Just as I had noticed with the blood of combat and the water before it, the muck washed away from my body and clothes as if a magical forcefield were pushing it away. I noticed the same happening to my companion. There were definitely perks to the programmed physics of this world. My only annoyance was that it did nothing to take care of the rash on my butt.
The smell of sulfur was almost overwhelming as I lay there. I looked to Henrik to search his face for any signs of discomfort, but it appeared as pleasantly nonchalant as always.
“Is this air safe to be breathing?” I asked.
He shrugged and laughed, saying, “It’s never killed me, but I certainly would not want to live here, breathing it long term. I mean, unless you like the smell of rotting eggs.” He turned south to survey the area ahead. “I remember this spot. We shouldn’t have to travel through so much muck now.”
I looked to see what had made him say that and saw a seemingly endless expanse of swamp that I could only assume was chest-high at the least, judging by the trees that were being consumed by it. Among them were the smatterings of small islands that I had see when we arrived at the spot, but now I noticed something more about them. Many of them were connected in some way, either by tangles of vines which sewed fallen logs together to form sort of rickety bridge-things, or by the roots of the old, stunted trees clinging on for dear life in the middle of this realm of hopeless darkness. Those particular trees were unlike the others I had seen in the swamp so far, with bark so black it appeared to be charred, and with branches that fanned out like giant thorny crowns ending in spindles whose sharpness I would not want to test if someone paid me.
“Are you suggesting we can walk across those vines?” I asked, confused. He had to be joking.
I looked back at them once more and he said with a nod, “Yeah, many of them will hold us. I’ve done it a handful of times before. These trees are made to survive the constant onslaught of muck. Water does not rot and warp them like it does other trees, so when they finally do fall, they lay there for decades—sometimes centuries, I would imagine—and the vines grow over them, anchoring them in place. They’re not the safest of bridges, but they work, more or less. We just have to be careful and take it one step at a time.”
I looked back to the closest natural bridge and tried to decide if I believed him. They at least seemed wide enough for even our horses to cross.
Once again, he seemed to read my thoughts, saying with a grin, “If you have any doubts, take a closer look at what we’re sitting on.”
I looked at the twig-covered ground beneath me and noticed that there was very little dirt actually covering our island. It seemed to be mostly composed of underbrush that had no doubt rained down from the trees above. I took a clump of it in my hand and only found more underneath it. I dug deeper still and found an obsidian, gnarled log from one of the fallen trees. I returned Henrik’s gaze with wide eyes. His smirk grew and he nodded. We were sitting on a floating island made of nothing more than dead tree parts.
“Holy fuck,” I breathed.
“Holy fuck, indeed.”
After a short rest, we continued on. Henrik was the first to set foot on one of the interwoven masses of vines and wood connecting our little mote of island to another. It gave under the big man’s weight, but only slightly, sending the tiniest of ripples emanating outward as it bobbed centimeters up and down in response to his footfalls. Sunstrider followed loyally behind, and the bridge dipped considerably deeper but still held firm. I waited for him to travel the several yards to the next island before setting out to follow.
“All right, come on, buddy.” I gently pulled Sleeper’s reins, urging him to follow when both of my feet were planted more or less firmly on the rickety thing.
With a modest amount of coaxing, my mount reached out with a single foreleg and pressed it into the natural structure. It gave a little under him, but this did not deter him as much as I’d feared it would. Slowly, he stepped out with the other front leg, and soon his entire weight was supported by the strength of the vines and logs beneath my own feet. I could see his apprehension in the constant shaking of his body, and I knew full well that one hurried move of his could send both of us to the muck for an unexpected bath.
“You’re doing well, Sleeper. Just a little bit further.”
He eased up after successfully landing the next handful of steps and was soon striding along as if we were walking on firm ground. Henrik jokingly applauded us as we safely made it to what was essentially the shore.
“Don’t patronize us, old man.” I laughed. “Sleeper did very well.”
He laughed in return, saying, “Come now, I’m not that old.” His hands were on his hips as he looked southward, judging which of the next two bridges would be best to traverse. Deciding on one, using standards of judgement unknown to me, he pointed it out and said, “Well, shall we?”
We carried out this slow pattern of landing on the floating islands, deciding which route looked best, and then inching along to our next stop over the course of the next few hours. I was unsure exactly how many hours had truly passed. Time was hard to judge in the unchanging dim haze of the Fetid Wood, though the same could be said for all of Circuit World because, as far as I had seen, there were no devices in the land that allowed a person to accurately check what time of day it was. All anyone had to go by, it seemed, was the position of the sun or moons in the sky.
All I knew was that I was becoming increasingly tired. As a career gamer, I was used to all-nighters, but after my second night without any sleep, as was the case when we wound our way deeper into the swamp, the exhaustion would always catch up to me, growing to the point of becoming unbearable. I would need to rest soon if I was to carry on. I would need my energy to save Safira.
Mindlessly, knowing that it would give me no clue as to how far we were away from our goal, I cast Coursing and held my arms out. It only pointed me forward.
“I suspect we will be out of here in the next few hours,” Henrik said. “The southern side of the forest does not stretch much farther after the swamp here.”
My spell had not worn off yet when we came upon one of the largest of the islands I had seen so far. There was a flicker of light in the shadows around it that caught my attention, and I realized that it was coming from the open door of a stone cottage—a stone cottage with a lit hearth in the middle of that damned place.
“That’s curious . . .” Henrik said. “As many times as I’ve come through here, I’ve never seen that before.”
“It looks like someone might be inside,” I said, holding my still-glowing hands up in its direction. Excitement stirred in my chest as the light coming from them did not falter. “Do you think she could be inside there?”
He pointed at my hands and whispered, “I do not know, but those appear to indicate the possibility, do they not? If she is in there, it is likely that her captors are as well. What do you think we should do, Si1ence: challenge them from here or sneak over and try to get the jump on whoever it is?”
“Hm . . .” I thought for a moment. “Let’s leave the horses here and hurry over to peek inside. I’m not against skulking, if it’s needed. Sound good?”
The paladin nodded and the two of us, crouching low, scampered across the vine-and-log bridge leading to the large island. The structure itself appeared unassuming enough, made of fat, crudely cut stones that had withered with age. Vines hung limply around it, trailing down from the thatch roof like stringy clumps of hair on a balding hag’s head. I looked through the open door and saw nothing but the fire inside, though much of my vision of the room was obscured by the front wall. If people were inside, they were being eerily quiet, but perhaps, I reasoned, they were sleeping. The thought reminded me of how much I wanted, how much I needed, to sleep right then.
Before moving in further, I held up my hands once again and crawled to one side of the house. My heart dropped when my hands shone just as brightly as they had when pointed directly at the door. Safira
was not inside the cottage. She was somewhere beyond it, likely somewhere far beyond it. Henrik saw the look on my face and shrugged before turning his attention back to the task immediately ahead of us. It was then that I felt as if we were not the only ones doing the watching.
We stood motionless and silent. I strained my ears for any hint of what might be causing the hairs to stand up on the back of my neck and the growing sense of unease to bubble up inside of me. All I could hear was the constant cracking of the fire, with its promise of warmth and a cozy respite, and the infrequent low huffs of the horses growing impatient behind us on the other island. I turned and noticed that I could barely see them in the fog, though they were not so far away. Sleeper was watching me with the same intensity as I had been observing the little house.
Henrik let out a quick, subtle whistle to get my attention. “I’m going in,” he whispered.
I was not sure if he felt that we were being watched as well. I held out a hand to gesture for him to wait, but he was already approaching the threshold with his back to me.
I glanced all around, scanning for eyes that might be watching us through the dim haze, but there was nothing foreign as far as I could see, though that was not very far at all. Against my better judgement, I followed my new companion, starting several paces behind him.
He reached the door before me, and only paused for a second to peek inside before stepping through. He turned around with a friendly smile and shrugged. “Not much to it,” he said with his usual jolly conversational tone. “It is quite warm in here.” He turned around to survey the setting some more. “I’m not usually one to suggest taking a nap in a dangerous place like this, but I’ll admit this spot does seem a little friendlier than any else we’ve seen here.”
I allowed the tenseness in my shoulders to ease away, and they dropped as I righted myself to my normal standing position. I began with confident strides to clear the last few yards to the door when I suddenly understood where my apprehension was coming from.
Henrik’s back was to it as he faced me, so he could not see the giant feral eyes silently blink open in the wall behind him. Two more, smaller pairs followed. And then four more. And then six. More and more eyes kept opening, and I soon lost count. When I was able to find my voice after having lost it in the sudden shock of this bizarre reality—of seeing this building with eyes on the inside—I opened my mouth to warn my friend, but it was already too late.
I only had enough time to see the dreaded realization dawn on the big man’s face as the door slammed shut, barring his escape. The horses went mad behind us, but I had to forget whatever trouble they might be in, if it was of their own doing, or if they too were in peril from some other surprise attacker.
I bolted forward and tried the handle. Meeting nothing but resistance, I hurled myself into the wooden door, but it still refused to budge. I recoiled from my own blow, stunned for a moment from the fleshy feeling of the cottage’s entrance.
The structure morphed before my eyes. It wasn’t a building at all; it was something far more sinister. As I watched, the crude stones inflated into grey, veiny pockets of blubber while the entire building itself deflated, sort of melting outward, almost doubling its girth. The door faded away and its outline bowed out into an ovoid shape with numerous rows of fangs lining its right and left sides. This mouth-thing looked like a nightmarish vagina as the monster’s viscous saliva dribbled down and pooled in front of it on the ground. Glowing from within, I saw the brilliant light of the hearth fire shining ever brighter, and it was then that I saw in my mind’s eye the terrible anglerfish which uses similar means to lure its prey to their unsuspecting deaths.
The creature’s mouth curled into some semblance of a mocking grin as it sat there watching me with those millions of uneven eyes dotting the upper half of its body above the puffy, gelatinous bottom half. It did not seem like much of a threat while I stood there out of reach, but I was hesitant to charge in blindly and risk it without any forethought.
But time was ticking while my ally was trapped inside, surely being digested as I pondered the best approach. So, in the end, blindly charging ahead was what I decided to do.
“Fuck it, let’s chop,” I said.
I raised my swords high and wailed my loudest battle cry as I rushed in to save the paladin. The anglerfish-perversion opened wide as if I were stupid enough to just run right in its mouth. I side-stepped and hacked into one of the fat globules at the side of its mouth. The sack exploded, showering me with whatever the hell nasty ichor was inside. That shit smelled worse than the sulfur pervading the air and invading my nostrils.
The beast whimpered or huffed, or maybe it was just breathing—I’m really not sure—but that served to make me think I was on the right track, so I swung again, this time with both swords, splitting two more sacks adjacent to the one I had just destroyed. It was screaming then and beginning to slowly inch away from me as best it could.
“You stupid piece of shit!” I yelled. “If only you’d waited a few more seconds, you could have had both of us!”
I punctuated my taunt by stabbing two more bags of nasty, this time on the opposite side of its maw. And then again. And again. The creature screamed louder each time as its internal fluids spilled into the underbrush, but there seemed to be nothing it could do to stop me.
Something moved at my feet, and I jumped away out of instinct. There was some wriggling clump among the puddle spilling out of the beast’s fresh wounds. I peered closer and realized that it must have been the thing’s offspring. There were more of them, I soon noticed—five or six shiny little many-eyed toad-shaped things squirming around with tentacles flailing helplessly in every direction. Then, it dawned on me that the clumps of gelatinous flesh I had be puncturing weren’t merely rolls of fat—they were incubation pouches for this thing’s babies.
My heart warmed at the sight of the helpless ugly fiends as I hacked them to pieces in front of their paladin-eating mother. It shrieked even louder as I did this, sending a wave of putrid stench my way, almost strong enough to knock me off my feet with a single whiff.
I held my breath and darted for her, this time tearing deeper into a section of pouches I had already shredded. I had to dig deep to reach her stomach—much deeper than the thickness of the illusory cottage walls, though the thing’s innards gave way with relative ease, parting for me with much less resistance than a wall of stone would have provided.
Blue and black ooze slid down and all around me. I wretched as a bullet of it fell across my lips and then full-on vomited when I could no longer hold my breath and had to gulp in another lungful of that foul odor of decay. I bent over as I purged myself, but stood and resumed my mission with renewed intensity when I could hear Henrik shouting from somewhere deeper inside.
I ripped through a layer of pink tissue that was coated in slime and decorated by a tangle of blue and purple veins and arteries. On the other end I finally reached something akin to bone, though it was yellower, translucent, and not quite as solid, bending under the she-beast’s overwhelming mass. Around these curious parts was a web of interwoven pink and red tubes and sacks—organs which served purposes I could only guess at. Whatever they did, the creature was going to have to do without them for the rest of its short time in this world because in the next moment I cut them down, and they lay useless at my feet. Blood was pouring everywhere then. It was as if a pipe had burst. It washed my face, and now the smell of iron was increasingly mixing with the stench of odor and the other multitude of rotting smells I could hardly describe. I threw up again, but this time I hardly paused, barely stopping before I made my next cut deeper into the monster’s bowels.
I raised my blades once more to cut deeper, surprised then that I had not come out the other side yet, but an armored hand stopped my weapons from completing their downward dive.
“Thank the gods!” Henrik shouted.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him through the widening hole, both of us covered in ooze, mine
now mixing with the sour digestive bile that coated my friend.
“Thank the gods! Thank the gods! Thank the gods!” he praised. “And thank you, my friend!”
We rushed out and dropped to the ground almost immediately upon exit once we had cleared the bulk of the puddle that had formed around the dying creature and her premature offspring. From where I lay among the twigs and fallen leaves, I watched her thousands of eyes sink inward, the upper half of her body collapsing like a deflating bouncy house. Her wailing died down until they were nothing but little streams of air expelled from the ugly hole in her face.
All was quiet for a long moment while the two of us caught both our breath and our wits. I could still hear the panicked neighing of the horses, but it seemed as if they were fine aside from the anxiety they were feeling. We inhaled and exhaled long breaths until they steadied and became normal. And then we laughed.
Pop!
Exp: 200
Kill: Anglerhouse
Search?
“Yes.”
Looting . . .
1 Anglerhouse Hearthfire.
I whipped open my bag, half-expecting it to explode into flames, and found a translucent red-and-orange stone sitting inside when the neon blue glow faded. I pulled it out and held it up for inspection. Henrik came near to see what had grabbed my attention so suddenly.
“Ooh,” he marveled. “I’ve seen a stone like that before. Do you know what it is?”
I shook my head.
“It’s called a Hearthfire Stone, or something like that. I had no idea where they came from until now. It is said that blades sharpened with the stone never dull—not only do they never dull, but they imbue the weapons with a burning enchantment as well.”
My ears perked up at that. “And I can use it on as many weapons as I want?” That sounded overpowered to me.
The big man shook his head. “I don’t believe so. I don’t know how many weapons it can be used on, but I’m fairly certain those things have their limits. Why don’t you try it out? You earned it, friend.”
Circuit World Page 15