Soulweaver 94: Dance of the Sea Serpent (Patreon)

NOTE: Just a reminder that there will be no soulweaver chapter on the upcoming Monday, and no Ashborn chapter on Tuesday the day after, in observance of Labor Day and the fact that I'll be at Dragoncon. If any of you are in Atlanta, head on over! I'd love to meet you! I'll have signed Ashborn paperbacks there, and a ton of other authors will be there too, including big names like Shirtaloon, TheFirstDefier, JM Clarke, Actus, Valerios, and many others! :-D

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“Greg! Hurry!” Richard cried, on the verge of panic. “He’s still alive. Cut him out!”

I moved instinctively, activating [Light of the Fearless] to make several precision cuts. I’d have been far slower without all the practice I’d just had cutting stairs while cradling my injured left shoulder, but even with all that, would I make it in time?

Fundamentally, how was such a thing possible? Alarm bells began to ring in my head as I clawed through the ice. Nobody could survive more than… What, a minute? Before they asphyxiated? Which meant someone had stuck him in there recently. We would’ve seen them.

But we saw nothing even remotely resembling a fight or a struggle. We hadn’t even come across a single other soul.

I finished cutting through the ice, bringing the middle-aged warrior, still encased in an ice block, tumbling down.

Aerion, Richard, and I all got to work hacking at the ice, desperately fighting to free the frozen man, who was still pleading for us to save him. 

I broke off another chunk, getting close to his face, but I didn’t rightly know how to actually get the guy out before he suffocated. The heat from my blade’s ability couldn’t melt ice nearly fast enough. Maybe with a half-hour, it’d make some progress, but he didn’t have a half-hour.

Then, without warning, the man’s screams cut out. 

No, not just that. He’d stopped moving entirely.

“What the fuck is going on here,” I muttered, staring at the frozen corpse. Just moment ago, he’d been writhing, calling for help. 

Now?

The corpse’s flesh was so pale, it looked like it’d been there for centuries. Perfectly preserved in time. Except, that was impossible. Sirens blared in my head.

“Stay sharp!” I yelled, whipping my head around for any sign of an enemy. “Might be a trap. There’s something seriously wrong with—”

I never had a chance to finish my sentence. The wall that had blocked our way came crashing down. Broken, rather, by an almighty force that sent blocks of ice flying in our direction with the force of a grenade, forcing us to duck, run, and shield ourselves as best we could from the shrapnel.

Having the benefit of a shield, I hunkered down, bracing against the blocks of ice that shattered against its metal surface, while Aerion, alerted by my warning, flattened herself on the ground, thereby avoiding most of the fallout. I saw a handful of small pieces streak across her back, tearing through her light armor and drawing blood, but she looked otherwise uninjured.

Richard, unfortunately, had neither a shield, nor had he the instincts to hit the ground like Aerion had.

“Behind me!” I roared, but it was too late. He took the brunt of the impact. Tiny pieces of ice shredded his ornate cloth armor, and he crumbled in a wail of pain.

If that were all, I might’ve counted our blessings. Richard was down, but not out. Aerion and I were mostly okay.

Except, I never thought to wonder what exactly could have caused such a sturdy wall of ice to come suddenly crashing down.

I got my answer a moment later. I’d never heard a roar so loud before. I’d never heard anything that injected the fear of death straight into my veins like that.

It was shrieking. It was massive. And it was utterly terrifying. Because when the frost cleared and the owner of that roar became visible and its scaly torso coiled and coiled, forming a mountain of its own, I felt my knees give out from under me.

I now knew what had made the passage we’d been aiming for. It wasn’t a passage at all, but rather a channel that had been cut out by the body of a creature so gargantuan, my brain could barely even comprehend it.

We’d just stepped into a boss’s lair. One that put even the terrifying Obsidian Dragon in Dominion’s Trial to shame.

The serpent of pure ice that stared back at us from its eyes hundreds of feet up in the air, had to be as wide as a house, and at least half a mile long.

In that moment, there were no expletives in the world that could convey what I felt. The words that came out of my mouth were just about the only thing that could.

“Oh… My… God…”

— — 

I just… Stared. At the colossal creature so huge, I could barely even see its head, high up near the ceiling of the great cavern we found ourselves in.

I felt like I was in a surreal painting, where nothing made sense, and everything was some form of abstract art.

“Greg!” Aerion shouted. “What do we do?”

“What do we do?” I laughed. “What do you mean?”

“How do we fight it!?” she shrieked, and only then did the severity of the situation dawn on me.

Fight… Right, this thing was going to kill us, wasn’t it…

“I, I don’t…”

“Greg!” 

Something hit me across the face. Hard. It took my addled mind a second to realize it was Aerion’s palm.

“Did you just slap me?” I asked, more shocked than anything.

“Get it together, Greg,” Aerion shouted into my face. “I’m just as scared as you are, Greg. But you’re the one who comes up with the plans. You’re the one who gets us out of these situations! You make impossible possible! So get it together, and think of a plan!” 

Tears streaked down her face, but the way she looked at me… With eyes full of hope… And terror that lurked just behind that thin veil of composure…. Something about it resonated with me. Right down to my core.

Right. Of course… Look at me, panicking like a moron. I thought I’d grown past this. I thought I’d learned. I guess while my courage might have been enough to take on dragons, it wasn’t quite at the level of city-ending giga-serpents yet.

The head of the snake started to fall. Even now, my brain failed to register the thing as a threat. It was so far away, and moved so slowly to my eyes. Like an avalanche on a nearby peak. The human body just didn’t react to these things. Not until it was far too late.

“The head,” I blurted, my mind spinning into overdrive. “If it has a weakness, I think it’ll be in the head.”

“Okay!” Aerion shouted. “So how do we get there?”

“We, uh… We climb it?” I squeaked, staring up at the skyscraper-sized creature. 

Aerion nodded. “We climb. What about Richard?”

 I looked down at the elf, who was just starting to sit up and regain his bearings.

“I guess I’ll just have to carry him…”

— — 

Climbing a giant sea serpent the height of a small mountain was one thing. A hard thing—to be attempted only by the most courageous climbers—but climbing a serpent made of ice? While it was trying to kill us? And do it while carrying my semi-conscious elven buddy?

Yeah, that was goddamn impossible.

“This isn’t working!” Aerion yelled, about a dozen feet higher up on the serpent’s back than I was.

That we’d even managed to jump onto its back spoke volumes about our athleticism. We’d managed it on the first try, before the serpent crashed into the ice.

That was also when we learned that the ice we’d been on? It wasn’t solid at all, but rather a thin layer of ice covering a frozen lake.

The thing about frozen lakes, though? They were only solid on the surface.

A column of freezing water geysered up the instant the serpent broke through the surface and plunged underneath.

With the size of the thing, it was some moments before the rest of its body followed, and we were currently on its back.

The safest place to be.

Until the damn thing dove underwater, bringing us with it.

“Bail out!” I roared. “Jump off!” 

Aerion didn’t need to hear it twice. With the most elegant bound I’d ever seen, she leaped off the serpent’s back, somersaulting in midair before landing perfectly on her feet on the ice nearby.

I… Wasn’t so deft. Carrying Richard completely destroyed my sense of balance, so the best I managed was a clumsy roll onto the ice, hugging Richard to shelter him from the impact as best I could. 

The feat didn’t do my woozy friend any favors, but it did keep him alive.

The serpent’s body finally disappeared under the ice, leaving behind an eerie calm. The kind you see in horror movies when the serial killer disappears into the shadows after killing his first mark.

“Mate… I’m never riding you again,” Richard said in his delirium, breaking that terrifying silence.

“He’s in bad shape,” Aerion said.

“Yeah. I can see that.”

Richard’s cloth armor was being steadily stained with his blood.

“Not a whole hell of a lot we can do, can we?”

“We should get him away from here,” Aerion said, before looking at the passage. It was a good hundred yards away.

“No, we need to get away from here,” I said, gingerly picking Richard up.

He groaned in pain, but an apology was all I could give him right now. My Spatial Inventory had healing salves, bandages, painkilling herbs, suture needle, thread, and other conventional medical implements. 

I couldn’t use any of that until we were safe. Until then, I just had to pray that Passion and Vigor had a good relationship, and that Passion hadn’t cheated him out of points in that stat over some stupid divine quarrel.

“Let’s go!” I yelled, pushing as much power into my legs as I possibly could.

A hundred yards didn’t feel like much, but when you were running from a serpent that could chomp you whole without even realizing, it felt like an eternity. Every step felt like a thousand, and I lost track of my surroundings.

My world became the passage with the broken wall, and the ice leading up to it. Doctors would call it tunnel vision, caused by adrenaline and my panicked flight response.

Whatever it was, it supercharged my hearing. Everything felt more visceral. More real than it had ever been. 

Which was why I heard the ice crack this time.

“DODGE!” I yelled, throwing myself as hard as I could to the side.

Aerion mirrored my motion without hesitation, diving the opposite way. 

Just in time to avoid the jaws of death that came bursting up through the ice, soaring into the sky like a column.

“Shit. Shit shit shit!” 

“Greg! We need another plan!”

“I know!” I shouted. This wasn’t working. We had too many handicaps. If we were going to fight this thing, we needed everyone at full strength. Including Richard.

I looked at the elven Champion, struggling to keep conscious through the pain.

“Sorry, buddy. But we need your help.”

“Well, mate,” Richard said through gritted teeth. “Why didn’t you just say so earlier?”

I tried to give him a comforting smile, but a grimace was all I managed. “Does that thing have a heart? And can you stop it?”