Valerios
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Chapter 70: The Hunters and the Hunted—and Jerry
🕑 Added 2022-06-17 17:38:00 +0000 UTCI suspect this will be terribly fun.
However, it will have to be terribly fun in a few days. We're approaching an important deadline at work -- I'm submitting my research to one of the largest AI conferences, actually -- and I need to bust my ass off for a week to get everything ready, so the story will go on break until 6/27.
On the bright side, work will probably calm down after that, until mid-July when my contract is over.
Sorry for the cliffhanger, enjoy your week, and see you on the next-next Monday!
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“Ugh.”
Jerry held his head as he got off the floor. “That hurt.”
He was welcomed by an affectionate oink. Boboar appeared, poking Jerry with his snot to make him feel better. Foxy was on the other side, looking at him with wide—yet empty—eyes.
“Oh, you guys are here too!” Jerry smiled. “That’s nice…but where are we? What happened?”
Both animals looked at him wordlessly.
“You don’t know either, huh… I guess we fell into a trap of sorts. The floor opened up, and here we are. But where is everybody else?”
He looked around. The nearby fallen torch illuminated a corridor stretching ahead and behind him, but there was nobody else to be found. Thankfully, Jerry was a necromancer, and he could use his magic threads to communicate with his undead.
He closed his eyes. A few long moments later, he reopened them.
“So, that’s how it is. Everyone is split, and we should try to reconvene as quickly as possible. But, man”—he scratched his head—“what a hassle. Where is everybody?
“Well, no use thinking too much. Laura said to follow all right paths, so we’ll follow all right paths. What do you think, Foxy? Between the front and back paths, which is righter?”
The fox shrugged.
“Yeah, I think so too.”
Jerry got up, grabbed his torch, and began walking. The two animals followed him excitedly.
“Yeah, this reminds me of the forest too,” Jerry mused. “Back then, it was just us three, wasn’t it? And then, we got all these other friends too… Being around so many people can be tiring, but I wouldn’t exchange you guys—any of you—for all the taels in the world.”
Boboar oinked, and Foxy purred in happiness. Jerry smiled.
I love my life.
The path branched off occasionally, but they always turned right. Jerry had nothing to consider besides keep an eye—and an ear—out for danger, so his mind wandered. From the Akshik tribe’s plight, to the Wizard Order, to the Curse, to the Archmage…and to the future.
Well, of he had any.
Probably not—but, if we somehow beat Aracataron and save the Dead Lands, what next? Fight the Wizard Order, maybe? Or continue as a traveling circus?
Hmm… Maybe I should go check out those flying whales. I still want one.
Jerry’s pleasant musings were interrupted when a shadow rounded the corner. He immediately got scared and shone his torch at it. The creature growled.
It was a hound like the ones they’d met before. In fact, its face was covered in blood and guts, so it was probably part of that specific pack and had somehow escaped the Axehand-Horace canine calamity.
As soon as it caught sight of them, the hound froze. Its red eyes wandered over their forms, and its flowing black mane seemed to shudder. It hesitated.
Jerry was impressed. The undead can show fear!?
He doubted himself—but, as if to confirm his suspicion, the hound turned tail and ran!
“Oh, no you don’t.”
Jerry’s soul force fell on the hell hound like an anvil, shaking its soul and making it collapse to the ground. These creatures weren’t too strong, actually; they were the dog equivalent of zombies. They could only pose a threat when in large numbers, like the decimated pack from before.
Otherwise, they were rather weak. Subduing one was easy for Jerry.
Maybe it’s because they’ve been stuck here for decades, he mused. My zombies mature with time too, so maybe these guys have reached the point where sentience has begun to reappear. Fascinating!
The hound gazed at Jerry as he approached, suppressing its soul and rendering it immobile.
“Bad doggy,” he scolded it. “You tried to kill us before. That’s not nice.”
The hell hound whimpered.
“Anyway, I guess I should kill you. Before that, do you know the way out of here?”
It gazed at him with fiery red eyes. Its flowing mane had fully receded by now, becoming one with its back, and it sat on the ground obediently. It nodded.
Suddenly, Jerry realized that this dog didn’t seem too bad. Sure, it may have a swamp of festering diseases for a mouth, and it might be covered in the grime of its kin, and it had tried to kill them before, but that’s no reason to be grumpy, is it?
“You know what?” he said. “If you show us how to meet our friends and escape this place, I will let you go. How does that sound?”
The dog whimpered again. It seemed to like the idea of survival.
“Excellent, then.” Jerry smiled, then released the pressure—he could reinstate it very quickly, if he had to. Plus, Boboar and Foxy had the hound surrounded, ready to tear it apart at the slightest sign of aggression.
“I think I’ll call you Doggo,” said Jerry. “Go on, Doggo. Show us the way!”
The hound hesitated for a moment. Then, slowly, it began to walk away, turning around every once in a while to make sure they were following.
Jerry felt very proud of himself. I tamed a dog…and even found the fastest way out of this place! By Desistos, I must be a genius. Boney will be so proud.
Whistling, he set to following the hell hound—and, right then, a deep, primal bellow shook the tunnel.
***
In another part of the maze, a tunnel was dark and silent.
“Well,” said Horace, “I guess it’s just us.”
A grunt was his only reply.
“Can you light up those lanterns you call eyes? I need a second here.”
An irritated grunt. Two yellow flames appeared in the darkness, illuminating the inside of a reinforced skull.
“Nevermind.” Horace sighed. “Those things can’t illuminate shit. I’ll just do it blindly.”
He reached for his inner sleeve, then easily tore a piece away. Grabbing an arrow from his back, he wrapped the cloth around it before extending it forward.
“Spark.”
Axehand ground his axes together, producing an awful, grating sound. Some sparks flew off it and landed on the cloth before fizzling out. Axehand repeated the process a couple of times before the makeshift torch caught on fire.
“Good,” said Horace, using a finger to rub his ear. “This won’t last long without oil. We need to hurry.”
Axehand gave an affirmative grunt.
They looked up, where a gaping hole stretched into the darkness. They looked to the right and left, where a corridor stretched out into similarly impenetrable darkness.
“I guess we’ll climb all the way up and try to locate the rest,” Horace concluded. “Man, I’m so glad I have fingers. What do you think, Axehand?”
Axehand grunted in mockery, then shook his head.
“No?” Horace raised a brow. “What do you recommend?”
Axehand pointed at one side of the corridor. Horace frowned.
“Why?”
Axehand tapped his temple.
“Because you’re smart and I’m stupid?”
A shake of his skull—and after some consideration, a nod.
“Thank you for the compliment. Do you mean that you’re speaking with Jerry? Is he telling you to do this?”
A nod.
“I see. Why, though?” Horace looked up again, squinting to peer through the darkness. “Ah. Maybe the floor is hard to break from beneath, and it would take more time than we can spare. Hmm. Fine, then. I’ll follow your lead.”
Axehand’s eye-flames turned crimson as he grunted. Right then, a terrifying roar shook the corridor. It was loud, deep, and rumbling—primal—making dust fall off the walls. Horace’s eyes widened as Axehand’s flared.
“What the hell was that?” said the hunter, looking both ways. “It sounded strong.”
Axehand grunted in concern. “Heh,” Horace was quick to mock him, “are you sca—”
Mid-sentence, he understood. Axehand wasn’t scared for himself. He was scared for his Master.
“I see.” Horace chuckled. “That is very noble of you, Axehand…but there is a simple solution. We can just hunt that monster down. I don’t know what or how strong it is, but I know it messed with the wrong hunter and his axe-handed minion.”
Axehand grunted, then pointed at himself, up, then Horace, down.
“In your dreams, skull-face. I’m in charge.”
A grunt of challenge. Horace’s eyes narrowed.
“Oh? You wanna go?”
Suddenly, another sound reached their ears—this time, it was blood-curling screams, like a chorus of madmen at the height of insanity. The two frowned.
“What is it again?” Horace said with annoyance.
Another round of screams came as nine creatures jumped into the flickering torchlight. They resembled humanoid zombies, but with a few key differences; first, they ran on all fours; second, they were completely bald and naked; and third, their teeth and nails were abnormally long and sharp, more like a predator’s than a human’s.
Horace clicked his tongue. “Ghouls.”
The ghouls charged like rabid, grotesque animals, and the two men—skeleton and human alike—did not take a single step back. “Hey, Axehand,” said Horace, nocking three arrows at the same time, “how about this? Whoever kills more of these fuckers gets to be the leader.”
Axehand grunted in amusement, readying his axes. The ghouls fell on them.
Poor ghouls.
***
“KYAAAH!”
Laura screamed at the top of her lungs, running as fast as her legs could carry her.
“Masteeer!” Boney’s jaw clacked in terror as he ran beside her, while Headless was in front of them both, his head holding on to the back of his shirt’s collar with its teeth.
A bunch of spiders nibbled on their heels. However, these weren’t normal spiders.
First off, they were big, the size of a human foot. Second…they had tentacles.
“Why the hell did I come down here!?” screamed Boney.
“I’m wondering the same thing!” shouted Laura.
“AAARGH!” roared Headless, unable to speak. In the process of doing so, his head stopped biting onto his collar and was flung back—thankfully, Laura was there to catch it.
“EEK!” she shouted. “Take it away, take it away!”
She tossed it to Boney, who almost dropped it.
“Headless, you buffoon. You almost died!”
“AAARGH!” the head screamed again, while its lower half kept paving the way.
After deciding to explore, the three of them had started moving, always following the right path—but gradually, the corridors had adopted a steady downward slope. Soon, they’d reached an area filled with cracks on the walls, where even the ever-present black glass was tainted and broken in places.
Moreover, the further they went, the larger the cracks got.
“This can’t be right,” they’d agreed. “If we go any deeper and the cracks become proper crevices, there might even be tentacle monsters.”
“Should we turn around?”
“We should.”
However, when they turned, there were creatures on the floor below them—large, tentacled spiders, pitch-black and making odd belching sounds; in fact, their only similarity to spiders was the general shape, as they had tentacles in place of legs.
These weren’t proper tentacle monsters, but rather their adolescent forms. And the moment Boney, Laura, and Headless saw the spiders, the hunt had begun, pushing them ever deeper into the tunnels.
“This isn’t working!” Laura shouted amidst her panting. “At this rate, we’re only heading to even worse things. We must do something, now!”
“Just magic them away!”
“I can’t control nearly enough water!”
“Ugh, could you be any more useless?”
“You can’t even do anything, you—”
Laura and Boney fell into Headless’s arms, stopping dead in their tracks. They instantly panicked even further. “Let—Oh, Gods!”
Their words were cut short as they noticed the gaping chasm. If Headless hadn’t stopped them, they would have fallen right in.
The apex of a sharp, 90-degree right turn had collapsed into a large, circular, dark hole. In fact, the collapsed corner seemed to only be a small part of the chasm, which extended far into the rock. Who knew what terrors lurked in the darkness…
On the bright side, avoiding the chasm was easy as long as you noticed it; to them, it was only a broken-off corner they could easily jump over. That’s what they did, putting the new terrors aside to deal with the old ones.
“Laura, water!” Boney shouted as he kept on running. “This is our chance!”
“I know!”
The stopper of her flask popped off, allowing a steady stream of water to rush out and surround the opening.
The spiders’ tentacles didn’t actually have suckers. They were slimy, slippery things, and the spiders basically glided on them. As soon as they reached the turn and the water before it, they were unable to stop, and they slid directly into the hole.
Only one of them managed to turn, and Headless bravely squashed it under his finely-made boot with a wet, sloshy sound.
“Quick,” said Boney, “let’s run before they can—”
A series of loud slurping sounds interrupted them. Headless waved his torch at the chasm, allowing them to see that its insides—it was a shallow crater, no more than ten feet at its deepest—were covered in cracks and crevices, and an entire flood of tentacles had shot out to grasp whatever fell inside.
The spiders panicked, trying to climb up in vain, but they were slow. The tentacles wrapped around them, fighting over each spider, and the poor creatures were dragged inside the crevices like candies. A merciless cracking signified each spider’s disappearance, followed by a loud slurping sound.
Boney and Laura were gaping, while Headless’s head was turned the wrong way.
“Holy… There have to be dozens of them,” whispered Laura, her heart beating fast. “I—”
“They would tear us limb from limb—or bone to bone…” Boney added his own whisper. A loud gasp came from Headless, who’d snatched his head back and taken a look, and then the slurping sounds came to a stop, followed by slimy splashes as the tentacles kept looking for food.
Their search quickly angled upward, approaching the edge of the chasm.
Boney and Laura looked at each other. “Oh no,” they said at the same time, then bolted again.
