novelzi 121- The Real Forsaken Lands
121- The Real Forsaken Lands
Vraxious—The Ravenous Grove.
Vrax was on top of a crumbling manor on the edge of his holdings. Stereos was still nose deep in books researching for him, so he figured now would be the best chance he would get to do a trial run for the real hunt and see if he was as prepared as he thought he would be.
He had come loaded up to take on a damned dragon if need be. Would he win against an actual dragon? Fuck no, but he would be at least a pain in the ass to eat. A bandolier of smelter moss vials jingled lightly across his chest, wrapped in form-fitting adapted pouches. These weren’t simple moss either; each of them was a living weapon that would act on its own hunger when unleashed, searching for prey to reduce to cinders.
His new cloak shivered in anticipation of bloodshed. The everthirst weave hugged against him tightly; the slight endless shifting was a bit unsettling, but he was getting used to it. The hooked roots continually spread out behind his back and peeked over his shoulders as they tracked nearby birds and small game.
His spear was lightly packed with a thin hole filled with a corklike shrub he had adapted inside of it, and Magebane worms inched round hungrily inside. If you looked closely, you could occasionally see them press right against the transparent interior tongues trailing around madly. Vrax had a small solid piece of wood stuffed into the top to seal the Magebane worms inside. It should slag away the moment he channeled a smite or used his stigmata.
Malice shuffled underneath him. A bit unhappy with his new saddle. It was composed of thick overlapping leaves layered into something akin to barding but much lighter. It was filled with holes all along the spine to allow the retrievers unimpeded room for escape.
And of course on the rooftop next to him, Duchess loomed hungrily, twisting and turning, tasting the air for the hints of the fear she needed. Far Below, Lux meandered through the streets, experimenting with his new capabilities. There was a horrific screaming whine and splash of crimson mist that coated an entire distant alley as Lux finally caught a Forsaken Wolf he had been playing cat and mouse with for the last few minutes.
Vrax had his entire menagerie stuffed to the brim with his deadliest creations. Sunshine, a mangler tree, even a variety of dandelions, including the awful self-reproducing Vein Diver Assassins. Although, he had tweaked them and renamed them Extinction Divers, since he was pretty sure if he unleashed those in any kind of nest, it would utterly scour it clean of life.
A flock of devourers loosely flew overhead, prompted to follow every once in a while, by [Adapt Life] recalling them toward Vrax. He had left the sugar gliders at home. They made a fantastic defensive measure for his capitol. Between them, his friends, and just the general fuckery going on there, it wouldn’t be a simple place to try and overrun.
Alright, this...this is my trial run. If everything I have works as intended, I should be fighting far, far in excess of what my level suggests. And what better place to see if I'm ready for the unexpected than that ancient zoo I have been chomping at the bit to explore?
Let's go find some weird shit and slay it. This should let me iron out any kinks in my new gear and creatures. Not to mention getting some more levels into Lux, Duchess, maybe even Sunshine isn’t a bad idea.
Vrax leaned forward and whispered to Malice while pointing towards the distant bridge, “Zoomies?” He was expecting Malice to be jarringly fast, but he wasn’t ready for what the psycho actually did. Malice clacked his teeth excitedly while waving his hands in front of himself and then simply leaped straight off the side of the building. Retrievers stuck into the edge of the roof slightly and slowed his descent the moment before he would have brutally impacted into the cobblestone.
Vrax was happy he had put some footholds and an oh-shit handle onto the saddle, or the odds he would have just splattered all over the unyielding street were high. He held on for dear life as wind whipped by him. Slowly he eased himself up into a half crouch, one hand holding his spear, the other on his bridle. His knee's bent to absorb the shock of each leap and sudden jarring motion his mount made seemingly at random.
Sometimes malice would fly across jutting slabs of rubble that sat dozens of strides apart like they were stepping stones. At another point his mount scampered straight up the side of a building in a flash before scarfing down a bright yellow bird that had caught its eye. Even with the random distractions, they thundered across the bridge that led to the zoo in just a handful of minutes.
The flurmph, who called this place home, eagerly started tottering towards him the moment he entered the dramatically overgrown square. Heading off almost certain death, Vrax corralled his creations down a side street to approach the zoo from another angle. Otherwise he was almost sure Duchess or Lux would get them all killed by trying to hunt the oddly cute little abomination lures and waking the fucking tier 3 mimic that was hiding nearby.
It took some finagling, but Vrax managed to get them right up to the Ancient Zoo’s broken walls without any incidents. Malice clambered up a collapsed wall so he could get a good look at what was actually hiding here.
Vrax’s breath hitched the moment they crested over the crumbling edge, getting his first good look inside the zoo. The landscape shortly within the walls was a stark and violent shift from the jungle-like ground outside. The entire landscape curved slightly downward into an ancient crater, hiding the true horror hidden within. Twisting branches reached towards the sky as if begging for mercy. The very air held a slight twinkling shimmer that crackled with pure mana as shapes darted within the obscuring magical fog.
Things, vast things, shifted occasionally within the thick mystical miasma blanketing this place; tentacles the size of a tree whished audibly through the ominous landscape, creating soundless black lightning bolts with their very presence.
The bit of foliage Vrax could see through the fog other than the twisting trees was wrong. Bushes that had melted in on themselves, wrapping inward impossibly. Grass that stood perfectly straight and utterly devoid of any color. The very ground rippled occasionally as if reality here was only a suggestion.
Oh fuck me, I found an aberrant zone. Oh gods...the things that must be hiding in here.
Vrax rubbed his hands together greedily as he imagined what a place of chaotic eldritch magic like this would have done to the life that lived here for a millennium. This place wouldn’t have been looted either; almost no one was crazy enough to try and explore aberrant zones. This was the real forsaken lands, places so twisted by uncontrolled magic that they were nearly another dimension. Most of the Elysium capitol was this way, from what he knew.
If we can survive this jaunt, then we can survive our trial hunt. Hell, I might find something in there that could give me an edge in hunting something nearly fifty levels above myself.
Vrax turned to Duchess and Lux. “Alright guys, who wants to go stab something with too many eyes and get a shit ton of quick levels?” He gave a nervous glance towards the massive tentacles in the distance. “Probably not the big one though.”
They crept forward off the wall and past a collection of mangled enclosures that were laden with creeping red fruit trees. The ground here actually rose upwards slightly into a gentle hill before it abruptly dropped off into the massive crater that was the aberrant zone.
Lux looked at Vrax excitedly, pieces of his bark whizzing all round him fast enough to make a slight whistling sound. “Alright, buddy, stick close to me; we are going to just scout the edges. And I really hope visibility is a bit better once we get in there.” Lux creaked darkly in response a bit of wolf fur still sticking from his mouth.
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Duchess flicked her tongues out and oozed down the crater slope, disappearing into the fog with a slight crackling sound. Her every crawling step and slithering movement sent small ripples across the ground.
Vrax followed cautiously behind on Malice, and Lux took up the rear, claws curled and at the ready. The devourers bobbled around overhead, drifting in and out of the fog as they entered, making curious cooing noises when they touched the fog, and its static properties caused them to poof out to almost comical proportions.
They descended past wretched dead-looking trees, none the same color or shape. Some were impossibly angled things looking crudely hewn rather than natural. Others looked like melted candle wax with bark slogging down onto the dark earth below. The only thing they all had in common was how their branches grew nearly straight up, reaching for the uncorrupted air above the fog.
Vrax took a deep breath; the air tingled slightly, almost like breathing on a frosty morning, but thankfully didn’t seem to be poisonous. The slight arcs of electricity with every movement in the fog were distracting and absolutely wrecking his party’s stealth but appeared harmless.
Well, shit, at least nothing will be able to sneak up on us silently in here.
The visibility inside the thick fog was slightly better than looking in, but it still cut how far they could see down to a meager twenty strides. Vrax slowed Malice’s cautious trot down as they reached the floor of the crater, and a toppled structure loomed in the fog ahead.
It looked like a growth from the ground jutting awkwardly out of the earth at an impossibly sharp angle. Crimson crystals had grown from the earth and risen up underneath its tilted side, harshly holding it aloft. All along the crystals, small white figures scurried up and down like swarming ants into and then out of the building.
Vrax leaped off Malice, spear in hand, ready for anything. Duchess was waiting for him next to a massive broken window that led into a nearly sideways room crowded with more of the red crystals creeping across most of the once beautiful brickwork that the building was constructed of.
Up close Vrax could see that the small white shapes were things adjacent to eyeless fleshy spiders the size of a chicken. They rushed around almost every crevice of the building with seemingly no purpose. Duchess had a few of them in her hands and was occasionally tossing them into her maw, where they made an audible popping sound when she chewed.
Vrax rolled his eyes and slowly edged into the room; inside, a carpet of mushrooms peeked from within the cracks of the brickwork, warring with the crystals for space. Vrax smiled and started stepping along the thick lines of mushrooms winding along the harshly angled floor in the room. They clung to his armored feet like a lifeline, stopping him from sliding all around or having to grab onto the mystery crystals for support.
Farther into the room, past an especially large cluster of crystal that pierced the ceiling above, there was a gaping wound in the floor that led to a tumble of rubble and what looked like a cavern beneath the building. With a shrug, Vrax carefully began picking his way down, thanking all the gods that were listening for this stubborn carpet of mushrooms that crept their way down the rubble as well.
Duchess piled down after him nearly as gracefully; Malice simply lowered himself with bladed wires trailing behind the retrievers mooring above. Lux... didn’t have such an easy time stumbling with his new limbs more than once and taking the last five strides in a clattering slide accompanied by an avalanche of crumbling bricks.
“You good back there?” Vrax whispered back, although he wasn’t sure why he bothered between the godawful racket, Lux had just made and the obnoxious wet laughing coming from Duchess, any hope at a stealthy entrance had just died ingloriously.
Lux stood up in a small shower of bricks with an angry huffing sound; his bark pulsed off him a few times to shake the dust free, and he pointed forwards. “Hunt!”
“Uhuu...yeah, you’re fine...” Vrax looked over the new location, gathering his bearings and giving the embarrassed Spriggan a moment to gather itself.
The space under the building was a fascinating hollow formed from a thin, uneven shell of that same crimson crystal. It was strewn with honeycomb-like empty spaces that more of those strange creatures darted throughout. What looked like an old house sat in the center of the hollow.
The house itself was, of course, overgrown with the same crystals, although they grew around it almost protectively, forming into a swooping crescent that extended beyond the back of the crumbling building. It disconcertingly looked like a wasp's nest.
Vrax took a good look at one of the creatures when it plodded across his foot, totally unbothered. It was disconcertingly boneless in its movements, half oozing and half walking, and even up close he couldn’t discern a damned mouth. It paused on a nearby crystal, and he could see it and the crystal wall shimmer briefly before it continued on.
“Alright, I give up. What the hell are you guys? I don’t have a clue.” Vrax used predator's gaze on the nearest boneless blob when it paused briefly on the ceiling to do whatever the fuck it was doing to the crystal. [Bedlam Larva Tier-1] (lvl 4) [Threat: nonexistent]
Well, if you are the babies, I'd bet Mama or Poppa is down here somewhere too, and something tells me they won't be quite as calm.
He took the lead with Lux and Duchess poking about the edges of the circular room. Vrax frowned at the overall lack of plant life down here. There were still some of these stubborn mushrooms strewn about across the mostly crystallized floor, but not many... Before he went all the way to the house, he crouched behind a hunk of cavern floor that hooked sideways like a talon and began teasing out his [Cistern Of Bloom and Decay], letting its power slowly leak across the floor, explosively expanding the mushrooms' numbers into thick, crowded patches that peeked out from the cracks in the floor.
It wasn’t ideal, but it would hopefully be enough to use his stigmata if he needed to. Instead of walking the last ten strides to the nest ahead and letting whatever was lurking inside nab him, Vrax settled in while his companions made slow loops around the edges of the room.
There's almost certainly something in there...now how do I lure it out...? Duchess has been snacking on its babies, and it doesn’t seem to give a damn. The crystal seems to be integral to their survival, maybe.... With an evil smile Vrax pulled a small but solid dagger from his pack. He wedged it into a break in the crimson coating along the floor and pushed with all his enhanced might.
A single sheet of the crystal broke off with an unnaturally loud chime. The noise rolled through the room, echoing again and again, the very sound causing the rest of the room to flare slightly in anger.
Something large shifted within the ruined home ahead. The sound of glass being dragged across glass grated out, and Vrax saw the flare of tentative mana seep from the broken doorway across the nearby floor. Almost like it was probing for something, but whatever was inside didn’t venture out.
Hmm, fine. I need to be more destructive that wasn’t quite enough to piss you off—is that what you are saying? Oh...well, that would certainly do it...
Vrax teased more energy from his cistern, covering the ground around him with small mushrooms and even a light carpeting of moss that had been trying to find purchase. Then when he was sure he had enough, he activated his stigmata. Carving a blackened circular swath around himself and rending half of the life he had just granted the hollow from existence.
Rising from the rot, a tangle of hateful branches and red leaves, a single mangler tree flanked by two retriever hives stood defiantly slightly ahead of Vrax’s hiding spot, between him and whatever was hiding in the building. The tentative mana shot out, almost caressing the blatant invaders.
The mangler tree shifted right, then left, looking with its one massive eye towards the scurrying creatures nearby. It violently shimmied across the floor with its roots, snatching a half dozen of the Bedlam Larva as it went.
That still wasn’t enough; the thing within its nest just silently watched. Vrax waited; he was hoping the mangler would do what it always did when it had food. The mangler quickly tore the larva apart in its many heaving branches and then shifted side to side and spun in a slow circle in frustration, looking for somewhere on the floor to sink its roots.
After another moment of frustrated searching, its branches reached out and grabbed the crystal coating the floor, heaving it skyward with devastating force. An entire patch of the floor two strides wide shattered violently, hunks flying over the Mangler’s branches as it happily stuffed its roots into the soil below.
There were three heartbeats where the only sound in the room was the echoing unnatural chime of the broken nest resonating with its surroundings ringing out. Then an unholy shriek of rage and pain bellowed from within the nest as something massive and boneless oozed through a too-tight opening in the home's broken wall.
Lux looked up. “Hunt?” He asked in apparent confusion and a bit of fear.
Duchess floated off the ground, crooning down towards the others, “Oh well, now you have done it!”
Vrax cursed quietly and watched as fragments of the nearby nest began flaking away and shooting towards their master, sticking to it like magical armor. The creature was cursedly obscured by the sudden storm of crystal in the air. Vrax couldn’t tell what the hell it actually looked like other than that it was big and had too many damn eyes.