Corvayne felt something off about the last floor before he even saw it. Stepping out, it didn't look anything like the previous ones. The sky was a brilliant shade of pinkish red. The islands on this floor were almost entirely made of stainless steel surfaces, some flowing and some following strict lines and folds, all of them polished and finished in a complex array of forms and patterns of surface and different sheens. They were extra striking as grey and white and silver surfaces sitting in a sea of reddish goop. The overwhelming smell of strawberry and sugar nearly made him cough when he crested the stairs. Wick looked around. The place they had come up from was still a blue stone stairway, but the soil where they stepped out into was damp and sticky dark red. He saw bits of strawberry seeds mixed into it.
“Where did it take us?! This is like a painting of hell!” Wick commented. She lifted her foot and made a face.
Corvayne didn't bother adding anything. One more exit to get out. The scenery might be messed up, but he could see bridges and walkways between islands, and structures like towers with red slime flowing out of them, as well as islands that had purple and black bushes laden with titanic strawberries.
Corvayne had saved a stave and took it and walked over to a metalic beach, goop less forming waves so much as just pulsing against the surface and leaving red stains. He didn't worry about slipping because the entire surface was sticky. Dipping the wood into the goop, he saw that the beaches sloped into the muck. If they got into the muck, they could possibly get out. Assuming they didn't drown in jam. Next was the acid test. Literally. He used his offhand pinky to touch a little dab of the jam and waited. No burning sensation. Wick was looking around while he waited.
“Try to stand away from the edges... There's ramps out but we have no idea what type of monsters live here.”
After a while he was pretty sure the slime was harmless in and of itself. He looked at the red blob on his pinky, shrugged, and tried it. Delicious.
Wick was seeing if she could freeze the jam with her blade, and weirdly enough it seemed that the blade couldn't affect the sludge. “When I try it, the handle feels a little warmer.”
“Don't overload whatever enchantment is on it.”
Wick must have had the same mental image of her sword blowing up because she withdrew it immediately. Goofing off done, they explored the island they were on. It was about the same size as others in view: a steel dome shaped bump in the red ocean about four hundred feet all around. Bridges made of steel grates supported on thin poles rose out of the slime. No obvious monsters, but that just meant they either blended into the stainless steel, were lurking in the sludge and would attack as they crossed, or were hiding in the strawberry groves growing wherever there was enough slimy dirt to support them.
“Any chance we can go back and find another stairway up leading to, say, a warm lake with sandy beaches?”
“Very tempting.” Corvayne muttered. Honestly, maybe it would be better then trying to tackle a suddenly alien landscape. “But that other floor had a large monster on it. I don't know if I want to risk sticking around there wading through crabs and goblins. Maybe if we went down to floor 3, but then we'd be in the woods probably another whole day looking for a different path.”
“Ok. Well, one thing all the stairs had in common was that they were found in places that we went up to. The root, the route that followed the corkscrew, the pass on floor 3, and walking up the far bank. So, we should go try for the tower.”
He nodded. “That's an excellent theory. I'll get us there.”
The first bridge over the slime he took his time, walking, looking, and especially listening for something to try to slurp it's way out. A few minutes in and he was already of sick of the colors here: the over saturated pinkish-red of everything that wasn't gray made the already sticky feeling from walking over jam even more disturbing. The islands were full of weird metal statues, spiny steel arrangements that he avoided on principal. The few patches of dirt had little rises on the ground dividing them from the unnatural steel landscape and were filled with trees usually arrayed in neat rows but with signs of neglect as plants merged together. Corvayne was sure the monsters were in the groves when he noticed both viable paths to the tall island required them to walk through one set of trees or another. On top of that, sometimes he spotted holes in the floor, often in rows. He pointed them out to Wick and made sure he didn't step over any or leave himself with a row near his back. Picking the shorter grove, he stepped before the fifteen foot tall trees that had grown into a sickly purple red arch. The leaves ranged from purple to normal green, but every plant had huge strawberry textures pulsing out of them like (admittedly delicious looking) tumors.
“I think this is where the monsters are. My gut says ambush, possibly from the trees, possibly from the ground.” He stabbed a pulsing strawberry just to be sure, and got nothing more then a spear covered in fruit. He sighed and took a step into the grove, spear in both hands and eyes darting after each step. Wick was waiting behind him, sword out, trying to keep watch for something that might try to slide off the beach.
Corvayne had a feeling something was off as passed the second row of trees. He leaned back into a backflip on his knuckles as a vine whipped past, making the same sound a high tension wire would when cut and sent warbling through the air. Trees! He saw the second pair moving and another vine flew out. The normal looking vines sawed through a tree like it was butter. Shit. “Don't stand anywhere near me! Dodge the traps!”
He saw the trees pick up their roots and start skittering like spiders out of the grove, fat bulbs with weirdly animated vines coming off the top. He was almost certain if Wick stuck around she'd get cut in half by those flailing limbs. The trees were moving and trying to bullwhip him with their leading vines. Corvayne guided them to the bridge to the previous island. The metal bars holding it up might snare some of the limbs the enemy was using to try to cut him. Of course, the trees seemed to understand what he was doing and just dove into the muck. It wasn't nearly deep enough to keep him safe on the bridge he noted, and the steel making up the bridge was getting dented and had sparks flying. He had to separate the monsters or just flat out run: going in on both would be ripped apart. There was a chance they'd tangle each other if he was between them, but the more likely result would be him missing a few limbs.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
He saw that the island they were retreating to had a slightly boomerang shape, and he came up with a plan. He moved ahead, and the first plant got up out of the goop and started moving a little faster. Wick was already retreating to the previous island while Corvayne moved to get the other tree's direct line to him through slime, while the first had open ground. It seemed they were only so smart: Both were headed in a straight line, the back one ignoring that it could move much faster if it got up onto the land not ten feet from where it was wading. Corvayne had about twenty seconds to work with before the back one reached him. He noted any possible traps near him. Sadly, the tree skittering over didn't trigger any. It was on him to kill it.
He took his spear, and held it two handed connected to his hip. One hand he mimed holding the shaft like a sheath. The other as if the butt end was a hilt. He took a deep breath, trying to visualize Moon-Laughing-with-Stars preparing to draw. The woman had an unearthly beauty to her, and was one of the few people who also treated other villagers with the same icy distance as she did Corvayne. While he didn't like her, the power of her draw techniques was no joke. His own katana training was tremendously draining, getting his arms to unleash his weapon in a sharp fluid motion, to follow through with an attack, and then to replace his blade in it's sheath, setting himself up to move or strike again. There were more steps, meant to form a sort of endless dance of death.
The Tree's range was a couple of feet greater then his spears own reach. So he waited until the beast whipped and he ducked into it, slithering vine missing his scalp by no more then an inch as his heart hammered in his chest. He planted his feet and let the momentum from stepping past the attack move into his arms. His spear was a sword. It was a shackled beast that craved blood. Everything was slowed down as he moved his arms to unchain the beast, smoothly drawing his spear. [Cross-Skill: Draw] brought his spear out in between moments, the blade passing through the monster with no resistance. The only pressure he felt was from drawing his energy into the blow. The living tree, still not aware it had been cut once, was bringing all of it's vines to bear when he used the second movement. His weapon was a beast, running through a snowstorm in the dead of night, untouched by the smallest blade of a snowflake. He became his weapon. He became the beast. He became darkness.
[Cross-skill: Shadow step] made him run through the monster body as if it was a mere shadow itself, vines simply unable to touch him let alone cut. His blade drew a second line across the beast as he moved through it. He felt every step sapping him of power but refused to let his momentum slow, his will to win pushing his mountain like-legs forward. Behind him, the creature was still trying to jab at his suddenly missing form. He left the shadows with his back to the tree.
He took a half step to pivot, and while not part of the normal sequence of katana strikes he saw in his mind the beast sink its fangs into his target, and he changed his grip on the spear and flowed into [Cross-skill: Backstab], adding another point shining with the two lines he had already drawn. The effort of driving his spear down and pulling it back was titanic. However, for the hunt to end, there was one more step. Prey in his grasp, the beast closes its jaw, sealing the monsters fate.
[Cross-skill: Sheath the Life] let the beast end the hunt, returning to slumber as he placed his weapon back in it's imaginary scabbard at his side. There was the click of metal against bamboo despite having neither in place, and Corvayne felt some of the energy spent flow back into him as time returned to a normal pace. He had to take a deep breath before he started moving back the way he came. The tree he had attacked was still for four steps, then tried to swing a vine. It plopped lamely on the ground, and Corvayne smiled. Then the sound of two high pitched slashes and the rending sound of a huge hole opening up in the monster all happened at once. The huge tree crumpled into a goopy mess of wood and strawberry sap, gushing out of the creature in a sticky geyser.
The sequence worked great, with one problem: he was still exhausted after all those movements, and now still had one whip tree to tangle with. This one he had to fight the hard way: leading it around an island, getting it to commit with a whip, then step into range for just a moment to jab and back out. He felt himself slowing down even as he hit the tree a tenth time. His path took him back and forth across four islands, keeping the monster as far from Wick as possible while he slowly bled it out. Slowing down he ended up getting hit in the side, and nearly fell over as the vine cut into him. He instinctively folded with the blow and pushed to roll away on his back, coming up on his feet and a knee then springing back again, blood seeping out his side which was now pulsing in agony. The tree didn't seem to slow at all from the places it was dripping sludge: it relentlessly skittered at him, and he did another dance with it, stepping around the first hit and landing a blow on the trunk of the thing that drew a thin squirt of strawberry before dribbling it's blood out. Then he backed off, his cheek suddenly exploding in pain. It had hit him with a bullwhip flick as he backed away. His vision blurred for a moment and he was now bleeding from a cut cheek.
Wick was trying to tell him something. He took a moment to process what she was saying. “Corvayne we can just run!”
She was right, he could. But he wasn't sure it would give up at the stairs: the idea of running down several floors to try to lose it in other trees didn't seem like it would work, not with how much he was struggling after the chain of moves. He ran faster, but the monster didn't tire even after minutes of cat and mouse. After two more hits, he committed to trying to kill it with [Storm Thrust]. He got another grazing blow on his shoulder but the creature seemed to have adapted to his tactics and was expecting him to pull back, so it wasn't ready and used the powerful attack to jam his spear into the creature up to his arms, then twist and pull it out. He stumbled away and turned when he didn't hear skittering to see that he had won the battle. He gave the horrified Wick a thumbs up then his foot gave out, and the last thing he felt was hitting the ground, hard.