The Might of Jerry: A Progression Fantasy Adventure (Good Guy Necromancer Book 3), page 14
“You can’t be serious about this! Horace, you were my last hope!” Marcus said, but as he took a look around the group, he found smiling eyes. “Oh crap. We’re doing this, aren’t we?”
“I’ve seen a sea on clouds, a man who controlled volcanos, a talking tree, a Giant Wizard with teleporting hydromancy, titans, and various Primordials dead or alive,” Horace said. “I can accept that the world is round with a hole in it.”
“Remember what I told you? Blaming everything on magic is a great way to get killed!”
“We’re already this far, Marcus. Might as well go the distance,” Laura said.
“My bones are tingling,” Boney said.
Marcus groaned. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. Fine. Let’s rock this shit!”
16
MAGIC DEEP DIVE
Marcus was the last to enter the Fishboat. It bobbed in the middle of the ancestral lake, the only fish-looking object there. Iron weights were tied around it to accelerate its descent. Hydra stared from the mouth of her cave, head resting on crossed legs.
From the top of the Fishboat spread eleven ropes. Their other ends were tied to the waists of Jerry, Boney, Axehand, Headless, Boboar, Foxy, Birb, and the four Billies. Dennis floated nearby, while Laura, Erin, Horace, and Bodo waited inside.
“We’re a lot of people,” Marcus muttered to himself. “Seventeen. By gods, how did we even get this far?”
“Hey, Marcus!” Jerry shouted from where he floated on water. “Are you done?”
“Almost!” Marcus shouted back.
He turned the other way, where Freedom floated peacefully on the surface. He’d walked over its brown body so many times—relied on that sturdy hall to sail the Dead Lands, the Cloud Sea, the Jewel Archipelago, and the Wild Continent. That ship had seen a lot with Marcus as its captain.
“Dammit,” he said, wiping his eyes. “You’re the best damn ship I’ve ever seen. I swear I’ll come back.”
The ship bobbed heavier from side to side as if waving goodbye. A seagull landed on its massive red balloon, breaking the illusion. Marcus turned and swam for the Fishboat.
“I wonder how many women would break an arm to hear that phrase from you,” Boney said.
“Shut up.”
“Hey, Marcus,” Jerry said, swimming closer. He placed a hand on the treasure hunter’s shoulder. “I left something behind, too. My heavenly soft chair, which I carried all the way from the village of Pilpen in the Kingdom of Escarbot. When this is over, I’ll return with you.”
Marcus nodded. “Thanks, Jerry. I appreciate it.”
Laura’s head popped out of the Fishboat’s manhole. “Marcus, come on!”
Marcus gave Jerry a tight smile and shook his hand. “See you on the other side. I hope everything works out.”
“How could it not?”
“Well, this could all be an elaborate deathtrap, but who even cares?”
The treasure hunter jumped into the manhole and sealed it behind him. The Fishboat sank into the water. The rope around Jerry went taut. Just before submerging, he turned and waved at Hydra.
“Good luck!” he said. “Hope to see you on the other side!”
The Primordial smiled at him—her first true smile in years. “Goodbye, Jerry. I hope you win.”
Jerry sank into the water alongside his undead. Bubbles rose for a while, then nothing. The Fishboat had filled its hollow bottom with water, descending rapidly, and soon they were far gone.
Hydra gave a long sigh. She stared back at her cave, almost with longing, then drew her long body out of it. “Now then,” she muttered. “The time has come.”
She took a step, and then she was flying, her snake-like body rising higher until it surpassed the treetops. She gathered speed as she flew east. Her roar shook the world, upsetting the ambient energy across the entire continent.
“DESISTOS!”
A black dragon sat atop a sand dune, watching a bunch of boring people make boring plans. His mind was occupied by the dancing undead he’d risen behind the next dune. Suddenly, the undead collapsed. Desistos turned his head to the west.
“What’s wrong?” Orsel, the Life Archmage, asked.
“My sister is coming,” Desistos said. “I think she wants to kill me. Isn’t that tragic?”
The gathered people gasped. Rea Moonlight, clad in her blue dress, covered her mouth. Orsel’s blue eyes narrowed in thought. His blond hair was done in one long ponytail, which fluttered in the wind alongside his airy white clothes.
“You’re talking about Hydra,” he said.
“I guess.”
“Why would she make her move now? I thought she’d stay on that continent forever.”
“Beats me, Master.”
“How do you know she wants to kill you?”
“Well, she wants to kill someone. I figure it’s me.”
“Speak properly, Desistos. Why do you figure it’s you?”
“She wouldn’t be angry if her target was a mortal. You aren’t strong enough either. The only possible target of her emotions is me.”
Orsel frowned. “Are you disrespecting me?”
Desistos’s eyes flared with curiosity. “Fascinating. Speaking the truth aloud scares you because you think it ruins the illusion of leadership you’ve imposed on your underlings. Why do you feel the need to rely on lies when you’re already the strongest? These people can’t kill you, not with me here.”
Orsel brewed up, then sighed. “Can you defeat her?”
“For sure.”
“Even without me?”
“Less sure.”
Orsel’s brows scrunched. “If she possesses the same speed I observed from you, we have barely seven days before she arrives. A battle of Primordials could upset the balance, which is currently in our favor. If we fly over and meet her at the ocean, can we still win?”
Desistos tilted his head. “Riding me, you are the strongest mortal in the world by far. Why care about balance when you can just kill your enemies?”
“Answer the question, Desistos.”
“Yes, we can still win.”
“Then I guess all our planning today was a waste of time.”
The wooden table supporting maps, flags, and three-dimensional figurines cracked in half. It was the only evidence of anger from the seemingly calm Archmage.
“Kairos, I leave command to you. Rea will be your second. I should return within three days.”
“Yes, sir,” another blond man replied. “Should we attack the resistance despite your absence? We’ve found their base now, but they will move if we delay.”
“Do not approach them no matter what,” Orsel commanded, enhancing his legs to jump on Desistos. “We can always find them again. We cannot recover a lost army.”
“Yes, sir.”
Desistos flapped his wings, raising a cloud of sand. “See you, little ones,” he said, taking off into the distance and accelerating rapidly until he was just a dot in the sky.
Hydra hovered over the ocean surface. It was calm below her, but she knew that every living creature had long abandoned the area. There was no greater bane than a battle-minded Primordial.
A black dot appeared in the sky, and Hydra’s eyes snapped open.
Desistos stopped before her, ridden by the Life Archmage.
“How sad your fate, brother,” Hydra said. “Enslaved by mortals. A mockery of a god.”
“It’s not that bad,” Desistos replied. “Mortals are so weak they do all kinds of weird stuff. I mean sure, Orsel has enslaved my undying soul, but at least I get to watch.”
“Has he enslaved your vocabulary as well?”
“Give me a break. I was born a month ago.”
“Why would the mighty Hydra leave her abode?” Orsel asked.
Hydra hesitated before turning to him. “That I address a mortal in the presence of my brother is a disgrace.”
“Weren’t you the one who betrayed the other Primordials for the mortals?”
“To stop their abuse. I stepped up precisely because we aren’t equals.”
Orsel smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Let’s get to the point. You can’t possibly be here for battle. What do you want?”
“Why would I not come for battle?”
“Because you know you’d lose.”
Hydra showed a row of white teeth. Unlike Orsel’s smile, hers was genuine. “Everything dies, Archmage. Even Primordials. I’ll go the way I choose, and that is by slaying you and freeing my brother.”
“Even if you did slay me, which you cannot, it would change nothing. The slave seal is directed at the Wizard Order, not me specifically.”
“Exactly,” Hydra replied.
Orsel frowned in thought. “You want to kill me directly during the battle, hoping it will let Desistos resist the seal temporarily, then rush to the King Continent and the Sea of Sand and annihilate the Order before Desistos can catch up.”
“I never said that,” Hydra said.
“Because if she did,” Desistos said, “I would know, and so I’d have to stop her.”
Orsel laughed. “You know what? If I die, I don’t give a shit. You can have your shot.”
“Am I supposed to thank you?” Hydra asked.
“You’re supposed to die. Desistos—kill her.”
“Sorry about this, sis,” Desistos said. The sky turned black. The screams of tortured souls echoed all around, while his aura expanded to three times the size of his body, surrounding Desistos and Orsel in a spectral purple dragon.
“I will show you that a tamed dragon has weak jaws,” Hydra replied, her own aura flourishing. It flowed out of her body as drops of water, combining into a massive blue outline. The sea water rose. It towered.
“You were a fool to fight me over an ocean,” Hydra said, baring her fangs.
“It doesn’t matter where we fight you. We win, always,” Orsel said.
Desistos’s eyes were wide. Crimson lightning sparked from them, merging with the black clouds in his aura. His entire body was soon covered in dark fog, only his eyes sticking out.
“I don’t want to fight you,” he said, “but since I have to, I’m going to enjoy it.”
Black and blue collided in the air. Two Primordial auras grinded against each other, sending currents of power across the sky, washing away the clouds, leveling the ocean. The world shook and shattered.
Jerry watched the light disappear as he sank deeper and deeper. The passage thinned a bit, going from the lake-wide opening to a hundred-foot-wide tunnel descending vertically into the earth. For the first few minutes, he could see rock walls around him. After that, it was pitch-black darkness. The only light came from the eye flames of his undead.
“Everyone okay?” he asked them telepathically.
“The water tingles,” Boney replied.
A grunt reached his ears. As for Boboar, he was swimming around, squealing with joy at the unprecedented depth.
Jerry knew this was nothing. According to Hydra, they’d descend non-stop for five days, then ascend for three. As they approached the center of the sphere that was their world, the water would get so dense it would be painful, and that was despite the layers upon layers of ancient magic protecting this tunnel. Otherwise, the pressure would be completely apocalyptic.
What a wonky concept, he thought. The world being round… I still don’t get why we don’t fall off, but if Laura says so, I guess it must be true. I wonder what happens if we fly really high up. Do we appear on the other side of the world, as we do when we go really deep down?
“Dennis, can you ask Laura what happens if we fly really high up?” he asked the ghost, who remained within the Fishboat.
“She says she doesn’t know.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
The journey got a bit boring as the hours passed. While Jerry could contact the souls of his friends if he really wanted to, he preferred to conserve his power in case anything happened. It was cold, too, but the cold never bothered him anyway.
Hours turned into days. Jerry relaxed, finding the water comfortable, though the pressure mounted. The environment was almost meditative. His mind entered a state of extreme relaxation.
In this state, he found himself resonating with the Prism. His powers had increased vastly since the first time he acquired it. He could now probe its depths, much like how Fishboat was doing to the planet, and analyze it with an unprecedented lack of distractions.
The Prism beat like a heart. Jerry could sense it vaguely—it absorbed death energy, then released it again as if breathing. It wasn’t keeping any inside, nor was it doing anything to the energy. That was just its natural state of being, as effortless as clothes fluttering to the wind.
Why did you respond to my anger? Jerry asked the Prism, remembering the Wizard Tower and his battle against No. 2.
The Prism did not reply. Jerry looked into it and found nothing of sentience. He turned his gaze to himself, seeing his own human nature as a vessel of necromancy.
Maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe I was the one who responded to my anger, he realized. Necromancy is the magic of the soul. When my soul changes, so does my magic, becoming better-suited for some approaches and worse-suited for others.
Am I constantly refining my soul by practicing magic? If I am, I must be tending towards bright emotions, but it might explain why other necromancers turn twisted and dark. With them constantly suppressing and enslaving their undead, how could they not?
I wonder if Kiki and Milo are growing alright.
Jerry released a sigh, a string of bubbles shooting up. It would be hours before they reached the surface.
Inside the Fishboat, meanwhile, the silence was equally prevalent. It was cold and dark. Bodo maintained a weak source of light, but all it achieved was to make their dim surroundings even more depressing. The occasional groan of wood scared them.
Erin focused on Gaia’s finger and the Life Prism to keep her mind away from the fact that she was buried in a planet-deep tomb. These two artifacts were each otherworldly. The finger contained massive quantities of life energy—far more than she kept in her whole body, and much more refined. If she could tame that energy, she’d achieve extreme but finite power.
The Prism was something entirely different. Erin could sense how it contained the essence of the earth, of life, how it resonated with every living creature in the world. No—it wasn’t resonance, but ancestry, as if everything ever born originated from this little green bead.
It did not contain much energy, bur rather a unique energy signature, a master-key to control all the life energy in existence. Erin could understand now how Jerry was so powerful. With such an object at her disposal, she too could face Archmages. Or so she hoped. The truth was, she hadn’t witnessed the battle between Jerry and the Salamander, so most of her knowledge comprised of assumptions.
But how strong could they be?
Against Hydra, though… Erin’s mind chilled as she thought of that. If I had been the one to face her attack instead of Jerry… Even with the Prism… I would be dead. If I can control both it and the finger, however, I can become extremely strong!
The finger of Gaia was a resource even Jerry didn’t possess. In Erin’s mind, it sounded logical that if she controlled both, she’d outclass him, being a great help in the coming battles.
Familiarizing myself with these two isn’t easy, so this dead time is precious, she concluded, forgetting about the wet darkness entirely. I will devote myself fully. By the time we reach the Sea of Sand, I’ll be truly strong!
17
INTO THE DESERT
On the fifth day, as the Fishboat approached the tunnel’s halfway point, Jerry opened his eyes to see rock walls outlined in the darkness.
That’s weird, he thought. How can I see?
He gazed toward the Fishboat—the only way to know which direction was up or down—and found a faint light rising from what he assumed were the deepest depths known to man.
Huh, he thought. “Hey, Dennis, any idea what’s that?”
“Nobody here knows, Master.”
“Alright. Keep me posted.”
“Yes.”
He grabbed the rope and tugged on it, arriving at the Fishboat. He then crawled around it until he was at its side, no longer prevented from seeing deep below.
I have a better view than them, he realized. The Fishboat’s glass eyes were aimed at the wall.
The light grew steadily brighter. A few hours later, Jerry still couldn’t spot its source, but it was so bright now he had to squint to look down. The water was warming up, too.
Did we reach the other side already? he wondered. We could have. I have no way to track time.
When the light became too bright, Jerry closed his eyes, relying only on his soul perception. They were descending fast. They had been since the start. The walls zoomed past. The temperature rose rapidly, too, turning from cold to lukewarm and then hot. Jerry was fine, but his friends weren’t.
“Marcus, Laura, and Erin are sweating,” Dennis reported.
“I understand. Tell them to bear with it, but if it gets too warm, we’ll have to turn back.”
“Marcus says they’re going to boil.”
This was worrisome. If they returned now, not only would they lose all these days, but they’d still need to ride the airship all the way to the Sea of Sand. They’d arrive long after the war was over.
There has to be a source to this heat and light, and there’s only one way to know how close we are.
Jerry braced himself, looked down, and opened his eyes a crack.
The light was blinding. He closed them again almost instantly and turned away, but not before the image of what lay at the bottom of the tunnel was forever branded in his mind.
The corpse of an angel. A woman with flowing hair, limbs spread wide, skin immaculate and shining like the sun. She was the source of all the light and heat.
Manna, Jerry realized. The goddess of light and civilization. The corpse of the last Primordial.
