Chapter 82: Chapter 82: Grand Guignol

***AUTHOR NOTE****

Hey guys! 

We've finally caught up with the RR chapters, so the posting schedule will be M,W,F from here on out. 

I have another fic coming out in November and my week is split between both "Monster Menu" and this new deckbuilding fic I've been writing a backlog for. 

But don't worry, there's more "Monster Menu" to come. Nay's still only at Iron Rank so there's plenty of more progression in her future. 

Thanks for reading and keeping up with the story. It's a blast to write and I love sharing it with people!

There's also a Discord: https://discord.gg/JdGNGb3AET

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Before even seeing the harpy, Nay saw the red dot on her mini-map first. And it was moving quickly.

“We have incoming,” Nay said, whispering into the party line.

---

[Marrow Detected]

---

Then Nay smelled the harpy. Even though the wind was travelling in the opposite direction. The stench was powerful enough to cut through the wind and assault her nostrils. She covered her mouth with the back of her hand that clenched Thorn, trying not to gag.

Celyne emerged out of the bowels of the cave. Nay thought she looked like a pile of folded and sagging flesh being carried by a pair of blue leathery wings. She could tell it was a humanoid body but with monstrous wings. And instead of feet and hands, there were claws and talons. Scales and feathers blended with stretched skin so swollen it must be close to bursting.

Some female demon of gluttony that only moved with its wings, its arms and legs atrophied from laziness. The appendages dangled off the floating pile of pale flesh like the bones had turned to rubber.

Nay also saw vapors emanating off the harpy. Did she smell so bad she was giving off actual stink lines?

Celyne saw the dead goat and the beady black eyes pushed back into the folds of her fleshy face lit up with hunger. Her wings continued to flap as she hovered there, an absolute parody of a hummingbird feeding on nectar. She didn’t even land to stand or crouch. Her body tilted until she was hanging upside down so her face was close enough to kiss the goat.

She didn’t use her hands. Nay wondered if they even worked. The harpy had really let itself go. Nay thought she saw dried shit caked in the folds of its backside.

This should be an easy kill.

Nay tensed, resisting the urge to attack from behind and activate Shred.

“Wait until she eats and the poison takes hold,” Ilyawraith whispered over the party line, reminding everyone to be patient.

The harpy’s human mouth opened. The chin sat on a non-existent neck. But the lips parted, revealing the set of jagged and knifelike teeth. Its tongue emerged, licking one of the wounds Nay had scoured into the goat’s flesh. Celyne shuddered at the taste, her body wobbling like gelatin.

Then she bit into the goat and tore away a chunk of flesh, letting out a feral and guttural purr of pleasure. The noise sounded like a bird and a cat had died together in a fight, and their last dying emissions had blended together and found its way into the harpy’s throat.

Nay had to look away from the feeding. That’s when she noticed another red dot had appeared on her mini-map. It was moving towards them.

She turned her head away and dared to whisper, “There’s something else coming.”

As Celyne continued to feed, Nay felt a large presence enter the chamber. The footsteps were heavy and had a metallic quality to them. She could hear the ice crunch underneath its weight.

Whatever it was, it was still in the shadows, something big and wide occupying the space. Nay thought she could make out an outline of the shape in the shadows. It was humanoid but much bigger than any man she’d ever seen. She saw a glimpse of a hood and a tattered cloak.

---

[Quest Detected]

[Defeat the Maugrim Reaver]

[Loot Reward]

[Accept Quest Y/N?]

---

“It’s here,” Nay whispered. “What is a Maugrim Reaver?”

Before anyone answered, the large presence stepped out of the darkness. A heavy iron boot spidercracked the layer of ice as it stepped forth. It walked over to the harpy, towering over her like a sentinel.

A ragged and leathery hood and cloak covered its head and most of its wide body. But Nay saw the iron feet. The portion of tree-trunk sized legs looked like a combination of stone and metal. It was so tall it had to crouch to fit in the cave.

“This is delicious, Tiny,” Celyne said. Her voice was raspy and half full of raw goat. “It must have gotten injured by another animal and died here. What good fortune for us!”

She burped and strings of raw and bloody meat flew out of her mouth. Nay gagged.

How long for The Tentacle’s Kiss to take effect? And what were they going to do about this Maugrim Reaver?

“You didn’t have to escort me,” Celyne said. “You should be with the girls down below. I sense no danger here.”

A metallic growl resounded from the figure. The exclamation both mournful and concerned.

“I appreciate your concern, Tiny,” Celyne said, “but fate has chosen to supply me with a plump offering.”

She continued feeding. It went on like that, everyone forced to listen to the tearing and chewing and swallowing sounds.

But then there was a loud gurgling noise. It came from the harpy’s belly. “Oof, a bit of indigestion, Tiny. Remind me to remind you to make up some more of that earthwort tea. That will settle my stomach.”

Nom’s voice whispered gleefully over the party line. “Should I offer her a digestive biscuit?”

He snickered. He just couldn’t resist himself.

Then there was another loud gurgle, followed by another. Celyne spit out her food mid-chew and moaned loudly. Then the terrible stench grew even more oppressive as the harpy shat herself.

“Oh!” Celyne said, surprised. “There’s a bit of relief to that, you know. It’ll make more room to eat.”

The horrible flatulence continued. Nay was doing her best to remain in place and not flee from the cave.

“I do believe that harpy is shitting herself,” Nom said over the party line.

“Quiet!” Ilyawraith said, hissing.

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The moans of relief turned to cries of worry. She wasn’t stopping. She began screaming. Blood sprayed out of her backside and what looked like blue and white intestine unraveled out of her.

She’s shitting out her guts!

“Nom, what the fuck…” Nay whispered.

“The Tentacle’s Kiss is just a touch of Grand Guignol,” Nom said.

The wet plopping sounds and shrieking reached a crescendo and Celyne fell on top of the goat, her mid-section partially deflated. She had shit out all her organs.

The reaver kneeled and picked up the body of Celyne, cradling her in its sturdy arms. Was it the harpy’s protector? A bodyguard?

Whatever its role, they would need to defeat this thing to get Celyne’s Marrow. Nay accepted the quest to slay it.

And if there was any time to attack, it was now.

Still in stealth, Nay crept behind the large humanoid. She closed her eyes for a moment, steadying herself. Then she activated Shred.

She popped out of stealth and her arms moved as fast as the blades of a Cuisinart. Thorn and ice scythe rapidly struck the back and side of the crouching behemoth, resulting in an explosion of sparks. Clang! Clang! Clang! Pain vibrated up her arms as her weapons chipped stone and metal. Clang! Clang! Clang! Not really doing much of anything but putting a few scratches on the material.

She rolled backwards and looked at her forearms. They were shaking from the impact. She winced in pain. Her muscles were on fire.

An arrow flew from the entrance, shattering against Tiny’s head. The arrowhead turned to shrapnel and the wooden shaft splintered.

Nom’s Disintegration Ray flashed, setting the cloak draped around the creature on fire.

Gertrude, the battle axe, flanked by two vigor spirit axes, flew into the creature, and there was the sound of steel cutting steel. Quincy appeared next, ripping the axe out of the thing’s chest. He swung again and sparks and stone flew, yet the sentinel did not budge.

A circle in the center of the reaver’s wide chest began to glow a molten red. Nay could feel her hair standing on end, as if static electricity was gathering, charging up. Except this seemed way more powerful.

Quincy was still standing right in front of it.

There was a blast and a ball of lava shot out of its chest, hitting Quincy at close range. He wasn’t immolated, but the attack blasted him out of the cavern. His body and the molten projectile took out the wall of icicles and he disappeared out of sight.

Lain ran out of the cave after him. Nay didn’t know how bad the damage would be but he would most certainly need healing from an attack like that.

The tattered cloak concealing the body of the reaver was burning away and they could see the thing for what it was. It wasn’t a maugrim. It was something designed by the maugrim, hewn from the rock of the mountain and forged with iron and steel. Nay could see cog-like gears at its joints and it appeared to be some kind of rock and metal golem powered by a red vigor core that burned behind the metal of its chest.

An automaton of fire, rock and metal. Its eyes burned with the red vigor fire and it scanned all of them as if it were taking note of everyone’s positioning and possible moves. Nay could sense a calculating and rigid intelligence to the construct.

The ice coating the walls and floors were melting around them.

Ilyawraith appeared then, wielding her bo stafff. She used it like a pole vault and flew into the thing, her feet pounding its chest. Her Silver-ranked blow pushed it back.

Then the thing bull-rushed her.

The reaver and Ilyawraith disappeared out of the cave and off the side of the mountain.

Nay, Tuk-Tuk and Nom looked outside, somewhat in shock.

“The Marrow,” Nom said. He moved towards Celyne’s body and suddenly the ice floor collapsed underneath them and they plummeted into the abyss.

#

Ilyawraith kept the reaver at bay with her bo staff, Hoarfrost. Formed from coral off the coast of Yseros and forged by Dross, the legendary weaponsmith of the Yseros archipelago, infused with vigor and the breath of the North, it had kept Ilyawraith alive even when she stood against the Seven Slaughters. It was a staff also known as the Slayer of a Slaughter. The story was that it had been vaulted as a trophy by the DMA, if one believed that Ilyawraith fell to the Slaughters. But she didn’t, and now it was here in her hands as she fought the reaver.

The reaver and the Silver-ranked Marrow Eater fought in mid-air as they fell.

Her strikes were infused with vigor. The taps and swings denting the metal and chipping the stone of the automaton. She had beat its fists back and struck it on the side of the head, putting a concave in it. She had kept her combat skills sharp by practicing each day for all the years she had been alone, in the case she ever had to face down a Slaughter who might come looking for her to finish the job.

C’mon, old woman. End this now. It’s just a maugrim toy.

They landed on a shelf of rock and ice, a big sheet of snow falling off the cairn beneath them.

Ice levitated into the air, reassembling into spears. They flew at the reaver. But they just shattered against the armor and rock carapace.

Ilyawraith’s Ice Needle attack had no discernible effect on the reaver. It was a construct and she knew that meant it was invulnerable to her direct elemental attacks.

Yet even metal could be forced to kneel under a powerful wind.

She inhaled the air around with her nostrils and mouth, sucking in the atmosphere.

Ilyawraith released a sonic scream that blew the reaver into the side of the mountain, creating a crater.

#

Nay shook off her disorientation and climbed out of the debris. Nom and Tuk-Tuk recovered from the descent as well, extricating themselves from the rock and ice.

“Ow,” Nom said. “My head.”

Nom could tell they had landed in the center of a circular ice cave. There was no light so she pulled a torch out of her inventory and lit it with her Chef’s Thermometer ability. The contents of the room came into focus as torchlight filled the cave.

There were objects that looked like big wicker baskets placed against the walls in an intermittent fashion. The spacing reminded her of the major times on the face of a clock. Upon closer inspection, they appeared to be baskets made out of dried pine, fir and spruce needles. There was also elk and goat hair woven in. And that’s when she realized they weren’t baskets, but nests. The remnants of cracked egg shells littered the inside.

“We landed in a harpy nursery,” Nom said.

Six adolescent harpies entered the torchlight, surrounding them. They were gangly and young. Their leathery wings opened up, revealing the nude female figures within. They laughed, their black eyes soaking in the torchlight.

“Looks like Tiny brought us play things,” one of them said. The others giggled, baring their teeth. Another looked at Tuk-Tuk. “And one of them looks like quite the plaything.”

Tuk-Tuk shifted into polar bear form and roared.

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