Chapter: 222 - Not-Gravy (Patreon)

<Contains content which may be considered grimdark>
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Tala bisected the rotting corpse through the top of its head, Flow exiting between its legs.

The thing still tried to grab her as it fell, and she cut the falling pieces in half again, effectively quartering the zombie.

-Zombies aren’t real.-

What do you call these, then?

Tala was…not happy.

She stood on top of the only dry patch she’d been able to find so far in the incredibly odd swamp.

Swamp doesn’t cover it by half.

Instead of water, she had trudged through two-foot-deep sludge that had the consistency of week-old gravy. Tala suspected it would be a deathtrap, if the end of reality weren’t right below the surface.

-Well, two feet down.-

Don’t be childish.

-Oh, look, another one.-

Tala oriented on where her mirrored perception showed another zombie-like creature pull itself out of the gravy to stagger towards her.

Look, the ribcage is solid bone, all the way through. There’s no cavity for organs. It was never alive.

-Do you really prefer to think of these things as having been created to seem like zombies?-

Yes. Why wouldn’t I?

-Think of the implications of something creating a mimicry of zombies and doing a bad job of it.-

Tala quickly chopped this one up too. The thick muck around her was becoming oddly fluffy as the dozens of still animate limbs wriggled and thrashed, effectively aerating the not-water.

That almost looks like meringue. I’m never going to be able to look at that stuff the same again.

-It’s a lot browner, plus, look at all the detritus.-

After a moment, Tala nodded. Thank you, that helps.

Now, though, she wanted lemon meringue pie.

Alat snorted within Tala’s head. -We’re pretty odd.-

With no more immediate threats, Tala took a moment to scan her surroundings once again.

It smelled, awful. There was a cloying sweetness to the air, like someone had shot rotting syrup up her nostrils. To make it worse, there was no variation in the scent at all. It was utterly uniform, decidedly disgusting, pervasively pernicious.

-What’s with the alliteration?-

Anything to get the smell out of my mind.

She was roughly a hundred yards from the entrance, which looked like a stone archway from this side, freestanding in the swamp.

Overhead, she could feel the end of reality just out of reach.

This place was really oddly shaped, seeming almost like a long, wide hallway.

Reality ended about twenty feet to either side of her, and that seemed to represent the shape of this hold, extending away from her into the distance.

Nothing broke the gravy-like surface except the occasional ripple, which Tala suspected were more of these not-zombies.

Close to a mile away, if her estimation was correct, a stone wall blocked the entire passage.

Tala spoke out loud, just to give her something to hear in the otherwise vacuous silence, “This place comes across like someone built it after hearing a child’s summary of a horror story.”

-That…actually makes a lot of sense, yeah. Are ether holds influenced by thinking beings’ thoughts or concepts about things? This is simply a manifestation based on the commonalities surrounding these stories, aggregated across all intelligent species?-

I doubt that’s actually correct, but it still seems like as good an explanation as anything. We really don’t have enough information to know, though.

-Onward?-

Tala sighed, then nodded. “Onward.”

She stepped down from the small rise and grimaced as the fluffed sludge came up nearly to her waist. She ignored the feet and hands that scrabbled at her ineffectively.

She rolled three ending-seeds around in her mouth.

She had popped them in before entering this space. They should be an effective weapon if the things in here ever came at her more than one at a time or managed to sneak up on her.

Her pressure distribution scripts weren’t large enough to allow her to walk on the surface of the gravy, sadly. In fact, Tala had pulled power from the scripts, though she couldn’t deactivate them fully.

With power flowing through them at full strength, they actually made walking harder, as it took longer for her feet to find the truly firm footing at the edge of reality.

Two more not-zombies rose out of the sludge, one after another, and Tala cut them down with contemptuous ease.

It wasn’t pleasant to walk through the stuff. If she’d been mundane, she might not have been able to manage it at all. Blessedly, with her magics and enhancements, she was strong enough that progressing was actually super easy, barely an inconvenience.

As she was forging ahead, confident in her strength, her next step came down on…nothing. Reality continued downward as it never had before, and with a little yelp, Tala fell into a pit in the border of reality.

-Oh, that’s evil.-

Tala couldn’t see through the swamp gravy, so she pushed her bloodstars up, out of the liquid to watch for enemies.

She calmly reached around herself, trying to find anything she could grab onto.

There was nothing.

Her movements gained a bit of frenzy as she scrambled in the mirk for any way of rising one again.

I will not drown in this nasty sludge!

-Would you rather drown somewhere else?-

Tala pushed power down a different path within Flow, transforming the weapon into a glaive. She then swept around herself, searching for any firm surface. The only one was directly in front of her.

With her bloodstars mirroring her perspective for Tala and Alat, she knew that she’d gotten turned around, and that what she had found was the shelf that she’d just stepped off of.

It was a good three feet ahead of her, and already two or three feet up.

Worse, if she understood what she was feeling by searching around herself with Flow, the border of reality extended back, underneath that shelf.

There could be anything under there, watching, waiting to devour her.

Tala would have thought swimming in gravy would be easier because it was heavier than water, so she should be more buoyant. Unfortunately, because it was a semi-solid, it didn’t flow around her as she’d have liked or expected.

Her movements didn’t accomplish anything but spinning her in place as she slowly sunk deeper.

Tala was beginning to panic.

She felt like eyes were on her from every direction.

Think, Tala. Think!

There had to be a way out.

She had to have an ability or item that could save her.

-Well, you won’t drown for a long, long time. The damage that would kill a mundane will be healed by your scripts so long as they last, and you have reserves, which you’re full of.-

So, no solution meant drowning for likely at least a month.

Not better!

-Tala?-

This would be such a stupid way to die.

-Tala, we have a problem.-

I know! Quiet, let me think.

She tried throwing Flow away, over the under-gravy shelf and pulling it back towards her, but that just brought the weapon back to her hand, it didn’t move her in the proper direction at all.

There was nothing for a grappling hook to grab onto, even if she had one, which she didn’t.

Her lungs were burning.

I am not inhaling this stuff.

She was kicking her legs, trying different methods of movement, even as she continued to slowly slurp lower through the sludge.

-You really need to actually notice this!-

It was then, Tala noticed what her mirrored perception and Alat had noticed quite a while ago.

There were dozens of not-zombies coming from every direction, and if what she was seeing was accurate, there would likely be some—

Something grabbed her leg.

That’s not a ‘something!’ I know exactly what that is.

A not-zombie grabbed her leg, accelerating her trip downward.

How deep does this go?

She cut away those grabbing at her, but more replaced them, even as she continued to hack.

She needed to get out.

She didn’t have any tool that could get her out.

For one of the first times in her life, she wished that she’d taken a more traditional path.

If she were a normal gravity Mage, she could have just reversed gravity in this area and used that to rise to the top.

Rise…against gravity…

Her eyes snapped open in realization, and even through the much, she saw multiple mutilated faces closing in on her.

That meant that they were within arm’s reach, and she struck out with Flow.

She targeted herself. RESTRAIN!

Her power enacted, stealing all the kinetic energy from her and lifting her up.

The working would lift the target above ground level, then alter gravity to hold them there.

It was the first part that she cared about.

-Oh, that was clever.-

You couldn’t have thought of that?

-Well…we were panicking a bit.-

Yeah, we were at that.

As the creatures surged at her, she continued to strike out, fighting against the leeching nature of her spell, though every movement that was hampered by the magics accelerated her rise.

The gravy around her was swarming with skeletal creatures, faux flesh adorning them in odd ways.

Why does that one have a…kidney? Is that a kidney hanging out of its eye-socket?

-They clearly have no basis in actual biology, Tala.-

Clearly.

Her lungs were still burning, and she could feel parts of her degrading from lack of oxygen even while her magics repaired them, but Tala put the pain aside. She was almost free. It was only another moment and—

Her head broke the surface, and she gasped in a great lungful of air.

As she did, three ending-seeds shot down her throat.

Her body reacted reflexively, closing off her airway and causing her to swallow without conscious thought.

One.

Two.

Three seeds were swallowed.

Oh.

-Oh.-

That’s…bad.

Tala felt her enhanced stomach acids breach the ending-seeds in sequence, and their magics began to ramp up.

She lifted completely free of the not-swamp, and the beasts lunged out at her like fish trying to snag a bug.

Tala was a whirlwind of death.

She used her discs to redirect her assailants, positioning them to her greatest advantage. Together with her tungsten sphere and rod, she spoiled attacks and controlled the space around herself incredibly effectively.

-You’re getting a lot better with those tools.-

Why, thank you, Alat.

Flow flickered between its forms, always the perfect length to lay open what she struck at.

Her free hand caught and crushed other unfortunate creatures.

Their clawed hands and gnashing teeth couldn’t find purchase on her, even when they were able to reach.

The only damage that they wrought was to tear at her clothing, but that quickly repaired after each piece ripped free.

All the while, she was doing her utmost not to panic as her mage-sight watched the destructive powers build within her gut.

Maybe, my stomach acids will degrade parts of the magic? It wouldn’t work then.

-Maybe? The acid is magic now…- But Alat didn’t sound convinced.

Tala’s mind traced over every line in the building spell-forms. She picked out the patterns in the flowing magical spell-forms streaming side by side in her gut.

The seconds seeming to stretch into minutes or even hours as she continued to kill the things attacking her purely on instinct and reflex.

She was now floating a few inches above the gravy, held there by her own power.

Her strikes were angled downward as much as possible to keep herself up despite the pulls of those that managed to snag her momentarily.

Even so, it didn’t matter. The ending-seeds were about to pop.

It was so, so stupid!

I can’t just grab the spell-form, that is useless. I can’t even grab the power and redirect it. It’s too stable for magical manipulation to make meaningful changes. I might be able to strong-arm it, but that would be much too slow, if I could do it at all.

She could pull reinforcement power from the surrounding flesh to wrap around it, and that might dampen the effect. That was the purpose of the ending-berry power after all, to counter that of the ending-tree.

Unfortunately, ending-seeds were much more powerfully worked than the basic ending-tree disintegration.

She felt like whimpering and screaming at the same time.

Her body utilized magics that were so close to the ones about to blow her in half.

-It might not be that bad.-

Tala glared internally.

Alat quieted.

Blocking rivers of power would create lakes, or just cause the water to flow around the blockage. The power in those lakes would still have the remembered pattern, however. It would still activate, still tear at her insides.

I need the power to take a new path. She couldn’t vomit the stuff up. Even if she were fast enough, her anti-vomit scripts would fight her. She could pull power from them temporarily, but it still would be difficult. She just didn’t have the time.

Tala’s defensive magics were so, so close in form to the magics that would soon assail her from the inside.

The stupid magics are the inverse of what I want! She screamed into the silence of her own, panicked mind.

…the inverse.

She hesitated.

Her eyes widened. Like my inverse Archon star.

It wasn’t exactly like a river. The power was flowing according to its own nature, rather than in physically restricting banks. So, if she shunted the power away, it should reform, and if the Archon star was any indication, it would invert.

In a panic, she did something inadvisable.

With her long-trained dexterity, she stabbed her aura into one of the three streams, angling her aura against the current to create a sloped shunt. More than that, she shaped her aura around the redirected stream, angling the result away.

Power shot up the aura ramp, prevented from flowing as it wanted to, but acting by its nature, nonetheless.

Even as it was distorted away from its natural path, the magic was still bent and aspected to form the patterns of an ending-tree, thus, it almost immediately began flowing through the loops and twirls of the well-known spell-form once more.

In less than a second, the entirety of that stream had been shunted off to the side, reconnected, and was now floating, self-contained beside the others within her stomach.

Did it work? She didn’t have time to investigate.

-Skip the second!-

They could tell that the second was too close to triggering for her to work with it.

So, she drove her aura into the third spell-form, even as the first activated.

Reinforcing magics blossomed within her, the power hauntingly familiar. It was the power she had absorbed so many, many times before.

Ending-berry power.

The second spell-form activated right afterwards, destruction radiating outward and clashing with the reinforcement.

Unfortunately, it is easier to destroy than to protect.

All the inverted seed’s power was consumed, and the acid within her stomach was broken apart.

The disintegrating magics slammed against her stomach lining, eating away at it, but no longer having enough power to break through the defensive magics there.

But Tala was focusing on the final seed.

Almost…

The flow of power snapped into place even as it hit its activation threshold, and reinforcing power swept through her in a wave.

The three seeds had triggered barely a second apart, from first to last.

Her stomach churned, even as her regeneration scripts fought to rebuild her perforated stomach.

Base, highly volatile substances spilled into Tala’s insides, causing chemical reactions all through her abdominal cavity.

Her magics minimized the destruction, and repaired the damage, but it was still agonizing.

She grit her teeth against the pain, tears streaming down her face and spoiling her vision.

Thankfully, she could still see through her bloodstars, and she fought on, hampered through she was.

In the aftermath, the creatures were able to drag her back down into the gravy, and she broke the working on herself and cast it again.

Restrain.

With that, she rose back up above the surface, regaining her composure and continuing to deal destruction and spoil their attacks with Flow, tungsten, discs, and her bare hand and feet.

-Rusting slag!-

Tala coughed up bits of her lung that had been destroyed by the processes within herself, spitting to clear her mouth.

That rusting worked? A wave of relief washed through her, and she found herself laughing, even as she continued to rain not-zombie parts down on the thick liquid below her. That worked!!!!

Her jubilation helped pull her away from the remembered pain, even as the substances within her finally reached an equilibrium.

There would be internal clean-up to do after this, but that was far better than losing her lower half to this place.

-I still don’t think it would have been quite that bad, but I am glad that you succeeded.-

Tala smiled at the accomplishment, reveling in what she had done.

As she continued her active defense, contemplating her success, her eyes widened. She was struck by a realization that was the obvious follow-up, and she began to laugh.

-Tala, is that really a good idea to try right—-

Tala pulled in a deep breath and drew some power from the defensive scripts in her flesh into the air in her lungs.

With a deft will, she jammed her aura into the swirling flow of power and watched the spell-form come back together, inverted.

With a powerful exhale, she breathed out a gust of disintegration, and every enemy in a ten-foot cone…lost a few layers of bone and flesh.

Tala grimaced.

Not enough power.

She took in another deep breath and strained to pull many, many times the power of the first attempt through the defensive scripts and into her lungs.

She could feel how doing so strained the inscriptions, and she knew that she would need to get them refreshed far sooner, if she used this very often.

Then, with an increasingly familiar motion, she thrust her sharpened aura into the flow, redirecting and inverting the form.

She exhaled and time seemed to slow as the power flooded out with her breath.

Firstly, the magic obliterating every part of every enemy in a ten-foot cone.

But there was still power in dissolution.

Tala had never seen that before. Ending-trees always imparted almost exactly enough power to destroy what they acted on.

-Um… I think that might be bad.-

With nothing else to act on, the power broke apart the air itself.

There was a brilliant flash as a reaction of the now separate elements bloomed into heat and light.

Fire.

Her overuse of the power had lit the very air ablaze in one shining moment.

It wasn’t a forceful explosion, though it was loud and bright.

Even as she flinched away, Tala began to laugh, her mirth echoing across the surface of the not-swamp close on the heels of the explosion.

-Too much power. I think with those two samples, though, I can help you use the right amount.-

Still laughing with glee, Tala nodded. Let’s do this, then.

She threw Flow and drew it back again and again, cutting through many enemies each time.

Whenever she could contain herself enough to do so, Tala paused her laughter and repeated her breath of disintegration. With Alat’s guidance, they didn’t use too much power and the attacks were simply exhalations of disintegration.

The lesser use of power also put less stress on her inscriptions. She would still need reinscription sooner than she would otherwise have needed such, but she wouldn’t run them dry in a single battle or even a few conflicts.

Finally, after another minute or so of fighting, Tala was once again alone, hovering in place above a frothing mass of sinking parts.

She still had a gleeful grin stretched across her features.

She surveyed her surroundings and sighed. Now what? If I remove the working, I’ll drop straight down.

-I have an idea for that.-

Tala cocked her head to one side. “That just might work.”

A bit less than five minutes later, Tala’s feet slammed into the stone wall at the far end of the ether hold.

She had cut the working drawing her that way as soon as she’d gained a good amount of speed, and now she altered her perception of herself and her needs sufficiently to break the ‘Restrain’ working as well.

With a lithe twist, she landed in the six-inch deep muck before the wall.

Wow. I’m glad this wasn’t another pit.

She could have used another ‘Restrain,’ but she should have thought of the possibility beforehand.

“That worked amazingly, Alat.”

-I am glad to be of service. We’ve been wanting to try out some of our potential methods of flight, and that worked beautifully, at least in this confined space.-

Yeah, I wouldn’t want to do that outside of a hold…

That could end quite badly, if she wasn’t careful.

She examined the stone wall before her, and the massive gates that were the only way through. The tightly fitted stone was braced against the edges of reality all the way around.

“You know, what? Why would Pallaun think this would be fun? I can’t imagine that combat would have challenged him.”

-Well, he did tell us this was a smaller one, and he shirked it off onto us.-

Tala grunted. “Might be that he’s more concerned about us than he let on.”

-You think he gave us an easy one?-

She shrugged. “Maybe. Or, maybe a combination? It was easy and disgusting, so why not give it to the new girl?”

Alat huffed a laugh. -Yeah, maybe. Or things are about to get a lot more interesting.-

“Maybe, yeah. Shall we see what lies in the ‘evil fortification?’”

-Yes, let’s see what the collective understanding of a ‘mad Mage’ might be.-

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