by GR Griffin
Versa picked up where Roy left off. "Yeah… yeah, and he forced me into these mines. I found these… these fountains. I was so thirsty that I drank from them."
Roy shot Versa a wide stare. "Me too! The water had some kind of effect on me and I saw what the others were seeing, and then…" He faced upwards, beady eyes open but empty. "I was before this giant mirror. He showed me a world where everyone wanted to be my friend… I've never had a real friend before."
Fleck frowned upon hearing the fate that had befallen him and almost happened to them. The story was the same, but with Roy as the main character.
Versa nodded slowly at the other's side of the story, clearly drawing parallels to her own.
"I didn't want to go at first, but when I was gazing into that fantasy land, it was like I was being pulled into it," she said. "I couldn't resist. I touched the glass and… everything up until now was like a dream."
Roy shook his entire body. "Okay, so, we know how we got here, but what do we do now?"
Fleck told them loud and clear: escape.
Both monsters agreed and decided to accompany the human. They had a better chance of getting out of this place if they stuck together.
After retrieving their backpack, Fleck's adventure continued, now with companions. Together, all three travelled together down the tunnels.
More questions dribbled from Roy's and Versa's mouths, wanting to know more about their situation and about Fleck themself. Fleck told the truth about everything. The discovery that they were a human did not shake them much, if anything, only made them surer that they would escape Vail's grasp.
All of a sudden, after more minutes of walking, the sounds of marching feet and shifting metal came from the corner ahead, made tinny in the echo of the hollow maze.
They stopped. Fleck's heart sank as they recognised the mixture of noises straight away. The same given out by the members of the Monster Military.
Vail rounded the corner, followed by the twenty sturdy souls sent in to investigate a long time ago, marching in two lines of ten. The armour on every soldier was strangely immaculate; their weapons looked as sharp as the day of manufacture. Vail looked so out-of-place at the front; a sharply-dressed, suave gentlemen being tailed by silver soldiers.
"Company," – Vail slammed his leather shoes to a stop – "halt!"
The monsters of the military stopped in perfect unison.
"Soldiers," Vail lectured the troops like a drill sergeant, "you are the best of the best. The finest, most decorated unit in the whole of the Monster Military." He paced back and forth; one hand behind his back, the other in front and gesturing his point across. "You have faced down challenges that would make the Emperor himself cry himself to sleep. You have taken on the absolute worst of the worst, the best of the worst, the worst of the best, and the best of the best – oh wait, you guys are the best of the best. Forget I said that last part. But now, your greatest threat advances upon you, and threatens to destroy everything you've fought for." He waved his hand at the petite human, the rainbow, and the vice almost like he was being comical. "Gaze upon them now, but do not fear them."
He gave the troops a few moments to absorb their opponents. For all Fleck knew, they could be the biggest monstrosities to the soldiers.
Vail shouted, "Will you let them win?"
"Sir, no, sir," the troops responded just as loud.
"Will you give up?"
"Sir, no, sir!"
"Will you destroy them?"
The troops raised their weapons and boomed, "Sir, yes, sir!"
"Will you annihilate them?"
"Sir, yes, sir!"
"Will you kiss them?"
"Sir, yes, s—!" The troops' boisterous bellowing dropped into a collection of mumbling.
Vail chuckled a bubbly chuckle. "Think fast, fellas…" He raised he free hand above his head. "For honour; for your people; for your Empire;" – Vail sliced the air with his open palm – "CHARGE!"
Roaring their battle cries, all twenty monsters rushed forward. Through the blur of rushing silver metal, Vail vanished.
Versa's tiny arms stretched into the air. "Wait, we're not dangerous," she shouted as loud as she could. "You're being controlled! You've got to snap out of it!"
Her words were ignored as the soldiers drew their crushing advance closer.
"Hey, uh, kid," Roy said, sounding nervous. "Don't suppose you got a plan, huh?" A bead of sweat down his brow refracted the light that shone from him.
Fleck gave him a curt smile.
That depended on whether any of them had any water.
Chapter 22: The Genuine Article
The first guard attacked, swinging his sword in a wide arch toward the trio. There was an undisciplined nature in his attack; he did not care who he hit as long as it hit one of them.
The group – Fleck, Versa, and Roy – dispersed in three directions: Fleck to the left; Roy to the right; and Versa jumped back. The blade clanked against bare ground.
The soldier behind the leader focused on Fleck, charging in with a spear. Fleck reached back and grabbed both ice axes from their backpack just in time. In one fluid motion, they side-stepped the spear and struck down on it. The soldier stumbled forward on his own momentum, lost balance, and then fell onto his knees; his helmet clanked against the ground.
Before he could raise his head, Fleck jumped on it, stomping it down before running up his back. They leapt off just as a sword was swung horizontally by someone else, clearing it like a hurdle.
Five of the monsters in suits formed a dam in the cramped tunnel, standing together. In their line, they thought they were impassable; unfortunately for them, they did not know what Versa was capable of.
She stretched her arms wide and swung them together, summoning pillars on both sides that slammed into the ones outside the wall. There was a crunch of metal and monster groans as all five soldiers were sandwiched together. Mercifully, the pillars retreated as quickly as they appeared and the soldiers flopped to the ground.
Fleck pushed forward, ducking and dodging and parrying blades and pointy ends left and right. Versa and Roy kept with their pace; Versa with her clamps and Roy with his rainbows.
Versa pointed to the ceiling and summoned a column down on an unsuspecting soldier’s head, stopping as it struck her helmet to avoid squashing her into paste.
The strength of Roy’s rainbows were controlled by him. He knocked a soldier down with a blast that was not strong enough to pierce the breastplate, but enough to knock the wind out of his sails.
Fleck was halfway through the fray; those before them advancing forward, ready for battle; those behind them in the process of picking themselves up to try again. As they had sworn to the illusion-loving monster who had no actually authority over them: they would never give up.
Fleck ducked through the legs of a brawny monster only to face a brawnier monster behind that one. The size of his upper body was severely disproportioned to his tiny legs. Obviously, the term leg day did not exist in his vocabulary. His stance was low, and his stern glare at the human child told them that the trick they just pulled will not work on them.
Flanking that guard were two others at both sides, charging in and proclaiming that they got this one.
Versa shouted, “Get ready to start jumping!” She pointed toward Fleck’s feet. “Trust me, I’ll catch you!”
Before Fleck could react or speak or do anything, the section of ground shot up underneath them. The three monsters of the Monster Military lunged too late, slamming face first into the rising pillar. Fleck fought the strong urge to jump, fearing that there was another pillar plunging downwards above them like before. The sudden movement was bizarre, as if they were getting bigger or the tunnel was getting smaller.
The cuboid of rock stopped and Versa shouted, “Jump! Go now!”
No thinking. No arguing. No questioning. Fleck took a massive leap forward, above the heads of those down below. All those in front stopped and stared as the child fle
w. To the monsters, Fleck may have been a ferocious fire breathing dragon, swooping down from the heavens with a mouthful of embers to share. A few reached with their swords and spears, coming short.
Suddenly, while they were still in the air, another pillar launched from the ground and stopped under Fleck, catching them before they could fall.
Onwards, Fleck hopped above the monsters in suits while Versa and Roy slipped beneath their legs. The sight of a child jumping on appearing platforms was mesmerising; nobody seemed to notice the vice monster or the rainbow monster as they kept up from the adjacent side of the tunnel.
Versa, upon reaching the back of the crowd, lowered her pillars until Fleck landed safely on the ground. They stopped jumping and inhaled a victorious lungful through their nose. Great! They had gotten past the Monster Military that were in front of them.
They turned around.
And now those exact same monsters were behind them; the fallen had picked themselves up and recollected themselves. Fleck exhaled a short and heavy breath out the mouth that deflated them. That victory was short-lived.
The squad had just started their second attack when, all of a sudden, two pillars zoomed from one side of the tunnel to the next, followed by another two from the top to the bottom. The pillars separated the twenty monsters from their targets.
Fleck faced Versa, who was waving her arms madly to conjure them. What appeared to be traces of water from the flask trickled down her flat head, which, upon closer inspection, happened to be sweat.
The soldiers attempted to squirm through the gaps, scratching and grinding the shiny edge out of their armour. Some were attempting to break the pillars, already showing results.
Fleck and Roy prepared themselves for the upcoming attack when Versa shouted to them. “Go! I’ll keep these guys busy. You us find a way out and… I’ll catch up with you later.” There was a hint of hesitation in her voice.
The two stood routed in place, wondering what to do.
With a heavy heart, Fleck turned and ran.
Fleck sprinted and Roy hovered, pushing their limits to their limits. They could hear the grinding of rock and the exertion of tired, grunting soldiers. Fleck fought every urge to look back, and kept that desire at bay long after the sounds had faded far behind them.
Versa was not going to last long by herself.
If Fleck were to do something, it had to be real soon.
They came to an exit, glowing a light, eerie shade of blue. Fleck had a small, lousy, ill-placed sense of hope that they had finally found an exit, a way out. However, that was not the case once they passed through it.
Roy and Fleck came out at another opening in the tunnels. Fleck knew, or at least suspected, that the beehive of tunnels beneath Black Ice Mountain was big, but not this big.
They stood now in some kind of chasm. Thousands of feet high and across, it stretched as far left and as far right as the eye could see; the two walls connected by a series of stone walkways at a spider web of different angles and altitudes. The escaping monster and his human companion were on one of these walkways. The ceiling was a giant cluster of sparkling white dots, too close and too bright to be considered stars in the night sky, and there was no bottom either, only darkness.
The walls were encrusted with scaffolding materials ranging from worn timbers to rusty metal bars to scaling rope. Contraptions and cranes stood lifeless, some till holding payloads of rock clusters and crates. None of it looked OSHA approved.
“Such a huge place…” Roy whispered. “How anyone got their way around here is beyond me.”
No time to dawdle on pointless questions. They had an exit to find; a friend to save. They rushed across the wide walkway. The far rock wall was farther away than first expected, and seemed to get farther the closer they got.
About a third of the way across was when the great, powerful, and mysterious Vail landed before them. He dropped from the ceiling, yet landed with a silent, cat-like grace. He looked like he was about to say something when Roy made the first move, launching one of his deadly rainbows. Vail zipped to the side in a fraction of a second, effortlessly dodging the magical attack.
“Do you know,” Vail started – hands in pockets like that attack just then didn’t happen –, “that beyond these tunnels lies my private domain? I must admit, I’m impressed: nobody with their head stuck in reality has ever made it this far. You truly are something, kid.” Roy launched another rainbow; Vail dodged it all the same, moving closer to the edge.
Vail continued, completely ignoring both attacks. “Sadly, though, I can’t let to go any further.” Roy unleashed a third attack, clearly not getting the pointlessness of it. Vail zipped further aside. His heels touched the edge.
Vail shook his head disappointedly. “Oh, Roy, you of all monsters should know by now…”
A fourth rainbow headed in his direction. With nowhere else to dart off to, this volley would definitely meet its mark. Without a care in the world, Vail leaned back and fell over the side.
The two ran over and watched as he plummeted as stiff as falling timber, hands now folded behind his head and one leg crossed over the other as if he decided to catch forty winks right there, nary a peep of a scream came from him.
He vanished into the dark abyss.
Nothing but silence existed for a few moments.
Fleck and Roy looked at each other as if to say, “Is it over? Was it really that easy?”
Then came a low rumble, like that of a rising earthquake or a tsunami. It rose from the depths, getting louder and louder, stronger and stronger until it shook the very foundations of the mines. A few ropes snapped and frameworks collapsed and scattered into the deep darkness. Fleck covered their ears as the roar reached a deafening crescendo.
A giant hand rose up from the darkness and wrapped its extremities around the end of the walkway.
The human and the monster were truly and utterly awed as the rest of the giant emerged, laughing. A familiar reptilian face with the slick chocolate hair, dazzling red and yellow eyes, and devilish goatee. The irises were so large that they could make out the tiny details. Walkways in his wake shattered like toothpicks.
The hands pressed tightly over Fleck’s ears did very little to protect them from Vail’s boisterous laugh as he shadowed the tiny human and the tiny, tiny rainbow monster. “THIS IS MY WORLD.” His normal voice boomed like thunder.
If it wasn’t clear before, it was now. The mines were a web and Vail was the spider. A very big, very scary spider.
There were many normal things one would do in that scenario, and stay and fight was not one of them. But Roy did it anyway. The clouds that comprised him glowed extra bright and out launched four rainbows at once. They dispersed and collided in four places on Vails chest, exploding on impact.
Vail did not flinch in the slightest. He reacted to the meagre assault by twice wiping his three-fingered hand down his vest as if he were brushing away crumbs from the last meal he ate. “DON’T CREASE THE DIGS,” he said, adding further punishment to fragile eardrums.
“Okay,” Roy whispered, “I’m out of ideas. What now?”
Fleck shot him an annoyed expression having barely heard him. What made him think that, just because they were human, they had a plan for this eventuality? Oh, of course, regular sized people conquered giants all the time where they came from. Sarcasm. Although that did sound like an interesting premise for a manga.
Out of all the normal things to do, one option did click in both of them: run.
The child dashed into a sprint down the walkway with Roy following behind. For a few moments, the colossal monster did nothing but watch the tiny bugs scurry, tipping his head to the side in amusement. At that speed, it would take the two of them three minutes to reach the other side.
Vail gave them a minute, then rose his fist – his every movement that tiny bit sluggish – and brought if down before the next tunnel. The entire bridge snapped downwards and collided with walkways below, knocking Fleck
off their feet and onto their side. Roy, acting fact, willed another spectrum of light and jumped on it, gliding to safety across the empty expanse.
Fleck was sent spiralling down the tilted, broken walkway. No matter how hard they kicked or grabbed, Fleck could not stop themselves as they rolled closer to their doom. As the edge drew near, they grabbed one of the axes and slammed it down in a display of sparks. The edge finally gained traction as they went over the side.
Fleck held on. Their sights focused on the one and only lifeline above them and not what lay below them. After this was over, they would like to avoid precarious drops on any kind for the rest of their life.
The enormous form of Vail chuckled some more as the tiny human dangled helplessly. He grabbed the broken bridge by both ends and lifted it carefully, taking care not to shake it too much.
“LOOK AT YOU…” he tried to say as quiet as he could, and yet it still came out like an alarm. Unable to let go, even if they wanted to, Fleck had no choice but to endure his booming voice. Vail zoomed in until his eyes were metres away from their entire body. Fleck and Vail made eye contact, and the former, at long last, knew what it felt like to be the ant on the end of someone’s thumb. “LITTLE, LITTLE FLECK. YOU’RE SO TINY. SO FRAGILE. IT’S QUITE ADORABLE, ACTUALLY.”
A small explosion burst of the side of his head. Vail blinked, then heaved a sigh as he found Roy flying around his head. Another shot found its mark on his cheek; not like it made much of a difference.
“Put the kid down, right now!” Roy shouted as loud as he could, making doubly sure that the big, bad monster caught it.
Vail glanced at Fleck and snickered. “WELL, IF YOU INSIST.” He released the rock path. In an instant, it dropped straight down and the handle slipped out of the child’s grasp. “COULD’VE PHRASED THAT BETTER, THOUGH.”
Roy Giovani Biv gasped. “Oh, geez…” With a burst of speed, he zoomed toward Fleck in a stream of seven colours. “Hold on, I’m coming!”
