Chapter Six
They’d been walking about five minutes when Reve landed before them. Krysta squirmed out of Skylar’s arm, went over Reve’s shoulder, and lunged through the air into Vester’s embrace before she’d even touched down. He caught the red panda and cuddled her to his chest.
“We’re okay, it all worked out,” he promised Krysta, hoping to soothe her squeaks of distress.
The little red panda wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his throat, her tail trying to hug him back while he rubbed her spine.
Vester looked up at the others, shaking his head.
“I don’t even want to know how that looked from your perspective.”
“Terrifying,” Skylar said cheerfully once she’d dropped out of Reve’s arms. The djinn walked over, caught him by the back of the neck, and pulled him in for a deep kiss. “Completely terrifying,” she repeated, voice soft, “and insane.”
“That is how it felt to me as well,” Kora said with a shaky huff. He could tell the blind kitsune was still struggling with their journey off the cliff, and Vester was worried he might have given her a new phobia.
“I liked it,” Li Ra countered with a subdued smile, “at least until we were spinning sideways. I could do without throwing up again.”
“You’d like rollercoasters,” Vester said, shaking his head at the polar reactions. “Anyway, how was the flight down?” he asked. His attention went to Reve, not wanting the tall woman to feel left out. She simple flared her wings, and then brought them down to wrap around her body.
“Skylar and Krysta were well within my limits,” she said, “though we did have to navigate around a few of the titanbats. The beasts can be territorial if they think another is encroaching on their range, and my scent is close enough to theirs to set them off.”
Vester, who had wondered how they’d beaten Reve down to the bottom so fast, assumed titanbats were the huge shapes that had passed through his illusion path. “Are they dangerous?” he asked.
“They’re herbivores, mostly, drifting through the sky and sucking in spores from all the fungal life,” she replied. “But they’re strong, and tough, and when roused they are capable of great damage. These were babies, so they likely couldn’t have killed us.”
“What does being ‘mostly’ a herbivore mean?” Li asked curiously. She lifted her head, tilting her hat back while taking in the cavern skyline, almost like she expected a huge bat to fly down on them at any moment.
Not that I blame her, Vester thought. We haven’t had the calmest welcome to this floor. But we got away and nobody is actually hurt, so I’m still calling our arrival a win.
“Their mouths are very big,” Reve explained. When no one looked like that had answered her question, the woman shrugged. “They don’t spit out anything that gets sucked into their mouths. Between their size and their strength, they often drag in any small enough to consume.”
“They don’t choke on larger animals?” Li Ra continued, surprised the beasts used a method like that.
Vester thought it sounded a lot like whales on his planet. I wonder if the titanbats use the same kind of filtration system in their mouths?
“Their throats are lined with heavy muscles and many crushing teeth that reduce everything entering their stomach to paste,” Reve explained. “They rarely choke… though it has happened. I believe that is the most common cause of death for the beasts.” Reve’s description painted a gruesome picture.
Okay, so, they’re nothing like Earth whales, Vester decided.
Giant, flying garbage disposals that are almost too tough to kill.
Sounds fun. His fingers rose to scratch behind Krysta’s ears, glad she’d finally stopped trembling.
She must have been so scared for us, he thought while planting a small kiss on the top of her head.
“Let’s find a place to set up a Sanctuary,” he said. “Once we have a safe position, we can try and figure out where we are and how to head toward the blood elfling city.” The others nodded, and the Party shifted smoothly into a patrol formation.
Skylar pulled her golems out of storage, Beaky and Splinter back in frames modeled after Woody’s.
The bronze-and-iron puppets weren’t made of Sargo’s bones and Safe Zone wood the way Woody was, but the four-armed murderbot shapes were identical.
Woody, Dent, and Ripper came next, the golems forming a pentagon around the group.
Kora moved toward the back, ready to protect them from any who might follow them.
Li Ra went to the front so she could use her skills to find them the best place to camp.
Skylar and Reve walked ahead of Vester, and Krysta remained in his arms.
They were able to make good time, though the terrain wasn’t remotely easy.
The stone they moved across was slick, a coating of slimy moss and mold growing in the deepest channels, while the dryer ground was sloped enough to make Vester feel like he was trying to walk diagonally.
Worse, the plant-like sludge filling those stone channels released a foul odor that lingered in their clothes.
It reminded Vester of a beach he’d been to in New Jersey, one where dying fish, hot seaweed, and abandoned trash had all been left to rot in the saltwater.
Not exactly perfume.
Less than twenty minutes into the trip, Krysta had shoved the muzzle of her head into his breast pocket and wrapped his handkerchief around her face. Li Ra had sneezed twice, her eyes watering, though she handled the stench far better than Krysta.
It was Kora who seemed to suffer the most. The kitsune’s eyes were constantly leaking, her nose was running, and she’d developed a cough that had Vester worried. “Is this green shit poisonous?” he asked, waving toward the slime at their feet.
“No,” Reve said, shaking her head, “but the spores are highly irritating to those who aren’t used to them. Races with sensitive noses are especially vulnerable. Once we’re away from the river, the moisture level will grow too low for this variety of slime-moss to grow and the air will clear.”
“I’d say we should walk faster, but I think we’d trip and break something,” Vester muttered. Between the tilted stone, the wet slime, and the allergic discomfort, it wasn’t easy keeping a solid pace.
“Why don’t we ride the golems?” Skylar asked.
When Li Ra turned to look at her, Skylar motioned toward her puppets.
“Woody, Splinter, and Beaky all have claws that can pierce the stone, so their footing is perfect. Dent is just cracking the ground every step, since it’s too heavy to slip… and Ripper, well, Ripper doesn’t have problems with footing.”
The six-legged feline golem opened its jaws like it was purring, pacing in a slow circle while everyone stared at it.
With its splayed, clawed toes, the four serrated tentacles on its back, and its long, chainsaw-like tail, the panther-like golem looked ready to charge in any direction without issue.
Vester knew from experience that Ripper actually was ready to charge in any direction.
Skylar had done an amazing job articulating Ripper’s joints for maximum flexibility.
Despite its long body, Ripper could curl into a ball forward and back, and its tentacles could reach over twelve feet from its body.
“I want to ride the cat,” Li Ra announced. “I call dips.”
“Dibs,” Vester corrected absently. “When you’re claiming first right on something it’s calling dibs, not dips.” It amused him that the word came out a little oddly through whatever translation magic Ordinal used to let him talk to everyone. It almost sounded Russian to his ears.
“Yes, I call dibs,” Li repeated, nodding. “Please let me ride the murder cat.” The oni wasn’t normally the expressive type, but she was giving Skylar puppy-eyes so wide Vester was worried she’d hurt herself. Li Ra’s hands were clasped before her chest and she was literally leaning toward the djinn.
“Fiiiiiiiinnnnee,” Skylar conceded after a moment.
Everyone knew Ripper was secretly her favorite, even if Woody had the most sentimental value.
He didn’t blame her; she’d worked hard designing that articulated skeleton, and it was only because they’d used high-grade dungeon materials that they’d been able to get Ripper to work at all.
The cat had required specialized enchantment to keep its crystal pieces stable, but that part was crucial, since the crystal was needed to store the power from its golem core that allowed it to move so fluidly.
Li Ra let out a happy—if psychotic—giggle and darted over to sling a leg over Ripper’s spine. She nestled herself in between the two sets of tentacles, which Vester wasn’t sure about, but he didn’t question it.
“I suppose this will work,” Kora agreed.
She simply walked over to Dent and stepped onto its hammer-hand.
The kitsune had no problem using Dent’s arm like a stair and then settling herself on the golem’s wide shoulder.
She reminded Vester of a princess on the back of an elephant, regal and unbothered.
“I shall simply fly,” Reve announced. A whoomph sounded as she spread her wings then swept them down to lift into the air. Vester nodded in agreement. Reve was too tall to be carried piggyback by any of the remaining golems, and there were advantages to having her airborne.
Skylar simply hopped up onto Woody’s back and wrapped her legs around its waist, in between its upper and lower arms. That left her free to swing her wrench as needed. If the slender puppet had any problems with Skylar’s weight, Vester couldn’t see it.
“Here,” Vester said, gently peeling Krysta off his chest and setting her on Beaky’s shoulder.
At least, Vester thought it was Beaky. The combat frames weren’t distinct, and both Beaky and Splinter were made from the same materials, so Vester didn’t really have any features to base his guess on.
“I’m going to just run to keep my mobility.”
It wasn’t comfortable walking on the tilted stone, but that didn’t mean it was hard for Vester.
His dexterity and wisdom were so high that he was more than capable of registering the changes to his footing and adjusting before most people would have even grasped they were sliding.
If anything, the rocky, slime-coated teardrops were a great training method for him.
He swore he could feel Kora nodding in approval behind him. That woman really does love when we train, he thought in amusement. “Okay, let’s get going. Li Ra, if you could turn us away from the nearest river, we’ll head somewhere dryer. I think we’d all enjoy some clear air soon.”
The oni waved a hand in salute, then tapped Ripper on the side to turn the golem.
The Party resumed moving, now much faster; the only downside was their stealth.
Dent was not a subtle thing, and with the iron golem starting to gain momentum, the heavy crunch of its footfalls echoed like anvils falling.
The other golems were almost silent in comparison, but Vester still heard dozens of metallic clicks marking their claws punching into the stone. If he closed his eyes, he imagined it sounded like a giant crafting a sword while dozens of metal spiders tap danced around its feet.
But sacrificing stealth for speed had a real benefit: thirty minutes after they’d mounted the golems the Party finally escaped the slimy rocks for more even ground. The coughing, sneezing, and wet eyes faded about five minutes after that, and none of them had had to use any of their mana to cure it.
They’d also found a much wider path, where the stony teardrops had begun forming slim pillars reaching twenty, sometimes fifty feet into the sky.
Vester could see that the pillars continued to thicken and gain height deeper into the cavern, and after a moment he realized they reminded him of foothills, if he considered those massive columns that reached the ceiling to be the mountains.
He glanced back over his shoulder toward the slimier rocks, wondering if that made the sludge-covered area the equivalent of plains.
Then he turned his attention back to their journey.
The others dismounted the golems, reforming their original marching order.
Krysta resumed her pandali form and came to walk next to Vester. “You okay?” he asked her quietly.
“It was really, really scary seeing you flying through the air like that,” she admitted.
Her fingers gripped her metal staff hard, grinding her palms against the textured metal.
“I couldn’t keep up with how fast you were going, and then there were all those crazy turns! Reve wouldn’t look in your direction. I think she was terrified she might break your illusions and kill all of you.”
“Oof,” Vester grunted, “I didn’t even consider that. Her Perception Aura can dispel them if she focuses too hard on seeing through them. I’m glad she thought of it.”
Krysta let out an anxious noise, biting her bottom lip for a second, then exhaled.
“I also struggled because everything I was taught at the Academy about magic insisted there was no way that should have worked. If you had a telekinesis or a matter-manipulation skill, maybe,
but simply summoning stone into existence under you in midair should have resulted in you and the rock plummeting to the ground below.”
“Yeah, not gonna lie, I was afraid that would happen too.”
“Then why would you even try it?” Krysta hissed while giving his back a whack with her tail. “Why would you even consider something so reckless and insane? You dove off a cliff with two people and slid down a… a… a slide… made of nothing but your dreams! It was madness!”
Vester hooked an arm around Krysta, dragging her against his chest and hugging her tightly to his side.
“I did it because I had faith. I’ve created solid objects in the air before, and my illusions follow my will. Fantastic Reality is connected to Freeform Illusion, so I gambled that it meant the reality I create would also follow my will… and I was right.”
“But if you hadn’t been—” Krysta began, only for Vester to cut her off.
“I know it was scary to have to watch,” he interrupted gently, “and I am sorry that it worried you so badly. But we had to get out of that swarm, and Reve couldn’t carry all of us. It was a gamble, but it worked. It took almost all of my mana, and I’m still pretty spent, but I made it work.
Take a few deep breaths, we’re okay.”
Vester wasn’t mad at Krysta—he understood she was stressed because she’d felt helpless. This was the first time she’d ever failed at creating her Sanctuary, and all of them had grown accustomed to her ability to make the temporary Safe Zones. She was shaken, and stress was leaving her rattled.
He hugged her close, guiding her while they walked, and she slowly relaxed in his arms, but Vester didn’t think she really relaxed until Li found a good campsite for them and Krysta’s Sanctuary blossomed into being around them.
To be honest, part of him didn’t relax until that moment either.