Chapter 66: Sela's Dark Journey (Patreon)

Sela jolted awake, sometime early in the morning. After the events of the day before, a long, restful sleep was everything she needed and so much more, and she was able to get just that, even if it didn’t feel like nearly enough. Despite living with Aby for months at a time, she still couldn’t quite sleep through some of its odder eccentricities. Sure, she hardly even tossed when the entire cave shuddered and roared hours earlier, merely wrapping her arms tighter around one of the Undines before it could flee in terror, letting the other two return later after settling down.

No, what woke her up, without fail, was the bond she and her partner shared, and just how alien its mind worked. During the night, and sometimes throughout the day, it was simply like another person, right there alongside her. Granted, it was still childlike in quite a few ways, and had some odd personality quirks that would probably stick with it as it grew, but it was, to Sela, an incredibly endearing individual, and what few words she could coax out of it were always charming, to her.

And in the mornings, all that changed. Aby the individual shifted, and in ways she can’t quite put to words, spread out, becoming Aby the Dungeon. At first, it was only a small change, one she noticed but never really thought too deeply on, but as Aby’s dungeon grew ever larger, that shift grew ever more prominent. That wasn’t to say that it made her uncomfortable, it was certainly enough to jolt her out of the sea of dreams, but it didn’t cause distress or anything. The closest she could liken it to was a sudden epiphany, a wave of clarity that washed over her any time Aby suddenly changed ‘modes’ like that, only there wasn’t any actual thinking involved.

And so, every morning, when the first invaders ventured forth into Aby’s world, Sela would either take that as a sign to either fall asleep, trusting the core to keep her safe as it always did and she knew always would, or wake up and set to occupying herself with some of the gemstones many creations, or improving its domain with a decorative flair that the core still lacked, even if it had an eye for detail in its own right. Today would be the latter, Sela was too worn out from their impromptu ‘company’ to stay up with Aby, and so she took that time to sleep it off, while Aby had, apparently, thrown itself into its work with the same single-minded drive that she had known the core to have.

Everyone had their coping mechanisms, mused Sela, and she wasn’t overly surprised that Aby’s own response to roughly a day of prolonged fear for its very life, even if it was apparently unfounded, was to have no real reaction at all. Something about that was so very much like the core she knew, and with a soft smile, she rubbed the gemstone fondly, getting a bit of distracted, or maybe diluted, happiness passed back towards her through their bond. It was very hard to put a label to what Aby felt when it was busy managing everything, but what mattered was she knew the core would always spare a moment for her any time she needed it.

But for now, she was content to let the core run its empire without being a nuisance. She could get a general idea of what was going on through their bond, what floors were seeing ‘visitors’, little bursts of happiness and even the smallest trickle of power occasionally, whenever someone couldn’t handle Aby’s way of greeting. While Aby took care of defending its empire, Sela would go see what it has been up to in its gardens, it wasn’t as if she could miss the newest changes when she saw an entirely new scene just outside of what amounted to her bedroom.

Firstly, and most unusually, it seemed Aby’s youngest boss had been pretty heavily impacted by the complete lack of resistance it put up, and wanted to better guard its creator as a result. Either that, or it had already forgotten, and gone back to the endless cycle of eating, shifting, and eating more. Honestly, Sela couldn’t tell, and the way its four eyes were boring into her was making her pretty uncomfortable. The fact that they were all very clearly the eyes of The Mapper, and that they were implanted into one two-meter-long snake with five tails and glowing blue fur didn’t help. The stream of inky mucous was leaking from each oversized ocular organ just wrapped it all up in a neat, uncomfortable little bow. 

“Um… hello there, you?” She spoke, unsure exactly of how to address the odd sight before her, but before she could start wondering if it could even hear, all four eyes blinked, not at once or even at the same speed, but it was acknowledgement at least. Then, it started swimming its way to her, stunted, malformed muscles moving in ways they were obviously not supposed to and betraying the creature’s complete lack of regard for a skeletal structure.

Sela was too mesmerized by the unnatural movement that she couldn’t even convince it not to come over, and by the time she had already begun waving her arms to ward it off, the beast had made some ugly semicircle begore her, staring up at her with curiosity and maybe excitement, if its all too intelligent eyes were to be believed. Then, it nuzzled its serpentine maw into the palms of her outstretched hands, and closed its eyes, the right way this time.

She was about to pull her hands back, before she calmed down for a moment to really think over the situation. Not only was it very clearly being affectionate, in its own very weird way, it was soft. Whatever its luminescent blue fur was made from, Sela was enamored with it, and began eagerly petting the doppelganger. A few minutes had gone by, simply scratching under its chin, kneading behind the single ear that appeared in the middle of its forehead for a short time, and playing with the thicker fur that lined its spine; all the while she was repulsed and fascinated in equal measures at watching the critter grow and shrink and lose two tails. 

By the time she pulled her hands away from the unusual being, it had taken the shape of a half meter long nearly eel looking thing, still fuzzy and wrong but endearing in its own, very disturbing, way. Sela thought for a moment, before realizing that maybe there was a decent reason for Carmine’s adoration for the stars after all, not that she was any closer to sharing that particular sentiment. The terror was gone, but the lingering unease didn’t grow any less pronounced. 

She took one last look at the formless horror, coming to the conclusion that it really was much cuter than the starfish, and that she totally wasn’t biased due to her near-death experience at all and it was completely objective. And besides, real fur, even if it glowed an otherworldly blue… green now, was far better than the wiggling cilia that covered starfish. As she gave one last parting pat and a goodbye to her unlikely new companion, though not before promising to be back later. Trying her best to ignore the half dozen large puppy dog eyes she was given as she departed, Sela set off for one of her many hidden corridors upwards, curious about just how large Aby’s new reef extended.

After looking around she had to admit that coral which radiates darkness, sucking the light out of existence but still leaving everything perfectly visible even without her Dungeon-granted darkvision, was a peculiar experience. But, seeing as this was merely one of the many she’d experienced today alone, she quickly adapted and instead focused on everything else. Yet again, her companion had outdone itself, managing to make even crushing darkness and endless hunger look ethereal and breathtaking, finally fitting in with the rest of its realm in activity, though lacking the calm and color of the rest of its myriad reefs.

Ooh-ing and ahh-ing her way through the darkness, she made her way up to the seventeenth, then upwards even further, making sure to be mindful of the many hungry looking mouths and curious eyes pointed her way. Logically, she knew nothing bad would happen, but when a squid’s beak, sharper than any knife and larger than your head, is pointed your way, logic gives way just a bit to instinctual terror. She actually had to wait at the entrance of the thirteenth floor for a minute or so, if Aby’s light warning and her own ability to get a rough idea of the state of these halls wasn’t enough of a message, the noise carried down through the water would have been plenty to tell her there was something going on in the wyrm’s cavern. And then, abruptly, the noise stopped, and any presences in that specific floor were gone, for whatever reason.

Sela took that as her invitation to move upwards, and so she did. The first thing that caught her eye was the real, actual light on the floor, a mass of squid shaped white that quickly broke down into motes of grey and disappeared, the craggy cavern walls and bulbous coral growths swiftly shrouding themselves back in darkness. The second thing to draw her attention was in the same area as the now deceased squid, a cloud of opaque yellow slowly dispersing into the water around it, and the monolithic serpent lazily swimming back out of it and to her cave, no doubt planning to once more lounge about and watch as her serpents dance to some unknown tune or work towards some nebulous goals.

But, when she caught sight of a small blip of heat cautiously peaking its head out of the entrance to her domain, a short investigation was all it took for her to delay those plans for at least a bit. After all, when the Lady of her halls deigns to visit, how could the wyrm possibly show anything less than complete respect. And so, she did just that, releasing her hood and allowing the studded crown to nearly disappear from view.

As Sela witnessed the serpent make its way over to her, she couldn’t help but take a moment to stare in wonderment at her. The titanic beast had only grown larger, and her onyx scales had just a hint of a deep blue, along with a couple wispy lines of bone white, that Sela had no real explanation for. Amber slitted eyes larger than she by a significant margin looked down at her with a deep respect, but even that wasn’t enough to hide the intelligence they held, nor the arrogance she looked at everything else with. 

She watched as the gargantuan wyrm bowed her head towards her, going to give her a bit of praise for whatever it was she had taken care of mere seconds earlier. She had no way of really knowing whether she’d scared them off, or treated them to a more permanent stay, but she did know that it was one less potential conversation that she’d find herself involved in, and that was good to her.

Unfortunately, it seemed that having a bit more time with her young companion, as both of them looked upwards abruptly, a look of surprise on Sela and one of contrite anger on the wyrm. Aby had warned them both of a group of five crossing the vast openness of the ninth floor much faster than they had earlier in their trip, apparently headed directly towards the wyrm’s entrance. Sela took that as her cue to head to another floor, and the wyrm gave her one last lingering look as she departed, and a confused glance aimed at something following behind her, before turning to face the entrance and flaring her hood once more, a bit more irritable this time.

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Hi all, I am so sorry I didn't mention this as I posted on RoyalRoad, but this chapter, when I uploaded it, has a few edits within it that add some more to the chapter as a whole. I'm sorry I didn't mention sooner!