while I was working on two on my left side. I chuckle, amused. I’m a blaster-scrapper in a family of speedsters. Teuila is trying to find an angle of attack on the toothy gnasher and seems unsuccessful however.
The teeth begin to buzzsaw as they approach us, something the last one of these I faced was not able to do, or at least didn’t do when we fought. Then again, the last one I fought was floating in a wide open space, while this one’s external surfaces are hidden by the soil and stone of the tunnel, so this might be its burrowing method. I call out, “Te, hop back for a second?”
Teuila obliges while I rush forward and take an experimental punch at a buzzing tooth. I manage to chip it, not even severely damage it, but that’s fine, that wasn’t the point of my attack. My danger wraps told me enough about the creature on contact that I now have a pretty good idea as to how I can handle one of these. Grinning, I take a quick leap back as it tries to speed forward to engulf me. I raise my right hand, palm forward, and support my forearm with my left hand near my right wrist. This might have some kickback, so I lean forward and brace my shoulder with my left shoulder actually leading, so that I don’t pulverize my shoulder socket. Leaving my right elbow slightly bent, I let loose a simple fireball, imagining all the skills that multiply its effectiveness. A single hundred mana fireball is well over one hundred, perhaps two hundred, times as potent as it should be once all of my skills and stats have been factored in at this point. Normally, with no skill levels in any of the various multipliers available, a human mage’s firebolt is a few inches across. My fireball covers basically the entire twenty five foot diameter of the cavern’s tunnel structure as it rushes forth from my hand. I hadn’t tried out this ability since before the ridiculous time spent along Lord Agni’s back.
Ah, I should have quickly summoned something in front of myself or behind myself, either to shield myself from the blast or to brace myself against it. I’m being flung backwards by the concussive force of my fireball reaching its target and violently exploding. That was the lowest amount of mana and power I can put into a spell now, and I still already feel cracks forming beneath my flesh as Mana runs rampant within my body. My magics are becoming too powerful for me to handle using at all. Teuila catches me as we ride out the short windstorm caused by the fireball’s explosion and creature’s derezzing.
As much as I’d like to believe that will be the last toothy gnasher, I bet we have dozens more to go. I cock my head towards Teuila and raise an eyebrow, signaling that I’d like to know how much further we have to go. We’re only a few minutes into the tunnels so far.
Te abashedly raises her hand behind her head and blushes as she chuckles, “There are uh, a few more hours of tunnels until the scary room.”
Of course there are. Much like The Hollow, the insect warrens where Linti would hunt, the spawns within this place have risen multiplicatively since Teuila was first here. Everything in the world seems to be approaching some sort of critical point as we draw nearer to the convergence. My own powers are becoming too strong, the cragbeast warren was going to be overflowing with cragbeasts that were no longer eating one another, the insect warren’s spawns have gone crazy. These tunnels have gone similarly crazy. What’s more, they’re looking more and more like worked stone, like the tunnels of a crypt or catacomb. That’s ominous. I don’t like the idea that our world is doomed to go critical and end up ending in one way or another no matter what we do. Hm, other strange things are occurring as well, various critterkin spontaneously gained inventories when they hadn’t originally had the ability to use them, and some have developed basic magics.
Oh well, for now, we hunt and we loot and we travel deep within the bowels of our planet to speak with essentially Mother Gaea. For the most part, now I’m conserving my mana to fire off rapid fireballs because occasionally there will be a dozen gnashers in a row, one behind another behind another. This leaves Teuila to do all of the hand to hand combat against the thunder lizard skeletons and ankylos and draconian hybrid skeletons. I’m tempted to release my electrokinesis which is enhancing my nerve pathways and senses, because I’m starting to actually drop lower and lower on mana while we seem to be facing endless waves of creatures. I want to keep the enhancement active though, as I’ve already had several close calls with buzzsaw teeth.
Teuila is weathering the horde of creatures easily enough, but my muscles are beginning to burn and burst every time I cast a spell at this point. Worse, we’re definitely in some kind of massive dinosaur crypt or something. Strange stone coffin-like structures dot an enormous room, and these structures are peppered with eggs that I can tell will hatch into more horrid gnashers. Since my lightning breath is slightly weaker than casting thermokinetic spells, I begin relying on it to try to finish off creatures as they hatch, while they’re still rezzing into being. It’s less taxing on my muscles, organs, mind, and body. I can’t seem to interact with eggs that have spawned in this fashion, I can only let them hatch and deal with the creatures that burst forth. Similarly, the coffin objects seem to birth more and more skeletons, and are seemingly impervious to anything I try to do to them.
Teuila hooks an arm around me, and makes a break for it as she rockets down the tunnels, avoiding as many creatures as she can, until she’s forced to stop when faced with more cavernous maws blocking the whole tunnel. She sighs and sets me down as she draws her bow to its fullest once more, aiming back the way we came. Teuila trusts me to handle these things, but if I launch a fireball at this range, we’ll both be rocked by the blast. If I try to slay it with lightning breath, I’ll have to enter its mouth and continue to blast lightning for five to ten seconds. Hopefully it pauses its advance while I’m in its mouth, so that Teuila has time to charge her hurricane blast.
I use the JT movement to launch myself into the gnashing creature’s mouth, in between buzzsaw chomps. While within I draw a massive lungful of breath and begin blowing it back out, expelling it as a cone of jagged lines of lightning sparks. Wait, what am I doing? I roll my eyes at myself and stop my breath attack. I aim my index and middle finger towards where I imagine a brain or nervous system, or at least a nucleus, would be located in this creature. I unleash a bolt of lightning at the lowest power that I can muster. Still a hundred mana, the minimum mana for most of my abilities that could be called spells, but it has the desired effect, derezzing the gnasher instantly. The pain I experience by letting loose this attack is slightly less than launching a fireball, but it feels like the energy or mana that travels along the pathways in my body is slowly disintegrating me from the inside out, no matter which type of spell I use.
Of course there are more gnashy-creatures behind it. Fine, another lightning bolt for you, and the one behind you, and the one behind that one. How many of these are there!? Suddenly I’m pulled tumbling backwards as Teuila’s hurricane arrow is released, its vortex pulls me along with it. Te drops her bow to lash out and catch me by the ankle as I tumble past. I virtually cackle with laughter at the destruction caused by Teuila’s archery. She drops me to the floor of our tunnel as she zips backwards along the path to snag everything that was dropped. She rejoins me an instant later.
We repeat this combination of attacks hallway after hallway, room after room, for hours on end. Finally Teuila holds up a hand, preventing me from crossing the threshold to another room. Sensing a seemingly endless horde that continues to spawn behind us, I hazard trapping us in by conjuring several walls of stone and Umbral duplicates of that stone made permanent. Teuila and I take a moment to recover. My insides are alight with pain from utilizing my energy for spells. I glance at Teuila, trying to study her for any hint that she’s suffering the same effects, but she doesn’t show any signs of suffering. Thankfully.
Te frowns as she rides my thought waves, “Sorry that you’re hurting boogerboo. You really can’t pull your punches any more than that? I mean, your magical ones. Your spells. Even your little acid globs that you tried firing out a couple of times are getting pretty big. What are they, like, a yard across?”
I nod. Firing my newest skill off a few times didn’t have the decidedly excruciating repercussions my older, more practiced skills had, but energy passing through my body at all is starting to tear it apart more and more. I state, “I’m glad this isn’t affecting you Te. I got a little greedy when fighting mites on top of Lord Agni, and I think I’m paying the price for it. It’s probably doing a number on my psyche on top of the physical strain.”
Teuila rests her head on my shoulder and tugs me in close as we try to calm ourselves and prepare ourselves for whatever fight lies beyond the barrier of this room. After relaxing for a few moments, and making certain our resources are as well-handled as they can be, we step through into the room.
Two things happen simultaneously, a fwsh sound signifies that the barrier engages behind us as we enter, and the room transforms. It’s as if we’re standing amidst the stars, veritable giants amongst the cosmos. The utter empty blackness of space is peppered with flecks of light like shimmering crystals, galaxies some endless distance away no doubt. Our more immediate concern is a comet rocketing towards us that fills our vision to the point that it eclipses any horizon we might have been able to discern. It slams into me easily, and though Teuila reacts swiftly, she fares no better after a mere moment when the comet catches up and begins grinding us along its forward face. The comet and the emptiness of space begins to dissolve, we find ourselves back in the room we’d seemingly been teleported from. The comet’s massive impact was no illusion though. It has still definitely fractured several of my bones and toasted the scales on my face. Its impact, and the blast that occurred upon arriving back in the room sent Teuila and me flying dozens of feet apart. We both land shakily on our feet thanks to our fantastic reflexes, but we’ve definitely suffered major damage.
Teuila looks utterly wrecked, her limbs hang loosely and the padded clothing beneath her armor is nearly vaporized, exposing charred skin beneath. She still stands, thankfully. My heart skips several beats with worry as she wobbles in a standing position, but now she’s righting herself and taking up a defensive pose as we gaze about the room for our attacker. Without warning, bones that seemingly decorated the walls coalesce to form around a pulsating aura. The form they adopt when combined is that of an impressive dragon. Before I can even pause to enter accelerated thinkspace to plan, this draconic lich attacks.
It aims its foreclaws at Teuila, and a sickly green light sparks into existence before sending an ethereal ghostly wave of energy in her direction. I summon a stone wall between the energy and Teuila, but it passes through my fortification. Teuila is dripping blood and barely able to move. I don’t think she’ll survive whatever effect this spell causes, even using JT on her might knock her out or kill her. So I use the JT movement to propel myself between her and the ghastly flood. Its negative energy seeps into me but I’m able to prevent it from passing through to Teuila. I seem to have enraged our boss-creature, and gotten its full attention by intercepting its attack and still living.
The skeletal being thrusts at a blinding speed and I can’t react quickly enough to fully dodge. The creature looks as if it remains standing still, yet a translucent blue afterimage is unleashed at hypersonic speeds. The dracolich mutters what sounds like a spell as its claw penetrates my armor and flesh. My defenses spread before its attack like warm butter. It feels as if a slimy liquid penetrates my flesh where its attack connects. Its claw-tip barely scratches my heart, but I feel a chill pass over my entire body. I look down and see no lasting damage, my armor is intact. I feel physically unharmed, but I swear I can hear the words anti-sorcery echoing in my mind, and I suddenly feel weakened, out of touch with my senses and mana. The electrokinesis enhancing my nerve pathways and reflexes ends unwillingly, and I can’t reactivate it. The ghostly blue afterimage dissipated after making contact with my heart.
I falter and stumble. Teuila rushes to my side by leaping horizontally towards me, but when she gets within a few feet of me, she falters and stumbles as well. One look tells me that she fell out of touch with her own mana and extraordinary senses only once she got near me. I struggle to slink away from Teuila, hoping her strength returns, and thankfully it does.
I call out, “Te, I think I’m stuck with some kind of anti magical aura, it’s preventing any sort of active sorcery. I, I’m useless. I can’t even reset time. I’m sorry.”
Teuila looks horrified that my magic has been taken from me. We can both only hope that defeating the creature ends its spell on me. I experiment to see what I can do without magic, and the answer is very little save amble about. I can combine some things in my inventory, but I can’t propel them outwards with space magic. I can summon things to and from my inventory, but only to my hands, similar to how other critterkin have to make contact with an object to use their inventory systems.
Now I wish I had crafted a bow so very long ago, and practiced with it. The Valkyrie bows are folded such that they look like little metallic birds in my inventory, and won’t unfold for anyone other than Valkyrie herself, and worse, the bowstring appears to be made of mana itself when she wields it, so it likely wouldn’t work for me even if she handed me an unfolded bow.
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Between the comet, meteor, whatever it was, the cascade of negative energy, and the deathly touch, I feel as if I’m inches from death’s door already, and we’ve only just started the fight. I try to distract the dracolich as Teuila begins rebounding around the room seeking a safe angle of attack. Thankfully it still wants me dead for having survived all of its spells, and it turns its maw in my direction as it prepares yet another attack. It unleashes a massive torrent of flame, the blast nearly bowls me over, but thankfully has almost no effect. Its lack of effectiveness is of course due to my utterly ludicrous thermal resistance for someone that isn’t a natively red souled or Fire Biome-born creature. Me emerging unscathed from its breath attack seems to enrage it further.
With its focus entirely on me, I risk weakly dancing around it as it begins to swipe and claw at me. Ducking under a left hook, I stab upwards with my Valkyrie dagger, which has absolutely no effect. Frustrated, I sheathe the dagger and pull out my sword. I weakly leap over a grab from the dracolich’s right hand, slashing at it with my sword as I barely clear its grasp. My slash simply rebounds off of the dense bone.
I huff a sigh as I glance about for Teuila, hoping that she’s fairing better than me. She’s landing the occasional strikes, and has already severed the dracolich’s wings, keeping it grounded. She seems to have dealt nearly half of the boss’s health in damage already, she must be pouring her all into each strike. At the very least this lets me try to keep its attention. If it were able to fly up and away, it would eventually realize it can ignore me, and wait to finish me from range. I could maybe try to fly under my own muscle power, but I’ve never been that great at flying by flapping my draconic form’s wings. I think the dracolich is already realizing it can ignore me anyway, since my attacks aren’t doing anything.
Hm, I wonder if the thunderstick is going to be suppressed by this anti magic field. Oh, yes, it will be suppressed. Teuila had all of her magic suppressed, and my danger wrap isn’t providing any sensory feedback.
I guess my only option is to try to punch massively dense dragon bones. As it swipes for me again, I hop feebly back and lean forward with my shield, bashing with all of my weight behind it. As I hear a soft crunch, I follow it up by spinning hard at the hip into a right jab aimed where my shield had just connected. There’s a satisfying crack as I break the tip off of one bony talon.
Teuila meanwhile has shattered weaker bits of vertebrae, separating the dragon from its tail that had been hounding her. She seems to be powering her leaping thrusts with massive amounts of mana to make sure she’s dealing devastating blows to the dracolich. Her attacks have reduced the boss’s health bars down to a quarter of their starting number already. Now that the dragon is landbound, and doesn’t have the reach of its tail, Teuila pauses on the ceiling at the far side of the room. While there, she draws her bow, nocks an arrow, and aims towards the skull of the dracolich.
I try to buy time, keeping the dracolich distracted while Te’s power coalesces into a tornado’s vortex. I acrobatically dodge in circles around the dracolich, dropping large stones and bottles filled with acid in a tight circle around the creature. The acid was my meager attempt at bottling my own spell with bottles purchased from the shop. The acid loses almost all of its spell related potency when trying to get it to persist beyond the magic of the original spell, but at least it’s something I can add to Teuila’s attacks.
The dracolich tries to swing its stub of a tail at me, thankfully Teuila has already removed the offending appendage. Te sends a message to my brain letting me know to get clear, so I dive away from the dracolich. As I dive, I drop some tetrahedron faces from my inventory in the direction of the boss and the oncoming blast. Even though I have cover, the dracolich turns towards my cover and shatters it nearly in an instant as a tornado tears through it. The tornado siphons all the debris I’d left around the boss to the central point of the vortex, battering the dracolich’s skull and ribcage severely. The boss ends up coated in acid in several spots, and as Teuila’s attack ends, its last health bar depletes instantly. It doesn’t derez, but other than a sickening pulsating glow floating near where its heart would have been, there doesn’t seem to be anything else we can do. I pick up a pebble and toss it through the energy whorl. The pebble sails through effortlessly, distinguishing the energy whorl from any tangible phenomenon. I’m still coated in a field of anti-magic, so quite a number of things feel off.
Looking back to the entrance, the barrier is still up. Worse, as Teuila and I head towards each other to try to recuperate, all the bones and pulverized bone dust begin to reform into the dracolich once more. If its spells are recharged, we’re utterly dead meat. As it reforms, it lets loose a sonic roar that sets each of us to quaking. It rattles the bones throughout my body, aggravating the already fractured supports within me. I’m hanging on by threads, and Teuila’s looking like she’s at about half her strength. Okay, this thing is definitely some sort of boss, sure, but why didn’t it derezz? It’s undead. Based on fantasy tropes in my head from fakeworld, that could mean a few things. Its soul could be what we have to actually destroy, or it’s just a puppet being animated by something else entirely.
Teuila busies herself with slaying the dragon again. While she does that, I lock it in place by dropping conjured stone around its ankles. Or at least I try to, it barely slows the thing down. Thankfully I continue to annoy it enough that it releases its breath at me once more. The last of my scales crack and peel away, exposing soft tissue and muscles beneath, but I can bear it, for Teuila. I will not let this thing turn its attacks on her. My magic is still locked by anti sorcery, so I have very few options. Wait, I’m covered in anti sorcery. If this thing dies, and I jump into that weird whorl of energy, will that prevent it from reforming? Or will I be torn apart by negative energies?
I taunt it, “That’s right, get pissed off at me you bag of bones! You can’t kill me! And that infuriates you doesn’t it?” I simply hope that the lilt and cadence of my voice angers it further, keeping its attention on me, since I’m certain it can’t understand me.
I cough, barely keeping myself standing as I stagger around almost drunkenly. My random movements are the only thing saving me from being flattened or shredded by the dracolich’s talons. Teuila angles herself for another blow, separating it from its tail once more. In two more leaps she’s removed its wings once again, and she nods to me. Her nod lets me know I need to distract it once more, and that she was riding my thoughts, so we’ll try the anti sorcery against what might be its soul when her next shot kills it once again. I need to position myself so that when her hurricane arrow passes me, that I can ride and tumble along its wind current into the whorl, without disrupting the magic of the attack itself. Thankfully my sense of direction and simple arithmetic aren’t magic powers of mine.
The air in the room becomes more and more thin, harder and harder to breathe as Teuila siphons all the wind to her arrow once more. The moment it takes me to pause and gasp for breath is enough for the dracolich to capitalize on. It swats at me with its left claws, breaking my right ribs. For the umpteenth time in my life, broken shards of my right ribs puncture my right lung as the creature sends me flying out of position, I begin vomiting blood as I try to gasp for air. I’m part ofblood, part rezzer, I can’t, I can’t let this kill me. My vision begins to fade and darken. I can’t use my mana to dull the pain. Tears stream forth from my eyes. I, I can’t move.
I’m sorry Teuila. I’m sorry. Wait. She can ride my thought waves even though I’m encircled in anti sorcery? What does that mean? Can I capitalize on it? I have so little strength left. I don’t know of a way to weaponize our mental link. If I had gained psionics from someone with offensive psychic talents, that might work, but I haven’t had the time to seek someone out like that, and the only person who might have them that I know of is in a coma. Poor Dehlia. Poor Lil. I’ll have to ditch this line of thought, I don’t have the energy to carry it through to any sort of fruition. Teuila repositions herself ever so slightly as she lets her arrow fly. It’s just enough that I can stumble forward and flare my wings as the tornado passes nearby. It drags me tumbling along with it towards the dracolich as it batters the bones to dust once more. I struggle to pause my unsteady flight when I pass into the energy whorl.
Once in position, I’m coated in the most sickly feeling energy and immediately begin loosing up the sick in my stomach. Its contents spatter the ground below, mingled with blood from my lungs. This is worse than when King is trying to invade my nervous system, cells, and mind. I do my best to hover in place with my broken, battered body. The antimagic surrounding my heart continues to stay, and the dracolich doesn’t reform while I’m in place. The problem is, it doesn’t derez, nor does the field surrounding the room’s two exits drop. I’m certain that as soon as I drop out of position, this thing is going to begin to reform again.
Barely able to speak, I call out telepathically to Teuila, “Next time it reforms, just disable it, don’t destroy it. Buy me time to search the room.”
Before I drop out of position, I exhale a fiery breath from my draconic heatsac below me. This warms the air below me, granting me a momentary updraft. I can only do that a few more times before needing to rest. I never thought I’d use it, since the magical spell version of breath attacks is available in all of my forms, and so much more powerful. My breath attack also scatters the pulverized bone dust around the entire room.
I remove my blindfold and helmet so that I can squint as I gaze about. Come on, come on, somewhere the dust shouldn’t settle evenly. There has to be something invisible that I’m not seeing. I continue to scan my surroundings, pleading with the world that the invisibility isn’t so powerful that it can make an illusion of the dust settling evenly. I can’t hide the wry grin that plasters itself across my face when I spot a pair of prints in the dust. I flick my eyes towards it, and Teuila nods.
I pratfall out of the sky, pretending I’m too weak to carry on. As I tumble to the ground, I make sure to brace my impact and roll out of it, looking for all the world like I’m in an uncontrolled tumble. I angle such that I can cover any escape vectors that Teuila won’t be able to cover as she pretends to focus on the dracolich again. I stumble, coughing up yet more blood as I position myself. The prints on the ground shift as the dracolich begins to reform, so I take that as my cue to summon up my remaining strength to dash towards my target in the hopes of restraining it before it can hide.
Years of constant struggle and strife, training with Teuila, living as if life itself were an unending battle has trained even my puny muscles to be able to put on bursts of speed without magic. In an instant I burst forth from a standing position into a horizontal leap, cutting off the direction the footprints had shifted to. As my anti sorcery field comes into contact with the creature, my mind falls into despair.
The invisible creature is revealed to be a squid-headed semi-skeletal humanoid whose face opens up fourfold with tentacles reaching out for me. I crash into the creature as the tinnitus races screaming into my ears. My joints spasm, twisting around the limbs of this new Mind Blower. I seize up, all of my muscles lock in position, thankfully locking around the limbs of the creature that’s trying to eat my brain as its tentacles wrap around my face and skull. My heart pounds in faltering, frightened, staccato, arrhythmic pulses. Teuila unleashes a wind arrow that clips the wings off of the dracolich as it forms, and she leaps to my aid, barreling towards me and the Mind Blower, her longsword outstretched.
I can’t tell her. I can’t tell her. Don’t think about it, don’t let her know. My vision tunnels as I give into the fear, stumbling slightly, angling the creature between myself and Teuila. I know what’s going to happen, and it’s not her fault. My heart skips several beats as my mind falls into day terrors. Her sword is too long, when she gets within the field, she won’t have magic to slow her velocity or change direction. It happens, as I expected. Teuila’s blade penetrates the abdomen of the Mind Blower, and my own as well. I topple backwards, off of the blade, releasing the creature as I roll away, bleeding on the ground. Teuila leaps vertically as her magic resumes, cleaving the Mind Blower in twain, she then drops on it with a copy of Gae Buidhe, making certain it can’t heal as she splits it the rest of the way down its center. That last wound is enough. I’ll bleed out now, since I don’t have my magic to stop the bleeding.
Time dilation hits us as the Mind Blower derezzes, but the dracolich remains. The spell that reanimated it had already been cast. Teuila is left facing the dracolich once more, this time, alone. Its attention entirely on her, the dracolich begins exhaling a horrid torrent of flame. The blast sears her flesh as she stands in its attack, charging her hurricane arrow one last time. I’m dying on the floor, unable to help her, and I can tell her magical energies are nearly spent.
Wait, my magical energies are back! The antimagic has ended. The true caster of the anti magic spell must have been the necromantic Mind Blower creature. I can dull the pain. I can help her. I aim an Umbral cascade of Valkyrie daggers towards the dracolich’s neck worth several hundred mana, summoning hundreds of daggers each four times the size of the normal dagger. From above, I spend several hundred mana to drop duplicates of the full tetrahedron at the dracolich’s neck as well. Running my internal electrokinesis, I shut off my pain receptors, and signal my cells to repair my lungs and abdomen first as I set a layer of Frozen Frost Shielding over my wounds.
If the question is how do I live without magic, the answer is I nearly don’t. I conjure an Umbral copy of a Valkyrie shield in the dracolich’s throat, cutting off its flaming assault from assailing Teuila any further. Finally, no longer having to struggle against the heat blast that was fighting against her wind’s coalescence about her arrow, Teuila is able to finish charging her hurricane shot. Our attacks release, and the dracolich is almost instantly atomized and disintegrated by the sheer volume of our attacks as I add dozens of acid shots to the swirling maelstrom of destruction.
If there are health values in this world, if I have several hundred or several thousand hitpoints, I’m in the single digits. I’m at fractions of a percent of my total health, almost entirely dead. But as any miracle worker will tell you, mostly dead, and all dead, are two very different states of being. I laugh as memories of cinema from fakeworld flood my mind. My heart rate is still arrhythmic. I might die if I’m not careful. I crawl to the nearby wall, and drag myself to a standing position as I slump against it. I carefully walk a circle around the entire room, dragging my dagger up and down, scoring a zigzag pattern against the entire perimeter of the room. I want to make sure there are no secret panels hiding phylacteries or other tropes from fakeworld.
Teuila catches my intent, and she fires off several arrows at spots around the room she finds to be suspicious. She shatters several large urns that almost seemed to be reliefs carved into the wall along high ledges. She flits about the room collecting loot from the two creatures, after making certain that everything atop the high ledge is shattered or derezzed. I finally collapse against the wall after I complete my perimeter sweep. The green barrier at the room’s exits has fallen, but I can’t continue on without some rest. Teuila slumps down next to me after she checks me over, making sure that I’m not going to die on her.
I mumble, “Te, have I ever told you how much I love you? I really, really, truly do. I was finished, my magic was stripped from me. If you hadn’t been able to kill it, I’d have bled out. Thank you so much.”
Teuila scratches the back of her head as she blushes a bit while gazing at the wound in my abdomen, “Sorry about, um, that.” she grimaces, pointing to the wound she caused, “But, about feelings, you know, it’s okay, I words you too. It’s good we did this together. I’m so glad I didn’t come in here alone. Right off the bat we got hit with magic that was so strong that it nearly obliterated us, and then more spells kept coming. I could have maybe beaten it without my magic, maybe, if I stumbled across the invisible thing right away. I’m glad you figured it out though. Check out this stuff though!”
There’s over forty million currency worth of coins, paper, and gemstones, just from these two creatures alone, not counting the massive piles of loot we’d gained on the way in. There’s a crossbow that radiates power, it looks a bit like Linti’s, it can be worn on the wrist like hers. But it has two separate firing tracks to place bolts in, one atop the other. Teuila shrugs and hands it off to me, she has her Valkyrie bow.
There’s a heavy flask made of steel or iron, and it sounds like something is shaking within. In case it’s some sort of angry djinn, I don’t want to risk opening it while we’re weakened. There’s a staff that appears to be made of copper, yet far more resilient, and definitely enchanted. Its upper end culminates in a set of twists that leaves two rounded rhombuses exposed through the staff’s head. Holding it, I can feel the magics laying in wait within, they want to be released. There’s another tiny gemstone like the one orbiting Teuila’s head, this one also orbits her head as she inspects it. She grins as she nods approvingly.
We find several bottles that appear to contain glue, and several more that appear to contain solvent. Instructions on the glue say that the solvent is the only way to remove it. That’s powerful glue. There’s a girdle that crackles with lightning that doesn’t seem to fit either of us, nor does it alter its size to fit us as most other magic items do. I think Lil might be able to wear it, it seems more suited for a quadruped, it almost has a harness-like quality to it.
There’s a brass ring with a flat mirror built into its top that basically rebounds my magical senses, and any magic I send to probe it. I want Teuila to wear this, if it does what I think it does. I surmise, “Te, I think you should wear this, I think it reflects spells or magics somehow. Oh wow, you gained like four levels today, that’s crazy, I’ve never seen any of us gain multiple levels in a single outing. Still, I was worried when that comet or meteor or whatever nearly decimated you, and then that ghastly energy spell was sent your way.”
Teuila shrugs and accepts the ring, “I probably would have been fine. Okay, maybe not, you’re higher level, the comet didn’t damage you nearly as badly as it did me. Then that energy wave took you almost all the rest of the way out. So, yeah, fair enough. I don’t want either of us to go without the other, I’ll be happy to wear it, boofwerebutt. Should we put up some shelter and try to sleep before finding the Maka goddess sister?”
I chuckle at Teuila’s impropriety when referencing Maka-Akari, Gaea’s Cradle, but nod nonetheless. Not wanting to be in this room in case of some sort of respawn, we head to the far exit, and barricade ourselves in on all sides with inventory magic and space skill duplication. I summon some thick leathery leaves for bedding, some actual pillows we’d gotten from the stores when Fawn clued me in about them, and some linen sheets as well. As we sit snuggled against each other, I also summon forth bandages, antiseptic, and whatever other medical supplies I’m carrying so we can tend to each other’s wounds.
I try to push the dark frightening thoughts out of my mind. The thoughts I’m avoiding indicate that I would be dead if my magic hadn’t returned when it did. Still, we’re here, and I’m cautiously optimistic about our future prospects. I glance at Teuila as she snuggles into the crook of my shoulder, and we both adopt our smaller, softer forms to sleep together. A contented smile plays across my face as I drift to sleep with Te in my arms.
He asks, probably just covering his bases, “Huh, the GALS project actually got a volunteer. You do know what you’re signing up for, don’t you?”
The brown-haired man in an open labcoat, with corduroy vest and glasses stares at me from across the table. We sit on steel chairs in the surgically clean, boring, sterile room. The overhead incandescent lamp is virtually blinding with my hyperphotosensitivity. I chew on my tongue as I nod absentmindedly. Of course I know. It’s better than the alternative. I’ll never go back, I can’t go back. No psychiatrist, no meds? No thank you. The researcher pulls out a smartphone and begins fiddling with its screen, no doubt entering the results of our interview.
I blink myself awake slowly. As usual, when Teuila sleeps on one of my bodyparts, she subconsciously increases her gravity to keep me trapped beneath her until she’s ready to wake up and move about. I chuckle as I nuzzle into her shoulder and neck. She nips at mine playfully, indicating she’s already awake, just not ready to start our day yet.
I start, “So, Maka-Akari is supposedly probably asleep. I’m almost loath to risk waking her, but I think my sparkspeak can reach into a sleeping mind and still speak to it. I’m not sure which I like better as a name, sparkspeak or electropathy. Eh, either way is fine. Still, I’m probably going to need you to stay on high alert in case things start spawning around us.”
Teuila nods, “Of course, punkychunk. I’ve got your back. Never fret, never fear, your awesomest archer will stay near!”
We both hold our bellies as they rumble with mirth during our laughter, and we wipe one or two tears of laughter from our eyes as we eat a smattering of meat. Summoning our temporary shelter and bedding to my inventory, I glance about the cavern to get my bearings. I assume my draconic form via shapeshifting, and I equip the strange double crossbow to my right wrist, and surprisingly I begin to radiate a soothing warm golden glow out to about ten feet. If this is aura, it’s so strong that even I can see it with no aura senses whatsoever. Whether it’s aura, or just light, this would be awkward if I were trying to sneak around. Thankfully, for right now, we’re not trying to be very stealthy.
As we continue down yet further tunnels, we come up against more dinosaur skeletons. I testfire the crossbow without loading any bolts into it. Shining metallic spikes fly forth coated in a dull golden flame. While trying to throw daggers or sharp objects at the skeletons normally did almost nothing, the flame coating these magical bolts seems to, on contact, burn away and disintegrate magics that hold the skeletons together. An anti-necromancy crossbow? Or maybe anti-undead in general. That would have been handy against the boss, ugh. Well, I was under the effects of antimagic anyway, all sorcery around me, including items, was suppressed, and Teuila wouldn’t have been likely to try out a new ranged weapon instead of her bow.
I stow the double-barreled hand crossbow, and draw out the copper staff. I can sense fire, ice, and lightning magic within. More powers that I can’t identify, or don’t know how to control, or don’t know what to target, exist within as well. One bit of power apparently lets me conjure a translucent copy of my own hand, up to a few dozen feet away. It floats around at my bidding, and disappears after about a minute. Another power allows me to shrink or enlarge something or someone for a short while. The final power that I can figure out for now causes me to laugh almost hysterically.
The staff can grant me aura sight. I can see the aura of magical items and creatures with its power. I don’t even need to keep the staff in hand, but the aura sight fades after around ten minutes. I don’t need to scar my eyes with aura toxin anymore. This is hilarious to me. Who in the world made this staff? Or what system of our world designed it? As far as I’m aware, I’m the only being in all of creation that can’t see aura at all. Still, it’s quite a handy tool. I’m surprised the, grr, the creature, didn’t use any of its magic against us.
I gulp back a sob as tears stream from my eyes momentarily. It looked like the creature underneath the illusion in the dam. The Mind Blower as Lil called it. My legs buckle and I crumple to my knees. My moment of sadness, weakness, fear, allows a thunder lizard skeleton to roar at us, blasting me tumbling backwards into the air. My right forearm vibrates and quakes violently as it twitches in a shaky rotation. Teuila wears a concerned expression as she gazes my way momentarily, before she finishes decimating the creatures around us.
Te swiftly joins me where I’ve fallen. She whispers, “Shh, shh, it’s okay dearpunk. It’s okay.” Teuila strokes the back of my skull, and I drop into my cherubic form reflexively so that her fingers sift through my hair comfortingly.
After several minutes, my heart’s pulse stops throbbing like a hammer pounding into my ears, and the ring of my tinnitus lessens slightly. My arm finally stops spasming and I shakily take deep breaths until my breathing smooths out entirely.
It wasn’t her, it wasn’t her, it wasn’t her. I have to keep repeating this to myself as a mantra, over and over. Teuila frowns, concerned again. She knows exactly what feelings I’m fighting off. Her lips quiver but she simply walks at my side as we continue downward in the tunnel. We’ve finally reached what seems like a sheer vertical drop, but on this side, there’s a zigzagging staircase descending along this southern wall. It’s fairly narrow, so we’re careful to walk down it one at a time, each holding onto the other. Either one of us could prevent a fall from being too deadly or dangerous, but it’s better if we’re both alert in case something happens to one or the other of us.
At the bottom of this stairwell, it seems we’ve hit a dead end, until I realize we appear to be standing at the edge of a massive eyelid made of stone and soil. Teuila raises a startled eyebrow in my direction questioningly and I nod. This must be Maka-Akari, Gaea’s Cradle. Similar to Lord Deckard Agni, she slumbers far beneath the surface of our small continent.
I tentatively send out pulses, tiny sparks, until I’m certain I’ve located a portion of Maka-Akari’s brain that I can communicate with as she continues to slumber. Once there, I set up a steady stream of outgoing and returning sparks, hoping that for once, we don’t need to experience a god’s version of telepathy that fills our heads with their element. I don’t think we’d survive having our heads filled with stone and soil.
I probe, “Lady Maka-Akari, Gaea’s Cradle, please pardon our intrusion on your rest, but if you deign to speak with us, please simply let your thoughts return along this spark. We would not otherwise survive your method of communication. We’ve spoken with Lord Deckard Agni, the Pure and Desolate, as well as Lady Tenith Grayl, the Sky Unending. We even paid a visit to Leviathan, Storm of the Endless River, though that did not end so amicably. An entity from beyond this realm has set its sights on awakening the four of you far earlier than fated to begin your convergence.”
Maka-Akari’s reply is soothing, motherly, “I sense the touch of my siblings upon you, so I will trust you at your word. What is it you wish of me then, ponderous one?”
I hazard a request, “We’re hoping to prevent the destruction of all those loves and lives that we hold dear. There’s so much left of the candle our mortal lives are supposed to experience, according to Lord Agni’s metaphor. This entity has been the cause of much destruction across large sections of this continent, and at this point, many of them have relocated to a single Miracle Oak in the East. I want to protect them, all of them, no matter our differences.”
Maka-Akari speculates, “A great many mortals around a single tree in the East? Hm, yes, I can sense the tides of fate turning in such a direction. Perhaps even as intended, despite the efforts of your mysterious entity. Still, you have not made your request, though I can hazard a guess as to your desire. I would like you to tell me what it is you believe I can or will do for you.”
I gulp, I wasn’t expecting to be called out by a goddess, but she’s right, “Lady Maka-Akari, Gaea’s Cradle, we wish for you to remain slumbering, for as long as you’re willing to. Lord Agni is currently resisting the sway of the entity as it pursues him into his own subconscious. Lord Agni has said that he would not mind slumbering for an additional several months, years, or centuries, while the mortals experience our candle to the fullest. He is being manipulated against his will, as outrageous as such a claim must sound. The entity is incorporeal and invades the minds of those it touches. It forces them to act according to its will, rather than their own. One of its first actions in this world was to awaken Leviathan prematurely. Please give us any opportunity you can, or are willing to give, to protect those dear to us, as many of the lives left on this continent as we can.”
The goddess chuffs, “If you are truly earnest in your desire to protect my other creations, create a shield of lacrimosa trifecta around my greatest miracle. Perhaps those within its radius will be spared the cleaning of the slate. If I can sense an honest effort being made at its construction, I will rest yet for some time. Weeks, months perhaps. I will not neglect my destiny, nor will I keep my sister waiting forever mind you, so tarry not.”
As tactfully as I can, I ask, “If it’s at all possible I’ll do my utmost to try to accomplish just that. Can you tell us anything about this shield? What is the lacrimosa trifecta? What is your greatest miracle? Is it the Miracle Oak?”
I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that the Miracle Oak is indeed her greatest miracle, the one that’s inhabited by the Fairies and the Lavaborn Alliance. A trifecta is three, a lacrimosa is something like a crystalline tear, a river of tears or glass, something that weeps in three forms? Three colors of a river of energy? Ley lines? We already know about three fields of energy, but all of them are destroyed now. We had to break the last one to reach Maka-Akari.
The goddess answers honestly, “Yes, I believe that which you refer to as the Miracle Oak is indeed my greatest. The shield must be constructed such that it can withstand onslaught from everything along the spectrum. Reds, greens, and blues set to mingle and mix, to produce light and aura as need be. The lacrimosa is a refractory agent, a lens of sorts. Perhaps some of the oldest among your mortals, if you’re protecting as many as you claim to be, may understand the construction of such a shield. If you’re very lucky, they may even know enough to lecture you about its principles. Go in peace my child, but do not tarry. If the entity is as powerful as you claim, my brother will no doubt begin his journey before long. I will stall for what time I am willing and able, but know that I long to see my sister once again, and would not hurt her by spurning her aid.”
I nod, I can entirely empathize with wanting to be reunited with one’s family after a long period alone. Gratefully, I say my farewell, “Thank you Lady Maka-Akari. Thank you beyond what words can express. I hope we don’t disappoint you. Please be well. Teuila and I will do our best. We beg our leave of you and take it now. We wish you a restful slumber and pleasant dreams.”
With that, Teuila and I begin making our way out of the strange crypt-like dungeon. Battling our way back out isn’t entirely necessary, so we make haste where we can, when we’re not blocked from proceeding further. I have to pause momentarily at several locations as Teuila destroys creatures that continue to give chase. These locations are of course where I’d left a number of barricades of clay, soil, stone, and Umbral duplicates of objects. I have to meditate as I claim them. My mana over-usage isn’t as bad today, but there’s still an underlying pain along seemingly invisible lacerations within my muscle and tissue layers.
After several hours of rushing back to the surface, we’re finally free, and we each heave deep sighs of relief. We embrace each other and spin into the air as we kiss passionately. This is as close to a victory as we’ve had yet at all. This is as much celebration as we can afford at the moment, we still have work to do.
Te asks, “So butterspoot, how are we feeling? We did it! Three gods in a few days! I mean, sure, we didn’t kill any of them, hell, we barely survived some of them, but look at the pair of us!”
My smile is wide but not to my eyes, at least for a few moments, but then gazing into Teuila’s eyes, my smile broadens the rest of the way. My lips quiver ever so slightly. I don’t speak my doubts or my sorrows. Te is right. The two of us have undergone extraordinary experiences, and we’re returning home alive, mostly healthy, and with more knowledge, and more time. This is about the best outcome we could have hoped for.
When we return home, we have to figure out how to build a shield large enough to cover an entire multi-mile wide settlement and its many miles high tree. Even once we know how to do it, getting the materials and doing it in time sounds like a massive undertaking.
Even still, even with all of that ahead of us, I somehow feel that it isn’t quite time yet to send the messages back in time to myself. Somehow, there’s at least one more piece of the puzzle that I’m missing. At the very least, I have no idea how the books tie into all of this.
Teuila and I set off into the air, using our combination of skills and magics to traverse the distance back to the Miracle Oak in short order. We’re both looking forward to seeing Linti, Lao, Ag, all the twins, Magnus, all the rest of the cats, and even Jaz.