by A. J. Markam
As soon as they saw the seal, Alaria and Stig tensed up.
“I see I was right!” the Umbra Priest crowed. “Let me introduce myself. My name is Storn. I’m sure you know whom I represent.”
“The god of good grammar?” I asked sarcastically.
Storn smiled and drawled, “No… not that god.”
The way he said it sent a chill down my back.
“Varkus wants his money,” Storn continued.
“How much do I owe him, anyway?”
“As of this morning, 32,000 in gold.”
“What the FUCK?! It was only 13,000 a couple of weeks ago!”
Storn smiled beatifically. “Of all the miracles known to us, daily compound interest is by far the greatest.”
Yeah, made sense he would think that. After all, he was a God of Pain’s priest who worked for a loan shark mob boss.
“What’s the interest rate?!” I snapped.
“I believe it’s 3% per day.”
I nearly choked. “PER DAY?!”
Christ!
There was no way I’d be able to pay that off!
“I never agreed to that!” I shouted.
The priest shrugged. “It was all in the contract you signed. You should always read the fine print.”
“He’s right, boss,” Stig piped up.
“OKAY, Suze Orman from HELL,” I snapped at my imp, then turned back to Storn. “I don’t have 32,000 gold.”
“Varkus figured as much… which is why he’ll take your head in payment.”
Storn raised up his bone staff –
“Tell him he can have YOURS instead,” I snarled as I cast Chain of Darkness.
The lasso of demons shot out of my sleeve and looped around Storn.
Didn’t stop him from attacking me, though.
A black lightning bolt blasted out of his staff and slammed me onto my back.
A red number floated up above me, informing me of the Damage.
-10% Health
Of course, a whole bunch of golden numbers were flashing through the air, too – the result of Chain of Darkness:
-160
-158
-157
-155
The Chain o’ Pain wasn’t nearly as impressive on a dude with only 16,000 hit points as it was on a kraken with 2 million.
I ignored that, though, because I had bigger problems to worry about.
His one attack had carved off a tenth of my Health in less than two seconds.
Yet it was going to take me TEN seconds to do roughly the same amount of Damage to him.
And even though he had Chain of Darkness binding him, he could still attack me.
Which he did.
“Four Horsemen!” he cried out.
The air boiled with black smoke, and four riders raced out of the haze.
This was apparently the Book of Revelation version of my spell Unholy Quintet.
I had imps; apparently this guy had harbingers of the Apocalypse.
One rider was emaciated as a skeleton.
One was covered with sores and boils.
One was drenched in blood.
And one carried a scythe and rode a pale horse.
I’ll bet the religious protestors would have loved this Storn guy. He was right up their alley.
I scrambled to my feet. “ALARIA!”
She grabbed my arm, flapped her wings, and lifted me into the air.
The riders were too fast, though.
We wouldn’t have gotten away – but Balrog saved us.
My horse reared up on his hind legs, screamed, and kicked his forelegs out at the approaching riders.
One of his hooves caught Famine (or whoever the skeleton guy was) in the head and knocked him clean out of his saddle.
But Death used his scythe to cut Balrog’s head clean off.
There was no blood. My horse just dissolved into the smoke that made up his twisting mane, and then he was gone.
ASSHOLES!
I wanted to stay and kill them for that, but I knew better than to try.
Alaria managed to lift us out of the range of their weapons just in the nick of time.
We soared away from the cliff and out over the water a hundred feet below.
Because I’d been attacked, Stig had been attacked by proxy, and his teleportation powers kicked in. He appeared on Alaria’s back in a puff of smoke.
“Whoa,” Stig said. “That bitch is crazy.”
“You ain’t kiddin’,” I said, and looked back to see Storn racing up to the edge of the cliff as his horsemen dissolved into smoke.
“DARK TRINITY!” the Umbra Priest roared as he raised his staff.
Thunder rumbled above us, and the sky grew dark –
And three winged figures flew out of the clouds.
For a second I had a flashback to Exardus.
…Meera?
I could be forgiven for thinking it was her. The figures were all women, they were all flying, and they all had feathered wings.
But as they came closer, I saw they most definitely weren’t angels.
Ever seen that creepy internet urban legend that goes around every few years? That one where a hideous, bug-eyed, evil-looking bird lady supposedly contacts children and tells them to kill themselves?
Momo.
That’s her name.
I guess they were technically harpies, but it looked more like we had three fuckin’ Momo’s bearing down on us.
“VRAAAAARK!” the nearest one shrieked as she dove at Alaria.
“AAAAAH!” Stig yelled as he teleported out of the way.
“AAAAAH!” Alaria screamed as the harpy’s talons ripped through her right wing.
I blasted Momo in the face with Soul Suck, which drove her off – but there were two more harpies just 15 feet away and closing fast.
Not only that, but Alaria was severely injured. She could barely keep us airborne.
Any second we were going to plunge down into the –
That was it!
“ALARIA, GO UNDERWATER!” I yelled as I cast Terrify at the nearest harpy and drove it off, then fired a Darkbolt at the third.
Alaria went into a dive, and we SPLASHED! into the sea.
And kept on swimming down, down, down.
Up above, I saw the harpies’ talons rake the surface of the waves as they tried to divebomb us – but that was as far as they could go. They weren’t built to travel underwater.
We were, thanks to my Ring of Baloq.
The first thing I did was use Self-Sacrifice on Alaria. Blue energy poured from my hands into her body, and the rips in her wing healed in seconds.
“Thanks, babe,” she said, gingerly testing her wings out by flapping them.
“Thank you for saving me,” I said, and gave her a quick kiss.
I waited until I was reasonably sure the harpies had disappeared, then swam up to the surface to take a look.
Mostly I went out of curiosity.
Well… maybe to gloat, too. I was sure I was out of the Umbra Priest’s range of attack, so I wanted to tell him exactly what Varkus could do with his bounty.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I poked my head above water and saw the bastard running over the waves towards us.
Holy SHIT – he had the ability to walk on water, too! FUCK!
He was still four or five hundred feet away, but he was gaining fast.
Alaria and Stig surfaced right next to me, and Alaria’s eyes widened.
“Wait,” she cried out, “is he Jesus?!”
“What?! No – why would you think that?”
“He can walk on water!”
Oh yeah.
I’d jokingly told Alaria various factoids about J. Christ over the months. Now, anytime somebody did something He could do – things which were miraculous in the real world, but not so much in a videogame (see: walking on water, raising the dead, healing others, self-resurrection) – she thought they were Jesus.
“It’s not Jesus,” I said.
“Is it his brother?”
“NO.”
“Can he turn water into wine?” Stig asked.
“Who, Jesus or that guy?”
“That guy.”
That would be a weird power for a videogame – but actually pretty popular, now that I thought about it.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“If he can, we should make friends with him,” Stig said decisively.
“He’s trying it kill me. We’re not making friends with him.”
“Ahhh, fuck me,” Stig muttered.
Storn was a couple hundred feet away now.
“You can’t escape me that easily, Warlock!” he called out cheerfully as he ran over the waves.
“Not trying to, obviously,” I yelled as I weighed my options.
I could get into a back-and-forth battle with him and possibly get 10,000 XP or so. But if I lost, I would resurrect at the nearest graveyard, which was probably on land.
In fact, I was betting that was Storn’s plan. Once he cornered me on the shore, he could probably whip my ass – and either kill me 300 times or deliver me back to Varkus.
Here in the water, I could evade him easily. We could just dive deep until we were out of his range of attack.
The only problem was that I wanted to get back to land to do the other two dungeons. I really wanted to level up and defeat Zali.
However, getting back to land was easy enough. All we had to do was submerge to a depth Storn couldn’t see us, swim a couple of miles, walk back up on shore, and continue our journey.
Problem solved.
I had shit to do, places to go, evil ex-masters to kill. I didn’t really have time to deal with cheerful asshole Priests.
He was only about 80 feet away when I made my decision.
“On second thought – fuck off,” I shouted at him, and dove beneath the waves. Alaria and Stig followed me.
Once I was sure I was out of Storn’s range, I stopped and looked up.
There he was, up on the surface of the water – only his boot soles visible, like he was standing on a giant pane of glass.
It was actually kind of cool.
“We’re not going to kill him?” Alaria asked.
“Too much trouble,” I answered.
“Chicken,” Stig said matter-of-factly.
I pointed at the surface. “Be my guest and go up there and have fun. Maybe you can ride a couple of those harpies of his.”
Stig looked up like he was considering it… then made a face. “Naaah.”
“Chicken,” I taunted him playfully.
Stig nodded. “Yup.”
“What are we going to do, then?” Alaria asked.
“We’ll just go deep enough that he can’t see us, swim underwater for a couple of miles, and then get out of the water.”
“Aren’t you forgetting that he can track you by the seal on your hand?” Alaria asked.
Oh.
Oh yeah.
Well, SHIT – there went a perfect plan.
…or maybe…
“Let’s see if he can track me underwater,” I said. “You guys stay here for a second.”
I cast Invisibility and started swimming.
At my top speed, I was able to cover about 9 feet per second. By the time 20 seconds elapsed, I was a good 180 feet away.
Unfortunately, the fucker’s boot soles followed right along with me.
DAMN IT.
Alaria was right. He was able to track me despite the Invisibility.
Not only that, but my top swimming speed – about six miles per hour – was easily matched by his running speed. No matter how far we swam, he would easily be able to keep pace.
If we’d had the mermaids, we could have easily outrun him.
But we didn’t have the mermaids, unfortunately.
I came to a stop and treaded water as Alaria and Stig swam over to me.
“Well, that didn’t work,” Alaria said.
“Yeah, I noticed,” I snapped. “Help me think of – ”
“Boss!” Stig cried out as he pointed straight up.
I looked up to see a glass wine bottle steadily dropping down through the water towards us.
What the hell?
There must have been no air in it, because it didn’t float.
I wondered if it was a trap – if he’d imbued it with some sort of dark spell – but as it floated down even with me, I saw there was a piece of parchment stuck in the neck.
Message in a bottle, indeed.
I reached out and grabbed it. As I pulled out the message, I couldn’t help but think, What, he’s got waterproof parchment and ink?
Turns it was some sort of magic. Golden words glowed on the paper in a spidery script.
I can follow you anywhere, Warlock. Come up to the surface and settle this like a man, or I will be forced to come and get you.
I snorted. “I’d like to see you try, doucheb– ”
“IAN!” Alaria screamed as she pointed down.
I looked just in time to see a GIANT whale heading straight for us, about 80 feet beneath our feet. It was the size of a blue whale, but its skin was black. I could only see one eye on the side of its head, but it glowed red.
“WHAT THE – SWIM!” I yelled at the others.
Too late.
Not only did the whale have the element of surprise, but it moved at least three times faster. It was upon us before we could even react.
The whale opened its mouth, and the water all around us sucked downwards in a vacuum.
We screamed as we tumbled into the dark cave of its mouth and its lips sealed shut behind us, plunging us into darkness.
32
My first thought was, We’re going to die!
…but we didn’t.
I half expected to feel my body being shredded by razor-sharp teeth –
Then I remembered this was a whale, not a Great White. They didn’t have any teeth.
The whale might have been able to crush us to death, I guess, but we seemed to have bypassed that danger. There wasn’t any pain, just inky blackness.
In fact, there was even air.
Dank, nasty, rotten-fish-smelling air, but air nonetheless.
“Guys?” I spoke out loud to the darkness.
“What just happened?” Alaria cried out in fear.
“We got ate,” Stig said.
“Yeah, we figured that one out, thanks,” I said sarcastically. “Give us some light.”
There was a FWOMP as Alaria and Stig both conjured fireballs in their palms that let us see our new surroundings.
We were inside what looked like a slimy pink cave, 20 feet tall, with the flesh-covered vertebrae of a giant spine above us.
We were sitting in about a foot of water. Small dead fish – some of them fresh, most of them decidedly not – were floating all around us.
“EWWW!” Alaria said, making a face.
“Hmm,” Stig said as he poked at a floating fish – which suddenly started thrashing around in the water. “ACK!”
As I looked around, I experienced some serious déjà vu. “Wait a second… OH HELL NO.”
Alaria looked at me in surprise. “What?”
“This is some PINOCCHIO bullshit!” I snapped.
“Pinocchio?”
“Yeah, it’s a mov– uh, a story about a little wooden puppet who wants to be a real boy, and he gets swallowed by a whale.”
“Oh,” Alaria said, nodding. “Finocchio.”
“What?” I asked, confused. “No, Pinocchio.”
“Little wooden puppet that came to life? Wants to be real? Has a blue fairy who helps him out, and a tiny talking insect?”
“Yeah!” I said, stunned that she knew the story of Pinocchio.
“Yes. Finocchio,” Alaria said. “He’s a mob boss, a rival of Varkus’s. The blue fairy’s his enforcer, and the cricket is his consigliere.”
I stared at her in disbelief. I wasn’t sure whether to be more surprised
by the fact that OtherWorld had turned Pinocchio into The Godfather, or that Alaria knew the Italian word for a mob boss’s advisor.
“Wait – you mean to tell me that – ”
A rumbling rose up all around us. It sounded like we were in the world’s biggest upset stomach.
Which I guess we were.
“What the hell?” I said, staring all around us at the cave. The walls seemed to be rippling.
“Uh, boss, the floor’s movin’,” Stig said, lifting up one hand in distaste.
I could feel it, too – like –
Muscular contractions.
“OH SHIT,” I yelled at the others, “HANG ON!”
The entire cave convulsed and contracted. The far end pinched together, and a tidal wave of water and dead fish rolled over us, propelling us forward.
The fuckin’ whale was barfing us up.
Everybody oooooooout!
As the water subsided, leaving us covered in dead fish, I realized we were on a small, sandy beach.
I turned around to see the whale sliding back into the water, one evil red eye staring at me as the monster slipped back beneath the waves.
Wait… they didn’t get out of the whale in Pinocchio by getting puked out. They escaped by building a fire that made the whale sneeze. And when they got out, it tried to swallow them again!
That meant –
“This isn’t some Pinocchio bullshit – this is some fuckin’ Jonah and the Whale bullshit!” I shouted.
“I know Finocchio,” a cheerful voice said. “Never heard of this Jonah fellow, though.”
I turned around to see the Umbra Priest standing on the shore behind us, casually leaning on his bone staff.
Motherfucker.
“See?” Alaria said as she pointed at Storn. “It’s Finocchio.”
I ignored her and focused my attention on the bounty hunter. “You summoned that whale?”
“Of course.”
I guess it made sense, in a fucked-up, biblical kind of way. We’d already seen the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and a grotesque version of angels with the semi-blasphemous name ‘Dark Trinity.’
If you were going to do an evil parody of another Bible story, there weren’t many more famous than Jonah and the Whale.
Somebody in the writers’ department at Westek sure wanted to stick it to their old Sunday School teachers.
Ordinarily I would have approved – but after being chased, attacked, and vomited out by said Bible stories, I was kind of hankering for some good ol’ familiar Mage hijinks.