Chapter 181: Take Fear for a Ride

I need more information. Here’s the important follow-up question: Will thought, using his snakes to freeze the terrain in place. Kincaid made a strangled whimper, like someone had just stepped on his throat.

Is this flesh surrounding me actually Kincaid or a projection created by an ability?

Will walked up to a lump sticking out of the wall and hacked it off with his tomahawk before offering it to the Tower.

Do you wish to Sacrifice Dimensional Stomach to Aspect of the Immortal Serpent?

No.

Hmmm. Doesn’t say ‘Kincaid’ or ‘Fae Lord’. I guess it was too much to ask for to get a piece of him that easily.

This also meant that damage Will did here probably wouldn’t directly affect Kincaid.

“Why are you suddenly afraid, Kincaid? Will asked, his Phantom Eye’s gaze flitting across the spot in the floor that he’d damaged in his surprise attack on the decoy. It was gone now, but Will knew for a fact that he’d hit Kincaid’s real body with that one attack.

“You don’t take any damage from anything that happens in here, do you?” Will asked, pacing the confines of the stomach, the acid trying and failing to bother his skin. Not only did Will have a passive to resist ‘exposure’, his Resistance was criminally high. The acid was no more powerful to him than water.

“Or maybe…you just realized that it’ll take longer to kill me than it’ll take the psychic venom you got hit with to break your grip on me?”

Will detected a fountain of fear spilling out of the center of the room as Kincaid reacted to that statement.

Will’s tomahawk had a lovely on-hit debuff that grew over time, and Will had tagged him with it. Kincaid was on a clock, and to Will, this stomach might as well be a fleshy spa.

“You may speak.”

Will released his grip on the terrain enough that Kincaid could speak again.

“…”

Kincaid didn’t speak for a good while, seemingly considering his words carefully.

“The wound you dealt will spell my demise. However, that demise will come from another Lord taking advantage of a crippling injury. I will either consume you or you will die as this pocket dimension becomes untethered when I die. You will not escape. I will not lose to you.”

Will felt his hair stand on end as he realized what was bothering him.

This was just like the Trial Room that almost killed him. Except there was no door.
Will felt his breath hitch and his heart jolt in his chest like a spooked horse.

Will did what he always did when he was afraid: Make shit up.

“If you’re going to die either way, it would be better to be killed by a legend, wouldn’t it?” Will asked, pacing back and forth in the room like a trapped predator.

“…What do you mean?”

“I don’t know if you know this, but I’m a pretty big deal in The Tower,” Will said, trying a tactic he had never tried before against someone he was fairly sure it wouldn’t work on.

“You seem ill at-ease. Can I offer you some stomach acid to settle your nerves?”

To spite him, Will formed an air-cup and knocked back a quart of the potent acid with a zesty burp.

“How do you know this pocket dimension is disconnected from reality when you die?” Will demanded, pointing up at the ceiling. “Have you died before?”

I think there’s a porthole in the floor where the fear is oozing out from. That has to be where the connection is formed, but does it allow the physical to cross or just thoughts and feelings?

I know this pocket dimension is disconnected because I have done many experiments with many subordinates granted this Ability. Up to and including killing them while they were using it.

Damn, that’s a pretty good answer, Will thought, continuing to pace across the floor that he was holding in place, the fear gushing from himself nearly tripping him.

Oh great, now I’M afraid, Will thought, glaring at where his fear and Kincaid’s mixed together on the floor, creating a stringy mess.

They didn’t seem to want to mix well, like oil and water they slithered across each other, twitching slightly as their owners interpreted their fears differently.

As he looked at the two fears sliding across each other, a spark of an idea arose.

No…that couldn’t possibly work…but on the other hand…don’t really have much to lose.

At the core of Will’s idea: What does one do with terrain?

Ignore the weird, fancy uses that Will had created as cantrips. Those were perversions of the natural order. One doesn’t normally manipulate the terrain to that extent. You don’t turn it into lenses or make it into ripples and pillars that break your opponent’s legs.

So what do you do with terrain?

You navigate it.

You traverse it.

Kincaid is feeling the exact same fear here and in the outside world.

Can I use it like a bridge?

“…what are you doing?”

“Trying something.” Will said, stepping on Kincaid’s fear, causing the entire room to shudder with terror.

Will lunged forward, moving forward along the fear as fast as he could…and slammed face-first into the fleshy pink wall.

“BAHAHAHAHA!” Kincaid’s laughter was exuberant, but with the way the fountain of fear began drying up, Will was not amused. That was his door out, and it was closing.

That realization caused Will’s fear to begin to gush out of him again unbidden, obscuring Kincaid’s fear as it retreated back into the floor.

I need to get him to be afraid again, Will thought, scowling at the floor as he paced back and forth.

“I see you have discovered the link between my consciousness and my stomach. I must inform you that it does not exist in the physical sense. Dig down to it all you like, you will find nothing.”

“I believe you,” Will said, pacing back and forth as his mind worked at full tilt. He needed to get Kincaid scared again so he could try again. But each time he did it, Kincaid would get less afraid, and he’d have to come up with some new provocation.

Will had already wasted the best fear Kincaid would ever feal. The fae had seemingly come to terms with his own death.

The only thing Kincaid feared now was Will’s escape, which would make him look like a chump.

How do I…

Will paused for a moment and watched his own fear slide across the last remaining tiny pool of Kincaid’s fear.

Oil and water.

Two opposing fears by two opposing people. What Will was afraid of, Kincaid wanted. What Kincaid was afraid of, Will wanted.

The two would never mix.

Unless they did somehow?

Will had very little control over Kincaid’s fear.

But he did have some small control over his own…

What if I was afraid of what Kincaid was afraid of? Would the two mix? Would those slimy ‘strands’ connect? Could that create a bridge between me and him? Two points in space connected by the exact same fear?

That was so godsdamned unintuitive…

But worth a shot. All I have to lose is time.

Will sat down, leaned up against the wall and made himself comfortable, closing his eyes and relaxing.

“…What are you doing?”

“Escaping.” Will said with a long exhale.

I am Kincaid. I am very afraid that William Oh is about to escape.

Will began with that as a premise, but it rang hollow. He wasn’t actually feeling it, even a little.

Will began filling in details that the knew or surmised to be true, adding depth to the fear. In order to match his fear to Kincaids, he would have to imagine himself being Kincaid. Fear what he feared…and then do it anyway.

Will exhaled and pictured himself as Kincaid...

He was over nine thousand years old, and he had climbed his way to the top of a bloody pile of corpses, accumulating Debt, gaining size and intelligence to fulfil his purpose of taking revenge on the people who had abandoned him.

Why?

Those people were long dead, but their descendants fit the bill well enough. Even though they protested their innocence, they wore the same faces as the humans who had lorded over him his entire life, and nothing gave him as much satisfaction as seeing the light leave their eyes while they were still alive.

Will brought that attitude forward and used it to color his thoughts about William Oh.

The idea that a fae who had survived every single upheaval from the beginning until now would lose to a young upstart was-

Kincaid/Will paused as a thought occurred to them.

Isn’t that the way it’s always been though? Every time the Coil ends… THE HARBINGER!

A bolt of fear shot through both of them as a fog was lifted from their memories, the story of the Harbinger resurfacing in their consciousness.

How…!?

“What are you doing!?” Kincaid demanded

“Escaping,” The little human said, eyes closed, slowly leaning forward inside his stomach. Leaning toward the connection. Something about the human had changed, some undefineable quality in the way he inched forward tapped into a deep terror that Kincaid had never shared with anyone.

This wasn’t just the fear of losing his life. It was deeper, more primal. The fear that everything, including his legacy, would be consumed by the world-eating snake as it inexorably ground out another Coil.

Nothing would be left of him but a footnote in a doomed hero’s story.

“DON’T YOU DAAARE!” Kincaid shouted both in his stomach, and the real world, what remained of his throat going raw from that single feral scream.

“Oh, I’m gonna,” The Harbinger hyperventilated through gritted teeth, eyes still closed, leaning forward and grasping some invisible…something…that wriggled in his hand like an angry eel.

Will could feel it. The dread squirming in his guts matched the thrashing of the eel exactly.

And yet it was connected to Kincaid. Connected to both of them. Their fear was synched up. Merging. Creating a tidy little rope bridge between the two of them.

Will was absolutely terrified of what would happen if he crossed it…but cross it he must.

It’s just like falling through the Doors. Just swallow the fear and do it anyway.

Kincaid and Will’s terror redoubled an instant before Will took a firm grip of the invisible strand and dove forward.

Will’s body sank into the fear, disappearing as he began swimming through it like a fish going upstream.

“No, NO! NOOOOO!”

He’s coming, he’s coming he’s coming he’s coming he’s coming, he’s coming he’s coming he’s coming he’s coming, he’s coming he’s coming he’s coming he’s coming, he’s coming he’s coming he’s coming!

Will’s mind devolved into pure terror as words and subtlety lost all meaning. Their fear turned inward, folded in on itself over and over, swelling like a monstrous ovipositor as it protruded out of Kincaid…

And out of the folded tunnel of fear tumbled William Oh, eyes still closed.

Now let’s find out if I was imagining everything, Will thought.

Now Will had to do the process in reverse, re-establishing his sense of self and de-coupling his fear from Kincaid’s.

I am William Oh, and I am not afraid of myself escaping, Will thought, his life flashing in his mind.

Will exhaled and opened his eyes, discovering a sea of blue.

Right. Still blind. Guess that’s still a problem. Inwardly, Will was relieved that he wasn’t actually Kincaid. That would suck.

Phantom Eye

109 Charges remaining

Will’s vision was restored just in time to see a massive cancerous mass barreling towards him.

“It’s you!”

Will dragged himself backwards and slammed into a wall, rolling to the side an instant before the cancerous appendage struck the stone, creating a cacophonous crack that spread through the spacious room.

Will gained distance and took a moment to take in the scene.

They were in some kind of dark cathedral, a massive underground shrine dedicated to feeding Kincaid. The tapestries were rotten and barely clinging to the walls. Though they were old and tattered, Will could tell that they deified the repulsive fae.

 The only light that he could see came from a closed door that presumably led to the tunnels that Will had violently exposed to the sky. Despite being only a sliver of light, it was more than enough for Will to study the contents of the room.

Strewn across the floor were half-eaten corpses, both human and fae, and in the center of it all, was a pyramid of tumorous, throbbing flesh, topped by a single skinny upper body with emaciated, elongated limbs.

“Three times!” The massive, distended stomach screamed at him while the upper body flopped around lifelessly, jaw slack and eyes staring.

“Three times I have deceived you! Three times I survived the turning of the Coil! And yet…here you have come for me again, Harbinger. How are you here? How did I forget!? How did you ESCAPE!? Why do you…keep coming back?”

Will shrugged, limbering up his axe arm.

“WAI-“

Will unleashed everything he had.