Downfall And Rise

by Nathan Thompson

  “No, look at that technique!” My fairy companion piped cheerfully. “You're doing great!”

  I wanted to scream an entire sonnet of expletives at her right then and there, but the rabid angry balls of fur just below me weren't interested in giving me the opportunity. They were interested in gnawing off any part of my lower torso they could reach with their blunt, over-sized teeth.

  And yes, I said blunt teeth. These ugly, cross-between-a-second-grader-and-a-wooly-badger-looking monsters that ran about on all fours; they had no greater passion in life other than finding something bigger than them, swarming it all over and biting it to death with their blunt teeth. Because whatever bastard of a god that had created them had opted for painful deaths instead of quick and efficient ones.

  That same god had probably been the hell-muse that sparked Breena's current concept of training.

  I kicked out at a gibber-kin that had halfway climbed up the ledge to me. The damned-blasted thing happily accepted the kick for an opportunity to try and bite into my leg. The bite hurt, but with my improved earth armor activated it didn't really break the skin, much less my vital guard. Meanwhile my stone-toed boot had cracked into its jaw, and my shocking touch spell had triggered. Not weighing much more than the Ilklings, the gibber-kin was sent flopping through the air, spasming slightly as my new and improved taser magic ran its course.

  Something about my posture must have told Breena I disagreed with her. That was unfortunate, and not my intent. I had actually wanted my posture to tell her to either shut the hell up or to actually help me fight these things, or to just snap a couple arcane bolts into the back of my head so that I could die painlessly, instead of having these frothing furry monsters swarm up and tetanus me to death.

  “Wes,” my little fairy flew up and said firmly. “Don't get discouraged! It's perfectly normal to have days like this! Just because things aren't going as well for you as they did on the last mission doesn't mean you're doing a bad job!” Dear God in heaven, I thought, she was in my face, waving a tiny finger, trying to give me a pep-talk right now. All while three creatures that were effectively were-honey badgers had almost finished pulling themselves onto my ledge. “I mean think about it,” my friend- my companion- my life-linked and supposedly loyal partner- continued. “You led them away from everyone else they could have hurt, you were smart enough to head for the high ground, though it's a shame you have the wrong weapon for it, ask us for a longer one next time, and best of all, you're still alive! Most new Challengers would have already been screaming while eaten alive by now! You're doing really, really great, Wes! Don't be so hard on yourself!”

  They were all out to get me, I decided. Ilklings, gibber-kin, fairies. Everything under three or four feet tall would always try to kill me no matter where I met them or what they had to work with. They couldn't even help it, I suddenly understood. It was just one of nature's laws.

  I swore then and there that I would never either have kids or pursue a career in education, nor would I ever tolerate those others who did. Destructive behavior was destructive behavior, noble intentions or not, and I was done enabling the breeding of short, dangerous creatures of any species.

  “Breena,” I growled, moving to deal with the three precariously perched demons that were mere seconds away from continuing to pursue their macabre goals for my groin. “They,” (Kick-bite-zap-snarl-hurtle) “Are,” (Bite-riposte-gurgle-zap-flop-flop). “Trying!” (Slash-bite-ow-ow-punch-punch-crunch-zap-throw). “TO BITE OFF MY CROTCH!”

  Breena paused in her lecture to tilt her head at me. “Yeah, but... why does that have you so upset?”

  I made the rookie mistake of turning to gawk at her in outrage. Another gibber-kin seized on that opportunity to leap off of one of its pack-mates clear to the ledge. Another half-second was all it took for the thing to claw its way up my leg, gnashing its mouthful of molars at where my legs met my hip.

  “I mean they're gibber-kin,” Breena continued absently. “That's what they do. Everyone knows that. Didn't I tell you? Wait, did I tell you?”

  A shriek that I will never, ever consider unmanly hurtled out of my throat, seconds before the creature chomped into my left inner thigh, thankfully missing everything else in the region. I wanted to cry in relief but I didn't have time. I just stabbed my weapon down into its neck and let my Outer Circuit spell finish it off. My hind-brain was screaming that if I stayed on this rock for a second longer the rest of the gibber-kin would overwhelm me, so I took the risk of leaping to up the next rocky ledge behind me.

  “I mean, your vital guard will keep you from bleeding to death, so loss of that thing shouldn't affect your capabilities at all,” Breena continued, flying up with me. “Even if that part of you is completely chewed off, since you're a Challenger your vital guard will slowly repair your injury. Maybe even by the end of the month, in your case.”

  “A month?” I screamed. The gibber-kin had not released its grip in death and continued to hang off my inner thigh. The other gibber-kin were still trying to climb the ledge below me. Having seen the last one reach me directly by leaping off another's back, they were now all furiously trying to duplicate the act. But since they were all trying, that meant at least one of them would stay below and miss out on all the biting. None of them were willing to make that sacrifice, so they all dissolved into a massive angry pile of trying to climb each other's backs and failing while snapping at each other in frustration.

  That gave them me another five seconds of respite. I could use that time to suck down some more air and maybe remove the newly attached hate-ornament on my leg, or gain even higher ground using the next rocky ledge behind me. Breena's chittering actually made the decision easy for me.

  “I would be without my manhood for a whole month?” I shouted as I leaped up the waist-high ledge behind me, a feat made easier in part to my enhanced body and wind magic, and in greater part to my newly acquired castration phobia.

  “I know,” the little pink pixie squeaked. “Isn't a Challenger's magic amazing?”

  I had a long response I could give Breena. I could explain that certain parts of the human body, nay, most parts of the body will be missed even if they are not immediately necessary and even if they somehow grow back over time. I could explain to her that even though I am in constant pain back home, even though said part is effectively rendered impotent by my pain back home, I have no desire to experience something similar here. In fact, I had a desperate desire to not experience anything of the sort, to escape such pain for as many moments as possible.

  But all of that would take time I did not have.

  Now that I was higher up and the gibber-kin were duking it out for the privilege of un-manning me, I did finally have time for some spells. Five, I counted down internally as my hands and mouth shaped formulas. Three, two, one…

  Lightning Flash.

  Light spat out of my hands like a bolt through the night, and just as bright. The flash did nothing but temporary sear eyeballs, but it ensured that the gibber-kin got even more tangled up as they struggled with each other. But it would only last for about three, two…

  Muddy Earth.

  The still-blind creatures were now slipping around in the greasy dirt. They were now actively using their claws to remain upright, but that still gave them no purchase on the slippery mud. So they clawed into each other's bodies to try and remain on their feet or to climb up on each other's back. That resulted in gibber-kin getting scratched. Normal gibber-kin were angry to begin with, and scratched gibber-kin were apparently worse. They moved from snarling and wrestling each other to full on attacking each other with slashes and bites.

  That was the key, I realized. They were looking for the closet target. Like the Ilklings had been, only these things were just pure aggression. It was as if they barely tolerated each other's company just because they hated everything else on the planet a little more. But anything that attacked them went straight to the top of their kill-list, even if it was each other. All I
had to do was to make them keep hurting each other.

  Strong Gust.

  Breena had been having trouble deciding what new spells to teach me recently. She said it had to with me constantly answering “everything” to her “What do you want to learn, Wes?” questions. But my increased skill in Air magic had allowed her to teach me a new Air spell. This was back before she decided she wanted to see how well I performed for herself, to figure out how I kept 'cheating,' as she called it. It did no direct damage, but that was important right now. I targeted the gibber-kin who had stayed out of the melee below the most and used the spell to push them into the ones that were fighting.

  “Good job on putting your new spell to work!” Breena cheered. “I was wondering how you'd use it!”

  And just like that, my enemies began to dwindle. They weren't quite willing to kill each other, like the Ilklings were, but they still tore each other up pretty badly in their attempts to display dominance. At least three gibbers were down on the ground, moaning weakly, doing all they could not to drown in the mud. Others looked like they were close to succumbing to their wounds as well. For a half-second I felt sorry for the crazy things, until I realized that this whole thing could have been avoided if they had taken any of the half-dozen opportunities I gave them to stop trying to castrate and kill me.

  Also, I really needed to have a talk with Breena about that whole ‘test you with castration monsters' thing, because dealing with that nonsense was really weird and not okay.

  Then I remembered everything would change for the worse as soon as the mud turned back to normal ground, so I hurriedly reset the spell. Then I blinded them with another flash, to ensure they would keep running into each other.

  And then I started to feel the drain of casting too many spells too quickly. My head swam, and for a moment it felt like I was dealing with my condition back on Earth. But the feeling quickly passed, even though something still felt spent inside of me. I checked my mana pool, and realized I had room for maybe one more spell left. I needed to let them fight for as long as they were willing, then finish off as many of the healthy ones as I could.

  Fortunately, the two healthiest ones had found each other and began fighting as well, since they could no longer get to me and there was nothing else out here to take their frustrations out on but each other. I waited for as long I dared, because as soon as the ground firmed up under them again, they would find a way to launch themselves back at me, and so I had to act before that point. I began to count down the most conservative estimate of how much time I had left.

  Three, two, one…

  Friction Slash.

  A three feet long blade of overheated air swept out from me into the last pack of fighting gibber-kin. The magic still wasn't powerful enough to do much more than a sword slash, but for their low pools of vital guard, plus the damage they had already done to each other, that was more than enough for my needs. Even more importantly, the blade managed to pass through every single monster in the pile.

  That was the second time this strategy worked for me, I realized. Force a large group of small angry things together, make them bite and fight each other for a bit, then hit them all with my main area attack spell.

  Best of all, they were now too injured to climb up to me. So I finally had time to try and remove the dead ornament still clinging to my upper leg.

  “Great job! But what are you doing now?” Breena wondered at me.

  “Um, belatedly lowering my exposure to tetanus?” I replied.

  “Hm. I guess that kind of makes sense,” Breena mumbled. “But aren't you worried about the gibber-kin's fast recovery rates?”

  “What?” I asked, still distracted by the act of removing the dog-sized hate-ornament under my waist.

  “You know how I mentioned these things recover their vital points faster than almost any other monster their size?” She paused suddenly. “I mentioned that earlier, right? Or did I? Hold on, let me thin-”

  She stopped talking as soon as the blood-rippling scream erupted from my lips. I ripped the dead gibber-kin violently off my leg, upper quadriceps be damned, let my hand form a death grip on my short blade and leaped down into the closest gibber-kin that was slowly working itself back upright. The creature screamed its rage at me and tried to bite at my foot or anything else it could reach, but I just screamed back and stomped my foot down on its face. The little hate-beast died when it tried to swallow my foot whole and choked, but it was a near thing. I pried it off my foot and, still screaming, proceeded to hack and stomp my way through all of the remaining gibber-kin, screaming out Breena's name like it was my new favorite swear-word.

  Because it was.

  Five, maybe ten or even fifteen minutes later and they were all finally dead. I was covered in even more bites, as the Breena-blasted things had managed to catch me even in those last minutes, but I was panting and alive while they were all limp and dead, so maybe there was a God after all.

  The gibber-kin threat to the native inhabitants has ended. You have completed your second Challenge, Wes Malcolm.

  Your Intelligence and Wisdom have improved by one point each.

  Your skill in General Magic has improved to Layman's rank 2. Spellcasting will be 1% easier to understand, and spells will cost 0.5% less in time and magical energy.

  Your skill in General Melee has improved to Layman's rank 2. Weapon skills will be 1% easier to learn, and all weapons will gain 0.5% more damage and accuracy.

  “Fantastic!” Breena screamed. “You passed the main test of the training! And almost perfectly!”

  The fairy buzzed in front of me. “Look at you! Completely covered in blood, most of it your own, and still victorious! You really do know how to fight through pain and use your vital guard! No wonder you were able to mow through the Ilklings so easily!”

  “Breena,” I panted in warning.

  “Now we just need to show you how to track guard-breaking attacks, so that you don't make the mistake of ignoring serious injuries! But I could tell you were already watching out for that this fight!”

  “Breena,” I panted again.

  “Although I think you may be a little too worried about non-vital injuries,” Breena mumbled distractedly. “I mean, I don't have that same part, so I'm not that familiar with it, but losing it shouldn't impact your effectiveness that much. I do know that-”

  “Breena!” I yelled.

  “What?” she squeaked. “I'm right next to you.”

  As if I didn't need to yell to get her attention.

  “Do. I have. Rabies?” I asked in what I thought was a super-controlled tone. After today, if I got out of here without turning into a gibber-kin myself and biting someone's head off, and even manage to keep asking sensible questions, that would be the real victory.

  “Ooh!” The little fairy suddenly piped. “Good question! Let me check.”

  I counted backwards from ten, trying to get myself back under control. Breena is normally a nice person, I reminded myself. Breena healed me last time when I got really injured. Breena is just trying to make sure I get strong enough, fast enough to save their worlds from the upcoming disasters.

  “Nope, you're all okay!” The little pixie piped cheerfully.

  “That's good,” I replied. At least that went well…

  “But if that one gibber had hung on a second longer, you probably would have been infected with some other really creepy stuff.”

  “What?” I asked flatly.

  “Did I forget to mention that too?” Breena wondered. “Gosh, I really got scatter-brained today. I guess I was so excited about today's adventure that I had trouble focusing. I'll have to make sure I didn't forget anything else important. But you didn't even die from it Wes! Do you realize that?”

  Twitch, my right eyebrow said. Twitch-Twitch.

  “I mean, even when I'm on top of my game it's normal for a Challenger, even one who's Risen twice, to die at least once in an encounter like this! But all you got was just a whole bunch of
not-quite infectious bites! You didn't even lose any limbs!”

  Twitch-Twitch-Twitch.

  “Breena,” I said slowly. “I think it's time to head back to Avalon.”

  “Huh? Are you sure? I mean you completed another Challenge, but we could still look around...”

  “No.”

  “There might be some spare monsters we can stir up or I can show you some of the natural wildlife...”

  “No.”

  “Well, what about-”

  “Breena,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Portal. Now.”

  “Ugh! Fine. I guess you earned a break.” The deceptively adorable little sadist muttered.

  Chapter 19: Steady Now