“One day. One day soon, I will have my revenge for your heinous betrayal. But not now. No, that’s far too soon, and far too simple.
YOU are far too simple. How can I exact revenge on an animal that doesn’t understand my master stroke for what it is?”
Steve licked his own eye.
Mindless animal or…plotting something?
It did not matter, the meager thoughts of a crystal snake were of no concern to The Devourer of Knowledge.
“How could I possibly be satisfied by a dull, uninspired ending as simple as mere death?” Devourer asked herself, pacing back and forth, her flagella whipping the soupy atmosphere of the miasmatic dimension as she hovered over the crystal snake.
“Which certainly has nothing to do with the fact that you are immune to all forms of miasma, and when I toppled the bookshelf over on you, the shelf broke first! Those weren’t attempts at revenge, those were…tactical assessments of your strength, so that the true revenge will pierce your ridiculous crystalline hide.
For you to truly regret your odious life choices, the last step will be to give you a mind of your own,” Devourer of Knowledge continued, glaring at the ignorant reptile that had killed her physical body.
“I will find a way to MAKE you understand, but just as the light of knowledge begins to shine through those placid, staring eyes, your dawning sapience will comprehend but one thing: The inevitability of your demise.
Your death won’t just happen and be done with, either. Oh, no. I will manipulate the very fabric of reality, accelerating your mind’s time at the culmination of my triumph. The moment will be stretched out into infinity. A single instant frozen in time so that the horror of realization an instant before your death is the only thing you will ever experience for ages!”
Steve began slithering down the table.
“Hey WAIT! I’m cursing you!” Devourer of Knowledge shouted, whipping its flagella against the miasma in the air, creating minor currents of magic that rippled through the insulated laboratory of William Oh as she chased after the snake.
“Steve, don’t – you’re not supposed to - AGH!” Devourer bellowed in frustration as Steve shoved past Devourer’s makeshift blockade and left the lab in search of rats and other small, defenseless creatures, like innocent spiders whose only crime was being helpful and eating pests!
“Stop right there you cock-shaped brute!” Devourer shouted, borrowing some language from the other humans she’d overheard.
Steve glanced up and gave her a blank stare, seemingly curious about the sound that had crossed dimensional barriers solely to insult him.
A moment later, he put his head back down and continued slithering out through the snake-door in the lab.
Why in the world does the lab have a snake-door?
William had assured her that Steve would stay dormant for at least a day, as he’d been well-fed the day before, but sure enough, the moment the crystal snake left the human’s gaze, it began plotting the downfall of modern civilization.
Case in point…
Instead of heading towards the kitchen where one of the staff might give it a tasty steak-beetle, the snake instead turned down a seldom-used corridor, entering a storage room and crawling over and behind the pile of junk that had accumulated over the course of the Lord’s many experiments.
RRRRIP
Devourer froze in place at the dreadfully familiar sound, patting herself down with strands of miasma and growing external optical spheres to inspect herself.
No damage, no separating from a body or anything.
What was that? she thought, squeezing into the pile of failed experiments after Steve. She found the reprehensible serpent staring in fascination at a little hole in the world.
The edges of the hole were made of frayed reality, where miasma and spacetime overlapped.
Beyond the hole was a vast starry night sky, not unlike the 11th Floor, actually-
RIIIP.
The hole tore further open with a strand-rattling noise, startling the empty-headed snake, who immediately turned tail and ran.
RIIIIP!
The edge of the hole caught upon the tip of Steve’s tail and imprinted itself on the crystal snake’s unique flesh.
“Steve! Steve stop, you’re making it worse! You damned snake, I HATE YOU!” Devourer shouted as she fled beside the transparent serpent.
Much like an errant string caught on a protruding nail, Steve’s tail caught the edge of the tear in reality and exacerbated it as he sped away, creating a serpentine pattern of empty sky cut into the floor.
After a breathless few seconds of chase, the strand of miasma finally faded from Steve’s tail and the two looked back the way they came, watching the gaping hole in William Oh’s floor swallow up his failed experiments, carpeting and various tools.
Steve looked up at Devourer of Knowledge.
“I’m not taking the blame for this,” Devourer said. “I told you to stop. You’re the one that thought you could find rats in the storage room.”
The tear in reality that spilled across the floor gradually closed, restoring the floor back to its previous state.
But at the rate it’s slowing down…
It definitely wouldn’t close completely. Maybe.
“…I should probably tell someone about this.” Devourer mused.
The fear of having his tail caught in a strange miasma web seemingly forgotten, Steve began moseying towards the kitchen.
“And don’t you act like it never happened!” Devourer shouted. “I need a witness to corroborate my testimony!” The tear in reality was already fading.
Steve stuck out his tongue and flicked it at her.
Mockingly.
Steve the Crystal Snake. One day…one day will be your last, and I will savor every moment of it, Devourer swore as she hiked up her flagella and aimed towards the main entrance.
I have to warn…Who? William Oh and Loth the Luminary had gone up to make Loth’s Stronghold. They wouldn’t be back for…days. Maybe years in Loth’s case. The Devourer wasn’t even a whole year old yet, so that sounded like lifetimes.
The only people on the Floor who even knew she existed were…Jorn!
The Devourer of Knowledge slipped through the door and out into the sunlight of the 10th Floor, putting on her maximum speed, which was roughly the same speed that one of these humans called a ‘light jog’.
While Devourer of Knowledge tracked down the local monster-hunter, Will and Loth were discussing interspecies ethics with an oversized dragon.
“Milord, this one was eating it’s own young.” Stevie said, kneeling.
I wonder If I should stop naming things ‘Steve’. Will mused.
“I wasn’t eating my children. I was eating…someone else’s.” Maskar the Corpulant said, glancing away evasively, encased in a cage of lightning.
“Not better.” Loth replied.
“No, it really isn’t.” Will said.
“How dare you judge me by your flimsy human moral code! I am Maskar the Corpulent! I am not a pathetic human, I am a dragon. I am outside, beyond, ABOVE your mammalian mores and I refuse to be subjected to them. Dragons are mighty creature that rule by strength alone, and it was the other dragon’s weakness that allowed me to kill them and raid their den, therefore the flesh of their young is mine by right of conquest.”
“So by your own logic…” Will said.
“No…” Maskar the corpulent said, sensing where Will was going.
“If we’re strong enough to kill you, then your flesh is ours by right of conquest.” Loth finished.
“No, no, no, you don’t understand. You two bipeds should behave like bipeds and run around shrieking until I eat you, while I behave like a dragon and do the eating. You two have it all backwards.” Maskar said, shaking his head, making his fat neck jiggle under his scales.
He placed a genteel clawed hand on his chest. “We all have the roles we must play.”
“It seems like you don’t know much about bipeds, because, as a rule, we typically kill things that eat children and other bipeds.” Will said. “So how about you follow your role, and we’ll follow ours.”
“Well, you see-“ Maskar said, taking a deep breath.
Suddenly the world was engulfed in flames as Maskar exhaled a wall of fire that dwarfed his enormous body, bathing the mountainside in flames. In a fraction of a second, the ever-present meat and all the creatures that lived in it were swept away.
Will reeled himself back while Loth teleported away, arriving outside the range of the dragon’s breath.
Even from as far back as they were, the oppressive heat made the edges of Will’s clothes darken and smolder, his hair curling a bit as it flirted with catching fire.
When the flames faded enough to see through, Will was surprised to see that the fat dragon was no longer fat.
Will was reminded of the dragon youth, Jericho…in that this Dragon had virtually nothing in common with the youngster.
The old, formerly fat dragon fought like a veteran of a thousand battles…
It likely was.
Will surmised it had used some kind of self-buff that consumed it’s own tissue to improve it’s stats as the miasma inside the dragon had become far more dense and lithe.
The red dragon’s form was lithe and muscular, and its tail which had formerly appeared to be a chubby mass of lard attached to its ass had transformed into a deadly whip thrice the length of its body.
It despite it’s lean frame, it was larger than any dragon Will had ever seen save Mother and Father.
…This thing is more dangerous than the monster on the 17th Floor. Will concluded as it reached into a portal.
Will and Loth reflexively swerved as dragon claws whipped out of a portal, slicing through the spot they’d been standing.
POOF!
Maskar exhaled another burst of fire and used it as cover to dive underground.
Creak!
Will heard the distinctive sound of piano wires sliding over each other and dodged the next attack by ear as Maskar appeared above them, his breath directed straight down.
Strangely enough, Will could still see Maskar swimming through bedrock below them as easily as water.
Is it a projection or did he manage to trick the map? Will wondered, dodging the flames and weaving to make himself a more difficult target as he approached.
The Maskal underground faded from Will’s map as the one above raised his arms in a humanoid way, clasping his hands together with a shout.
What the-
Prickly miasma lined up and stuck out of Maskar like iron filing attached to a lodestone.
He looked something like a puffball that would explode into seeds the moment something disturbed him.
Some kind of traceback effect? It looks reactive and explosive.
Will flicked forward a single spike of miasma with all identifying marks removed.
True to his predictions, the miasma barrier locked onto the spike, memorizing it’s shape before it exploded outwards, seeking to consume and destroy anything that matched.
Maskar didn’t passively wait for his barrier to do it’s job either, swinging his tail forward with a crack of thunder to keep Will on the defensive.
Will created another spike of miasma in his left hand and added a ‘sticky, adhering’ effect to the bottom.
The burst barrier began hurtling towards the newly created spike, and Will barely managed to attach it to the dragon’s tail without getting crushed.
“AGH!”
The homing barrier caught the spike and began tearing apart the miasmatic structures connected to it, spreading from the spike itself to the dragon’s tail that Will had adhered it to.
Maskar weaved a plane of miasma and wiped away the spell while warding off Will with his wings and left paw.
Loth appeared above him, gesturing.
Will saw her favored active Ability, the wasp impregnation spell, shoot towards the back of Maskar’s head, aiming to make an oversized wasp chew its way out of his skull.
Will took a quick sketch.
Maskar’s neck twisted at an inhuman angle and dodged the attack, shooting back a wall of flame at Loth.
Will took the momentary distraction to charge in closer, getting inside the dragon’s guard.
Once he got close, Will saw a similar prickly, reactive Ability inside the dragon’s head, waiting for Will to try something.
He couldn’t tell at a glance if the defenses were mental or all-purpose, but he didn’t want to try using the Sickle of Malignant Silence against an unknown reactive ability.
Will was still in the process of testing out his new Relic and this was the perfect opportunity to do so.
“Lucas, Tassos, hamper his arms.” Will directed the Burning Court, pointing with his tomahawk.
The named fae seamlessly crossed dimensions, blinking into existence and grabbing the dragon’s fingers and wrenching on them with everything they had.
“OW! You little-“
Will made his way through the reflexive bites and buried the tomahawk straight into the dragon’s chest.
Unfortunately, the monster’s heart was buried several arm’s lengths deeper than the blade of an axe could reach. It’s times like this I remember my conversation about weapon size with Travis.
Maskar broke free of the fae’s grip and brushed Will away with a swipe that would’ve pasted a civilian. Neka stepped into the physical world and took the brunt of the hit, sending Will tumbling backwards.
Will caught his fall and reoriented himself on the dragon, watching as it idly itched the flaming wound.
“Hah, it barely itches, human, what were you thinking bringing a toothpick to a battle with…
“Why am I on fire!?” Maskar demanded, clapping a claw over the flaming wound in his chest.
It’s not the size that counts, Travis, it’s the burning sensation when you use it, Will thought as the fae bodyguard’s hand alighted on his shoulder again.