Wiggles resembled a tunnel-boring machine rather than an undead creature. Victor, Henry, and a frightened Genus followed the dark tunnel through the earth Wiggles had perfectly carved out. Apart from the foul smell of death and decay and the occasional suspiciously neon-green puddle, the tunnel through the bedrock was perfectly smooth.
Henry and Victor were perfectly fine in the pitch blackness to the planet’s center. But Genus took every step with a nervous caution befitting a blind lady attempting to cross a busy road. He kept his wings tight to his body as he carefully put one paw in front of the other; the constant scraping of his claws against the smooth rock grated on Victor’s nerves. Genus occasionally cast glances at Victor’s shadowy avatar that floated beside his head a few meters off the ground. Finally, with a gulp and a deep breath, Genus opened his mouth and politely snarled, “Voice, can you provide a guiding light?”
Victor took a moment to remember his name was Voice and quickly responded with a snap through his avatar, “No. I am the harbinger of death and mass destruction. What need would I have for light?”
Genus grumbled and continued cautiously descending down the tunnel. His golden scales lightly glowed and provided a few feet of faint light. The chrome dragon squinted his exotic crystal eyes as if trying to peer through the veil of darkness before him.
The avatar sneered, “A grand dragon such as yourself can’t see in the dark?”
Genus ignored the remark and soldiered on. Minutes turned into hours. Victor scrolled through his stats to pass the time and started to get stressed. There was nothing down here, only Genus to possibly sate his hunger if things got bad enough. He looked up at the ceiling and debated floating through it with Spirit Movement to the surface to acquire some prey. Although Victor had learned to live with it somewhat, the constant feeling of withering away as the world tried to return him to the void was unsettling. Imagine if you had a continuous timer ticking over your head with that obnoxious tick-tock sound, constantly reminding you of your impending doom. And in this silence, the sound was deafening.
“Boss, what the hell is an actor?”
A small voice whispered at the back of Victor’s mind. The Netherborne looked around in confusion, his avatar mimicking his movements.
“Something wrong?” Genus asked as he saw the avatar looking in all directions, with many glowing blue eyes appearing on its body.
“Did you hear that?” Victor questioned through his avatar. “I heard a voice.”
Genus paused with abject horror on his scaly face. “V-voice? Where?” The chrome dragon, larger than a double-decker bus, slowly backed up like a scared kitten.
Note to self, dragons hate being underground. Victor suspected any bird would despise being deprived of their most significant asset, flight. If an opponent of equal strength, such as Wiggles, appeared and fought with Genus in this enclosed space, the poor dragon would have a low chance of victory. Genus’s attitude was understandable and utterly opposite to his previous arrogant attitude.
“Also, what is zombie world’s second season?”
This time Victor entirely stopped in his tracks. He did one last look around the surroundings to confirm no hidden speakers. He released a wave of Annihilating Aura to ensure no critters were lurking and messing with his mind through telepathy. Keeping an eagle eye on his stats page, he confirmed no debuffs listed or anything out of the ordinary. Victor paused and entered his network. The black ocean spread out for infinity in all directions and was calm, barely even a ripple of activity.
“Boss, it’s Terry. Can you hear me?”
Victor spun round and saw a ripple; it came from above. How can something come from above? He squinted and saw a speck so tiny in the far sky.
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Was that Terry?
Victor condensed a single message in a metaphorical stone— “ Terry, where are you? What happened?” — and lobbed it into space. He watched it sail through the sky toward its destination in the far distance—and drag a shit-ton of himself with it.
He snapped out of his network and eyed his stats page with panic. An entire zero had vanished from his stats. He was down a magnitude of ten and estimated he had around seven hours of lifeforce remaining with some quick math.
“Henry, keep tabs on Genus and continue to lead him down the path. I need to move on ahead.” Victor didn’t even wait for the horseman’s response and barreled down the tunnel at an unknown speed. Through his connection, he could tell Wiggles was nearing the mana mass likely to be the dungeon. He needed food, and he needed it now .
***
Alice awoke to her world shaking. The previously calm lake, occupied by a copious amount of rainbow fish, had waves splashing into the shores and rainbow fish flopping into the air. She pushed herself up onto her shaking legs and stumbled back. She had heard legends of earthquakes, but they paled in comparison to this. Even her vision was shaking up and down, making her feel sick.
Keeping close to the ground and using her arms as makeshift legs, she crab-crawled her way to the cavern’s outer edges, where the shaking wasn’t so bad. The trees rustled, and fruit fell to the ground like oversize hail, bouncing and rolling across the moss-covered floor.
“W-what is happening?” Alice checked the silver barrier, and it was still functioning. There was no sign of the dragons outside making a move; did they not care? Could they not feel the shaking? Rocks cascaded from the cavern’s ceiling and splashed in the lake below; some even impacted rainbow fish in midair, creating a bloody patch on the water’s surface. Alice hid under a tree and held her knees to her chest. She glanced at the silver barrier every second, hoping it would vanish so she could escape or run for help.
Instinctively she activated Stealth, hoping that it might obscure her from the rocks and she would outlive this earthquake or whatever was happening.
A loud explosion took her eyes off the silver barrier and back to the lake. A wall of water, twenty meters high, surged toward her with a roar. She grabbed the tree trunk for dear life as the water smashed into the tree and impacted the wall. The water was freezing and knocked the wind straight out of her. Dazed and confused, she fell to one knee, opened her mouth wide, and deeply inhaled and exhaled. She was in shock and didn’t know what to do. She looked up for answers.
Looming over her was a massive creature that reminded her of Hyveth Arcspace. The enormous prison cell designed to house a dragon suddenly felt very claustrophobic to Alice as she stared into the creature’s abyssal mouth that could swallow a dragon whole. Its rancid breath filled the space, and neon-green sludge dripped from its thousands of teeth.
The creature slithered out of the enormous hole where the lake once was and turned to her. There were no eyes nor signs of intelligence. No reason or rhyme, just primal hunger for flesh. It came closer. Alice gagged and felt bile crawl up her throat as the smell of thousand-year-old blue cheese mixed with decaying corpses wafted over her. With one hand, she reached out as if trying to hold back the titanic creature that could kill her with a sneeze. She was weak, so, so weak, and she hated it. In the face of death, she had nothing.
It was inches from her face. She could reach out and touch one of the razor-sharp teeth that were bigger than her. She looked through the gaps in the thin fingers and could see all the way down its endless throat. It looked like a tunnel to the void, the abyss, hell.
Right as she closed her eyes to accept death, an all-too-familiar ancient voice echoed through the claustrophobic cavern, and hope bloomed in her heart.
“Stop, Wiggles. She isn’t food.” The massive, midnight-black earthworm shook the room as it turned toward the speaker; its black scales, the size of castle walls, shifted as it moved, revealing the glowing, neon-green flesh below. The ugly thing blocked most of Alice’s view, but she saw a long, shadowy arm ending in meter-long claws pointing toward the silver barrier. “Food is out there.”