Chapter 210 - Tentacles and Ashes III

When Claire ascended the cylindrical mountain and climbed atop its umbrella-like peak, she found herself gazing upon a scene that one would only ever associate with civilized lands. There was a town, a beautiful farm village with over a hundred residents working its fields. From where the party had entered, they could see it in all its glory. The temple sat atop a large hill overlooking the rest of the tranquil hamlet.

It was still misty; the same noxious smoke that had assailed them on the previous floor filled the space occupied by the town, but the fog distorted their view no longer. Somehow, it was equal parts purple and clear; they could easily see beyond the nearby fields, through the town square, and even into some of the houses therein.

Strange feathered creatures were wandering around the village, going about their everyday lives as they would outside a god’s realm. Some were tending to their crops, some were processing the items they gained from their hunts, and some were simply idling about, sitting in their grand, two-story nests and dozing off.

“Uhmmm… Claire?”

The only shoggoths anywhere in sight were tiny specimens chained to homes and dressed with top hats and monocles. They were willingly collared, treated more like pets than slaves or servants. Some even had smaller nests outside their masters’, carefully constructed to keep out the rain. Most were lazily lying around, perking up only when others passed by so that they could happily greet them with their tentacles.

“Heellooooooo?”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Uhmmm… I dunno. I don’t think I’ve seen her really get like this all that much before.”

It was only upon looking at the townfolk that they found the weapons the other adventurers had described. Out-of-place blades hung off the waists and backs of the local hunters. Some of the deformed residents had extra appendages to wield them, but most had only their wings and legs, limbs not suited to the manipulation of sabers and axes.

To label the locals as birds would be generous at best, disingenuous at worst. They were clearly eldritch in nature. Though obscured with layers of feathers, their vomit-green skin was not invisible. The sickly, bumpy layer peeked out from beneath the plumes where their beaks met their faces. Each individual had a distinct mouth part, the absurd variation within which appeared to suggest that the creatures were not all the same species. Shapes, sizes, and colours all varied drastically from person to person. Some had the standard yellow wedges, some had long, tropical hooks, and there was even a particularly unfortunate individual whose face was decorated with a horrifying mouth shaped like a pair of mugs clamped together.

“Ughh… come on! Snap out of it!”

Just as noteworthy were the monsters’ feet. Chicken-like toes were most common, but there were tentacles, hooves, flippers, and even humanoid legs present within the crowd. When paired with their mouths, their feet made for perfect identifiers, for while some shared the same legs or beaks, no two individuals shared both.

They were abominations, beasts whose very existence stood opposed to the tenets preached by the god of beauty. Claire would not have been surprised if one of his followers declared a crusade immediately upon sighting the aberrations, nor would she have spoken against it. Their aesthetic reeked of an unholy influence. They deserved nothing more than to be consigned to the abyss. And yet, she was stuck fighting the glands nested in her mouth.

“Claaaaaaaaiiiiirrreeee! I’m going to bite you if you don’t say something.”

Drool poured from her lips like water from a fountain. Her uncontrollable forked tongue flicked through the air, tasting them prematurely, and ice sprouted from her hands, coating her body in a layer of frost. All influences from the child that had been integrated into her soul.

Extra pupils appeared in her eyes as she located the morsels she was to consume. Their civilization would follow as an added dessert. A delightful accompaniment to the song of death that would be her second lunch.

“Okay, you know what? That’s it!”

A tingling sensation shot down her spine as soon as the words passed through her mind. A mix of pain and pleasure, originating from the teeth embedded within her ears. The strange feeling dispelled her hoarfrost armour, scattering it to the winds with her unhindered aggression.

Her butt still clenched and her face still twisted into a grimace, Claire wiped the drool off her face, yanked the angry fox away from her ear, and pulled her hood over her head. “Never do that again.”

“It’s not even my fault! You weren’t listening,” complained the fox. “You aren’t even supposed to attack them yet! We’re supposed to be taking a break.”

“I wasn’t going to attack them.”

Claire tilted her head, innocently, but Sylvia was not having any of it. The captive fox raised a paw and pointed it towards the lyrkress’ other hand. When the longmoose looked over, with one of the extra pupils in her eyes, she found Boris, shaped like a grappling fork and ready to be thrown. Her gaze shifted back towards the accuser, then to the rest of the jury before she slowly lowered the arm and hid the lizard behind her back.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She put on the most innocent smile she could manage, appearing to them not as the hungry child who had threatened to demolish the field of food, but rather as one that did her homework and made her bed without having to be told.

“That’s not gonna work when we literally just watched you get ready to kill them!” cried the fox.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” repeated the lyrkress.

“Matters of intention aside, how shall we approach contact? I doubt they are willing to accept unruly vagrants as guests.”

“They seem civilized enough. There might be an inn or something for us to rest in,” grunted Matthais.

“I doubt it.” Natalya dismissed the hypothesis with a shake of the head. “Smaller towns like these rarely ever have them, and I doubt we have the currency to use them in the first place. There’s no telling what an isolated society like this would use for its coinage, if it uses it at all.”

“With a society of such a scale, it would shock me to discover them capable of minting metals at all,” said Arciel. “There are no smithies here. I spotted not a single chimney during my initial survey.”

“It doesn’t have to be literal coinage,” said Natalya. “They could just be using rocks, or shells, or something else as a substitute.”

“You two are going to put me to sleep.” Grumbling under her breath, Claire turned her attention in the direction of the uncomfortable gaze that had settled on her back. Following it across the vista and up a tower, she found that they had already captured the attention of the local watchmen.

The two bird-like creatures sitting atop it were whispering to one another, their words spoken in a tongue she was unable to comprehend. One of the men readied his bow and nocked an arrow, but the other raised a wing to stop him before he could fire. He pointed one of his wings in their direction repeatedly, his voice growing louder and louder until the other creature finally rolled his eyes and lowered his weapon.

The angrier of the two breathed a sigh. Still somewhat annoyed, he smacked the other villager over the head and pushed him off the tower. Had they not been birds, under the loosest of definitions, such a deed would surely have been questionable, but the trigger-happy maniac spread his wings and caught himself before he hit the floor.

He soared right up to Claire’s group, looking more annoyed than not as he moved through the town. None of the other residents bothered to greet him, merely allowing him to pass by stepping out of the way whenever necessary. And necessary it often was. He ignored everything but the buildings in his path and made a beeline straight for the intruders, causing all sorts of chaos without a care in the world.

“Halt,” he said, as he landed in front of them. “What business do you have with us?” His Marish was accented, the vowels too short and the consonants too long.

“We mean you no harm,” said Arciel. “We wish only to rest briefly before we set out again.”

The watchman took half a look at the vampire squid and scoffed. “Silence, sleeper. I was speaking to the dreamwalker and the progenitor. I have no patience to waste on the likes of livestock like you.”

“Livestock!? Do not call me livestock!” The squid’s face twisted; her eyes narrowed into a glare and her teeth turned to sharpened fangs. “Do it again, and I will pry your still-beating heart from your ribs and shove it down your throat.” Her shoulders trembled with every word, and her magic ran rampant within her frame.

She was not the only one set off by the insult. Matthias had also placed a hand on his blade and lowered his stance. The local had nocked a bolt of black made from mana as a response, but Claire stepped in before the circumstances could spiral too far out of control.

“Ignore her,” said the lyrkress. “We’ve only stopped by to rest. Blink, and we’ll be gone.”

Again, the watchman scoffed. He shifted his eyes between the fox and the lyrkress before he finally lowered his weapon. “Then we shall allow you to rest within the temple. But you may wander no closer to the center of town, else we will interpret it as an act of aggression.”

“Don’t worry. We won’t.”

“We will be watching.”

The bird turned around and returned to his tower, followed closely by two hostile gazes, two curious looks, and the hungriest stare he had ever felt.

“Why did you stand between us, Claire?” asked Arciel. “Surely you of all people understand that he has slighted my honour? Does stopping me not go against your overzealous penchant for murder?”

“That’s not the problem.” The lyrkress rolled her eyes. “When you have more than a sliver of mana.”

“I thought we were just stopping by to rest,” said Lia. “I really don’t think we should be butchering the locals, even if they happen to get on our nerves.”

“He has gone far beyond getting on my nerves! To describe me as livestock is to deserve death without exception.” She tightened her grip on her staff, bashing its tip against the floor.

“Just kill him and be done with it then.” Claire froze a patch of dirt and sat down on top of it, her tail curling in around her legs. The tree she leaned on was equally as fake, made of the icy bits that had come with the dispersal of her drool-driven armour.

“Hold on, let’s take a few steps back,” said the cat. “Nobody’s going to kill anyone, okay? We’re bounty hunters and dungeon divers, not bandits.”

“And these are monsters inside of a dungeon,” said the lyrkress. “So we’ll kill them for experience.”

“You don’t have to kill them just because they’re monsters. You didn’t kill Sylvia,” said Lia.

“Because I couldn’t. Still can’t,” said Claire. “And she’s fluffy.”

“Wait a second! I thought you said that I wasn’t fluffy!” cried the furball.

“I said you wouldn’t be happy with my answer, not that you weren’t fluffy.”

“That’s basically like saying I’m not fluffy enough!”

The catgirl frowned as she sat down atop a flattened rock. She pulled out her book, flipped through it a few times, and put it back before finally speaking again. “If they’re smart enough to talk, then they’re smart enough for us to let them go.”

“I don’t care how smart they are,” said Claire. “They give experience.”

“That doesn’t make it right for us to kill them.”

“Their words have given us nothing but right,” said Arciel.

“I don’t really care if we kill them or not,” said Matthias, “but I’d like a shot at fighting them. They’ve gotta be at least halfway decent if they have shoggoths for pets.”

The catgirl pressed a hand to her face and sighed. “Why are all of you so bloodthirsty? Adding more people to the party was supposed to make us less aggressive, not more.”

“It is not bloodthirst,” said the squid. “He has slighted my honour. Another insult, I could tolerate, but to describe me as livestock is a line too far crossed.”

“I get that, and I don’t blame you for wanting to go after him, but we shouldn’t murder the entire town just because one person pissed you off.” The cat placed a hand on the blade of her sword. “So how about this? You at least attempt to request a duel, and if he accepts, then we let it slide with just that?”

“That’s boring,” muttered the lyrkress. “We sh—”

“Please don’t give her any ideas, Claire.” Adjusting her glasses, the cat cut the moose off with a fiercely professional smile.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That whole skit would be much easier to believe if I didn’t just watch you try.” She put her hands on her hips and twisted her lips into a frown. “I still don’t get why you love killing things so much anyway. I know you want experience, and I know you’re Cadrian, but that doesn’t mean that you should be trying to murder everything you see. And it’s not like you don’t know better. Wait, are you even listening?”

Though Natalya had intended on giving an honest sermon, she soon found the lecture an effective weapon. It curbed Claire’s aggression without issue, taking her from a hundred to zero before she so much as needed to take a breath.

There was only one caveat. Claire had not calmed because she had come to understand the cat’s side of the argument, but rather because she was already on the verge of falling asleep.

___

Because Lia lectured her almost every time she snapped to attention, Claire remained half asleep until the battle began. There was a magical whoosh, a horrifying screech, and a thick, wet, glop—familiar violent sounds that signalled that it was time to clear her mind.

Arciel and the offending man were dueling in the street, their surroundings in ruins. Many of the shops and homes located within the town square had been heavily damaged if not outright destroyed. Some were on fire, others collapsed, but none were inhabitable any longer. At first, the moose assumed it to be some sort of petty revenge. She herself would surely have wreaked havoc as a way to get back at the rude local, but the next exchange proved that it was not the squid that was responsible for the damage.

The vampire evaded an arrow by diving into a shadow. What seemed like an excessive maneuver soon revealed itself a justified precaution. There was a quiet click, followed shortly after by a much louder crack. The space where the missile had touched the ground shattered, with everything around it sucked into a gravitational well.

It almost looked like force magic. There were a thousand vectors chaotically swirling about in tandem. Individually, they were weak, but together, they formed a coalition capable of tearing wood by its fibres.

Arciel attacked without stepping back into view. She called upon the collapsed buildings’ shadows and turned them to spikes. Combining to one, they surged towards the man, traveling along the ground until they suddenly pitched up and spun towards his chest. He flapped his wings and hopped to safety, but the vampire squid refused to relent. She emerged from his shadow and clubbed him in the back of the head before he could react.

For a moment, he reeled. It looked as if he was about to lose consciousness and collapse, but he planted his feet firmly on the ground and stood strong. A dozen tentacles sprouted from the back of his neck and reached for Arciel’s throat. But she failed to be strangled.

The tie that bound her ponytail snapped as her hair sprang to life. The thin black strands shot forward, piercing the horror’s neck-limbs and locking them in place. He tried to struggle at first, but the strength drained from his body as the tentacles that covered her head sucked the life force from his veins.

For the man, engaging in close quarters had been a mistake. Because while he was an abyssal horror, she was a kraken. And when it came to tentacular combat, kraken lost only to themselves.

He tried to spin around, but his other limbs were given the same treatment as his tentacles. He grit his teeth and begrudgingly spat a reluctant admission of his loss, expecting to be freed, but the Vel’khanese royal only continued to drain him. Horrified shouts and angry jeers ran through the crowd as his life was slowly, slowly stolen away.

The other watchman drew his axe with the extra limbs sprouting from his waist and stepped towards the murderous bloodsucker, but Claire intercepted him before he could butt in. Without a word, she brought Boris down on his skull and bashed his head into his chest. His broken spine was shoved straight into his heart, crushing it to bits.

It was a brutal assault, but the man refused to die. With a loud grunt, he drove his axe towards his attacker’s shoulder and slashed with all the power his tentacles could muster. It was too quick to dodge or deflect, but Claire ignored the pain and bashed him again. Each strike smashed his cracked skull further into his body, making it a permanent fixture held within his chest.

He tried to strike her again as his consciousness dimmed, but the result was unchanged. His blade was unable to pierce her skeleton. Her tail, on the other hand, saw no difficulty in ravaging his. It flew straight into his ribcage, piercing his flesh and bone alike.

“Claire!?” Natalya shouted as she ran towards them.

“It’s too late. He’s already dead.” The lyrkress turned around and walked away from the bird’s corpse right as it was swallowed by a burst of vectors, the hydra in his stomach proving that her magic was far superior to the arrows that they fired.

“Not that!” shouted the cat. “Your shoulder!”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine! Their weapons are clearly cursed!” Lia patted the wound dry with a piece of gauze from her bag. “Don’t worry, I’ll get it bandaged up. We can probably get you back to the ship before it bleeds out and have one of the priests treat it.” Her hands slowed and her words trailed off as she watched it close right before her eyes. “Huh? How? I thought…”

“I have Builledracht’s blessing. I’ll be fine.”

“Oh… thank Tzaarkus,” The cat breathed a sigh of relief. “I thought you were done for.”

“Thank some other god,” The halfbreed muttered under her breath as she peeled the cat off her face. An arrow nearly struck her as she did, the projectile missing only because a shadowy bolt knocked it out of the air.

“Stay on your guard.” Arciel stepped over the two dead locals as she brandished her staff. “There are more of them.”

While most of the women and children had retreated, nearly half the male witnesses had remained. Some were cautious, keeping their hands on their weapons, in case the foreigners attacked, while others turned openly aggressive. They moved to surround their enemies, weapons drawn, and their beaks rattling about the cowardice of those that refused to join them. Of the twenty-odd birds still present, only five wielded the glowing purple steel employed by the deceased.

One such bird was locked in combat with Matthias; both fighters had engaged as soon as they spotted each other, one shouting profanities, the other wielding his arms with a confident smile.

“This is exactly why I wanted to minimize the number of casualties,” grumbled Natalya.

“It wasn’t going to be possible,” said Claire. “They look too edible.”

“I’m not sure that’s exactly the first thing that comes to mind when I look at them,” muttered the cat.

Shrugging, Claire immediately broke the encirclement by taking on her true form and forcing the avians back with her sheer size. She rose into the air, grasped one of the birds in her maw, and snapped its bones to bits. Like the first two villagers, it demonstrated a remarkably durable constitution. It continued to struggle even as she chewed it, perishing only after a few seconds of crunching.

The flavour was slightly better than what she had expected. It was bland and boring, but not excessively sour or otherwise outright disgusting. It was decent enough that she went for another bite, swallowing the second and third just as readily as the first. They tried to struggle. One of the men was armed with a bow, but his arrows went nowhere. The pony she summoned vacuumed them up before they could cause any harm.

“You’ll never get away with this!” A boy with an owl-like shape, one of the few children that remained, shouted as he charged through the men, his wings beating furiously. He folded them at the last second, diving towards Natalya like a spear from the sun.

“This is definitely going to weigh down on my conscience…” Still complaining, the cat sidestepped the barehanded brat and struck the back of his head with the pommel of her blade. “Can we please just calm down!? We can still talk this through!”

“Liar! Murderer!” He grit his teeth and crawled away from her, so she ignored him and shifted her focus back to the others.

And that was exactly why he perished.

He sought Arciel’s first kill and grabbed one of the arrows from the dead man’s quiver, “With my life as tribute,” and without a moment’s hesitation, stabbed himself in the heart, “I summon Meltys of Arviandor, divine protector of the arviad race!” The words were spoken through gritted teeth, the arrow’s vectors forcing blood from every orifice.

It was not a true ritual. There were no magic circles, no holy deeds or worship. But its effects could not be ignored.

The young man’s heart burst into a ball of fire, a silvery flame. It grew with untold vigour, swelling to consume his body before soaring beyond the heavens. The boy was gone, his ashes consigned to the void by a pillar twenty meters across and twenty thousand tall.

But his will was not forgotten.

It alone was carried on, entrusted to the saviour that emerged from his flame.