[The Twining] 12. Deeper Dangers (Patreon)

[ happy 2024! ]

Isen lay on his stomach between Ros’s shoulders as the beast swam through the radiant waters, the golden light reflected in its pearlescent scales. Its tail propelled them over the surface far faster than Isen could manage on his own.

Soon, they were further out than Isen had ever been. The cavern’s ceiling gradually grew closer to the water, revealing a surface that glimmered like a cloudless night sky.

Isen looked over Ros’s side. A dark dorsal fin jutted out of the water’s surface, slicing through the placid waves.

Isen pulled up his hands and shaped a ball of energy. Energy no longer crackled between his individual fingers. Instead, it whirled over them from the first finger—the pointer—to his pinky, then swooping up under his palm to his thumb. It almost looked like a grasping motion.

When he performed the technique with a single hand, he could only make a thimble-sized puff of energized air that went a few feet before dissipating. But using two hands together, he could shape the energy into a ball as wide as two fists.

After charging up the technique for a full fifteen seconds, Isen launched the ball toward the fin, aiming for the monster beneath the surface. His fingers burned as though he’d been dangling from his fingers.

The water exploded in a geyser, doing more damage to the liquid than whatever monster lurked beneath. Despite Ros’s hopes, Isen knew the energy ball technique was ill suited for an aquatic environment.

When Isen tried to create an energy ball underwater, the liquid didn’t respond to the circuit of energy in his hands. He had a feeling it wasn’t because he was doing the technique wrong, or that the radiant water inherently resisted being manipulated. He just didn’t have enough power.

Isen frowned as the geyser’s drizzle speckled his bare skin. “Maybe we should wait until I advance a bit more.”

“We’ve only just set out, and you want to turn back?”

“I just remember what happened last time. I wasn’t much help then. I don’t feel like much of a help now.”

“Isen… have we ever discussed how long advancement typically takes at the different tiers?”

He perked up. “No.”

Ros hummed. “The pattern is easy to remember, though this is just a rough approximation, and it varies between species. For the first tier, five years. The second tier, fifty. The third, five hundred. The fourth… Well, you can guess.”

Isen watched as the last of the geyser’s ripples faded into the waves. “Five years for the first?” He’d figured he was quick but had lacked a point for comparison.

“Let’s say you always advance five times faster than the average,” Ros said. “Even then, it will take you ten years to advance through the second tier. You won’t want to go much faster than that, even if you find yourself capable of it. You’ll be crippling your foundation in the third tier if you don’t live. You’ll want to widen your horizons, gain wisdom and insights.”

“But surely the initial advancement could be faster,” Isen protested. “I could advance to the peak of the second tier, then stay there for years, traveling the world. It would be safer to do so with greater power.”

“Some might try,” Ros conceded. “It isn’t a path I suggest. It’s better to advance steadily, naturally.”

Isen ran his hand along the edge of a shoulder scale. “If you’re at the peak of the third tier, how old are you?”

“Monsters don’t keep track like humans do. We just live, then advance when the time is right. We don’t overthink things.” It paused. “At least, not until later.”

“When did you become…” Isen struggled for the right word. “Intelligent?”

Ros didn’t respond; Isen could only hear the rhythmic breaking of the waves. He almost thought the beast hadn’t heard when it spoke: “The third tier.”

Isen guessed that it wasn’t upon reaching the third tier, core consolidation, that Ros had gained intelligence. None of the third-tier monsters they’d seen were intelligent. Moreover, Ros had spoken of divinity in the fourth tier like it was something that developed over time.

Perhaps for beasts, the third tier was more than consolidating the core.

Rough mental calculus said that Ros had probably only become intelligent after living a hundred years, if the beast’s advancement had been blistering. Maybe two or three hundred. But Ros was also stuck at the peak of the core consolidation stage. It was possible it had stalled there for years. Decades.

Centuries.

The scale of time was unfathomable to him.

How long had Ros been stalled in its advancement, and how long had it been stuck in the depths? And why… why had it come to the depths at all?

But there was only one question he could bring himself to ask. “Ros… how long do cultivators live?” Isen had the general sense that the further along a cultivator went, and the more they tempered their body, the better. But to learn that a typical advancement time for the second tier was fifty years? That was nearly a lifetime in Goldbounty.

And then five hundred years? Practically ten generations.

“Those at the first tier might live a few decades longer at best. At the second tier, most cultivators live at least two hundred years. At the third tier, most live to be at least a thousand if they don’t die of unnatural causes. And as for the fourth tier… I’ve never heard of one dying from old age.”

Ros didn’t mention what happened after the fourth tier, the divine core stage—the realm of gods, but he didn’t need to.

Soon, the distant shore disappeared, leaving them adrift in a sea of gold, the ceiling overhead glimmering like a million stars.

“Isen,” Ros said, its voice uncertain. “Which way is forward?”

“You’re still on course,” he said. But over the next hour, Ros repeatedly drifted. Isen corrected the beast’s heading every time until eventually he took to guiding the beast continuously. Without Isen, Ros would have found itself on another shore, no closer to the lake’s center than when it started out.

Some mystical force didn’t want them to move forward.

Throughout their journey, they continued to see aquatic monsters, but none approached, all below the third tier.

Isen’s sense of danger only grew the further they swam. It soon became overwhelming. Isen could swear he tasted the danger as coppery blood.

“Ros,” he whispered. “We need to turn back.”

“You’re the one navigating,” the beast retorted.

Isen pushed hard on Ros’s shoulder, directing it to reverse course. They went back, but the sense of danger only escalated further. Isen’s teeth chattered from dread. “Ros. Something is hunting you.”

“I know.”

Suddenly, Ros flailed its tail, diving to the left. Isen grasped the sack of books tied around Ros’s neck, little more than a thin choker on the scaled beast’s massive frame. He swung from the cloth, his eyes squinting into the spray of water.

Ros roared as a finned serpent surged from the fathoms, its body the color of ice, its head covered in clusters of black beady eyes, like fish eggs. Its teeth flashed as it fell back into the water with a piece of torn flesh. Ros’s side bled milky white.

Isen didn’t have an easy way to sense the tiers of different monsters, but this one was obviously at the third. It was huge, thinner than Ros, but more than twice as long.

There was nowhere for Ros to retreat to—it either needed to kill the serpentine monster or force it to give up the hunt. Ros dove underwater, pulling Isen along with it. The serpent was nowhere to be seen, but it had to be lurking somewhere, waiting. The radiance was so bright in this area of the lake, they couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction.

Blood pooled around them. Ros’s injury had started healing, but it would take minutes to scar over.

Isen frowned as a tier two fish monster approached from below. It swam to the cloud of blood and inhaled, the white liquid filtered by its gills. Normally Ros would just smack it away with its tail or arm, but it couldn’t afford to do so with the serpent around.

Isen decided to handle the fish. He bit down on his dagger and pushed off from Ros, launching himself at the opportunistic feeder. The fish retreated with a powerful pump of its tail.

Now further out, Isen’s heart raced as he saw a wall of beady eyes surrounding them. Tens of fish, maybe hundreds, each as large as his torso. All with sinister silver teeth so long, their jaws couldn’t close all the way.

And behind them flashed the finned tail of the tier-three serpent.

Isen kicked back on reflex, avoiding the snapping jaws of several fish as he maneuvered. His abs, shoulders, and arms screamed as the muscles flexed to propel him toward Ros.

The wall of fish surged forward, not just toward Isen, but Ros. With no other choice, Ros swung its tail in an arc, swatting tens of them away. Others fell beneath its four brandished claws and its furious mouth. Fish blood dyed the water a sickly gray, making it even harder to see.

Some got through, diving for Ros’s exposed injury, but Isen was there to meet them. Using Ros as a springboard, he slashed an overzealous fish across its stomach. He continued forward, picking up more speed as he slid his knife into the gills of another fish. Following his instincts, he rode the fish as it spun, its jaws flashing. Rather than nabbing Isen, it bit down onto the face of its brethren.

Isen withdrew the knife, his stomach dropping as three of the fish tore at Ros’s injury. His lungs protested as he kicked toward them. Another fish he hadn’t noticed lunged at him from the side and he twisted, avoiding a serious injury, but the monster glided away with bloody teeth, leaving Isen’s left glute a shredded mess.

Still, he swam forward, stabbing both fish while they were distracted by Ros’s flesh. Isen figured they were used to their scales protecting them from other tier two competitors. They were unprepared for a dagger made from divine bone.

Worried that he’d lose the blade in the fathoms, Isen had tied a bear-sinew rope around it before setting out. It was a few feet long to allow him to retain his maximum range of motion.

Surrounded by a mass of dangerous foes, far beyond the scale he’d honed himself against closer to the shore, Isen was struck by a new way to use the knife.

Before he had a chance to test it, the hidden serpent struck for Ros’s neck.