An ever-present evil mansion nestles within the distant mists curling to claim it. The roaming gardens barely peeking through too seem miniaturized along with the vast distances of Zennia.
The wide world shrunken, so that the boy-sized, tear-drop-shaped boulders which flip wildly after missing Adris can tumble toward this strange phenomenon.
(The higher we go up toward the tree, the further from the ground everything swirls.)
“E r r o r: height still exceeds modified tolerances for this tool. Down, terminal velocity achievable.”
“Hahaha, stupid doll, ‘down’ isn’t real! Nothing is below us, ever…”
Adris re-extends his hand toward a girl giggling maniacally after the last stone chips pass by, pink flowers and smoke raining with them. Instead of taking Adris, the chunk that was dodged tore loose the tooth next to the one the rope Ave clings to is tied. Ave can’t grasp his with her hand having a pop-up book stuck in it, still proudly spewing warm lights, and a doll wrestling with the other arm to stay stuck to the snake elf.
“… You can’t fall if down doesn’t exist…”
Almost pointed straight up on a tight-strung line the climbing snake elf coils toward an alcove set into the tower they climb. Adris’ hand is the lure that brightens Ave’s face to a shining happiness at the thought of reaching safety with Still and—!
“HYAAAAAA!”
“FIRMAMENT…!”
Pieces of the tower “miraculously” converge into each other on their death flights toward Ave. The chunks fighting for space instead tumble downward into the distant bottom of the the world to be eaten by fog, joining the petals that pump out at set intervals to spill from the tower’s many pipe holes.
“Rocks aren’t real either.”
“… terminal speeds achieved, that which supposedly doesn’t exist.”
Under an onslaught of hurled artillery which whizzes by, the elf with a rictus smile and a sweating face continues her twisting climb.
(That’s a new threat for this tower.)
These threats only seem to multiply with the pain clutching Adris’ heart making it difficult to help Ave up to their joint perch once she reaches it.
Beside him a bodyguard is busy staring down the flying spectators that refuse to close in for the moment, if only because they’re wary of the dark-colored witch that clashes with the brush-stroke colored surroundings that have overtaken the once scary tower’s exterior. Adris wants to cry at the thought that these creatures are more afraid of their home turning into a children’s painting than of the threat his allies pose.
(Instead of through, OVER was where this insane, story hero elf went.)
All who stupidly chose to follow this “tale”, save one, gather finally within the jaws of a comically exaggerated winged lizard creature of immense proportions that is a decoration of their current facing of the tower. Its wings are also the tower’s exterior, stretching to the top to overhang the party and serving as an impossible obstacle to scale a curving surface. Only its long neck is straight up and down, running down three stories from the top to happily provide shelter for them within its mouth.
Adris leans out while holding onto the teeth to look up and recheck his count of the insects of stone which cling to the wings. Awakening on the climb, the immense jaws of these stone constructs keep yanking out from below themselves more rock scales that instantly replace. Tear-drop-shaped and sharpened at the edges, this instant death for whatever is struck by these at least half a ton chunks forces even Still to hide.
(But not you!)
Once close by and leading the storm of pastel colors upward is a ghost of an elf knight that ignores gravity to scale the curving exterior of the tower even now.
They could’ve gone through the greenhouse complex, but up and only up has become a secret route that Still thinks defies “the rules” enough to have justified getting stuck.
(Where he goes, the danger keeps vanishing for him at least!)
This route took them to a tower adjoining the tallest greenhouse chamber, one inset into the largest root of the world tree itself and protected by these rock parasites which squeal when an invisible demarcation sweeps over them. Swirling colors repaint to leave them as sleepy-little colorful tykes curling up into the lizard’s unfurled wings to become the elf’s next leaping ledges.
“Rouvenor’s” effect of overturning the mansion’s traps and trials is Adris’ only mercy allowed.
“The page is trying to turn!?” Ave screams while showing off her story book. The edge is curling up, which from prior experience means…
(A change in scene. He’ll vanish until we reach the next one!)
Unlike this elf that’s carried by the softest of breezes, Adris and the rest are left to deal with the detritus from behind.
More eels slide out of petal pipes dotting the circular tower’s artwork of red trees in a large field. Pinkish, fluffy petals are pasted over their slender bodies and equally long dual wings which open to lightly carry them. Slick with sticky juices, too, the dozens that awoke as they’ve come nearer to the top are being joined by a hundred awakening as they refuse to go back down or fall.
Only the bright storybook surroundings seem to really balk them, no matter how they scatter when Still flings another dirk at one that flits closer.
(It hurts…)
Their deadfish eyes are set on Adris, obeying the tremors of a key that tries to turn. It clicks and shoots pain through his limbs every little bit further that Ave’s Rouvenor gets away.
And the shaking of this structure that grows to almost hurl him from the lizard’s mouth must also obey the brass key’s call. Machinery within has come alive in fullest, revived by the Alchemaster’s ire.
Below and at the base of the rope they’ve tied taught to climb between levels that only Still could scale, the wall beside a knight-squire turns glittering in the afternoon sunlight. The rumble behind it isn’t of machinery.
(The key is very, very jealous of Ave’s story!)
The gilded wall explodes outward with a chomp!
Cup, chair, coin, and chest that are all golden, these items and a veritable treasure pile more spill forth from the huge hole. The deluge of wealth that should obey gravity instead lifts amorphously up to glance around, settling what seem like glowing gemstone eyes on a garish black knight-squire.
“Mmmm… feel very ‘one-side only’ beating coming.” Left to guard a narrow serpentine run up to the middle of the sky-stretching tower that had been their former path up, Kol abandons that duty to briskly jog toward the rope tied to the path’s sudden end.
This golden pile behind her opens ‘jaws’ that have sharp cutlery and decorative weapons for teeth to chase. Where it flows out onto the serpentine ornamentation, the surface crackles with the spread of gold!
“[Midas Maw], unsurpassable threat of the upper Castillo tiers.” A walking bestiary whispers into Adris’ ear, untrusting of anything else to cling to except for him so high up.
“Appropriate for us.” Adris licks his lips, trying not to grow pale when the wandering treasure pile easily matches Kol’s speed while clinging to the tower’s exterior like a leech. “Powers?”
“… Luring trap fiend. ‘All that it touches shall become as eternal as Greed.’ [Gildification] without remedy. Highest resistance to pseudo-Art claims it; immunity to all but specialized weapons.”
(I’d be frozen forever like those killer maids in the foyer if it touched me!?)
“KOL! Don’t touch it! Don’t even hit it with your poleaxe!” Adris has no other advice, as he can’t even guess at the limits of its influence since the tower’s midsection surrenders bit-by-bit to the spreading gilding.
“Gggnnnn!” For once, Kol’s sixth-sense abandons her usual blustering and she instead throws hand-over-hand to climb their taut rope skyward.
The bruiser looks back at the closing monster, then toward Adris several times, growling in pain again before yelling loudly when the clinking pile that could envelop all of them at once closes on the rope’s end. “PUDDLE! CHANGE UP!”
(Change wh—?)
A blur leaps from the lizard’s mouth to slide down the taut rope, then sends Kol shaking with a hop off the kobold’s helmet.
Instead of dirks, three vials strike the swishing pile of valuables before it chomps the rope’s end. Freezing vapor crackles outward to contain the half of it that was lunging, but the rest shifts backwards to rip free. The gargantuan maw on the front pulls inward to lunge out the back at Still once the sneak lands on the wall above it, crawling after when she runs sideways to make distance!
“Kol, terrify them!”
“Never running, only going to next fight!”
Where one guardian abandoned, another hurls herself upward to land next to a coiled snake elf and blazes with indignity. “HAAAAAH!”
The bravest eels crash into the infernal sphere that a stone lizard perch now chews on. Phantasmal fire bursts out to snare upon the swarm.
Adris was their target, even though the shaking cross he holds refuses to release the darkness that would equalize them. Painted clinging vines contain its emanations, so the eels now twist in place before striking unwillingly toward Kol with all their might.
(They’re trying to…!)
Adris’ nostrils fill with the stink of sex with the cloud the eels draw with them. The fluffy leaves are covered in a mind-bending substance that also envelops everyone else.
Colors that were only colors now gain a sexual tinge.
White, blue, violet, and green. Each taste is swirling on Adris’ tongue.
(It’s an aphrodisiac.)
Perhaps the primary source of the garden’s mind-bending allure, for the petals fall from this tower and others to break up in the air.
An invisible poison spreads to the amusement of the eels. Rather than with teeth, the tails of these flying serpents whip forward to extrude dripping triple length! With softly-barbed heads that have puffy slits, the pink aura they spark with can only be one horrible thing when stealing strength from the tower’s contents.
(Flesh is their target, but their bellies aren’t what’s going to be filled…! Fuck!)
“TOO WRIGGLY!”
The innumerable dripping appendages that come from within the eels whip back, some shortened as a few of them scream. Kol’s mechanical pole axe rips through to unleash a lucky magical wind that blows away the blinding pink cloud. It reveals teeth flashing instead of sexual organs writhing.
(Bless that part!)
Protection from rape with all its unclarified limits drives Kol resolutely through the suffocating stench. Ave’s book binds his cross, but just like the key it struggles to burst its physical vines. It’s enough time for Adris to kneel at the rope and scream down at Still.
“Cut the end! Cut…!”
Still runs along the tower, trying to get an angle to do it; but, the opportunity passes when the rope stops jiggling the same way when Adris unties it. The high tension, extra thick woven line meant for a snake elf to use glints in the afternoon sun with so much added weight now.
(I PAID A LOT FOR THAT! Wait, would it stay solid gold if I took it outside…?)
The evil golden maw’s influence is a third of the way up the line, leaving it useless to Adris. Without its full length, they can’t hope to bridge between their current spot and the top. Since no treasure is allowed anyway, he sighs and lets it plummet.
(Not that we could reach it without Still to climb.)
“We need to get up there, Adris! The tower isn’t painted near us anymore!”
“It isn’t, is it…?”
A comically festive lizard mouth flakes away its charming colors to reveal a scarily hungry creature frozen in time as the perch they hide in. The outer perimeter of the elf’s influence is almost past the nearest rock-hurling constructs, too, ready to unleash them again.
“Rope! Adris, use the rope!”
“We have no rope. Nor do we have the climber to carry it.”
“Eh?”
Ave’s shock lurches her toward the edge of the lizard’s mouth, willingly hanging out on her long tail to stare down at Still. Stuck relentlessly dodging and jumping in gravity-defying motions, the usually uncatchable sneak tries not to lose her hat as she keeps her own feet from landing on the golden surfaces which carry the creature’s curse.
(She only has so much tower to run on before she’s back up to us or touching its influence.)
Which is where she’s headed, edging as much time as possible with her freakish agility playing to the wandering maw’s lacking intellect, for it keeps charging like a bull instead of cutting her off.
“Rope…?”
Ave slides up the mouth to stare, prompting Adris to join by hanging onto her body. Ave flinches, but draws both their gazes at where the wings meet the huge lizard decoration’s neck running up the tower to the top.
“Ave is like a rope!” The elf tilts her head, smiling again with that unrestrained fashion that makes Adris pull back with concern. Just like when a hallway became a casket filled with fire.
(Please discuss this first.)
“Ave, I think we sho-uuuuuld—?”
“DESIST!”
Neesiette yowls when Adris is whipped out over into the naked air to hang from Ave’s clenched hand. The elf giggles and then merrily yells at Kol.
“Follow me!”
“Nah?”
In the midst of fifteen serpents vying to lunge, Kol turns her back to receive a barrage of flying needles. “Ghk!? Not needle, but burning that hurts?”
Avenalliah slithers out and up the lizard’s mouth, scurrying to the neck as innumerable eels aim and spurt from their mouths in her direction.
“AVE IS A ROPE! SEE!?”
That long emerald body that’s rarely more than an obstacle wedges into the narrow space between the two sections of the tower’s faces where they meet and undulates upward at an uncanny speed!
“Not leave Kol!” Each alternation of Ave’s body’s coils shoots them further up, leaving Kol making a huge leap to grab onto Ave’s tail tip. The kobold bangs up the rock face after them.
(Thank Crackbrass!)
Flying eel darts pelt Adris as Ave climbs, because he’s dragged behind like baggage so that she can thrust her storybook toward the sky! The missiles clink off his lamellar armor or lodge in the spaces between plates, sparking with light-eating darkness where venom flashes into smoke instead of melting the coppery surfaces.
“Impacts registering!?”
“You’re safe!”
(I’m safe!)
His unshielded legs pull up under Neesiette to let her stately dress catch the miniature darts in it, grateful that its thickness is enough to blunt the impacts. The Lunar protections also fizzle off the venom that tries to melt the fabric.
“STILL! RUN!” Adris calls down to the witch to receive a curious smile back when she stares.
The maw jumps then, sending Still into a leap clear off the tower with both legs flailing. Before Adris can yell concern, the acrobat’s arm flings toward him to shoot out a white globular length at high speed.
“Kol’s leg, heavy!”
Kol kicks back and forth, but can’t shake the spiderweb shot attached to her. Still swings back to the tower to sprint up its side using Kol as an anchor.
(We’re not outpacing the maw!)
The unstoppable treasure pile flops up the tower too, aiming for Ave the same as the swarm of flying eels.
But then a great explosion of pink colors erupts from the tower top that the elf had reached! The eels circle and share looks, confused by the outpouring of elvish colors that fall from overhead. Just as if something happened that should end their pursuit, but they still are stuck with prey.
(Indecision is enough if we can just—
Oh?)
Arriving at their previous perch finally, Still bounces over the lizard’s head using her webbing line and leads the maw flopping toward it. From her sleeve of infinite storage flicks out a strange, spongy-looking blue fruit that inflates to the size of a kick ball. With pinpoint perfection, she beans the decorative lizard’s snout with it.
The spongy ball decompresses into a huge spray of layers-upon-layers of thick foam that covers the entire lizard’s head and ten meters of area splashing around it. Like a trapper beetle’s liquid spray that becomes a solid cloud that can encase a child’s hand, that’s the bubbly obstacle the Midas Maw ignores by leaping onto it in pursuit of Still.
When its body hits the foam, the bluish becomes solid gold and starts to sag.
(Oh, you’re a genius.)
At the moment of Still’s intellect peaking, the Maw suddenly tilts over. It pulls off the tower with the solidified foam that it’s standing on ripping free. Where the foam had space there is no gildification of it, leaving only the extreme weight of the creature tearing it loose.
The Midas Maw spins end-over-end as it sheds goblets and keepsakes to crash at the unseen base of the greenhouse complex.
(Discount witches are an amazing purchase!)
With only some plant pod taken from the gardens, Adris’ pet witch thwarts a brass key that vibrates with rage in his chest. Still chases after Adris as Ave reaches the top of the tower.
“Where is he!?”
Ave yanks Kol up with her tail and then drops Adris at the edge of the climb. Overlooking the entire complex, this tower, like the others that line up beside the largest greenhouse chamber, feeds tubes grown heavy with vines to other distant sections.
“Rouvenor came to the top, so where did he go!? How does the story continue…?” Ave looks to her picture book as everyone catches their breathes. When Kol grunts and stands to join the elf, Adris yanks on the kobold’s arm to stay away from Ave.
“Wait… let her… ‘start’ things off.”
“Nnn?” Kol’s voice is one of confusion; but, as the flighty elf slithers to the center of the tower and over an enormous rusted grate that spans it, said gate creaks as the weight of Ave reaches the center. Then clicks to depress, sending nearby machinery underneath the top into motion.
“Hmmm!? What was that?” Ave looks left and right, while Kol nods and then sniffs her nose.
“Boss, very good at using elf~.” Both feel the increased grinding of machinery as something primes. Still throws herself to huddle beside them after melting her webbing with some chemical, and then Neesiette speaks as Ave’s ponytail starts to lift with an uplifting wind.
“Recorded often in Grand Collection… unusual methods of translocating invaders, replete these be within Castillo.”
“He’d have to fly to get to what looks like the destination?” Ave independently reaches the same conclusion roughly after Neesiette by peering out into the wider world, yet fails to discern that she’s about to find out. “But, how…?
Hmm!?”
Ave stares down into the grate below her serpentine body, her pretty crystal green eyes filling with a terror that’s not reflected in her stilted smile.
“Oh, that’s how~!”
Pink petals by the bushel full start shooting past, followed by a roar.
“I se—HHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh———————!!!!”
Adris braces flat against the tower’s edge to keep from blowing away with the blast of air that sends Ave careening skyward.
He marks the direction and arc, remarkably easy with the elf’s full length curling in flight to match the air currents, finally exhaling when the rocketing elf lands at some distant spot on the rooftop of the biggest greenhouse chamber.
(I can vaguely make out what looks like a large holder for something, but it’s not holding anything?)
“A hidden area… like with…” Adris’ memory of another detour prompts a midget to start marching for the tower’s edge.
“Nearly apocalyptic, current circumstances mirroring, this party’s last encounter with hidden foes shows remarkable similarity.
In addition: method of identified translocation be registered as [ILLEGAL].
Assert: abandon newt, descend tower, return to earth instead of…”
While Neesiette is busy trying to escape Adris’ grasp on her shoulder cape, Still flashes quick signs at Adris and Kol both.
{Secret way means secret doom.}
“Kol, thinks every trip with Boss, always turns out different from any other trip to Castillo Kol has ever had.”
{It’s always the same story, just different beats.}
“Agree. But, Kol, not entirely dislike~!” This and a wagging tail cause Still to slowly slap her mask to let it slide off, revealing a frown.
(It’s not my story, it’s Aurumia’s and Ave’s.)
The girls finish their quips at each other before turning to regard Adris. He’s busy keeping watch for the sensations of the tower’s machinery to potentially reset. Already, he watches the depressed grate lifting back to its original setup in accompaniment to a thrumming within the tower.
“Why bother with stupid details like ‘who are we fighting’?” Adris stands up, dragging Neesiette into his arms.
“Alternate route, NOT IDENTIFIED; BUT, seeking instead…!”
When he ambles toward the center of the grate, the Lunamaton ceases screaming and stares up into his eyes with a mournful expression.
(A scared Neesiette is also adorable. Especially because you’re silent!)
Adris’ weight depresses the grate slowly, until the added weight of two others is pushed on by the threat of a swarm of flying pests still hovering around them getting braver. Both girls cling onto his arms so tightly that they start going numb immediately.
(Aurumia won’t kill us with heights. That’s not her style.)
“Be ready, unworthy adversary!”
Adris boasts this before closing his eyes and finding his happiest thoughts.
Just in time for his stomach to hit his boots. The thickest plume of sexual poison coats him, and then he becomes the first denizen formerly of Xin to achieve flight unaided by aura.
“Kahk!” Adris chokes while hanging over the edge of the pool of gunk.
A very familiar sensation of being submerged and lost, just as when he flushed down the Castillo’s interior after Lycia threw him into a tank, renews with an added horrifying thickness swishing between his teeth.
It isn’t liquid, but it’s also not solid! It sticks and clings and tastes like snot. Not his own, because that flushed into his stomach when he was launched.
(Where did we land!?)
And the worst part is that the muck is warm.
Positively burning.
It gets everywhere, soaks every inch of skin, and is making Adris’ whole body feel too alive. The jarring flight shook loose coherent thoughts, but the plan in motion was still being made even in flight.
As Adris keeps spitting out onto an iron, rusted roof that seems as equally coated as his tongue is with goop, the boy finds his hands wandering.
Searching for… something that came with him.
(My women…)
“WHY MORE GOOP!? Everything always goop…!” One of those sought howls and splashes to join Adris, heaving herself over the edge of this deep scummy pool they seem to have landed in to crash onto the floor. Black plate armor is coated with an off-whitish, partially transparent slime that also sticks between Adris’ fingers when he forces them apart.
But Adris’ sight won’t leave the bruiser that clanks up to her knees, desperate to peel back the steel and make what’s inside his own.
When he stretches for the tasty, but soiled, prize…!
Something strikes on his rear. It sends him crashing out of the pool, too.
Jolted out of his tunnel vision, Adris finds what hit him to be a very surly witch with an extra droopy hat sliding out to kneel. She fishes out a lifeless doll and tries to shake it awake, using her free time to also pluck strands of goo from her clothing.
(Ugh… touching… tasting Kol…!? That’s not a priority!)
Adris finally stands, keeping well away from both Kol and Still.
“Fullest rejection in future… any method of conveyance by departing the ground. Punishable by… extermination…” Neesiette pats Still’s hand to be let down, gathering her snotty tome and planting on her butt, to then drag up her knees and silently mope.
{Ave is…?}
“… Ave hates everything bad in the world that ever has been, but this most of all…”
{Wow!} Still points out the elf floating upright on the scum in the extra large pool. The sneak flings her arms out in sarcastic “shock”, then signs aggressively. {We’re reciting the same spell, that’s trouble, Adris~!}
Adris ignores her to take in their arrival location. Mostly water logged and humid, but also something more sinister, the nature of this area is troubling because…?
(This slime doesn’t seem made artificially.)
Adris’ nerves turn knife sharp again, blunting the growing heat and strange unbalancing effect that the girls have on him by proximity. Kol fishes out the reluctant Avenalliah. This leaves Still and Adris to tepidly take in the area together as he picks out details.
A flat walkway of long-rusted iron without rails stretches across the top of the greenhouse master building, with their slightly wider area hosting a great, deep rain catching pool made of hammered sheets. Over the edge glows pinkish-red danger, for Adris catches endless rows of soft and tall trees cradled in the dark below. Not needful of light, instead they provide their own luminescence to show a floor clouded by the pollen or substance they release. Spindly flora like this cannot be natural, and because there are no sounds from the enormous enclosure below except for the rustling of drafts, it’s likely total doom if Adris were to plummet through the open skylights even if his rabbit boots could save him.
(If this isn’t what the slayers call an “arena”, I’ll bugger myself somehow in apology to them. And that is probably the source of the Castillo’s physical curse of passion.)
The spiritual must flow from the Golden Heart of the Castillo itself, but its physical basis is cultivated here in quantities that could blanket the kingdom Adris now lives in. Such an act would make a landscape for erotic demons instead of men, everything endlessly rutting itself to starvation.
(Why not just unleash it…? What worse plans do you have in mind, Aurumia?)
The Alchemaster’s subordinates have such unbelievable weapons in their grasps, yet await invasion instead.
{We’re done for. It’s actually a secret arena.} Still points to the structure Adris saw in the distance, two large bars with struts going upward and curving toward each other. Most of the structure seems melted by some ancient firestorm, and both of them are dwarfed by the mess of the object that was held between them. Scored and cooked silver has like some sugary treat melted to hang over the edge of the walkway on both sides, filling the center.
Pillars rise from inside the greenhouse, and its length is such that even Adris as an aura warrior would require well over a minute to hustle from end to end.
Far too many places to ambush from are all around, and the walkway they’re on seems intended to disallow any alternate escape routes except to go to the end of it and descend the spine of the building straight to the world tree’s base.
(Biggest risks, biggest reward! There’s nothing else between us and our destination.)
{It… this feels wrong.} Still edges forward, then falls back to take up beside Adris. {There’s more than us here. We’re being watched.} He wants to quip at her that any other situation is about the same, but her agitation is a mirror of when they were locked within Aurumia’s relative’s hidden chamber with it full of the frozen past.
Beyond what tingles with the heat of the mucous, a whisper of condemnation running up Adris’ back that also sounds squishy carries regret and rage. It unsettles his Inner Expanse, reeking of long-held feelings that feed darkness.
(Why mucous!? The whole “arena” is covered in both wet and drying goop…)
“Boss, smell important! Two big smells! Very dangerous!” Kol rushes up with the rest languishing behind. Everyone organic and alive is equally burdened by what’s covering them, if Adris’ tainted senses picking out lurid details can be trusted.
(We’ve been marked.)
Ave’s face is red as an apple, while Kol’s breathing and hunched posture are dead give aways of how wild she’s getting.
(Aphrodisiac from…? Animals… they are poisonous because of what they eat! And… it loves water…!)
Something Fatso taught him during poison-making lessons filters through, and suddenly the nature of their enemy makes sense.
If it’s that animal, it can thrive by eating and also mating, needing nothing more than these two activities. It won’t particularly tire, and has no need for differences in sexes to worry about limitations like “refractory periods”.
(That creature would love a forest of eternal fucking. But it wouldn’t be that alone, it would be something even… more terrible…)
Becoming aware of its true nature sets it off, of course.
Gathering clouds overhead shut out the strangely clearer world tree from view. This close to it, Adris kept suffering from a recurring upward draw pulling toward it.
{Demesne activation! Ready!} Still’s two signs are all she spares before darting forward to stand between Adris and an unseen enemy, two shortswords appearing out of nowhere in her hands.
“Felt this before with Rooster! Deep training inside Castillo… everyone fought something really big.” Kol takes up the back, herding the fraught Ave, still mute and trying to clear the mucous from her special storybook’s lifted pages to see what they’re showing, and Neesiette, glowing earth rod out and ready, into the center of the defensive circle.
(How can a creature that insignificant be dangerous!?)
Adris knows its nature, but can’t decide whether he wants the black cross, now free of vines, to flare out or not.
At least not until he stares up at one of the pillars running alongside them, spotting a flash of gold.
(Legs…?)
Adris’ mouth drops when an impossible object jumps clear across to the walkway to slam down before them.
“ARMS!” Two great impacts knock all but Kol off their feet, with the second directly behind. The kobold’s presence explodes around them in challenge, but that flame is nothing before the splendor of a perfectly cast set of men’s legs.
“Alchemical in nature, Alchemaster’s direct creation by inspection, 100% certainty.” Neesiette’s announcement drains Adris’ blood.
They gleam so arrogantly, dwarfing all below with a height clearing twenty to thirty feet, and a thickness greater than even the larger trees that root the forest floor. Wearing only sandals allows one to see every muscle and tendon in motion when stomping forward. The rusted walkway covered in gunk creaks when they shift.
“AT LAST, OUR GODDESS GRANTS ABSOLUTION FOR THE MIGHTY!”
What was made by a deranged evil girl is marred by how abruptly these titanic legs end. Before the waist would be reached, the thighs are sheared off with a melted edge. Gross brass connections twist upward, thinner than the legs of a true gigantic warrior. Joining as an oblong mass linking both legs, it’s from this holey conglomeration that resembles a stillborn fetus of cracked metal that the elated, disgusting tone yelled from. At its top, the metal twists upward as if intending to connect so something greater than only this lower body.
(It’s filthy!)
The pores of the brass amalgam weep the same degenerate fluids that cover Adris.
(Like a spongy metal sea cucumber controlling godlike limbs? Ah…? AHH!? I’M COVERED IN…!?)
A terrible thought hits him just as another voice, the same one but from behind, howls out.
“AND THE MANY OF I SHALL BECOME MANY MORE OF WE…”
Adris twists behind to see two equally godlike giant arms holding aloft the same type of cancerous brass container between them. From below it must’ve swung, to land on its palms like a balancing act. The brass tumor, twisted and revolting in longing for a connection to something at its bottom, is a housing for what squirms within that can only be innumerable…
“GROSS! GROSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!” Ave jumps upon Adris, riding up his back as she screams and points. Adris groans not to simply collapse, staring in equal horror at her target. “SLIMY! DISGUSTING! HATE THEM!”
And without are the true occupants of the golden limbs, for all at the edges of the walkways eye stalks peek over.
Then, the green-and-brown bodies climb up to recoat the floor in slime.
(Slugs.)
To Adris’ aura senses, there are dark truths flowing over the immaculate gold of both giant sets of limbs that these multitudes serve, straining his eyes with something of their growing truth.
[BRONZED KING OF BROKEN GOLD] proudly declares what they regret, though it fails to capture a true contradiction. To fall short denies them as worthy of Adris’ understanding of what’s just on the other side of what is seen.
“YOUR PLEASURE WILL BE ETERNAL…!”
Divine legs lift one of them to stomp forward, a rush of crisp destruction arcing from its foot. A single one could crush Adris and not notice the loss.
“… AS CONSORTS (HOLES) OF MY GODHOOD RENEWED!”
Behind, the arms slap a palm strike only feet away from Kol, rolling Adris forward so hard that he scratches at the walkway to stop!
Vision distorts from the threat that shrieks out of the giants.
(Right, slugs are hermaphroditic. Zennia has a god of them!? And I’ve read that some can… implant.)
From the grinding gold piloted by monsters within, Adris can feel the gaze that sees him as meat along with the girls themselves.
“Umu…! Not weak.”
He stares in panic when he realizes Kol is sitting on her butt from what blew him away, tail stiff after when rising. Like a wolf that’s cornered, this knight-squire hunkers down and prepares for the worst.
(We’re in trouble if Kol is knocked down by them.)
{Its hidden weakness? An outrageous gambit? Serenade me, loverboy.} Still puts her back to his and taps fingers, refusing to lunge for the shortsword that flew away to land next to the giant slugs slurping closer from the walkway’s edges. {Anything at all?}
“Predatory” shouldn’t describe slugs, but these plodding creatures seek to surround without even a hint of fear toward Kol. The giants behind them protrude from the brass holes hundreds of stalks, with the biggest two at the top of the brass tumors letting twenty foot ones rise to stare.
{I will blow your mind for an answer out of here!}
When Adris doesn’t even jolt at this, Still taps fiercer and harder.
{Boast! BRAG! DO… ANYTHING!}
(The black cross won’t ring out!)
Adris tries to will it to equalize this obscene god of slime wreathed in golden penumbra that stomps toward them, but again there’s an interference.
“A new page…?” Ave’s terror-filled mew turns brighter with the name of what swirls up from colors to stand before Adris and Still.
“‘Against a giant of gold’…!” A girl’s recitation from her storybook flows into a man’s oath.
“… a kin’s blade, be ever bold.” From this painted figure who extends his named weapon, the scene flows forth!
One knight clad in green stands without fear against a heaven for slugs.
(SAVE MY ASS! ROUVENOR!)