Green Forest
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Monarch of Profound Toxin - Chapter 23
🕑 Added 2024-09-25 18:58:03 +0000 UTCFor a moment, everything stood still as he sailed through the air. And in that moment, he became sure he wouldn’t make it, but the effect of Movement Boost pushed him further, until his fingers closed around the cold chain links. With the strength of a mere F-ranker, he was unable to keep a proper grip on the metal as he slid down the length of the chain.
With every link his fingers slipped on, the speed of his descent increased until it became impossible to save himself from a violent and noisy fall onto the large brazier down below.
Eik prepared himself for the imminent impact, but instead of slamming bodily into the iron bowl down below as he had expected, a horrendous, gut-twisting agony exploded between his legs as his nobler parts made direct and arresting contact with one of the four thinner chains connecting to hooks on the rim of the brazier.
He had to bite his own lip to keep down a scream, only his hold on the main chain preventing him from sliding down like a child down a banister. Eik glanced up at his teammates and saw them holding their breaths as they watched.
After carefully dismounting the chain, he made it onto the brazier proper. Given how much the thing itself weighed, the addition of a single Eik hardly rocked it at all, allowing him to crawl to the edge and peek down.
The heat from the fire under the cauldron was magnitudes more intense so close and directly above, with even the iron of the brazier’s bottom reaching a temperature that could be described as uncomfortably hot.
Eik’s plan was a simple one, really. Drip the Profound Toxin into the cauldron from above, wait for the cultists to dig in, hope the toxic agents weren’t broken down and made impotent, and voilá, walk in and get the kids out while the cultists were down for the count.
One of the cultists had stepped up with the ladle to stir, so Eik had to wait for him to finish before he could start letting the toxin flow. Now that he had some time to think, his confidence in his own plan was waning. If some of the cultist abstained from partaking in the meal, they would be able to both fight back and call for help from an unknown number of lunatic comrades.
There were stacks of used wooden bowls off to the side, but from his vantage point on top of the hanging brazier, he couldn’t tell if the number of bowls corresponded with the number of cultists they’d seen thus far. But it was too late to change his mind anyway. He couldn’t leap back from the chain to the balcony, so the only way out was down.
When finally the damned cultist pulled the ladle out of the stew and placed it back on the rim of the cauldron, Eik released the Profound Toxin from the tip of his finger, the blue substance dripping into the cauldron drop by drop, the small quantities making the luminescent nature of the liquid a lot less eye-catching.
For minutes, he kept the toxin flowing as the cultist milled about. When they weren’t scribbling in their scrolls or having conversations with each other, they actually appeared to be rather… aimless, simply studying the walls or their hands as if in a trance. Their deep hoods also prevented them from seeing anything around them, including Eik hanging from the brazier above.
Eik paused when the bubbling mass was stirred once more, resuming as soon as the cultist walked away again. After more than an hour of this, the bowls were brought to the cauldron, the dried gunk from the previous batch of stew still sticking to the sides. As the meal was poured, all of the cultist in the chamber, including some who emerged from the darkened hallways, gathered silently around the crackling fire.
They lined up to receive a filled bowl each, after which they formed a circle around the cauldron, holding their bowls with both hands. It might have been his mind playing tricks, but Eik thought the stew had a faint blue glow to it.
In the end, only the cultist who had been serving the food to everyone was left by the cauldron, pouring a portion for himself before he walked to the last open space in the circle, his own bowl of people stew held high above his head as he spoke some manner of nonsensical, sing-songy chant. His robe was identical to the rest of them, but he was behaving like an obvious leader.
The followers joined him in chorus, waving the bowls from side to side as they intoned foreign words, many of them seeming almost maniacal in their performance. The same boy in the cage who had raged at the cultists earlier resumed his hate-filled verbal assault, the hooded figures paying him no mind.
For almost a minute they kept up their chant, and then, at the order of the leader, put their lips to the bowls and used their fingers to shove the food into their mouths with gusto. Seeing the followers devouring the hot slop obediently, he nodded almost imperceptibly and consumed everything in his own bowl.
The cultists bowed their heads over the bowls, haunting whispers flowing between them. For a minute they stood like that, and then the first one vomited, his meal cascading back into the bowl in his hands as he sank to his knees. Almost immediately, another three cultists did the same, followed by the rest of their number. It was chaos incarnate as they previously quiet figures rolled around in their own vomit, clutching their stomach as they groaned in pain.
The leader was down on one knee, fist pressed into his side as he fought for a deep breath, but he wasn’t nearly as badly affected as those who followed him. Eik glanced up from the havoc to the balcony above. His companions were nowhere to be seen. He prepared himself.
A minute later, Heath’s massive form stormed into the chamber, shield raised in front of him, Michael and Sonja stopping in the gateway with weapons drawn. Their tank bull rushed a cultist who was blocking his path to the cages, knocking the bastard violently to the floor, the deep hood falling back to reveal a face with six eyes, three on each side of the head, two slits for a nose, and three scale-like plates that covered the forehead from the bridge of the nose to the top of the scalp.
Eik had somewhat expected these people, whose architecture and way of life seemed so similar to pre-industrial Earth, to resemble humans like Atla and Mikla did, but this woman—or rather, he assumed it was a woman—looked decidedly non-human in all but shape.
Eik dropped down from the brazier as Heath fought with the heavy lock on the cage. The captured Alliance team looked stunned at the sight of a rescue. The boy who had been screaming so fervently at the cultists just moments earlier was at a loss for words as well, staring open-mouthed as their saviors charged into the chamber with their torturers writhing on the cold stone floor. Even as Heath gave up on the delicate lock picking task and smashed the lock with a series of well-placed strikes with the pommel of his sword, their stupefaction persisted.
Only Heath pulling them out of the cage by the elbow seemed wake them up. “Wh-Wh—, Who are you? Are you—, Wh-What’s going on?” the boy asked while his companion, a girl with skin as red as fresh blood, was utterly petrified. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“We have been sent by the Nidafjeld Alliance. This is a rescue operation,” Eik said staccato as he led the girl with the red skin towards the gateway where Michael and Sonja waited. “There’s no time to waste. Where are the rest of you?” he asked, knowing the answer but needing confirmation.
At this, the girl broke down in sobs outright, the boy clearly holding back tears as well as he tried to speak through the lump in his throat. “D-Dead… Those shitheads a-ate them.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Eik said sincerely. “We already found an rescued your friend Pollarak. He’s alright, but extremely worried about you.”
“Pol’s alive?” the girl piped up, a tiny spark coming to life in her eyes.
“He sure is,” Eik assured her with a smile. “And a very anxious and very frightening man, whom I believe is your father, is waiting for your return.”
They funneled the two children into the passageway after Michael and Sonja, but just as Heath entered behind them a roar fueled by frenzied rage echoed throughout the chamber as a yellow ball of energy crashed into the stone wall just above the arched exit, sharp fragments and dust raining down onto Eik.
A frantic glance back revealed the cult leader on shaking knees, his hand raised toward them with a second yellow sphere of crackling energy taking shape within his palm. His hood had also been thrown back, and while Eik could now see several other faces, all of which were the same six-eyed tall foreheads, the leader looked arguably human with the exception of his elongated ears and milky white irises. The ferocious snarl on his face did not bode well for their escape.
“Hurry, run, run!” Eik shouted, dropping any pretense of stealth, pushing on Heath’s broad back as they desperately tried to make it to the stairs before another ball of destruction was launched at them.
Another explosion shook the narrow passageway as the shrieks of fury reached them from the chamber. “Do you think he’ll follow us?” Heath asked over his shoulder as they made it to the long, winding stairway.
“Maybe. He looked weakened, but he’s also definitely stronger than us.”
Another sphere impacted the step Eik’s foot had just left, the shock wave of the explosion blasting his skin painfully and almost causing him to stumble and fall. Unintelligible words that sounded like threats were screamed after them as they kept running.
“Keep going, everyone!” Eik called up to the front. “I think we might just make it!”
They rushed up the stairs and crashed through the rooms of the surface temple, kicking the front double doors open, one of them flying off the hinges. Sunlight blinded them and they almost stumbled down the stairs to the temple building. Without looking back, they ran as fast as their legs would carry them, eager to put distance between them and the powerful cult leader.
As they made it to the first houses on the main street, another ball of energy ripped up the cobblestones right by Sonja’s feet, the explosion throwing her over a fence and into an overgrown front garden where she rolled back onto her feet in the same movement.
In an instant, her bow was out and she shot an arrow back toward their attacker. Eik turned around just in time to see the long-eared cult leader casually bat the arrow away, hardly paying the projectile any mind.
Still clutching his stomach, the robed man held an empty potion bottle loosely in his other hand as he walked toward them with murder in his eyes, the remnants of a yellow liquid pooling at the bottom of the bottle. He was pale as chalk, sweat pouring down his clammy forehead. Even after consuming the unknown potion, he looked ready to collapse, but the fact that he had made it back to the surface as quickly as they had was a testament to the power he still possessed. He hurled the bottle at them with a screech, face twisted hideously in pure, unadulterated wrath, and charged up another yellow sphere.
Heath cursed under his breath as he pushed past Eik with his shield raised and sprinted full tilt for the cult leader with a roar. The pale man whipped his hand around to launch the attack at the approaching tank instead of Sonja.
Sonja released another arrow while Eik darted off to the side and briefly activated Movement Boost to get himself onto a roof from which he leapt into the back garden of the adjacent home. As he sailed through the air toward the grass below, he heard the metallic crackle of the impact of the radiant orb against Heath’s tower shield.
Eik looped around the overgrown house and back onto the street diagonally behind the evil elf man, Profound Toxin flooding the venom ducts of the fang. The strength of the Movement Boost pushed him beyond his limits as he brandished his weapon, course set directly for the pointy-eared lunatic.
Before he could plunge in the venom fang, the man spun unimaginably fast, backhand coming up to intercept Eik’s path.
Comments
Green Forest
Thanks a ton for the feedback! I'm always looking to improve so I'll take everything into consideration as the story develops!
Notcreepycreeper
ok, I take back my last comment, given the toxin-poisoning plan, it makes sense Eik was the one to do it. Also makes sense as he's their rogue. I would like the rest of my point to stand though - as this keeps going it'd be cool if different party members take the lead/have ideas/do things on their own with good OR bad outcomes in order to gave them develope. Rn I like Michael a lot, bc his very understandable reluctance to do dangerous things, desire to just heal ppl in safety, and willingness to put his life on the line anyway for his mom tells me who he is. Heath has some development as the tank, but that's all - tank.TM, nothing super individual. Sonja feels even less real, as her role as a ranger-character is often overshadowed by Eik who fullfills a lot of the same role, and bc ranged attacks that are too effective often take tension out of fights. But like who is she? Why's she here (motivation)? What does she really contribute such that I should care about her? Does she have a personality beyond "level headed sibling"? Similar questions for Heath.
