The surrounding world slowly came into awareness — before her eyes were open, before her ears registered sound, Iris felt the leaves and the vines through the pressure their matter exerted on the void. The air was still and dense, and filled with tiny buzzing bugs — those were the first sounds she heard, the incessant buzzing of gnats bouncing off her face and ears.
Her eyes cracked open with great complaint, revealing the dense green canopy of old and gnarled trees. Hanging moss dangled from the branches, and purple vines — no, they were tentacles. She was suspended in the air by tentacles originating from her bottomless bag, they gently cradle her legs, torso and neck and wrapped around the branches above her. With a cautious turn of her head, she saw stagnant water about twenty feet below and extending in all directions, that would explain the foul smell that permeated the air.
Disgruntled tones emanated from the bottomless bag as it stirred at her waist, and Littletooth squeezed out between the tentacles and climbed onto Iris’s stomach. He walked up onto her chest, his two tiny feet pressing into her with all his weight like slow little punches.
Iris groaned, “you shouldn’t be out right now.”
The wyvern’s eyes locked onto a target about the time Iris heard an intense buzzing on the approach. A large fly zipped by in front of her face, and Littletooth gnashed out to catch it into his jaws. He seemed offended by the aggressive buzzing of the insect in his mouth as he awkwardly struggled to crunch it between his jaws.
Iris gave up, she didn’t have the energy to fight with him right now. She let her head relax against the tentacle that cradled it as her eyes slowly closed. Her head was aching, but it wasn’t the mana headache she was used to. With a slow, groggy check of the back of her head, she felt half-dried blood matting her hair. Her hat was gone, too, but she didn’t care right now.
“Did you get my sword?” she asked without opening her eyes.
Affirmative tones came from the bag.
Littletooth curled up and lay down on her chest, and she decided to hang there for a while. It wasn’t all that uncomfortable, really, it felt almost like a hammock. The memories of how she got here came back easily enough, the balrog attack and the battle in the crow’s nest were surprisingly clear in her mind. She recalled tangling with the balrog as the ship left them behind, and remembered trying to disengage, but that was her last memory before waking up here.
“Ship kept flying?” she asked.
Affirmative tones.
“Figures,” she sighed, “that’ll be our biggest problem, I guess.”
Iris ran through the check list she had learned from adventure magazines. Food wasn’t a problem, much of Autumn’s plentiful stores were kept in her bottomless bag. With Abby’s help she could probably put together the party’s tent, as well, so that took care of shelter so long as she could find a solid patch of ground to put it up. Water would be tight, she kept a decent amount in her bag for emergencies and for Littletooth but it would maybe be enough to last her a day or two if she drank as much as she should — and she didn’t need to inspect the swamp water to know it wasn’t potable.
“All thing’s considered, we’re not looking too bad.”
A few silent moments passed, and then birds scattered from the trees as a familiar roar echoed in the distance.
“Oh good,” she her voice was dripping with sarcasm and disdain, “the balrog lived too.”
At least it was far enough away not to be an immediate concern. Still, it was a reminder that she couldn’t stay here long. She allowed herself a final moment of relative peace before opening her eyes and inspecting her surroundings more thoroughly. There was a patch of muddy land close enough to blip to, that seemed like a good first step. Iris wrapped an arm around Littletooth, then spoke to Abby.
“Let go of my belt for a second.”
Abby obliged and unwrapped the bag’s drawstring from her belt. Once the bag was detached, Iris blipped above the patch of ground and twisted in the air to land on her feet. Her boots slapped wetly into the mud, immediately splattering the bottom of her robe. She let out a sigh, accepting that this robe probably wouldn’t survive the next few days anyway.
“Alright, you can let go. I’ll catch you.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Abby released her tentacles from the branches and slurped them back into the void, letting the bag fall freely towards the water. Iris blipped it into her hand and returned it to her waist where the drawstrings once again wrapped around her belt. A thought occurred to her.
“Abby, what do you think would happen if I blipped the bag into the void?”
What could be only described as several intensely angry and overlapping roars came from the bag.
“Something bad, got it.”
While Littletooth scurried up to sit on her shoulder, Iris took a moment to inspect herself. All of her glow stones had survived the fall, that was good news as she wasn’t looking forward to the fresh nightmares her unwelcome hitchhiker might cook up in these new circumstances. Her robe had a few superficial cuts, she guessed those happened during the fall through the canopy. The leather chest plate and bracers were in good shape, but she didn’t remember putting those on before the balrog fight.
“Did you put these on me?” she asked.
Affirmative tones.
“Huh, thanks,” Iris was constantly impressed by the void monster’s care-taking nature, “alright, I guess we need to make up as much ground as possible. I doubt the ship will slow down for us.”
Concerned tones.
Iris let out a tired breath, “yeah, I don’t have a lot of hope we’ll catch up either, but we need a goal and that’s the best one I’ve got right now. Did the sun set while I was asleep?”
Negative tones.
The sky was seldom visible through the canopy, but the position of the sun was obvious by the rays it cast through the leaves. It was somewhat low in the sky, that meant it was late afternoon or early evening. She twisted to position it behind her, orienting herself to the east, then turned slightly to face vaguely southeast.
“Next time we’re in a shop, make me buy a compass.”
Affirmative tones.
Iris tilted her head and looked over at Littletooth perched happily on her shoulder, he returned her gaze with a titled head of his own. She knew that she really ought to put him away in the void, but his presence made it a little bit easier to pretend this was a fun jaunt through the swamp with her familiars rather than the harrowing, life-threatening situation it really was. Plus, she really didn’t want the trouble of trying to catch him right now.
“Are you gonna behave?”
He cocked his head to the other side.
“No running off, no starting fights, and absolutely no chasing anything. Is that understood?”
He cracked open his jaws and released a tiny screech.
“I’m gonna pretend that was a yes. Abby, grab him if he does anything stupid.”
Affirmative tones.
Iris held her palm up towards the sky and ripped open a window to the void. Her walking stick slowly rose up out of her palm, only beginning to tip when the last of its length emerged from the void. A twist of her palm let the staff slip down between her loose grasp, which tightened near the top as she planted it into the mud.
“Nothing else to do but get going, I guess. Hang on tight, little guy.”
She leaned forward and kicked off the ground into a leap, releasing a blast of force from the end of her walking stick that propelled her forward. A blip brought her to a tree trunk, which she kicked off of before blipping again.
“Ow!” she shouted, quickly blipped to the nearest patch of mud as she moved to pry Littletooth’s claws out of the flesh of her shoulder.
The wyvern let out an apologetic whine.
“It’s not your fault,” Iris sighed, “that really hurt, though. We need to come up with something better.”
A tentacle rose up behind Iris from the bottomless bag and began gently nudging the wyvern forward. At first, Littletooth flapped his wings in annoyance and nipped towards the tentacles as a warning, but Abby pushed harder. With a complaining whine, Littletooth launched off Iris’s shoulder and flapped his wings in a half-flight, half-glide to land on a half-submerged log nearby. He turned back towards Iris and hissed angrily at Abby.
“No, your mother’s right, Littletooth. It’s about time you started flying.”
Littletooth let out a sound that wasn’t quite a screech but was a little too shrill to be a roar, and blipped. Iris sensed him appear in the air above her other shoulder, and quickly blipped to the log. Littletooth awkwardly flapped his wings to slow his descent towards the ground. His feet soon splashed down into the mud, and he released a pathetic whine.
“It’s this or the void,” Iris shrugged.
Littletooth let out another almost-roar, and then took flight with a running start. He flew past Iris in the direction she had been traveling, and she blipped after him. She made sure to blip slightly ahead of him, both to lead the way in the right direction and to make it clear that he was following her, rather than the other way around. He couldn’t quite maintain altitude in sustained flight, but could rise quickly in short bursts and made occasional stops on logs or low hanging branches to kick off and gain height like large, clumsy bird fluttering between perches.
Pretty soon the pair had a reached a pace that almost matched what Iris could have managed without him, and she found herself smiling wide and even laughing as she watched him learn how to fly in real time. Simply staying aloft seemed to come naturally, and rather quickly, but maneuvering around obstacles was very much a work in progress. More than once he simply barreled through a small sapling or a patch of hanging moss rather than avoid it, and at one point he let out an adorable shriek of terror when he found himself fast approaching a tree which he only narrowly dodged.
Though Iris doubted they could ever match the speed of the Gaping Maw, their pace was nothing to scoff at. She guessed they were easily traveling faster than a carriage, maybe even as fast as a cantering horse, which was quite the speed to sustain in the swampy terrain. If nothing else, she was enjoying the journey and felt a sense of accomplishment that she was at least doing something. For now, she would simply have to hope that the Gaping Maw would have to stop for repairs after the battle, giving her a chance to catch up.