Chapter 119 - The One-Legged Kraken VI

There was an audible splash as Claire descended upon the seafloor. Accompanying the out-of-place sound was an equally out of place sensation, the feeling of a light, salty breeze against her hooves. The ungulate feet were dry, just like the layer of sand that lay beneath them; the chasm’s salty brine came to an abrupt end just a few centimeters above her ankles. Even stranger than the air pocket’s presence was its uniformity. There was a distinct invisible plane that the water was not allowed to pass. She was unable to transport any of the fluid into the dry chamber, even with her magic.

The chasm’s bottom dwellers were distinct from their high rising peers, both in scale and number. Wagon-sized fish were a common sight, and their predators, the sharks and monopusses, were also scaled up accordingly. With the four-legged hunters removed from the equation, the food chain was far more chaotic; the submarine behemoths battled it out in freeform brawls where only the victors were allowed to eat.

While their bodies had grown to exaggerated proportions, their levels did not. The larger variants were only once ascended, and the most powerful among them hovered at most in the level seventy range. Like the crabs, they were unable to hold against her. But for what they lacked in strength, they appeared to demonstrate in intellect. Most began to actively avoid her after bearing witness to the butchering of their kin.

Locating the lord was not as easy as Sylvia had suggested. She wandered around the ocean floor but found nothing but the usual suspects until she investigated the mountain that lay at one of its far ends. Drawing closer to the large triangular structure revealed that it was covered from head to toe in a layer of sickly purple skin. The halfbreed had assumed that the lord would be bioluminescent, just like all the other creatures swimming around in the dark, but it remained the sole entity that refused to conform. Or at least the only one she could see.

The monster pulled itself out of the sand as she drew near, revealing both its fifty meter frame and the three heads that lay at the base of its body. The one on its left was relatively ordinary; it was a giant octopus face, no different from the ones that all the other monopuses had featured, but the other two were more distinct. The middle head looked like something that would have fit better on a dog, specifically a bulldog with its flattened face a thousand times larger than the norm. Its right head was humanoid. It was old and wrinkled, with massive warts growing atop its disproportionate hooked nose; she wouldn’t have been surprised to find the very same head atop an old child-eating witch. All three craniums were topped with locks of grey-black hair, each styled in its own unique fashion. The dog head had braids, the squid head had dreadlocks, and the human head was left messy and untamed.

“Hello, stranger. Good day to you.”

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“Go away. I’m very, very sleepy.”

The human, squid, and dog spoke all at once. Making out their words was difficult. Their voices were near identical. They almost seemed to fight against each other; the contrasting sounds echoed off the walls and melded together to create a dissonance of barely intelligible noise. Claire had to close her eyes and replay the mess in her mind to pick out the individual sentences. But even then, she was left at an impasse. She didn’t know which head to respond to; all three seemed to be awaiting an answer.

“Are you the lord of the chasm?” She was almost tempted to ask why or how the chimera was 35% catgirl, but refrained in the interest of keeping the filthy word out of her mouth.

“Correct. We are the sixty fourth lord of the chasm.”

“Fuck off! None of your business!”

“I’m tired. What year is it?”

Again, they all spoke at once. They had only had a brief exchange, but Claire was gritting her teeth. She was sick of talking to it, and it had already given her all the confirmation she needed, but it spoke again before she could get on with its murder.

“You’re here to slay us, but we don’t like fighting. Let’s engage in a contest of wits with our lives on the line.”

“You look dumber than the average person. Why don’t you try solving one of our riddles?”

“Sleeping is fun but mind games are funner. Let’s enjoy a word puzzle together.”

The rogue closed her eyes and slowly inhaled a lungful of water. She considered playing along for only a moment before outright dismissing it. Claire was confident in her rhetoric, but there was no point in putting herself through the trouble, especially not if the riddle in question was binding. In her moment of silence, she forged a weapon, a large chunk of ice in the shape of a spear, and raised it above her shoulder.

“I refuse.” She threw the weapon as the words left her mouth. It drilled through the water, nailed the dog-like face square in the forehead, and drilled through its supple flesh. More than half the spiral-tipped lance sank into the monster’s body, but she was unsure if she managed to do any lasting damage. The head was more than ten times the pole weapon’s length, and she could’t tell if she’d gotten through to the brain, stopped at the skull, or perhaps even failed to reach the bone. The monster was far too massive and bizarre for her to accurately gauge the effects of her attacks.

Still, she remained confident. If stabbing it once didn’t work, then she would just have to stab it again, and again, and again. Until it was turned into a bleeding mess of a corpse.

The cerbersquid began to roar and shout as it finally registered the pain, but she heard none of it. Her ears were sealed in a layer of ice; crafted to protect her from its headache inducing cacophony of a voice. She was tempted to dive straight into close quarters and smash one of its faces with her fists, but she backed off instead and kept a careful eye out for its response.

Killing it would be difficult. She had no idea where its true vitals lay or how it intended to fight. The smaller monopuses would fly at their prey with their mouths gaping, but she didn’t think it practical for the lord.

And yet, that was exactly what it did.

It flipped on its side and dove at her mouth first, revealing a beak lined with three sets of jaws, each made of teeth as large as her head. Though seemingly practiced, the approach was irreparably flawed. Only one of its heads could see her; neither of the two mammalian parts were able to look beneath themselves. Their eyes simply weren’t positioned for the task, and their skulls were locked in place; it almost appeared incapable of craning its non-existent necks.

Smiling confidently, she avoided the toothy body slam by darting aside and approached the only head that fit in with its frame. The submarine face began to glow with a soft green light, but she lashed out at its eye before its spell was complete. Her tail dug straight into its massive socket and fished around for the piece of flesh that held it in place.

The kraken reeled back and flailed at her with its tentacle, but she evaded again. When the boneless arm reeled around for a second strike, she stepped out of the way and left it to stab at its own missing eye. It had failed to put up a defense; not even its slimy mucous had stopped her from robbing it of one of its vital organs.

Screeching, it lashed out at her again. Its tentacle was erratic and would change angles seemingly at random, but its movements were too slow, too reliant on momentum to catch her. Each lashing strike had a long, predictable windup that she had no trouble identifying, even with the details of its frame obscured by a lack of light.

Casting the stolen eyeball aside, she weaved through its blows and approached its face again. But unlike the first time, it was ready and waiting. A magic circle appeared beneath it as its cephalopod head ballooned like a pufferfish and ejected a series of tiny spines in every which direction. There were too many of them to evade; her skin was scratched by a countless number of needles, even as she retreated and focused her efforts on knocking the projectiles out of the water.

Log Entry 3021

You have been poisoned. Your health regeneration has been reduced from 1560/hour to -440/hour, and your agility has been reduced from 518 to 268. Your motor functions have been impaired. This effect will last for two hours.

The pins themselves did next to nothing, but the accompanying payload was not one she could easily dismiss. Her veins were itching and aching; she was tempted to dig her nails into her own skin and tear her blood vessels from her flesh. As much as it bothered her, the prickling irritation coursing through her body was but the second fiddle. The seemingly harmless hit to her agility was what truly took centre stage. Her limbs refused to respond with their usual fluidity; moving through the water was as hard as wading through mud. She had to actively fight her own rigid form to get her body to obey her commands.

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Even breathing was hard. Her lungs often refused to respond, and her heart began beating at uneven intervals. When the lord tackled her again, she found herself struggling to evade its beak. The jagged mandible ripped through her cloak and tore through her armour like paper. It was nigh unimpeded, the metal delayed the attack for only the briefest of moments. It was enough time for her to escape, but not without suffering a blow. One of her ribs was broken and there was a bloody gash running across her chest, but she had managed to get out from under the monopus before she was crushed by the weight of its humanoid face.

It yelled something at her, a message that fell on deaf ears. She continued to ignore it as she took half an unsteady step forward and fired an icy beam. Though the freezing ray coated everything it touched in a thin layer of ice, she knew that it was far too small in scale to pose a real threat. It was the same problem she had with the whale. She was outsized, and to make matters worse, the monster’s vitality was too high for her to drag it into a battle of attrition. The eye she had torn out was already starting to grow back. It wasn’t quite as quick to heal as a corrupted watcher, but a significant piece of flesh returned with every passing moment. All the damage she did was sure to be undone if she didn’t reapply the wound within the next few minutes.

She needed a way to hit it quick and hard.

And that was precisely why she drew her iceborn axe.

Seizing the initiative, the lyrkress kicked off the ground and sped through the water. Shouldersnake was summoned in the middle of her charge and infused with every last drop of mana it could take. The serpent was launched into the water with only one simple instruction, to serve as a suicidal nuiscance. Ignoring the behemoth’s attacks, it weaved its way in and out of the monopus’ underbelly, firing bolts of ice everywhere it went.

The one-legged kraken wasn’t so easily distracted. Though it did attempt to squash the spirit animal, at least one of its five eyes remained fixed on her no matter where she went. Its heads were locked in place, so it tilted its whole body instead, even if it meant taking more damage from her serpentine companion.

It wasn’t a bad choice, but not even all the tentacle lashing in the world could stop her from proceeding. From just outside its range, she exploited one of the most fundamental properties of her chief element. The ability to spread.

The ice that made up her blade expanded through the sea, increasing its mass tenfold with every passing second. She fed it a constant stream of mana, freezing and weaponizing the water around her. Try as it might, the monster was unable to stop her from enhancing her blade. She took a step back each time it stepped forward, and its agility proved inferior, even with the poison eating away at hers.

Once transformed into a kraken-sized cleaver, the monstrous blade was swung with all the might she could muster.

Her foe attempted to intercept the attack with its tentacle, but she boosted the axe’s speed with a burst of force magic and slid it past the squid’s guard. Its head cleaved straight through the dog face, splitting it in two, right down the centre.

And in doing so, revealed that it was not what it seemed.

The monster was in pain; it flailed about and clutched at its skull.

But it wasn’t bleeding.

Looking inside the open head, she found that it was nothing but a prop. There was no brain and no skull. It was just another lump of flesh. Not even the canine mouth was connected to the rest of its body; its oral cavity ended with another layer of purple skin.

Though confused, she pressed her advantage without missing a beat. She readied her massive weapon again and brought it down a second time. But the sea monster rejected the attack. It smashed its tentacle into the side of her axe midswing.

The brittle ice was nothing before the giant’s powerful muscles. The weapon wasn’t just displaced. It was shattered. Its blade was broken into a million pieces, particles of fine dust.

It had learned.

And she had known it would.

That was why she had transferred all of the weapon’s momentum on contact.

The confused, raging kraken crashed into the sandy bank below. All five of its eyes darted around wildly in an attempt to locate her, but the light that revealed her location was gone, muffled by a thick layer of leather.

She fired her next attack from directly overhead. Two beams of ice, one from each hand. The glowing magic carved through the darkness right as her phantom serpent snuck up the sea creature’s octopus-like face and exploded whilst biting down on its remaining giant eye.

One spell landed on each of its sockets. The ice rapidly expanded from the point of contact, filling the half-empty holes and freezing them in time. The thought of using her divinity crossed her mind, but she refrained. She had already cheated one lord to death. She didn’t need to do the same thing again. The recoil wasn’t worth it, and she wanted—had—to prove that she was superior, cowardly tricks notwithstanding.

It flailed around and tried to evade the beams, but she kept them concentrated on its squid-like face. She swam around it, focusing her fire on the same spots even as it tried to block her with its sole limb; its whole head was frozen by the time the beam finally fizzled out.

The false command center remained an unmoving meat popsicle for a full five seconds. But then, it burst free, just as she was about to conclude that she had dealt another lasting blow. The whole world trembled as the creature roared; its three heads screamed at her as it manifested a series of spells. All of which set its own body as the target.

Sickly purple parts sprouted from its frame. Blinking eyelids appeared all over its feeler, flattened appendages grew from its remaining heads, and a massive muscle extended from its mouth.

Claire threw her axe into the water above and grew it again. Recognizing the impending attack, the kraken began rushing its spells. Each polymorph was more gruesome and incomplete than the last. Blood leaked from the eyes, only half the fins were properly formed, and the tongue was more a mess of cancerous flesh than it was a distinctive organ.

The one-legged colossus kicked itself into high gear as soon as its tongue grew from its beak. It began to spin like a top, slowly at first, but more rapidly with every passing moment. The water around it followed suit, spiralling into a massive vortex that deprived her of all control. She struggled against the current, but she couldn’t stop it from sweeping her up and washing her away.

Chunks of debris-rocks and spines-crashed into her as she was flung to and fro. They bashed in her armour and sliced up her scales.

Log Entry 3022

You have been badly poisoned. Your health regeneration has been reduced from 1560/hour to -2440/hour, and your agility has been reduced from 518 to 18. Your motor functions have been heavily impaired. This effect will last for four hours.

Her heart rate plummeted as she gasped for breath. She felt like she had been debilitated; her body refused most of her commands. Only one of every few orders carried through her system, with most losing steam halfway down her spine.

Log Entry 3023

You are now familiar with and capable of producing lesser tetrodotoxin.

Her eyes drooped and lost focus. The massive shadow at the centre of the storm grew blurrier and blurrier. She felt like she was about to lose track of it the moment she blinked, and being flung around like a ragdoll only served to make matters worse.

Paralyzing gaze had no effect on the three-headed monstrosity. Or perhaps it did. She couldn’t tell. Its momentum kept it spinning, regardless of whether its muscles were frozen.

Claire could only grit her teeth and bear with the assault.

She didn’t know what to do. It was too heavy for her to push it with force magic, and her ice magic had little to no effect. Physically battering it seemed to be the only viable option, but even that was questionable at best. Closing in on it was impossible while it was spinning, and she wasn’t sure that the damage she dealt would last.

An alternative popped into her hazy mind as she considered options, one that ultimately led to Shoulderhorse's advent.

The make-believe pony got to work immediately. It opened its mouth. And began to inhale.

Unlike the toxic barbs polluting her surroundings, the water was not made of magic. Neither was the underwater vortex that had her at its mercy. It was entirely a physical phenomenon produced by the monopus’ raw strength. And that was precisely why it was eaten. The entire spiralling mass was instantly devoured and taken into the mare’s stomach.

More water rushed in to fill the void, but not quickly enough. With no ocean to support it, the monopus plummeted into the sandy shore below. Both its heads were ground into the sand at an incredible speed. The grit shaved through its skin and burned its flesh before it could finally slow. Because of the way the ocean was structured, no water filled the gaps between the monster’s body and the submarine beach, and its mucus was soon depleted. There was no lubricant to save it from wrecking its underside; it was forced to endure the pain until it finally ground to a halt.

It slowly rose from the sand and returned to the water, both its faces fuming with rage. The humanoid head’s veins were popping, and its squiddy puppet was buzzing and flailing.

That was when she finally approached.

Popping up from within the sandy shore, she flung Shoulderhorse into its open, bloodied mouth. She chopped off its tongue with a blade out of ice, plugged the entrance with her weapon, and sealed it shut by freezing the area around it. And then, only then, did she order the spirit to dump its load.

It was a bet. Predicated on the idea that its other two heads were the same as its first.

A bet she won.

Their false orifices failed to function as exits for the fluid.

With nowhere to go, the water pooled inside the monster and inflated it to a dozen times its previous size. Its skin was incredibly stretchy and elastic. But not elastic enough.

Pushed to its limit, the kraken’s flesh burst. And flooded the sea with a mix of blood, guts, and brine.