by Ryan Rimmel
The puma pounced, launching all 800 pounds of its overripe form at me. I managed to get slightly to the side, so that the creature didn’t land squarely on me. Both of us still went sprawling flat on the ground, though. The puma was trying to get its back legs into position to just rip my bottom half open, and I was thrusting my shortsword into its very thickly furred neck.
Then, I heard the hissing. The section of the field that we were rolling around in was completely drenched in demonic blood. That blood was highly toxic to living organisms, except for me. Shart was my familiar; we were bonded, for better or for worse. This was one of the rare times that it was for the better, because Shart’s blood honored the bond between us. I was fine. The puma, on the other hand, was not. It had stopped attempting to tear into me and was instead focused on standing up. I dragged the creature back down, continuing the process of knifing its side.
All the tumors on its left side seemed to detonate like firecrackers into the demonic blood. The thick black blood adopted a greenish tint for a moment, twisting into unknown wicked shapes that tried to pull the puma deeper into the blood. I rolled clear when one reached for me. I grabbed Shart and got the hell out of the way.
“Did we get her?” asked Shart weakly. He looked much worse than I’d ever seen him before.
“Not quite yet,” I said. I was quickly shoving his entrails back inside his gaping chest wound. Once all Shart’s inside parts were no longer on the outside, I pressed the wound in his chest shut. His demonic skin knit back together almost instantly. Then, I reached into his extradimensional pocket and grabbed my bow.
“What’s happening?” I asked, sitting the demon carefully back on my shoulder. He didn’t stay, so I fed him 20 points of Mana while I strung my bow.
“It cut me,” stated the demon. “It ought not to have done that. My blood craves the magic that my body provides. When my blood is outside my body, it tries to get power from anywhere.”
“Well, that explains the tentacles,” I said, watching the blood surround and attempt to strangle the puma with its weird, octopus-like features.
“No, it doesn’t,” grinned the demon.
I hate demons.
I hadn’t been working on Marksman much recently. After all, I hadn’t thought that I could still fire a bow. After my injury, I’d just known that I couldn’t shoot like I had before, so that had translated to not being able to shoot at all. Now, shooting left handed, I realized that SueLeeta had been right.
Lining up my first arrow, I released it into the puma’s side, causing another tumor to explode. The blood, which had been quieting down, started growing more thick black tentacles. It continued trying to drag the cat into itself.
I fired four more times. Each time, another tumor popped. Each time, the blood reanimated, and the cat fought harder to get away. Strangely, without the tumors, I expected the cat to be some sort of weird mutant. It was instead nearly the perfect specimen of pumahood.
With the final tumor gone, the cat managed to get out of the blood. It was smoking from the effects of the acidic demon blood on its skin. Using Lore, I found that it still had over 50 hit points left. The puma really was a proud majestic beast, and, for a brief moment, I considered letting it go.
Out of nowhere, Badgelor leapt onto its back and started tearing into it. “You freaking ass! I’ll show you exploding green tumors!”
“Out of Stamina,” stated Shart, as he readhered himself to my shoulder properly. I can only describe the sensation as creepy. He felt lighter than I thought was healthy for him.
“Badgelor wasn’t,” I thought, then realized he meant the cat. It was true. The puma had less than 10 points of Stamina left, which meant that it was a sports car without gas. They look pretty but are more or less useless.
With a scream, the puma died, and Badgelor began phase 2: the destruction of its corpse. He was a thorough creature, if nothing else. I noticed a prompt.
Level UP, Mage 3.
You have gained one perk. Please select it from the Mage menu.
Your Hit Point Total is increased by 10. Your Mana is increased by 10.
I dismissed it. I was in too much pain to go through the level up process now.
I was down to half Health. The puma’s attacks had caused several injuries with bleed effects. Those weren’t going away anytime soon. I grabbed a healing root and started chewing. I offered one to Shart, who sighed.
“I wish,” stated the demon. “Wait… do you smell that?”
I sniffed, and Shart twisted around, looking every way he could. We simultaneously turned toward a large tree close to the edge of the clearing. I had several prompts waiting for me, but, at this moment, the tree was calling to me. We walked over as I fed Shart more Mana. He had some sort of process for turning Mana into Health, and he was seriously depleted on both fronts right now.
My Tracking skill had no trouble finding the large amount of puma tracks that were heading toward this tree. They all led to a small gap in the trunk, though small was relative. It would have fit that 800 pound puma easily. I didn’t hear anything inside, so I signaled Badgelor. He hunkered over and went in. Shortly thereafter, Badgelor called for us to follow.
The tunnel led under and through the tree. For an instant. I wondered if I was about to find a dungeon. The tunnel widened before opening into a poorly lit lair. The walls inside were abnormally smooth, with deep roots growing in them from all sides. I looked around and realized that there were tracks of hundreds, if not thousands, of kittens here. Swallowing hard, I looked around. Aside from a strange looking spring in the back corner, the lair was empty.
While I was observantly looking through the entire area, Shart was focused entirely on the spring. I stepped toward it and was surprised. I had expected the air underground to be musty and thick; it wasn’t. The air seemed vibrant. I could see some plants growing around the spring, even though the lair was underground and decidedly dark.
We walked the rest of the way over to it. Shart grew ever more fixated with every step we took.
“What is this?” I asked, gesturing towards the pool. Now that we’d gotten closer, I found that the spring emptied into a small pool the size of a bathtub. I pulled a dead leaf off the ground and dropped it into the spring.
It floated down and settled, revealing that the spring was not made of water. The pool was kind of like aerogel, or a transparent cloud or mist. It was about as liquid as air could get, or about as airy as a liquid could get. In no way was it a natural spring, and that was just the beginning of its mysteries.
The leaf first turned green. It looked healthy, like it must have been when it was on a tree. The leaf itself had been damaged, with a piece missing. That didn't matter; the spring turned it whole again, for a while, at least. As we watched, the leaf began twitching. Small tumors began growing on it. They grew larger and larger, until, finally, the leaf was hiddenly entirely behind them.
Shart’s attention snapped from whatever he had been focused on. “Damn it! Barrier!”
I snapped up my barrier using both hands. I found a trick, then. If I lined up my thumbs, the barrier got wider and somewhat stronger. That was definitely fortunate, because the little leaf suddenly exploded. The sickly green tumor pus splattered against my barrier. Because it didn’t quite fit together, the barrier allowed several tiny bits of the magical pus through. It felt akin to making bacon naked, but less pleasant.
“That explains the puma,” said Shart. “She found this life spring and started bathing in it. She was wise enough to get out before she exploded but was also wise enough to stay in as long as possible. That explains the tumors.”
“She?” asked Badgelor. “How do you know it was a she?”
“What about all the other pumas?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“All hers,” stated Shart. “You can survive off life energy, if it's in a spring like this. It’s not great for you, but it repairs life in tremendous ways.”
“What do you mean by that?” I a
sked, as Shart looked around. He spotted something and plopped off my shoulder. The demon picked a seed off the ground and came back to us.
“Observe,” he said, throwing the seed into the spring. It floated lower than the leaf, but still didn’t touch the ground. Within moments, the seed sprouted, growing quickly into a flower. There was no water, no soil, and no sunlight, but the flower grew anyway. It went through its entire life cycle in seconds, and then started growing tumors.
I pushed it aside with my shortsword, and it fell to the ground. From where it lay, it looked like any other recently picked flower. It had grown without anything to support it, other than life energy. I knew about hydroponics; plants didn’t necessarily need soil, but no sunlight or water?
Where did all that mass come from?
“Well, we can’t have this,” stated Shart. “It goes against the natural order, and all.”
I blinked. “Hang on, if she was pregnant and got in here, then the baby pumas would start growing at that rate?”
Shart said nothing, waiting for me to run through the steps. They were gruesome. The baby pumas would grow rapidly, and probably, eventually … chestburster their way out of their mother. Mom would promptly heal, because of the spring that she liked to spend all her time in. Then, they would crawl out… and promptly impregnate their mother again, and the cycle would repeat. Looking around the cavern, I again observed the smooth, spherical walls. The cubs that didn’t make it out in time just exploded here.
Well, this is a whole new layer of hell.
“So, do we need to destroy the spring?” I asked. Shart looked abashed.
“No, first you need to go for a swim. That way, I can see what’s filtering the life energy. Then, we’ll see what we can do with it.
“I don’t want to go in there,” I stated.
“Well, Stumpy, I didn’t ask,” replied Shart, looking at my hand.
We stared at each other for an uncomfortably long time. “Right, so get out before the tumors start?” I eventually acquiesced.
“Well, get out before you explode, at the latest,” stated Badgelor, as he plopped down next to me.
Chapter 50: A Relaxing Bath
Bathing in a spring of life was an unnatural experience. If you timed it just right, then the results were great. Anything beyond that few second window was going to be a bad time. I needed to heal, then get the fuck out before tumors started to grow. If not then, than certainly before chunks of Jim splattered on the walls.
As it turned out, having bad wounds made the process much easier. When I stripped naked and stepped into the spring, the first thing I noticed was all my lesser injuries vanishing. The puma had scored several blows on me, and I still had spots where I’d been hit by pus. The fact that this spring of concentrated life magic could kill me if I stayed too long was bitterly ironic.
Shart was explaining degrees of concentration. I was really trying to focus on not blowing up, but I think I caught the general gist of what he was saying. The life spring was about the concentration of a good beer, while the tumors on the cat had been the equivalent of moonshine. I can drink a bunch of beer, moonshine, not so much. However, even the best beer can make you explode if you overindulge
I carefully watched my hit points recover, until they were full. Then, I waited even longer. My fingers started to heal. Even in the spring, they required thousands of points of healing. Thousands of points of healing could be completed here in minutes. It took five, for both my fingers to be fully restored. After another thirty seconds, my own Overhealing pool was fully recovered. It took longer than I expected. I began daydreaming while relaxing into the amazing feeling.
Quite suddenly, Shart was screaming at me. I wanted to stay just a bit longer, but he was whining. I showed him my fingers, and the small greenish blob that was growing on one of them.
I was supposed to get one when those started appearing, but that one wasn’t very large. It was probably okay to stay a few seconds longer.
Shart threw up his hands, and I suddenly felt something grab me by my hair. A moment later, I was dragged out of paradise by a pissed off badger. It was cold, hard, and terrible outside the spring. I moved to jump back in, but the Badger growled. I started shaking my head, before realizing that I was suffocating. I started gasping wildly, but, after that, it only took a few moments for me to come back to myself.
“What happened?” I croaked.
“Life intoxication,” stated Shart. “You were in just a touch too long. Luckily, the puma hurt Badgelor pretty bad out there. That meant that he could reach in and pull you out without risking himself too much.”
Looking at Badgelor, I noticed that he was more dirty than injured. Shart still looked awful.
I gestured toward the green tumors that had grown. They were small, but I could see at least 3 of them. Shart walked around me, examining them carefully. Finally, he shrugged. “Life pimples, early stage. They will clear up on their own, or you can pop them. I suggest letting them clear up on their own, especially the one on your taint.”
Chapter 51: My Two Best Friends
It popped when I put my pants on. It felt just about how you’d expect a small grenade detonation next to your ball sack to feel. While I was in the corner weeping, Iron Will did nothing for concentrated Magical Damage it seemed, Badgelor and Shart were busy excavating.
“I don’t care if you are an all-powerful demon, I know burrows. If I dig there, the whole northern wall is going to collapse,” stated Badgelor, while Shart gesticulated wildly.
“Curse your superior badger digging mind,” shouted the demon. “What I need is in the wall over there, about 2 logs in.”
Badgelor made a show of looking around, then found a spot on the floor he liked. He began digging in his War Form. Large Badgelor’s digging speed was tremendous, especially when he was just digging, as opposed to tunneling. Tunneling involved creating a stable passage. As such, it took much longer than mere digging.
Shart glanced over at me. “Good news! Both of your little friends are intact.”
“I don’t care about you two right now. How are my balls?” I groaned. Shart grumbled and turned away. A few moments later, there was a commotion from the wall that fed the spring.
The wall promptly began to shake, and an object shot out. It bounced off the opposite curved wall and then bounced twice more, before it finally hit the ceiling and stopped. I watched it for a long moment, waiting for it to fall. Finally, I turned back to Shart.
“Your balls are fine,” stated the demon, as he flapped the tiny wings on his basketball sized body. He flew up to the object.
‘Object’ was as close of a descriptor as I was going to get to whatever the thing was. It was a material thing that could be seen and touched. If I had to describe the shape and color, I would say that it was what you see if you press on your eyeballs really hard while doing acid.
“What is that?” I asked, finally getting to my feet. The curiosity I felt was greater than the tremendous pain in my unmentionable area.
“The source of the spring, obviously,” stated Shart. He held both of his pudgy, off-sized hands on the object. He was focusing on it in much the same way as he had focused on the spring.
“Is that some sort of artifact?” I asked, moving closer. The room wasn’t that tall; I was able to get within arm’s reach of the object just by standing under it. It hadn’t stuck in the ceiling like I’d initially thought. There wasn’t even an indentation from where it had impacted the root-firmed dirt. I casually reached my hand up and pressed one finger into the object. If the thing had been traveling at any speed, it would have sunk into the ceiling pretty well.
Shart groaned. “Is it purple?”
“Are artifacts purple?” I retorted, and Shart groaned again. “I don’t see it as having any color, “I added.
I didn’t see it as being anything. I was going to have to flip off my filters, which blocked most mundane items. They normally prevented me from seeing data about rocks,
sticks, and other useless bits of debris, but they were also blocking out the object. I took a moment to find all the filters and disable everything.
I wasn’t prepared for the information blasts in my vision. Suddenly, I could see the ground, the roots as a system, worms, and even pockets of air. The object, however, remained an unknown.
“It doesn’t show up at all,” I said.
“That’s because it shouldn’t exist here,” stated Shart. “It's a
That word sounded strange. Shart occasionally used the demonic language around me, and none of the words sounded right. My Demon Lore skill allowed me to understand their meaning, insofar as a mere mortal could, but when I attempted to mouth the word, I found that I could not. It wasn’t like I was blocked from saying it or something; rather, my vocal apparatus wasn’t up to the task of saying it. Instead, I coughed.
“Well, it made a life spring. Is there anything we can do with it?” I asked.
Shart considered for a few moments, before shaking his head. “Not right now. I will have to figure out what to do with this.” With that, Shart took the object as it undulated and flexed, and shoved it into his mouth. When he opened his mouth again, the object was gone.
“Is every orifice on your body an extradimensional portal?” I asked.
“Yes,” replied Shart. “Before you ask, no, you do not have mouth privileges.”
Strangely enough, that hurt. “Why don’t I have mouth privileges? I do all the hard work around here. I deserve mouth privileges!”
“Maybe, if you’re good, and you do what you are told, then I’ll reward you with mouth privileges later.”
Freaking demonic tease!
Shart landed back on my shoulder. I walked over to the smoking hole in the wall that Badgelor had curled up in. He was napping. The critter had shrunk and was curled up, fast asleep. I picked him up and headed for the opening.