Into the Hells

by Christopher Johns

  I saw Muu yo-yo back behind me, and a large shadow moved toward me from below.

  Two more seconds.

  Jaws was mere feet away.

  One more.

  The light was beginning to leave as its teeth clamped shut.

  Then I felt the held spell pulse, and a wave of electricity burst from my palms. The shark's innards were ribbons, and it opened its mouth to try and get the pain out of it, sinking lower into the water.

  The others were on it in seconds, even Muu gliding through the water around him as if he were touched by Poseidon himself to drive his ice lance into the dying creature.

  We got company! Yohsuke and Bokaj shouted.

  I turned to see other shapes looming toward us. Some large, others small but I could guarantee not one of them would be friendly. Using life sense confirmed that; all of them were not red, likely because they weren’t actively hostile against me at that moment, but the dozens of large and small dots were sooo not comforting.

  As we began to swim north as close as we could to the wall, I noted several misshapen and disfigured fish swimming toward the shark we had beaten down.

  They had glowing, green scales or blackened ones that looked to be oozing some kind of slime behind them. Others looked to be inside out with teeth all over them.

  Needless to say—I wasn’t sleeping well near water. Ever.

  The experience came seconds later, signifying it was finally—fully—dead. And that meant that we were back on the menu if they caught our scent. Luckily, there was enough shark chum to attract all the predators around us to the feast and possibly each other.

  Another large shape loomed closer, and we were all relieved to see that it was the island.

  There was a shelf there, and it traveled down further and seemed to be getting smaller and smaller.

  Likely, the bottom of the island is where we find the way to get to this thing’s lair, right? I looked at the others, and they shrugged.

  “Mayhaps we follow the pollution?” Maebe suggested softly to me, and I repeated it to the others.

  She pointed lower and further toward the eastern portion of the stone before us, and the cloud of murk took on a more virulent-looking deep brown.

  We touch that shit, it’s going to hurt, Muu observed.

  I have just the thing for it. Jaken waved all of us toward him, grabbed Yohsuke’s hand, then James’s, and nodded for the rest of us to follow suit. Got this as a gift for beating back the lich. Sorry I didn’t bring it up sooner.

  A wave of golden light passed from him to us, and I suddenly knew that I was going to be okay.

  Protection from Impurity – Caster has blessed you with perfect resistance to negative status effects such as poison, acid, and others. Duration: 30 minutes.

  That’s cool and all, man, but we need to work on knowing our spell inventory better than we have been, Yohsuke grumped.

  Long cooldown of forty-five minutes, so let’s get to getting, Jaken advised. We swam as quickly as we could into the disgusting waters and were rewarded with an opening large enough for each of us to fit one at a time. Jaken led us, me behind him, and the others funneling in after us. Maebe likely headed up the rear to ensure our safety.

  We were well into the cavern inside, moving as swiftly as caution would allow us when, Jaken’s buff began to flash in its final seconds.

  We pressed on, Bokaj and I each casting Purify on the others and ourselves to offset the multitude of status effects we were receiving. It was draining, and even with it taking about a minute or two for the disgusting effects to take hold again, we were hurting. Luckily, James seemed to be immune to the majority of it, so purify wasn’t as necessary for him.

  “Think it’s because I’m a descendant of a black Dragon?” he asked Muu.

  The Dragon-kin seemed to think about it before shrugging. “It’s possible. You have some serious acid damage you can do. It would make sense that you would be highly resistant to it, like me with venoms and poison.”

  Which was a relief on our mana pools. Not too much, but it would help.

  An opening above us signaled some kind of hope, so we took it, the watery cavern beneath us carrying the majority of the Dragon’s pollution with it. All that was up in this small area was a rocky shelf barely large enough to hold us all with a high roof.

  The water seemed to be easier to breathe here, if only slightly, and the debuffs finally stopped popping back up. Once my mana was back up to a reasonable level, I began to cast Purify on the others. Bokaj joining me when he could. We were so happy to be out of the detritus that we seemed to lose our damned minds

  I cast Sense Life, and a large number of red blips glowed around us.

  “Fuck.” I tried to cast something, anything, but my mind blanked as thousands of tiny creatures began to swarm us.

  Radiating shadows blasted from behind me, and the legion of red blips turned gray. Wiped out.

  “I grow weary of these minor inconveniences.” Maebe crossed her arms and waited for anyone to object to her assistance. She smiled when there was none. “I will be assisting in the fight with the black Dragon too—if there is one.”

  “Fine by me.” James shrugged. “We got anything to eat up in this bitch?”

  “It’ll get soggy, so no.” Yohsuke sighed. “But there is that tea that I put into a waterskin. Though it would help us to sleep, and I know we have enough time on the spell to make sure we can. We will definitely need to wait for the food. I think there’s a good chance that we should take our rest now and have a snack once we find some place dry. Yeah?”

  We weren’t happy about it, but it made sense. The rest of us nodded.

  “All of you rest. I will take first watch.” Maebe turned toward the opening and all but ignored us outright in her focus.

  I kissed her on top of her head and laid against her back so that if anything came, we would be ready.

  I slept as best I could through the night—my friends let me sleep rather than making me get up because of all the swimming I did for us.

  In the morning, or whenever everyone was ready, I cast Water Lung once more to keep us all going strong on being able to actually breathe, then spent a minute recovering my mana before we moved on.

  We moved further along the cavern, traveling steadily toward the surface—or what we hoped was the surface. As Jaken’s buff began to wear off, we took turns alternating Purify until he was able to get it back on to us.

  Another hour and we came to a room with actual air and a way out. I checked for signs of life, and nothing came back, so we popped up and deactivated our water-breathing spells. I was pleased to see that the others—except for Maebe—had the same visceral reaction to the spell that I had and a lot of salt piled next to the water.

  We stopped to enjoy an actual meal, letting Yohsuke cook while the rest of us explored the space. The stalactites were enormous and of varying colors and shapes that mesmerized me even though it was so dim in this place with light from our cooking fire.

  “Why are we cooking?” James asked Yoh. “We have rations. We can eat those and move on.”

  Yohsuke blinked at him, slowly, before he shrugged, “You don’t wanna eat my food? Don’t. You wanna go into a Dragon’s lair without resting? Go ahead, dragon boy, be my guest. The rest of us are going to park our asses here in a bit and enjoy a nice meal before we go meet a giant lizard.”

  James looked taken aback but mumbled, “Sorry, I was just wondering.”

  “Shut up, you know I’m not, not going to feed you. Go away.” Yohsuke went about his business, and the rest of us moved off.

  Every time I moved, I cast Sense Life. I caught rats, lizards, and occasionally, low-hanging bats but nothing hostile, and none of the animals seemed interested in speaking to me, though I could tell they were curious. The place was probably a hundred and fifty feet by a hundred and ten, give or take a dozen feet. I was never the greatest at measuring distances.

  As I was exploring, I also noted a rivulet
that led to the water. It smelled acidic, and when I took a chance and touched the vitriolic slime, it burned. I purified my fingers and growled at myself.

  “Found the runoff from the Dragon.” I told the others as I warily walked back to the group.

  After exploring and finding nothing of great interest, we had all returned to the cooking fire for food. The smell of roasted meat and freshly warmed and buttered bread was almost intoxicating after having not eaten anything substantial.

  We wolfed the food down as it came, muttering words of praise and gratitude to a surly—but smiling—cook.

  “Food,” I heard muttered next to me. I looked and saw nothing, initially but looked down to see a rat.

  And another. And more. More kept pouring from the shadows around us. Now, to our credit, none of us screamed, but Muu was on a fucking warpath unlike anything I had ever seen.

  I watched—startled—as the Fighter began to stomp and crush the rats that came too close.

  “Don’t.” Stomp. “Like.” Deep growl of resentment. “RATS!”

  “They’re just hungry!” I tried to explain before I felt tiny teeth sink into my breeches. “Oi! Fuck off!”

  I willed the shadows at my feet to heed my desire and sent a wave of darkness slicing through those loosely clumped around my legs. A notification popped up, but I dismissed it offhand. Combat wasn’t a place for this. I lost a healthy 135 MP with that experimentation.

  I sighed as I looked out toward the darkness, and a seeming tidal wave of tiny rodent bodies began to roll toward us. I cast Fireball into the coming shit show and watched as several larger rats began to surge forward from the dead. Their teeth were large and crooked in their mouths, the fur singed, but they seemed even darker and more dangerous than the others.

  “Watch those ones!” James ordered from behind me. He fired a ki blast at one, and it crumpled. The others beside it stopped to begin eating it as more piled forward. “I can promise that a bite will be shitty. Think of the trench rats during the Second World War!”

  “Oh, fuck that,” I heard Jaken growl. A torrent of arrows flew out at the rats in front of me, then a nimbus of gold flashed next to me.

  “This is gonna be bad!” Yohsuke grunted. “Maebe! You want to help a little more?”

  “I think I will.” She stepped next to me and touched my shoulder. “They will overrun us if you fail here. Tell the shadows to form a wedge-shaped shield in front of you, and hold it as best you can.”

  I looked at her, and she shoved my head back toward the problem at hand. With a clap of my hands together before me like I was diving into the water from a diving board, a surge of instinct washed over me, and I shouted into the void, “Bend, straits between the stars and answer my will. Sunder the living before you and shield us!”

  As I finished that, I snarled and opened my hands so they formed a wedge-like a snow plow against the coming tide of vermin five feet in front of us. As soon as they touched the freshly-made shield, the loss of mana made me groan. I was instantly at 200 MP and falling steadily by large numbers.

  I gritted my teeth. “Can’t. Hooold.” I began to see stars; my mana went back up a little and began to fall once more.

  More bursts of arrows and ki to my left. A burst of muted-black light and a burst of blood and black snow lightly from Yohsuke. I saw some rats freeze. Then burst.

  My vision began to fade. I fell to my knees. Someone fed me a mana potion, and it helped a little, but the rats were everywhere. I heard a giggle, “Good work,” and suddenly, the pressure was gone.

  I gasped and fell over—looking for the impending pain of teeth and slithering rats’ tails, but finding nothing.

  “They are gone,” Maebe stated simply. “Touch the shadows. You will know what happened.”

  I blinked, not wanting to move, so I called the shadows closest to me over and dipped a finger into the blackness.

  They were there, alive and frightened, and the shadows around them loved that.

  “What will happen to them in there?” My voice sounded hollow, even to me.

  “We will see, in time, but for now, they are in stasis, much like my art.” She offered me a hand, and I took it numbly. “You did well with that shield. I am certain that in the future, you will only get better.”

  I nodded, exhausted. I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to my left to see Muu there. His somber face looked relieved, and he nodded once before turning and walking away. I saw him stamp on another rat corpse as he went, then noticed the others.

  Some were a little bloodied. Yohsuke’s legs were bleeding, and he seemed a little paler than normal, but Jaken was seeing to him. Bokaj seemed to be casting Purify on Tmont; the panther laid mewling piteously on the stone before him. Her stomach looked slightly distended; likely, she had devoured the rats without thinking of what they might have consumed. James floated in a meditative trance—likely gathering his ki, and I was sitting there like I was in shock.

  Was manashock a thing? Going through that much all at once? I had never really gone through it like that before, but it seemed to be what I was feeling. Distant thoughts. I felt cold. My hearing was slightly impaired and my vision—fine for now—but I had only taken in my friends one at a time.

  As I contemplated this new sensation, warmth crept into my being from Coal. The flame wolf was obviously worried about me, his ears flat against his head and his tail tucked. I thanked him silently and closed my eyes to the world around me. I took solace in that warmth. Basked in it and tried to circulate it throughout my body before I looked at the two new notifications I had.

  Shadow Scythe – The caster summons and expels a close-range sweep of shadows that carve through the enemy. Cost: 57 MP. Range: 10 feet. Cooldown: None.

  Void Shield – Casting your thoughts into the nether, the caster wills a malleable barrier into existence. Base Cost: 203 MP (Mana points are expended as damage is taken unless the shield is grounded at a specific amount of MP.) Range: 5 feet. Cooldown: 10 seconds.

  Those were really cool new spells. I would have to see if I could mix them with anything else.

  I looked over at Maebe, her arms crossed under her chest as she watched me with obvious curiosity.

  “You would have helped if I hadn’t been able to do it, right?” I asked her quietly.

  She took a step closer and looked me directly in the eyes. “I care for you, and this may even be something akin to love. But those emotions have no place in what has just occurred. If you had not taken the threat seriously and relied on my assistance—or anyone else’s—then you would not have been able to truly use that spell to the effect you needed to.” Her green eyes stared coldly into mine. “Never forget that you are the truest source of your survival. Never forget that in times of duress—it will be you who must save your friends.”

  I blinked. That was true. She had been as calculating—as cold—as she had been when we first met in the Fae Realm.

  “Thank you.” I reached out and touched her cheek, and the frost in her eyes melted slightly.

  “Thank me if we survive this.” She kissed me on my shoulder. “Do not fail yourself. Do not fail your friends. Do not fail your Queen.”

  I nodded in response and turned to my friends, who seemed ready to go. We packed the rest of the food and cooking equipment away before walking toward the rivulet of detritus material leaking into the water.

  Carefully, we traveled up the ledges beside it. Jaken and James took the fore, Maebe, Yoh, and Tmont in the center, and Muu and I took the rear. The walk was slow at first—the air was slightly noxious—but as we continued on, it grew more and more difficult to breathe. After an hour, we had to take turns purifying each other once more. James seemed largely unaffected by the growing toxicity in the air.

  As we crested the next rise, another tunnel greeted us, splitting from our current route.

  “We could follow the acid and poison, or we could check out the new area.” Jaken turned to James, and the black Dragon-kin just looked unc
ertain.

  “The Dragon knows we’re here.” He glanced at the path to our left. “If I wanted to lure anyone into a trap or where I wanted, I’d offer up some kind of easier route, then lay the trap there.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense, but then again, who knows what a Dragon is thinking?” Muu shrugged. “Ampharia led me to believe all kinds of things while she was training me, then completely surprised me with the opposite. Or the very thing she told me would happen. There’s no real knowing. So we go in cautiously no matter which way we choose.”

  I saw his face light up, then he grinned. “You get a point of wisdom?”

  He looked smug and stated, “Two.”

  We all smiled and began to make our way behind James toward the right where the noxious gas kept coming from. It wasn’t long before light graced us, though it was a small amount, and we came out of the opening slowly.

  The cavern we were in now was clearly a hollow in some kind of mountain or something. Mounds of glowing fungus and lichen dotted the floor and the ceiling high above us. Off to our left, there was a bend in the stone and light shone dimly against the gray outline of rocks and weakly growing fungal pods hanging from the walls.

  This won’t be fun, I observed to myself.

  There was motion in my peripheral on my right, and I looked over in time to see James slinking toward a large pile of something.

  Bones. He stopped to look over them. Dragon’s bones.

  It’s fucking dead? Bokaj’s dismayed question made all of us more than a little angry.

  Not at him but that we hadn’t been able to get to the Dragon before it died.

  Well, whatever happened, let’s at least try to get some loot from the place before we check out. Yohsuke’s sigh was audible, but he continued telepathically, No telling what could be around here, though. So, let’s keep our eyes shifty and our thoughts to ourselves. Be cautious.

  The rest of us gave a thumbs up and began to slowly move around the area. The ground was littered with some sort of powder, likely from the fungus in the place—old spores maybe?—that kicked up into tiny clouds as we moved about.