Broken Lands

Dav’s punch of the monster gave Sophia an idea. It was either brilliant or blindingly stupid; she’d know which when she found out if it worked or not. At best, it would resolve the problem. Far more likely, it wouldn’t matter and they’d have to finish this the hard way. There was also the outside chance that it would get her eaten, but Sophia didn’t think that was likely. Things were already looking pretty dark and this was the best chance she could think of to turn things around.

There wasn’t much room in the passage beside the monster, so Sophia hopped on the ledge to her right and used it to climb onto the higher ledge beside the monster. It was slick with moss, so Sophia had to take it slowly; if she moved too fast, she’d slip and either injure herself or alert the monster. It was partially blind and had a disabled arm; that didn’t mean it was helpless.

Once she made it onto the higher ledge, Sophia carefully turned. Dav definitely still had its attention; as she watched, he dodged backwards, ducked under a wild swing from the injured arm, and easily dodged an attempt to all too literally bite his head off. Her eyes were drawn to his side, where a bright purple liquid oozed out through a gash in Dav’s armor. That was new; he must have gotten a little too close while her back was turned.

She’d deal with the fact that he bled a color other than red later. He wasn’t the only person she knew who bled an unusual color; it didn’t really change much. All it really told her was that for some reason the Origin presented as glowing purple to Dav; it didn’t have to mean more than that.

Sophia gathered her legs under herself then lept for the back of the monster. She hadn’t done such a foolish thing in years, but if she was right this was exactly the monster where it wasn’t a bad idea. Her first concern was the landing, rather than the attack. Against another monster, she’d have different priorities, but against this one she was pretty sure she could stay on its back and kill it from there.

She wanted to land evenly but she was a little off. As she twisted, her left boot hit the monster first. It sank in, just as she’d hoped, but it also held the foot in place and it wasn’t quite the right place. Her momentum pulled her the rest of the way around so that when her right foot hit, it was roughly where she wanted it, but it wrenched her left knee.

Not that she was going anywhere any time soon. With her full weight hitting the monster, she’d sunk at least eight inches into it. Her feet were both trapped. That was uncomfortable but it was also the plan.

Dav definitely didn’t have the monster’s attention anymore. It straightened and seemed to flail at Sophia, first with its good arm then with the bad one. All it managed was to press its back fully against Sophia’s knees. She hadn’t been certain, but as she’d hoped it was completely unable to reach behind itself and it also seemed to be unable to eject something that had pushed inside its rubbery flesh without hurting it. She’d anchored herself to the monster in a place it couldn’t easily remove her from where it also couldn’t attack her.

Now all she had to do was take advantage of it before it realized it could slam her against a wall or shapeshift. Sophia picked out the area that was probably where its spine ran; it seemed to have bones so it probably had a spine, at least in this shape. She rose up to her full height, or as close as she could manage without losing her balance, then crouched as quickly as she could and shoved her knife between two of the discs of its spine.

Amazingly, it worked exactly as intended. Even more amazingly, the whatever-it-was seemed to keep its brain in its head, at least in this form, because it collapsed. Sophia had hoped that would work but hadn’t really expected that it would; she knew several people who wouldn’t die if they lost their heads entirely. A monster that formed from goo on top of a thin layer of water seemed like the kind of thing that ought to be able to do the same.

She stayed right where she was for a minute, just in case the monster had something else in store for the two of them. She was thinking about moving when the monster seemed to shiver and shift. She tensed, expecting to have to fight, but instead it collapsed a little as it turned into an extremely thick layer of something like moss.

With her feet still stuck inside it.

“I think we’re good,” Dav called out to Sophia. She felt the comforting feeling of healing magic wash over her. It was cool, rather than warm, and felt weak and undirected. Sophia still recognized it. The cool was nice, in a way; her knee hurt where she’d twisted it and the cool feeling soothed the pain. “I have some Wisps, so I think the Guide is telling us it’s dead.”

Already? Sophia pulled up her status to check.

She had exactly 3 Wisps. She’d checked prices fairly thoroughly earlier, so she knew that wasn’t enough to buy anything. On the other hand, there was that exclamation from Cliff she’d heard during the fight.

“Cliff? Did you collect anything?” As much as Sophia would prefer not to talk out loud to the voice in her head, she wasn’t sure how else to make him hear her. At least Dav already knew what was going on. That might make her seem a little less crazy.

“I did!” Cliff sounded jubilant. “A plant and a monster and something called a Martial Technique! Both the plant and the monster are called Devouring Moss. I think they’re the same thing, or maybe the plant is a dormant form of the monster? I got the monster when you jumped on it, then the plant when it collapsed.”

Cliff didn’t elaborate on what the Martial Technique was and Sophia didn’t ask him to. She had a better way to find out: her Status.

Available Martial Techniques

Stunning Roar

Daze the world with the force of your anger! Imbue your shout with mana and anger to temporarily disorient opponents.

(feather line break)

Add Stunning Roar to the available Level 1 Martial Technique Ability Slot?

The answer to that was easy: yes. There wasn’t a Wisp cost for it, which Sophia was grateful for; she already had the feeling that she was always going to want more Wisps. The Guide almost immediately presented her with her Status.

Sophia

Spells:

Unaffiliated Abilities:

Warped Human

(Empty, 1, 1)

Innate Communication (Bonus, Free)

(Feather Image)

Body: 5

Martial Abilities:

Species Abilities:

Core: 7

(Stunning Roar, 1, 1)

(None)

Shield: 4/10

Spellblade Abilities:

(Imbue Blade, 1, 1)

Wisps: 0

Spheres

Spellblade (Hallow)

Level:1

Collector (Linked)

Level: 1

That was going to get very annoying very quickly. In fact, Sophia was already annoyed with it; she didn’t want screens to pup up in her vision unless she asked for them. They were simply too likely to distract her at a bad time.

Sophia looked up at Dav as she dismissed the screen. “Did you ever find a way to adjust when the Guide shows you things?”

“That wasn’t what I expected you to ask,” Dav said with a chuckle. “I thought you were going to ask for a hand getting your feet free. And no, I didn’t find a setting screen or anything. It’s still showing me eyes on every message.”

Sophia looked down at her feet. They weren’t uncomfortable, per se, but it would be nice to sit down while her knee healed in the radiance of Dav’s beacon.

Her eyes wandered over to the beacon for the first time and she took in the full scope of its strangeness. It looked like someone had slid a metal butterfly ornament into an upside down multicolored wide mouthed vase, then anchored the butterfly into a block of green stone and made the whole thing glow a rather disturbing shade of yellow-green, especially where the butterfly met the vase. It looked a lot more like some of the enchanted objects Sophia had seen over the years than a summon.

It looked pretty odd even for an enchanted object.

“I could use some help, now that you mention it,” Sophia admitted. “Also, while we heal, do you want to harvest some of the monster? I think it may have become a sort of magical moss now that we killed it.”

“Are you sure it won’t turn back into a monster?” Dav held a hand out for Sophia. “I don’t want to have to fight it again.”

“No,” Sophia had to admit. She used Dav’s hand to steady her as she struggled to get one leg out of the moss trap then the other. Unlike the monster, the moss seemed pretty solid; once her legs were free, she only sank as she compressed the moss instead of actually sinking into it. “But I’m pretty sure we can catch it if it does. Wait, I have a better idea. Cliff, do you know if the moss can become a monster or not?”

“It can, sort of!” Cliff sounded almost chirpy. Sophia wasn’t sure what to think about a dungeon that was that happy, but then again she probably shouldn’t think of Cliff as “a dungeon” anymore, should she? It wasn’t like he could build a proper dungeon right now. “Devouring Moss is the sessile form of the Devouring Moss monster! It acts like a plant, but when the conditions are right it will … well, blossom I guess? The Devouring Moss monster is sort of both the mobile form and the plant’s spores. The moss releases a thin form of itself which travels through wet areas and eats pretty much anything. If it runs across something too large or mobile or it reaches a dry area without finding more Devouring Moss, it can gather itself temporarily into a solid monster. If it’s killed or finds more Devouring Moss, it will revert to the moss form and start over.”

“So … no moss monster unless the moss starts leaking green goo?” Sophia kicked the top of the pile of moss softly. It was surprisingly dry. “I think we can work with that.”

She stumbled as she tried to step off the moss and her knee gave out. She would have hit the floor if Dav hadn’t caught her.

“I’ll deal with the moss,” Dav told her. “You sit down and heal. Hmm. I wonder how quickly Shield heals? We must both be out, since we’re both hurt.”

Sophia pulled up her Status and glanced at it. “I’m at four out of ten. Either it comes back quickly or I didn’t run out. Maybe I hurt my knee because I did it, not the monster?”

“Mh,” Dav grunted. “It can’t come back that quickly; mine’s still at zero. I think the healing beacon’s helping with our injuries but not the Shield. You’re probably right about the knee.”

“At least that means the beacon will help it,” Sophia offered. She definitely didn’t want to have to dig out the pair of healing potions she had in her pack; they were for emergencies only, so she’d only use them for her knee if she just couldn’t walk. Healing potions were one of the worst ways to heal injuries and that was even more true of joint injuries. She’d never hear the end of it if she used a healing potion for a damaged knee when she didn’t have to.

Well, she’d never hear the end of it if she made it back home. Sophia flinched away from that thought.