Book 3. Chapter 59

A huge bulking form distorted the surface of the water, but Brin didn’t even get to see what it was before a wave of black spears from Hogg stabbed it back down.

The roiling waters calmed for a moment, but no one was fool enough to think that the fight was over. Brin could still faintly see the dark shadows of creatures beneath the waves.

He looked between Hogg and Lurilan and his mind was called to one of his Skills that he often forgot about. Not because it wasn’t good, but because it worked so seamlessly that he often didn’t realize he was using it. [Battle Sense]. And what his Skill was telling him was that neither Lurilan nor Hogg were all that worried. The optimal path to victory would be for both of them to charge into the waves, or better yet shoot arrows and projectiles of hard light into the water.

Instead, they were going to wait for the monsters to surface. Either they aimed at letting the teens get some practice in, or they didn’t want to reveal their full power until they had a better idea of what they were up against. Whatever the case, the fact remained that the two heavy hitters weren’t going to take care of everything. Things were going to get exciting really soon.

In the last few seconds of quiet, he sent out a directed thread to make an Invisible Eye, find out where Pio was and what he was doing, and then report back.

The water started to froth again.

“Davi, play my song,” said Brin. He hoped his [Bardic] friend remembered the Doom music.

“No,” said Davi. “I think it’s time to play my song.”

Brin wasn’t sure what song that was. Did he mean the Natsu theme Brin had done that one time?

Davi saw the confusion on his face and grinned. “It’s time to let you in on a little secret about Jeffrey. That guy really doesn’t care about anything other than music. He doesn’t worry about the political situation in Frenaria or anything. The only reason he didn’t start singing the Epic of Hammon’s Bog right away was... because he wanted me to make it.”

A humanoid fish monster with huge black eyes and a mouth full of shark teeth sprang from the ocean, and immediately took an arrow to the head.

“It’s still a work in progress, so don’t judge but... it’s time.”

The ocean erupted in a frothy spray as dozens of insectile creatures burst from the water. They ran across the surface of the water, unheeding those that fell to Lurilan’s arrows. When they reached the shore, Zilly and Brin ran forward to meet them, and Davi’s song followed them.

It started out with a solo, sounding almost like heraldic trumpets. The actual tone was electric and triumphant and full of energy. Brin wouldn’t have guessed that Davi would start a song this way, straight into the action with no build-up, but then again it was practical. If he was going to use this song to boost his friends in a fight, then it needed to start off with a bang.

It definitely banged. Brin felt the energy thrum in his body, and his spear effortlessly tore through the monsters as they approached. He flowed smoothly and naturally, instinctually weaving around and through the horde, dealing wounds with every stroke.

He wasn’t sure which monster gave him his first death notification; it was difficult to separate them, but he took note that the System called them Giant Water Skeeters.

Zilly moved at his side, slashing through the horde with wild abandoned. He saw her use an [Overload] to dice a Skeeter in two, then kick both pieces at oncoming opponents. In the brief instant it took them to push the obstacles out of their way, she’d already [Dashed] away to stab yet another Skeeter into the ground.

Sion stayed by Davi, keeping his spear at full length to ward them away.

The huge thing Hogg had pushed down with spears of hard light groaned deep and so loud it was audible from underwater, and then lifted itself up. Hogg sent his giant black scorpion forward. It lashed out with its stinger, and an enormous hand with webbed fingers rose up from the water to catch it mid-strike.

The giant underwater monster rose. A huge toad-like face appeared from the water, then its massive body. Still holding the scorpion’s tail, it slammed into the scorpion with a massive fist, breaking a black leg off at the pace. The scorpion pressed forward with both pincers, locking the giant sea monster in a wrestling match.

Davi wrapped up the solo and began to sing.

“Upon the day the Scarred One came,

An orphaned child without a name,

We saw in him a premonition,

And cast upon him dark suspicion.

From that day forth, a curse was cast,

For of those who left, none came back.

Into the forest, dark and deep,

They vanished all, in shadows steep.

Arise ye bogland men, go to!

I press ahead with comrades true.

I shall not dodge nor shift mine stance,

With friends beside me I advance.

To left or right I will not stray

For trust and honor cannot sway.

No stepping back and no retreat,

For courage in our hearts must beat.

A warrior knows but one true course,

Forward bound with steadfast force,

Attack, ye men of Hammon’s Bog,

Towards death and victory through the fog!”

As Davi wrapped up the first verse, a Skeeter slipped past Sion, aiming at him with claws like scythes. Davi stopped it with a rib-crunching kick and then stomped down to go straight into another solo without missing a beat.

Brin and Zilly wore down the Skeeters’ numbers until they switched from trying to swarm to hit and run tactics. Brin stopped being able to catch any of them, and when he started throwing projectiles of glass at them with Language-empowered spells, they dodged those as well. Myra held them down with her threads, and together she and Brin started to take down the stragglers one after another.

Only Zilly was quick enough to catch them alone, but they led her into an ambush, trading the life of one of their number for a couple of deep gouges on her sword arm. Another Skeeter went for her neck, and Marksi appeared just in time to bite down on the arm and pull it off target.

She [Dashed] back to Myra who immediately started to sew her wound shut. Brin and Sion moved side by side to defend them while she worked.

Meanwhile, Lurilan had joined Hogg in taking down the giant. He sent arrows into the monster's joints, locking its ability to move while the scorpion steadily tore chunks out of its flesh.

“Then at night the army came

With one last burst of effort, he pushed as much glass magic he could into the bullets lodged into the Kukubaru’s body.

“”

He heard a faint whumph and then Kukubaru collapsed.

You have defeated: Elder Kukubaru [40] Shape Glass leveled up! 33 -> 34

He risked a glance to his friends. Myra had tied down the feet of other Elder Kukubaru, but Zilly was still having a hard time finishing it off. Sion had killed four of the giant crabs and the other two were keeping their distance. His flame was starting to putter out.

Hogg and Lurilan were pressing the giant sea monster back into the waves. It was all but dead, only a matter of time now. They were doing it.

He heard a call from the forest, an angry squeal from a giant hog. Big Ron was crashing through the trees, and an army was at its back. Cherry bears, spinewolves, and a host of other forest creatures were bearing down on them, and he got the feeling that this time it wasn’t to save them.

“Arise ye bogland men, go to!

I press ahead with comrades true.

I shall not dodge nor shift mine stance,

With friends beside me I advance.

To left or right I will not stray

For trust and honor cannot sway.

No stepping back and no retreat,

For courage in our hearts must beat.

A warrior knows but one true course,

Forward bound with steadfast force,

Attack, ye men of Hammon’s Bog,

Towards death and victory through the fog!”

Hogg’s giant scorpion cracked, shuddered, and then broke apart to disappear in the air. The giant sea monster he’d been fighting was dead. Hogg turned to send a volley of black arrows into the oncoming monster horde. For Big Ron, he sent a pair of shackles to bind him and hold him in place, and the giant boar thrashed and fought, tearing himself free despite Hogg’s considerable magical might.

Out of nowhere, Brin’s thread returned, along with a slew of memories. He’d found the trace of Wyrd connecting the Kukubarus to the [Witch] controlling them and then used a directed thread to make an Invisible Eye and follow the Wyrd to the source. He’d connected the image from the Invisible Eye to a pane of glass that he’d summoned at his feet.

Looking down, Brin saw it was there. He picked it up, and saw that the image was focusing on the top of one of the black spires; a line of sheer black rock jutting up from the ocean with nothing on top of it. The image wasn’t moving, the directed thread clearly thought that this was where the [Witch] was.

She could be hiding. She’d had one illusion-aspect familiar under her command, what’s to say she didn’t have another?

He ran to Lurilan who was quickly but calmly sending arrow after arrow into the oncoming monster horde.

“Can you hit this?” he asked, shoving the glass into the [Hunter’s] face.

Lurilan considered for a moment, and then nodded.

He turned around, pulled a very expensive-looking arrow from his quiver, aimed, pulled, and loosed.

The arrow streaked through the air, and Brin wondered if it was really going to hit. The target had to have been at least half a mile away. If Lurilan could really kill an invisible enemy at this distance... maybe Brin should’ve given more consideration to the [Hunter] Class.

The arrow disappeared to Brin’s eyes before it struck, but when it did it exploded, destroying ten feet of solid rock on the tip of the spire.

This much power in a Common Class? Lurilan’s Class had to have evolved to Rare by now. He would ask later.

“Got her,” said Lurilan. “There was a [Witch] up there! Good eye. I didn’t even see her.”

Brin didn't see a death notification for her, but he got something else.

Call Light through Glass leveled up! 37 -> 38

“You can be a little scary sometimes,” Brin said flatly.

“I don’t know why you would say such a thing,” Lurilan. Without looking, he loosed three arrows, finishing off the two giant crabs that Sion had been struggling with.

Brin just shook his head.

His last thread took that moment to return. This was the directed thread he’d sent to watch Pio, so now he had the memory of watching the [Beast Master] under water.

Pio had swam desperately back and forth across the bottom of the sea floor, picking up rocks and setting them down, desperately searching for something. All the time Brin and his friends had been fighting above, Pio had been down here. Brin’s Invisible Eye had also noticed a black ball in the water, one of Hogg’s Visible Eyes. Hogg had been watching this, too.

Pio had finally moved one boulder out of place to find a pure white pearl, and once he faintly touched it with his finger it disappeared into a plume of mud that spread out and filled the water around him.

Brin’s directed thread hadn’t really understood anything it was seeing; it wasn’t much for any thought at all and the memories had been oddly detached from thought or opinion. Brin wasn’t sure what he’d seen and the directed thread hadn’t cared. Its assignment had been to follow Pio, and now Pio was gone. It went into the muddy cloud and found that a tunnel had been opened up in the ground below. It followed the tunnel going down, deep into the earth, before leveling off and going up again.

His Invisible Eye sensed that it had come into some kind of cave, but he couldn’t see anything even with his darkvision. The thread knew it would need to make light to continue hunting Pio, but wasn’t sure if that was aloud. It had opted to return.

“We need to follow him!” Brin shouted to Hogg, but more for the benefit of the others.

Hogg’s storm of black arrows had mostly halted the advance of the monster horde, but he hadn’t killed them all. Now they were creeping around from behind cover and looking for ways to get close without being seen, and more were arriving every second.

Lurilan loosed an arrow struck a cherry bear right through a poison sac and into its heart, sending it to the ground. “Go. We’ll hold here.”

Hogg shoved a white pill in Brin’s hand, for water breathing according to his [Inspect]. He washed it down with his last potion of anti-sleep from Calisto.

“Come on,” said Hogg, and grasped Brin by the arm. Together, they dove down into the deep.