89. The Hewer of Roots

  Renate took the lead—only natural, given she was now the only ripple-reader among the spelunkers.

  This, unfortunately, upped the degree of difficulty for the two outrealmers. Not only did Renate’s petite frame fail to provide a barrier against the elements, she also moved with more speed and less patience than the sturgeon man.

  It was all Serac could do not to lose sight of the hooded figure as she followed it in a near-vertical descent of the Realm-cave. Twice she nearly slipped and fell. The first time, she was saved only by a word of warning from Trippy, and the second by the strong arm of Zacko just behind her.

  See, Trippy? Both you and Zacko care about me in your own ways. If only you could accept him for what he brings to the table right now—not what he might or might not do in the future…

  Between the frenetic parkouring and more self-reflections, it took Serac a while to notice that the cave was narrowing. The walls had closed in; what had started as an inconceivably wide-open space had become a cylinder, with its diameter contained within a single field of view.

  “I believe we’ve funneled ourselves into the taproot portion of the cave,” Renate called out from ahead. “This is the Realmtree’s central anchor, which means it will take us straight into the lowest part of the Roots. And we’re getting close…”

  As if to underscore this point, the very nature of the cave changed. The walls—hitherto solid, rocky, and very much tree-like—took on a softer, almost fleshy texture. The greenish glow of Zealous energy upped its intensity, giving the whole structure enough lighting for a ripple-blind Rakshasa to see where she was going.

  And where she was going was a very strange place indeed. After several more leaps of faith in pursuit of Renate, Serac realized that the strong winds had died down—as if this narrowing corridor itself provided its own form of protection. She also noticed something disturbingly peculiar about the ‘footholds’ she’d been using. For they were no longer rocky ledges, nor were they tree-like outgrowths.

  No, these things had a firm, bony consistency and a solid connection to the walls that helped to assuage Serac’s fear of falling. At the same time, their surfaces were uniformly slick, as if coated by a mucusy substance—which helped to bring the fear back.

  As the Wayfarers spelunked lower and lower, their footholds became larger and larger, each one a conical spike that anchored its wide base against the walls before tapering into sharp, pointy ends that dripped with mucus. These grew, not just in size, but in number. In fact, there were so many of them now—jutting between and atop each other in dense layers, all pointing into the central cavity—that Serac no longer needed a local guide to map out her parkouring routes.

  And then… it suddenly hit her. She knew what these things were—had seen them in many different places and in many different variations. In fact, she possessed a set of them herself.

  They were teeth.

  And even a hell bumpkin on Day 1 of her Pretjordian journey knew that teeth and tree didn’t belong together, no matter how inconceivably large and Realm-spanning the latter was.

  “Are we,” she yelled out to no one in particular, almost afraid of the answer, “inside of a living thing? And I don’t mean that in the ‘kum ba yah, trees are living things too’ sense. I mean what we’re stepping on right now are teeth, and they look like they belong to something that would want to chew its food.”

  “Pretty thoroughly at that, judging by the sheer number of these things,” Zacko quipped, as infuriatingly calm as always.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Renate yelled back, and if Serac weren’t mistaken, there was a hint of excitement in her voice. Indeed, the frog woman with a self-professed inquiring mind had slowed her parkouring pace, the better to take in the weird and wonderful sights around her. “Even if we were to assume that we’ve indeed wandered into the ingestive orifice of a living creature, I don’t recognize this particular morphology from anything else in Pretjord. We’re in the presence of something truly unprecedented…”

  Serac’s first instinct should’ve been to take the local at her word. After all, what did she, a hell bumpkin, know anything about Pretjordian biology? But then… she found herself disagreeing with the ‘unprecedented’ part of that spiel. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she had seen this exact ‘morphology’ on a living creature before—and not just once or twice or even hundreds of times.

  And then it hit her. A circular maw. Rows upon rows of fine, razor-sharp teeth. Like the head and mouth of a lamprey.

  Of course she’d seen this arrangement hundreds of times before. After all, she’d farmed the creature in question damn near to extinction.

  For these teeth looked like they belonged on a Narakite Flesh-fiend.

  But… she also decided to keep this notion to herself. She’d seen and heard many strange things on her journey, but this was a little too far-fetched even for her.

  I don’t want to sound like a complete lunatic, especially when Renate and I were just starting to get along. On top of that bit of self-restraint, she allowed herself a private critique of Pretjord as a Realm—or at least its ‘consistency’ when it came to its biotic theming. And come on, Renate’s never seen ‘lamprey teeth’ before? You mean to tell me there aren’t any Yakshas who’re typed after a lamprey? Although, to be fair, it’s a little scary to imagine what that might look like…

  “Should we maybe think about turning back?” Serac did ask aloud. “I mean, if this thing really is some giant creature, we’re just walking ourselves into its gullet, aren’t we?”

  “Even if it really is alive, it doesn’t seem to have noticed our presence,” Renate retorted. “And we also haven’t seen any sign of the sturgeons, which means at least they managed to descend further. I say we go down as far as we can, and see what we see.”

  Was Renate’s ‘plan’ the product of calm judgment, or did it come from the need to satisfy her own scholarly curiosity? Either way, Serac wasn’t about to argue. Even if the Wayfarers were to meet their demise here, the risk was mitigated by their recent reconstitution and offloading of Liminal Karma.

  Serac’s train of thought was soon cut short, as the trio of spelunkers came upon their next discovery.

  Slangespytts. Not just ten or a dozen, but a whole swarm of the Poison Balls crowded the spaces in between the lamprey teeth. There were so many of them, in fact, that it wasn’t hard to imagine this to be a breeding ground of sorts.

  All those Poison Balls that were hanging out in the cave and bubbling up to the surface… did they all come from here? Was this… ‘lamprey’ thing spitting them out this whole time?

  But Serac had no time to ponder the question, for she soon saw the distinctive figure of Lars Tomasen—OAR held aloft as he tried to muscle his way through the Slangespytt piles. He was having a predictably hard time of it, what with having no way to fight back or defend himself.

  “Zacko, you stay put!” Serac seized the opportunity to take charge and kick ass—it’d certainly been a long time coming. “Lars, you big dummy! Get yourself out of there and let us girls handle this one. Renate, I’m going to open, then you go after the stragglers, got it?”

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  A KL-33 Rakshasa bossing around a Yaksha at least 30 levels above her. It was a sight to behold, and perhaps it was the novelty of it more than anything that made the latter shut up and follow along.

  Lars too obeyed as soon as he saw that the cavalry had arrived. He jumped to the safety of the nearest tooth up, before flattening himself against the fleshy wall. As soon as she saw that the sturgeon was clear of the danger zone, Serac opened fire.

  [Chamber One: CATHARSIS]

  [235!]

  And she didn’t stop there. She kept firing into the crowd with unimbued bullets that could do no damage to the Slangespytts, with the sole intention to empty out the cylinder and cycle back to Chamber One.

  [190!], [228!], [457!]

  [Catharsis] went through its three stages of penitence, spreading like wildfire all the while. The cylindrical corridor filled with a fantastical display of black flames and shining Souldust, all of it glazed by the greenish gleam of the cave walls.

  [860 ?], [860 ?], [860 ?], …

  Serac’s Pathsight was bombarded by an endless slew of messages. All good news, of course, but it also upped her stakes and sense of urgency. If she were to die now, it’d be a job and a half to retrieve all that freshly won Karma.

  Elsewhere, Renate had already jumped into her follow-up attack. A big swing of a big shovel: [Elemental Surge]. This time, DREDGER disintegrated an entire tooth, before sending its razor-sharp fragments into the crowd below.

  More Slangespytts succumbed to the second AOE bomb in quick succession. But while [Catharsis] and [Elemental Surge] had been powerful, they were also imprecise. Several Poison Balls remained standing—or rather floating in air, and far enough apart to avoid being targeted by one attack. It’d been in anticipation of this last set of stragglers that Serac had already speedloaded a fresh cylinder.

  [Chamber One: BLOOD FOR BLOOD]

  [SLANGESPYTT Status Effect: BLEED]

  [Wayfarer Status Effect: BLEED]

  With the remaining bullets converted to Infernal damage, Serac took her time to pick off the rest of the Poison Balls. Aim, lock, fire. Even amidst a battlefield scorched and scarred by spectacular magic, the basic principles of marksmanship still applied.

  [190!], [190!], [190!], [190!], [190!]

  [860 ?], [860 ?], [860 ?]

  And that was that.

  With the immediate threat dealt with, Serac hopped down several more teeth, before landing next to Lars Tomasen. The sturgeon man looked to be in very bad shape indeed, now slumped against the wall with a pained expression, like he might throw up at any moment. And as Serac checked his HP bar, she saw that it was practically racing to the bottom.

  “Motgift Pellet!” she yelled, still using her bossing-souls-around voice. “Do you have any left?”

  “Already took my last one,” Lars said through labored breathing, “still four stacks of [Poison] left.”

  “Here, use this instead.”

  That was when Renate sidled up to the two of them, shoving a spherical object—about the size of an orange—in Lars’s face. It was the same gleaming vial Serac had spied earlier. Up close, she saw it contained a creamy orange liquid—not unlike the color of the [Satiety] gauge—and it came with its own Pathsighted label: [Pearl of IMMERSION].

  It’s the thing that cured Zacko of his [Poison] the first time, Serac understood implicitly, then waited anxiously for Lars to accept the gesture. To the sturgeon man’s credit, he didn’t hesitate for long, and he downed the [Pearl]’s contents in one big gulp.

  Almost instantly, the ‘color’ returned to his face. His HP also halted its freefall. The man stood to his full height, looking ready to take on the whole world—if it weren’t for the large chunk that was still missing from his health bar.

  “… My thanks,” Lars grumbled, and had the decency to meet Renate’s round eyes with his cold glare. The latter seemed to consider him for a moment, then reached once more into the containers around her chest. She pulled out a second vial, this time filled with a blood-red liquid and labeled: [Pearl of COURAGE].

  “Here,” she said, handing the vial to Lars, “you could do with this one too, Stammer.”

  If anything, Lars’s hesitation was longer this time—though probably not out of mistrust. If Serac were to guess, the man simply took exception to the suggestion that he lacked ‘courage’. He downed the [Pearl] anyway, this time broken up into several swigs.

  By now, Serac knew exactly what to look out for. And sure enough, the red that represented Lars’s health filled back up to its maximum—almost as if the contents of the [Pearl] had transferred itself directly into his HP bar.

  “Neat!” Serac proclaimed with a big smile. “You’re just full of solutions, aren’t you, Renate? Boy, you must be handy to have around in a Wayfaring party!”

  For a moment, an odd expression crossed the frog woman’s face, a strange mixture halfway between anger and laughter. In the end, laughter seemed to win out, as she croaked out a light chuckle.

  This puzzled Serac. She couldn’t understand how her words could be construed as either funny or offensive. In any case, Renate herself volunteered no further explanation, as she instead pulled out two more [Pearls] from her bandolier—of the creamy orange [Immersion] variety—before handing off one each to Serac and Zacko.

  “Might as well leave these with you now,” she said. “Drink it only if you’ve reached the max stack of [Poison]—or if you’re literally about to die from it any second.”

  “Thanks,” this from Zacko, “but Bubblegum, didn’t you say you only had one of these to spare?”

  “I had just enough time to rearrange OYSTER’s loadout before we set off,” Renate explained. “Good thing I did too, because I imagine we’ll encountering more sources of [Poison] the further down we go.”

  “Did you,” this from Lars, who looked visibly discomfited by what he was about to ask, “did you perhaps bring an extra? For Hans, I mean.”

  “I do have one more here,” Renate said, pointing to her chest. Then, after the briefest of pauses, she added, “But I’m saving that for myself.”

  Lars’s expression didn’t change.

  “I understand,” the man said, then left it at that.

  It was time for the reunited quartet to move on. But that was also when the whole cave came alive.

  Bwwwwhhhhaaaarrrr…

  The booming lamentation issued from below, above, sideways, everywhere. For it was the living cave itself—and whatever ill intent roiled within its bosom—that had produced it.

  Serac instinctively shut her eyes and plugged her ears. She felt the mucusy surface of the tooth shake beneath her feet, nearly throwing her off balance. And when she opened her eyes again, she saw that the fleshy walls around her now burned bright with the green fire of Zeal and [Hunger].

  “Welp, I guess we should’ve thought of this before we set off our fireworks,” Serac quipped with performative nonchalance, taking a page out of Zacko’s book. “If this thing didn’t know we were here before, it definitely knows now.”

  “Would you have done anything differently?”

  Renate’s question was more rhetorical than anything, and in her round, defiant eyes, Serac saw a little something of herself. She shook her head by way of answer, smirking with irreverent bravado and excitement for the fight that was about to come—against a boss whose ‘arena’ was the boss itself.

  And Pathsight too joined in on the hype, gracing the momentous occasion with a fresh label—grandiose, formidable, and surprising in equal measure:

  [Designation: MULAHARTA—Hewer of Roots]

  [Aberrant Race: Hellspawn]

  [Aberrant Class: Dungeon Boss]

  [ZEALOUS Instrument: GIZZARD]

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