Book 3: Chapter 42 - Trap (RAW)

Reflect carefully upon your memories, for when we gaze upon them at our convenience, they are oft inclined to present themselves in a manner most flattering to our own desires.

- From the Analects of Quassian Discourse.

I prodded the remains of Gersal to make sure things were absolutely safe before I approached closer. Most of the soft parts of the corpse, the unprotected places, had been eaten, leaving behind a rotted thing best placed in the realms of horror. Time, the damp air, and scavengers had left behind a mystery. I could not ascertain it for sure, but something near here had authored Gersal’s death. 

And where were his companions? Why had they left him here to die alone in the dark? In my mind, it served more as a warning than a mystery. Still, I could not help my hands search around for anything of value. 

After removing his bevor, I looted a roughly cut ruby necklace with a tarnished silver chain from around what remained of his neck. Larynda silently assisted me with this grisly task, showing no signs of horror or disgust. This led me to believe it was not her first experience looting a corpse. Together, we found some notes and assorted coins of various denominations. I also discovered a red potion which, after confirming with my magic, turned out to be a minor Health potion. I gave Larynda the money and the potion as her share of the loot, while I kept the necklace for myself. It might serve as a useful gift or could be traded later.

Besides Gersal’s corpse lay a cracked and rusted sword, the blade pitted and the scabbard rotted. More intriguing, however, was the massive shield next to him, which in the dim light I had initially mistaken for a trap door. It was a spiked tower shield, constructed from tough wood and reinforced with dark metal bands. I ran my hand over its rough surface, toying with the idea of taking it, but ultimately decided against it since I already had my own. For a fraction of a moment I felt something stir in recognition within, but the sensation was fleeting and soon left me.

Just as I was about to tell the girl that it was time to depart, there was the glooping sound of sludge falling somewhere in darkness beyond the sentinel light of our Zajasite. The sound repeated itself, becoming a promise of something dread. The hackles of my neck rose in response, the primal part of me knowing that danger was close at hand. I had become nigh immune to environmental concerns such as heat or cold, yet I felt a single bead of sweat make its way down the nape of my neck. This could not be fear. Must not be fear. Nonetheless, the next few words came out of my mouth. 

“Move back slowly. Something comes,” I commanded somewhere between a hiss and a whisper, hoping that I was able to hide my momentary weakness. “And when I say so, run.”

It was not fear. Most definitely not. I was just being sensible.

Behind me Larynda nodded mutely, eager to leave. With her better eyesight, undoubtedly more so perhaps than even I. Slowly we edged backwards, moving away from whatever horror was amassing beyond.

“We really need to be moving a little faster… there’s a big lumpy thing and it’s getting bigger I tell you… an’ faster,” she suggested worriedly in a whisper.

But this suggestion rather than spurring me to greater efforts of flight, instead sparked a most contrary feeling. It made me realize my pathetic current reality. The great Gilgamesh, Herald of the Goddess, waltzing about in the sewers on a quest to kill mere rats. It made me irate and rebellious. I had stood before creatures of legend and prevailed, who was I to be afraid of what lay in the dark?

“Whatcha doing?” the little girl behind me hissed as I stopped, standing my ground.

“I would first see what stands before me before turning tail,” I stated with all the bravery of a youth who has been slighted.

“Dun’t know why you can’t see that oozy thing already, probably old like… nah, that’s not the point! We got to get out of here! Please!”

Ignoring her, I cast Identify into the direction before me, willing the magic to find what had caused me to feel anxious and not give me some useless information on the state of a random stone tile. The voices in turn soothed me, promising me victory with their sibilant whispers. I drew a slight breath, grinning to myself as it gave me the information that I sought.

Quiverings - [Slime lvl.18]

Health: 351/351

Stamina: 41/41

Mana: 2/2

Naira had outdone herself in her care for her guest's needs, I thought to myself. An eager smile played about my lips as I drew my crossbow, placing a fresh iron bolt upon it. It would be interesting to see how this glorified slime, this Quiverings, reacted to fire damage. 

I swiftly cocked my weapon and fired an Inferno Bolt at the location of the Quiverings. A flare of light shrieked through the darkness, illuminating an alien yet horrifyingly familiar creature for a fleeting moment. At first, I doubted my eyes, thinking they deceived me. Before us was a wall of living ooze, a quivering, tentacled blob inching towards us. The impact of my bolt on its gelatinous body gouged out a sizable chunk of its Health, hissing as it burrowed its way into its mass.

The monster emitted a primal screech that resonated with its fury. An extraordinary feat, considering it had no mouth. The Quiverings began to vibrate, its amorphous, slimy body rippling. Bright circles of runes emerged, slowly intertwining to form a spell construct that hinted at flow and communion.

“Stay behind me!” I cried out to the half-elven girl as I fired another fiery bolt, determined to interrupt its arcane incantation.

The quarrel of burning iron smacked against the creature, releasing its potential energy, but I had been too slow.

Despite the additional damage inflicted by my fiery bolt, the odd creature completed its spell. Twin lances of dark, watery sludge formed, spinning rapidly before hurtling towards me with alarming speed.

Behind me, I felt Larynda’s presence. The girl despite having urged me to flee earlier had obeyed my command and was still firmly stuck by my side. Were I alone, I could easily dodge the magical sludge coming for me, but I had to protect my ward. I had to stand my ground. That was my conclusion as I knelt and summoned my Mimic shield even as twin balls of dark water mysteriously flew past me on a course to intercept the dark sludge.

In mere moments, threaded vines of organic matter flowed disturbingly from my arm, digging into the stone floor. A wall formed of thick wood, banded iron, and steel spikes that blocked my vision. A mimicry of Gersal’s oversized board, a tower shield. 

The spell smashed against the new form of my shield, a great jarring impact that rattled my bones. I had expected to have been knocked off my feet or pushed back, as the laws of physics dictated before I realized that my shield was still firmly rooted to the ground. I needed to see what was happening and I needed to get up. Now.

Waves of confusion crashed against my consciousness as I felt something opening. For the first time, a new eye opened and the Mimic saw the world around it, and through it, so did I. Painted in shades of grey it was a stark picture of the world, no better than own… no worse even than my own sight I realized as dismissed new notifications from the game that momentarily clouded even this new vision. 

Your Entropic Mimic has learned Adaptive Defense (lvl.3)

Your Entropic Mimic has learned Shield Form (lvl.3)

Your Entropic Mimic has learned Absorb (lvl.1)

Your Entropic Mimic has learned Perception (lvl.1)

I saw then that the Quiverings was writhing, its advance slowed as my bolts were still eating into and causing damage.

Disoriented by the extra source of sensory perception, on unsteady feet I rose, lifting the cumbersome shield with me. The Mimic shield relinquished its grip on the floor with a crack of stone as its roots withdrew back into itself. 

I started to step slowly back, but Larynda stopped me.

“Behind you!” she wailed emphatically.

I momentarily turned to see twin orbs the color of diseased yellow materializing in the darkness, just at the edge of the Zajasite's light. What began as two eyes quickly multiplied to four, then eight, until a multitude stared back with a foreboding hunger. The sound of chittering squeaks escalated, gradually overpowering the background noise of flowing effluvia and the lingering echoes of the Quivering’s primal scream.

Approaching us were creatures the size of wolves, but they bore large incisors and long, sinuous tails, instead of the canines and bushy tails of their very distant lupine cousins. Their bodies, covered in matted fur, carried the grime of the sewers, and their eyes reflected a bold, unwholesome hunger.

As predicted by Larynda, the Sewer Rats of Al-Lazar had found us.

“Do something!” I commanded at Larynda who nodded and drew a piece of paper from her pouch, a magical Seal. She began to chant a spell of her own in a small and panicked voice.

Slimes and bloody rats. Instead of fear, I felt anger and resentment take me in full bloom and oddly a need to set an example. It blossomed into a rage that was echoed by the magic within. How dare they set such creatures against me? Entropic Aura beckoned to be released, the perfect spell to deal with the multitude of rodents that had snuck up upon us.

I released the magic from within and let it ride upon the waves of my emotion. As the first circle of grey night spread from me, I felt oddly at peace, as if the universe and everything made sense. As if everything that was meant to be, now, simply was.

The magic pulsed.

The monstrously large rats squealed, squeaked, and hissed in terror as they moved away from me. The Quiverings unfortunately was not so easily dissuaded. It continued its alien advance, tripping the marked trigger plate and swallowing up Gersal’s remains. 

Bladed darts rained from the ceiling down onto the gelatinous, tentacled blod to little effect. Its body seemed to absorb the force of the sharp metal and it suffered damage only in the single digits. It was, however, for the moment distracted.

And so I turned my attention to the vermin horde, preparing to cut a path through them with blade and spell. 

Just as I was about to cast Drain… no Greater Drain to reduce these creatures of flesh and blood to a bundle of zeros, I heard a quiet voice, a mere whisper. Pitted with the promise of the grave, it called to me in protest, and with it a sense of rot and release, of turning and of change played on my senses. Decay demanded attention. Surprisingly, the voices agreed in their sage wisdom. So, hooking up my crossbow to my belt, I formed the rarely cast spell, my free hand running through the strange somatic gestures.

The spell of rot and ruin washed over the vermin, the denizens of this terrible place. Almost immediately, pustules grew upon the giant rats as if they had been suddenly overtaken by virulent sickness. This was soon followed by an explosion of vile liquid, leaving behind cancerous weeping sores all over the rodents’ bodies. A sense of wrongness came over me, a stark contrast to my earlier feeling of tranquility. Decay, the spell at least, did not work like this.

The rodents instead of running away from us in fear and pain, drew ever closer, their number increasing by the second even as more of their number were overcome by my spreading disease. They formed almost a living mass of their own, crawling over each others’ bodies to reach us.

Then suddenly, I felt a rush of diseased air as Larynda unleashed a spell of raw Chaos. “Nara Sakullu,” she cried out in a tremulous voice that nonetheless rang out with notes of destiny. She had summoned the Black Flame.

Black jagged lines of fire rushed from her, the dark flames seemingly absorbing what little light there was, into the giant form of the Quiverings. The slime shrieked again when the black fire met it, and I laughed in maniacal glee, glad that I had chosen to take Larynda with me. A weapon that I could command. 

The dark fire burned at the Quiverings, filling the air with hot, newborn steam. Its health dropped suddenly, the unnatural magic of Chaos eating away at it as it was dissolved by the liquid flames.

But the fires did more than just burn, from them I that they emanated something very ancient, very ancient indeed that resonated with a part of my soul. Primordial chaos. Where the flames licked the stone floor and water, growths of vegetation sprouted from the stone and wastewater. Ghost-white they wilted and died in scant moments, but as suddenly as they died new flames stoked their corpses to birth new life.

Oddly, I realized to my horror, that as the Quivering’s Health dropped, so too did it on occasion rise. The spell was raw Chaos indeed, as harmful as it was helpful.

Our released unknowable magics mixed, and they created a warped duet that played in constant counterpoint. In this most discordant of songs, a melody of oblivion that resonated and echoed with itself, a single note of harmony and controlled chaos sounded.

The Quivering could not be defeated by my magic or blade, Larynda’s strange magic had seen to that. A link was formed between me in this medley of arcane medley and the tide of vermin. And with this link came my demand and order. But this was no one-way street of communication. As did my command fall upon them, so too did their multitude of lives fall upon me. Impressions of a life of darkness, of days fought with tooth and claw. Of balancing the urge to survive and live with the equal urge to rut and reproduce.

What do you wish of us? They asked of me, not really words, but a demand of their own. They were seeking purpose.

My next words were ripped from me, ripped as it seemed, from the very fabric of my soul. I felt lessened.

“Be more,” I croaked. Such simple words, but with great and heavy meaning. Larynda looked at me in horror.

But the rats listened. More importantly, they obeyed. As if marking this moment, the game heralded me with a new message. To me, it was just a notification, but to these low creatures, it might as well have been the start of their new gospel.

You have gained 1 Wisdom.

You have gained 1 Luck.

You have learned Monster Taming (lvl.2)