Chapter 375 - Giants, Raccoons, and Giant Raccoons IV
The party started searching for a spot to camp as the sun began to set. Jules, who had switched places with the elf napping atop the wagon, had nearly steered the turberi into three different clearings, but each time, the decision was vetoed on account of the groups already present. No one wanted a repeat of the previous Cadrian attack, and though sick of driving, the clam was inclined to agree.
It was only after nightfall that they finally found a decent spot. It was a little bit off the beaten path, just far enough for everything but their campfire to remain invisible to curious passersby. The precise composition of the forest only served to better veil them; they had finally gotten deep enough in Zarkaahn for the vegetation to have changed; there were large patches of bamboo spread all over and the number of ferns had finally exceeded the number of maples.
All things considered, it was a fairly quiet evening. Dinner was cooking, and each party member was attending to his or her own business. In the abstract, their behaviour was no different from how it had been the last few days, but the mood was nowhere near as dour.
Chloe hummed to herself as she stirred the pot, and Arciel was finally of the mind to return to practicing her magic. She was focused primarily on casting her ars magna. She fired off the shadowy bolts as quickly as she could, with the resident lyrkress serving as her target. It was, of course, an entirely consensual exchange. Claire had volunteered herself for the others to strike, and three of the four in the midst of self-discipline had taken her up on the offer.
Jules was the only one to refrain. He kept to himself, refining his magical formulae within the men’s tent while Arciel, Krail, and Lana made use of the moving target. The squid was focused on the quality of her attacks, whereas the other two put volume first and foremost. Krail formed an endless stream of arrows that kept her moving, while Lana rushed to her blind spots and deployed her area of control.
Their coordination wasn’t perfect, but so long as Claire refused to use her vectors, it was more than good enough. They forced her into frequent transformations, and Arciel’s blinding attacks only dialled up the pressure.
Practice lasted until dinner was ready, with Chloe calling upon the group to gather around the fire. Each of its members was served a bowl of stew and a loaf of deep-fried bread, bought fresh from the market earlier in the afternoon. There were a number of fruits to balance out the experience, as well as some blood for the two vampires. It had been drawn from a curious but unfortunate rabbit that ventured close enough to the party to become a part of the evening stew.
Arciel happily began with the rabbit’s offering, only to freeze with her eyes turned skyward. The bowl in her hands dropped to the ground, but her maid grabbed it with a dive before its contents could spill.
“Ciel? What’s wrong?” asked Chloe. When she looked at her mistress, she found the royal squid with her pupils in flux. They pulsed twice a second, shrinking and expanding like a bird in flight.
“Uhmmm… What the heck is up with yo—” Sylvia opened her mouth, but Chloe pressed a finger to her lips and shushed her before she could finish her question.
The flickering didn’t last for long, with Arciel momentarily drooping her head and snapping to a seated position. Her lips were twisted into a bit of a frown, which she quickly covered with the bright red fan she retrieved from within her sleeve. Her cheeks were the faintest shade of red, no doubt in part thanks to the attention that had followed her sudden seizure.
“I have been bestowed a revelation,” she said. Her voice was a little shaky, but she continued to speak regardless. “The goddess has affirmed that another entity has thrown our plans awry and advised that we refrain from exploring dungeons prior to our entrance into Paunse.”
“Uhmmm… how far away is that again?” asked Sylvia.
“It isn’t too far, maybe a week or so away,” said Krail. “If I’m remembering right, Paunse is north of Fornestead, which should be where we find ourselves once we cross another border.”
“Mmmnnnn, so does that mean we gotta rush until we’re there?”
“It does not. We are to progress at whatever pace it is that we so desire,” said Arciel. “Griselda cannot determine at this time if any difference shall arise from pushing ahead. She shall inform us once she has completed her analysis.”
“Oh… well, in that case, we should probably hurry as much as we can,” said Sylvia. “Right, Claire?”
There was a brief pause. “Right.” The moose quickly finished her meal and stood up from her seat. “I’m going to go lie down.”
“H-huh?” Sylvia blinked. “Uhmmmm, okay, gimme a sec.” She stuck her face in her stew, drained the bowl, and chased after her pet. “Thanks, Chloe!” she said, as she hopped away, “It was really tasty!”
She didn’t slow until she entered the tent and found Claire on her bedroll with a leatherbound book in hand. It wasn’t open; she was just holding it and silently staring at the cover.
“Claire?”
“We’re going to be in Paunse soon.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right.” The fox blinked. Thrice. “I totally forgot about your catgirl fetish.”
She was met at first with a silent stare. “I don’t have a catgirl fetish. Alfred has a catgirl fetish, and he tried to give me one by fiddling with my head.”
“Yeah, sure… I mean it’s still gonna be a problem, right?”
“Not anymore. I got rid of the effect when I ascended.” She raised the old diary to eye level as she fell back into her makeshift bed. Her cloak deformed during her descent, transforming into a set of luxurious sheets still attached to her body.
“Oh. Wait, really?” The fox narrowed her eyes into a skeptical stare.
“Really.”
Claire stared at the book’s cover for a little bit longer before she finally flipped it open. She started with one of its earliest pages, rereading to the point where she had last stopped, lips pursed into a frown throughout. She raised a finger to turn the page as she reached it and even played with the corner, flicking it back and forth, but though she thought herself ready, her body refused her commands. She even tried using her vectors, but like her extended digits, they only served to deny her.
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In the end, she closed the keepsake and returned it to its bag, beckoning the fox with a finger to take its place in her hands.
Sylvia happily complied. Crawling into the embrace, she joined the lyrkress in a moment of respite. She looked up at her favourite chair, half expecting to jump into an extended conversation, but Claire was already asleep.
Giggling to herself, the less-than-stuffed animal snuggled a little closer and closed her eyes as well.
___
Claire fell through the darkness. The wind rushed by her face as she plummeted through an infinite abyss. That part was normal, but that was exactly why it bothered her.
She hadn’t been given any choices since Pollux had captured their allies. The phantom had pulled her straight into his world every night since, and not even the use of her key had allowed for an early escape. Though she suspected that mastery of his techniques would have allowed her to circumvent Sophia’s defences, she had no intention of following through with his training. She still wanted her own solutions. He had other plans, however, and drilled her on the use of her divinity for as long as each night allowed.
His non-presence was awfully suspicious, so she began by summoning his door and cracking it wide open. She was expecting the usual, empty world, but there was no sign of its continued existence. There was only more darkness on the other side. And like the vertical space that allowed her to access all the others, it was the sort she couldn’t see through.
The not-so-fresh environment came with a set of disquieting sensations. Her spine shivered, her tail shook, and something itched under her skin. She couldn’t determine its cause even after stepping inside, only that her feet touched against something soft as she advanced through the space. There were no walls, and she could stretch her limbs as far as they could go, but for whatever reason, it felt narrow, like she was being boxed in with every step she took.
It was on the fourth such action that everything suddenly changed.
Bright pink eyeballs sprouted in the space around her. Some were only partly visible and vanished briefly once every few seconds like they were embedded in a set of invisible, blinking faces. Others could be seen in their spherical entirety, their veins pulsing and the nerves behind them firing a constant barrage of signals.
Claire backtracked immediately. Her heart leaping out of her throat, she zipped back out the door and slammed it shut, nearly breaking its frame with the force of the collision.
She didn’t know why she was panting.
It shouldn’t have terrified her, but somehow, it did. Her own eyes were blinking uncontrollably, opening and closing all over her body as she tried to slow her heart. Despite her best efforts, the metronome refused to calm. It continued throbbing, striking against her ribs like a hammer. The lack of control undid her transformation; she reverted to her massive true form, which for some odd reason felt like it filled the unending space around her.
She tried to escape the darkness. But none of the other doors heeded her summons.
There was no way out.
It was as she came to that realization that her fear suddenly abated. Annoyed, she came to a halt by flapping her wings and spun around to gaze at the spot directly behind her.
The darkness faded into a mist, with an irritatingly familiar chapel taking its place. Normally, the space would have been lined with soldiers, phantoms of warriors long past, but they had vacated their positions and gathered in front of the empty throne. They stood in lines of ten by ten, weapons ready, exactly as would an army on the verge of marching out to war.
In its usual state, the temple could not have possibly supported the formations—there were tens of thousands of warriors and it was only a few dozen meters wide—but on that particular day, the space was expanded. Every soul stood present atop the same red carpet, leaving the walls far away.
Being near the back of the formation herself, Claire found a number of familiar faces. To her annoyance, she recognized one Timaois Pollux just a few dozen meters away, as well as the obnoxious centaur she had just slain the other day. Her great uncle was also among them, but she paid him little attention. They had never been close, and she doubted that he would recognize her with her body in the shape it was. As far as she was concerned, they shared only their last names and their silvery colours.
It took half a second for her to realize that they were all unmoving. In fact, the whole scene was frozen; it was almost like someone had stopped the clock and plopped her onto the resulting set.
Vella was not the mightiest deity. But in spite of her stupidity, she wasn’t too far from claiming the title. There couldn’t have possibly existed an entity capable of exerting such influence over the arachne’s realm, save for the goddess herself.
Surely enough, she soon revealed herself as the perpetrator. Pushing the door wide open, she stepped inside with her face a jubilant smile. Her mechanical, spider-like legs skittered across the floor as she approached the lyrkress with her circuits alight, pulsing with the same pink glow that the eyeballs had carried before her. The presentation was so over-the-top that it only drove Claire to roll her eyes.
“Welcomwph!?” Vella tried to speak, only to bite her tongue as the snake-moose gave it a magical tug. Her sharpened teeth tore right through it, separating the two halves with ease.
“You’re so stupid I almost can’t believe you’re not a delusion.” Muttering under her breath again, Claire took a deep breath and ripped herself free.
The world became muffled as she left her delusional brain to rot in its meat cage and pressed her feet on the ground in spirit form. The fox in her arms gawked as she did, looking between her soul and her figure in clear confusion. It didn’t help that her true form had emerged from her humanoid one, despite the difference in size.
Deciding not to acknowledge the event, Claire summoned her doors and took a moment to pick between them. There were three as always. One led to the phantom’s abode, where she could hone her skills. One led to Rubia’s mind and allowed her to explore the royal castle. And one should have led to the land of dreams.
On that particular night, the dream door was missing, replaced with a series of metal bars that resembled the entrance to a cell.
Still ignoring her fox, she popped it open and strolled right through. There was a fair chance that it was still a trap, as it had been before, but she entered it regardless. It was the obvious choice. The god of the hunt was denying their opportunities to grow stronger. She needed to do everything she could to offset his efforts and perhaps even outpace them.
Vella’s prison awaited her on the other side, looking exactly as it did just half a week prior. The very same deities were held in the very same cells with the very same numbers overhead. Though she had already browsed nearly half the spider’s wares, Claire took her time perusing her choices. She focused primarily on her gut feeling, using it as a benchmark of risk as she examined each of the gods in question. She made sure to double-check their weapons as she looked them over, more so as a means of guessing their approach to combat than gauging the threat of their reach.
She eventually settled on an erdbrecher with a pair of twin sabres and the number twenty-five marked directly above his cell. He didn’t seem like the easiest opponent; her instincts assured her that there were many others she could handedly defeat. And that was exactly why she chose him. She wouldn't grow if she only bullied the weak. Though, evidently, the definition thereof was ever in flux. Two of the celestials she had defeated before had gone from easy to unwinnable. It was a curious occurrence, and she suspected that it had something or other to do with the growth of her ability scores. But at the end of the day, it was irrelevant information.
Without changing her form, she took Starrgort in one claw and her key in the other.
Log Entry 854675
You have received a quest - Vella’s Call (8)
Primary Objective: Survive the shadow of Einhardt Brandt, God of Blade Dances, for 72 hours.
Rewards:
- 25000 points of divinity
- A 1% modifier to all ability scores applied after all other calculations.
The shadow wasn’t about to end itself.