ScaleGuard 4: We Were All Isekai'd to a GameLit Fantasy World Page 2

  It was… warm. Cozy. It was like I was drifting in the comfiest of all possible beds, and I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes again and let sleep take me once more into its warm embrace.

  I’d been here before.

  “Oh goddammit,” I said. “Did I die again? From, what? Alcohol poisoning?” Fuck, Kono was going to give me so much shit for that.

  Well, then again, maybe not. I hoped she wouldn’t feel too guilty for egging me on to my demise. I mean, a little bit of guilt, sure. But I didn’t want her like, crushed by the burdens of her sorrows or whatever.

  “Oh, calm down. You’re not dead.”

  I recognized that voice. No sooner had I thought about turning to face the speaker than the entire world shifted and I was looking directly at a buff shirtless man with a crocodile head.

  “Hey Offler,” I said.

  “I’m not… OK, what even is that? You made that same joke last time.” I opened my mouth to explain, but Sobek raised his hand and shook his head. “Never mind. I only have you for a little bit while you sleep, so we can’t waste time.”

  “Oh,” I said. “What’s up?”

  The god regarded me with an unreadable expression-- which I suppose was to be expected, given his face was that of a crocodile’s. After a moment, he said: “First, I suppose congratulations are in order.”

  “They are?” I asked.

  “Of course! You finally got me some followers, over in Hyralia. About time too. I was beginning to think you’d forgotten our deal.”

  “Nah, I was just looking for a good opportunity,” I said. That was a lie; I actually had pretty much forgotten that I was supposed to proselytize for him until the Hyralians started worshipping Sobek on their own. “I could have preached to the elves and orcs and whatnot, but I figured they wouldn’t be receptive.”

  Sobek cocked his head. “You’re more confident than you were last time we talked.”

  I shrugged. “Last time I hadn’t saved any worlds or stopped or started any wars.”

  “Eh. Good point. Anyway, I have a task for you.”

  “You mean, aside from spreading the Good News?”

  The god shuddered. “Please don’t phrase it like that. I had enough of that damn carpenter back on Earth.”

  I grinned and didn’t say anything.

  Sobek cleared his throat, and I wondered if said throat was more humanoid or crocodilian. I don’t think I’d ever heard Riverjaw clear his throat, but that didn’t necessarily mean crocodiles couldn’t do it. Damn, I wish I still had access to Google so I could look up whether or not crocodiles could clear their throats. This question was going to bug me for the rest of the week; I just knew it.

  “Anyway,” Sobek said. “Your efforts have not gone unnoticed, by myself or by the other gods. I have entered into a wager with two of them, about which of our Champions can conquer a specific Dungeon first.”

  “OK,” I said.

  “So you will be going to that Dungeon first thing tomorrow.”

  “Um,” I said. “I’m not the one who made a bet, so…”

  Sobek held up a finger. “If you succeed and I win the bet, then I will be able to command both those other gods, meaning I can have them bestow their blessings onto you. How’s that for an incentive?”

  I tapped my chin. “Who are the other gods?”

  “Thor and Amaterasu.”

  “So a thunder god and a sun goddess? Sounds pretty cool.”

  Sobek stared at me. “You recognize them, but you didn’t recognize me.”

  I just smiled.

  He shook his head. “When you awaken, there will be a map in your hands. Marked on that map is the location of a special site called a Godsway that can transport you great distances. You will use it to travel to the Draconian Mountains, where the Dragon Lord’s Temple awaits. You and your party have seven days to reach the Temple. Once all three Champions and their parties are assembled, the competition will begin.”

  “Cool,” I said. “So what can you tell me about these other Champions?”

  Sobek said something, but I didn’t hear it. The world suddenly rushed by me in a dull roar, and before I knew it I was lying in my bed in the inn, a piece of parchment in my fingers, and my head was killing me.

  Fucker couldn’t even bother to cure my hangover. Useless damn god.

  III

  The Godsway

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Kono said flatly.

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this!” Lyra said with a voice full of wonder.

  We were trudging through the forest, following Vaingloria since she was, apparently, the one of us who was most skilled with using a map. Hey, me and Kono were city folk, and Lyra had spent most of her life either living under her father’s thumb or wandering aimlessly, while Riverjaw was built for, well, rivers, and was also a crocodile. Vee was the only one of us with a rural upbringing that had required her to navigate wildernesses.

  Sometimes I wondered if maybe we weren’t actually cut out for the adventuring life. Then again, between stopping the Plague Lord in Heliosor, recovering the Crown of the Orc King in the Gorla Steppe, and leading a successful revolution of the proletariat in Hyralia, we seemed to be doing surprisingly OK for ourselves.

  “Look,” I said. “Sobek’s orders. He says we need to get to this Godsway and travel to the Draconian Mountains, so we gotta do that.”

  “Why? Because he told you in a drunk dream?” Kono asked.

  “If Lord Sobek commands it, I shall follow,” Lyra said. “I swore an oath when I became a paladin.”

  “But why the Draconian Mountains?” asked Vaingloria. She paused to check our progress against the map. “Why not some place closer?” She nodded to herself and started off in a new direction, the rest of us following close behind.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He made a bet with some other gods about whose Champion could conquer some dungeon first.”

  “‘Dungeon’ as in prison, or ‘Dungeon’ as in weird pocket-universe full of monsters?” asked Kono.

  “I assume it’s the second one.”

  “Damn.”

  “What Dungeon are we to conquer?” asked Lyra.

  “Um,” I said. “I think he said it was the Dragon Lord’s Temple?”

  Vaingloria stopped dead in her tracks. “What!? Nobody’s ever conquered the Dragon Lord’s Temple before!”

  “Really?” I asked. I shook my head. “What exactly does conquering mean in this context?”

  “It means beating the Dungeon,” Lyra told me. “It means reaching and defeating the Dungeon Boss.”

  “What, like we did in Arvalas with the kings?”

  Lyra shook her head. “Not exactly. I guess you could say Arvalas was a sort of lower-case-d dungeon, but proper Dungeons, with a capital d, are rare and mysterious places. Traps and monsters continuously spawn within them, and even the layout of the Dungeon constantly changes. The Dungeon Boss is the most powerful monster within, and it usually guards a trove of riches.”

  “Once slain, a Dungeon Boss returns on the next full moon,” Vaingloria explained. “Along with the treasure trove. But no one even knows what the Boss of the Dragon Lord’s Temple is, because no one has ever reached it and lived to tell the tale.”

  “Great,” I muttered. “And Sobek expects us to do it before two other adventuring parties can.”

  “I am certain Lord Sobek’s faith in us is not misplaced!”

  “Thanks, Lyra.”

  Kono sighed. “This is what I get for signing onto an adventuring party with a fucking Champion and a paladin.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “So quit yer bitchin’.”

  She glared at me and said nothing.

  After a few more minutes of trudging through wilderness, trying not to trip over roots or shrubs or walk into a tree, Vaingloria suddenly stopped and stood still as a statue. She seemed to be standing just on the edge of a clearing, so I walked up behind her and started to ask “what’s wrong?” Excep
t I had barely started on the first syllable when she shushed me.

  Then I saw what she was staring at.

  We’d reached the Godsway. In the center of the clearing, overgrown with moss, was a stone platform with a massive ring floating a foot above it, slowly rotating. Small stairs led up to the platform, and old pillars surrounded it.

  But none of that mattered; not even the floating ring. Because also on the platform, facing away from us, were two big furry monsters. They were bulky, covered in brown fur with streaks of grey, and stood on all fours.

  “Do you think they know we’re here?” I whispered.

  One of the creatures reared up on its hind legs and its head turned all the way around to look at us with two huge eyes on a feathered face. It hooted.

  Huh. I didn't know Crucible had Owlbears.

  “I think they do now,” said Lyra.

  The owlbear looking at us opened its beak and let out an ear-piercing screech before turning its body to face us as well and charging forward. Its companion jumped at the sound of the screech and looked around frantically, its big round eyes settling on us a second later.

  I hefted my axes. “Great ready!” I called.

  Three ghostly apparitions swarmed about the charging owlbear, and the beast jerked back and swiped uselessly at them. With a silent thanks to Vee for distracting it, I threw the ax in my left hand at the owlbear and ran at it, raising my right-hand ax for a good old fashioned melee strike.

  I reached the owlbear just as my first ax struck its shoulder, and I swung my other ax at its stomach, chopping into its gut and spraying blood all over me.

  “Ugh! Damnit!” I leaped backward just as one of the monster’s big claws swiped at my face, recalling my left ax to my hand.

  Behind the first owlbear, I heard the second screech and start charging forward. I caught a fleeting glimpse of its eyes focused squarely on me and prepared myself to fight two big monsters at once.

  Luckily, I didn’t have to.

  A silver glow enveloped the second owlbear, and it immediately turned its attention away from me and charged right past myself and its companion, instead going for Lyra. I didn’t dare risk turning away from my current opponent to look, but judging from the “ha!” and the angry screeching, I assumed she was holding her own.

  The owlbear that I’d so rudely chopped fell upon me, going from hind-legs to all-fours in what seemed to be an effort to crush me under its bulky mass. I threw myself to the side, stumbled, and fell into a roll, just barely managing to avoid the beast’s body. I scrambled to my feet.

  *Pop!*

  A crocodile manifested on top of the owlbear and immediately started trying to get its jaws around the monster’s head. This proved easier said than done, what with how big and round the owlbear was. But it provided me with the distraction I needed.

  As it thrashed about trying to get this angry reptile off of it, I jumped forward and slammed both axes into the owlbear’s neck as hard as I could. The heads buried themselves inside the monster’s flesh, and it shrieked in pain before rearing back to swing at me.

  I dodged backward and recalled the axes to my hands. The weapons tore themselves free of the owlbear’s neck in a fountain of red blood and grey fur and feathers. The owlbear stumbled forward.

  “Necrosis!”

  Immediately, its wound turned black, and it croaked out a pained sound as the black rot spread across it. Feathers fell from its face and fur from its body, and its head collapsed limply, hanging from what remained of its neck. It took a few more stumbling steps forward before collapsing, dead.

  Somehow, I managed to keep myself from puking from both the sight and the smell.

  “Thanks!” I called to Vee once I was certain that I’d kept my breakfast down. I turned to see Lyra striking the second owlbear’s paws away while Kono leaped on its back and planted her daggers in its eyes. Riverjaw bit down on its hindlegs, and together they all just sort of threw it to the ground and then stabbed it until it stopped moving.

  “So,” I said. “Who wants to take a quick break?”

  *

  “Anyone want watermelon?” I asked, putting the big fruit on the ground next to our campfire. The great thing about the Survivalism Ability was that it guaranteed I would find something edible every time I went foraging, even if it made no goddamn sense. This was the first time I’d even seen a watermelon in Crucible.

  “Huh,” Kono said, studying the big round green thing. “I would, but I kind of don’t have an appetite right now.”

  “Why not?”

  Kono and Lyra exchanged glances, and then they both looked over at the one member of our party who wasn’t at the campfire.

  “Oh,” I said. “OK, yeah, I get it.”

  Vee was currently removing the guts from one of the owlbears, very carefully putting each individual piece out in a pattern next to the body and shooting warning glances at Riverjaw, who was watching with great interest.

  The smell was awful.

  “Hey, Vaingloria?” I asked. “You really need to do… um, that? Now?”

  “The Mistress of the Dark Arts waits for no one,” she replied, unspooling what I assumed was a large intestine from inside the dead owlbear. “Besides, I let you guys have meat from the non-rotted one.”

  I glanced at the meat skewers that were cooking in the fire. “We appreciate it,” I said. “But… what are you doing?”

  “Necromancy.”

  “Ah.”

  She carefully laid out the intestine, then removed a, um, something. Whatever organ it was, she apparently didn’t need it for whatever she was doing, because Vee just frowned at it for a few seconds before tossing it to Riverjaw, who was all too happy to gobble it up.

  “The non-rotted one, she says,” Kono muttered. “She just waited for us to get some meat off it before she started rotting it.”

  I looked at the other dead owlbear. It was now a skeleton, covered in foul-smelling slime that used to be flesh and meat.

  “I should be done in about an hour!” Vaingloria told us. “Go on and eat without me.” She scratched at her forehead, then grimaced as she realized she’d just gotten blood and whatever other fluids all over her face and glasses. “I’m going to need to wash up after this anyway.”

  “Yes,” Lyra said flatly. “You are.”

  Vaingloria got back to work, and I shrugged and started carving the watermelon.

  *

  After dinner, we decided to settle in for the night. Vee was still working when I curled up on my sleeping mat, but she must have finished at some point since she was sprawled out on her own mat snoring away when I woke up.

  I sat up, stretched, yawned, and froze.

  An owlbear was standing on the edge of our camp, looking at me. Or, rather, I think it was. The damn thing had no eyes. And it also had no fur or feathers, just black skin stretched taut over its skeleton, giving it a gaunt appearance. It took me a moment-- during which time I was still with dread-- to even realize it was an owlbear.

  There was a rustling, and a second twisted monstrosity stepped out of the forest.

  “Good morning.”

  I slowly turned my head to look at Vaingloria, who was rubbing her eyes with one hand and fumbling for her glasses with another.

  “Vee,” I said slowly, “what the fuck are those things?”

  “The owlbears,” she said. “Well, zombie owlbears. Well, technically they’re mummies, since I removed all the fluids from them. I rotted their flesh into goo, which I then stretched over their bones and solidified into new skin. Then I animated them under my will.”

  “They’re horrifying.”

  “Thank you.”

  Lyra yawned and sat up, shaking her head to try and get the strands of blonde hair out of her face. Then she saw the undead owlbears and yelped.

  “Vee’s new pets,” I told her.

  Lyra nodded wordlessly, staring at the monsters. Kono groaned from her bedroll.

  Over the course of the morning,
everyone gradually got used to the presence of the horrible mummy things, and we were able to focus on our task at hand. After breakfast, I found myself standing in front of the floating ring in the center of the clearing.

  “Do you know how to use it?” Kono asked.

  I shook my head. “Lyra?”

  “I have never even heard of these things.”

  “Cool,” I said. I did the first thing I could think of; I reached out, put my hand on the cool surface of the ring, and spoke: “Draconic Mountains.”

  For a second, nothing happened, and I assumed that that was not, in fact, how the Godsway was activated. Then the ring started glowing.

  I jerked my hand away and stepped back, and as one we all stared in awe as a blue shimmer spread across the inside of the ring. It floated there, humming, the blue glow practically beckoning us forward.

  “OK, bud,” I said with a gulp. “Let’s do this.”

  Riverjaw looked up at me and I dismissed him. The crocodile vanished, but I still felt his presence through our link. I’d been hesitant to dismiss him ever since I’d found myself trapped and unable to summon him back in Hyralia, but I assumed a mountain range probably wouldn’t be hospitable for a cold-blooded reptile.

  With a deep breath, I stepped forward through the ring.

  I saw… I’m not even sure. Glows. Colors. Swirling vortexes and protean masses and shapes that were not shaped like anything. I was walking forward, through a fog full of images that were tantalizingly familiar and yet completely meaningless. Everything was warm, and yet I was freezing. My bones shivered in the cold, and yet my skin was covered in sweat.

  I could taste smells and smell colors. I saw the shapes of sounds and heard the sounds of tastes. I walked through a realm where everything was possible and yet nothing could ever be. And just as it felt as my mind might break itself free from my skull in protest of everything I was experiencing, I was suddenly stepping out of a ring and into a vast cavern.

  Falling to my knees, I gasped for breath. I heard and saw from the corners of my eyes the rest of the ScaleGuard, stumbling out of the portal and desperately trying to collect themselves. The only ones of us that seemed unfazed were the two terrible owlbear mummies following Vee around.