A crater in the canyon, the inside full of makeshift houses excavated from the rock itself. Boulders piled on boulders for protection from the sun, the ground strewn with castoff pieces of gear from the army that had invaded through the rift.
Chloe spotted a helmet, a blade, and something that looked like the shredded interior fabric of leather armor. At one point along the way, they even came across a stain of sun-scorched blood on the ground, as if the army had fought among themselves and destroyed some of their own.
“Might be a good place to stop,” Ben suggested. “Regain stamina, take a break, and protect ourselves from the sun.”
“Sounds good to me,” Tag said.
“No, we must keep going,” Gan’gor said, eyes flicking around the canyon walls above. “You cannot remain still in this realm for long. It might look empty, but creatures will find you. Drawn by the scent of the strangers, they will hunt you for your weapons and destroy you.”
“Like you did?” Ben asked with irony.
Gan’gor nodded. “Exactly.”
He pushed them on, walking primarily on all fours at the front of the party. His fingers were long with bulbous ends, and he splayed them with each forward movement. His skin, despite being under the baking sun, remained moist and shiny to the eye.
“How does he stay so moist?” Chloe asked Ben out of the side of her mouth.
Ben snorted, then sniggered behind his hand.
“Oh, grow up!”
Gideon rolled his eyes and tried not to laugh.
“Everything okay back there?” Gan’gor called.
They told him it was and continued to follow.
The longer they were in the canyon, the more Chloe felt familiar with its patterns and ways. What she had at first perceived to be an unchanging landscape that was dry and devoid of most forms of movement had now begun to slowly unravel for her.
The sun, for example. While it remained high in the sky, it was not in the same position. The realm must revolve the same way planets did, with the sun in a tight orbit, never quite going far enough to create shadows but circling in a way that made Chloe sure it wasn’t static.
The walls around them moved too, and she heard gentle croaks and whispers as faint gusts of wind gently brushed the rocks. Fissures grew and shrank as though the rock was breathing. The ground occasionally rolled like a ship sailing the seas.
When she mentioned all this to Gideon, she found that he had noticed the same thing. “It’s almost hypnotic, don’t you think? Like lying in bed and hallucinating.”
What if we are hallucinating? Chloe thought, suddenly aware that it had been hours since her last drink.
With no way to tell when day turned to night, how would they know how much time had passed? When everything around them seemed to wobble like the rift itself, did that permit sanity? Did Gan’gor feel the patterns too? Feel the life within the Nether Realm as though they were walking on the skin of some giant, living, breathing monster?
More time passed. How much? Chloe didn’t know, and the in-game clock on her menu offered no help. Since stepping into the Nether Realm, her menu had been stripped back to her stats, skills-dex, spell-dex, and quest-dex. The ancillary functionality had disappeared, including her steed option.
As they despaired about their now-aching legs, they realized that anything that was reflective of their adventures had been deleted.
Gan’gor crawled on, seemingly unaffected by the experience.
And why would he be? Hadn’t Gan’gor told them that the waifs were now native to this region? After thousands of years of living within the canyons of the Nether Realm, had they not become accustomed to its strange magic?
Chloe narrowed her eyes at the waif. He had been quiet for some time now, leading them onward without a word. Was she being played for a fool? Could she trust him? What if he was leading her to the others? To his tribe? Would Chloe suddenly open her eyes and discover another three dozen replicas of herself in front of her?
Were Gideon, Tag, and Ben even present right now?
“Chloe?” Gideon’s face was full of concern, his voice weak and dry.
Chloe grimaced, turned slowly back to Gan’gor, and let out a grunt. The waif turned to check that they were still following. A grin crept onto his face. Without thinking, Chloe sprinted toward the waif, leaped, and tackled him to the ground.
“Chloe! What are you doing?” Ben cried, running over to break the pair apart.
“Where are you taking us?” Chloe said, distress in her voice. “Where are they? What have you done with them?”
“Done with who?” Gan’gor choked.
“My friends! Give them back.” She held him by the shoulders and shook his body.
She felt hands on her shoulders and was pulled backward. Mumbled voices followed the casting of a spell. The world around her disappeared into a shower of flowing blue water. The sensation was cooling. She reached forward and eagerly lapped at the water around her.
“I should’ve thought of this ages ago,” Gideon said, drinking from the aqua orb too. A moment later Tag and Ben were inside, splashing their faces and cooling themselves off.
“What the hell just got into you?” Ben asked when he had finally cooled down.
Chloe continued drinking, feeling the cool water pass through her system. Drinking until she felt sick.
“I don’t know what came over me,” she said when she had had her fill. “It’s just… This place is so…”
So what? Chloe couldn’t think of the word to finish her sentence.
“I get it,” Gideon said. “I felt it too. It’s endless and hot, and that does things to a person’s mind. It’s like crossing a desert. You never know when it’s going to strike you.”
Chloe nodded.
The waif sniveled.
Chloe stepped out of the orb, her armor dripping wet. “I’m so sorry, Gan’gor. I didn’t mean to attack. I have no excuse, I’m sorry. We’ve been walking for hours, and it feels like we’re not making any progress. How much farther until we’re anywhere near where we need to be?”
The waif considered Chloe, large eyes studying her. There was a hint of fear in his face, as though she could attack again at any minute and he was deciding whether it was worth staying.
“Not all that much farther,” Gan’gor said at last, visibly relaxing. “The gateway to the Keeper is a little way ahead. Though I must warn you, once we pass inside, I don’t know how much help I will be.”
Ben emerged from the orb, clothes sodden. “What do you mean?”
“Yeah, who’s the Keeper?” Tag queried, joining them all.
Gideon retracted his Aqua Orb and rejoined them under the endless sun. They began walking again.
“The Keeper is a foul creature,” Gan’gor explained. “A monster from the ancient world who was cast out eons ago and has made the realm his home. My people dare not tread close to the woods, for fear of the Keeper’s wrath.”
“And you were more than happy to lead us straight to him?” Tag’s face soured. “I think someone is trying to find a better way to kill us than to do it himself.”
“No! Not at all,” the waif protested. “This is the only path to the Plains. If you wish to search for your missing one, it is through here that you must go. I never said the path would be easy.”
Tag threw his arms into the air. “You never mentioned a friggin’ ancient monster, either!”
“Tag!” Ben laughed.
“Why is it never easy? Why is there always a friggin’ roadblock in our way? Titans and giant worms and rocks that squash our loved ones. Seriously! Can’t we walk through cotton candy and swim in milkshakes for one friggin’ mission?”
Chloe raised an eyebrow. “Do you need to cool down again, buddy?”
“Yes, please.”
“Gideon?”
“I’m on it.”
Chloe and Ben chuckled gently as the dwarf disappeared back inside Gideon’s bubble.
After Tag had re-emerged, they
continued through the canyon. Occasionally Chloe thought she saw shimmers of movement at the rocks’ edges. She remembered the story of the trickery and mimicry of the shifter-waifs and wondered if they could turn invisible, too. She had yet to see anything of the sort from Gan’gor, but that didn’t assuage her doubts.
When they next took a turn, the canyon narrowed. The walls closed in around them, now over a hundred feet high. At the narrowest point of the canyon was a narrow vertical slit in the rock, barely wide enough to accommodate Tag’s armor.
As though it were made to fit, Chloe thought.
KieraFreya snorted. You’re all doom and gloom today, aren’t you?
Oh, and you’re just the symbol of positivity?
KieraFreya used Chloe’s shoulders to shrug. I’ve grown.
“Here is the entry to the Keeper’s lair,” Gan’gor said softly. “You must pass through to find your way to the Etheric Plains.”
“What do you mean, we must find a way? You’re coming with us, pal.”
The waif gulped and looked longingly in the other direction, then back at the crevice. “I thought you were going to say that.”
They laughed, replenished their stats with potions, and headed through.
Chapter Forty-Six
They could feel the power in the lair the moment they stepped inside.
Energy thrummed around them. Every step they took filled their bodies with a strange sensation of being watched. They squeezed through the crevice and the rock closed around them, the space so tight that at certain points they felt as though they couldn’t go any farther.
Chloe’s armor scraped the walls. She worried it might scratch, that the perfect golden metal would become blemished and ruined, but the metal of the gods was strong and the armor remained untouched.
At one point, she felt as though the rock were squeezing and had the crazy notion that she was trapped inside the organs of some giant rock thing, squeezed along by peristalsis through the gut, eventually to be churned in a vat of digestive fluid.
The only salvation was the break from the heat. The passage was cool. Somewhere nearby, they could hear falling droplets of water. When they finally reached the end, they found a set of crudely carved steps hewn from the rock.
These they followed down into the darkness. They were now able to walk abreast. At the bottom of the stairs was a large cave. Strange fungi grew along the walls in shades of green, blue, and red, emitting a calming glow in the otherwise dark space.
“Hello?” Chloe whispered, her words immediately lost in the vastness of the space.
She looked at the waif, and Gan’gor nodded toward the darkness.
Chloe cupped her hands. “Hello!”
The words reverberated around them. The sound tore around the cave, finding its edges and looping back, magnified by some strange phenomenon until it came back like a boomerang and moved the hairs on their heads.
They clasped their hands to their ears and waited for the sound to fade.
“Ow…” Gideon complained when he was sure it was safe again. “Don’t do that again, okay?”
Chloe nodded.
They waited apprehensively. Surely the occupant of this cave had heard the call? Why wasn’t he responding?
“I don’t think he’s home,” Ben said, careful to keep his words soft.
“Well, that’s good news, right?” Gideon said. “If he’s not home, we can pass straight on through and out the other side.” He was suddenly hesitant. “There is another way out of here, right?”
“Yes, straight on through. Just go where the air is cleanest.” Gan’gor stuck his nose in the air and sniffed. “That way.”
They moved with caution, their footsteps sounding like war drums. The fungi shook from the sound waves.
The farther inside the cave they got, the stranger the rock formations appeared around them. Great stalactites and stalagmites stretched from the ceilings and floors like the fangs of some enormous beast.
She pointed out a row of evenly sized stalactites, realizing as they others squinted into the darkness that she had forgotten about her Dark Vision skill. She cast Purple Blaze to give them a little more light, and Gideon did the same.
When they came to a large underground lake, they paused at the edge. The water was deadly still, its surface a perfect mirror, enhancing the grandeur of the cave.
They could see no bottom. Could not see beneath the surface. Could only see the reflection of the ceiling above them and the glow of the fungi.
“Is this water safe to drink?” Tag shook his skein. “I need a refill.”
“Cave water is supposed to be some of the purest,” Gideon replied. “It’s filtered through layers and layers of rock, which removes all of the impurities and cleans it all up.”
The waif sniffed the water’s edge, then broke the surface with his tongue.
He shuddered. “It’s a little cold, but it seems fine to me. My people often drink from the springs within the rock. It’s how we survive.”
They took turns filling their flasks and drinking their fill. With each disturbance of the water, ripples went out across the lake, the tiniest of disturbances creating mini waves that stretched into the darkness and beyond.
“It’s kind of beautiful, isn’t it?” Chloe said, admiring the view. She wondered what kind of creature would live in such a place. They hadn’t seen any other forms of wildlife, and no footprints or skeletons to show that something else was living here. For all they could see, this was a forgotten wonder of the world, empty and lost to the flow of time.
“You’re sure there’s some ancient wonder of the world here?” Tag asked the waif. “Like, positive? Because we’ve traveled a good distance inside, and we’ve seen zero bad guys or enemies.”
“My people have always told tales of this place. Legends of a being so grand it could swallow you whole. It used to be a test of manhood to seek the cave and fight the creature, until several decades ago when we lost over a dozen in the trials. They entered the cave, as we did. They did not come out.”
“Maybe it died?” Ben suggested. “Y’know, things get old. They live, they breathe, they die. Maybe it reached the end of its lifespan and croaked. All living things must eventually.”
Gideon raised an eyebrow. “In these realms, anything can live for as long as it wants. Obsidian doesn’t play by the rules.”
“Neither will the Nether Realm,” Tag finished.
Chloe sat silently by the water’s edge. If she were back on Earth right now, she would likely have kicked off her shoes and dipped her toes in, recoiling as the chill ran up her legs.
As it was, she could not remove KieraFreya’s boots. The power of the goddess held them firm. She wondered what it would be like when they finally separated. How freeing it would feel to change outfits again and experiment with Obsidian fashion.
I could be a trendsetter, she mused. Visit all the kingdoms and bring new fashions to the realm. Maybe that could be my next business venture.
She imagined the scene: a long catwalk in the hall she had visited for Tohken’s auction in Nauriel, the crowd applauding and going wild for the latest designs. She’d bring in orphans and the homeless, give them work staging the show. Maybe make some of them models so they could finally get off the streets and integrate with society.
Or maybe she could help the baker from Killink View. Fund his business so he could bring his baked delights to the wider world. Obsidian was still primitive enough that trading routes took days—sometimes weeks—to traverse, and in that time, the goods would have gone stale or rotted. What would it take to increase the speed of delivery, allowing traders to offer more and different goods?
It was then that Chloe realized that she hadn’t heard the sound of clanking coins for a while. No notification of people using her Heroes-for-Hire board.
Of course not. They’re all involved in fighting the armies of Fukmos. When would they have a chance to get involved in smaller tasks while they’re defending the cit
y?
Still, she missed it. It was nice having launched her first in-game business venture. She leaned forward and stared at her reflection in the water. Maybe she did have some of her parents’ genes in her after all? Maybe, given the right circumstances and free reign over her decisions, Chloe really could follow in their footsteps.
What other lessons from Obsidian would she be taking back into the real world when she finally exited her pod?
A splash—something had leaped out of the water.
Chloe raised her head. The thing was gone, but a trail of ripples worked their way to the shore.
“Did you see that?” Chloe asked.
The others, who had been otherwise engaged in a conversation about what kind of creature could have inhabited a cave like this for so long, turned their heads and saw the small waves.
“Did you throw something?” Tag asked.
Chloe shook her head.
A flash of silver, then another. Three fish the size of footballs, arced into the air, then landed with a loud splash.
The reflection of the room wobbled, causing Chloe’s stomach to churn. It was as though half of the cave was suddenly moving out of focus.
“Blimp fish,” Ben muttered, having used his Creature Identification on the creatures.
The waif licked his lips hungrily. “It’s been ages since I’ve had fish.”
His eyes grew wide, and the waif was suddenly overcome with an unstoppable desire to catch the fish. He sprinted to the water’s edge and gracefully dived in, the water hardly moving in his wake.
He disappeared beneath the surface for several seconds. More fish jumped in the air, some small, some large. The larger ones—the ones Chloe presumed to be the adults—jumped several feet above the water’s surface before blowing up to twice their size and floating for a few seconds like balloons. With an explosion of air, they’d shrink again and flop back beneath the water.
“They’re beautiful,” she marveled, noticing how each of the inflated fish would illuminate for a moment like a firework exploding, then fading to darkness.
Ben, Tag, and Gideon came up beside her, mouths hanging open. The whole thing was mesmerizing. Who’d have thought such wonder could live in this forgotten realm, somewhere deep beneath the desolate canyon?
Goddess Complete Page 34
