Chapter 18 - Attack the Mock

The plant creature, if that’s what it was, didn’t even try to dodge. In fact, the “petals” closed around the glow rod as it spun into the back of the thing’s throat, plunging me into darkness. Then, with a muffled *FWOOMPH* there was a flash of purple through a slit in the monster’s mouth, as it deformed and split from the concussive force of the blast.

Back to being in pitch dark, I scrambled to the side, my feet tearing through the sucking mud until I felt the pillar where I’d tried to rest. Placing my back to it, I summoned a chunk of scrap iron I hadn’t had a chance to use yet.

Volatility [1 MP/sec]

I didn’t try to control the amount of mana I used for this one. I just poured it on, watching the cave get brighter and brighter. Unfortunately, the mist I’d observed earlier was thick in the air, swirling and billowing in confusing patterns as my light tried to penetrate. Indistinct, dark shapes the size of trucks stalked through the fog everywhere I turned.

Detect Limestone wasn’t giving me anything. Whatever this place was made of, it wasn’t that. Maybe the silt mound I stood upon was too tall to let me see the actual cave floor.

I activated Detect Iron, and the world lit up, but not like it did when I was working with pure ore. This was more of a subtle glow in my senses, dimmer than the concentration of iron in my blood but still better than nothing. I stood on a mound of diffuse iron, more concentrated further down into the mud. Surprisingly, the pillar at my back was the highest concentration of the element aside from me.

Feathery flakes of something drifted down on me from overhead, so light and insubstantial my eyes couldn’t make them out, and when they touched my skin, they dissolved, leaving behind a sticky sort of residue I couldn’t brush off.

I slowed my breaths, looking down so as not to get the stuff on my face or take it into my lungs. I wished I had enough of a shirt left to make a rudimentary mask, but I didn’t get that chance.

Something big shot out of the dark from behind me, my Detect skill warning me just in time for me to dive to the side. Meanwhile, I clutched my glowing grenade light tight in my hand, making sure to treat the item as gently as I could. The creature’s petals bit down where I was was with a *SNAP,* while I crawled around the pillar to put it between me and my attacker, only looking up again once I sensed the thing starting to retreat.

Before it slipped back into the fog, I caught a glimpse of some of those petals as they collapsed back in on themselves to become a bulb again. Then it was gone, out of range of Detect and my light, just in time for another attack to come from behind.

This time, I wasn't able to dodge properly. The flower monster rushed me, already at tremendous speed by the time it entered the 10 foot radius for Detect, and I was only able to roll on my belly for a few feet before it was upon me. The red and yellow flaps opened wide and draped down over me with wet slaps, the fangs thankfully missing me, penetrating into the mud instead. Disturbingly warm and wet, the flaps of the monster’s mouth wrapped around me like a disgusting, smothering blanket.

The mass of the monster bore me down into the ground, crushing me into the silt until I was below the water line. Foul liquid rushed into my eyes and ears, my nose, but the experience didn’t last long. Soon, I was moving. I had the sensation of being whipped in one direction, then the next, and then there was a muffled *crash* and the walls of the creature’s mouth cooled.

I thrashed at the fleshy petals, trying to make some room to move around, but, if anything, they tightened around me, constricting me until there was no room to get any force behind my kicks. I tried Devouring Grasp, but the walls of the bulb were too slick and rubbery to get a good grip.

No. No. No!

I wasn’t going out like this. I still had the grenade in my hand. I could detonate it and hope for the best, but that ‘best’ would probably result in my death. The blast would probably kill me in this confined space, and if it didn’t I would be concussed and deaf and easy pickings if I didn’t kill the monster in one blow.

Water rushed in from around me to fill what space I had left, quickly cutting off what little air I had. Something else was in the water too, something that stung my eyes and made my skin itch. I’d handled enough chemicals to recognize the signs of something corrosive.

It was going to drown me. Then it was going to digest me.

Detect Iron told me I was in one of the bulbs, attached to a long vine about as thick as I was, and I was slowly settling on the bottom of the lake.

Luckily, I had just come from an underwater ordeal, and I’d come equipped. Letting go of my grenade to let it sink down to the bottom of the bulb, I contorted my body, shrinking down into a ball so I could get some room to summon my last full air tank. It appeared in front of my face, and I went right to Shaping the aperture to allow me to breathe.

The stinging digestive juices were becoming more intense. My entire body burned, even my eyes, so much I couldn’t keep them open anymore, and when I closed them, the chemical went to work on my eyelids. I fought the urge to scratch or rub at the sensation, knowing it wouldn’t help. It was maddening.

Think, Ryan. Think. What do we have?

I breathed in from my air canister, held it, then breathed out, feeling the bubbles trickle past my face and pool above my head, forming the only spot inside my new prison that had any semblance of air.

With air came the liquid, the juices that got into my mouth tasted sour and numbed my taste buds. The thought of getting the stuff inside my lungs terrified me.

Have to act now. Do anything. Do… Oh no.

My shoulders slumped and my stomach did that sinking thing as an anxious feeling came over me.

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I had an idea, and it was a terrible one.

My oxygen canister was already saturated. All it took was a little push to pry open the breather aperture wider and wider and wider, until the air was leaving the tank in a bubbling, hissing torrent. Bubbles shot past my face, surrounded me. I dropped the tank, allowing it to spill its contents into the monstrous cavity as I summoned my weapon.

I’d improved the design somewhat since my prototype rifle. Now it was a one handed model with an actual spring loaded firing pin so I didn’t have to slap it every time I wanted it to go off. It was still a single shot type with a chamber I had to reload manually, but I hadn’t had time to really get the whole thing working before I was out of food. Right now, the weapon looked like a bolt action ballistic rifle had a baby with a potato gun. Hopefully, it would do the trick

The bulb was bigger now, the water that was once drowning me now a pool on the “floor” only deep enough to come up to my knees. My ears popped. The pressure was climbing fast.

Using Detect Iron, I found the front of the bulb where the lips folded around one another to create the seal.

I was only going to get one shot at this, and it was going to suck.

Taking a deep breath, I placed the muzzle of my pistol against the mouth of the monster and pulled the trigger.

*FOW*

The rubbery petals blew open, and the pressurized pocket of air I’d created rushed out before the water could reassert itself. I, too, was expelled from the bulb into the warmish water of the lake. I was expelled with such force that I tumbled bonelessly along the muddy bottom for quite a way before colliding with the slope of the central mud hill.

It took me a couple seconds to find which way was up, but then I was moving, jumping up and breaking the surface to get fresh air in my lungs before my dense body dragged me back down.

As quickly as I could, I ascended the hill, jumping to catch my breath several times before I was able to properly get to dry-ish land. The amber glow of the pillar’s weird growths called to me, promising me dependable oxygen and-

Wait. Did those always glow?

As I swam/ran for the top of the hill, the glow of the bulbs intensified, bathing the cavern in yellow, sulfuric light. Tendrils of mist wafted up from the surface of the water, slowly at first, but it picked up speed, rapidly approaching fog bank levels of obfuscation. The humming was back now too.

By the time I was out of the water, the mist was everywhere, and the air vibrated with that smooth dulling song that enticed me to lay down and die.

My body was on fire, seared raw by the digestive acid, my clothes were falling off of me in clumps, and my chest heaved. With a shaking hand, I summoned another round of ammunition and slipped it into the pistol, snapping the chamber closed with a *clack.*

I looked everywhere at once, eyes wide, tracking with my weapon and ready for anything to pop out of the yellow fog.

Then, whatever was causing the amber lumps to glow, stopped. They winked out like candles, plunging me back into darkness.

“Eer illeeu mina?”

Oh, wonderful. Horn lady was back.

I turned, fighting the urge to sink down to my knees and relax my arms, just for a moment. I shook my head and worked my jaw, focusing on the burning of my skin to keep alert.

There she was, beautiful, ethereal. Midnight hair on pale skin, shapely legs carrying her across the water, leaving barely a ripple. Her smile gleamed, and her big dark eyes invited me in.

I slapped myself. The rest of the cave was pitch dark, but Detect Iron was still going. While my flesh glowed with sparkling vitality and warm, rushing blood, the pale woman was a void in my senses, nothing but empty space.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Something behind me rose from the water.

I dashed to the pillar before the creature could strike. It got close though, close enough to trigger Detect. In fact, quite a few of the bulbs were close to me now, just below the surface of the water, waiting for me to turn my back on them.

The woman approached me, smiling bashfully, looking down at her body then peering at me through wavy hair. Her tiny horns glimmered, though there was no light.

“Ches tule mirakabory?” She asked, holding out a hand for me to take.

Detect told me the truth. There was nothing there.

This is a spell.

The realization hit me between the eyes, shattered my perceived reality, exploded in my mind. The curtain of the glamor lifted, was burned away. Suddenly, I could think clearly again.

I looked around. The mist, the woman, the darkness, all of it was gone, or, more precisely, it was there, but it took on a translucent quality, one that I could easily see through. The humming was just a buzzing like so many insects. Yes, my eyes saw the illusion, but they saw it for what it was now, no more than a light show or maybe a waking dream.

The yellow light was back, the orbs on the pillar burning brightly like miniature suns, bathing the rest of the cavern in yellow, so intense I could see the rest of the monster or monsters below the surface of the lake, waiting there patiently for an opening.

What’s more, the walls… the walls were not made of rock. The pillar was not made of rock, though the illusion there was much harder to see through. No, the pillar was made of red fleshy fiber with yellow streaks, just like the inside of the bulb mouths. The thing blurred as it vibrated at a frequency I couldn’t hear but I could feel.

I took a step back from the pillar, shaking my head at the enormity of how screwed I was. The whole cave was alive.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

This time, I could see the bulbs rising from the water. Not a single one this time, but many. They were everywhere. Maybe the monster realized I wasn’t fooled anymore, or maybe it was tired of wasting energy on me and just wanted dinner to be ready. Whatever it was, this was the end game. I was out of tricks.

One by one, the petals unfurled themselves, revealing their pink and yellow insides and hard, fang covered tips. Except for two that hung limply from their vines, one shredded from the inside at the “neck” and the other with sagging, ripped lips that leaked honey colored fluid.

I swallowed. I couldn’t kill them all. Well, maybe not.

Calling on my spatial storage yet again, I summoned my last remaining air supply, the tank I’d half-drained when I’d arrived here.

Volatility [1 MP/sec]

I invited the wild mana in, as much as I could, for one second. Two. Three.

I kept the spell channeling for as long as the creature would give me. The wild mana suffused the tank’s structure, mixing in among its matter, quivering behind all the molecules, practically bursting with anticipation at being set free.

Five. Six.

Video games had it right. In a boss fight, aim for the glowing weak spot.

The flower monster’s many mouths reared back and coiled their vines in preparation for a strike.

Seven. Eight. The aluminum was a brand in my hand, searing my skin.

I’d run out of time.

I flung the air canister at the pillar, up high where the amber tumors grew, as far from me as I could.

It flew up and away, far up into the ceiling of the cavern before it reached its apex. Meanwhile, I dove toward the relative safety of the water.

With a flick of will, I broke the containment for my Volatility spell, triggering its detonation. My body hit the water with a splash just as one of the petal mouths slammed into me from above and wrapped its smothering plant flesh around me.

*BOOM*