by Ian Rodgers
“Well, it looks like we’re lost again,” Gaelin sighed. Dora and I let out a groan at that declaration.
“I swear, half the time we’ve spent in the Aether we’ve done so lost,” I griped.
“Nothing to do but fly in a random direction,” the half-orc sighed. We began to travel through the Elemental Plane of Darkness, moving at a ridiculous speed. Planetoids whipped by, their unique colors and shapes becoming little more than greasy blurs as we zoomed across the sky.
Eventually, we decided that the best way to find the Whispering Nebula was flying towards the nearest cluster of sparkling celestial gas and hope for the best.
“Wow, that’s surprisingly beautiful,” Dora uttered as she looked at the nebula we were approaching. It was a glittering haze of various shades of grey, which hung in the wide-open expanse of Quilloth. A nearby luminous planetoid ensured that the nebula reflected grey light like a rainbow, which made the whole celestial phenomenon glow brightly.
“It certainly is,” I agreed. She nodded absentmindedly.
=She thinks you are disgusting.=
“Huh?” I looked around, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise.
“Hmm? What’s wrong?” Gaelin asked, glancing over at me.
“Err, nothing,” I said slowly.
=He thinks you’re a monster.=
Had I a mouth, it’d be frowning. Something was tickling the back of mind. It sounded like words, but at the same time it was so quiet I could barely understand it.
I spared a glance towards my two companions. Gaelin was wearing his helmet, so I couldn’t tell what his facial expression was like, but his emotions appeared calm and steady, his mind focused on piloting the stolen craft through the nebula.
As for Dora, she was quiet, but her lips were pursed and her eyes were darting around the front compartment, her gaze lingering on me and Gaelin for a few seconds before flickering away to alight on something else in her vision.
=She doesn’t trust you,= the ‘voice’ hissed out, and I was getting an itchy feeling in the back of my mind. It felt like something was trying to burrow its way into my thoughts.
‘Well, this is odd,’ I thought to myself. ‘And worrying.’
=Hurt her! Hurt her before she hurts you!=
“Guys? I think we have a problem,” I said aloud.
“You hear it too?” Dora asked, relief dripping from her voice as she turned to me.
“Yeah. Something keeps trying to make me… I’m not actually sure what it’s doing. Make me mad at you? Suspicious? Whatever it is, it’s incessant.”
“It reminds me of the time we encountered the Mirror Soul in Luminoth,” the Healer said, and I bobbed up and down in my seat, recalling the way the strange reflective entity had tried to coerce us into accepting a deal of some sort with it.
“I don’t hear anything,” Gaelin replied, looking at us worriedly. My attention focuses on the quartet of bunnies still nibbling at his adamantium boots, and realization hit me.
“Well, your helmet might be blocking any telepathy aimed at you, since, ya know, adamantium is magically resistant. Or, it could be thanks to the Rending Rabbits.”
“Are they still trying to eat my shoes?” he asked, glancing down.
I reached out with a tendril and grabbed one of the anti-magic rabbits, prying it from his right boot. It struggled for a bit, but when I offered up another tendril for it to chew on it, it became pacified quickly.
As soon as I pulled it close to me, I heard a faint screech of fury fade from my thoughts. I waited, but no more mental communication came my way.
At the same time, Dora suddenly let out a gasp of pain and doubled over, clutching her head.
“Oh, crud!” I exclaimed. I reached out and snagged a second Rending Rabbit, pulling it from Gaelin’s left boot this time.
Concerned about Dora being gnawed to death by the black rabbit, I extracted a potion from my Dimensional Pocket and poured it into the mouth of the struggling bunny. It yawned, and then went slack.
“Here, take it!” I said, shoving the monster into Dora’s hands. She let out a second gasp, but this time it was one of relief as the telepathic assault vanished from her head.
“Th-thanks, Jellik,” Dora said hoarsely, glancing down warily at the Rending Rabbit she was holding. “U-um, is it asleep?”
“I drugged it with a highly potent sleeping potion,” I explained. “Hopefully, it should stay unconscious while we get out of this nebula.”
“Thanks, Jellik,” Dora said gratefully as she absentmindedly pet the furry monster. “Think we can make it through this nebula unmolested, now?”
Gaelin leaned back confidently in his seat. “Absolutely, Dora!”
Before any more words could slip past his helmet, though, the vessel heaved to the side as something slammed into it from below.
A massive dent bulged in the center of the middle compartment, and moments later a second blow sent us spinning through the nebula.
“What the sweet and saucy Hellhole was that?!” Dora screeched, clutching her sleeping bunny to her chest.
“Hey, uh, guys, I think I found out what was sending you those telepathic messages,” Gaelin said warily, gesturing towards the windows.
To the left of them, a bizarre and horrific figure could be seen flying through the nebula. It was huge and grey, its skin mottled with scars and old wounds. In appearance and size, it vaguely resembled a great white shark, though it had long, leathery bat-like wings in place of fins. Furthermore, as it turned to ram us again, all three of us got a glimpse of the disturbingly human face it had in place of a regular shark’s head, though the teeth were razor sharp and pointed.
“Food!” it bellowed at us, swimming through the celestial gas. “How dare food deny me?!”
“Oh okay, that thing is just weird,” I said, looking at it in disgust. “And how is it breathing air?”
“Maybe it’s an amphibian?” Dora suggested. I mimed a shrug.
Gaelin didn’t bother to comment, jerking the steering wheel to the side and dodging the monster’s charge. He then put the pedal to the metal and shot off through the nebula, trying to lose it. The creature clung to our trail, though, following behind and shouting at us.
“Whatever it is, it’s fast,” the halberdier said grimly as he looked into a rearview mirror. “It’s able to keep up with us even at this speed!”
“You cannot run forever!” the monster sneered.
“Says you!” Gaelin shot back, even though it was impossible for it to hear the retort.
“Dora, your crossbow! Can you use it against him?”
“I don’t think so. I’d need both hands to hold it, and if I did that, I couldn’t keep hold of the Rending Rabbit!” Dora pointed out.
“What if Jellik holds onto the rabbit for you and keeps it close by?” Gaelin suggested, swerving to the side as a jagged bolt of ice narrowly missed us. Even so, the sheer cold of the projectile the shark-thing had spat at us caused frost to form on the windows.
“That’s not good,” the halberdier muttered.
“Ok, fine!” Dora said, passing over her Rending Rabbit and darted towards her repeating crossbow. As soon as she was a foot from the rabbit, however, she convulsed, screaming and clutching at her head.
I rushed over to her and pressed the body of the unconscious animal against her. She fell silent and twitched for a moment before sighing weakly.
“Th-thanks, Jellik. That helps,” she mumbled, before fumbling for the weapon.
Like last time, she propped it up on the rolled down window, and aimed out in the black and grey of Quilloth. As the shark monster approached she fired at it, but with preternatural agility it weaved through the cascade of bolts.
“Oh, come on!” Dora swore. She kept up the barrage, but after a bit her weapon clicked, and ceased firing. “Dang it, out of ammo!”
Either it sensed she was out of bolts, or the monster heard her, because the second she uttered those words the creature lunged at us
, slamming into the side of the vehicle. Glass cracked and mental dented and Dora was sent tumbling through the compartment, a gash on her forehead where a shard of the window had torn into her.
“Dora!” I cried worriedly. She began to scream and writhe as her mind was invaded, and I stretched out the tentacle that was holding onto her rabbit and she stopped moving and screaming.
Angered, I flung a few Fireballs and blobs of acid, but the shark-chimera evade those as well, even going so far as to spit chunks of ice from its mouth to block the attacks.
With a cruel, mocking laugh echoing through the nebula, it opened its mouth far wider than normally possible, and I felt the temperature plummet rapidly as vast amounts of Ice mana gathered around it.
“Move, move, move!” I shout at Gaelin. “It’s about to use a wide area of effect spell!”
“I’m pushing this golden junk as far and fast as it’ll go!” he shouted back, our speed picking up. Yet the monster was faster, and before we could do anything about it, the shark-creature was above us, unleashing a blizzard.
“Doom Glacier Burst!” it roared. Tens of thousands of hail stones and jagged shards of ice erupted forth and tore through the nebula towards us.
“Heat Shield!” I chanted, weaving magical defenses around the vehicle. “Heat Shield! Temperature Wall!”
The monster’s spell was strong, and it collided harshly with my hastily erected barriers. The first Heat Shield was overwhelmed and obliterated in seconds. The second one lasted for a few more seconds, before puffing away into steam. But the monster’s spell had been reduced enough for the Temperature Wall to resist the frost from freezing us all solid.
Chunks of ice battered against the hull of the vessel, and a few managed to pierce through the roof, but for the most past Gaelin managed to avoid the worst of it.
“We can’t handle another attack like that!” he warned.
“I know, but what can we do? If we stop here, we’re sitting ducks! And if we go out to fight, we’ll be torn to shred by its S-rank speed!” I replied.
“…Pray to Nia?” he suggested, and I was silent for a moment before bobbing.
“Yes. That sounds wise.”
We quieted down and prayed as hard as we could.
‘Please, Lady Nia, send us a way to escape this predicament!’ I begged, channeling as much Light magic as I could to increase the chances of my prayer reaching her.
{Fear not, my Chosen Ones. Salvation has come.} Nia voice drifted up through my soul, and I sagged in relief, before confusion rose up in me.
‘What? What do you mean?’ I asked her, but she was gone as soon as she came.
All of sudden, there was a thump as something landed on the roof of the vehicle. I opened my senses wide and gasped.
“Oh wow, that was fast! Gaelin! Dora! We’re saved!” I cried out.
“Wuh?” Dora inquired groggily, rubbing the bloody cut on her forehead idly with a glowing finger in an effort to heal it.
“What happened?” Gaelin asked slightly more coherently.
“Hey, you kids alive in there?” an unfamiliar male voice called out to us.
“Y-yes!” I called out.
“Good. Hate to have wasted a trip out here to fetch my new apprentices,” the person standing on the roof of our vehicle said.
“Don’t interfere!” the shark-chimera roared.
“Gods, you’re loud.” There was a ripping sound, followed by a surprised screech that was cut off abruptly.
I peeked through one of the larger holes in the roof, and gaped at the corpse of the monster hanging lifelessly in the air. The lack of gravity caused the monster’s remains to drift apart slowly, and as I watched, it split into four pieces, carved up into near perfect quarters. A cloud of red filled up the grey nebula, and the person standing on our roof got off, moving over to the door of the middle compartment.
With a ‘click!’ it opened, and a tall man with shaggy black hair and dark eyes that reflected swirling stars within them poked in his head.
“Hey, there, kiddies. You did good making it to the Whispering Nebula so quickly. I wasn’t expecting you to be here for another couple of days.”
“Wait, this is the Whispering Nebula? Wow, our luck is a mishmash of good and bad,” I murmured.
“B-Barron?” Gaelin asked reverently, and the man nodded before stepping inside.
“Yup. Scoot over, mister driver. I’ll take over from here and pilot us to my home.”
Gaelin got out of his seat, nodding numbly as he let the leader of the Six Heroes take his spot.
“Got to say, you three have managed to impress me,” Barron declared. “Making it to the Whispering Nebula so fast, rescuing four of my Rending Rabbits, and surviving an encounter with a Screaming Sharrak. Not something a lot of people, Chosen or otherwise, could do.”
Beaming with pride, we watched as he piloted the vessel out of the greyness of the nebula. Excitement bubbled up within us. I could hardly wait to see what training he had in mind for us!
~(o)~
“Those are some big bunnies,” Gaelin muttered as he stared out at the vast number of Rending Rabbits surrounding us. Some, like the tiny specimens in our possession, were no bigger than a cat. Many, though, were huge, towering over their companions. These were the size of horses and moved rapidly across the field of their planetoid.
“Yes, Rending Rabbits grow quite large,” Barron agreed as he set the vehicle down on a hill.
The hutch the black furred anti-magic rabbits lived on was egg-shaped, and covered in orange and purple grass. The planetoid itself was the size of a mountain, and was dotted with hills and vast burrows for the Rending Rabbits to dwell in. A nearby diamond shaped planetoid emitted plenty of pale white light to provide decent illumination, and orbiting it was a pitch black comet, upon which a small house had been built.
As Barron emerged from the golden pinecone vehicle carrying the four Rending Rabbits we’d rescued, he was immediately surrounded by a crowd of eager – and thankfully small sized – rabbits. Laughing, the legendary hero bent down and pet them, fondly ruffling their fur. The rescued bunnies darted over to what I assumed were their families, and began cuddling.
“This is where we’ll begin our training,” he revealed, despite his attention still being focused on the Rending Rabbits. “There will be three main items I will be teaching you. The first is how to fight and survive without magic. These fluffy fellows with help with that.”
“Okay, makes sense,” I said slowly, wincing as I emerged from the vessel and felt the stinging sensation of numerous sources of anti-magic rubbing against my senses. I could barely sense anything more than a couple feet in front of me, and the ‘eyes’ I used to see things like a human were showing everything as static-laced and grey tinted. Even my Mana Echolocation was weaker!
“The second item I’ll be teaching is how to defend your mind and soul from attacks,” Barron went on. “As you no doubt experienced earlier in the Whispering Nebula, telepathic assaults are not so easy to overcome.”
“Tell me about it,” Dora grumbled as she rubbed the spot where a cut had been on her head. She’d healed it, but the half-orc still felt annoyed at being so helpless against mind-based attacks.
“Lastly, I will show you three how to properly slay Void monsters,” Barron stated, his jovial tone turning serious. “We will conduct hunting expeditions to slay any wandering Void creatures. Quite a few tend to sneak out into Quilloth due to the presence of several Void Gates in this Plane of Existence.”
“That seems fair,” Gaelin nodded. “How long should it take?”
“As long as I want.” Barron’s answer caused all three of us to tense up.
“Pardon?” I asked hesitantly.
“Oh, yes. See, this isn’t going to be easy or simple or short. Not like my friends’ tasks for you,” Barron said, turning to us with a wicked glint flashing through his eerie star scape eyes. “No, this is going to last as long as I think you lot are still too weak to fi
ght against the World Rebellion.”
He rose up, and behind him the numerous Rending Rabbits began to stamp their feet eagerly.
“I am Barron, the Noble Dark, leader of the Six Heroes of Chaos, and Slayer of the Void. I will turn you three Chosen Ones into true champions. Nia will be very proud.”
He then pointed a finger at us, and the bunnies all around us gave us excited looks.
“Run,” he commanded, and the Rending Rabbits burst into action, hurling themselves at us.
“RUN!” I screamed, and began bouncing away, Gaelin and Dora hot on my trail.
As he ran, Barron’s laughter echoed across the planetoid.
~(o)~
In a house that was unnaturally normal looking, in a room filled with pink and red, a woman made of blood ceased her violent ravaging of the furniture and surroundings.
She stood as still as a statue of red ice, but slowly, her head turned towards the sole window of the room. She rushed to it, pressed her face against the glass, and let a mad smile creep across her lips.
“He’s here!” she whispered, first in shock, then once more with joy. “He’s here!”
She ran out of her room, slamming the door closed behind her. She made her way down the stairs to the living room, where her youngest brother was busy ‘disciplining’ two of her older siblings.
“Enom, please, forgive us!” Selquist whimpered, only to scream as another wave of pain shot through him.
“Brother, brother, brother,” Bolgoros babbled, trapped in so much pain that the fat bob couldn’t even feel hunger any more.
“Where are you going. Philia?” demanded the skeletally thin brother who wore a halo of eyeballs.
“None of your business, Enom!” she snapped, darting out of the house before any of them could say a word.
“Huh, haven’t seen her that worked up in a while,” the eldest member of Typhon’s brood commented, casually leaning against the wall and eating popcorn as he watched the Memory of Typhon torment and remind the Hand and Body of the price of failure.
“Shut up, Rath,” Enom said blandly.
