773 - And Yet So Far
“LET GO!”
Akna’s furious scream was punctuated by her sinking her teeth a tentacle as thick as a log, the rubbery appendage wrapping around her middle as it tried to drag her to the far end of the pit she’d fallen into. The bite caused a flurry of screams to emanate from the corner of the sinkhole, where a cluster of animal corpses – massive rats, oversized badgers, and moles the size of dogs, among others – were scattered in front of a tangle of tentacles, all surrounding a beak lined with razor teeth, the only visible parts of the creature whose bulk was buried in the ground.
But it wasn’t the monster’s central maw that emitted the chorus of screams. Instead, those came from several of its smaller tentacles, their ends splitting open as though making a grotesque parody of flowers. As each one opened, it unleashed a new cry, different in pitch and tone.
The cacophony was beyond unpleasant; the sounds seemed to clash dissonantly, causing Akna’s ears to flatten in pain. Even as she clenched her teeth harder, she exhaled harshly, forcing ice to crystalize along the tentacle in her mouth. But the creature didn’t seem particularly bothered by the cold, bringing its shrieking tentacles closer rather than pulling them back.
It was only when the screaming pseudopods positioned themselves on either side of her head that she realized the noise wasn’t just unpleasant.
It was an attack.
At the same time as she registered that, the two screeching tentacles shrieked louder, and this time the pitch sent spikes of agony through her. The sounds were so piercing, so absolutely grating, that she couldn’t maintain her hold on the appendage grabbing her, releasing it as she frantically tried to twist her head away from the shrieking tentacles aimed right at her ears. But no sooner had she released the larger tentacle – only oozing slightly from her bite – that it tightened, pulling her down and coiling more, making it harder for her to twist away from the brain-shattering noise being directed at her.
Struggling harder, Akna’s awareness of everything around her began to slip as the pain grew worse, making her wish that her ears would simply burst so she could escape the hideous sounds. She’d heard the elders of her tribe complain how the young warriors could be so noisy that they made it impossible to think, but this was the first time she’d ever found that to be literally true-
A spike of black crystal surrounded in a purple aura suddenly flew down from beyond the edge of the sinkhole, burying itself just next to the base of the shrieking creature’s beak.
Immediately, its screaming was silenced.
Gasping in relief, Akna didn’t have a chance to steady herself before an explosion of cold filled the pit she and the creature were in. To the adlet, the blast was little more than a stiff breeze that ushered in a welcome chill, but from the way its tentacles suddenly writhed and shook – the one coiled around her middle unwinding from around her as it thrashed in pain – the monster at the back of the sinkhole found it far less pleasant.
“Akna!” called Solvei, the winter wolf crouched at the edge of the pit, lowering a paw. “Quick! Change forms and grab on!”
The shaman didn’t need to be told twice, shifting back into her humanoid form as she reached out, fingers grasping Solvei’s crystal-clad paw. Immediately, the oversized winter wolf yanked, and Akna found herself lifted out of the sinkhole even as the tentacled monstrosity seemed to recover, pseudopods reaching out toward where she’d been a moment before. But even as the smaller tentacles yanked the shard of black crystals from its body, the thing remained silent, the ends of its thinner appendages opening to no effect.
Heedless of her nudity, Akna stumbled well away from the edge of the hole before flopping down, panting. “The last time I was here, Darkest Night didn’t seem nearly this dangerous!”
Some sort of energy beam – the offshoot of another battle taking place elsewhere – cut across the sky then, momentarily visible through the canopy overheard before vanishing. A second later came a loud roar, followed by a crash and the sound of something being rent asunder. Solvei’s ears swiveled toward the sounds for a moment, confirming that they weren’t coming any closer before she shook her head. “Was the entire place going crazy then?”
Akna shook her head wearily, but didn’t have a chance to say anything else before Lex cut in. “If you’re not injured, then we need to keep moving. The longer this goes on, the greater the chance that something else will take our bodies before we can reclaim them.”
“I’m honestly surprised that hasn’t happened already,” groaned Akna, shifting back into her winter wolf form before glancing at her lifeline, still pointing resolutely ahead. “With all of this chaos going on, you think something would have stumbled across them by now.”
“Which suggests that there’s something preventing nearby creatures from reaching them,” murmured Lex. “And which might make it difficult for us as well.”
“I doubt it’ll be any match for your magic, Master!” chirped Solvei, lowering herself down so that Lex – who had gotten down from atop her so that she’d be able to help Akna out without worrying about unbalancing him – could climb onto her back again. “That thing you threw to quiet that monster was amazing!”
“What was that anyway?” huffed Akna, glancing back at where the tentacled creature was already starting to pick up the debris from the bottom of its sinkhole, laying branches and leaves atop the opening so that some other creature would fall victim to it.
Far more disgusting was the way several of its smaller tentacles were burrowing into the animal corpses that had been down there, causing them to move with obscene parodies of life as it manipulated them like puppets, placing them atop the pit’s coverings where it made them twitch and mill about as further camouflage. The sight made nearly made Akna gag, and she turned away from it, focusing instead on the magic Lex had used. “I mean, I’m glad you shut that thing up, but why didn’t you use it against that giant, Sissel or whatever her name was? She casts spells the same way you do, right? By saying magic words?”
“...let’s go,” answered Lex. “We’ve wasted enough time here.”
Huffing at having been snubbed, Akna didn’t say anything else as Solvei took off, for which Lex was thankful. Despite having tested the limits of what he could produce with dreambinding, he hadn’t been completely certain the silencing enchantment – modeled after the spell he’d seen Silhouette use to defeat Sonata back in Vanhoover – he’d placed onto that black crystal dart would work, and Lex had little patience for whatever tantrum the adlet was likely to throw if she found out he’d gambled her life on something he hadn’t been sure about.
Still, he admitted silently, she was right about one thing: now that he’d confirmed the efficacy of that particular tactic, it was one he’d be able to employ to good effect the next time he fought Sissel, or any other spellcasting whose magic required chanting to activate.
Now he just needed to get back alive so that he could use it against her.
“Okay, well...you were right that something’s keeping everything away from our bodies...”
Akna’s statement, uttered in a wry tone of voice, met with no response from Lex and Solvei as they stared at the black statues of himself and the adlet.
But despite being within a few dozen feet of their current position, none of them moved any closer, finding themselves completely stymied despite being so close to their goal. Right there, hissed Lex in silent frustration. The way back to our bodies is right there, but we can’t get to them!
It was a conclusion that he didn’t need to say out loud, the situation being obvious to all of them.
In the last few minutes of their journey, the ground had risen sharply, taking them over a large hill. Or rather, what had looked like a hill when they’d begun to climb it, only to find as they’d neared the top that it was rent asunder, as though some ancient beast had taken umbrage at the sudden rise in elevation and cleaved the offending uprise in two.
The result was that there was now a deep trench splitting the landscape. It didn’t extend very far – at a glance, Lex estimated that it was perhaps a little over a hundred feet from end to end, the edges of the rift narrowing at the edges of Solvei’s darkvision – and judging from the rock that Akna had dropped into it, listening for when it struck the bottom, it was only slightly less deep. Nor was it that wide, perhaps a little over two dozen feet across at most.
And several dozen feet down the opposite side of the crevasse – ironically just about level with the landscape surrounding the hill – was a rocky outcropping just barely wide enough to support the ebony replicas of himself and Akna that were perched on it.
By itself, reaching them would have been only a modest challenge, but Lex was far more concerned with the mist filling the bottom of the small canyon.
Darkest Night was, save only for his brief time in Eigengrau, a realm that could only be seen in black and white. The lack of any natural sources of illumination meant that darkvision was required to look at anything, and that was a form of sight that didn’t detect color. So for Lex, who had been borrowing Solvei’s sight almost the entire time, the Night Mare’s realm was entirely achromatic in nature.
But the mists at the bottom of the rift had a color all their own.
Red.
The glow was so soft that it was barely visible to the naked eye. In any other circumstance, it wouldn’t have been noticeable that the fog was glowing at all. But with no other light sources to overshadow it, the crimson hue stood out just enough to make itself known against the edges of the rift, staining everything with its carmine coloration.
Just as notable was the lack of activity. Although explosions and loud roars could still be heard, there were more distant, with the area around the rift almost totally silent. Even the rock Akna had dropped into the rift to test how far down the fog went – something she’d done only after the rest of them had made preparations for the simple test to disturb some new horror lairing in the mist – had done nothing, clattering anticlimactically upon hitting the canyon floor.
The only issue they’d had to deal with had been from the air, the trees having thinned out as they’d climbed the hill. After barely a minute of observing the rift, they’d been attacked by a flock – for lack of a better term – of creatures that had resembled nothing so much as giant manta rays, except airborne rather than aquatic.
Slashing out with tails like whips, the creatures had scattered in the face of Solvei and Akna’s breath weapons, but Lex had been more interested how one creature – its wing-flaps partially frozen – had careened into the mist-filled rift. The creature had let out some sort of whistling sound as soon as the vapors had touched its body, thrashing almost immediately. While it had managed to recover and fly back out a moment later, Lex hadn’t overlooked how its body had begun bleeding from its pores.
Or how the patch of mist it had flown through had grown slightly redder as a result.
“The crimson death mists,” muttered Solvei, shivering beside him. “Master, this is what Spinner was talking about, remember? When I saw those adlets for the first time but didn’t know what they were?”
Akna cocked an ear at that, looking at Solvei. “Excuse me?”
“Your scouting party,” clarified Lex. “Solvei saw them in their mist forms, and there was a discussion as to what exactly she’d observed.”
“And one of the ponies in Master’s group talked about the ‘crimson death mists,’ which suck your blood out if you touch them!” continued Solvei, pointing down to the crevasse.
“She also said they had glowing eyes, with discernable heads and claws,” countered Lex.
“And you thought we were anything like that?” huffed Akna, before shaking her head. “You know what? I don’t care. Let’s just get back to our bodies already. Since I can't take to the air again for a while, that means it's up to you to do your thing.”
Seeing that she was looking at him as she said that last part, Lex let out a slow breath. “And what thing would that be, exactly?”
“Use your magic!” growled Akna. “Just wave your hooves, say some weird words, and poof! We’re there!”
But Lex was already shaking his head. While he had a short-range teleport spell among his remaining thaumaturgical spells, one which allowed him to bring a few passengers with him, its safeguards required that their destination be an area able to accommodate them. The lack of space on the outcropping where their three-dimensional silhouettes were situated meant that wasn’t an option. And telling his tulpa that he wanted an item which would enable magical flight-
Unable to comply.
-was a nonstarter as well.
“I don’t have a spell which can get us there.”
Fighting down a whine of frustration, Akna turned to Solvei. “Can you make an ice-ramp or something? You did when you were fighting that hag!”
Solvei grimaced. “Making something that big requires me to use the extra bit of magic I keep in reserve, and I used that all up fighting White Wraith. I won’t have it back until tomorrow.”
Taking a deep breath, Akna tried to stay calm. “Okay...okay...new plan. We go over to the other side of the ridge, right above where the way back to our bodies is, and tie a rope to one of the trees on the other side of the hill, probably that one there” – she pointed at the opposite side of the ravine, where a twisted tree covered with vines and whose branches were bare save for hanging pods the size of melons, squatted near the edge of the ravine – “and lower ourselves down.” She looked at Lex as she finished. “You can make a rope, right?”
“I can,” answered Lex. “But I won’t.”
“Why not?!”
“Because if I’m right, the things hanging from that tree’s branches are bloodfruit, which means that we’re at the edge of whatever orchard Sanguine Disposition is keeping. Which likely means that tree is either a dangerous creature in its own right, or is guarded by one.”
Solvei’s eyes widened. “That bat pony has something to do with this?”
“Bloodfruit?” echoed Akna.
Lex ignored the adlet, focusing instead on Solvei’s question as he shook his head. “Unless there’s some deeper meaning to the Confluence placing our bodies here, then this is likely a coincidence. We only arrived here a few hours ago, and Sanguine Disposition didn’t see to know the full extent of how we came to Darkest Night. That suggests that it’s very unlikely that he knows these are here.”
“Hang on, what’s a bloodfruit?” interjected Akna. “And for that matter, what’s an orchard? Is that the name for a place filled with dangerous trees?”
“The best course of action is to wait,” announced Lex, fighting down the urge to sigh. “If we stay here long enough for Solvei to recover, she should be able to-”
He didn’t have a chance to finish before an explosion knocked him off his hooves.
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Well, at least there's less of a chance of their bodies being snatched though getting them back is going to be an issue in itself, especially with what just happened at the end. At first I thought it'd be Steel Soul's goons but they've been given explicit orders to avoid Lex so unless one of them got overambitious or this is another surprise courtesy of the Darkest Night's native flora and fauna.
Bats, Bloodfruit and Darklands? Someones been reading the classics.
Go East, young pegasus,.
11416659 Well, it helps that said classics have become the foundation for most of the tropes and archetypes that have developed since. Hence why they're classics.
11416574 Apparently getting out of Darkest Night without one last crisis was too much to hope for, though given how it was starting to become obvious that there had to be something keeping the local wildlife away from the planar passages to Lex and Akna's bodies, that was perhaps inevitable. Anything that would deter most of the local monsters would have to deter them, after all. As for that explosion...at this point, it's anypony's guess if that's the native flora or fauna, or if one of Steel Soul's minions has overlooked potential collateral damage.