Chapter 22: Chapter 21: The Cracking of Jokes, Wood, and Bones

 

Shivelo is a crusader, a brave and noble warrior who has dedicated his life to fighting the forces of darkness. He wears a white cloak over his metal armor, a symbol of his purity and faith. He carries a silver crossbow and a dagger, weapons blessed by the holy light. He follows the lead of his commander, a wise and venerable priest who guides them through the perilous halls of the Demon King’s castle.

 

But Shivelo is also a puppet, literally. He is a wooden marionette whose strings are controlled by an unseen hand. He has been cursed by the Demon King, along with all his comrades, to lose his humanity and become a toy in his twisted game. He does not know this, he does not see this, he does not feel this. He simply walks with stiff and jerky movements, unaware of how his joints creak and squeak with every step. He speaks with a monotone and wooden voice, unaware of how his words sound hollow and empty in the air. He looks with blank and glassy eyes, unaware of how his vision is blurred and distorted by the spell.

 

He is oblivious to everything around him, except for one thing: his mission. His mission to slay the Demon King, to end his reign of terror, and to save the world from his evil. He, as a crusader, is driven by one thing: his faith. His faith is in the holy ways, the divine plan, and the righteous cause.

 

— The stumpy legged marionette bounces as he moves.

 

Until his legs leave the ground and he, not really realizing it, is lifted up towards the ceiling above all of their heads.

 

---

 

 

Dust and wood chips rain down over them.

 

“Say, Zac, old pal!” starts Ruhr the river-sorceress excitedly, her wooden body bobbing up and down with exaggerated movements, causing her straw-like strands of long, blue hair to bounce around the air. “What do you think about the Demon-King?” asks the river-sorceress, holding her hands on her hips as she essentially dances in place, the painted on mouth on her flat face turning into a smile that is just a single black smear where her lips should be.

 

Her friend Zacarias looks back at her, the strings holding his head aloft from above shimmering in the aural light of the dungeon. His features, like hers, are all painted on the wooden sphere that acts as his head. Ruhr tilts her head, looking at him; the string holding her noggin aloft moves to the side as the invisible puppeteer above makes this accommodation.

“What?” asks the man dryly.

 

Ruhr, tapping her wooden chunk of a foot that is painted in the color of her boots, continues to bounce as she looks his way. “You know, the Demon-King!” says Ruhr, leaning in towards him.

 

“— The Demon-King!” whispers a voice from the side, from another crusader in the circle.

 

Another man, also a puppet, lifts a wooden finger, the string holding his arm aloft rising into the air. “I heard he eats babies!” says a man. People gasp all around the crowd.

 

Another woman chimes in from the side, her head swaying back and forth. “Why, I heard that he reuses the same bathwater every day!” Shocked noises come from around the room from the hundreds of puppets. “And then he pours it on cold orphans!”

 

Ruhr nods, her arms crossed, the painted expression on her face moving as she talks, as if her features were being continually redrawn every second. “Did you know, Zac?” asks the river-sorceress.

 

“What?” asks the man.

 

“- That the Demon-King eats worms three times a day?” she asks, waving her finger with the bobbing of her body.

 

“Really?” asks Zacarias, raising an eyebrow.

 

She nods, leaning in. “And then he pukes it all back into baby birds' mouths until they die!”

 

“I heard he likes to crawl under people’s beds at night!” calls a voice from the side. They all turn to look at the other man who said that.

 

“…Why?” asks his neighbor, a priestess who, for some reason, has her arms out to the side and is waving with both her hands as she bobs around.

 

The man confidently crosses his arms. “To pull away their blankets while they’re sleeping and uncover their feet!” he explains.

 

Horrified murmurs move through the crowd.

 

“That old meanie the Demon-King is a real jerk, Zac!” says Ruhr, as the man turns back to look at her.

 

“…Why are you bouncing?” asks Zacarias, raising an eyebrow.

 

Ruhr waves at him with a finger, smiling. “Because there’s a spring in my step!” she jokes.

 

Everyone laughs.

 

---

 

 

Swain stares blankly at the crusaders through the vision granted to him by his many eyes. The intruders have been turned into wooden marionettes through the magic of floor twenty-one of his castle.

 

He slowly turns his head, looking at the creator of the section, the spirit-cook, Byblos.

 

The once dark-elf cook turns her head, feeling his gaze, and stares back at him. “What?” she asks.

 

The horrific monstrosity that is the true horror, the beast of the hopeless wild-lands, the king of the damned, and the lord of all that suffer, gestures vaguely toward the distance. Byblos turns around, crossing her arms.

 

“I like puppets, okay?” she admits.

 

Swain looks back into the distance. “I just thought it’d be something about cooking, is all,” admits the Demon-King.

 

She lifts her nose, turning around again. “I love cooking. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have other interests.” The gallu stares off into the distance for a time, before looking back over her shoulder. “It’s important to collect a… variety of experiences in life,” she explains, looking at him as she remembers something that had happened. “To help broaden your… ah… capabilities,” remarks the demon, playing with the ties of her apron, which may be covered in what is either copious amounts of blood, or strawberry jam as she walks towards the throne.

 

It is impossible to say.

 

The Demon-King, not entirely unimpressed, snaps his fingers for a sheet of paper to write on as he gets an idea, which is delivered by a howling ghost that just as quickly flees in horrific terror, though he finds himself otherwise distracted from the noble, artistic pursuit.

 

---

 

 

“This is where you’ll stay,” she says, as the new gallu walks into the room, looking around himself. He’s still dazed from the transformation. She recalls the sensation herself. It takes a little while before the power of the Demon-King’s blessing is fully absorbed by the living vessel of the body. “When you are ready, come find me,” she says, closing the doors to leave him there.

 

The confused man, still covered in afterbirth, his short hair sticking to his face and obscuring his vision, looks her way. “Ready for what?” he asks.

 

She tilts her head. “That’s up to you,” replies the dancer, closing the doors and walking away to get back to her practice. Ghosts appear from the walls, orchestrating her movements, even the mundane ones.

 

The demon narrows her eyes, looking at a trumpeter who has been playing a note for every step she takes. The ghost plays a long, drawn out, falling note as her eyes lock onto its.

 

---

 

 

“Take that, you dooby-wooby!” yells the river-sorceress, holding her hands out in front of herself. Blocks of blue painted wood fly outward, thudding noisily against the head of a skeleton, bonking against it and collecting over the ground below in heaps.

 

The skeleton lifts its hands dramatically, shrieking somehow, as its bones fall apart into a jumble.

 

“Don’t waste all of your magic on trash mobs like these,” says Zacarias, looking over at her, his wooden body clattering as he moves.

 

Ruhr laughs smugly, waving him off. “Don’t worry, Zacco,” says the river-sorceress. “What’s a little magic here and there?” she asks, leaning toward him. “It’s -”

 

“I will hit you,” he warns.

 

The two of them stare at one another.

 

Ruhr opens her mouth. “…No -”

 

“- I mean it,” warns Zacarias.

 

She closes her mouth, and the two of them look at one another from up close. She lifts a hand, holding it against his chest. “Say, Zac, you hunk, when did your muscles get this hard?” she asks, her fingers running down his wooden torso.

 

“I… huh?” he asks, confused at the sudden shift of topics.

 

“- IT’S NO SKIN OFF MY BONES!” yells Ruhr as quickly as she can to get the joke out, ducking away from the confused man and laughing as she dives under his arm, which swings over her head, and instead of hitting her, clears her head and catches hold of the marionette’s strings, holding her up.

 

Ruhr, pulled back by the tug on the strings attached to her head and limbs, flies off of her feet and then lands on her bottom, sliding down onto her back over the stones.

 

“Oh, hell,” says Zacarias. “I’m sorry, Ruhr!” says the man emphatically, looking down to help her up. “I didn’t actually mean to hit you.”

 

Ruhr, laying on her back, stares up towards him. Despite lying there, her legs and shoulders pull in and out, as if she were still on her feet, bouncing up and down. “That’s okay, Zac!” says the river-sorceress, her painted on face changing through a variety of expressions on her wooden face. “I guess you -”

 

He sighs, looking down at her. “- You’re gonna ‘swept me off my feet’, aren’t you?” he asks, interrupting her.

 

“— Really swept me off my feet!” finishes Ruhr, entirely ignoring his comment and then laughing.

 

The rest of the crusade laughs too.

 

Some of them watch as one of the others in the back of the crowd is slowly lifted up into the air, the strings on his body holding him taut as the puppeteer above chooses him to be pulled into the thick darkness above their heads that light doesn’t seem to pierce, but even those that do continue laughing at the spectacle of the two of them.

 

Chips of colorful wood rain down from below a moment later.

 

---

 

 

He doesn’t trust this one bit.

 

Zacarias’ wooden eyes look around the room, scanning the arena for anything that’s wrong or out of place. But so far, they’ve only been encountering normal monsters, which is extremely strange for this place. There are always traps and tricks of some sort, but… everything just seems ‘normal’ for lack of a better word.

 

It makes him very suspicious.

 

But there is nothing wrong at all, anywhere. It’s just a dungeon.

 

“Hey, Zac,” says Ruhr from ahead of him, her wooden head turning a full one-hundred and eighty degrees around to look at him. A second later, her body turns to follow the same direction as she walks backwards. “Why don’t you lighten up a little?” she asks, looking at him. The river-sorceress gestures to him and then to everyone else. “You’re really killing the mood, you know?”

 

“The… mood?” asks Zacarias, looking at her and then at the rest of the crusade, who bounce by, some of them dancing and some of them bobbing around nonsensically. The man looks back towards the half-elf. “Ruhr. We’re in the Demon-King’s castle, remember?” he asks. “The only mood here is ‘bad’, that’s it.”

 

She places her hands on her hips, her legs stopping as her body just slides backwards instead now as she stares at him. “Oh, Zac,” smiles the half-elf.

 

He waits for more to come.

 

But nothing happens. She just stares at him and smiles, continuing to bounce around.

 

“…What?” he asks. “’Oh, Zac’ what?”

 

“That’s just like you!” remarks Ruhr, laughing.

 

“I… huh?” Zacarias looks around himself, at some of the other chuckling crusaders who continue their march. “Ruhr,” says Zacarias, looking back at her. He grabs hold of her shoulders, leaning in. “Listen,” he whispers. “Something is up,” explains the guardsman, looking around the room before looking back at the side of her carved head. “I don’t know what it is, but… we’re walking into something here, don’t you think?” he asks. “It’s been too quiet. There hasn’t been a single trap or anything yet.”

 

— Ruhr slowly starts to float up into the air as something pulls on her strings, their eyes not separating from one another. Zacarias, his hands already on her shoulders, pushes her back down to the ground, not really thinking about it. “Maybe,” replies Ruhr. “But maybe the Demon-King also just has, like… one or two floors that aren’t butt, you know?” she asks, tapping the side of her head.

 

“I highly doubt it,” replies the man, looking around himself for anything that’s wrong.

 

— Ruhr’s back leg, attached to a string, starts to lift itself up behind her in an arch as his hands rest on her shoulder. The two of them turn to look at her lifted foot, raised into the air as if they were in a kiss, and then look back at one another. “Why do you always have to do this?” asks Zacarias, sighing. “We can sometimes just have a talk without you making it weird, you know?” He shakes his head. “I get that we’re in a bad place, but… it’s a lot sometimes, you know?”

 

“I’m sorry, Zac,” apologizes Ruhr, lowering her head. Her other leg lifts up in the air too, just the same as the first one. Zacarias rolls his eyes. “— I can’t help it, I swear!” she says, looking back up at him. “Look…” says the river-sorceress, as her legs fly up into the air behind her, starting to pull her waist back up into the air with them. “I’m messed up, and this is how I cope, okay?” she says. “I’m a broken person.”

 

Zacarias shakes his head. “No… I’m sorry,” he says. “I know you’re just you,” says the man. “We’re going to die here one way or the other, so let’s die as friends. I shouldn’t be nitpicking your personality.”

 

"Gods, you’re going to make me cry, Zac,” she says, rolling her eyes. Her body has fully left the ground. She cranes her neck upwards to be able to look at him, until her body has risen up so high that he has to lift his gaze now to stare at her. “As if I don’t have enough issues, now you’re going to make me clingy about you too.”

 

“As if you aren’t already,” replies the man, holding his arms up onto her shoulders still, stretching his fingers as she slides towards the ceiling. “Was it your dad?” he asks.

 

“Isn’t it always?” replies the half-elf.

 

Zacarias shakes his head. “No,” he says.

 

Ruhr’s eyes open wide. “Oh! Oh!” she says excitedly. “Are you going to tell me something about you for once?” she asks. His fingers slide off of her as she is pulled into the air, moving towards the darkness above them. “Backstory!” calls Ruhr out into the crusade, holding her hand by her mouth. The crusaders all look her way as she hovers in the air, the strings frozen. She points down at him. “Zac’s gonna tell us his backstory!”

 

“…What? What the hell?” asks Zacarias. “Ruhr!” he snaps. “I was going to tell you!” hisses the man.

 

“Zacarias? As in Guardsman Zacarias?” asks a voice from the side, one of the crusaders. “I heard he’s secretly a villain!” whispers a man.

 

A priestess, bouncing next to him, covers her wooden face with her wooden hands, bobbing up and down. “Why, I heard that he’s a lost lover of the king’s dead daughter!” she says, excited murmurs traveling through the crusade, as many priestesses, interested by this, start to scoot his way. Ruhr drops down a few feet, batting them all the way from above, yanking on their strings.

 

“I heard that he’s actually…” says a voice, everyone falling quiet as they look at the man, whose body doesn’t move, but instead, his head bounces in places. “Just kind of a normal guy.”

 

Aghast expressions and voices carry through the crowd, which begins to turn his way.

 

The ground beneath them begins to shift and change; wooden boards slide in from all around the room, pushing themselves beneath the feet of the thousands of people who pay them no mind as a construct begins to emerge. Walls build themselves up, windows begin to form, and rooms begin to take shape as many people are lifted into the air — the chips that rain down moments later are pressed into the material that makes up the new scene.

 

Of course.

 

Zacarias groans, as he is lifted up and placed in the center of a room, but on his way down, he grabs Ruhr, yanking against the taut strings that were taking her to the darkness.

 

“Am I in this too?” she asks. “I think this is your scene, Zac,” she says.

 

“I didn’t agree to do this,” remarks Zacarias, as flakes of a dead priestess rain down on him from above. “So you’re going to be stuck here with me. It’s your fault.”

 

She lifts her hands, grabbing one of his with both of hers as she shakes her head. “I don’t know what came over me,” she says. “I swear!” promises the half-elf. “I’d never tell anyone your secrets.” She rubs her face in frustration with her wooden hands. “It must be that fanny-fuddle demon magic,” she explains. “The one that doesn’t let me swear either.”

 

“You’re just traumatized,” replies Zacarias. “It’s not demon-magic.”

 

“Zac!” she argues, elbowing him. “I don’t want to be double-traumatized!” she snaps. “My childhood was already bad,” explains the river-sorceress. “So what kind of person would I be if my adulthood was traumatic too?”

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“A non-functional one,” he replies.

 

— Ruhr slides across the floor as something pulls on her strings again. She looks at him and then down at her hands, not aware of her sliding away. “…Oh…” says the river-sorceress, as her back thuds against a wall that has formed, the strings pulling through an open window behind her that she is lifted toward. Zacarias absentmindedly walks over, closing it and clamping her strings down against the frame.

 

Ruhr hangs there, pressed against the wall. “Hey, Zac,” she says, lifting an eyebrow mischievously.

 

“— Yeah, yeah, I know, I know,” he says. “You’re ‘hanging out’, right?”

 

She stares at him as he walks by, inspecting the building that has formed, before looking back over his shoulder at her.

 

“- I’m hanging out!” she says, laughing.

 

“I just said that!” barks Zacarias, pointing at her.

 

— Something opens the window from the outside, and Ruhr is pulled toward it. The guardsman grabs her arm and pulls her into the house, whatever force is outside of its four walls letting go. “So where are we?” asks Ruhr as he sets her down.

 

“Stop playing around, Ruhr. Please,” asks Zacarias, looking around. “This isn’t the time.”

 

“Sorry,” she says. “I really… I dunno, I feel funny, Zac,” says Ruhr. “Something isn’t right,” remarks the river sorceress. She looks down at her hands, which are painted wood orbs in essence, with some crude, stacked cylindrical tubes attached for digits. “I feel… I dunno.” She rolls her shoulders, looking up at him. “Stiff?”

 

“We’ve been sleeping on the floor of the Demon-King’s castle for days now,” replies Zacarias, looking at her and then into the next room. “I’d be more surprised if you weren’t stiff.”

 

He feels an elbow in his side.

 

“Do not,” warns Zacarias.

 

“I mean, considering that we’re bunk buddies ” starts Ruhr.

 

“- Ruhr.”

 

“- I’m more surprised that -” A wooden finger shushes her. Zacarias shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Zac!” apologizes Ruhr a third time, pulling his hand away and then rubbing her face. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel like someone made a caricature of me and put me in it and it’s making me… I dunno, double down on who I am for the sake of some sick joke.”

 

“Breathe,” says Zacarias, looking up at the open ceiling of the lidless house they’re in where their strings go through, as they should, as is perfectly normal and not really to be questioned. Why would it be? It’s as mundane as air. “I need you on board here, Ruhr,” he says. “You’re stronger than I am.” He looks at her. “You’re probably having some kind of panic attack,” explains the man, making an effort to over-exaggerate his slow breathing, so that she catches on. “Let’s take a second, okay? Tone it down a little.”

 

Given that his entire body is made out of inflexible wood, there aren’t really any movements to see or mimic other than the expression of blowing lips painted onto his wooden face.

 

She mimics him though and then nods after a moment of recomposure. “Okay,” affirms Ruhr, nodding. “Thanks, Zac. I think I’m good now.” She looks around herself. “So, where are we?” asks Ruhr, picking up a small ornamental vase from a table next to them.

 

“My place,” replies Zacarias.

 

Ruhr looks at him, starting to say something, but then catches herself and clears her throat, quietly setting the vase down.

 

“Nice vase,” she says, changing the topic to something more normal.

 

He waves over his shoulder. “Actually, that’s an urn,” he says. “Dead people.”

 

Ruhr winces. “Flutes.” She looks around the house, likely trying to examine the area to avoid stepping into any more awkward moments. “Your parents?” she asks.

 

“No,” he replies, walking toward a door and grabbing hold of it. “They’re in here,” explains the man. “It’s probably going to be a whole thing.” He nods to the room. “You know how the Demon-King is.”

 

"Yeah, and also, aw, that’s so sweet, Z.B.,” she says. “You looked after your folks when they got old?” He nods. “So who’s in the vase? Grandparents?”

 

“Wife,” replies Zacarias, getting ready to open the door, looking at the half-elf from the side of his eyes, her strings shifting. “She took her own life because of their bullying,” explains the man.

 

A long exhalation of the letter ‘F’ leaves her mouth but never forms a word. Ruhr holds her arms out to her sides. “Just gonna drop that on me, huh? Just like that? No build up?”

 

“You asked. Besides, knowing the Demon-King,” says Zacarias, turning the handle slowly. “This is going to be some sort of monstrosity made out of meat and terror in some sick metaphor used to contort my inner failings against us, kind of like back on floor ten with your dad.”

 

Ruhr nods. “The Demon-King is like that, so you’re probably right,” she relents. “But sh… shoebox, Zac. Sheesh.” She folds her arms over her chest and looks away. “I thought there was going to be like… this whole thing, you know?” she asks, gesturing to the stage set around them. “That we’ll work through your dark and mysterious past in a sequence of events where we learn more and more about you through a series of horrific experiences together, until ultimately coming out stronger in the end together after we’ve beaten some dire, evil monstrosity.”

 

“Exactly,” replies Zacarias, tapping his head knowingly. “That’s why I told you the big secret now, right away, so the Demon-King doesn’t have anything left to play with.” He looks at her. “My parents weren’t good people, Ruhr, but I still felt obligated to take care of them.” He shakes his head. “I pulled someone else into my obligation and then neglected her for its sake,” explains Zacarias, opening the door.

 

“And your folks?” asks Ruhr, looking back his way. “Demon-King?”

 

The door swings open, revealing the pulsating, gyrating meat that hangs from the ceiling — a cancerous growth with dozens of long, pale, lanky arms that reach and touch all around the room, feeling for things to grab hold of with their slender, sharp, witchy fingers covered in clawed nails.

 

The paint all around the room is scraped off. The wood is dug out for as far as the hands could reach, burrowing into the room and consuming it, many others reaching up and catching the shredded flakes of those others outside of the house who are torn into the darkness of the ceiling.

 

“No,” replies Zacarias, as the mass inside the room shifts. Dozens of arms move through the squelching flesh, coming together at the front to contort themselves onto the growth, forming the image of a hungry face. “People like them never seem to die,” explains the man as the arms break formation and begin to reach for him. He looks at the drooling monstrosity, covered in wiry hairs and a strange gel that oozes down its exterior. “Probably because people like me keep them alive.” He shakes his head. “We water the weeds and not the flowers.”

 

He lifts his shield off of the ground, which is one and the same as many of the arms bear on the joints.

 

“Dang, that’s poetic,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder.

 

“I’ll handle it,” he says, walking towards the clawing, hungry tumor. “This is on me.”

 

A hand pulls him back. “No,” replies Ruhr, shaking her head as she looks at him. “We’re friends, Zac,” explains the river-sorceress. “Friends don’t let friends suffer the consequences of their own actions alone,” she says, wiping a ‘strand’ of blue hair out of her face, which is actually just a series of blue painted wooden beads. “We’re going to kill your parents together.”

 

“Are you sure?” he asks. “I get that this might be weird for you.”

 

Ruhr shrugs. “No. We’re good,” she says, knocking against his chest. “I’ve always wanted to kill a parental figure, so if anything, I owe you for letting me get in on this,” explains the half-elf. There is a loud scratching of nails as blackened, fouled hands dig into the wood at their feet, just barely unable to reach them. The digits of hundreds of soggy palms try to grab them, only a breath away, as scraps of the dead and the constantly dying rain down slowly over them as members of the crusade are slowly, one after the other, pulled into the darkness above.

 

“So do I kill your mom or your dad?” she asks, looking at the mess beyond them that is hardly separable into such clean cut categories.

 

“Don’t make it weird,” remarks Zacarias, turning to face the thing that can’t reach them.

 

“Okay, well, then I’m gonna kill your dad,” replies Ruhr. “You seem like a mommy-issues-boy.”

 

“Whatever, daddy-issues-girl,” replies Zacarias. The two of them nod and charge in, pressing the hands back together with the wooden tower-shield and the force of wooden water.

 

---

 

 

“My lord, we are about to reach a new fork in the road,” says Abydos the painter, holding out his hands to the side. “One road moves through a collection of villages that have established some… unusual fortifications,” explains the demon. “It would seem they’ve managed to use some unconventional methods to capture a wild demon for their benefit.”

 

“A demon?” asks Swain, looking at him and at the half-written poem in his lap now that Byblos has left it and returned to her work elsewhere.

 

“A wandering creature of the depths that existed before yourself, my lord,” explains the painter. He lifts his other hand. “The other road is usually an empty route, but it appears that a large contingent of armored riders is moving to the north there; we would overtake them on the road, though it is unlikely they’ll stop and we’ll need to give pursuit.” He lowers his hands. “They’re likely trying to reach the north to reinforce the capital.”

 

The Demon-King lowers his head in thought. He’ll have to make a choice on the matter.

 

“Any news of the witches, whom we’ve ignored in the past?” asks the beast, considering the last time such a choice had to be made.

 

“No, my lord,” replies Abydos. “They seem content to exist in mutual disinterest.”

 

Swain nods, thinking about it.

 

It is unlikely that the human forces, if allowed to fester in their interior, will not come back to haunt them later down the road should they be ignored. However, much the same, allowing such a powerful group of additional soldiers to reach the human capital will significantly aid its defenses for the final push.

 

He must consider it carefully.

 

---

 

 

Wood clatters, chipping away in all directions, the beads on her head rattling in the violent winds as magic presses out of her stumpy, wooden hands, totally consuming the entity as she screams, letting out a few things. The monster, pelted with sharp, jagged wood, flails and screams, blood and sinew flying all over the place as it is bludgeoned and ripped apart — the sack that it is being filled with misgrowths, such as eyes and teeth — spilling its contents onto the floor, connected by strands of sinew and odd veins that connect to useless pieces of a body, to feed those parasites with blood.

 

A hand reaches out, grabbing hold of all of the strings attached to the top of her body at once, causing Ruhr to tightly compress together into a backwards bent ball, her joints moving in directions that they really shouldn’t, but she doesn’t notice that.

 

An instant later, she lurches, her body hanging free again and falling to the ground as a heavy tower shield cracks into the arm, breaking it at the elbow and causing it to let go, flopping uselessly on the stones. Ruhr jumps to her feet, running to the side just in time as another fist smashes down where she landed, cracking the ground behind her with a wave of hammering strikes, smashing down like the hammers of a piano as she runs along the edge of the room, holding her hands out towards the creature again. Ruhr sees Zacarias out of the corner of her eyes, both of his hands locked against a pair that grips him from the front, pushing back against him as another fist now raises itself over his head.

 

She holds her hands up.

 

(Ruhr) has used: [Aquatic Dragon]

 

— It rushes down towards him in the same instant as a great serpent made out of azure rips through a dozen arms that fall to the ground, their severed nerve endings wiggling like worms as they come into contact with the air, the beast catching the fist before it hits him and smashing it against the wall.

 

Ruhr grabs a shield, spinning around once and chucking the heavy thing through the air towards him — definitely not with enough force to damage any of the limbs like he had. “Zac!” calls Ruhr.

 

The man looks to the side and pulls his hands out, catching the shield and then spinning, cutting through the lower wrists of the two appendages with the bottom of the shield, sending sprays of black blood everywhere through the air, coating the strings above his head with a greasy fluid that drips down towards him, running along their wiry lengths.

 

The two of them lean against each other, looking at the flailing, oozing monstrosity that hammers the room with its remaining fists more violently than ever, thrashing like a beast in rage.

 

Ruhr moves behind Zacarias, holding her arms around him and planting her palms on the back of the shield. “Hold it,” she instructs. “As long as you can.” The man plants his legs steadily down, planting the shield in the ground and hold onto it as water begins to spray out of her hands, chunks of wood splintering and crashing down around their feet as she applies more pressure, intensifying the spell and then even more still, the metal rattling, splinters flying through the air in all directions like shrapnel.

 

“RUHR!” he barks, as the hands move towards them, lumbering, greedy fingers that always yearn to take more. In the grave, before the grave — it doesn’t matter — More. More. Black hands crawl around the shield, reaching for them.

 

More.

 

“NOW!”

 

Zacarias pulls his arm free of the shield’s breaking straps, the sheet of metal shooting straight through the air, filling the room with a loud, sickly cracking noise.

 

The two of them stand there, looking at the growth in the center of the room, which has a hole going clean through it. The tower shield is bent and embedded deeply in the opposite wall.

 

The arms stop and begin to fall down to the ground, one after the other, as the monster dies, shuddering in a spasming death that sends viscera and goo everywhere in the throes of a beast that can never scream.

 

One arm falls down before him where the shield had been, a gently curled index finger running over his cheek with its backside, as if to offer any solace — if mocking or not, she can’t tell.

 

The two of them stand there in silence before looking at one another.

 

Ruhr purses her lips in a smile of sorts and nods to him once.

 

Zacarias nods back.

 

There’s not really anything else to say that hasn’t been said.

 

Especially now that the spell has been broken.

 

---

 

Ruhr opens her eyes in her real body, staring down at the room she was just in together with Zacarias from above — as if she were hanging from the ceiling. Wooden puppets lay down there limply in the arena, one with blue hair.

 

The half-elf’s eyes wander to her own arms, which are adorned with strings and wires that lead down to the marionette below; she follows them, looking at the blue doll, and twitches a finger. The doll twitches a finger.

 

“The hell…” mutters Ruhr, blinking to focus her blurred vision, before turning her head back around herself and looking up at where she expects the ceiling to be, given that she assumes her back is pressed tightly against it.

 

— Yet there is no ceiling. There never is, is there?

 

The whole thing is it. It is much like the thing below, but spread flat all across the entire floor, like a meat paste smeared onto brickwork.

 

Long, cankerous hands hold her aloft — the very same as the ones they had just fought below. Many of them hold people, like herself, who are only now starting to wake. Many others hold nothing and simply hang there, limply, having already consumed their prizes - the puppet and the thing that was holding them.

 

An eye looks down at her from above, having been waiting for a long time to pull her into the toothless hole that is waiting for her not far away now.

 

 

Water explodes out from her, bursting into all directions, tearing the hands off of herself and those around her as they fall down in free-fall with the wave, mostly roughly crashing into the ground below and looking up at the ceiling that has now become visible, now that the act is over.

 

— Hundreds of impossibly long, gangrene arms dangle down towards them like vines in a jungle, the puppeteer from above having finished the act but not the show. Ruhr blasts the ceiling, shooting down hundreds of people. They must have gotten caught in a trap when they entered the floor.

 

What a disgusting thing.

 

The river-sorceress continues the stream of her magic, pressing waves of water against the ceiling that immediately rains back down over them and the floor as a whole in her attempt to drown the thing above and to free as many others as she can.

 

“Zac!” yells Ruhr over the roar of the magic, as the crusaders come to wakefulness and join in on the counter-assault, blasts of radiant magic of all kinds flying up into the holy-water that drizzles down around them, intermingled with blackened blood. Her eyes frantically scan the arena, not seeing him. She turns her head around, looking at the puppets.

 

The strings.

 

“No. No. No. No -” mutters the woman, not seeing the doll anywhere and then looking back up towards the ceiling. “ZAC!”

 

A long, gangly arm whips through the water. She turns her head just in time for its clawed, rotting fist to smash right against her face. Ruhr flies back, a loud, sickly crack ringing through the room as her head roughly strikes the wall of the fake house, her vision going dark immediately before she has the chance to limply fall over.

 

Next to her, an urn falls from a table and shatters.

 

 

---

 

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