[388] 5.12 Katabasis IV

Even though we still have goddesses-only-know how much further to go through this constructed underworld, my heart feels a lot lighter than it did just an hour or two ago.  I hadn’t realized how much my heart had tried to heal over scars that were never properly addressed, even in the therapy sessions that I’ve continued to attend every couple of months over the last three years.  Now that I’ve gone through that ordeal, I feel like the scar tissue deep underneath has finally been addressed and I can truly let that part of my life live in the past.

My eyes look up at the void that surrounds this now-abyssal waste, toward the heavens where I know my mom, Lily Mortensen, is resting in peace and maybe from time to time looking down on me with a smile.  And you know what, Mom?  I’m probably going to keep screwing up.  Mom— Alicia, my other Mom— will help when she can, and I have my wonderful soon-to-be-wife by my side to help me when times are tough.  But I’ll keep trying and I’ll keep walking forward.  And I’ll strive to be a daughter that you can be proud of.

There’s an argument out in the distance.  One of the people involved is the short man from before.  The other is an irate-sounding woman.  They aren’t speaking any language that I understand.  Frankly, I’m not convinced they’re speaking the same language.  I know the one guy from before is speaking French and while I can’t make out any words the shrill woman says, it’s not any language I recognize.  It sounds vaguely Slavic, possibly Russian or similar.

Chloe turns to me and the two of us nod in unison, hurrying our pace through the darkness until we arrive at the main event.  Four people in total standing at the shores of a small lake that ripples with a phosphorescent green hue.  From their posture and the intensity of their verbal jousts, I expect that negotiations are rapidly deteriorating.  Sadly, the shouting woman notices us before we can put up any sort of illusion or mount another defense.

“You!” she says in broken English.  Her eyes lock on me.  “You… I know.  You… Seraphina!”

Her partner has an iridescent sideshave and a face that’s smooth with a jawline that evokes neither masculinity nor femininity.  The rest of their figure provides me no other indication of their gender, and I assume it is by design.  A moment later, a pair of roots emerge out of their hand before disappearing just as quickly.  In the place of those roots— how their [Inventory] manifests, apparently— are a pair of earpieces, identical to the ones that they and their partner are wearing.

They toss one to each of us, then motion for us to put them on.  Chloe and I share a glance, both aware that this is possibly a trap.  I put mine on first, confident in my ability to extricate myself from any situation this device might try to cause.  Instead, I’m pleasantly relieved when the speaker embedded in the device starts playing in my ear and I discover it’s some sort of a translator device.  The only Ethertech within is the electrical source; everything else is just digital electronics.

It doesn’t take much time for Chloe and I to get it set up to translate the other groups’ words into English.  Once we’re both situated, the shrill woman from before starts speaking in her native language, which is translated in our ears after a couple of seconds of delay.

“I was correct, was I not?  You are Seraphina?  That Seraphina?  The famous one from those video lectures back in America?”

“I am,” I say.  “Do you have something we can call you?”

“You may call me Svana.  My partner’s name is Svylune.”

Svylune gives a tepid wave but says nothing.  The two of us reciprocate the gesture.

“And I am Chloe,” Chloe says.  “Though, if you already know Sera, then maybe you already know who I am.”

“Only vaguely, I’m afraid.  I’ve watched most of Seraphina’s lectures available online, and she has mentioned you more than a couple of times.  I do not know more of you than that.”

“Have you completely forgotten about us?” the diminutive man from before says.  “Or can you please save your little… girl talk for once we are out of this place!”

“Can you explain the situation?” Chloe asks.  “We’ve been busy in this dungeon for the last few hours and haven’t had much of an opportunity to figure out what’s going on down here.”

“For the love of Christ!” the man says.  “We don’t need to hear about your sexual proclivities!”

I turn back to Svana, considering that she’s the only one treating Chloe and me with a modicum of decency.  Well, her and her partner, though I can’t get much of a read on Svylune either way.

“What is the issue that we’re dealing with here?”

“The issue,” the man says, “Is that these two are far too cautious.  We need to cross this lake in order to advance to the deepest part of the dungeon and finally get the hell out of here, but they refuse, citing frivolities of danger.”

“If you two are so confident that that’s the way onward, then no one is stopping you!”

“Au contraire!  The second we try to cross into that death trap, I expect nothing less than for both of you to start attacking until there is nothing left of us!  That is why I say we should go together and split the danger between our groups.”

I beckon Chloe and walk around past where Svylune has been watching.  They continue not to talk to either of us, and I’m starting to suspect it’s a case of ‘can’t’ over ‘chooses not to’.  They do, however, watch us with keen interest as I dip my toes.

As soon as I’m covered up to my ankles in the strange green water, I understand the extent of the problem.

[You are affected by the [River of the Damned].  All stats temporarily decrease by 3%.  (This condition will persist for as long as you are submerged in the river, plus an additional five minutes (Remaining: 00:05:00).]

I flare out [Defiant Spirit] to counter this effect, hoping that perhaps this is considered a power-suppressing effect.  It doesn’t work the first time, but I keep pushing out the threads of power into my feet, hoping as I fight against the dungeon and the System that maybe I can power through, or maybe even get a Skill upgrade for my trouble.  Half a minute of trying yields no fruit, and I have no further opportunity to experiment before Svara and the Frenchman who still hasn’t introduced himself both start screaming at me.

“We need to get a move on, already” he says.  “We’ve been waiting here quite long enough!”

“Surely there must be another way,” Svana retorts.  “Or–”  She turns to me.  “Seraphina, can you fly over this?”

“I had no success trying to fly the earlier river, but I will try again.”  I am, however, a bit flummoxed by the request.  Do none of these four people have a flight Skill by now?  Surely at least one of them has already tried, unless they have some other means to propel themselves here.  Very curious indeed.

Sure enough, and to my astonishment, it actually works.  And there is something very faint, out in the distance, on the other side of the river.  I demand a few minutes to restore my combat stats to the maximum, and then we follow a very simple protocol.  Chloe takes Pierre— the shorter Frenchman, who finally gives us a name— while I take Svana.  Then the two of us come back and take Svylune and the other man, Jacques, over shortly thereafter.

The six of us agree to an informal truce, at least until we get to the end of the dungeon.  Both of the other two groups communicate through a series of gestures and whispers that these new translators refuse to interpret.  Chloe and I, meanwhile, remain silent, not needing either of those means as we communicate silently about strategy.

“Svylune apparently has some sort of magic related to plants and nature.  I’m guessing they may also have some sort of healing affinity.”

“Their life force is surprisingly high, even compared to Svana.  I would say that, should we be in a fight, Svylune is far more of a threat than Svana.”

“And the two Frenchmen?”

“Jacques has an astronomical level of life force.  But… I don’t sense much [Ether] coming from him.  I expect him to be all strength and speed.  A pure physical combatant, eschewing all magic for more raw strength and speed.”

“Annoying.  But at least we have a couple of ways to deal with him.”

“You worry too much, Sera,” Chloe says.  “As long as the two of us possess flight and none of them do, we will be at an overwhelming advantage.”

“That’s no excuse to get too overconfident.  There was that dungeon back when we were training when your mother…”  I don’t finish the statement.  “It had the ability to negate our flight.  That river back there did as well.  Let’s not assume that they can’t either.”

“Good call, Sera.  Changing the subject slightly, what do you think we’ll end up finding down here?”

“I don’t know.”  The flow of Ether all around shifts slightly; not even Chloe picks up the minute sensation.  “I suspect we’ll not have to wait too much longer to find out.”

Svylune raises a hand.  Almost as quickly as I can track, their fingers trace letters in the air that glow in a dim gold.  Svana translates the written text that fades back in the darkness shortly thereafter.

“There is a very strong energy signature in that direction, approximately eight hundred meters away.  It is likely the boss.  Svylune also believes that the creature is of the third ascension.”  Svana pauses.  “Frankly, I do not trust that the two of us alone are going to be enough to take this beast down.  As such, I would like to extend a truce through the end of the battle.  We shall negotiate an equitable division of any monster droppings following the conclusion of the battle.”

“Hmph.”  Jacques, who’d not said a word to this point, shakes his head.  Rather than the large partisan he’d been using before, he this time summons forth a comically oversized warhammer with a face as large as my torso.  Despite weighing close to a ton, he carries it in his hand without the slightest trace of exhaustion or strain.  I add ‘weapons specialist’ to his dossier, and assume that he can summon many other weapons, all of which he is trained in.

It is he who takes the lead.  He wears no armor, and upon his back as a result, there are hundreds of wounds.  Wounds which look far too clean to be the work of brutes and monsters.  Either he’s been fighting machines in dungeons, or this is the work of people.  Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was some sort of torturous, hardcore bodily conditioning training.

Part of me considers such methods to try to obtain and train new Skills, mad.  But I suppose it’s not so different from going through multiple dungeon raids each month in the pursuit of more and quicker levels.

Despite Jacques standing at nearly seven feet tall, he is but a dwarf before the creature who rises to create the six of us.  The behemoth lives up to such a moniker.  Ten heads with eyes looking in every direction command a humanoid body with a hundred arms, twenty directly connected to the main body and eighty more that are attached invisibly by threads of Ether and probably some sort of dimensional resonance.  Altogether, as the beast roars, it stands to a height of nearly five hundred feet.  Chloe estimates its total health at over half a million.

We draw our weapons.  It seems we’ll have quite a bit of work to do.