by Prax Venter
The metal crown squealed as Mark’s weapon knocked it aside, and the silver hoop ended up tangled within the branches of the maze wall. With a grunt, he bashed it again, and the dented Ghothal’s Crown fell lifeless to the ground. As it faded away, Mark felt more essence enter his body.
He shot a glance behind him, found it clear, then Mark jogged back to the others.
“Everyone okay?” he asked, but he could already tell no one was hurt. Without waiting for an answer, Mark healed his bleeding arm, then nodded up the row. “Then let’s keep moving before more come from behind.”
Jezebel nodded, and the five of them dashed forward quietly through the rest of the maze. As they jogged, Mark quickly noticed warm desire coming from all the women around him. Even Cel. From her, he could feel a sense of shocked awe. He saw echoes of Jezebel’s ideas on how Lovers within this world were never fighters, and that she was now very curious about him.
When Mark saw the light spilling in against the far wall, he knew they’d reached the exit. Abby activated her mind-clouding ability, and Cel pulled in a gasp when she vanished from her sight, but there was no change for Mark. The dark-haired thief slid along the foliage and peeked out into the city. They didn’t know if her innate invisibility would work on the magic crown entities, but it didn’t hurt to be safe.
Mark watched as the dark-haired monster-woman leaned out, looked around, and then scurried back to them. Abby then stood at attention and gave her report.
“Stone foundations covered in red moss, five visible crowns, scattered. And a strange, alluring glow around the edges… of things.”
Abby was never one to be at a loss for words.
“It’s the anomaly,” Cel whispered. “I can’t believe I’m so close.”
“Where is this bridge from here?” Mark asked.
“We exit the maze and keep going straight away from it. We’ll see it on our left when we get close enough.”
Mark took in a deep breath.
“Let’s go get us a nut.”
- 11 -
Jezebel and Abby jumped out of the maze and began activating their special abilities immediately. One of the furthest crowns along the giant hedge maze became ensnared in the satyr’s Vines, while the abyssal horror cast an instant Mind Crush with a flick of her tentacle then began preparing her high-damage laceration spell.
While she wove the incantation, Sasha and Jezebel ran out into the field to engage the remaining three as Mark and Cel raced along the maze’s outer edge toward the one trapped in Jezebel’s Vines.
He shot a glance out toward the bright-white stones and soft red moss to check on the others and immediately saw the glow Abby was talking about. The mostly barren land had this aura of vibrancy and… shine.
Mark turned back to the hedge maze wall and noticed it stretching miles beyond their tangled crown target. Far in the distance, the leafy topiary wall eventually ended, and distant flashes of a violent thunderstorm hung over a shadowed, gray swamp. He saw bolts of lightning strike the ground multiple times in a row and wondered if it was some sort of permanent storm that acted as a natural barrier.
Sasha pulled his attention back as she Arc Bolted a foe out of the air, and then Bear-Jezebel tore her target down right after. He looked over and was glad to see the Mind Crushed crown dipping toward the ground as dark wisps of energy looped around its silver edges, ending whatever force kept the enchanted entity alive. Abby was getting stronger, and he just knew there were some kick-ass spells still waiting to be unlocked.
Behind him, he felt Cel swiftly keeping pace along the wall as they went to finish the trapped crown with his mace but decided to slow his strides.
He turned to the small plant-woman behind him.
“I changed my mind!” he yelled. “You go kill that thing!”
She looked at him with eyes like two full moons, but the Kalorplast Fighter wrinkled her nose with a cute snarl and sprinted past him toward the tangled crown.
Mark followed, but she was faster than he expected when she poured on the juice. Cel pulled her dual hand-axes out from her belt and hacked downward into the silver hoop as she slid to a stop. Her wooden Swift Strikes were fast and did seem to damage it, but the crown needed seven such chops before it dropped and vanished.
As with Loa in the Utterback catacombs, Cel’s kill still gave him essence.
“Nice work,” he said as they trotted back toward Jezebel and Sasha.
“I destroyed a crown!” she said, a huge toothy grin on her cabbage-helmed face.
“Five we can take,” Jezebel said, back in satyr form and scanning the bright landscape. “But you said there were hundreds?”
Cel squinted her eyes and looked around the ancient ruins, and Mark did the same. The land sloped upward from the maze’s entrance into a bluff that appeared to overlook the whole area. To either side of this rise, the ground angled downward toward an immense blue ocean with pink and gold clouds framing everything. No grass grew anywhere. The Light King’s domain was either dried dirt, ancient white stone, or vibrant red moss. There were hints of structures still standing, and he saw a broken white tower crouching on the bluff, but mostly there were only weathered foundations- white crumbling bricks barely poking out of the ground like half-buried skeletons. Behind them, the imposing wall of the maze ran flawlessly straight from that distant stormy swamp to his right and then appeared to stretch on endlessly to his left. The warm sun above wasn’t unpleasant, but its light and heat felt amplified by whatever magical anomaly drenched the air around him.
Cel found what she was looking for and then pointed her small hand out.
“You see those legs and part of a torso over there?”
Mark followed her finger over the ancient foundations and crimson moss to see the broken white sculpture she mentioned. There was something particularly bright about it that made it hard to look at directly. Cel continued.
“The crowns spawn on their heads every dawn even if the statue is destroyed. They are scattered throughout the area, so the chance that all of them would-”
“Two,” Sasha said, dashing off and armoring up. Ahead, Mark saw one Ghothal’s Crown become snared in glowing vines while Sasha’s black hooves crushed part of an ancient stone foundation as she pushed off to go after the other. She brought a thickly muscled leg up and executed a sliding Side Kick on her target as Abby erased the vined one.
Mark pushed off the ground to follow his badass Destructor.
“Let’s keep moving,” he said and led them straight away from the Bloodberry Maze up the sloping land ahead. “I want to get to a higher vantage point.”
“Your axe material is ineffective,” Abby said as they jogged up the gentle incline. “With no cutting edge, they are like maces with wind resistance.”
“Kalorplast don’t like metal,” she said with a shrug. “And my innate ability makes them a bit stronger.”
His focus was on the surrounding area and potential threats, but there was no denying the lies Cel was telling Abby. She understood they were ineffective. Without probing deeper, he didn’t know why she had them, but he tried to keep his eye off the sprout warrior. Too much was going on right now, and Mark didn’t like how little control he had over the visions that assaulted him sometimes. Especially after whatever that was with his ear in the maze.
The jog to the top of the bluff took about ten minutes, and Sasha reached the edge first.
“Holy shit,” she said as Mark joined her and saw the gleaming splendor for himself.
The dirt ended in a sheer cliff overlooking a vast, tiered landscape of square stone foundations and red moss as it continued for about another mile until ending abruptly with a sharp drop-off into the sea. They could see everything from here, and what pulled everyone’s attention was the nearby island jutting out of the water. On the left side was a great mass of what appeared to be melted stone, frozen in the shape of an enormous splash. Cel had told them that this citadel had been destroyed by a magical explosion and appa
rently this massive structure had turned into liquid and was blown sideways before instantly solidifying as this gargantuan work of abstract art glistening in the sun. On the right side of the island was a multi-hued paradise of green grass and exotic flowers the size of buildings with rainbow-colored vines spilling over the edge down into the gap.
The only thing that connected the elevated island to the rest of the ancient ruined city was a thin stone bridge as if it were a piece of white string stretched between them.
“I believe you picked one hell of a partner, Cel,” Mark said.
She nodded, her mind swirling with excitement, wonder, and awe.
“That is the Light King’s Citadel and his Royal Garden. Somewhere in there is the being I intend to spend the rest of my life with.”
Movement in the ancient ruins below caught his eye, and he noticed countless glints of polished silver milling around in a clump between them and the bridge. He was about to point them out when it struck Mark as odd that he hadn’t noticed any of the motes of light indicating a crossing-over point in a while. The crackling power still spun in his mind, but there was nothing to use it on. If he’d seen a doorway, they might have been able to bypass the horde of crowns on the Wrongside. Also, it would have been damn interesting to see what craziness might be present in the same place within that semi-mirror universe.
“Anyone else seeing the traffic jam up there?” he said, fishing for ideas.
“No…” Cel said, fear in her voice. “Is that too many to handle?”
“I count thirty-plus,” Jezebel said. “Maybe we can draw them off somehow.”
“Are they smart?” Mark asked the plant-elf.
“Um, not overly so. I don’t know.”
Mark looked back over his shoulder, and at this height, the insanely intricate hedge maze appeared as the top of a green brain extending across the landscape- and a plan began to form.
“How do you fine ladies feel about a little backtracking?”
Everyone turned to see what he was talking about, but his sexy, smart satyr caught on first.
“You want to lead that clump of crowns into the maze.”
Mark nodded. “That’s what it’s for, isn’t it?”
“Your logic is flawless,” Abby added, standing on her toes to see the tops of the bloodberry bushes.
“How do we get them to follow us all that way and not kill us?” Cel asked.
Mark looked over at Jezebel.
“Grizzly-Jez gallops pretty fast. I’m thinking you and Sasha go down close enough to draw them with a Shock Bomb. Then Sasha hops on for a ride to where we’ll be waiting at the entrance. Once the horde of crowns is lured inside the maze, Cel will let us cheat through the walls and pop back out through over there.” Mark pointed to the place near where the Kalorplast Collector smashed her first crown.
The plant-like Fighter took a shuddering breath and turned to face him.
“Your plan is fantastic. Thank you, Mark. You have no idea how much this means to me. Not only are you helping me fulfill my dream of being an adventurer, but you are also teaching me how it’s done.”
“Just put in a good word for us with Guild Master Noma after we get you your nut buddy.”
About twenty minutes later, Abby had her tentacle wrapped around his hand as they stood just inside the maze. Despite the differences in elevation, he could see the distant blue succubus shape throw something before hopping onto the back of the red bear shape, and the concussive blast’s echo reached them moment later.
Abby squeezed his hand as they waited for their bonded teammates to lure the mob of foes up through the ruins, and although they were standing still, both their hearts raced with anticipation.
“Run, now!” Mark shouted as soon as he saw Sasha’s horns appearing over the rise.
The three of them rounded the first bend in the hedge maze as the galloping Bear-Jezebel caught up, and Cel willed open a hole for them to escape into a path far-removed from where they were. Everyone ran through except Sasha, who activated another Shock Bomb and threw it as far as she could down the path.
Once she joined them, Cel closed the opening, and the four-foot-tall plant-woman led them back through a series of dense foliage walls until they were once again out in the anomalous, ruined landscape.
They didn’t wait around to see if any Ghothal’s Crowns would turn around, and all five of them sprinted to the left, down the sloping land toward the bridge they’d spotted from the bluff.
As they moved further into the moss-covered ruins, it became clear that his plan had worked, and they’d lured off all the crowns that would have potentially been in their way.
Cel hopped as she ran, punching her fist up toward the liquid yellow sun.
“This is everything I thought adventuring would be!”
Mark shared glances with his three lovely monster-women as they all closed the distance to their destination. Eventually, the dirt ahead came to an abrupt, eroded end, and he called for a stop.
The explosion of color to the right of the melted stronghold was a sharp contrast to the pure white, lifeless stone extending out over the sea. Giant red tulips reached three stories high, but there were also vibrant pansies, towering lilac bushes, and many other colorful mutant plants. Every square centimeter was choked with dense foliage. Mark peered over the cliffs between the ancient city and this island and found the calm dark water of the ocean about a hundred feet below.
“It’s beautiful,” Jezebel said.
Abby twined her long green appendage around his arm.
“And, I’d have never seen color if it weren’t for you.”
“Really?” Cel said, turning toward him.
Mark smiled. “It’s a long story, and-”
And that’s when the blimp of a bumblebee lifted off one of the huge flowers in the distance. Perspective was a notion Mark only flirted with these days, but given what he was seeing, the coming boss fight was going to be intense. Even from this far away, Mark could hear the deep hum from its impossibly small wings.
“At least we know where it is,” Sasha said as she took one step toward the stone bridge, her tail snapping once.
Jezebel turned her emerald eyes on the Kalorplast standing among them.
“What can you tell us about this creature?”
“Not much is known about the Behemoth Bumblebee that guards the Light King’s ancient garden. Only a handful have reported their fight. It can regenerate its wounds if we don’t destroy it quickly. That’s really all I know.”
Mark bent to kiss Abby’s smooth tentacle and dislodged himself.
“We’ll check out the layout first while we keep an eye on the big bee. Then, we’ll have the upper hand with a perfectly executed ambush.”
He shot the four monster-women a confident smile then turned to head for the weather-worn bridge. When Mark moved those first few steps onto the slab stone stretched out over the calm waves far below, he was confident in his ability to cross this ancient walkway with no railings, but the porous crunching under his boots quickly sent red flags waving in his mind. Wind, rain, sun, and sea had hammered away at these remains of a bridge for hundreds of years and left only a pockmarked specter of what sort of majestic span stood here so long ago.
“This structure might not bear our entire throughput,” Abby said, trying to step gingerly in her big black boots. “Perhaps we should cross one at a time.”
They reached about the halfway point and had to move near the edge to avoid a cavity worn through the middle, and there they did take it one at a time- just to be safe.
“Remember to come to me if the bridge collapses,” Jezebel said from the other side as Abby was crossing. “I can recall us to Starglade before we drown.”
“I do not wish to discuss falling at the moment,” the abyssal horror said as she shuffled along a section that was about a yard wide.
The armored satyr put her hands on her hips. “Abby… There’s no way you’re afraid of heights.”
&
nbsp; Abby’s dark eyebrows came down hard.
“I am afraid of nothing. I do not trust the integrity of this structure.”
“That must be nice,” Cel said, waiting her turn to cross. “I’m afraid of everything.”
Abby shot a glance back at the plant-like woman.
“I suppose,” she amended, “there are a few things that would truly bring me terror. But I could never be afraid of a general abstract concept like falling itself.”
The green woman in the yellow bikini hopped over the last few paces where Sasha took her reaching tentacle and held her close. Abby continued from within the succubus’s embrace.
“Falling that led to separation from those that I need… Perhaps what I now fear is being alone.”
Mark felt the augmented enemy AI that was Abby push out a pulse of realization through their bond. She had explored a self-awareness that she never had a reason to before.
Despite Abby’s mistrust, the eroded bridge held, and they all made it to the chunk of land thrusting up out of the sea. The frozen, solid mass of stone must have held quartz because it sparkled in the sunshine as they moved up the relatively untouched set of stone stairs toward a flat ledge they could follow over to the overgrown garden.
“It kind of looks like a castle-sized catcher’s mitt,” Sasha said as she observed the melted citadel over her shoulder.
“Yeah, I can see that,” Jezebel said.
“What is a catcher’s mitt?” Cel asked as she too studied the towering splash of melted bricks.
Mark chuckled. “A large, padded leather glove that someone would wear to protect their hand. It’s used to catch high-speed balls in a game where we came from.”
“The formation seems prepared to catch the sun,” Abby said, and Cel gave her a smile.
As they moved around the crumbling melted bricks, they saw some intact walls or thick stairwells that ended in empty air, but almost every inch of this gleaming, melted citadel was deformed in some way. Small shoots of tenacious vegetation began appearing between the cracks more and more until it was hard to make a call if they were in the gardens yet or not. When six-foot-tall leaves began blocking their sight, Mark held up his hand and called for a halt.