“Something’s peeling off the mountain.” Will said, squinting as the surface of the distant mountain began shifting slightly, like grass in the wind. Pieces of that grass were floating up into the air.
“Better eyes than me,” Loth said.
“Here,” Will grasped the air, lensing the air to create a makeshift spyglass, bringing the mountain closer.
“Ah. Some kind of flying monster.”
Will couldn’t use that trick as well as he used to, because he could see the miasmatic structures being used to lens the air itself, which made it harder to treat it as a lens.
At least the fog cleared up.
“Loth, make us a place to hide and Jorn, we’ll need to use some of your summons as a distraction. Pick one that’s flashy.”
Jorn nodded while Loth placed a hand on the ground.
A moment later, bugs crawled out of Loth’s barrel and began to burrow into the stone ruins, while hundreds of firespout hummers were carried by cloud-goats far off into the distance.
Once they started spewing fire, they would immediately gain the attention of everythign in a several mile radius, hopefully including these little fluttering…things.
How far out are these guys?
Will compared what he could see to what was represented on his map.
The pale red cloud of fluttering things were headed their way, and they were directly above that ridge, which put them…
Oh. They’re in range.
“I’m gonna thin them out.”
Will mentally grasped the fabric of his Map and plucked two opposing sides.
Columns of hardened air smashed down on either side of the swarm and crushed a swath of the monsters, some fifteen miles distant. The flock of…whatever they were, tumbled to the ground, creating a hole in their formation that they could see from here.
“Showoff.” Loth said, probably feeling a bit competitive, knowing that her Draconic Domain only stretched about three miles.
“No, it didn’t kill them,” Will said with a frown. Will’s Aspect cantrip simply didn’t harden the air enough to kill a monster on an upper Floor.
Will briefly considered trying to create a Dimensional Blade through the Map to chop up the enemies in the distance, but since it was a self-made Ability, there was no hand-holding when it came to doing so.
The channel that allowed Abilities through his Map was open, but if Will got it wrong, there was a change of cutting himself in half again which was…ill-advised to try for the first time in the middle of nowhere, under stress.
Especially because I’m not sure exactly where the Dimensional blade will originate if it fails to go through the Map. Where my Map is stored? My head?
Instead, Will sent out Phantom Hands.
Beside him, Jorn’s halo of arrows shuddered, looking like they wanted to leap into action, but holding back.
“What’s your range with those things?” Will asked.
“About a quarter mile.” Jorn said with a sheepish shrug. “I thought that was pretty good.”
While Phantom Hands were chopping up the enemy, Loth gestured to them.
“The hunting blind is done, gentlemen.” She said, grasping a carved handle on the stone and pulling it open.
Will and Jorn climbed in.
The inside was a hollowed-out section of stone wall, with thousands of tiny holes in the ceiling that made it possible to peer outside without the outside peering back in.
As long as it was brighter outside than inside.
“The escape route is that way.” Loth said, pointing down a dark tunnel. “It follows the ruins for about a hundred feet, then we run.”
Blinking glowbugs marked the path.
Will nodded then turned his attention back to the monsters approaching from above.
They were becoming large enough to make them out individually. They looked like…Butterflies…made of meat.
That’s weird.
At their center, where a butterfly would typically have a face with a proboscis, they had a single wickedly barbed spike of bone with an unknown miasma pattern on it.
The spike rested in the center of a bloody gash in their necks, almost like the creature had been beheaded and its spine reformed into a thrusting weapon.
“Well, I don’t like that.” Will muttered.
“Don’t like what?” Jorn asked, peering out one of the holes. His Acuity wasn’t quite as good so he took a few extra seconds, but he saw it eventually.
“Oh, Ugh.” Jorn turned a bit pale in the dim light of the glowbugs. “Were those people?”
Will frowned and peered back through the hole.
The edges of the butterflies wings….looked a bit like someone had taken human limbs and brutally stretched them out, adding flesh between the arm and leg to create a wing.
Then skinned the whole thing.
The ‘legs’ of the butterfly were ribs.
Yep, that’s a person.
“Nice catch Jorn.” Will said, giving the kid a thumbs-up. “Try not to throw up. Or become one of them.”
“I’ll try.” Jorn said, nodding.
“Is this that empathy thing?” Devourer asked.
“Indeed, it can be a weakness. When a certain amount of horror is inflicted on another, humans can’t help but imagine the same done to themselves, and it causes a small amount of psychic damage,” Loth replied.
“Fascinating. Why did they choose to have such a weakness?”
“Why did you choose to be made entirely of Miasma and incapable of moving by yourself or interacting with the real world?” Will asked, glancing over at the disembodied miasma construct.
“Fool, I didn’t…Ah.” Devourer paused, the flickering of her mind speeding up. “I see. You didn’t choose your weaknesses.”
“As if anyone would choose to suffer,” Will whispered, watching the butterflies getting closer. They were deceptively fast.
“Jorn, the distraction.”
There was a bloom of light in the distance as Jorn’s summons began spewing flames in every direction, creating what Will assumed was a perfectly good distraction.
Will felt it through his feet and the knuckles he was crouching on.
A minor tremor at first, imperceptible to anyone but him, followed by-
Will threw an arm over Jorn’s head as the world began to rattle violently.
Unlike what Will had expected, the hunting blind they were hiding in didn’t collapse from the sudden earthquake. There were deep cracks in the stone that should have collapsed it, save for the silk filaments that had been exposed to air.
Loth gave Will a thumb’s-up.
It won’t break that easy, she signed.
“Lemme see what happened,” Will said, peering out the blind. The distraction was behind some distant buildings, so no matter how hard he pressed his cheek to the stone Will couldn’t get a good angle on…
Will smacked his forehead and rolled his eyes.
Phantom Eye
Will used the map to summon a phantom eye above Jorn’s summons.
“…Unsummon the firespouts.” Will whispered.
Jorn did so, but he couldn’t resist asking.
“Why?”
“Because you’re feeding the meat tower,” Will said, pointing.
Jorn pressed his face up to one of Loth’s peep-holes, spotting the pillar of meat that was continuing to rise above the surrounding buildings, covered with goop that sputtered with flames.
“Whaaa…”
“That’s why it’s cold here,” Will said, watching the miasma dance in front of him.
He’d noticed the miasma of the floor was designed to chill the air and retard growth. He hadn’t bothered to ask why.
“Someone modified the entire Floor to slow the growth of…whatever that is,” Loth said, nodding. “I’ll have to be careful with cooking.”
If someone could modify an entire Floor, did they have the same level of technology as the inhabitants of the 8th Floor? Or…no, the stone buildings weren’t particularly advanced.
Chances were this was the result of a single powerful individual making a last-ditch effort to…allow the people to escape to a lower Floor.
What’s going to happen to my home when The Coil ends? Will hadn’t thought about it too much, but watching former humans twisted into butterflies…he felt like he’d gotten a glimpse into how bad it could be, and why he needed to prevent it.
Through Phantom Eye, Will saw the pillar of meat grow and branch further towards the sky, its surface bubbling with protrusions that swelled and shrank, the growth at war with the flames killing the flesh, turning it into a black, charred tree weeping blood.
CRACK.
“Run,” Will said, shoving Jorn towards the emergency exit.
Loth and Jorn went first, followed by Will, Steve and Bree’s bird.
It bumped its noggin on the ceiling as they ran.
“The Burned Stronghold is currently not on-
The rest of the sitrep was interrupted by a cacophonous noise as the pillar of meat fell through their hunting blind.
Will dove through the cloud of dust and rock shrapnel, coming to his feet beside Loth and Jorn.
The building-sized meat-tree had collapsed under its own weight and crushed their hiding places. Even in death, its branches were budding with ominous fruit, slightly different from what they had seen before from the earlier one.
And above…
PFFT
One of the bone stingers shot out of one of the meat butterflies, tearing through the air and missing Will’s shoulder by a hair’s breadth.
Did you just shoot your spine at me!? Will thought, drawing his axe. Hardened air wasn’t going to block it like it did those globs of acid earlier, so he didn’t even try.
“Will!” Loth motioned for Will to come closer.
He grabbed Jorn and the two clumped together with Loth.
A dome of spider-silk erupted from the ground and caught dozens of spines as they shot towards them, bringing them harmlessly to the ground.
An instant later, a volley of dozens of anchorite bullets launched out of the earth and knocked back the frontline.
The ground opened up and threads of webbing began to capture the flying monsters and drag them towards the ground, where man-sized worms with circular rows of inward-facing fangs waited to devour the butterflies.
Will was stunned for a moment at their resemblance to the pale worms that had nearly eaten him during his Establishing Quest, but he shook it off, sprinting straight up into the air.
Who’s left? Will thought, scanning the surroundings both with his eyes and with the Phantom Eye above him.
The fliers were starting to thin out, so Will picked off the last ones, bobbing and weaving to make himself a harder target while considering his next move.
The fruits on the meat-tower were beginning to swell.
That was the next move.
Will perforated each and every one of the fruits with a cannonball, pre-empting whatever the Abyss the Floor was deciding to send at them.
He landed beside Loth and Jorn. Loth seemed calm, surveying the ground for trap components she could re-use.
Jorn was red-faced, panting and wiping sweat from his brow.
“Gods, it’s never been that frantic before. Is climbing always like this?”
“Pretty much.” Will said, keeping an eye open for those brain starfish. If even one of them caught the scent of this battle and approached, it might be able to kill one of them before the others could react.
Click, click, click, Will could hear a soft clicking sound, like a creaky door being opened extremely slowly. Since getting the sense upgrade to his Uru Drake Eye, he’d become able to tell if a sound was coming from the real world or if it was miasmatic in nature.
This was miasma.
Click, click, click.
Will turned in Jorn’s direction, where the sound was coming from.
There was a spine coming out of his back.
“What?” Jorn asked.
Inside his body, Will could see and hear Jorn’s Class click as the invasive miasma flipped a portion of it into…something else.
Dimensional Storage
Will pulled out a numbing potion, a Supreme healing potion and a regrowth potion, along with some gauze and leather.
WIll hastily rolled up the leather.
“Bite down on this.”
“Huh, wha-agh!” Jorn’s voice was muffled as the leather made it’s way between his teeth.
Will grabbed Jorn’s shoulders and manhandled him onto his stomach.
“Sorry,” Will said, shaping Phantom Hand’s armor into a sharp cylinder.
It’s got barbs and poison. No sense wasting time, let’s make this as fast as possible.
Will used the phantom hand’s ability to shape blades to his needs to scoop out the barbed spine along with about an inch of flesh on each side of it, carrying a bit of internal organs and Jorn’s slowly corrupting Class along with it.
Jorn let out a scream of surprise through the gag until Will dumped the Supreme healing potion on the wound.
Sourdough
The supreme healing potion became a small red bead and Will pocketed it while holding Jorn’s thrashing down.
“Three second triage. That’s gotta be some kind of record.” Loth mused, looking over Will’s shoulder.
“What. Was that!?” Jorn demanded as Will released him, grasping his back and scuttling away from Will like he’d gone crazy.
“Souvenir?” Will asked, holding up the spine along with the chunk of Jorn still attached to it.
“Wha-was that in me?”
“Yep, say ‘Ah’,” Will said before force-feeding Jorn the regrowth potion just to be sure his internal organs were good.
Sourdough
“I didn’t feel anything!”
“That happens. Remember your first fight?”
“Right…” Jorn said, rubbing his back.
“Anything hurt?” Will asked, jiggling the numbing agent. Because the spines had some kind of curse Will had decided to forgo the numbing agent.
“No…I’m good, Jorn said, climbing to his feet and picking up the barbed projectile, gazing at it in fascination.
Will turned his attention to the peripheries.
Is Steve okay? Yeah, he’s climbing out from under some rubble just fine. Raven okay? Will found the bird atop his head, somehow not dislodged in that scuffle.
Devourer of Knowledge was gliding along beside Loth, who picked through the aftermath for trap components and Relics that might’ve spawned.
None of those brain-starfish either. Good.
“Hey, Will,” Jorn said, bringing his attention back to the spine.
Jorn’s flesh was slowly calcifying, turning into a lump of solid bone on the end of the spine.
“…Lemme check your back again,” Will said, gesturing for Jorn to turn around.