Arthur groaned as he made his way into consciousness. Finding himself facedown on the rocky ground, he realized he hurt all over.

"I-I'm alive?" he mumbled, not sure if anyone was around to hear him. Deciding to get a better look at his surroundings, he made to lift his head. A sudden jolt of pain down his spine made doing that impossible.

"Ohhh, that was a bad idea…"

A cacophony of noise finally hit his ears and made him rethink staying still. Gritting his teeth and gathering his strength, he slowly worked on scraping himself off the stone. Another bolt of pain lanced down his back, but he ignored it as he finally found his feet and straightened as best he could. His legs still felt like they were made of wet noodles, but at least he was upright.

A repeated meowing sound was coming from somewhere, interwoven with weird chanting. He could also hear water flowing from somewhere, and a noise oddly similar to slurping and slushing.

His vision, however, was still blurry, making it difficult to pinpoint the exact location of the sounds. All he could see was splotches of color, predominantly the white and grey of the rocks he had been sprawled across. Arthur exhaled slowly, and rubbed his eyes until his sight resolved into sharpened clarity.

What greeted him was a landscape of giant lava tubes, feeding into the vast cavern from multiple directions. The crown jewel was an enormous lake of bluish green gelatinous liquid gracing the center of the space. Thrown drops glittered in the light of their own glow, water churning as if caught in the grips of a murderous rage. Tendrils of… something could be seen behind the curtain of liquid, thrashing out the lake like an enraged medusa.

Tentacles.

A single tentacle was currently slithering back to the safety of its cohorts. Slowly, the creature attached tried to submerge its giant snake-like body beneath the surface.

Judging by the direction the arm was retreating, that was probably the culprit that dragged Arthur into this cavern. There was something peculiar about it though.

The tentacle was grasping a pendant.

Arthur’s mind emptied of fog immediately. “Hey! That’s mine!”

His first reaction was to call the cops. Then self-preservation kicked in. He instantly covered his mouth, preventing any sound from escaping, and scuttled back till he bumped painfully into a large boulder. A tiny moue of discomfort slipped through his fingers.

Two unrelated thoughts rose up in his mind, as he tried to push away the additional sting on top of his existing aches. First was, ‘What the hell is going on!’ And then, ‘There really was a cartoon thief trying to break in!’

A voice cut across his internal musings. “Mr. Arthur! If you do not want to die, might I suggest that you hurry up and take cover behind that boulder? And take the cat with you!”

“Mrrowlll!”

‘Right! The weird monk! And the cat...’

Arthur snapped his head towards the direction of the voice, and saw a gray and white blur flying towards his chest. By the time he registered the tail and splayed legs attached to the unidentified flying blur, the cat had already crashed into him with a whimper.

He grunted at the impact, instinctively wrapping his arms around the ball of fur. Following the monk's advice, he slipped around behind the boulder, cat tucked to the front of his shirt.

“Meow! Meew mrau mew!” A litany of grievances spilled from the traumatized feline as it snuggled up to his body for comfort. Tears trailed down around the muzzle, leaving a track of wet fur behind on either side. Never in its short life had it ever been so disrespected. It was bad enough being scolded by a shady human for trying to protect him from those scuttling circles in the house. But being dragged down by a weird alien tentacle...thing and tossed around like some yarn ball was simply too much.

Arthur tried to soothe the agitated cat as best as he could. The poor thing’s tail was kinked in a caricature of Pikachu’s now. No wonder it was in shock. Cats hated their tails getting touched, let alone squashed. Carefully poking his head around the curve of the stone, he went to check on the third member of their surprise kidnapping.

Feng looked like he had just walked through a sand storm. His only set of robes were a mess of holes and tears. Black hair, previously tied up in a neat braid, had come loose, part of it swirling around in the wind. 'Wait, wind? We're underground!' The rest was sticking to his clothes. The Chinese cap he had sported earlier was nowhere to be seen. His sleeves hung in tatters, the edges seemingly dissolved by acid. His face was decorated in a plethora of tiny scratches, though Arthur doubted it was the tentacle monster that was responsible for them. Tentacles didn't usually carry sharp edges.

The monk was currently swinging around a huge sword as he battled the numerous arms assaulting him. It seemed the two were at a stalemate. Any wound he made on the tentacles healed almost instantaneously, whether it was a slash or a stab. Even the burns and gashes from the fireballs and wind blades he threw out had no visible effect. But the flailing limbs were unable to land a blow on the whirling dervish attacking with a single minded intensity.

Now Arthur was no expert, but it seemed rather pointless to continue to go after a creature that was fighting to escape. Anytime the monster tried to retreat, Feng baited it back into rejoining the battle. It took him a moment to realize the purpose of the dance before him. The attacks were concentrating on a specific tentacle trying to retreat into the lake. A tentacle that was currently wrapped around his pendant.

‘My pendant...’ Arthur didn’t know why the alien wanted to steal his memento, but whatever it wanted it for, the monk clearly didn’t want it in the monster's possession.

It took a moment to process what was being shouted by his defender. “What nature of Scourgekin is this! Wait... That green jelly, is that immortal elixir?!” The monk’s last squawk sounded almost hysterical to Arthur. “Even my strongest transcended magics get neutralized immediately! Tarnation! Why isn’t the backup here yet?!”

Liu Feng looked almost as aggrieved as the cat. Arthur could clearly pick out his perturbed tone, even with all the swooshing tentacles and exploding fireballs.

“I did not want to do this, but you leave me no other choice, Scourgekin!” Declaration given, Liu Feng removed an incredibly detailed miniature bronze sword from an inner pocket, light from the lake glinting off its highly polished sheen. Chanting from a strange language bounced off the cavern walls. A few moments later, the miniature sword was glowing brightly, and Feng’s eyes had caught on fire.

'Mr. Arthur!' The monk's voice echoed inside his skull. Every fiber of his being screamed in panic, but the monk's powerful voice seemed to possess a magic, forcefully calming down his tense nerves.

'Close your eyes! And cover your cat’s too. Do not look at the light directly!'

Arthur had no idea what magic the monk was about to cast. But he wasn’t going to stop and ask. In gaming terms, Liu Feng had clearly gathered enough rage points from the fight, now he was going to use his ultimate.

Ducking back behind the boulder, he untucked his shirt the rest of the way and stuffed the cat underneath, praying that it kept its claws to itself as it struggled against his skin. The tail popped out of his partially unbuttoned collar to whack him in the ear, and he got a spectacular view of feline rear before he got his eyes closed. 'Whadda ya know. Female…' his brain unhelpfully chimed in. Not two seconds later, Arthur could feel a blinding light pierce through his eyelids, as if a sun had blossomed in the cavern, drenching everything with its dazzling light.

Yet he felt no pain. He felt calm, and at peace. Like there was no city sized tentacle monster out there to kill them. Hakuna Matata. That’s what this spell was called, Arthur decided. The light of Hakuna Matata soothed his soul. The cat stilled under his shirt, a tiny purr replacing the yowling of before.

And then the sun winked out, and everything went silent.

“It’s… okay now…” Arthur once again heard Liu Feng’s voice. But this time it wasn’t telepathic, rather coming from his left. Arthur hesitantly opened one eye, and peeked in the direction of the monk’s tired tone.

Liu Feng looked even worse now. After tumbling down the hole, he'd looked like a beggar that had slept in the empty cavern of an antique automobile's engine compartment. Now he looked like he'd been beaten up by a gang of other beggars, tossed in a dumpster, and thrown into a landfill before escaping through the sewers. His eyes were swollen, ears bleeding, and he was gasping like a beached fish. There was a peculiar smell of burnt hair coming from his body too.

Arthur turned his gaze behind the injured monk. He looked at the lake, where the monster lay.

All the swaying tentacles were cleanly severed from the middle, with the ends falling into the shallows. The lake monster, or alien, or whatever, was now having trouble regenerating its injuries. The base of each cut was still being scorched by a blazing golden flame, presumably an after effect of Liu Feng’s ultimate. Each time the tentacles tried to regrow, the flame would simply turn that part into ash.

Arthur took a leap of faith and decided, for now, to trust this man. After all, he'd fought off a city-sized horror to protect them. Not to mention before, saving him from being squashed into paste by being dragged into the tunnel by said horror.

Of course, that didn't mean he wasn't still a little suspicious.

“T-Thanks man,” Arthur stuttered, while showing an embarrassed smile, “... sorry for calling you a thief before.”

“No matter. It was my fault for intruding upon you uninvited.” The monk gave a magnanimous smile.

“So... what now?” Arthur looked towards the lake again. The pendant was lying on the ground less than three meters away from the lapping edge. His number one priority right now, not counting escaping this place with his life and the cat, was to retrieve his memento. But God above, he did not want to approach that lake. The severed tentacles were still twisting violently in midair. One random hit and he would become a pancake.

“The pendant,” Liu Feng asked. “Do you know of its origin?”

He glanced between the flailing limbs and his necklace, torn between darting forward to grab it or staying safely put. “No, not exactly. Uhhh, it’s a memento from my mother. She told me it was a synthetic gem, made in some lab. That’s... all I know,” Arthur replied hesitantly.

“...I see.” The monk paused to contemplate that revelation. Tapping his chin, he continued, “For now, let me retrieve it. The Scourgekin might try something again. And the blasted backup still isn’t here.”

Arthur had nothing to say to that. He couldn’t. This whole matter was completely out of his hands right now. Even if he wanted to tell the monk to return the pendant to him, he doubted Liu Feng would agree.

The monk, pretending not to notice the inner turmoil scrawled across Arthur’s face, warily made his way to the pendant.

He made it two steps before stopping dead in his tracks. Arthur grimaced, picking up on the subtle change in the air as well.

A quiet otherworldly screech threaded through the still air of the cavern. Like the low buzz of a Cicada undercutting the silence of a summer night, it fluctuated in intensity. This cry, however, promised rage and retaliation.

The thrashing lake monster abruptly went still. Then, with a movement rivaling a Tsunami, it surged outward and devoured the severed tentacles, along with the golden flames still scorching them. Arthur was reminded of high school biology, watching a slime culture gradually envelop its food with its cellular body. Except the slime they had been studying hadn't looked like it had come straight from a Lovecraftian novel.

Immediately, the flames were snuffed out, and the monster began growing new wrigglies. These ones, however, were covered in thick bark-like armor and insectoid plating.

“Oh, curse the heavens!” Liu Feng couldn’t help but swear. Finishing a quick incantation to boost his speed, he made a dash for the pendant, tossing a few magic missiles towards the rapidly growing morass of tentacles, trying to delay them for as long as possible.

Just before his fingers brushed the chain, the gem flashed and it sprung up. Literally.

The monk lost his footing and face planted in surprise. “Fudge!”

“What in the-?!” In all of the years it had rested around his neck, not once had it done anything like that!

The pendant, which had been lying on the ground like the dead object it should be, suddenly grew a pair of octopus-like legs. It stood there for a moment, not wobbling a bit. Then in a perfectly casual motion, it skipped past Feng's nose, straight towards the lake. Like a merry little lass going out for a summer stroll through the park.

Reaching the water's edge, it leapt upwards, front pair of legs poised in a perfect dive. Time seemed to freeze for a few long seconds before it fell in with a tiny ploink.

The cat finally got her head free, and pricked two-toned ears at the sound. "Mrrow?"

The trio stared wide eyed at the animated ornament steadily sinking into the lake water.

By the time they snapped out of it, the undulating turquoise body of the monster was starting to rise up into the air, tentacles thrashing in ecstasy above.

Liu Feng scrambled to his feet, fingers sketching lines in the air. Before he could finish enacting a proper defense, he got smacked from behind by a stray tentacle and followed the necklace into the glowing depths.

Arthur could only stare with a gaping mouth as hundreds, if not thousands of tentacles shot out of the floating lake and formed a cocoon-like structure around the pendant. Panic overtook him.

He couldn’t run. The lava tubes were already sealed up by tentacles.

He couldn’t fight. He’d be squashed in a heartbeat. The only thing he had any chance of beating here was the cat, and if he were a betting man, his money would be on the cat.

For the second time that day, Arthur saw his life flash by.

He hugged the feline still under his shirt and closed his eyes tightly, waiting for the inevitable death to come.

The cocoon let out a blinding glow, and then...

…………

……

..

Something wet touched his cheek.

For a few seconds, all he could hear was silence. The sound of wind being cut by thrashing tentacles, the churning lake water, even the creaking of the moon’s crust. All of it was no more.

Then, fading in from the background, there was the gurgling sound of a man slowly drowning in water, followed by the quiet meow of a cat. He checked his shirt. Empty.

‘Is this it? Killed by tentacles, so I get sent to tentacle hell?’ thought Arthur cynically.

Then the realization hit him. He wasn't dead yet.

“Umm...?” Arthur slowly opened one eye to take a peek.

He was greeted with the silhouette of a girl, about his age, bending over him, water dripping onto his pant-legs. With knee-length long sparkling golden hair draped over her pale, naked self, she squinted at Arthur with a teasing glint in her turquoise eyes. The freckles dusting her face made the squint all the more alluring.

Arthur’s mouth gaped open. The girl broke into a breathtaking smile.

Then, with no warning at all, she pinched his cheeks. Hard.

“Long time no see, Arthur.”

He knew the girl. Her name was Zoe.

She was his old babysitter.

***

“So, what you’re saying is, you’re not a human. You live under our house because my dad let you ‘enshrine’ this place. The pendant is actually one of your ‘cores’. And you dragged me down here, without any word of warning, because you thought Liu Feng, who was hiding in my shadow, was trying to hurt me and steal the pendant?”

“Yup.”

“Are you kidding me!?” Arthur cried, throwing his arms up in frustration.

He was having a hard time believing that his childhood babysitter, housekeeper, and possibly puppy crush was some sort of lake sized, amorphous, magical tentacle monster!!

Even with all the supernatural stuff he had seen that day, it was something he had trouble just accepted at face value.

The main problem was the pure ludicrousness of it all.

That didn’t matter to the girl though. She didn’t look a day older since he last saw her 5 years ago. Wiggling her fingers at the cat in her arms, she deftly avoided the batting paws. “I don’t get what’s so hard to believe, Arthur. You aren’t asking that guy over there if he can really do magic, even though he was throwing fireballs at me earlier.” The cat finally caught her hand and began gnawing on the pinky. "Oh, you clever girl…"

“That’s because I can’t! You. trapped. him. in. goo! How am I supposed to ask him?!” Arthur shouted in exasperation.

Apparently, the gurgling he had heard just after waking up hadn't been Feng drowning.

The monk wasn’t dead. He wasn’t eaten alive. He wasn’t even tortured, forced to suffer through unimaginable tentacly torment. The type of torture that had to be censored.

He wasn’t even unconscious.

Zoe had trapped him in a bubble of that luminescent teal water. The prison of liquid now slowly floating in mid-air. Even his wounds had been healed.

Liu Feng, the spectacularly gurgling monk, was lounging in the bubble with arms crossed. His eyes flashed, obviously trying to tell him something. If Arthur had to venture a guess, the monk wanted him to ask Zoe to release him.

He sighed.

“Puh-lease. In any case, could you release the guy? He looks uncomfortable in there.” Zoe’s blatant distrust of the guy wasn’t completely illogical. But then again, the monk did just try to ‘save’ Arthur from Zoe, even though it was completely unnecessary in the first place.

“It’s not meant to be comfortable. And no,” Zoe denied his request. “Don’t be naïve, Arthur. There is a reason this guy stalked you. And I’m sensing a group of people just like him outside our house, for quite a while now. They’re probably his comrades. I can’t let him go. You shouldn’t trust him. I think…" She extracted her hand from the feline's grip and tapped her chin. "It’s better to get rid of him.”

“I can’t trust you either!” Arthur blurted out in a rage. But when he saw how visibly hurt Zoe looked, he took a deep deep breath to calm himself.

‘Calm down, Arthur. Deep breaths.’

He spoke with a note of hesitancy, a guilty tone colouring his shaky voice. “Look, Zoe. Today… has been an incredibly stressful day. I’m just tired, really. I know I can’t trust him, but I can’t just let you get rid of him! He risked his life to save me! Even though it wound up being totally pointless... I mean... What I’m trying to say is, I've always trusted you, Zoe. I- I always will! And… And it’s my fault for yelling at you?”

Zoe just looked at him, obviously unimpressed with his groveling.

“Do you really mean it?” she asked skeptically. The girl was caressing the cat’s tail, gently smoothing out the kinks and ruffled fur. Her gaze fell to meet the sapphire eyes of her armful. Fingers lit a dim green, leaving softly glowing tracks along their journey that faded after a moment. She was making a point to ignore him.

Arthur sighed again.

“Yes, I really trust you. I know you won’t hurt me. I also know there has to be a good reason why mother gave your core to me,” he replied. He was a bit skeptical of her yes, but deep-down, Arthur knew, Zoe was practically family.

“No, that it is your fault.”

“….Yes.” Only the cat saw Arthur grit his teeth. Whiskers flared as the hand moved to rub under the white chin.

“I’ll be frank here, Arthur. I don’t believe it.” Zoe finally deigned to look at him. Her eyes spoke to him, telling him that she was still unhappy. Gently, she put the cat down and crossed her arms with a pout.

“What do you want then?" he grumbled. "Do I have to get down on my knees and beg?” Even though she was a giant eldritch monstrosity, she was still a girl at heart, Arthur lamented. He should know better. Women in his family never forgave slights so easily.

“No, that this guy would actually risk his life to save you.” Zoe shook her head, jerking her thumb at Liu Feng who was trapped inside her prison of slime, looking thoroughly exasperated.

Arthur was thrown for a loop.

‘Oh my god, lady! Would it hurt for you to be more detailed when speaking?!’