CHAPTER 33

“Well, what do you see?” Kopius shouted up the hoodoo.

With the help of pre-existing holes, Cici had scampered up the pillar like a squirrel on a tree. After twenty or so feet, he had disappeared from sight, somehow entering the stone tower.

“More bones,” Cici yelled back.

A few quiet moments later and Kopius jumped back as a thick braid of rope seemingly fell from the sky. Cici popped his head out and made hand motions that told Kopius to get up there. It took him a moment of fiddling with the rope until Kopius decided to just climb up as Cici had. He wasn’t a squirrel on a tree, but he moved at a decent pace. Once he was close enough, Kopius grabbed Cici’s outstretched wrist, and the big man hoisted him inside the hoodoo.

Kopius had expected some kind of hollowed out woodpecker hole, but what he found was more along the lines of half a crow’s nest carved into the pillar. The space was large enough for just two people and a few belongings.

A pair of skulls and a jumble of bones covered most of a slanted floor. The ceiling came in at a sharp angle, leaving little to no head room for the two tall individuals. Two weather-worn leather satchels lay half-open, their contents long withered and hardened. A few rusted and brittle weapons were the last of the noticeable items that remained in the hoodoo hole.

At first glance, Kopius was thankful that it had not rained any time recently. Given the right downpour, the small pocket in the stone could easily become an impromptu bathtub. In both corners on the floor, tiny quantities of water were gathered as if to tell Kopius he was right to be thankful.

Not all was decaying or decrepit. The bags were still usable, and they provided Kopius with an answer to a question that had been on his mind. After searching one of the bags for anything of value, he littered the contents over the side of their safe space. He removed three books from his inventory ring, then placed the books in the empty bag and then the bag into his ring.

“Yes.” Kopius said quietly, accompanied with a fist pump.

“Did you not think it would work?” Cici asked, having watched the entire process.

“I figured it would. Had to try though.”

“I could have told you.”

“I still would have tested it. I have trust issues.”

Cici grunt-coughed in a way that said ‘‘tell me something I don’t know.’’

Kopius used the weathered bags to finish consolidating his inventory, and then the two of them began clearing out the small space. Everything went over the side. The bones went over the edge, crashing down upon the ground and scattering. Tattered remains of clothing and armor followed, as well as three swords and two long knives that Cici claimed were worthless.

All the while, Kopius allowed a distant memory to invade his thoughts. A time an ex-girlfriend had liberated his belongings via a third-story bedroom window.

Cory had, at first, employed the ‘‘you’re cute when you’re angry’’ approach, but that quickly collapsed. ‘Begging forgiveness’ also failed to slow down the onslaught of personal belongings sailing out the window. It wasn’t until his Playstation10 Pro Titanfall3 Special Edition console had hit the open air when he had finally admitted to himself that there might have been some red flags missed along the way.

With their small alcove clear and clean, they removed some of the clothing sacks from Kopius’s ring. The pair set up two upright places to sleep. The space was cramped, and their feet would have some overlap. It had all the room and comfort of a window seat on an airplane.

“Should we bury the bones?” Kopius asked after they had finished. Cici looked over the side and scratched at his beard. They both knew dusk was quickly approaching, so whatever they needed to do on the ground, they needed to do it soon.

“You worried about ghosts, lad?” Cici said, a smile in his words that Kopius didn’t have to see to know was there.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“You worried about ghosts?” Kopius replied mockingly, with all the cadence and maturity of a second grader.

“Don’t go getting all broody on me,” Cici said with a hearty laugh, and Kopius couldn’t help but crack a smile. “Come on, let’s get down there and make some food before the light fades altogether.”

The sound of something like a whip cracking startled Kopius out of his sleep. The only reason he hadn’t jumped over the ledge in surprise was for the uncomfortable, fetal-shaped sleeping position he had wedged himself into the night before.

Awake enough to know he was some thirty feet off the ground, he remained seated while he waited for his other senses to catch up. With his bearings all figured out and his feet untangled from Cici’s, he activated his Night Vision.

SNAP!

Another whip-like sound cut through the air, and Kopius instinctually ducked. After a few moments, he quietly leaned his head over the side to have a look. At first, he could only see about halfway down the hoodoo. He opened and closed his eyes a few times in an attempt to turn them off and then on again. He opened his eyes wide and squinted, but all he could see was a black pit of nothingness.

SNAP! SNAP!

It made Kopius flinch, but he remained focused on the darkness below. The sound had moved away from a whip and into a metal trap shutting noise. His heart had a noticeably faster pace to it, but he was confident in his concealment, as long as nobody made a sound. The clamping had come from the direction back towards the river, the way they had trekked in.

Suddenly, a neon-green sphere, roughly the size of a softball, arced through the open space. The small, green comet streaked from his right to left in a glowing beam of light, covering a decent amount of ground before splashing into the pillar where they had found the skeletons. The slime ball hit the stone like an egg hitting a brick wall. Bright-green ooze trickled down from the point of impact. Splatter went in all directions, and the parts that did stick began to slide down the hoodoo.

Even at this distance, it gave off the slightest sound of hissing and gave Kopius the notion that the green slime was eroding the stone.

That extra bit of illumination dramatically increased what Kopius could see with his Night Vision; it was as though the sun was at high noon. As if someone had turned the brightness all the way up on their laptop, the scene below became clear. Two large circles came into view, and Kopius saw a moonshot for the first time. They were just as Cici had described them while they ate the previous evening:

“They float, so you won't hear them coming,” Cici had begun between bites. “Round in shape and as large as I am tall. They got some sideways chompers, no eyes, and throw balls of acid.” The big man had tilted his head ninety-ish degrees and bit at the air a few times.

“The acid is what then, magic?” Kopius had asked.

“No, they produce it.”

“Produce how?”

“They shit it out.”

“Nah.”

“Oh yeah, they shit it right out and throw it around with that tail-arm they got.”

“You’re messing with me. How’s that even possible?”

The conversation had devolved from there as they both attempted to demonstrate what a tail shaped like an arm would look like in order to catch and then throw poopy acid balls.

Kopius had basically imagined the monster to look like a floating version of Mike Wazowski, minus the eyeball and after several rounds of steroid use.

Who, besides its vertically situated sharp teeth and near soundless wandering, also threw deadly slime balls like a pack of howler monkeys. Now that he was looking at one, he took a moment to be impressed with Cici’s accurate description. The arm wasn’t an ‘‘arm’’ per se, but it was an appendage attached to the backside of a floating circle monster.

Ekk, fuckin’ gross. Why would you throw that? Kopius wondered. He leaned over only as far as he needed and watched the two monsters enter the small, tilled clearing. Another bright glob of acid hurtled through the air just as the first one had, only this time Kopius saw the whole process. The moonshot's long, flat appendage had caught the ball of acid and then flung it across the small area like it had a Jai alai wicker cesta.

The two floating creatures began to slowly circle each other, both chomping and throwing fecal acid at the nearby hoodoos. As they circled, they moved in and out from center, their chomps and throws happening with more unison and synergy. They turned their backs towards each other, wrapping their tails in the process, and then moved in an odd, gyrating fashion, making noises that sounded like poor-quality ASMR videos. Kopius involuntarily gagged as he caught on to what he was witnessing.

He ducked out of sight, trying to remain quiet and push down—as best he could—the bile escaping his stomach. In a half-baked attempt to make it all go away, he clamped his eyes shut and smothered his ears.

It was all for naught.

His imagination played moonshot porn on repeat while the sounds creeped in and echoed inside his mind. All he could do was wait it out and hope they performed like he had on prom night: quick and painless.