The Chained Maiden: Bound by Fate

by Ian Rodgers

  Blood boiled, and eyeballs exploded from the torrent of Lightning magic Ain shot out. As the spell ended, the Grand Elf fell to one knee, panting heavily, his mana severely drained.

  “Ain!” Dora shouted, hurrying over to his side. She held up a Mana Potion to his lips, and he drank the contents of the vial down eagerly.

  “Ooof, thanks, Dora,” he said, voice raspy. “That took a lot more out of me than I expected.”

  “Can you do something like it again?” she asked, glancing over at Enrai who was currently dancing around the enormous Sewer Drake, trying and failing to pierce its hide with magical wind and flames. At the same time, he was forced to be defensive and avoid getting hit at all costs, lest Long-Tail-Shadow – who was still strapped to his back – get harmed as well.

  “Forked Lightning Barrage is a Level Five spell, yet it took as much mana from me as a Level Seven! I can’t muster up the same kind of power I’m used to using here in Gaeum,” Ain replied to Dora.

  “Then we have to kill that monster the old fashion way,” Dora said with sigh, readying her crossbow. She removed a vial from the pouch at her side and dipped the tip of one of her bolts into the dark green substance.

  Once the bolt was coated in the concoction, she loaded it into her crossbow, and aimed it at the larger than normal Sewer Drake.

  “Enrai, get back!” Dora shouted, and the Monk obeyed, darting away with a final parting spray of flames into the monster’s eyes.

  As it flailed about, roaring in pain, Dora fired her drugged bolt into the enormous reptile’s exposed left side. Several of Enrai’s punches had cracked the scales there, and her bolt was able to puncture the flesh.

  “Ain, can you tire it out? Don’t hurt it, just let it chase you a bit,” Dora instructed, and the Spellsword nodded.

  “That, I can do,” he claimed, sprinting forward to distract the Sewer Drake. He began to flit about the battlefield, making the large draconic reptile chase after him.

  After a minute of exercise, the monster’s roars suddenly turned confused, and it staggered around drunkenly for a few minutes before slipping on some loose stones and collapsing to the ground.

  “What exactly did you coat that bolt with?” Ain asked incredulously as he watched the fearsome and gigantic Sewer Drake flail weakly around as if it was drunk.

  “A special poison the Yellowmoon Menagerie used to drug the larger animals with,” Dora replied easily, putting away her crossbow. “It makes the subject feel woozy and dizzy, and makes them experience something akin to vertigo, so they become hesitant to move around too much. I put enough on that bolt to put that giant monster out of commission for a couple of hours.”

  With the guardian of the Grand Palace now defeated, and the lesser Sewer Drakes dead or fled, the group was free to enter the building and make their way up to the mansion’s attic.

  No other monsters or creatures emerged to challenge the group, and so they were able to clamber through the upper levels of the building, and emerge onto the lower region of Floor Thirteen.

  Dora winced and shielded her eyes with her hands as she emerged from the tumbled down ruin that connected the previous Floor to the current one.

  Unlike the other Floors beneath her, the Thirteenth Floor was actually lit up quite brightly. This was not a good thing, in Dora’s opinion, because all the light was coming from a massive, swirling red and black vortex that hovered near the ceiling right in the middle of the Floor.

  From the magical portal, figures could be seen tumbling out of it on occasion. Even from a distance, though, the Healer was able to tell that the creatures that emerged were misshapen abominations. Tentacles, wings, oversized claws and maws, too many limbs, or too few, depending on the body type.

  “Demons,” she spat, glaring at the dimensional portal that sat there like a magical wound in reality itself, oozing curses and foulness.

  Hardly anything was left intact on the Floor. The ever growing army of demons capered and frolicked in the ruins, gleefully destroying everything in sight, breaking apart stones and statues and reducing rumble to ever tinier shards. No building had more than a single wall still standing, and those were defiled with all manner of supernatural graffiti.

  The demons fought among themselves as often as they wrecked the surroundings, and the whole Floor was a carnival of madness.

  “By the Twin Goddess,” Ain muttered as he took everything in. At his side, Enrai murmured prayers in his home tongue, eyes shifting about nervously. Long-Tail-Shadow quivered in fear, pressing close against Enrai’s back.

  Dora swallowed a lump of apprehension that rose up in her throat, before she shook her head dismissively.

  “We came this far, we can’t turn back now,” she declared firmly. The half-orc glanced over at the trembling Rakkar and walked over to her, pity in her eyes. She drew a dagger and cut the ropes binding her to the Monk.

  “How do you feel? Have you recovered your strength?”

  “Miss Dora?” Long-Tail asked, confused.

  “You should head back home, now,” the Healer said kindly. “This is as far as you can go.”

  “…I know,” the Rakkar said sorrowfully, bowing her head in understanding after glancing at the hellish vortex in the distance. Dora patted her shoulder fondly.

  “You’ve helped us out greatly. I won’t forget it,” she promised their former guide with sad smile. “If you hurry, you should be able to get out before the drug wears off on that giant Sewer Drake.”

  “Stay safe, Long-Tail!” Enrai said cheerfully, clapping her on the back in a friendly manner. Ain too nodded in respect towards her, a tiny, barely noticeable smile upon his face.

  “You will always be remembered-known as my friends!” Long-Tail-Shadow vowed, before darting back the way they came.

  Dora’s smile became strained as she watched the Rakkar depart, but she steeled her nerves for the coming confrontation.

  “The Queen Swathed in Vermillion has Nia’s pets. And she wants me to get them back,” the Healer said aloud, reminding herself why she was here. “This is a task for a Chosen One. This all comes back to me being able to save Erafore. Somehow.”

  “We’re with you every step of the way,” Enrai promised her, Ain nodding fervently in agreement.

  She grinned at the pair, before passing Enrai a Mana Potion.

  “Drink this,” she ordered. “And then, with the boost of energy, fly us over into the portal. I’m tired of walking, tired of fighting, tired of doing things other people’s way. Right now? I want you to get hopped up on magical power, grow giant fiery wings, and carry us into the Abyss. Understood?”

  “HA!” Enrai laughed, taking the vial and draining it. His veins started to glow a fiery orange as his soul began to produce more mana than his body could contain.

  In response, he conjured up his giant flaming wings and grabbed onto his friends. Dora put an arm around his waist while Ain put one arm around Enrai’s shoulder. Firmly attached to his body, the trio shot into the air with an explosion of flames.

  Several demons looked over at the sound, and watched, perplexed and surprised, by the burning comet ascending into the sky. And then, many of the observing demons burst into flames as the wave of fire and heat Enrai was giving off swept over the landscape, burning away everything.

  “Here we go!” the Monk shouted, aiming towards the demon’s portal. Eyes narrowed, Dora nodded.

  “Do it!”

  Enrai collided with the vortex, slipping inside of it, even as his flames torched everything nearby.

  Dora wanted to scream as her body, mind and soul were stretched to the breaking point. Whispers chanted in her ear as she fell upwards towards oblivion. The sensation of spiders crawling over her skin made her want to weep. From her throat prayers to the Divine Family spilled out into the endlessly shifting wormhole.

  Time and space collapsed around her as she and her friends were spat out. Retching, and then staggering to her feet, Dora wiped a trail of bile from her lips as she glar
ed definitely at the scenery around her.

  “We made it,” she muttered as the sky writhed and boiled, and the ground squirmed and spat forth insanity.

  “Hurray,” Enrai and Ain deadpanned together as they too wiped vomit from their faces.

  “Now… where do we go from here?” Dora wondered aloud.

  ∞.∞.∞

  Long-Tail-Shadow scurried through the darkness. Her heart felt heavy for leaving the three people she’d come to view as friends, but she knew it was for the best. She was nowhere near as strong as them. Even Miss Dora was capable of besting her in combat. She’d just be a hindrance to their journey.

  Still, Long-Tail couldn’t help but smile as she recalled the trio, and how earnestly and kindly they’d treated her. She went from being a complete stranger beaten up in a bar to a guide, and then, dare she say it? A friend. Long-Tail had almost forgotten what kindness from non-Rakkar was like.

  Muttering a prayer to the God of Thieves who had cursed her kind eons ago, she wished for their success in their task of stealing from one of the infamous Demon Lords. If her people’s ‘patron’ could spare even a fraction of his power to their endeavors, perhaps they might survive long enough to see her again?

  As she dreamed of meeting them once more in the future, Long-Tail-Shadow left the Twelfth Floor and arrived at the Eleventh. Her thoughts were thrown out of order by the sudden presence of terror that filled the Floor. The stench of it was thick in the air, yet the young Rakkar couldn’t sense any monsters nearby.

  ‘What has happened-occurred here?’ she wondered, creeping silently along through the area that was even more abandoned than usual. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a Shadow Stalker cowering in an alcove, its body trembling violently.

  Long-Tail-Shadow frowned, and her eyes narrowed in suspicion. She followed the gaze of the feline monster, noting it was staring without blinking in the direction of the entrance to Floor Ten.

  Becoming even more worried, she slunk through the darkness, paws reaching for her knives. Whiskers twitching, she began to detect the rich, coppery tang of freshly spilt blood. Patches of blood trailed along the walkway she was following.

  ‘What in the name of the Snatching Hand?’ Long-Tail-Shadow thought to herself as she began to she chunks of flesh, shards of bones, and even entire limbs littering the ground as she moved forward.

  “…get there later!” the Rakkar’s ears perked up. Has she heard that right? Was someone else here in the abandoned levels with her? It wasn’t unusual for the squatters and slum-dwelling folk to go hunting for monsters when food or resources were scarce down below, but they never left such a mess behind them!

  “You said that last time! And we’re still in the upper levels!” a deeper, petulant voice boomed out. Despite its timber, it had the qualities of a whiny child to its tone. The first voice let out an annoyed sigh.

  “And I told you that it’s not my fault we’re stuck up here! It’s been millennia since I came to Down, how was I supposed to know all the Floors had shifted so drastically?”

  “Um, that’s kind of Down’s thing, brother,” the second voice pointed out, and Long-Tail-Shadow couldn’t help but nod her head in agreement.

  Their words raised questions in her mind, though. These travelers clearly were capable of Planeswalking, but were also old enough that they hadn’t been in the Delving City for a long time. Long enough for them to remember when these Floors had actually been inhabited by more than just monsters and squatters. Such was the danger of teleporting or portaling into Down, though. The place you thought might be the right area could just as likely be abandoned after so long.

  The young Rakkar woman crept closer, and as she crested a pile of rubble, spotted a duo heading towards the staircase that led down to Floor Ten.

  One of them looked like a normal – albeit blue skinned – humanoid, though the size of his left hand was far larger than that of the right, causing the figure to hunch over to accommodate the increased mass.

  The second figure was a bloated, obese monstrosity with bone spikes jutting out of its many flabby folds of fat. In its right hand, Long-Tail-Shadow could see it holding the leg of a Deep Crawler like it was a drumstick, occasionally taking huge bites out of the raw flesh.

  The entities were arguing with each other as they ventured down the stairs towards the Tenth Floor. Long-Tail waited for them to disappear completely before sneaking after them. Something about the two made her fur stand on end, and she didn’t want to be caught out in the open by them.

  Unfortunately, as she emerged onto the Tenth Floor, she felt rough hands grab onto her, and she was hoisted into the air. She froze as she was brought face to face with the pallid and corpulent face of the fat entity.

  “Brother! I caught the sneaky little rat! What should we do with it?” the creature rumbled, and Long-Tail shivered as she saw the figure drooling slightly as it looked at her.

  “Let me think,” the blue-skinned brother said, looking at the captured Rakkar with sharp green eyes. “Hmm. Maybe you can help us. You see, my brother and I were sent to find someone who was spotted headed to Down recently. Have you by any chance seen a blonde elf with a saber, a bald, tattooed human, and a half-orc in white robes who can use Healing magic?”

  Long-Tail-Shadow stiffened in surprise, and the man with the misshapen left arm smirked. “Well, it seems as if we’ve found a clue, Bolgoros!”

  “Should we torture the information out of the rat, Selquist?” the blob-like humanoid inquired. To the Rakkar’s relief, the other one shook his head.

  “No, that’s no good. It’d take too long.” He looked down at his oversized left hand. “Same problem if I tried to fuse with her. Process would take more time than I’m willing to waste. So, that leaves one method left. Bol! Eat her!”

  “Yay! I love this method!” Bolgoros cheered, lifting her higher into the air.

  A Rakkar did not cry or scream, even in the face of death. Yet Long-Tail-Shadow could be forgiven for letting out a whimper of fear as the stomach of the obese entity split open, revealing a gaping maw of teeth and a seemingly endless gullet.

  Without ceremony, he casually tossed her into his horrendous mouth, and it snapped shut. After chewing twice, Bolgoros sighed in contentment.

  “Alright, spit her out,” Selquist ordered him, and the fatty pouted, but complied. Instead of expelling her from his stomach-mouth, though, the features of the recently devoured Rakkar appeared on the skin, as if pushing up out of Bolgoros’ flesh like a strange tumor.

  Skin distended, and with a noisome ‘squelch!’ folds of meat parted and gave way to a flood of rank smelling amniotic fluids and a naked rat-woman. She shivered in disgust and horror, eyes wide and staring at nothing.

  “Tell me: Where did you last see the elf, human, and half-orc?” Selquist demanded.

  “On Floor Thirteen,” the reborn Rakkar droned dully, the words forced out of her mouth against her will.

  “Why were they on that Floor?” he inquired, confused.

  “There is a portal to the Abyss on that Floor.”

  “Why would they be looking for that?”

  Long-Tail-Shadow struggled visibly for a few seconds, trying not to respond, but ultimately failed. “Miss Dora received a revelation from her goddess. She was told to retrieve a pair of Elemental Tails in the possession of the Queen Swathed in Vermillion.”

  Selquist growled in annoyance at the Rakkar’s words. “Damn it! They’ve gotten away! They’re no longer in Down at all! Ugh, I knew we shouldn’t have stopped for all those snacks, Bolgoros!”

  Glaring at his brother for a moment, the entity with the misshapen hand eventually returned his attention to the cowering, fluid-stained Rakkar at his feet.

  “Still, it’s not a bad loss. We have a tool we might be able to use if the Chosen One ever does return. Tell me, little one: Does the half-orc trust you?”

  “She called me her friend,” Long-Tail-Shadow whispered, feeling helpless as she was unable to keep f
rom betraying Dora and the others.

  A cruel smile spread across Selquist’s face. “Good.”

  He then reached up and plucked out his left eye with his overgrown hand. Even as blood cascaded down from his torn socket, he reached out and grabbed Long-Tail-Shadow’s left arm with his free right hand, dragging her closer to him.

  He pressed his severed eyeball against the back of her left paw, and chuckled darkly as this time, unable to stay silent, she screamed out in pain as he fused it to her flesh.

  “If you ever encounter that particular Chosen One again, or if you come across any other Chosen Ones in the future, you will use this gift I’ve given you to contact me. I will then use it as a beacon to Planeswalk over to you so I can kill it. You are not allowed to destroy or remove that object from your flesh, or tell anyone it exists, or what happened here. Understood, little puppet?”

  “Yes,” Long-Tail wept, curling up in on herself.

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes, master,” she replied, weeping quietly.

  “Excellent,” Selquist said with a sneer. He turned away and ripped open a hole in reality with his left hand. “Come on, Bolgoros, it’s time to take a trip to the Abyss!”

  “I like demons. They’re both juicy and crunchy at the same time! Like frozen jelly!” Bolgoros announced as he and his brother stepped through the portal.

  In their wake, they left behind Long-Tail-Shadow, who cried alone in the darkness, the taint of the Void keeping the monsters at bay.

  Chapter 12: …Because the Abyss stares back

  “So, this is the Abyss, huh?” Enrai asked faintly as he looked around the area they’d landed. Black scorch marks surrounded the ground where the trio had arrived, Enrai’s blazing wings having burnt the topsoil away for several meters in all directions. His magic had seared into the Abyss, momentarily halting the endless chaotic changes that plagued the realm.

  Beyond that, the landscape curved and unfolded in nauseating ways. It was impossible to look at one thing for too long before it shifted in some way. Occasionally it was red, other times it was blue. Maybe it was round, or perhaps sharply curved. Was it a hill, or was it a deep valley? There was no way to tell.