Into the Hells

by Christopher Johns

  The others started to laugh at me, but when I just stared back blankly, they realized I was being honest.

  “Then we don’t fail.” Jaken clapped me on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  Muu and James stayed with Yohsuke to make the camp ready, while Jaken and I went with Bokaj to cut down the trees.

  I teleported us to the jungle, and after an hour of searching, we found trees seasoned enough to try and make a boat out of. Bokaj pointed them out to me, and I summoned a great axe with Stone Weapon. It took us a couple more hours from there to cut the trunks into more manageable pieces. Jaken and I used a saw that Bokaj produced to trim them down to blocks that were small enough to transport out of the jungle. Bokaj cut them into halves, then the centers into boards for easier transport. It was sloppy work at first, but he said that he would be able to refine them when we sat up shop by the ocean.

  Once we were ready to go back, I cast Regrowth on the four stumps, muttering a word of gratitude to each for their sacrifices, and left the area.

  James ended up helping Bokaj come up with the blueprint for the base of the boat, but that was too difficult without specialized equipment, so we ended up designing a large raft. We spent some time making minor cuts in the wood where Bokaj asked us, then left it alone. We ate, sparred a little, then went to bed. The sparring wasn’t really helpful for anything other than us learning to adapt to attacks quickly. And we almost never used deadly force, though some of us slipped occasionally.

  James. The asshat.

  * * *

  The following morning, after the daily draw on my mana for my prosthetic hand to be normal, I rose to go look around the water.

  Maebe was off in the distance talking to a shadowy figure with Shadow Speak, and I didn’t want to interrupt.

  It was high time I got used to the idea of being in the same area as the fish. I took my shirt off, the breeze from the water chilling me a little, but my fur helped to mitigate the cold from it a bit.

  I cast Nature’s Voice and leaped into the water. I immediately hit sand and heard a soft chuckle behind me.

  I turned to find Maebe watching me in a dress I had bought her. The deep green of it made her eyes sparkle so much brighter in the light blue sky that served as a backdrop. Her dark skin, sun-kissed and warm looking even though I knew she was likely cold to the touch. The cloth fell mid-calf and flowed effortlessly in the ocean breeze. I had to pull myself away from gazing at her.

  “Yeah, that was hardly cool of me.” I sighed to myself exasperatedly. I saw the water move, and she was there.

  “It was not cool at all. There was no ice to be seen.” She smiled and motioned to the water around us. “I have never seen so much water. It is exhilarating to see it all.” She helped me stand and patted my rump to get the moist sand off of me a bit. “What were you planning to do?”

  “I was going to go explore the waters and see if I couldn’t acquire a few animal forms to help us in the future.” I pointed to where the parts for the raft were. “That won’t get very far without a sail or someone to pull it, and it’ll need to be something strong.”

  “But you are uncomfortable with the water, so you will do this to prove to yourself that you can handle that fear?”

  I looked at her, her green eyes unblinking and a serious look on her face. “Yeah, I suppose you could say that. You knew all that from… where?”

  “I observed you while we were at the edge of the cliff.” Her delicate hand caressed my cheek. “You are easier to observe when your guard is down. The water will bow to you. Or it will not. But it cannot destroy you—I won’t let it.”

  The waters around us became noticeably colder, and the sound of ice forming rapidly reached my ears.

  “I will freeze this whole ocean and claim it for you, if needed.” The fierce look on her face was both endearing and terrifying.

  “Thank you, dear.” I hugged her for a moment, and the ice around us thawed.

  “We have much to discuss when you return.” I glanced down at her, and she elaborated. “The fight with the Dragon, the finding, what needs doing after that. Other things.”

  “Will you be coming along then?” I raised an eyebrow at her, and she nodded. “I think you’ll need to wear something other than that dress for the water.”

  She smirked and lifted the cloth over her head. Her own small clothes clung to her body as she folded the dress and placed it into her own inventory. Then she pressed forward through the water and dove into it with little other thought. When she came out of it, she smiled and splashed at me.

  I stepped closer to her and cast Water Lung.

  Water Lung – The caster and a number of creatures up to their intelligence divided by five (70 / 5 = 14) can breathe water up to 24 hours and withstand crushing depths. Cost: 75 MP. Range: 35 Feet (on casting). Cooldown: 30 minutes.

  So, fourteen people. That’s fucking awesome. The spell took hold, and I felt like the air I was currently breathing was simply too light. There wasn’t enough oxygen in it. I could breathe it, but it was harder somehow.

  Fighting every instinct I had, I ducked my head into the water and trusted my magic. I breathed out as forcefully as I could, then breathed deeply under water. Air bubbles left my mouth; then a vacuum of water formed in front of my face as I inhaled water. The briny liquid coated my lungs, and I could feel the strain of not having taken a breath alleviating immediately. The thickness of the water in my lungs was odd but not too uncomfortable. Opening my eyes underwater was slightly irritating, but it was fine after a couple minutes of getting used to it.

  I opened my mouth to speak to Maebe who was floating beneath the surface serenely, then closed it. Would the sound travel?

  “Yes, you can speak beneath the ocean,” came the sea turtle’s voice from my right, “but be wary. Sound travels far under the tide.”

  “Thank you.” My voice sounded weird, but the creature had been right. “We were going to search for larger aquatic creatures to try and see if they will let me take their forms or not.”

  “Try deeper waters, Druid.” The turtle sighed before turning and swimming away toward the beach.

  “So helpful,” I grumbled mutinously.

  It called over its shoulder, “I heard that,” and swam off faster.

  I shrugged, then took off toward the deeper waters with Maebe. The water was cold—freezing—at some points, but it got easier to bear as time went on. We didn’t go too far down. Wasn’t like twenty-thousand leagues under the sea kind of swimming—we just went as deep as we could. A cool thing about my new metal hand as well was that it wasn’t functioning like normal metal underwater. It was almost exactly like my normal arm. Excellent.

  There were small schools of fish out there, just at the edge of our vision. They looked like clouds against a black expanse with minute light smattered through. A curious eel swam by, his body writhing, but he seemed content to keep his distance no matter how much I called to him.

  I was beginning to lose hope when I saw a flurry of motion lower down in the water and noted a large shadow passing beneath us.

  Instantly I was wary of it and more than a little freaked out. There was no telling what kind of creatures of the deep were out here in a magical world. No way of knowing except what little water-based lore I knew. And the ones I knew were sure as fuck not comforting.

  Multicolored fish swam toward us in a wave of fins and fear. I didn’t imagine it was hard to scare fish, but it was following.

  Maebe and I swam outside the swarm and watched as the hulking form of something that resembled a whale swam through the swarm of fish with its mouth open. Dozens of the smaller aquatic lives were sucked into this creature’s gullet before us. It closed its mouth, and on instinct, I swam forward to try and latch on to it.

  Compared to the school of fish, I was like a baby trying to swim around. Even the larger fish was able to see me coming. Luckily, Maebe seemed much more at home in the water than I did, and she beat me to him. She touched its
fin, and it stiffened for a moment before relaxing. She nodded her head toward it, and I simply shrugged before completing my swim over to touch it on its dark, scaly body.

  It was a deep blue or something to that effect with a lighter yellow portion on the side that looked like a stripe, but it blended much better. It could have been underwater camouflage. Maybe in certain lights, surroundings or somewhere else, it would lure prey or confuse something even larger.

  That last thought made me gulp at the thought. After another moment, I felt that I had acquired the large fish’s form, and we let it go. It took one last look at Maebe and decided that it wanted nothing to do with her. I looked down below us, and something there caught my eye. I had to investigate.

  We both swam lower, the light of day bleeding less and less into our surroundings. My dark vision kicked in and what little light we were getting helped me to see the shapes of creatures near the floor of this section. One of whom was very curious about me.

  I felt a tug on my left leg as I reached a dark band of coral at the bottom with seaweed not far away. I looked down to see a single tentacle wrapped around my leg. This tiny octopus the size of a cat had latched on to me and was slowly working the other tentacles around my leg. It didn’t hurt; it kind of tickled really.

  I bent and addressed it kindly, “Hello, little fellow. Can I help you?”

  “Hold still while I hunt you, please,” it squeaked back. “I am a great hunter of the deep, like mother, and she will be so proud to see my first kill was such a strange creature.”

  I laughed nervously. If this was a baby, where was mom?

  A dark shadow passed over us, and I noted that it had tentacles as well. As soon as it finished passing over our position, I felt a pinch and noted a single hit point was missing from my total 400 HP. The little fucker had bitten me!

  I tried to gently extricate myself from the little one as swiftly as I could before grabbing Mae and casting Teleport.

  We landed with a great splash on the beach near the raft with great heaving breaths. The last thing I had seen of that deep area had been an open maw in the shape of a beak rocketing toward us with its legs fanned out around it.

  I came out of my panic-induced tunnel vision to a stream of curses and a wet Bokaj. His shirtless upper body was covered in deep-sea brine, and his hair was sopping wet.

  “Get. Away. From me,” he growled.

  He had tools in a white-knuckled grip and was baring his teeth at us. I nodded dumbly and fled to go calm down in the warmth of the sunlight on the sands by the water. But, you know—far from the water.

  I wouldn’t be going back in today. Not a fucking chance in hell.

  I shivered despite the warmth of the bright sunlight above me and dismissed the water breathing effect so that I could breathe normally. I instantly began to hack up great lungfuls of water. Finally, with a heave that felt like I was choking on vomit, a large bubble of water ejected from my mouth with some kind of powder inside it. It popped a few feet away, and the powder dropped to the sand below. It smelled like sea salt. I felt ill all over again.

  “That was an interesting reaction to the spell,” Maebe offered.

  She seemed to be completely fine, and that made me unreasonably angry. I let the emotion fade before I nodded and offered a small smile. “Yeah, that was really weird.”

  “You are unwell,” she observed aloud. She looked up into the sky, which was comforting. “You feel justified in your fears.”

  “More than a little.” I sighed. “I expected sharks. I expected larger fish. Like whales. Granted, I didn’t think it would be a predatory whale, like that one, but it was a possibility. But almost being eaten by a creature of myth and legend? Fuck, man.”

  “It was only a giant octopus or squid. I think. I am not well versed with a large variety of sea creatures, but that was hardly a leviathan or Kraken. It for certain was not something so massive as a water Dragon.” I felt her hand cover mine and squeeze gently. “You were smart enough to get away from there. You have a way out. You will be okay.”

  “I’ll have to make sure we keep a constant Teleport on then.” Blinking up at the clouds above us, I was reminded of how much better I would have felt if Kayda was around. Oh well. She was off learning to be the best she could. No worries there. She would come back stronger.

  “Let’s get some food and see about getting something to eat, then do a little bit of shadow magic training, yeah?” I looked over at her to see a savage grin envelope her face. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I had wondered if you had forgotten or if you would heed my advice to focus on your other elements.” She stood and pulled her own shadow over her body like it was a second skin that fell away.

  “I thought about it, and since I have one of the best shadow magic users I’m likely to ever meet at my side, I figured learning a little bit may not hurt, right? Besides, wasting the potential to learn anything from you would be stupid.”

  She stood there dry and then did the same for me before her lips turned up in a smile. “Dress fully and come.”

  She slipped the dress she had worn previously over her head, then left me to stare at her walking away as she wandered into camp in search of food. Let’s just say that we all know that I am stupid lucky. Yeah?

  Chapter Nine

  We had eaten the sausages in toasted buns rapidly, then moved out of range of the camp by more than three dozen yards.

  Maebe cast her hand upward and mumbled a string of words that were too low for me to hear. A dome of pure shadow sprung to life around us that covered the area in darkness like night. The ground was bathed in cool shadow, but the lid of the dome was half darkness and the other, clear, night light.

  The Queen of Cold and Shadow stood, bathed in the void that the stars filled. The darkness swallowing all of her features save her face. Her green eyes stared out at me with confidence.

  “The first lesson is quite simple: call the shadows to you.” She smiled and stepped back into the darkness, disappearing completely.

  I had done something similar to this before, in willing my mana to do what the hell I wanted it to, like pulling it from my mana reserves into my fingers or into an item I was enchanting. I just had to try and turn that inward solution and vision outward.

  I looked at the shadows on the floor, the ebon energy of them and called to them with my mind.

  Nothing happened.

  I kept at it for a solid fifteen minutes before a headache began to throb at the base of my skull near my spine. I groaned and felt a pair of arms wrap around my waist from behind. I felt the press of her body against my tails and back.

  “You’re trying too hard,” Maebe’s voice echoed toward me from where she had been before, and I looked down to see a perfect shadow copy of my lover behind me.

  “How do you do that?” I started, then took a deep breath. “How do you control the shadows?”

  “They are mine by birthright, but in order to control the depths of the void, one must bear in mind two things: their strengths and their will. A portion of my strength is my blood and my natural affinity for the darkness. My will is absolute,” I saw another likeness of the queen sprout from the darkness beside me, though her voice that drifted out of the darkness where she had been, “and my degree of control comes from centuries of practice.”

  The shade drifted toward me and touched my face lightly. It felt so real before it spoke in Maebe’s voice, “Call to the shadows.”

  Before trying to call anything to me, I turned my sights inward. I could use shadow magic already, and those obeyed my will. But that was all internalized, given by the Celestial gift that the queen had given me through a blood rite.

  I focused on what I was now. I was a Celestial too. Shadows were as much a part of me now as they were Maebe, right? I was stronger than this. I had come to this world, and I had made so many things my bitch—the darkness was just another thing on the list.

  Rather than simply exerting my
will mentally, I issued a verbal command, the same I would have if I were giving orders. I demanded the shadows now.

  “Come.”

  There was a strain as I exerted my will on the shadows on the other side of the dome, so I focused on the shadows on the ground beneath my feet. I forced my will into a groping hand that snatched the writhing, slippery tendrils of darkness into it and pulled. I didn’t realize I had closed my eyes to focus, but when I opened them, I looked at my hand and felt a cool touch.

  A small strand of shadow was in my grasp. A notification barged into my view.

  ABILITIES UNLOCKED!

  Shadow Control – The caster has reached into the shadows and brought them under his command. At the beginning stages, the caster will be able to perform minor tricks and spells with the darkness around them. With practice comes mastery, and with mastery—power.

  “Congratulations,” Maebe purred. She stepped from the darkness in front of me; this time, it was not a copy.

  The inky black behind her seemed like it didn’t want to relinquish her, like a pet that hated watching their master leave for work.

  “Thank you, but what do I do now?” She glided forward, her hand smoothing over the shadows in my grasp.

  “You practice.” We both watched as the dark tendrils slithered from my grasp. “Never-ending practice. Now, call them to you again.”

  And so we practiced. We spent hours going at it with little breaks. By the final hour, my concentration was shit, and my head pounded like a Dwarf was forging my brain with a sledgehammer.

  It wasn’t for nothing, though. I was able to make the shadows come to me rather quickly now, and even as we walked back to camp in the fading light, I had my shadow moving toward my hand before letting it fall away. It was weird and cool as fuck.

  The others were already eating some of the fish that Muu had speared earlier on in the day while I was training. I know that I had eaten a lot of things since coming here, but I wasn’t cool with fish. It was just too—what was that smell?