Devil in the Deep Blue Sea

by A. J. Markam

  “I – ” the dwarf started.

  The Warrior and the Tiefling both glared at her.

  “…yeah, okay, I totally agree on that one,” the dwarf sighed.

  “GOOD. Now let’s fucking DO this,” the Warrior snapped.

  As the group in front of us entered the dungeon, I scooped up Stig in my arms and we all stepped up to the ‘entrance.’ It was a giant blowhole in volcanic basalt rock – basically a big, black pit that plunged down deep into the cliff.

  On the other side of the blowhole was a pirate skeleton with a tri-corner hat, a peg leg, an eyepatch, and rotting clothing. The spindly skeleton of a parrot stood on his shoulder.

  “ARRR, mateys, are ye five in number?” the pirate growled, his bony jaw moving up and down with the words.

  “Five in number, five in number, arwk!” the dead parrot skeleton squawked.

  “Does Hannah have to be in your group for us to enter?” the Warrior asked me.

  “Nope, just to resurrect at the Gravesite.”

  “Yes,” the Warrior said to the pirate, “there are five of us.”

  “Then prepare to enter… the GREAT ABYSS!”

  A strong current pushed us off the edge into the mouth of the blowhole, and then a massive rush of water pulled us down into the darkness.

  23

  We must have been sucked 80 feet down through the darkness. Below us, a sliver of cobalt blue appeared and got larger and larger –

  And then the overpowering current suddenly stopped. We drifted down the last 20 feet through the bottom of the blowhole, and came to rest on a ledge carved into the side of the canyon cliffs.

  We were now in our own ‘instance’ of the dungeon – an exact copy on a server somewhere, which was devoted to our group alone for however long it took us to complete the dungeon.

  To our left was a giant wall of black rock that towered a hundred feet overhead. At its base was a small graveyard with rough-hewn tombstones covered in slime.

  Below our feet was a ledge maybe 20 feet wide, and which sloped gently downwards along the side of the basalt cliff. The ledge extended for hundreds of feet into the distance, maybe more.

  To our right, about half a mile away, was another sheer cliff of black rock – the other side of the Great Abyss.

  Between the two walls of the trench was nothing but water.

  Well, that and lots of sharks.

  There were hundreds of them swimming lazily through the canyon – hammerheads, tiger sharks, Great Whites. Although several were within 20 feet of our ledge, none of them seemed inclined to attack.

  “Ahhh, fuck me,” the Warrior moaned as she eyed the sharks.

  Stig came out of his drunken stupor long enough to glance up at her in a panic, then at me.

  “Don’t make me, boss!” he croaked in terror.

  “What?” I asked in confusion.

  “Don’t make me fuck her!”

  The entire group exploded into laughter. Even the dwarf found it funny.

  “Don’t worry,” I told Stig. “She doesn’t really want you to fuck her.”

  “Then why’d she say it?”

  “It’s an expression.”

  “…oh,” he said, his voice now filled with utter contempt. “One of those.”

  Stig was not a fan of my ‘expressions.’

  I explained further. “When she said ‘Fuck me,’ all she meant was ‘This really sucks.’”

  “And it DOES,” the redhead moaned.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “I absolutely fuckin’ hate sharks.”

  Not as much as a certain stoner orc I knew. Slothfart would have been shitting his pants right about now. Figuratively, anyway, since there was no ‘sheet’ in OtherWorld.

  Because of Slothfart, I was reminded of the wyverns that had populated the empty central shaft of Deek’s dungeon back in the city of Vos. My guess was the sharks were there for a purpose: to make sure nobody tried shortcutting the path we were supposed to take.

  Of course, that’s immediately what everybody else thought of, too.

  The dwarf tank stepped over to the edge of the ledge and peered down into the midnight blue depths. “What do you think’ll happen if I jump off? Won’t I just float on down to the bottom? We could skip a whole shitload of stuff.”

  “The ‘shitload of stuff’ is kind of the whole point of doing the dungeon,” the Tiefling said.

  “Yeah, I want to see what’s here,” the elf said excitedly.

  “I’m just curious,” the dwarf said.

  I pointed at the sharks. “I’m pretty sure they’ll attack you.”

  The dwarf squinted out at the man-eaters. “Might as well find out while we’re here at the beginning, right? Otherwise we’ll never know.”

  “Hannah, don’t you dare!” the Warrior snapped.

  But like most tanks worth their salt, the dwarf just jumped out fearlessly into the unknown.

  Had to give her props for that, at least.

  “ASSHOLE!” the Warrior yelled as we all ran over to the edge to see what happened.

  “That bitch is crazy,” the Tiefling muttered.

  “Bitches be crazy,” Stig agreed.

  All the LGBTQueters looked first at him, then stared angrily at me.

  “I didn’t teach him that!” I protested. Then, to take the heat off of me, I pointed down into the abyss. “Look!”

  Hannah was falling pretty slowly through the water.

  The sharks moved much faster.

  The nearest six darted towards her and started a feeding frenzy. Their teeth clanged against her armor, sounding like dozens of Bowie knives plunging through aluminum siding.

  There wasn’t any blood in OtherWorld, but if there were, I’m sure the water would have been stained crimson with it.

  We watched as her Health meter dropped precariously, hit the red –

  And then suddenly she was back on the ledge, standing behind us in the graveyard.

  “Welp, can’t go that way,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “You THINK?!” the Warrior yelled. “Don’t pull any more stupid shit like that!”

  “Fine, fine, whatever,” the dwarf said. “We ready to roll?”

  A chorus of ‘Yesses’ from the group.

  “Let’s do it, then!”

  Hannah `raced off down the ledge, and we followed along behind her.

  At first I was wondering where all the monsters were. There were none on the ledge in front of us.

  Then they started coming out of the cliff itself.

  There were holes in the cavern wall – black spots that blended in seamlessly with the basalt’s craggy surface, and which were apparently the home of some very nasty critters. We didn’t see them at all until they started coming out of the woodworks.

  Er, stoneworks.

  First it was giant moray eels. Their mottled green bodies were at least three feet wide from spine to belly, and they stretched more than 20 feet long, so there were no safe spaces on the ledge. Their round, golden eyes were the size of softballs, and their pupils stared at us with an inhuman gaze.

  And those teeth. Jesus, they were like oversized bolt-cutters.

  The first eel tore into Hannah’s armor like a can opener into a container of Chef Boyardee.

  She slammed the eel repeatedly with her axe, but the attack had taken her off-guard. And there were another three eels snaking out from the cliff straight for her.

  Tess the elven Shamaness jumped into action. Orange waves of light emanated from her fingertips like ripples on water and disappeared into the dwarf’s body, bringing our tank’s Health back up to par.

  Alexandra the redheaded Warrior raced into the fight and beheaded one of the eels with a couple of swift chops.

  Sylvie the Tiefling Hunter popped off multiple shots with her blunderbuss. Sure enough, she had Triple Shot – three of the eels took damage at the same time.

  I handed Stig off to Alaria and did what I could with Soul Suck, Doomsd
ay, and Darkfire.

  We dispatched the eels easily enough, but they were just the start.

  Five-foot-long crabs and lobsters began pouring out of the wall like roaches out of a fumigated crack house. Along with the eels, they all put up a vicious fight.

  We made our way through, though, and collected a bunch of loot to compensate for our trouble: eel’s teeth, lobster claws, and crab legs.

  I didn’t know if it was the dungeon, or if it was because I was hanging out with people way above my Level, but the loot was significantly better than other dungeons I’d been in before. The items would go for 3 silver apiece when I sold them to a merchant – so I effectively picked up 30 silver.

  Not bad for the first five minutes of a dungeon.

  Fifty feet after the last killer crustacean, the ledge abruptly ended – right at the mouth of a giant cave in the cliff wall.

  “Uhhhh, do we really want to go in there?” Tess the elf asked nervously.

  “Unless you want to go swimming with sharks like I did,” Hannah answered.

  “Never mind.”

  “Good – let’s go!”

  We entered the cave. Nothing immediately attacked us, but about 20 feet inside, eight-foot-tall stone pillars as big around as oak trees began appearing, until we were walking through a veritable forest of them.

  It was sort of like that creepy cargo hold of facehugger pods in the first Alien movie, except they were a lot taller.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” the Tiefling muttered.

  “Are you a Star Wars fan, too?” I asked in delight.

  The Tiefling stared at me. “What?”

  “Oh,” I muttered, realizing my mistake. “It’s, uh, something everybody says a lot in the Star Wars movies.”

  “It’s also something people say when they have a bad feeling about something,” the Tiefling said condescendingly.

  “Never mind,” I snapped.

  “Princess Leia, though,” the dwarf shouted. “When she was young? DAAAAAMN.”

  Sometimes allies came from the unlikeliest of places.

  “New Hope Leia or Return of the Jedi Leia?” I called out.

  “Oh, I’d’a fucked me up those hair buns, but I couldn’t say ‘no’ to the gold bikini.”

  “Amen on the gold bikini,” Alexandra the redhead Warrior agreed. It made sense, even leaving aside the whole lesbian thing. After all, her current outfit was definitely in the same fashion vein.

  “Ohhh, Princess Leia!” Alaria cried out happily. “Ian would hit her!”

  “WHAT?!” every other woman in the group roared at the same time.

  “HIT THAT, HIT THAT!” I yelled in a panic. “She still doesn’t have all the slang down yet!”

  During the kerfuffle that ensued, nobody was paying attention to the stone columns all around us.

  So nobody noticed when the creatures emerged – at least, not until the first one clamped down on Hanna’s head, fast as a striking rattlesnake.

  “MMMRRM!” our tank screamed in a muffled voice as her helmet disappeared into the monster’s gaping maw.

  “Holy SHIT!” Alexandra yelled.

  It appeared to be a tube worm – one of those weird underwater creatures that looks like it’s mostly plant. Pale tubular bodies, usually fairly rigid, with colorful hair-like fronds at the feeding end of the stalk.

  As far as I knew, real tube worms were pretty small – half a foot long at most.

  Not this one. At nine feet long and ghostly white, its serpentine body curled around so it could strike at the ground. The base of its body was still inside the stone column, but the red-colored mouth was lined with vicious fangs.

  It sort of looked like the penis monster Dorp had summoned to freak out Tarka when we first landed on the pirate ship Revenge. Basically an albino version of it – except instead of a swollen head, it had a red Venus flytrap mouth with actual fangs.

  Total nightmare fuel. Especially for the lesbians, I was guessing.

  Although part of me wondered if they even made the connection.

  “HOLY FUCKIN’ SHIT, IT’S A BUNCH OF GIANT COCKS WITH VENUS FLYTRAP MOUTHS!” the Warrior screamed.

  I guess they made the connection.

  Wait a second –

  ‘Cocks’?

  Plural?

  I looked around and nearly shat my pants.

  The tube worms were emerging from every single stone column around us.

  The worm that had clamped down on Hanna was swinging her through the water and slamming her against the ground, while simultaneously chowing down on her head.

  “MRRRM!” she mrrrmphed as the monster swung her around. She wasn’t exactly able to mount an effective counterattack with her head in the tube worm’s mouth.

  Alexandra the Warrior tried to help Hannah out, but the redhead immediately got embroiled in a battle with two tube worms at once.

  Sylvie the Tiefling was shooting her blunderbuss as fast as she could, but the things were attacking her, too.

  Poor Tess the elf was trying to help Hannah, but the tube worm was crushing the tank’s head faster than our Shamaness could heal her.

  And me? I was just trying to keep from getting swallowed as I Soul-Sucked the lot of them.

  Alaria was smart – she had ‘flown’ up to the top of the cave. The tube worms could reach up there, but since there were so many of us down on the ground, only one or two of the worms bothered to attack her. Unfortunately, other than dart out of their reach, all Alaria could do was jab at them with her non-flaming pitchfork.

  The single good thing about the tube worms were that they woke Stig up.

  Alaria ditched him when she started flying – otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to summon her pitchfork.

  One second Stig was floating gently down through the water…

  The next he opened his eyes and was staring into the gullet of a giant tube worm.

  “AAAAAH!” he screamed, and immediately teleported out of the way as the monster tried to eat him. From there he kept reappearing and disappearing in little blurps of smoky water, thankfully distracting some of the worms.

  Hannah’s Health dropped down into the red. Two seconds later she disappeared.

  “Shit, we lost our tank!” Alexandra yelled as she lopped the head off the nearest tube worm. “Ian, can you do that respawn point?!”

  “It takes a while!” I yelled. “And I should do it away from the battle!”

  “Then retreat, motherfucker, RETREAT!”

  I ran back through the columns, dodged a dozen pale worms, and made it to the ledge outside.

  I triggered my Gravesite spell, and black shadows began pouring from my fingertips into the lacey outline of a tombstone.

  Clank clank clank clank!

  I looked over to see Hannah running down the ledge towards me, a stray lobster chasing her.

  “I’m here, I’m here!” she yelled, and ran back into the cave.

  Just then, Gravesite finished and the tombstone was done.

  Not a second too soon.

  Alexandra reappeared first. One of her eyes was bugged out, the other squinched shut, and her whole body shuddered like she’d just downed a shot of particularly nasty tequila.

  “UGH!” she yelled, then shuddered some more. “Why couldn’t it have been giant pussies? I’d have been fine with giant pussies…”

  Second up was the Tiefling, who was unhappy but not quite as grossed out as Alexandra.

  “Christ, if you’re going to put a bunch of giant penis monsters in your dungeon, that shit should come with a trigger warning,” she griped.

  Last up was the elf. She looked severely unhappy.

  “I think I’m lesbian again,” she muttered.

  Alaria fluttered in from the cave to drop down beside us.

  Stig teleported down at my feet and immediately hid behind my legs, his entire body shaking even worse than Alexandra’s.

  Guess he was a lesbian at heart, too. At least when it came to giant al
bino penis monsters.

  “Where’s Hannah?” the Tiefling asked, and craned her head to look inside the cave. “Is she still in there?”

  “Nope,” I said, and pointed further up the ledge.

  Clang clang clang clang!

  “I’m here, I’m here!” Hannah panted as she finally reached us.

  Alexandra the Warrior turned to me. “It’s awesome respawning so close to the action, Ian. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  Then the redhead turned pointedly to Hannah. “Are you going to join the damn group so you can resurrect here from now on?”

  “No,” the dwarf tank said crossly.

  “Well, I hope you enjoy running,” the redhead snapped.

  “I enjoy it more than compromising with the patriarchy,” the dwarf sneered.

  Oh God.

  But rather than get into another tiff, I decided to keep it light.

  “And here I thought we’d had a moment about our shared love for Princess Leia,” I said playfully.

  “We did until I heard you wanted to hit her,” Hannah snarled.

  “Hit THAT! Hit THAT!” I yelled back at her.

  “We need a plan,” the Tiefling said.

  “Duh,” the elf said.

  “Let’s not try to get through them yet,” I said. “Let’s just attack the first couple closest to us and see what the best way to kill them is.”

  “Anything not to have to run through a forest of giant cocks again,” Alexandra said as she shuddered in disgust.

  “You know, you could just think of them as giant anacondas,” I suggested.

  All four lesbians looked at me like Shut the fuck up, dude.

  “Anacondas are, like, this big around,” the Tiefling said, putting her hands out with a two-foot diameter. “THESE fuckers are like, THIS big around,” she said, and motioned like she was hugging an oak tree.

  “Size to length ratio is nothing like a snake,” the Warrior spat, “but very MUCH like a penis.”

  I snorted. “You people sure are experts about something you profess to hate so much.”

  They glared at me so hard I was afraid they were about to go Lorena Bobbitt on me.

  “Alright, alright,” I said, putting my hands protectively in front of my crotch. “Let’s go kill some penises.”

  We hung out at the periphery of the cave and focused on the closest three cock monst– uh, tube worms.