Unusual Enemies - A LitRPG Adventure (The Whispering Crystals, #2)

by Mills, H. C.

  Hmm. Well, the most important thing right now is that he doesn’t get away with Alec’s eye-crystal. I join Kaitlynn in scanning the water at the front of the barge, spear at the ready. Maybe I should’ve kept one of those fishing spears after all. Rats.

  “D’you guys think we’re nearing the end of the river?” Jacob asks.

  “Maybe,” Dave answers, scanning the walls of rock around us. “We better keep an eye out for doors. At least it’s clear why we’d ‘never make it there on foot.’ These cliffs must be like, what, 200 feet high?”

  I look up with a frown. Is that really the reason? I mean, materials in this realm are pretty darn sturdy, so it shouldn’t be too hard to fashion a rope with some vines... The river was probably a lot faster, but still, how long have we really been on the Hydrum, maybe an hour?

  Kaitlynn frowns and cocks her head sideways. “You guys, what is that roaring sound? Aren’t we moving away from the rapids?”

  I blink. Now that she mentions it...

  As our barge gently drifts along the long bend, the answer becomes apparent in the distance, where the river... disappears.

  Or more accurately, drops down.

  It’s a friggin’ Hydrumfall.

  Dave curses. “Is there an anchor or something on board?”

  I shake my head. “We’d have run into that by now, this barge is pretty bare.”

  “Can we moor this thing?” Jacob asks, alarmed.

  Dave peers over the edge into the clear Hydrum, as we slowly drift forward, the roar growing more substantial. How long before we get there, two minutes? Three?

  “The Hydrum’s too deep,” Dave eventually calls out, “even near the edges. There’s no running this thing aground. We may be able to—”

  “No! Nonono—that bastard!” Jacob suddenly exclaims from behind the wheel. “The rudder is stuck!”

  It takes a second before it clicks in my head, and I sprint towards the back with the others. There’s a thick bundle of weeds tied around the rudder, and the chief is long gone.

  Actually, no, he’s behind the barge, merrily waving Alec’s eye-crystal at us. “So long, smelly monkeys! And thanks for this!” He cackles once more, before turning around and starting to swim upstream.

  My heart sinks as he moves away. This is it. Alec’s done for. Actually, we all are, aren’t—

  Are we? I glance around the cliffs, checking the rock walls for doors. There are none. Could they be under-Hydrum?

  “Guys, look for the exit, see if it’s under-Hydrum somewhere,” I call as I head for the cabin. “I have an idea!”

  Inside, I open up Alec’s backpack to take something out.

  Alec grasps my wrist. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?” he asks soberly. Emptily.

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” I say brusquely, around the lump in my throat, “and I haven’t given up yet, so save your goodbyes for later!”

  I pull away, and run around to the back with my prize, lifting it up high above me. “OOOY, YOU FAT, SLIMY TOAD!” I yell over the river. The chief stops mid-stroke, turning around to glare at me.

  “THANKS FOR THIS!” I continue waving the crystal around. “IT’LL MAKE A LOVELY NEW EYE FOR MY FRIEND! OR MAYBE A NICE DOORSTOPPER OR SOMETHING. I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON A FISH!”

  That ought to do it. The chief is glaring at me, so I nonchalantly turn around, casually lowering the crystal and holding it by my side. Near the water’s edge.

  “Any doors?” I ask conversationally.

  Dave is frowning at me. “No. What are you—”

  “Did he dive down yet?”

  Dave’s eyes widen. “Yes.”

  “And he looked pissed!” Kaitlynn whispers excitedly, catching on.

  I motion at Jacob and Kaitlynn to come closer, setting down my spear to run my free hand through my hair. “Good. Act natural,” I say softly. “And be ready.”

  My fingers clench around the crystal nervously. Should I hold it closer to the edge? Maybe he just needs another little push.

  “Ugh,” I complain at decent, hopefully not suspicious volume, “can you believe that oversized freak? Why the hell do the other Hoig even listen to him? I mean, he sent all of them after us just for them to end up dying at our hands.” I use my free hand to gesture at a nearby floating corpse that managed to pass through the rapids.

  “Yeah, exactly,” Jacob says, picking up the thread with a wonderfully disdainful tone. “He chased us all the way here and didn’t even manage to get a single stupid crystal back. And the loser still acts like he’s won somehow.”

  I shoot him an appreciative look. Nice improv there, buddy. He winks at me in return.

  And as the end of the river draws near, perfectly on cue, the chief lashes out with his tongue, aiming for the crystal.

  But with a Strength of 14, my grip on it is vice-like. My free hand strikes like a viper, the extra sharp nails I grew during level-up finally coming in handy when I grasp onto his tongue.

  I release the bait-crystal to grasp onto him with both hands and ready myself to pull as I turn to face him.

  Looking into his shocked, angry eyes, I hiss, “Got you now, sucker!”

  CHAPTER 11

  And I said heyyeyaaeyaaaeyaeyaa

  “HELP ME PULL HIM on board, I want that trident,” I yell, adding that last bit to throw the chief froggo off, just in case. It’s not even a lie, I really do want that trident.

  I pull hard on his tongue, forcing the chief a couple of inches closer to our barge. The cut between my ribs hurts like a bitch, but I’m quite used to accepting and ignoring pain. Unfortunately, the chief isn’t.

  His eyes narrow and his toothless mouth goes from a pained grimace to a crooked smile, before an arc of lightning travels up his tongue.

  Son of a—

  Pain erupts as my muscles all clench simultaneously. I want to say I hold on through sheer tenacity, but I honestly couldn’t let go if I wanted to, the pressure I’m now involuntarily applying forcing my nails deeper into his tongue.

  It ends as abruptly as it started, and his tongue slips from my numb fingers as I collapse backwards. Soft hands catch me, preventing me from slamming my head on the deck, and keep me propped up enough to allow me to watch as the bastard’s tongue retracts.

  However, just before the slimy appendage can slip off the boat, Jacob dives onto it, abandoning his sword and shield to use his hands to grasp it, much like I did.

  An arrow shoots past me, but the chief raises his trident and it bounces off, causing a lingering tone to ring out. Damnit, you lucky bastard!

  The chief sends another pulse of lightning down his tongue, but it looks weak. He’s out of Qi!

  Jacob grunts and tenses a little when the lightning hits, but shrugs it off, and pulls on the tongue.

  The chief rears back, kicking out his long floppy legs towards us as he pulls back harder, and almost drags Jacob over the edge with his bloody tongue. Kaitlynn dives over me from where she was holding me steady and grabs Jacob’s legs.

  I’m starting to get some feeling in my limbs again, so I catch myself on my elbows so I can see the action. Next to me, Dave curses and shoots another arrow. This time, it pierces the chief’s shoulder, causing him to croak angrily around his stretched-out tongue.

  Jacob scrambles up, braces his feet up against the low edge around the deck, and pulls on the chief’s tongue once more, assisted by Kaitlynn. He’s pulled a little closer.

  Feeling returns to my limbs, and I shakily get up to help them.

  But as I stand up, the roaring behind us hits me at full intensity, and I turn towards it, wide-eyed.

  We’re at the edge of the Hydrumfall.

  Beyond it, I don’t find the lower plain of forest I was expecting, but an enormous stone basin, as if we’re about to drop into an enormous granite sink.

  I freeze. A multitude of thoughts run through my mind as the barge drifts ever forward. Ultimately, I realise what I need to do.

  “Hold on,” I shout at th
e others as I pull Alec out of the cabin. “Don’t let that bastard slip away!”

  And they don’t. As the barge starts tipping over the edge, the chief shrieks horribly as his tongue is pulled taut. Thankfully, Jacob and Kaitlynn manage to hold on despite practically hanging from the tongue at this point, until the chief leaves the Hydrum and is almost catapulted over the edge with us.

  I kick off from the barge, hard, my spear in one hand, pulling Alec along with the other.

  I find myself in mid-Aether, above a massive, Hydrumfall-fed whirlpool. As the ground and Hydrum are suddenly far beneath me, gravity weakens considerably. For a moment, I think we may just float to the other side, but then the rush of Aether past me picks up.

  I want to look at the others, but Alec is screaming and flailing in panic, “WHAT’S GOING ON?!”

  “All right, listen up—stop flailing!” I shout back, releasing him for a moment in order to slap him in the face.

  It’s okay. He’s clinging on to me for dear life anyway. Either way, it works. Alec stops flailing.

  “We’re about to fall into a whirlpool,” I shout over the streaming Aether, “so I need you to breathe in as deep as you can and prepare to hit the Hydrum!”

  He whimpers, and I take a moment to glance around and take stock.

  Dave is falling below me, separated from the barge which is going down even faster, pulled along by the Hydrumfall’s pressure and gravity.

  Above me, Jacob, Kaitlynn, and the chief are also free-falling. It looks like the oversized bastard has finally retrieved his tongue. His gaze turns to mine and he smiles cruelly as I pick up speed, moving farther away instead of closer.

  I look down, at the now rapidly approaching, swirling Hydrum. Frig.

  “All right, Alec, time to breathe in,” I shout. “We hit the Hydrum in six, five...” I trail off, continuing the count in my head as I start inhaling too.

  As we get closer to the whirlpool, however, gravity increases and my prediction is skewed. I yell out ‘one,’ when I actually hit ‘two’ in my mind. Should be enough warning for Alec to close his mouth. I hope.

  I tense up my core muscles and hit the Hydrum feet first. The shock travels through me before I am wrenched along by the swirl and lose grip on Alec.

  The Hydrum isn’t really cold or warm on my skin, it’s just... wet. The clothes I wear beneath my armour are immediately soaked, dragging uncomfortably against my skin as I swirl around and instinctively attempt to swim up to breach the surface. Even though I’m used to looking underwater when I swim, I can hardly distinguish up from down, let alone control where I’m going in this maelstrom.

  Good thing I’m skilled at Breath Control.

  Then again, holding my breath is only a stopgap solution. It will take a while, but I will eventually run out of Lavi. As I can’t do much against the powerful flow I’m in, I turn off Boost Physical to save Lavi.

  As I go round and round and down, the pressure on my ears increases, but it doesn’t hurt like I would expect. I’m not sure whether to attribute that to the difference in how gravity works, or my improved Toughness.

  After swirling down for several tens of seconds, I end up in calmer Hydrum. I look around to get my bearings and find that I’m slowly sinking towards what seems to be a kind of drain: a huge metal grating clamped into a hole in the bottom of this giant basin.

  The hexagonal holes in the grating look big enough to stick an arm or leg through, but not big enough to pass through myself. Except for the big, equally hexagonal hole in the centre of the grating, through which Hydrum swirls down into dark depths below. Yikes.

  I start looking around frantically, to see if there’re any less ominous, less ‘end-of-the-line’ feeling paths to take.

  I don’t find any.

  Damnit. Since we still hadn’t spotted an exit, I was half-convinced that the river would flow on after the Hydrumfall, that we hadn’t missed the ‘end’ when we dropped, and that this is why it said we wouldn’t reach it ‘on foot.’ Looks like I was just deluding myself.

  Is this it then? Is this how I die, sucked into the drain at the bottom of a huge sink?

  Damnit! Stupid chief, with his stupid bloody trident! Ugh, no, I can’t really blame anyone but myself here, can I? This is my own stupi—

  A familiar sound—if warbled by the Hydrum—of stone grinding on stone, interrupts my self-recrimination. My head snaps around, and I see a small stone door on one side of the grate grind open.

  Wait, of course! This giant sink is ‘the end of the river’! Those friggin’ bastards!

  It isn’t just the one door that’s opening, actually; there’s several, spread out evenly around the grating.

  Four, to be precise. My heart sinks as I look at the fifth door, at the corner of what should have been a pentagon but is now a trapezoid. So that’s what it means to be ‘disqualified.’

  But the chief dropped with us! Filled with new purpose, I turn my gaze up, just in time to avoid being smacked in the head by Jacob’s shield, as it sinks down beside me.

  In fact, there’s all kinds of things drifting down: arrows, jicca nuts, Jacob, pieces of the shattered barge...

  Wait, Jacob?! Shit, is he unconscious?! There’s red murk in the Hydrum next to him as well, though that might just be from the shallow cut on his forehead from before.

  I’m currently drifting down somewhat to the side, near the first door to open, but he’s sinking down dead-centre, heading straight for the hole in the grate.

  Cursing internally, I start swimming towards him. I push against the Hydrum as hard as I can, but it’s going to be close.

  I reactivate Boost Physical, needing both the increased Strength and the flood of energy each pulse of my heart provides when it’s on.

  By the time I manage to reach him, the dark hole beneath us is awfully close, and I can practically feel it sucking us in. Pulling on Jacob’s ankle with one hand, I swim to the side as fast as I can.

  As his head disappears into the hole, I manage to touch a knee down on the outer edge of the hole. I almost sigh in relief as I grab hold of a metal bar with my free hand, but manage to hold my Aether in. It’s getting harder and harder to ignore the urge to breathe out, despite all the practice I’ve had since coming here.

  Meanwhile, Jacob is nearly all the way into the hole, and the suction is pulling down on him hard. Thankfully, with the extra Strength from Boost Physical’s second mode, I’m strong enough to pull him out.

  With an arm securely around his waist, I walk over the grating towards the closest door. It’s hard going with the drag of the Hydrum, and the way my feet are being sucked down, but I manage to make decent time.

  Looking down on Jacob’s unconscious face, for a split second, I wonder if I should give him mouth-to-mouth before pushing him through. However, if entering the preparation room isn’t enough to save him, then a bit of extra Aether isn’t going to help either.

  I unceremoniously shove him towards the opening, and it sucks him in before the door slams shut.

  That’s one. Let’s hope the others are conscious, because my Lavi is dropping faster than I like.

  I look up to find a battle raging above me. The chief is circling Dave, Alec, and Kaitlynn, who’ve pulled together. Dave is holding him at bay by threatening him with his bow. His quiver may be empty, but he’s got one arrow nocked, and two more in his hand.

  As I watch, Kaitlynn blows out a bubble of Aether into her hand and attempts to charge up a shot, but the Astreum which normally expands so quickly gets bogged down by the Hydrum and redirected by the flowing Hydrum, rendering the attack a waste of Aether.

  The chief somehow cackles, and lunges for her. Dave shoots. The arrow whizzes right past the chief’s face, forcing him to back off.

  Two arrows left. Shit.

  I look around frantically and spot one of Kaitlynn’s knives nearby, sinking towards the grate. I kick off from the stone next to the closed door and swim towards it.

  I reach it right as it pa
sses through the grating and stick my hand through after it to grasp it. With my chest sucked against the grating, I barely reach the handle in time.

  I get up, successfully procured knife in hand, right as the others touch down on the grating on the opposite side of the hole.

  Kaitlynn lands first, quickly moving to intercept Alec before he hits the grating. Dave almost fumbles his landing, but quickly regains his footing and trains his bow back on the chief, who is treading Hydrum above them at a safe height, his back towards me.

  I start towards them over the grating stealthily, circling the hole to end up behind the chief hopefully unnoticed.

  The chief cackles, easily maintaining his position hovering above the grating with casual kicks from his long, webbed feet.

  “Silly puppets, still trying to help your friend,” he warbles, somehow speaking under-Hydrum.

  I catch a hint of amethyst from his palm as he shows it off towards Dave and Kaitlynn.

  “And so what if you get this back? Are you really better off?” he cackles again. “Silly silly silly!”

  Dave says in my head without even a glance in my direction.

  I nod.

  The chief suddenly turns furious again, wildly gesturing with his trident as I sneak closer to beneath him. “YOU’RE NOT WORTHY TO SERVE THE GODS! NOT WORTHY TO BE CHOSEN! I SHOULD JUST SKEWER ALL OF YOU RIGHT N—”

  Dave shoots, but the chief is more prepared than he seemed, and quickly ducks out of the way. Dave immediately nocks, draws, and shoots his second arrow.

  The chief swings his trident, somehow moving the Hydrum in front of him, thus sending the arrow off course.

  He cackles wildly. Damnit!

  Fine then. Time to do what I came prepared to do. A Hail Mary.

  I sink slightly through my knees, before kicking off the grating as hard as I can. The chief turns to me wide-eyed but smirks as he sees my ineffectual jump.

  That’s when I blow all of the Aether stored in my lungs out in twin jets from my nostrils, and rocket up towards him.