The head that loomed over Angela had an almost dragon-like appearance—if a dragon had bred with a catfish. There were no ears, and enormous barbels hung from both the top and bottom on either side of its mouth. The mouth itself was more eel-like. Long and filled with sharp teeth. But unlike an eel or a catfish, the eyes were front-set and staring straight at her with predatory calm. The body of the creature, where she could see it, was enormously long and serpent-like, with plate-like scales that looked as though they could stop a bullet, and a dorsal ridge that stuck up in a repeating pattern that started at the back of the creature’s neck and continued down its serpent-like body.
Angela stared in awe, taking in every detail as she tried to work out just what the hell the thing was.
DRUID ABILITY UNLOCKED!
A pebble appeared, skipped off the water, and pinged Angela in the forehead, causing information to flood into her brain:
Druid Lore: Level 42 Ogopogo
A member of the serpent family, Ogopogo are descendants of the great ocean serpents who became landlocked following the last ice age. Ogopogo rarely reproduce, but when they do, it is by asexually budding off an egg that subsequently hatches into the much smaller, more intelligent humanoid stage of the species, collectively known as Ogpoi. Unlike Ogopogo, Ogpoi are either male or female. They live only briefly in their natal lake before departing on land to find an Ogpoi of the opposite gender, a search which may take decades. During that time, Ogpoi will level up many times over and can sometimes be found in settlements of other species. Once an Ogpoi finds a mate, however, the pair will immediately seek out an appropriate lake in which to bond. When this happens, the Ogpoi’s levels are averaged, and they lose their individual minds, becoming an Ogopogo. This process strips them of their advanced intelligence, and they revert to the animalistic, extremely territorial form that they will maintain for the remainder of their lives, which can last for centuries.
Encounter Advice: Ogopogo, while rare, are extremely dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. Under no circumstances approach a lake where an Ogopogo has taken up residence.
Druid Lore. Huh, sweet ability. Too bad she was gonna die.
“Heyyyy,” Angela said in her best “good doggy” voice. The Ogopogo huffed, blasting what was hopefully just water at Angela from its nostrils. She wiped the liquid off her face, only then realizing that the creature’s body had wholly encircled her, its sinuous waves rippling as they rose and dipped around her in an undulating, hypnotic manner. “Yeah, so funny story. See, I fell off that cliff—totally by accident—and happened to land here. Now, I know what you’re thinking: ‘Hey, that lady looks like a tasty snack!’ You’re totally wrong, though. I really don’t take care of my body. It’s probably all kind of nasty, and I’m sure you’ll—shit!”
The Ogopogo lunged at Angela, but she was prepared for the attack and immediately enacted her super-high-probability-of-success plan of escape, which essentially boiled down to grabbing onto the undulating body of the Ogopogo and hoping like hell those shifting coils towed her out of the danger zone.
No sooner had Angela’s hand closed around one of the creature’s many dorsal fins than she was jerked laterally through the water, practically dislocating her shoulder in the process. Much to her surprise, the sudden movement actually did pull her out of range of the Ogopogo’s snapping jaws. However, she was willing to concede that her main reason for success was the creature’s reluctance to risk biting itself. But hey, little victories, right?
That said, Angela still needed to find a plan that was less about delaying and more about surviving. Because at the moment, the only plan she could come up with consisted of staying alive until the Ogopogo spontaneously died of a heart attack brought on by a diet consisting of too much red meat, followed by Angela picking up around 40 Luck points.
Hey, it wasn’t totally crazy. Stranger things had happened. After all, just a few days ago, Angela was organizing a protest against industrial pollution in freshwater streams. Smash cut to today, where she would gladly dump a barrel of cyanide into this lake if it saved her ass.
As the Ogopogo continued to contort itself in an attempt to get a clean bite on Angela, she started hauling herself hand-over-hand up the Ogopogo’s back, moving from one dorsal fin to another. Not that she had a plan, per se. But it really seemed like she should be doing something more than merely hanging on for dear life. So off she went, climbing from fin to fin.
Periodically, the creature would get into a decent position to snap at Angela. When that happened, she would simply let go and drop to a lower fin, the sudden change in movement throwing the Ogopogo off its attack. It wasn’t the most complex of manoeuvres, but it seemed to be working. Of course, the Ogopogo hadn’t become an apex predator without a few tricks of its own, and it put one of them on display by simply diving beneath the water in a single powerful undulation.
The sudden movement was so powerful that Angela had no hope of holding on. She was immediately thrown off the Ogopogo’s back and sent spinning through the now-frothy water as she tried to maintain a sense of orientation. Not one to lose her head, Angela kicked her way to the surface and discovered that the course of her struggle with the Ogopogo had taken her back to the base of the waterfall.
“Welp, fingers crossed,” Angela said. With no other options available to her, she switched to a front crawl and swam through the rocks on the periphery of the waterfall itself, her strokes taking her behind the curtain of water on the off-chance she could find someplace to take refuge against the rock face.
As soon as Angela surfaced behind the falls, a big grin crossed her face.
There, behind the waterfall, was a rock wall and ledge, the obsidian smooth and polished in stark counterpoint to the rocks at the base of the falls. But it wasn’t the ledge that excited Angela. It was the large, semitransparent egg that made the ledge its home. There was only one—a little over a metre tall and standing vertically upright—but it was definitely an egg. If Angela had to guess, the moisture of the waterfall was serving to keep it damp. Given the ledge’s lack of accessibility by any means other than through the water, there was no question who the egg belonged to.
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A plan formed in Angela’s mind.
Hauling herself up on the ledge, Angela darted behind the egg and dumped the contents of her belt pouch out into her right hand as she waited for the Ogopogo to arrive. As it turned out, she didn’t have to wait long.
The Ogopogo arrived in a great plume of water, its predatory eyes quickly scanning the area. When it spotted Angela hiding behind its egg, it let out a titanic hiss, enraged at the threat to its young. The monster’s head snapped forward, trying to get at Angela’s cowering form, but Angela’s hunch that the creature was unwilling to risk its egg proved blessedly correct.
A game of cat and mouse ensued, with the Ogopogo trying to position itself to bite Angela while she circled the egg to stop it from happening. Through it all, the Ogopogo remained silent, focusing its energy on waiting for Angela to make a mistake rather than some useless theatrics. Which sucked because her entire plan hinged on it doing the opposite of that.
“C’mon, you catfish lover,” she taunted. “Tell me about your parents. What rock did they meet under? I assume you’re a worm? It’s just that I’m having a lot of trouble telling your head from your ass, and I can’t do that with worms either.”
Whether the Ogopogo could understand Angela’s words or not, it continued to stare at her unblinkingly. In fact, it had stopped moving entirely. That abandonment of its attempt to corral her made her nervous.
Glancing at the egg, Angela noticed that its semi-transparent, skin-like shell had a sheen to it that made it somewhat reflective. Reflective enough that she could see the faint outline of what was behind her…
Angela dropped to the ground just as the tip of the Ogopogo’s tail hammered into the rock where she had been standing, cracking it and sending chips of sharp obsidian raining around her. A large piece that was nearly a hand wide fell to the ground right in front of Angela’s face, the razor-sharp rock coming within a hair’s width of slicing her open.
It also gave her an idea.
Scooping the chunk of obsidian off the ground, Angela climbed back to her feet and stared down the Ogopogo, the contents of her belt pouch in her right hand and the obsidian blade in her left. Stepping next to the glistening egg, Angela held the razor-sharp stone to its leathery case and grinned. “You know what I love, you Slytherin motherfucker? BIRTHDAYS! Birthdays sure are fun. What do you think? Should we have a birthday party today?”
The creature glared at her but didn’t back off.
She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Angela put the sharp edge of the rock against the eggshell, but the moment it contacted the egg, the Ogopogo thrust its head forward and roared in titanic fury at the threat to its offspring.
Just as Angela had hoped.
The moment the creature opened its mouth, Angela tossed the contents of her belt pouch into the open jaws, the small objects hitting the back of the creature’s throat and causing it to involuntarily snap its mouth shut, swallowing the contents in an involuntary gulp.
“Haha! Oh yeah, that was AWESOME! Can you believe that worked?” Angela shouted, grinning maniacally and giving a fist pump. The Ogopogo looked at her in a state of semi-confusion.
“Oh, I forgot. You must be wondering what’s going on. ’Kay, here’s the deal: You’re a big boy, right? Hell of a lot bigger than me. But I am, believe it or not, pretty good at estimating weight—just one of those things. I figure you’re probably what, 5,000 kilograms? Maybe 6,000? That would make you say, 100 times my size? But that shouldn’t be a problem because…wait for it… here it comes…”
The Ogopogo’s head suddenly lolled around in a circle. It gave a full-body shudder as it tried to maintain focus on her, then it lurched off to the side where it vomited in a gigantic pile on the ground. That went on for a while, and when it finished, it turned its attention to a spot somewhere out over the water. It peered at the location curiously, moving its head around as though trying to look at it from multiple directions. Then it stopped. And it swayed. And then it fell over sideways and sank beneath the surface of the lake.
“…those mushrooms pack a HELL of a punch,” Angela finished with a fist pump. “Yeah, bitch. If I’ve learned anything in games, it’s that you grab every fucking crafting ingredient you can find.”
Angela looked at the egg and smiled, poking it with one finger. “Hey, no worries, little buddy. I wouldn’t have hurt you.”
The wet, fleshy shell suddenly bulged towards her, the semi-transparent skin revealing a humanoid face pressed against it from the inside. A long-fingered webbed hand appeared beside the face, pointing back at her as the head turned sideways to present a single gaping eye that opened and stared at her intently.
“Eeyah!” Angela shouted, jumping back. “What the fuck? What the fuck! FUUUUCK! That is so fucked up. Seriously fucked up. All’s y’all? SO fucked up.” A full-body shudder ran through her as she walked away from the egg, glancing over her shoulder as she went. The face remained pressed up against the shell, watching her leave. “So, SO creepy.”
With one last shudder, Angela dove into the lake and began pulling herself through the water to the nearest patch of shoreline. She wasn’t wildly happy to be back in the water with the Ogopogo, but from her experience, the thing would be high as a kite for a couple more hours, and if it wasn’t she was screwed anyway.
Fortunately, she was able to make the trip without any surprises or impromptu fights to the death, which was a nice change.
When Angela finally made it to the shore and pulled her bedraggled, adrenaline-ridden body out of the water, she turned and looked out over the water. Then she shifted her gaze up, to the enormous waterfall she’d gone over.
“WOOHOO!” she shouted, raising her arms in the air and staring at the sky. “Yeah, you know it, Tome people. I just took down a Level 42 Ogopogo like a boss. Hit me with that XP!” She stood there silently, but nothing happened.
She sighed. “Yeah, I know. I didn’t kill it. Had to try though, right?”
After squeezing out all the water she could from her torn and tattered clothes—her pants were practically shorts at this point—Angela set out along the edge of the lake to find the outflow so that she could resume her trip to Palmyre. She stayed well clear of the shoreline, though. The last thing she needed was the irony of escaping the Ogopogo in the water, only to get snapped up by it while she was on land.
On the far side of the lake, Angela discovered a broad marshy area where the water shallowed out, soon constricting into something once again resembling a river. She headed back down to the shore and picked up the pace, anxious to put as much space between herself and the lake as possible. Only then would she feel comfortable finding a place to stop and dry off so that she wouldn’t freeze her ass off again that night.
Not for the first time, Angela wished she still had that book to use as firestarter. But no… it had to go missing, because god forbid she caught a break in this place.
An hour passed with Angela picking her way along the riverbank. She was starting to get tired, but even though she found several good places where she could rest and dry her clothes on the rocks, she kept finding a reason to keep walking. There was always a rogue sound, or no place to sit that was perfectly flat, or a dark patch of trees—always something she could use as an excuse to keep moving.
Eventually, Angela was forced to admit the truth.
She was stalling.
Something had weaselled its way into her subconscious, but she had been so busy with the waterfall and the Ogopogo that she hadn’t processed it. As soon the encounter with the Ogopogo ended though, something had begun tickling at the back of her mind. At first, she’d dismissed it as a mistaken recollection. The further she walked though, the more nervous she got. And the more nervous she got, the less she wanted to confirm her suspicions.
Finally, Angela halted, unable to put it off further.
“Fuck it,” she sighed. “Tome.”
The slabs of rock appeared in front of her, almost crushing her feet when they fell to the ground. She ignored the near-miss, pushing the pile over so she could find the one that held a log of all the messages she had received so far.
Her eyes flicked to the bottom, locking on one of the last entries in the list.
“…first your brother, and now you…”
Sometimes it sucked to be right.
“Bro, where are you?” she said, her lips pressing into a line. “And what are you running from?”