Chapter 10: Big Bad Bodacious Monster

Being so close to oceans most of my life, I often worried about shark attacks. I thought about the sheer, blood-freezing terror of seeing a shark’s dorsal fin coming toward me while I was floating too far from land. The only thing worse that I could imagine would be the same scenario, but then the dorsal fin disappears beneath the surface.

Never once did I ponder giant aquatic turtle aggression.

In retrospect, it seems I wasted a ton of my life worrying about the wrong things.

Other than the crackle and hiss of the roasted River Shell carcass sinking, the river became ominously quiet. I checked my interface and found the cooldowns were over. Fresh mana, fresh potion at the ready.

If the Ember Shell came up beneath me, however, it could snap me in half, and it wouldn’t much matter what spell or potion I could pop off in my dying moments.

I should swim. The thought ricocheted around my skull, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t out-swim this thing. Being a new level 2, I wouldn’t likely win a fight against a level 9 creature either. I raced through my inventory, looking for something—anything—that I could use.

I mean, isn’t that how all the most satisfying games worked? You’ve got this little item that sits in your inventory for ten levels, and you have no idea what it could be for… until that moment. “Ah, ha! I can place the stone gargoyle on the foot switch and then dodge-roll under the rising portcullis!”

Scanning the few items in my inventory, I found nothing that seemed in any way helpful. I heard Grand Elf’s voice in my head, “Rick, this is anything but a game… in the wilds of Illdari, there is no reset button.”

I felt something beneath me and clenched my teeth. My time had run out.

The River Shell rose rapidly beneath me, pushing me up out of the water. It bounced me once on the nose of its beak, and I caught a glimpse of a fiery orange eye. It bounced me again, this time harder, and I flew skyward, twisting and flipping. I came down, expecting to be swallowed whole.

Instead, I landed on the creature’s shell, deposited on a bench of bony plating that was relatively smooth compared to the jagged shards in front and behind me.

The River Shell emitted a gurgling growl and swam at ridiculous speed to the opposite shore. With me sitting atop its back, dumbfounded and afraid to move, the giant turtle reached the shore, and craned its snaking neck to put its head right in my face.

Its jaws opened, and I panicked. I swept open my inventory, grabbed the pile of Root Runt Filets, and flung them at the creature.

Its jaws snapped shut. It chewed. It made a gurgling noise, something like, Brrrurek!

*[New Achievement Earned: Baby Daddy!]* the British babe enthused, *[25 Achievement Points. You have charmed your first pet. Fancy yourself a ranger or a stranger?]*

The Ember Shell tilted its head one way and back the other way. Something about its huge orange eyes—the slanted, sooty bar that crossed through each pupil…

“Gam?” I whispered.

Brrrurek! It bobbed its barrel-sized noggin and slowly bonked my shoulder.

“Are you serious?” I stared at the creature’s face. He looked so different, except for the eyes. “Gam, is it really you?”

Brrrurek! It began nuzzling my cheek.

I grabbed his face and put my head down atop his beak. “Gamera, I can’t believe it. How’d you get here? How’d you end up a big bad bodacious monster in Illdari?”

I didn’t expect him to answer. He was still a turtle—a magnificent giant, fire breathing turtle, but still.

The blue light blinked, I clicked, and Mr. Cajun Voodoo said, {Level 9 Embershell. Name: Gamera, aka Gam or Gam-Gam. Do you want to keep as a Pet or a Mount or Both? Warning: Selecting one form will boost all of its stats +5. Selecting both will reduce the max stats by -5, but allow both forms standard abilities.}

“Uhm,” I muttered, closing the inventory for a moment to look at Gam-Gam. “What do you think?”

Brrrurek!

“Ok, both it is.” I was thrilled with the idea of having a giant companion, but I knew from experience how important having a mount could be.

“Look at you,” I said, my voice regressing to sappy cute pet talk. “You’re a big ole turtle now! And breathing fire? Whoa, who’s a good boy?”

Brrrurek!

I went back to inventory to see if I had any more Runt Filets. I found that the little food icon for the filets now had a subscript 9, so I tossed Gam another.

He snapped it up, and his whole body jiggled. In the interface, I noticed a pair of new tabs: Pets and Mounts. Under Mounts, a query appeared: {Install Quick Mount, Yes or No?}

I clicked Yes, and a tiny turtle shell icon appeared on my interface, positioned roughly just to the right of the bridge of my nose. Without thinking, I clicked the shell icon.

Brrr—

A three-note musical chime sounded, and Gam vanished beneath me. I fell, my butt unceremoniously splootching into the muddy orange clay of the shoreline. I had to laugh at my own foolishness.

When I clicked the shell icon again, I heard the chime again, and I bounced up in the air, suddenly sitting atop Gam once more. “Coolness,” I muttered.

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I clicked the icon again, this time, ready for the drop and landed on my feet. I practiced a few more times until Gam grabbed me in his jaws and flung me out into the river.

Spluttering, I yelled, “Ok, I get it! You don’t like that so much.”

After paddling back to shore, I sheepishly held out my hand to my new pet/mount. Gam-Gam swung his head toward me and let me pat him on the nose.

“Thanks, buddy,” I said, clambering up his shell and sitting on that smooth plate that formed a natural kind of saddle. “From now on, only when necessary.”

From my perch, I looked up and down the river, and wondered which way to go. Flickering movement far above, drew my gaze. The imps that had attempted to murder me on the bridge were still up there on the ledge.

A faint “Bric-o-brac-o-brickle” drifted down from on high. I’m guessing in impish, that meant something like, “He didn’t die? Inconceivable.”

After I’d stared for a few moments, the imps disappeared into the woods.

[Insert Hiatus Marks]

I decided to go downstream.

Okay, truth be told, Gams decided to go downstream, and I pretended it had been my idea all along.

Gam-Gam was much faster on land than I would have imagined. His legs were long, each stride eating up a ton of real estate, and I got the impression that his current pace was far from top speed.

I munched on some bready wafers Grand Elf had packed me, and would have gladly tossed Gams some more Runt Filets, but he had his own designs. As we came close to the riverbank, Gam’s neck shot out to its full extension, his triangular head stabbing into the water. Each time he withdrew from the water, he came back with a large fish or an eel or these weird single-clawed lobster things.

Sunlight waned, casting warm yellow rays through the treetops on the opposite bank. Shadows stretched across the river and even onto our shore.

I think I dozed off intermittently for the next several hours because I remember weird glimpses of the forest and the river through Gam’s bony plates. I remember thinking that the paintings I kept seeing had the most peculiar picture frames.

When I finally woke up enough to have a coherent thought, the world had gone dark. No, darker, but not all the way dark like nights on Earth could be sometimes. Moonlight from Old One-Eye cast silver through the trees on our left. Colorful forest motes painted luminous ribbons, appearing to streak a short distance and then vanish, like falling stars.

The sky itself seemed alive with light. Stars of course, but also distant shimmering swatches—galaxies, maybe?—swirled and curled amidst the pinpricks of starlight.

“Gam, you doing okay?” I asked, patting the fin plate in front of me.

Brrrurek! He bobbed his head and kept pounding forward.

The cold sliced the bottom of my stomach out of nowhere. Stars, I thought. I should be grateful there are any stars, unfamiliar as they are. The black hole had stolen my life away, stolen everyone’s life away, consuming the planet and who knew what else. But, at least there were still stars out there. The universe lived on, and that was some comfort.

As if to underscore that thought, the forest came alive with sound. The river gurgled along, splashing the shore in places, and vocally coursing around or over exposed roots, fallen trees, and the knobs of big river rocks.

Little unseen creatures—tree frogs, crickets, or some other Illdarian inhabitants—created an ever present music, like sleigh bells, almost. A trilly hooting came from somewhere deep in the wood, only to be answered moments later from a different direction. Wind susurrated through all manner of broadleaf and coniferous trees, and a few weary wooden creaks joined the night’s symphony. The sound enveloped me, and the icy grief faded away once more.

Up ahead, the river swung far to the right, creating a kind of blind turn. As we drew nearer to the bend, a rosy glow appeared deep in the forest on the other shore.

“Gams, let’s go that way,” I said, pointing across the water.

My turtle mount buddy lurched to the right and plunged into the river. He didn’t submerge completely as he had when I’d first seen him in the water. He must have had some internal ballast system, for he floated along, easily keeping me from getting wet.

The rosy light was still too far away to be identified, but it had the feel of something manmade. Manmade, ha! I thought. For all I know, it could be some batwinged, flying pig-folk having a bonfire.

Crossing the deepest part of the river, Gam began to rock a little. It was a gentle wobbling movement that moved me a little back, a little forth, and a little side to side without causing me any fear that I’d fall off my saddle spot.

“Awww!” I blurted, recognizing Gam’s movements at last. He was doing his happy paddle.

We soon reached the opposite shore, and, while the river water sluiced off Gam’s shell, pattering the clay like rainfall, I kept my eyes on the intriguing light.

Burrrit? Gam squeaked, and I could have sworn it sounded like a question.

“Good work, Gam-Gam,” I said, pointing again. “Let’s keep going toward the light.”

Gams strode forward, adeptly picking passages through the trees wide enough to permit his girth. If things got too narrow, I’d have to temporarily stow him away, and… he’d made it pretty clear that the whole “put Gamera in storage” thing wasn’t working for him.

Forest motes whirled in and out of the trees around us as we traveled deeper into the wood, and I hoped that Grand Elf would show me how to befriend the wee cuties. Yes, I could wield a few spells, but somehow, the motes seemed like the most magical thing I’d experienced yet in Illdari. There was something pure about them, wholesome, and I welcomed their company whenever they lit up or streaked by.

The trees had been diverse: hemlocks, oaks, a few skinny birches, pine, sycamore, and a dozen other types I couldn’t readily label, but we entered a vast area that had obviously been cultivated. Wide row after wide row of wonderfully gnarled v-shaped trees greeted us, and gave us a marvelous living archway of dark—nearly black in the night—boughs overhead.

As we passed beneath the lowest limbs, I could see that the foliage was composed of dark green, tulip shaped, leaves that had serrated edges. There too were occasional pods of some kind of small nut or fruit. Smooth carpets of soft, emerald-colored moss flowed from the crook of each tree’s v-split, up the boughs, and presumably continuing onto the thinner branches of the high canopy.

The light ahead became less rosy and showed itself to be not one light source, such as a bonfire, but many light sources. The path ahead had a few ruts in it, indicating wagons and such had traveled this way with some regularity.

“Hey, Gam-Gam,” I said. “Stop for a minute.”

Gams complied, and I slid off my saddle and clambered off of his shell, dropping to the forest floor made spongy by dead leaves. I approached his head and scratched a little under his chin.

“Listen, buddy,” I said, choosing my word carefully. “I don’t know what’s ahead. It might be a town of friendlies, a military garrison full of bloodthirsty mobs, or something else. I know you don’t like being put away, but I’m not sure I’ll get the best response from strangers by riding into town on a fierce Ember Shell the size of a minibus. And let me tell you, Gams, you are quite fearsome.”

Brrrurek! Burrooorek!

Gam gave me a quizzical look and pawed at the ground with one foreleg.

“Do you understand?” I asked, ruffling the feathery golden tubercles beneath his jaw. “Of course, if things go south, I’ll need your firepower to back me up. So I guess what I’m asking is, do you mind if I put you away just until I get the lay of the land? Or, if not, will you wait on the outskirts of… whatever this is but come quickly if I call you?”

Brrr-roo rooooo! Gams stood high on his legs, the limbs always longer than I had imagined. I could pitch a tent under him and almost stand up straight. Combined with my lack of fluency in giant turtle-ease, the stance didn’t really tell me much.

“So… you don’t mind if I put you away, just for a little while?”

Gamera emitted a low bass growl that I felt in my feet. Heat washed over me as smoldering lava stripes striated his shell.

Pretty sure I could understand that bit of turtle body language. “Okay,” I said quickly. “No putting you away. We’ll go as far as we can, then. You’ll hang out, and I’ll call you if I get into trouble. Good?”

Gam’s shell returned to pre conflagration colors, and he snapped his jaws open and closed twice. Pretty sure that was Gam language for “I flex in your face!”