“Boss!”
Griff called out from the other side of the fence.
“I came back when I couldn’t see or hear the waterfall. What happened?”
“No idea,” Hiram said, still rubbing ointment on his arm. “I imagine people are coming up here to check on things, but I’m not sure what they’ll accomplish. I think we might need to bring in those adventurers of yours, Jason.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Jason said, without turning to face the others. His gaze was focused on where the tunnel went deeper into the mountain.
“Is it just me,” he asked, “or is the aperture more blue than it was before?”
Hiram followed Jason’s gaze down the tunnel. The blue shimmer of the aperture was definitely brighter than it had been before.
“I think,” Hiram said, “it might be time to get out of—”
He was cut off by a wall of water erupting through the aperture and down on top of them. It smashed them together in a tangle of arms and legs. Both were blasted down the tunnel and hurled into the air, hundreds of metres above the ground.
28
How Did You All Fit In There?
Water crashed into Jason like a derailed train, ploughing him straight into Hiram and blasting them both out the end of the tunnel. Sensations came faster than he could process: pain, wet, disorientation. He couldn’t breathe, or even tell which way was up.
Jason and Hiram had clutched onto each other reflexively, their limbs tangled together. Landscape blurred past as they span through the air, tumbling like the now-resumed waterfall. Jason’s first coherent thought was Hiram slipping away and he reasserted his grip. Darkness emerged from Jason, enveloping both men.
Extending the weight-reducing function of [Cloak of Night] increases the cost from low mana-per-second to moderate mana-per-second.
Their downward plunge was reduced to a drift, floating out and away from the waterfall. Their wild spinning was arrested, and they were able to orient themselves as they descended. Jason was grateful that his cloak could be conjured at a thought. If it had required an incantation like a spell, he doubted he would have been able to get the words out. Only now that they were free of the water and gently drifting could they even speak intelligibly.
“What in the gods’ merry garden is going on?” Hiram asked, voice tinged with panic. He was half-hugging Jason from the side.
“The first thing you should know,” Jason said, “is to not let go.”
Hiram lurched as he looked down, almost letting go.
“What did I just say?” Jason asked.
“We’re in the sky!”
“Awesome, right?”
“ARE YOU INSANE?”
“That was right in my ear!”
Jason started laughing madly as they drifted down to the ground.
“This is fantastic,” he said.
“You’re crazy!”
Between the force with which they were ejected from the mountain and the lightness of their reduced weight, they had drifted some way from the mountain before they lightly touched down. They landed close to the channel leading from the pool under the mountain to the village lake. Hiram immediately fell to the grass and hugged the ground, tension escaping his body in sobbing laughs.
Jason took a look around. They were about halfway between the mountain and the village, in an expanse of shin-high grass. The channel ran dead-straight through the grass from the base of the waterfall to the village. He could see people heading for the mountain trail he and Hiram had taken earlier. None of them seemed to have noticed his and Hiram’s descent.
On the other side of the channel were a bunch of children who had been looking up at the absent waterfall until they spotted Jason and Hiram fall from the sky. Jason gave them a wave. He then looked back up at the mountain and saw how far he had just fallen. A grin spread across his face.
“If this is the adventuring life,” he mused, “I think I want some more.”
“You’re a crazy person,” Hiram said, getting unsteadily to his feet. He looked uncertainly at Jason, still shrouded in the cloak of stars. Under the desert sun, the void black stood out more than the starlight.
“Hiram,” Jason said, still looking up at the mountain. “Are they what I think they are?”
Hiram followed Jason’s line of sight to the top of the waterfall. He spotted objects being tossed out the same way he and Hiram had been, at least a dozen of them.
“People?” Hiram asked. They were distant and hard to make out as they fell.
“Those aren’t people,” Jason said.
As they fell from the sky, the objects grew larger in their vision. Horror crossed Hiram’s face as he recognised the shape of the creatures.
“More of those things!” Hiram said with horror.
“Don’t be too worried,” Jason said. “A shab is a half-shark, half crab. Neither of which have wings.”
The large creatures lacked Jason’s weight-reducing power and fell well short of the distance Jason and Hiram had reached. The first one hit the ground with a sickening crunch, with others soon following. Jason counted seventeen by the time they finished falling, most of which died on impact. Those that fell either side of the water channel hit the ground and didn’t get up. Of the six that landed in the water, two struck the surface at a bad angle. Hitting water flat from that height was as good at hitting solid concrete, with similar results. The other four survived, but were clearly injured as they staggered out of the water.
New Quest: [Protect the Village]
A number of shabs have emerged from the astral space. Intercept them before they wreak havoc in the village.
Objective: Defeat [Shab] 0/4
Reward: Iron-rank (uncommon) magic bracelet.
One of the monsters had emerged on Jason and Hiram’s side of the channel, the others on the far side. They all looked about, disoriented, then made a straight line for the village. The sideways walk of the creatures wasn’t a breakneck pace, but was faster than what Jason had seen from the one in the tunnel.
“What do you think, Hiram?” Jason asked.
Hiram’s face was stern as he stared at the creature on their side of the channel. It looked to have at least two broken legs and the shell around its body was cracked and oozing.
“I think I can take one,” he said. “If it’s injured. But what about those kids on the other side?”
“I’ll get the kids away,” Jason said. “Then I’ll deal with the other shabs.”
“Are you up for that?” Hiram asked.
“I guess I’ll have to be,” Jason said, flashing Hiram a grin. “Don’t worry. I’ve still got a gimmick or two.”
Jason started sprinting towards the channel. It was a natural waterway, thirty or so metres across. Jason leapt off the short embankment, landing on the gently flowing surface of the water as if it were solid ground. He laughed with delight as he sprinted over the surface to the other side. He ducked down briefly as one of the dead shabs floated past, long enough to brush his fingers over its shell.
This monster corpse is unclaimed.
Would you like to loot [Shab]?
Jason kept moving as he looted the body, rainbow smoke rising behind him.
1 [Monster Core (Iron Rank)] has been added to your inventory.
10 [Water Quintessence] have been added to your inventory.
10 [Iron Spirit Coins] have been added to your inventory.
He recalled an odd potion he had looted from the first shab. After climbing onto the grass on the opposite embankment he pulled it out of his inventory.
Item: [Shell-Skin Potion] (iron rank, uncommon)
Potion that increases the hardness of skin at the cost of agility (consumable, natural).
Effect: Skin is hardened against physical attack and [Speed] attribute is decreased for 10 minutes.