by A. J. Markam
But if you waited until he was down to 20,000 Health and called the spell again, you were only going to knock off roughly 2000 hit points over ten seconds – which was 10% of his CURRENT Health, 20,000.
Not to get too geeky in the middle of battle, but –
Naaah, fuck it, I’m gonna get geeky.
There’s this thing called Zeno’s paradox. An ancient Greek philosopher posited that if you shot an arrow, in a certain period of time it would fly half the distance to the target. Then in another period of time it would fly half of the remaining distance, then over another period of time it would fly another half. The problem was, if the arrow kept going half of half of half of the distance, it would never actually reach the target.
Somebody finally solved Zeno’s paradox (I don’t know who – guess you could say he shot it down – sorry), but Chain of Darkness was actually a videogame version of it.
If I were limited to Chain of Darkness, and only Chain of Darkness, I would never be able to kill an enemy.
Why?
Because even if I got him down to 1 hit point, my next ten-second attack would only take off 0.1 Health, total.
And the attack after that would only take off 0.09 hit points.
I would eventually be shaving off 10% of his 0.0000001 remaining Health.
Obviously I wasn’t limited to Chain of Darkness alone – thank God – but it was an interesting conundrum.
Chain of Darkness: ridiculously overpowered against opponents with 1 million Health… incredibly useless against opponents with only 10 hit points.
Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled program.
As it was, Chain of Darkness was still my most powerful attack (and would be until the Naga dropped down to less than 8,000 hit points). Every time the cooldown counter ran out, I cast CoD as fast as I could.
Within seven minutes we’d killed the Naga, and I got more loot:
Eel-Skin Pants
+10 Armor
+ 2 Intellect
+2 Stamina
Shark-Skin Boots
+20 Armor
+10 Intellect
+25 Stamina
Plus I got three gold coins.
Nice.
This was turning out to be a very profitable dungeon.
After dealing with the Naga mage, we continued down the ledge. Along the way there were rockslides, gaps we had to jump across, and more caves and creatures.
Everything came to a close when we reached the bottom of the trench.
Our ledge sloped gradually down and ended at the sandy seafloor. A quarter mile away, the other side of the trench soared straight up like a skyscraper.
Looking up, we could see a ribbon of light-blue water high overhead – which was the sun shining through the gap between the two sides of the canyon. Other than that, we were in a realm of perpetual twilight at the bottom of the abyss.
Creepily, we could also see the silhouettes of thousands of sharks swimming above us. The ones at the top of the canyon were so far away that they looked like grains of rice. Dozens of full-sized shadows swam just a hundred feet overhead, though they didn’t seem interested in us.
Yet.
The sandy bottom of the trench was filled with giant clams six feet across and four feet tall. There were hundreds of them stretching in every direction across the ocean floor. Other than that, there wasn’t much to be seen in the gloom.
Most of the giant shells were open, revealing soft pink flesh within. And inside a few of the clams sat pearls the size of oranges.
Holy shit… I wonder how much one of THOSE is worth?
I wasn’t the only one overtaken by greed.
“Whoa – what do you think would happen if I stuck my arm in there and tried to grab it?” Hannah asked.
“Something bad,” Alexandra said.
“I’m gonna try it anyway.”
“Wait,” I cautioned her. “At least let me set up a Gravesite down here, just in case.”
“Okay.”
Once I’d deactivated the old Gravesite and established a new one a few feet away, I nodded at Hannah. “Go for it.”
She reached her steel gauntlet inside –
CRANG!
The shell slammed down like a bear trap on her arm.
I winced at the crinkling sound of metal being crushed.
“OWWWWW!” Hannah screamed as she tried to jerk away, to no avail.
“Serves you right for doing obviously stupid shit,” Alexandra snapped.
Then things got worse. The clam began grinding its shell back and forth, and we heard the raspy sound of serrated shell cutting through metal.
“AAAAAH! KILL IT, KILL IT!” Hannah screamed.
Everyone attacked the giant clam at once – though by the time we’d almost killed it, Hannah had died.
She popped back up at the tombstone, and got in a few rage-filled licks at the clam (that sounded dirtier than I meant it to be) before it died.
Its heavy shell shattered, exposing the meaty flesh within.
“Man, the irony,” I said.
All the women looked around at me.
“What do you mean?” the Tiefling asked.
“A lesbian killed by a giant clam, and she was even wearing protection.”
I knew it was bad, but I couldn’t help myself.
The entire group groaned.
“Do you know how offensive that is?” Alexandra snapped.
Of all the members of the group, I wouldn’t have pegged the Warrior as the overly sensitive one.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Pull the stick out of your ass. Or dildo, or whatever it is you’ve got up there.”
“OFFENSIVE!” Alexandra yelled as she pointed at me. “Another joke like that and I’m going to put you inside a giant clam!”
“As long as it’s yours,” I snickered.
“OH MY GOD,” Alexandra shrieked. “DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW OFFENSIVE THAT IS?”
I knew I shouldn’t say it, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Don’t worry, I’ll fill it up all the way!” I howled with laughter.
“No you won’t,” the Tiefling said drily. “Trust me.”
“Hey!” I snapped, no longer laughing.
“Dickhead jokes or not, at least we got this out of it,” Hannah said as she reached into the wreckage of the shellfish, picked up the pearl, and held it up for all to see.
It immediately shattered in her hand like a glass-blown Christmas ornament hit with a BB.
“WHAT THE HELL?!” she yelled angrily as the millimeter-thin pieces of opalescent shell drifted down to the seafloor. “It was a fuckin’ empty fake!”
Indeed.
It was the hollow chocolate Easter bunny of underwater jewels.
Suddenly, a rumbling voice thundered through the water.
“Who dares invade my underwater sanctum?”
We all turned to see figure striding out of the gloom.
He was dressed like a pirate – pants, shirt, boots, buccaneer’s hat, and he carried a rusted cutlass – but his skin was the prickly orange hide of a starfish. And his head was like a nightmare starfish, too.
Imagine Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean – you know, the guy with the octopus face and tentacle beard. Now, instead of a squid for a head, imagine a starfish, but all the arms are out front, twisting around like Cthulhu’s little brother. To finish it off, two angry, beady black eyes stared at us from beneath the hat’s brim.
A window opened declaring this was Captain Quatis. He had almost a million hit points.
Apparently, he was the final boss of the Great Abyss.
First item on my list: cast Chain of Darkness.
I flung the lasso of demons and they wrapped around his body. Not tight enough to constrict his movement, unfortunately – he was still able to swing his sword around. But his hit points were dropping rapidly, announced with a new golden numeral every second.
-9750!
-9653!
-9460!
; -9366!
And when he hit Hannah, the damage he inflicted was lessened by 25%.
Chain of Darkness was awesome!
However, Captain Quatis pulled a new trick out of his sleeve.
When Alexandra rushed him, he grabbed her with his spiny hand, hoisted her up in the air – and threw her into the nearest giant clam.
Which immediately SLAMMED shut on her – though with a bare arm and leg sticking out.
“AAAAAAH!” she screamed from inside as the creature started to grind against her exposed flesh.
It was pretty fucking horrible.
“Got any lesbian jokes now, Warlock Boy?” the Tiefling asked angrily as she fired away at the clam.
“No, just bad news – stop attacking the clam, and stop healing Alexandra!” I yelled at Tess the elf, who was sending orange ripples of light to the Warrior. “It’s better if you just let her die – she’ll respawn right away.”
The Tiefling looked around. “That’s fucked up.”
“I didn’t design the game!”
So the Tiefling stopped shooting, and the elf stopped healing, and Alexandra continued to die…
Very, very slowly.
And very, very painfully.
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GUYS DOING?! SAVE ME!” Alexandra screamed in agony as the clam slowly ground down on her arm and leg.
“Okay, new plan – get her the fuck out!” I yelled as I started Soul-Sucking the clam.
We attacked the mollusk as Hannah tried to engage Captain Quatis. Unfortunately, without us as backup, the same thing happened to Hannah that happened to Alexandra: she wound up trapped inside a clam.
Again.
Irony, irony, everywhere, nor any time to think.
Unfortunately, with our tank and Warrior out of commission, that left the rest of us as sitting ducks.
Quatis got to Sylvie the Tiefling first, hurling her into the nearest clam.
“NOOOO!” she screamed as the shell clamped down on her.
I broke off my attack and retreated. “Tess, stop healing Alexandra! We’ve got to let them all die and respawn!”
“Are you serious?!” the elf asked in horror.
“YES, now get away from – WATCH OUT!”
Quatis got her, too.
The only thing left to me was to cast Chain of Darkness on him again and run around, trying to evade his attacks.
Alaria finally saved me by picking me up and flying me far above Quatis’s head –
Unfortunately, that’s when the sharks above us attacked.
“NOOOOOO!” we both screamed as they rushed in, jaws snapping and teeth flashing.
Swear to God, I think somebody needs to investigate whether OtherWorld can give you PTSD. If you’ve never died by shark feeding frenzy (and how could you be reading this if you had?), it is not a pleasant way to go.
I reappeared at the Gravesite marker, trembling in my boots.
Alaria was dead, so I summoned her with my Action Bar menu.
Two seconds after Alaria appeared, Alexandra and Hannah materialized.
“Wait, just wait!” I yelled at them.
They waited long enough for the Tiefling and the elf to pop back up.
I wanted to ask Tess if she’d switched over to heterosexual after being crushed to death by a giant clam, but I figured this wasn’t the time.
“We need a strategy to deal with this guy,” I said.
“I got yer strategy right here,” Hannah said, lifting her battleax. “Alex, let’s cut this fucker in half!”
The redhead and the dwarf roared and ran straight for Captain Quatis.
I wanted to yell at them to stop, but I have to admit, their ‘strategy’ proved to be a good one.
With his attention divided between the two of them, Quatis didn’t know who to go after. As soon as he would make a move to grab one of the women, she would back off, and the other would dart in and inflict even more damage.
I cast Chain of Darkness, and he started hemorrhaging hit points again.
-4557!
-4511!
-4466!
-4421!
We kept at it, and within three minutes, Captain Quatis bit the dust.
More accurately, Hannah’s battleax sliced him in half from head to groin.
He peeled apart into two separate halves, which floated down slowly to the sandy ground.
“WE DID IT!” Hannah screamed, and high-fived Alexandra.
“FUCK YEAH!” Alexandra laughed.
But something was wrong.
We hadn’t been awarded any XP.
Or loot.
“Uh, guys…?” I said hesitantly.
Suddenly the two halves of Captain Quatis began to move.
Like something out of a horror movie, they got up on their arms and knees (or, I guess, on their arm and knee). There was a grotesque sucking sound, and wriggling appendages oozed out from their cores. The appendages hardened into spiky orange skin and filled in the missing halves of their bodies.
Now we were facing two Captain Quatises, both at full Health. Half-naked, by the way, although it was literally the left and right halves of their bodies that were missing shirts and pants.
The only good thing was that they didn’t both have a million Health. The problem was, splitting them hadn’t cut their hit points in half. Instead of 500,000, their new max was 600,000 each – which meant we’d increased the number of hit points we had to deal with by 20%.
“Fuck, they regenerate just like the starfish earlier,” I cursed.
“But there’s no cliffs to push them off of!” the elf moaned.
“At least the one guy isn’t armed,” Hannah pointed out.
Oh-so conveniently for him, the weaponless Captain Quatis plunged his hand into the sandy ocean floor and pulled out a spiked mace.
“Great,” I muttered. “Hang back, we need a plan!”
“We got one – FUCK HIM UUUUUUP!” Hannah roared as she darted back into battle, with Alexandra following close behind.
This time they tried cutting him in half at the waist.
Didn’t work out the way they intended.
Two minutes later, after they were finished slicing and dicing, we were dealing with three Captain Quatises – one with 600,000 hit points, and two with 360,000 apiece. Another 20% increase, at least in the ones that had split.
Not to mention our entire dungeon party was trapped inside giant clams by the end of it.
After slow, agonizing deaths, we all respawned by the tombstone within 30 seconds of each other.
“Would you two cut it the fuck out before we have FOUR of them to deal with?!” I yelled angrily.
“Or, more accurately, stop cutting them the fuck up,” the Tiefling agreed.
“Well, how do you want to handle it, then?!” Hannah shouted in frustration.
The three Captains were advancing on us again; we didn’t have much time to figure this out.
We’d already encountered a foe with exactly the same powers as Quatis: the starfish from earlier. They had split and regenerated when cut up, too. They’d been susceptible to my powers and the Tiefling’s bullets, but Hannah and Alexandra’s attacks had merely helped them multiply – which meant half our team’s offensive capabilities were useless.
I looked around in desperation.
The one truism in the game was that it always gave you what you needed to complete the mission – whether it was a volcano to throw an overpowered bounty hunter into, a flying ship full of demon pirates to come to your rescue –
…or a minefield of traps to help with the villain.
“The clams!” I exclaimed with glee.
“What about them?”
“They’re the key! Do everything you can to get the bosses inside one! Back them up, throw them in, shove them, whatever! The clam should close on them and trap them, and then Sylvie and I can fuck them up from there! But whatever you do, DON’T CUT THEM IN HALF AGAIN!”
Hannah triggered her Holy Battle Ram and sl
ammed into the nearest Captain Quatis, propelling him back against a clamshell. A couple of swipes with her shield later, and he fell into the bivalve’s gaping maw.
It immediately slammed shut on him.
CLOMP!
“AAAAAH!” he screamed as one orange, spiky arm and leg hung out of the shell.
“THAT’S IT, THAT’S IT!” I shouted. “Sylvie, help me!”
The Tiefling and I concentrated all our firepower on the imprisoned Quatis, who was one of the weaker ones with 360,000 Health.
Meanwhile, Hannah and Alexandra did their best to shove another Captain into a giant clam. I helped them out briefly by casting Chain of Darkness on the 600K Quatis, which lessened his ability to hurt them by 25%, and then I returned to pummeling the trapped one.
Meanwhile, Tess the elf was pouring all her abilities into keeping Hannah and Alexandra alive.
All in all, things went really well.
Our trapped 360K guy was down to 90,000 Health and dying fast.
Hannah used Holy Battle Ram to knock the 600K Quatis into the nearest clam, which closed on him like a steel trap.
And now Hannah and Alexandra were free to concentrate on the final Captain Quatis.
Just when I thought it was in the bag, everything went to shit – as it usually does in these sorts of final boss situations.
“I call upon my brethren of the sea to come to my aid!” the final Captain Quatis roared.
A second later, we were attacked from above by two-dozen divebombing sharks.
“FUUUUUCK!” Alexandra screamed as one chomped down on her arm.
“God DAMN it!” I howled as a hammerhead nearly took my head off. “Alaria, Stig, distract the sharks as much as possible! Everybody else – no matter what happens, make sure you cover Hannah so she can get that last asshole inside a clam!”
“Heh… getting an asshole inside a clam?” the Tiefling laughed as she fired her gun. “Now that’s a lesbian party trick.”
“Oh, come ON – how is THAT not offensive?!” I yelled at the others.
“A lesbian said it!” they all yelled at me.
Offensive or not, we succeed in cramming the asshole inside the clam. The shell slammed down on the last Captain Quatis – but he wasn’t dead yet.
And sharks were going into a feeding frenzy as they rained down on us.
“SYLVIE, FORGET THE SHARKS AND JUST FOCUS ON THE STARFISH DUDES!” I yelled. “HANNAH AND ALEXANDRA, KEEP THE SHARKS OFF ME, SYLVIE, AND TESS!”