Chapter 16

A Wet Ascension

Something bumped into my head and knocked my neck painfully forward. I wheeled around, amazed to find Stephen there, one hand on his rifle, aimed over my shoulder, and the other held out to me. I didn't know what the hell he thought he was doing, but I fought against the vines enough to reach up and take his hand.

As soon as I did, he fired. The sound, even while muffled by the water, was deafening. The bullet that left was huge, blue, and had tremendous knockback. Which is exactly what Stephen wanted. What vines the blast didn't sever, the speed of our ascent handled the rest and yanked me free.

Stephen fired again into the midst of the vines, who had yet to react properly, they were caught completely unaware. The new shot sent us up the rest of the way and we flew up and slammed into the wall of the tunnel.

"You go first." Stephen said. I started to argue but he cut me off. "If they keep coming after us my gun can hold them off. I'll be right behind you. Go!"

I wasn't satisfied with that but I really couldn't swing my arm anymore and would not be much help with fending them off. So I fell to my hands and knees and crawled like mad.

Stephen fell in behind me. About fifteen seconds of non stop crawling and I thought maybe we were home free. But then a huge splash sounded from behind us. I risked a moment to look back. The vines were in their wave form again, but not nearly as thick. All my wild swinging had actually put a dent in their numbers.

But they had another trick up their sleeve: as they rose, the water came with them, becoming a geyser. I didn't know the logistics of how it was possible, but the cave behind us quickly began to fill up.

I faced ahead again and went faster, wishing I hadn't seen any of that. We didn't make it much farther before the water was already spilling up to us. And then the vines came. One leapt over my shoulder and wrapped around my helmet. I activated the sword and cut myself free. But more jumped for us.

I abandoned crawling for the moment and turned completely around, cutting off the stray vines that had wound themselves around me and Stephen. The water was up to our waists and going higher by the second.

"Darcy, I've got a plan, but you aren't going to like it." I couldn't tell what Stephen was doing. He was supposed to be fending them off but he just sat there with his eye in the rifle's scope.

"Okay, let's hear it," I said as I cut one that tried to pull his gun out of his hand.

"I've got six shots left. This tunnel is filling up with water. Want to do a souped up version of what we just did?"

I grinned. "You got it wrong, man, I love the sound of that. Anything that doesn't require me to swing anymore is good with me."

He kept his eye on the scope. "Then put your sword away and hang on."

I sheathed it, but kept it in my hand, just in case. I wrapped my arms around Stephen's waist. He still hadn't moved his eye from the scope, watching as the main horde of the vines stretched up the tunnel as the water rose. Small, faster vines kept wrapping around us in various places but they weren't doing much harm on their own.

The water was almost above our heads.

"Uh, Stephen?" The vine horde was getting uncomfortably close. If we didn't go soon we would be overwhelmed.

"We have to wait until the water is—" He took a huge inhale of air as the water passed our heads.

Since he didn't get to finish his sentence, I could only make an educated guess on what he meant. I assumed we needed to wait until the water filled up the tunnel and we could make the most of our rocket to the top. But there was no way of knowing how much it was filling up, the vines were almost upon us, and we were also limited by however long Stephen could hold his breath.

The vines arrived, hitting us with wet whapping noises. They were not playing around this time, they squeezed me so tight I was worried my helmet might actually break. If not, my bones certainly would.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Uh, dude," I could still talk, safe in my fishbowl. "Anytime you want to fire that thing."

No answer. But he had finally moved his face away from the scope. No need to look for our enemies; they were here, all around. And trying to get the gun out of his hand. I didn't know why the designers decided to give such good AI to the vines but they were way more formidable than they should be, in my opinion. Would have to leave a bad review later: 3/5, The Vines Were Too Smart.

I turned on the beam sword again and did my best to aim it at the vines on the gun. I could really only wiggle the smallest amount because of how many bound my whole arm and how tightly they were squeezing. I fought off a decent amount but they quickly overpowered me, tied my hand down and, unbelievably, wrapped around the on/off switch on the hilt, keeping it firmly off. Yeah, my review was gonna be a 2/5 now.

Seconds went by and Stephen still hadn't fired us up to freedom. I tried to be patient, just told myself that he was giving the water as long as it could to continue to make our grand—

He wiggled, quick and violent, just enough to give me a heads up that something was wrong. And oh boy, I saw it: the vines had wound around his whole hand that had his finger on the trigger. They even had his finger in their grasp, pulling it away from the trigger.

I tried to move to help him but it was futile, I couldn't move an inch. Shit. So now I would get to watch Stephen drown before I was reeled back to the depths and forced to wait out the remainder of the match, this was soooooo much better!

I shook my head, which was thankfully safe to do from within my fishbowl, letting the negative thoughts go and wracking my brain for a way out of this. We were literally an inch from rocketing our way to safety, to lose at this stage would just be too cruel. The sword in my hand was in the exact same predicament as Stephen's weapon, just inches away from saving us.

It made me think of yesterday, and how we had almost lost that fight, too, but I came up with some dumb ass trick to get us out. If I could just do that again I could—wait.

I brought up a certain Skill.

[ Enlargement primed and ready! What would you like to use it on?:

Yourself: any body part ;)

User: Stephen, any body part ;) ;)

Weapon: Beam Sword ]

As tempting as it was to enlarge Stephen's penis to cut us free I did not think he would appreciate it. So I went for the only logical option.

[ Beam Sword, Enlarge! ]

It grew just as fast and as big as the fork from yesterday. The huge change in mass tore through the vines that held it and my hand like nothing. I mashed the on button and the sword roared to life, cutting into the side of the tunnel.

"Shit!" I swung it around and severed enough of the vines on Stephen that his finger finally found the trigger.

A deafening shot and we were thrown up the water filled tunnel. The force was so great that I couldn't keep a grip on the beam sword and it spiraled out of my hand. When the blast hit it, it became a deadly spinning blade, shredding the vines to pieces.

Damn, what an unforeseen weapon combination. I kind of wanted to stay and watch the carnage but we were way beyond that. Stephen fired the rest of his bullets, sending us shooting up with such speed the vines would never catch us.

I threw my head back and laughed. We were home free.

Home free, but out of control. The force of the blasts sent us too high so our heads were painfully pressed against the top of the tunnel. You would think I would be okay in my helmet but I kept hitting bigger chunks of rock that were sticking out which would jerk my neck in increasingly un-fun ways. I managed to pull Stephen close and tuck him under my chin, so at least he was kept from the worst of it.

But then we hit a giant rock chunk and my helmet was knocked down against the top of Stephen's head. The hit threw him and knocked the breath out of his mouth.

Shit! He would surely drown before we made it out. Unless...

[ Helmet Release Activated! Confirm?

Yes/No ]

I didn't want to take off the helmet, that was the last thing I wanted—but I didn't see any other options. But first I swung my legs up and kicked off the roof of the tunnel, getting us going more in the middle. But it wouldn't last for long, the tunnel was slanted and we would soon be up against the top of it again. Needed to make this transfer fast.

"Okay man, I'm gonna take off the helmet and put it on you."

Stephen shook his head vigorously.

I couldn't believe it. The dude was drowning and he still wouldn't put on the helmet? Was it really that hated!?

The helmet released my neck, I took a huge intake of air, and then lifted it over my head. Stephen kept shaking his head like mad but I ignored his stupidity and slammed it onto him. I heard him inhaling and coughing, and was too preoccupied with beginning to live again that he didn't immediately take it off.

To ensure he didn't, I pulled him over me and slipped around him, switching spots. For good measure I elbowed the helmet as I went by, knocking his head into the ceiling again.

"Ow!" He managed to get out between all the coughing and inhaling.

I made sure to scoot down lower so that his head bouncing wouldn't hit me and knock my air out. I positioned myself to face back, my head peeking over the side of Stephen's gut. We were actually nearing the end, I could see the opening of the cave. I wasn't sure how though, it seemed like the water had pooled at the top and was suspended there. More video game logic nonsense.

A really intense shuddering started and I thought Stephen hit a major rock but it wasn't him. It was much worse. The entire cave shook, cracks forming on the walls and spiraling up ahead of us.

No. Surely—

CRACK!

The spiraling reached the top and the entrance to the cave collapsed. You read that right, it didn't even give us another fun countdown to our destruction—just collapsed. And suddenly our grand escape was taking us to our sudden end.

Fuck this cave.