Chapter 247: Chapter 247

Is this our third fight?

 

Our fifth?

 

Or the thousandth?

 

Sparks crash around the world, a fiery light flashing out as the radiant embers spiral wildly away from us, crashing towards the churning black-water beneath us where they fall to be extinguished, swallowed by the bleak emptiness of the dungeon.

 

The hero slides back a step as I strike from above, the stones beneath his boots cracking as the pressure of the impact crushes down against him.

 

Before I even hit the ground with my own two feet, the shockwave blasts out in all directions, knocking the others over except for the monk who manages to keep her balance and catch the other two before they fall into the water.

 

That’s fine, I guess. They wouldn’t like it in the water. Though I guess skitters doesn’t really care. I appreciate that they’re pretending to be the priestess though. The hero wouldn’t play my game anymore if he got mad because one of his party has gone to sleep for today. He wouldn’t ever forgive me for it and I can’t have that.

 

Maybe it’s our ten-thousandth fight?

 

My boots strike against the rocks as the platform bobs up and down, swaying in an unsettling motion as the water beneath us rises upwards, lifting us up on a series of crashing waves. I pull my lance back, just as he draws his sword free, both of our movements creating a new reign of sparks and a new shriek of screeching metal that wails out like the mourning cry of a banshee, before her haunting scream is silenced as we meet once again in the center.

 

Writhing tentacles flail in agitation all around us, smashing into the stones all around us, held only at bay by a lashing whip of fire that doesn’t have the time to strike at me and a crystal storm of white-magic and vertical prismatic walls. But none of that matters. The stones crack all around us, the water churning in a violent storm, as the next wave comes crashing our way, this one too tall to lift the platform, this one is intended to wash it clean. To send us all down into the water where we’re at her mercy. The great old one.

 

But that doesn’t matter. My eyes only find the hero’s and his only find mine. He has really nice eyes, you know? The orange bits really stick out from the blue of his pupils. I press forward, slashing against him just before I see him raise a leg, just before the boot plants itself firmly against my chest and sends me flying backwards.

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The world spins as I spiral wildly out of control, crashing over the rocks and flying back towards the water. A slimy hand shoots out together with my own and we both grab the ledge together just in the nick of time before I fall off and down into the brack. My arm stretches taut from the sudden stop of the momentum and I feel my shoulder blade crack in half. I can feel us being lifted, higher, higher, as the tide rises. As the unfathomable disturbances beneath us lift the entire series of platforms up, throwing them up and down on the surface of the crashing water, as if the several ton slabs of carved dungeon rock weighed nothing at all. Black-water splashes everywhere, the sound of trickling, surging wet intermingling with the screams.

 

Ah. It’s such a familiar sound. The sound of chaos. The sound of frightened voices. The sound of crashing water. The sound of fighting and destruction. All of them mixing together into this… into this tone that feels so familiar.

 

I wonder how often I’ve heard it before? Three times? Five times? A thousand? How often have I respawned here and simply don’t remember? How often have I been here and simply don’t remember?

 

We pull ourselves up together, rising back up onto the platform just before it crashes back down into the trough of the wave. The world roars with a heavy, droning noise that is too loud for me to comprehend. It screeches, it roars. The sound is so deep and loud that I feel my bones shake, I feel my eyes vibrate in my hollow sockets as I look up. As I see.

 

As I see a great shadow that towers over me, as I see the giant wave approaching in an instant, the towering wall of water reaching all the way towards the ceiling of the dungeon and hidden behind the body of the tsunami is a single, giant eye that glows with a haunting fury, as it looks out from behind the wave. As she stares at us all in a rage, because we woke her up. Because we were bad children.

 

The hero party makes a bunch of human noises and they all gather around the fake priestess, who lifts her hands which are surrounded by an ethereal glow of white-magic. White-magic walls blast out all around them in a tight ring, encasing them in a jagged sphere made out of a series of flat, prismatic planes. As the last one closes, the wall rises up into the air to make a tight seal. I look at the priestess who looks back at me and winks.

 

The wall closes shut, sealing them inside, leaving nothing out here but me and the wave. Nothing out here but me and the great monstrosity behind it. Nothing out here but me, the slime and the great old one. So actually, there are a lot of us out here still. I don’t really know what I’m talking about, I just kind of make it up as I go along, guy, you know? I was trying to sound cool, okay? Get off my back.

 

Lifting my lance as high as my arm will arc back, I smash it into the stone surface before me, pressing the tip of the blade as far into the rock as I can manage, anchoring me, anchoring us into place. Just as the great wave that is three times my size, no… five times, no, a thousand times my size, crashes down over me, over us. As it has done so many times before.

 

I like to think so at least.

 

 

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