Chapter 76 – Deep Ones

James Candle sat atop a throne of polished bone, crossing one ankle over his knee and casting an avuncular grin at the kneeling masses of loyal new family members.

Quest: Mutalyst Mob

As the first and strongest cannibal, your Ascension into a Mutalyst is nearly complete. Gather those of like temperament and the Iron Crown will shelter you from the Company and its machinations. Succeed in thwarting the Company’s assessment, and the Iron Crown will richly reward you with a place of honor.

Now, James Candle was no longer the only one changed into this glorious new form of perfection. However, he would soon become the leader of them. He had found many lurking beneath the sewers, in the foulest places imaginable.

They were all glorious budding flowers, yet to reach their full bloom. Even that reprobate Jerry, who he reluctantly added to his family after he unleashed the King in the Deep.

The man–though not for long–was quite powerful, and he understood the nature of their mutalyst transformation nearly as well as James did.

Though Jerry was less than half James’ age, the older man was faster and stronger by far. Cannibalism and its mutation into the race known as mutalyst held wonders beyond imagining.

Jerry sat at a place of honor on James’ right for the monumental feat of unleashing one of the Four Kings upon the assessment. The Company already effectively locked the shop to cannibals. The cannibals lost LP instead of gaining it from each kill and subsequent feast.

That didn’t matter. The Iron Crown gave them a way out. And with the rest of the people in the assessment busy with the King, the Candles in the Dark were free to go forth and multiply.

James saw it as his sworn duty to do to his fellow man what the System had so kindly done for him: uplift them into a newer and higher state of being.

***

Cloak trailing after him like a black banner, Luke moved in a blur, rebounding off 90-degree angles and sprinting down the next opened tunnel.

It wasn’t hard to follow the King.

Wherever he went, destruction followed, and he didn’t have much love for tight, winding corridors. The creature strode through like a child kicking over sandcastles at the beach, making an easy–if somewhat fraught–path to follow.

Unfortunately, Luke hadn’t seen much action since following the King, and he was nearly back to a familiar-looking swamp full of mud and turbid waters that oozed across fetid banks.

The last time he had seen this place was up high on a rickety bridge. Luke looked to the massive sucking pools where the King had made his journey through and knew he was on the right track.

In the wake of the King’s path, several creatures were beginning to emerge from the muck now that they detected a new threat, one much smaller and presumably easier to eat.

Bloated fishlike creatures with scales and weeping wounds pulled themselves free from their watery coffins. Several bore armor and rusted plate mail, staggering toward him with each sucking step pulled free of the muck.

Luke eased two serrated daggers from his belt.

One of them, a little taller and less grotesque, reached his hands up in the universal sign of surrender.

That caught Luke by surprise. Monsters never surrendered. They were always violent and aggressive.

The man made a croaking call and the other creatures slipped back a few steps but watched warily. “Luke, is that you?” the watery voice asked.

Luke stared at the fish-like man. The creature’s voice was vaguely familiar, but it couldn’t have been.

Then Luke recognized the features. The man’s body might have been twisted, but his eyes were just as Luke remembered. He was even wearing the same armor.

Jimmy, a person he only knew from talking to Glenn, had fallen to his death. Luke cocked back his arm to finish the job.

“Wait!” Jimmy said with that same disquieting burble in his voice, as if he had water in his lungs. “I am sorry about before, but we need your help!”

“We?” Luke asked, keeping a tight grip on both wickedly serrated daggers. “I already have a quest to kill the King and help Havenholm.”

“Not them,” Jimmy said, stopping well out of physical reach but close enough to hear him easily. “I… I am sorry about before. I was wrapped up in Henry’s lies. In the end, it turned out for the best. I enjoy my life now as one of the Deep Ones… but we need your help.”

Luke tried to wrap his mind around this creature being the heavily armored warrior that had tried to kill him earlier and instead got nearly every one of his hit-squad killed except–hopefully–Glenn.

He hadn’t seen the Archer since their less than ideal parting.

“I come bearing a gift,” Jimmy said in his watery voice. He held out one hand, palm up, while the other fished around in a water-logged pouch at his hip. He pulled free a necklace with an intricate shell on a leather thong. It pulsed angrily.

“What do you want me to do with this?” Luke said, unwilling to let go of his daggers just yet.

“It is a treasure of the Deep Ones,” Jimmy explained, still holding it out hopefully. “We revere the King in the Deep, but he must never be woken. Now that he has, he has taken the minds and souls of our friends and family. They are not themselves when the King is around.”

“He’s enslaved your people,” Luke said slowly, struggling to reconcile Jimmy as a Deep One. “With some kind of sorcery. Sounds like a ‘you’ problem.”

Who did this guy think he was? Did he just wait around for somebody to show up and present them with a gift?

Jimmy tilted his head to the side in thought. “It’s… more complicated than that. I’m not sure I am fully up to speed, but I was tasked with giving this to any who came seeking to kill the King.”

“But he’s your king,” Luke said, not understanding. “You just said you revere him.”

“It’s complicated. Well above my pay grade,” Jimmy told him, thrusting the necklace out again. “When you kill him, he will not die. He will go back to sleep. He is like a god, but not. When you destroy his avatar, the Deep Ones will be free once more. Luke… you don’t understand how much the Deep Ones have helped humanity. Not just here, but there were Deep Ones on Earth. The things they’ve shared with me… the creatures in the lightless depths that want to destroy humanity, they are the last bulwark against agents in the dark.”

“So you’re saying that Atlantis is real and the Deep Ones are the thin watery line.”

Jimmy rolled his bulbous, watery eyes. “Ha ha. But yes, to the first. If you wear this, it will render you immune to the mind-altering effects of the King. Even if you are not a Deep One, he can enter your mind and bend it to his will. If you do not take this, you risk being a thrall to him, or at the very least, distracted at the worst time.”

Luke’s curiosity got the better of him. While he didn’t know Jimmy, he looked sincere and, above all, deeply worried. He slipped one dagger swiftly back into his belt and took the necklace in nearly the same motion.

Item: [Deep One’s Bulwark Shell (Unique)]

A necklace bearing a lone shell that shields its wearer from the piercing gaze of the King in the Deep. Imbued with the ancient Marks of the Deep Ones.

Enchantments: Grants immunity to the King in the Deep’s Authority.

“Well, let’s hope it does what it says on the box,” Luke told him, slipping it over his neck. He wasn’t about to trust Jimmy at his word, but the description backed him up and so far, the System hadn’t lied to him.

Before he was about to leave, he turned back to Jimmy who shrank back a little. Am I really that spooky looking? “What’s the best way to get to the King? If you want me to put him down, I could use a little help playing catch-up.”

Jimmy grinned, his lips practically splitting his soggy face in half. “I was hoping you would ask. Not afraid of dark places, are you?”

***

John screamed and dropped to the ground as a boulder the size of a house caved in part of the wall where most of the defenders were stationed.

The King had just made his appearance. Even though the King was nearly half a mile away, it picked up hunks of stone and hurled them with the accuracy of a major league pitcher.

The wall rumbled and shook, but it held.

Several Mages guarded by Gladiators in their evolved forms waved their hands and the walls rebuilt themselves.

There was only so much mana to go around, and the defensive spells seemed to burn through it faster than the offensive ones. Those spells didn’t do much besides temporarily thin the horde of Deep Ones that assaulted Havenholm.

They had finally gotten the storerooms and sewers completely blocked off. It had been a costly battle. John had managed to finish what Marcy started, cutting them off entirely from the underside.

After her injuries, the Deep Ones came in ever greater numbers, breaking through the blockades placed below. After John’s plan went into effect, unless the Deep Ones knew how to fly, Havenholm was safe from another underground incursion.

Now they only had one point of entrance, but that also meant they had nowhere to flee. They would die or stand here to the last.

There was nowhere else to go.

Dexter, his arm in a hastily built sling, helped Johnathan to his feet. “Are you okay?” he mouthed over the ear-ringing din of explosions set off by the Mages.

John nodded and gave him a weary thumbs up. He picked up his bow and nocked an arrow. There was a thick darkness that made taking an accurate shot nearly impossible even for John’s evolved class ability: [Owl Eye] that gave him nearly telescopic 2,000/20 vision.

Fortunately–or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it–the battlefield was so thick with enemies that as long as he shot the arrows far enough past his allies, they would hit something.

It was hard enough surviving regular monsters. John couldn’t fathom how they would make it through the night against a literal giant that radiated such an aura of power that it modified the assessment.

Without the shop to buy anything, people were building up LP hand over fist, but they were also dying just as fast. This was worse than any war John had ever heard of.

Mustard gas and trench warfare seemed like a walk in the park compared to the gruesomeness of magic that could turn people inside out and disgusting fish people who could fill your lungs with water with just a touch.

John was terrified, but committed.

He would defend all the people who had come seeking asylum. Havenholm had to stand. Even with the supplies and aid of other factions, things were going poorly. Most of which were given begrudgingly and only after the cabinet had shown them what awaited their faction if Havenholm fell.

Clutching her spellbook, Janet spoke an incantation. A bolt of white lightning crackled and leapt off the pages of her spellbook. It lanced through the sky with a thunderclap and pierced the shrouding gloom of the King in the Deep’s body, revealing a glaring pupilless eye the size of an Olympic swimming pool.

Rachel stepped up beside him, her hand smoldering and outstretched. She gave him a wink, drew back another hand, and an answering black bolt of lightning streaked from her other palm. It flew true, with another thunderous clap that blew John’s cloak back with gale force winds.

Marcy stepped up on John’s other side, her hands raised as thick steel-gray storm clouds rose overhead and scudded toward the enemy. Razor-sharp pellets of ice rained down on the Deep Ones, killing few, but deeply injuring scores and providing the army below with an opening to strike deeper into the thick miasma.

Alice, Ellen, and George–their 3 main Healers–worked tirelessly to form a poison resistance barrier that spread out a hundred yards from the wall. It wasn’t perfect, but it was holding against the strange poisonous wind that swirled around the King’s massive body.

Even through the dark haze, John could see something was going on. Despite being attacked by their two strongest Mages, the King was… turning around.

The King was ignoring them.

“What could possibly draw his attention away from us?” Marcy asked, thunderstruck. She didn’t stop weaving her ice spells, however. This was a prime time to thin the attacking army.

John didn’t dare hope that the other factions had banded together to fight the thing, so he was at as much of a loss as the others.

“Doesn’t matter,” Rachel said huffily. “We’ve got hordes of monsters at our gates. Get to shooting!”

John didn’t need to be told twice.