by E A Hooper
“What’s next?” Vincent asked, watching the water turn tumultuous once more.
“In about five minutes, the ocean will become still again,” Xan replied. “Then, fourteen more tendrils appear. You kill those, and then it’s sixteen. Aefa will keep increasing the number until she finally wins. Did taking out the first set out do anything?”
“Still a thousand points,” Jim answered. “My guess is we need to go underwater and find her core.”
“Oh lord, we’ve tried that,” Quinn said. “Don’t you remember how it went?”
“Yeah, but we have Vince and Ezra this time,” Jim noted. “Vince can take us underwater faster with Zero Field.”
“We’ll probably drown like all the other times,” River said with a sigh.
“Yeah, but we need to try something,” Fynn told her. “Floating around up here isn’t doing anything for us. Ryker, hit us with a diving spell.”
Ryker and the other mages raised their hands and formed air bubbles around each player’s head. They seemed similar to the bubbles that had protected the platform, but drew additional oxygen from their surroundings.
“If everyone groups together, I can take us down with Zero Field,” Vincent said. The party moved close together, although a few of them still seemed hesitant to stand shoulder to shoulder. “Come on, at least act like we’re all friends. That means you too, Ezra.”
Ezra scoffed, but he still squeezed into the packed group of players. Once everyone was close enough, Vincent smiled and snapped a group photo with his HUD before casting Zero Field over the party. He could feel the players with shields made of world magic pushing against him, but they all seemed to realize the issue and temporarily disabled them. Ryker aimed a palm at the floor of the raft and opened a hole in the barriers, which dropped them into the water.
Vincent pushed the party down into the ocean’s depths. It soon grew too dark to see, so Xan cast Greater Clarity. To Vincent’s surprise there were actually fish in the ocean, but they were bloated and deformed-looking creatures. Some had eyes hanging out of their heads, and others dragged their own entrails lazily through the water.
The party Clerics resupplied Vincent’s mana as quickly as he spent it, and they dove into even darker depths. Xan’s Greater Clarity struggled to penetrate the darkness at that point, but Devon boosted her light with his own.
Vincent felt the water pressing harder against his body. With his Density Field it didn’t affect him much, but he worried about his teammates. Some of them showed signs of discomfort—especially Devon, who had swapped his All Shield to something else. Zhang noticed too and cast another diving spell over the team that lessened the effects of the water pressure.
Anxiety built in Vincent’s gut as they continued to sink. He wasn’t even sure how much time had passed since they went underwater. At that speed he would’ve thought they’d reached some kind of bottom by then, but all he saw was more darkness beyond the reach of Greater Clarity. The feeling of pressure started to return, even as Zhang and other mages tried to buffer the diving spell.
Despite all the effort from their casters, Vincent noticed a few specks of water leaking into the bubble around his head. It didn’t worry him at first, and he tried to stay focused on his Zero Field, but soon the water filled the bubble all the way up to his chin. When he glanced at his teammates, he saw their bubbles filling too, and they all carried nervous expressions, except for Ezra.
>Ezra: You know, it’s been a long time since I found a unique way to die on the World-Tree. Getting crushed by deep sea pressure will be an interesting experience.
>Devon: The dying part almost sounds comforting. It’s everything else about this experience that’s stressing me out. I’m really trying not to throw up in my bubble.
>Alexandria: Just practice those breathing exercises I told you about. You’ll be alright, Dev.
Vincent couldn’t hear Devon’s breathing, but he could see the young man’s mouth moving as he tried to steady his breathing. After a few seconds, he coughed a few times, then vomited in his bubble. The young man began to panic, trying to push the bile away from his face.
>Ryker: Devon, try to stay calm. You’re going to break the bubble.
The young man didn’t seem to hear, and he started to thrash about, making it more difficult for Vincent to keep Zero Field around him. Before he could cause more trouble, Xan grabbed his shoulder.
>Alexandria: Dev, stay calm. Just look up and it won’t reach your mouth.
Devon raised his head, took a few deep breaths, then finally started to relax.
With that brief distraction, Vincent almost didn’t notice the bottom racing toward them. The range of Greater Clarity revealed a massive shape extending in all directions. Vincent could tell it must’ve been a sphere at least a mile or more across, but he noticed the surface had the texture of a clamshell.
>Ezra: Ah ha! There it is. Vincent, send me down there to take a crack at it.
Vincent moved Ezra lower until he landed on the shell-like surface. The man equipped his indestructible blade and raised it high, preparing to cast Celestial End.
>Ezra: You might want to move the party. There’s a good chance I won’t survive using this spell down here. Hopefully I blow a hole into the core for you.
>Vincent: Good luck, Ezra. Message me if you survive, and I’ll try to find you.
Vincent pulled the party away, and he tried to remember the range of Ezra’s strongest attack. He couldn’t be certain, however, since the last time it’d been used within a ring of world magic. He continued beyond the expected range just in time to see a flash of light that pierced the darkness.
Waves of pressure shoved them backward momentarily, but Vincent poured more mana into stabilizing Zero Field and sending them rocketing toward the location of the blast as it cleared.
>Jim: Yo, Ezra, you managed to shave off a single Will Point. Uh, you still alive?
>Ezra: Not for long. I couldn’t keep myself grounded, and I popped my diving spell. I’m just hurtling through the ocean while my organs are failing. Don’t worry about it. You lot need to finish this job.
>Vincent: There might be a chance to save you. Do you have any light creations that tag teammate’s maps?
>Ezra: Just focus on the boss. I’m detonating myself so you don’t waste any time trying to save me.
Vincent saw a flicker of light in the distance, letting him know Ezra had killed himself. He headed toward the damage caused by Celestial End. The deepest fracture in the shell appeared to travel down into an open area inside the core, but a field of magic covered the planet’s injury, preventing water from pouring inside.
Vincent noticed the smaller fractures healing themselves at a rapid rate, so he rushed to the largest crevice and shoved them through the magic field to the other side. A sudden shift in gravity overtook them, and Vincent flipped the group around and landed them on a squishy surface as the fractures closed behind them.
Zhang reached out, touching the air and using wind frequency to move it around his fingers. Then he broke his diving spell, which released the water that’d been trapped inside.
“Don’t worry, we can breathe in here,” the Ice Knight said.
Vincent and the others popped their bubbles, and Devon let out whatever remaining stomach bile he’d been holding inside him. Xan patted him on the back as their teammates assessed their surroundings.
The area looked to be made of twisted and interconnected passages of clamshell material, but the floors and ceilings were covered in thick, overlapping muscle tissue. As they stepped around, the tissue writhed beneath their feet.
Jeanie stomped her boot into the squishy floor and watched it move. “Alright, this is somehow even grosser than Lamat filling the sky with blood. It’s like everything is covered in tongues.”
“This is like the dungeon equivalent of our drunk make-out sessions,” Jim told Jeanie before wiggling his tongue at her in a playful manner.
Jeanie laughed it off, but a f
ew meters away River pretended like she was vomiting.
Vincent stepped ahead of the party and into a winding tunnel. Warm moisture came from deep within the tunnel and passed over him, only for the air to withdraw quickly as though the entire passage was breathing. Every two seconds the pattern repeated, and his teammates glanced at various tunnels as muscle tissue move rhythmically to the breaths.
“I think I can trace the air movement to its source using wind frequency,” Zhang said, holding up a hand.
The Ice Knight led them through several branching paths, but sometimes the tunnels closed tight around them as the muscle tissue flexed. Gravity seemed to twist and turn in the passages, and the walls of a tunnel often became the floor of the next. The frequencies around Vincent had a strange clamminess to them, making it harder to feel his magic as they proceeded.
Eventually, Zhang led them to the entrance of a long tunnel covered entirely in muscle tissue, but then he lowered his hand. “I can’t feel any more frequencies, but this seems to be the right way.”
“There’s an anti-magic field,” Vincent noted, trying and failing to feel his mana reserve. “Lamat’s inner domain also blocked my magic, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Be ready for something weird when we reach Aefa.”
“Weird like what?” Xan asked.
“Just be wary of anything out of place,” Vincent replied. “If you see something unusual, tell the group immediately.”
Xan nodded her head, and they followed the party into the passage. Whenever a gust of air ran past them, the entire hall flexed, growing so small that the taller players had to duck their heads. They formed into a line with Jim and Jeanie in the front. When those two stepped through the narrow exit and into a larger area, they came to a sudden stop.
>Jim: Well hello!
Jeanie nudged him with her elbow.
>Jim: Sorry, sorry. It’s just—I mean, wow!
The woman beside him sighed.
>Jeanie: You’re lucky I’m not the jealous type.
The rest of the team stepped into the large cavern, and as Vincent entered he could hear calming music he hadn’t noticed from the hall. When he joined the crowd, he saw what had brought them all to a halt.
At the center of the cavern, there was a woman. Despite having very human proportions, she looked about twenty meters tall. Vincent couldn’t guess her height exactly because her waist seemed to spring right out of the muscle tissue that covered the bottom half of the cavern. Her naked body—which was partially covered by her long, black hair—reminded Vincent of various paintings of goddesses he’d seen in museums or online.
She moved with fluid motions, strumming the taut strings in her grip. It took Vincent a few seconds to realize those strings were some of the woman’s own hairs. Although he couldn’t see her face, he could vaguely hear a sad hum accompanying the music.
Fynn was the first to ready himself with hardened-basteel armor and a sword.
>Fynn: Let’s hit her together. If we’re fast, she might not be able to fight back.
The Wolf Lord hurried ahead as the rest of the party equipped their combat gear. As he picked up speed, however, Aefa stopped playing her song. The hairs she’d been strumming became soft and fell slowly onto her back. Her entire body twisted toward the players, revealing she had no face.
Aefa’s arm curved upward, and her hand reached out almost longingly to the wolf-helmed man charging toward her. With Vincent’s high Perception, he saw lines rippling across her skin. When the ripple reached her fingers, several dozen strings shot from their tips.
Fynn dove away, and the strings stabbed the ground where he’d been standing. Since he couldn’t use magic, Vincent had no way to Scan the strings to see just how dangerous they were, but the shimmer on them gave him the impression that they might’ve been made of a material similar to mithril.
Aefa moaned sadly, although her voice was muffled by her lack of a mouth. She swung her arm to the side, whipping Fynn with the strings. Although his armor protected him from being carved into pieces, the strings were strong enough to swat him across the cavern.
The rest of the team rushed the mound of tissue leading up to her body. A few of them cut along the muscles, hoping it might harm her, but Vincent leapt and sliced her belly open with a basteel sword. He watched the strings that made up her body split apart, but no blood flowed from the wound. Aefa moaned in pain as the players cut through her, although the injuries sewed themselves shut within seconds.
The Goddess raised her other hand, and her fingers split into hundreds of strings that shot forward. Vincent cut through several, was grazed by a few more, and then others hit him directly, leaving shallow stab wounds. They were powerful enough to knock him off his feet despite his Density Shield, and he was thrown a short distance away.
When Vincent raised his head, he saw two players falling into ashes. Ryker and Zhang had been the closest to him, and he’d been at the epicenter of the attack, so he guessed they were the two that had died.
Vincent sprinted back toward the Goddess, climbed the mound of tissue in an instant, and leapt into the air while aiming his blade for her heart. He stabbed into a thick layer of flesh, and then pulled downward as he cut through her chest. His blade grazed something rigid, but it was only when he fell away from the Goddess that he saw what he’d struck. Where her heart should’ve been located was an interwoven shell made of thicker, more rigid strings.
“There’s your weak spot!” Fynn shouted, leaping into the air with his hardened-basteel sword. His next blow rang loudly across the cavern, but as he fell backward everyone saw that his blade had done no damage to the shell.
Aefa grabbed Fynn and lifted him with one hand. A muffled groan sounded from her as she tilted her head like a curious cat.
“Let go of me!” Fynn shouted, stabbing his blade into her hand.
The wolf-helmed man hacked off two of her fingers before the Elder Goddess reacted. She groaned again, her jaw stretching until the skin on her face ripped open and revealed a mouth. The Goddess’s pained voice boomed across the cavern, but then a twisting, inhuman-looking tongue raised into view with a basketball-sized pearl sitting on the tip.
Aefa closed her mouth, puffed up her cheeks, and then fired the pearl so fast it left a shockwave in its wake. Even Vincent barely followed the projectile as it took off Fynn’s head.
>River: Holy shit. This bitch is spitting pearls like cannonballs.
>Quinn: Are our attacks even doing anything to her?
>Jim: I have no idea. I can’t use magic, so I can’t True Scan her. Vince, how’d you kill Lamat?
>Vincent: Uh, I don’t think what I did will apply here. Her weak spot is clearly her heart.
Aefa’s body twisted upward, and her belly flexed. A ripple worked its way past her chest and throat, and then she opened her mouth to reveal another pearl on her tongue. She puffed up her cheeks and stared down at Quinn, who had been hacking at the Goddess’s side.
Quinn stopped, saw what was about to happen, and leapt away from Aefa. The Elder Goddess delayed her shot, watching her target as the Fighter slid into a crouched position.
Aefa waited for that brief pause to spit the pearl. Quinn tried to jump away, but the supersonic attack caught her on the left side, taking half her chest with it. While it was clearly a fatal blow, that didn’t stop Quinn from making one last charge as she bled to death. With her remaining arm, she equipped a Lotus Capsule, dove for Aefa’s heart, and self-destructed.
The Goddess thrashed and screamed in pain, although she still moved with strangely fluid and elegant motions. Quinn’s explosion had torn apart her chest, but the shell around her heart still remained intact.
>Alexandria: Seriously, nothing is working?
>Jim: For all we know, we’re doing Will Point damage by attacking her. We might not even need to destroy her heart. What if I run back to the end of the tunnel and use True Scan out there?
Jim started to move away from Aefa, but she immediately noti
ced him and readied a new pearl even faster than before. As her cheeks puffed, Jeanie shouted and dove in front of Jim with a hardened-basteel shield in her hands.
Aefa’s body lurched like she was shooting the pearl, but she froze before launching the attack.
“Stay behind me!” Jeanie shouted at Jim. “I might absorb enough of the blow for you to survive, then you run full speed for the tunnel, got it?”
A different kind of groan sounded from the Goddess. Her cheeks stayed inflated, the attack ready to fire at any moment, but her body slouched slightly. Vincent could feel the moist air moving back and forth faster than before. The strings around Aefa’s heart started to move with the beats, almost like they were growing weaker and less rigid.
>Alexandria: Something’s happening to her. What are you two doing?
>Jim: I’m just cowering in fear behind Jeanie. Babe, are you doing something?
>Jeanie: I’m just protecting you.
>Vincent: Well, her personality tag said longing. Maybe she has a soft spot for people with romantic connections?
>Jim: That’d be kind of cheesy, but Jeanie and I can make out if you think that’ll help.
>Jeanie: In the middle of a boss fight? Well, yeah, I’m kind of into that.
Jeanie threw down her shield, and Jim embraced her. A moment later, they had their tongues down each other’s throats.
>River: Okay, too gross. I hope that gets wiped from my memory the second I log out of this game.
Aefa stared longingly at the kissing couple, and the shell in her chest began to break open. The strings loosened, revealing her large heart. Xan dove for the organ with a blade, but the Goddess reacted quickly, spiking her with a hundred strings before she could reach it. Even with her upgraded shield, Xan didn’t survive.