Towering Trouble: A LitRPG Isekai, page 30
“We can’t do that,” said Saskia. “There’s still useful information to be gleaned; I’m sure of it. I might have another vision. And now we have his staff as leverage, there’s a very real chance there might be a way to end this without killing. I say we give him another day or two; see what happens.”
“And if he tries to flee again or turn on us?”
“Then he takes a dirt nap,” said Saskia, silently praying it wouldn’t come to that. “Between the two of us, I don’t think we have much to fear from him.”
“I amn’t afraid of him,” said Ruhildi, a little indignantly. “I just want him gone!”
“One way or another, he’ll be gone soon, I promise,” said Saskia. “Just a little longer. Please?” She tried to give her best puppy dog eyes, which wasn’t easy when they were scarlet and slitted like a cat’s.
Ruhildi gave her a long stare. Then she let out a snort. “Alright. He’s your pet leaf-ears to feed and water and clean up after, from now until we’re rid of him. And if he tries to break free again, I’ll bind him with his own intestines!”
“Ew,” said Saskia, even as relief flooded into her. She wouldn’t put it past Ruhildi to ‘take care of the problem’ behind her back if the dwarf thought she was being a naive idiot, but for now, it seemed her friend had been mollified.
The hours slowly ticked by as they trekked ever deeper into the twisting, overgrown tunnel. How many kilometres beneath the surface were they now? Ten? Twenty? Surely no cave system on Earth went this deep—at least none visited by humans. Then again, there were no caves quite like this on Earth; none bursting with so many peculiar plants and fungal growths, and all the things that wriggled and scampered and swam and flew among them.
Saskia was getting heartily sick of it all. Sure, this underground jungle was far more of a feast for the senses than the bland rocks she’d expected to find down here, but it was even harder to traverse than the dense forests on the surface, because there was no way around the various living obstructions without hacking or digging.
Again she felt the ground shudder and sway beneath her feet.
“What is that?” she asked when the shaking ceased. “It happened last night as well.”
“I don’t ken,” said Ruhildi, her forehead creased in a frown. And that was more concerning than anything else she might have said.
The air grew hot and humid, and wisps of steam rose up from the hidden depths to meet them. It wasn’t long before the river tunnel opened out into an even bigger cavern.
Actually, the word cavern didn’t really do it justice. Saskia felt her eyes go big and round as she gazed out across a vast inner world, shrouded in steam, and brimming with enormous phosphorescent growths, tall trees, arches and spirals and twisting towers of vegetation that reached for the distant ceiling. Vapour wafted from murky, bubbling pools. Through the haze, she could make out an unbroken column of white-hot liquid pouring down from—
Hold on a minute. It wasn’t pouring down. It was pouring up, like in one of those weird reverse-time videos of people unpouring drinks.
She’d known something must be up with the physics on this world, because tree the size of planet. But this? This was just…
She couldn’t even…
As always, Saskia looked to her friend, already brimming with dozens of questions. But best to start with the most important one. “What is this place?” she asked. “Surely we can’t have reached the Underneath so soon.”
“Och no,” said Ruhildi, her expression wavering between relief and…concern. That in itself was concerning. “’Tisn’t the ’Neath. This is Wilbergond, one of the Outer Hollows.”
In that moment an awful sound emerged from the depths of the alien jungle, like a giant hoicking up a mountain of phlegm. Trees swayed, and a whirlwind of startled bats swarmed into the air, reaching for the safety of the distant ceiling.
Book 2, Chapter 3: Hollow
Three weeks shy of Saskia’s third birthday, in the midst of a record-breaking heatwave, her mother almost killed her.
Alice Wendle strapped her daughter into the back seat of her not-so-snazzy new Toyota Corolla, drove to work, and parked in the company car park, before locking the vehicle and hurrying into the office, five minutes late for a meeting. This was little different from any other work day, but for one thing. This day her stress-addled, sleep-deprived brain forgot the crucial step of dropping her daughter off at daycare.
Saskia was only semi-conscious by the time a passer-by came to her rescue and broke her out of the vehicle. The paramedics who checked her over afterward and rushed her to hospital said she’d been just minutes away from death.
Years later, when Alice confessed to her daughter about the incident, she came as close to breaking down as Saskia had ever seen her. She’d never forgiven herself for that near-infanticidal lapse of memory.
As for Saskia herself, she didn’t remember much. Into her early teenage years she’d had these brief moments, now and then, when she felt a rising panic; a feeling of being trapped; of suffocating. As the years passed, so too had those terrifying moments, until all that remained were memories of memories. It had been a long time since she’d relived the experience directly.
Until now. Now she was pretty sure the inside of the car had felt a lot like it did here in Wilbergond.
The heat of this place was enough to make her want to curl up and die. There was no escaping it; no shady patch in which to find shelter. The humidity level was so far off the metaphorical charts that had they existed, the charts would’ve wilted into a soggy mess and dissolved. An hour of sweltering in this jungle sauna had slowed their pace to a crawl, and Saskia could have sworn her eyeballs were slowly simmering in her skull.
Mopping her grimy, sweat-streaked brow with the back of her hand, she scowled at her friend. “That one time, I may have said I’d follow you into hell, Ruhildi, but I didn’t mean it literally.”
This was a pretty kind of hell, she had to admit; full of bizarre and colourful sights. Some of those sights had teeth and claws and chittering mandibles. The owners of said appendages didn’t seem particularly intimidated by the big scary one-armed troll, the tiny, but arguably scarier dwarven necromancer, or their elven captive, who may be bound and helpless, but whose dour expression was enough to give any would-be predators a case of the gloomies. Saskia had been forced to get stompy on more than one occasion, and had earned an assortment of bites and cuts on her feet and ankles for her trouble.
The denizens of Wilbergond were a tenacious lot. Even the herbivores were bristling with natural defences. Scaly hides and tough carapaces abounded, along with an impressive array of horns and antlers.
Small wonder, in a place as brutal and unforgiving as this. Distant screeches and growls and slurping sounds assaulted her ears, warning her about the denizens she hadn’t yet met: the apex predators of this primal howlscape. Even more ominous were the carnelian-red markers roaming the periphery of her minimap.
Red means dead, she reminded herself for the umpteenth time.
“We surface creatures were never meant to tread in such a place as this,” said Garrain, wincing as he lifted his scalded foot out of a burbling pool.
“For once I agree with him,” said Saskia. “I really hope we can find the passage out of here soon. I don’t wanna boil alive. Or get eaten.”
“Would that ’twere so easy to find,” said Ruhildi. “Alas, I’ve not set foot in Wilbergond afore. All I ken is what the stories told of this Hollow. They made no mention of the arlium flow.” She cast her gaze up at the column of fiery white liquid inexplicably rising up to the ceiling. “But they did speak of a passage to Dwallondorn. If we make it that far—”
“Oh now you’re just overflowing with confidence,” interjected Saskai.
“If we should perish, I’ll take solace in the fact that your sadistic disciple dies with me, demon,” said Garrain.
“She’s not my—ugh,” groaned Saskia. “Okay Ruhildi, there’s no way we’re gonna die down here now. We’re not giving him the satisfaction.”
Ruhildi’s lips curled up ever so slightly. “In that, we’re of one mind, Sashki. As I were saying afore you interrupted: from Dwallondorn, we can take the prime passage the rest of the way down to the ’Neath. ’Tis a well-tread path; one I myself have taken afore.”
“Okay, now you’re talking. I just hope Dwallondorn isn’t as stifling as this.” Saskia glanced up at the source of the heat. “So that’s arlium? Shoulda known it wasn’t plain old magma. Magma doesn’t defy gravity.”
“I don’t ken what you mean by magma,” said Ruhildi. “Molten arlium is the lifeblood of Arbor Mundi.”
“Just so we’re clear, this is the same stuff you use for your magic?” asked Saskia.
“The very same. Only here it burns hotter than the hottest dwarrow furnace.”
“So…why is it rising?”
“’Tis just what arlium does when it gets hot enough. When it nears the surface, it starts to cool, and sinks back down to the main artery, where it heats up anew. Just as our hearts push blood through our bodies, so too does the lifeblood of Arbor Mundi flow.”
“Huh. Interesting.” So when heated, arlium started to defy gravity, or at least became lighter than air. Just a bit cooler (but still hot enough to remain liquid, presumably) and it lost this property. On Earth, there were gasses lighter than air, but no liquids, and certainly nothing that changed so dramatically while remaining liquid. So…magic?
Yup, she decided. Definitely magic.
“Alas, methinks the passage to Dwallondorn lies on the other side of the arlium flow,” said Ruhildi. “We’ve a ways to go yet, and it’ll get worse afore it gets better.”
“I can hardly wait,” sighed Saskia. “But I thought you said you’ve never been here before and didn’t know where the passage was?”
“I don’t ken precisely where to find it. But I ken which direction to go. I told you about the stone sense already, Sashki.”
“Yeah, but isn’t that a really close-range thing?”
“To feel details, aye, fair close,” said Ruhildi. “But the stone sense also gives me a flawless sense of direction. I’m taking us in the direction we’re like to find Dwallondorn, even though I ken not the exact route.”
“Oh, I suppose that makes sense.” It seemed Saskia wasn’t the only one with a compass in her head. “Dwallondorn is to the north then; toward the trunk of the world tree.”
“Aye, near the shore of the Arnean Sea.”
Saskia thought about that for a moment, before asking, “So why isn’t it underwater then? Why aren’t all of these caves completely flooded?”
“That’s a fair good question, Sashki. An arborologist once told me the arlium arteries and veins breathe the air—or mayhap make new air. I forget.”
Considering her words, Saskia came to the conclusion that maybe they weren’t complete bunk. Her rudimentary knowledge of biology told her that plants did indeed breathe, though oxygen came out of them instead of going in. The air did feel really thick down here, and there was an awful lot more life than she’d expected to find so deep underground. It might explain why the air grew thin and cold high up in the mountains, as it did on Earth, but not in places where this branch of the world tree curled up into spurs taller than any normal peak. If those spurs had arlium flowing closer to the surface, drawing the air close, or maybe even replenishing the atmosphere…
Again she heard that dogawful throat-clearing noise. She prayed they’d never meet whatever it was that made that sound, but a part of her was also curious…
As they drew closer to the column of fire, the jungle gave way to parched earth and blackened stone. It wasn’t by choice that they came this close to the most inhospitable part of Wilbergond, but an unfortunate consequence of its geography. The cavern was shaped like an hourglass, with the inferno raging at the choke point in the middle. The best they could do was scramble down into a trench at the cavern’s edge whose high walls shielded them from the worst of the radiated heat.
Incredibly, there were things that grew even here: great fungal fans on brittle stems like tree trunks, and long, tubular things with bulging tips.
“Aye, they do look like a certain something,” said Ruhildi, following Saskia’s gaze.
“Yeah, they look like…skinny purple mushrooms,” said Saskia.
“Och, so that’s what your people call them. You ken, there’s sure to be arlithite in those stems, if you were to chew on one…”
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Ruhildi.”
“I ken not what you mean,” said the dwarf, her face the picture of innocence. “My mind is just fine where it is.”
So yeah, the heat was making them a bit loopy. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it, she thought to herself.
As they dashed through the trench, there was one brief, horrifying instant when her head rose above the walls and she gazed directly into the heart of the inferno. In that instant, she could make out what looked like flaming birds flitting about next to the surface of the molten arlium.
“Were those…phoenixes?” she wondered aloud after she’d doused her smouldering hair.
“Methinks those were scorchwings you saw,” said Ruhildi upon hearing Saskia’s description. “We’ve naught to fear from such beasts. The fire sustains them. Were they to come down here where it’s cooler, they’d petrify fair quick.”
“Huh,” said Saskia. Nothing like their mythological lookalikes then.
Several minutes later, Ruhildi drew to an abrupt halt. Ahead of them in the trench, perched on a mound of dirt and stone were a pair of wide, bulbous forms the colour of charcoal; with leathery hides bristling with thick spiky protuberances, and thick tails tipped with spiked clubs. Then she caught sight of their eyes; black and multifaceted and…ugh…far too numerous. She counted seven on each head.
“Threshers,” said Ruhildi
“Yay,” said Saskia. “Name like that, they must be all cuddles.”
“You wouldn’t want to be cuddling up to a thresher, Sashki.”
“One day, I’m gonna have to teach you about a thing called sarcasm. Think we can get past them without a fight?”
“Och no,” said Ruhildi. “Threshers don’t eat meat, but they’re like to squash anyone who comes near their nest.”
“And their nest is…right in our path,” finished Saskia, seeing the debris piled beneath the two beasts. “There’s no way around. Fan-frocking-tabulous.”
“There may be another option,” said Garrain.
Both of them turned to him.
“Return my staff to me, and I’ll cast a spell to pacify—”
“No,” said both Saskia and Ruhildi in unison.
He let out a ragged sigh. “It was worth an attempt. Very well. Slaughter away then.”
There came a sound halfway between a snuffle and a growl, followed by an answering roar. One of the monsters slid down from the nest. The beast scuffled forward on stubby legs, beating its tail club rhythmically against the ground as it moved. Probably trying to scare the invaders off, but unfortunately for everyone concerned, there was nowhere for the invaders to go but through.
“They’ve spotted us,” said Saskia.
“Aye,” said Ruhildi. “I can see. I have eyes and ears too, you ken.”
“Oh good. Keep them on our prisoner, will you, while I hold back this monster.” Hurriedly, Saskia unwound Garrain’s rope from her waist and tied it to the thick trunk of a fungal spire.
For a moment, she considered taking the elf’s glaive into battle, before discarding the idea. It was an impressive weapon—probably far more deadly than Mjölnir—but having never practised with such weapons, she’d be more of a danger to herself than her opponents. Also, to survive in an environment like this, these creatures must be seriously resistant to heat, so the singeing edge of that blade would more than likely be wasted on them.
Mjölnir it was then. She bared her teeth at the threshers, hefting the massive hammer in her one good hand. “Time to get my troll on!”
“If the beast should get past you, I won’t be of any use, tied up like this,” said Garrain.
“Yeah,” said Saskia. “Your point?”
“I can help!” he insisted. “If not with magic, then with skill at arms!”
“Maybe, but we can’t take that chance right now, so just…try not to die.” Without sparing him another glance, she advanced on the approaching thresher.
Only as it drew near did she begin to get a sense of just how big this creature was. The word elephant sprang to mind, though it looked nothing like an elephant. There were very few beasts that could truly threaten a troll, but this thing…well, it’d give her a run for her money.
Closing the remaining distance, Saskia lunged forward, bringing Mjölnir down upon a vulnerable-looking cluster of eyes that regarded her unblinkingly. Or that was her intent. Her movement felt sluggish, weighed down by the oppressive heat. The hammer thudded into brittle earth, sending a cloud of dust into the air.
It took her a long moment to register what went wrong. Very nearly a moment too late. The beast had spun about, and its vicious club of a tail was sweeping toward her like a wrecking ball covered in nails.
Leaping upward in the nick of time, she felt a gust of displaced air press against her feet. She landed awkwardly and almost fell onto her butt.
Recovering quickly, she lashed out at the thresher’s flank. This time, her blow struck home, cracking one of its spines. The beast emitted a short, sharp yip, bringing to mind the sound her dog Cerberus had made when she’d slammed the door on his tail.
Dogramit! Why’d she have to think of that? Now she was actually feeling sorry for the bug-eyed monster that was trying to kill her!
Speaking of which, its tail was hurtling back toward her; this time high in the air. Too high to jump. With no time for thought, she dropped low to the ground.
There was a horrible grinding sound as it scraped across her armoured back. With a loud thud, the spiked club at the end of the tail smashed into the wall of the trench.
