[TEA] (229) 5.15. Knock Knock (Patreon)

Samantha touched down beside Asher and Rulfar, and Moxy hopped down from the stalagmite she’d been perched on. The four of them stared at the fallen creature together, none of them seeming to know what to say. Finally, Moxy spoke up with her usual cunning insight.

“Well that thing’s freaky.” Careful to avoid the black bile still flowing out of it, she frowned as she pushed at the creature’s neck with her foot. “What do you think it is?”

“It was like some horrible imitation of a dragon,” Asher said, peering at the gaping maw that the long neck ended in rather than any actual head. “Do you think these things just live naturally in the mountain range?”

“No. I’ve never heard of a creature immune to skills before,” Rulfar said, looking a bit shaken. Asher couldn’t blame the man. Despite taking on the role of their heavy hitter, he’d been all but useless during the battle. He hadn’t been fast enough to try and draw its attention and dodge its blasts like Samantha, and he hadn’t been able to attack like he or Moxy without risking the destruction of his weapon.

“Forget immune to skills,” Samantha said, wrinkling her nose as she pointed to the thing’s neck that Asher had completely sliced open. “Look! It doesn’t even have any actual flesh or blood!”

Sure enough, Samantha was right. Enough of the bile had leaked out from the creature’s neck at this point to reveal that, like Asher had suspected during the fight, it didn’t actually have any sort of muscle. Like some sort of twisted balloon, the entire creature was slowly deflating as the bile poured out of it, almost like it was nothing more than a hide filled with the foul liquid. As soon as he realized that, Asher had a sinking suspicion.

“There’s no way that creature is natural…” he said, shaking his head as they watched it continue to deflate. “And it didn’t drop any shards, so it’s definitely not a monster. I have an idea, but I don’t like it.”

“Well come on, now, don’t make us beg,” Moxy said.

“I think this thing… is from the abyss,” Asher said, getting an appropriate gasp of alarm from Rulfar and Samantha.

Naturally, Moxy proved to be a special case.

“The what?” she asked, scratching at the inside of her ear as she raised an eyebrow. “Where’s that?”

“The abyss is one of the major realms,” Rulfar said, staring at the creature with a fresh wave of horror and revulsion as he took a step back. “I don’t know much about it, other than it is said to hold little more than horrific creatures that defy logic and wipe out anyone who dares to enter. It supposedly holds magnificent treasures for those foolhardy enough to find them, but most of the time, entire teams of realm wanderers are lost when they attempt to tackle the abyss.”

“Alright. So why is something from the abyss hiding in the lich’s basement?” Moxy asked.

“The most obvious answer is also the scariest,” Asher admitted, his blood running cold as he realized they’d been thinking about this all wrong from the very beginning. “We may have made a terrible oversight. All this time, I’ve been thinking of the wizard that captured us as a demon specialist. Which makes sense, seeing as its used almost nothing but demons against us all this time, and even used them to staff its tower. But it’s not a demon specialist at all. It’s a realm specialist.”

The cave was silent, save for the steady dripping of black bile falling from the abyss creature’s corpse as they all thought about what that meant. If what Asher suspected was true…

“We have no idea what we might be going up against,” Samantha whispered, saying what they were all undoubtedly thinking.

“Well that’s exciting,” Moxy grinned, her earlier enthusiasm she’d shown during the battle coming back full force like it had never left. “Thank goodness, I thought things would get stale after killing nothing but imps and lesser demons for a while!”

“This is not good at all,” Rulfar said, frowning at Moxy. “We prepared against demons. Greater demons specifically, because we knew that the lich had at least two of them summoned. We did not prepare to go up against creatures from the abyss. Or whatever other realms the lich has access to. It’s clear this thing was some sort of guard dog. With an immunity to skills and a devastating attack, it must have been left here to eradicate anyone who managed to actually find the entrance to the lich’s base of operations.”

“All I’m hearing is that it sounds like this confirms we’ve actually discovered the lich’s true base,” Moxy pointed out, her grin only growing wider despite Rulfar’s annoyed look. “Look, we came here to kill a lich and fight minions. I see no reason to change the plan now.”

“Moxy’s right about one thing,” Samantha said, nodding toward the abyss creature’s corpse. Despite her clear nerves, she continued. “By killing this thing, we’ve given away our hand. As soon as the lich realizes its dead, it’ll know its base is compromised. We either go in now, or we risk losing the lich for good as it switches locations on us again.”

“As much as I think we should head back… if that happens, it might bolster its defenses,” Rulfar sighed, looking like he was still on the fence. “There’s a good chance it will take greater precautions and I won’t be able to find it again.”

“Then that settles it!” Moxy said, bouncing on the balls of her feet in glee. “This was a solid warm up, and now it’s time for the main event!”

“It’s not as bad as it seems,” Asher said, doing his best to boost Rulfar’s confidence a bit. “I did plenty of reading about the different realms, including the abyss. While realm wanderers talked about abyss creatures defying everything we know, nobody mentioned anything about them being immune to skills. I think we can safely assume that was either unique to this monster specifically, or at least not a very common trait.”

“Let’s hope you’re right,” Rulfar said, hefting his battleaxe as he cracked his neck. Asher didn’t miss how he stayed in his battle form, as though he expected to be attacked by another impossible monster at any moment. Luckily, Rulfar had a skill that allowed him to stay in his battle form for much longer than most beast-element holders. He was definitely a lot less sneaky as a ten-foot-tall half-bear man, but that probably didn’t matter too much at this point.

The monster had been roaring at the top of its lungs the whole fight. If this cave wasn’t magically dampened somehow, everything within the lich’s base had to know they were here by now.

Giving the still-deflating monster a wide berth, the four of them carried on deeper into the cave. It wasn’t long before they hit the end, where there was something distinctly not cave-like waiting for them.

An ornate, wooden door set into the flat stone wall like it was the most natural thing in the world.

[Wooden Door] – Masterwork quality. Enchanted.

“Alright. Who wants to knock?” Moxy asked, grinning at her own joke.

Shaking his head, Asher stepped forward, slipping into the astral as he peered inside. Or at least, that’s what he tried to do. Instead, his head smacked right off the fancy door, and he cursed as his eyes widened.

The lich has learned its lesson from the last time.

Returning to the material realm, he shook his head as he rubbed his temple. “The door is enchanted. I can’t bypass it through the astral realm.”

“Then we do this the old-fashioned way,” Moxy said, motioning for Rulfar to step forward. “If the large man with the equally large axe would be so kind?”

“I’m surprised you don’t want to punch it down yourself,” Rulfar grunted, stepping up and examining the grain on the door.

“You ever tried fighting a door?” Moxy asked. “It’s boring, they rarely hit back.”

Rulfar didn’t choose to respond. Instead, he nodded, satisfied with whatever it was he was looking for. Hefting his battleaxe, he put the full force of his battle form and Strength element into the blow, smashing his enchanted axe into the wood with enough force that Asher took a step back from the shaking impact.

To his shock, there was little more than a small scratch on the wood.

But rather than be dismayed that his powerful blow hadn’t blasted the door to smithereens, Rulfar merely sighed in relief, smiling at the sight of the scratch.

“Thank the realms… I was worried I wouldn’t be able to get through.”

Without waiting for a reply, Rulfar raised his battleaxe above his head once more, and smashed it into the door again in the exact same spot, as though he’d trained for this his entire life. Then he did it again. And again.

Asher hung back to chat with Samantha as Moxy watched Rulfar tirelessly go at the door, slowly but surely whittling it away splinter by splinter. The man never seemed to grow tired, and his blows always hit the same location, always with the same amount of force. It was an incredible display of both strength and skill.

“Rulfar’s really something else,” Asher muttered, wondering just how many years of dedicated practice the man had under his belt with the axe.

“No kidding… Though he doesn’t talk about himself very much,” Samantha said, a slight frown on her face as she watched him work. “I’ve gotten the vibe that he’s similar to me in a way. That something happened to his village when he was younger that caused him to no longer have a home to return to. But when I tried to get him to open up about it with me he refused. He either changes the subject or just walks away.”

“It was only after I shared with him the memory of Horntho village burning to the ground that he agreed to join us,” Asher said, remembering the look of sorrow in the bloodhound’s eyes when he watched Asher’s first memory of the greater demon.

“I guess we have only known him for a bit over a week,” Samantha said, reflexively blocking a splinter of wood with a flick of her emerald wing. “After all our training together, it just feels like so much longer. I mean, it’s not like I’ve known Moxy for that much longer than I have Rulfar, and I already feel like I’d trust Moxy with just about anything. Despite the fact that she’s so…”

“Moxy,” Asher finished for her with a grin.

“Yeah,” Samantha chuckled. Throwing another glance over her shoulder at the now nearly flat corpse of the abyss monster, she shivered. “Asher, if we end up going against a monster that we can’t beat…”

“Nothing’s going to happen to us,” he said, putting an arm around her and pulling her close. “No matter what, we’ll all make it out of this alive. We’ll show The Council of Death that they can’t just run around burning villages to the ground or slaughtering caravans because they want to. Somebody has to hold them accountable for what they’ve done, and we’re the people to do it.”

“I know, and I agree… I just can’t help but feel like we’re some rag-tag group of crazy people who decided to go after one of the scariest groups of people on the entire continent,” Samantha said, giggling despite her words. “I mean, look at us. A random hunter from a tiny village on the edge of the kingdom. An underground prize fight champion and former second in command to a powerful gang leader. A mysterious bloodhound twice the size of the largest person I’ve ever seen with obvious trauma in his past. And a realm wanderer who came from an entirely different world and decided to throw the entire balance of this one out of whack because, why not.”

“Hey now, I decided to throw the entire balance of this world out of whack because it’s fun,” Asher corrected, kissing her on the cheek even as she snorted. “Not to mention I thought it would impress this incredibly attractive hunter who I ran into.”

“I think she’d be even more impressed if you stopped killing yourself so frequently,” Samantha drawled.

“Well that’s a bit presumptuous. I never said I was talking about you.”

Before Samantha could spray him in the face with water, Rulfar struck the door one last time, finally breaking through the enchanted wood and snapping the entire thing into pieces. Nodding to himself, he wiped the sweat from his brow, turning to look at them.

“We’re in,” he said, gripping his battleaxe all the harder. “Let’s do this.”