Chương 66: Objective: Dive

There was something oddly satisfying about watching The Pactmaker, the self-proclaimed intellectual powerhouse, being nommed by the world's most insipid looking kaiju. It had the presence of a skyscraper with the proportions of a particularly obese piranha, including a tiny fish head, unthinking fish eyes, and the suction power of ten million vacuum cleaners. One moment he was there.

The next, there was a tennis-court-sized void in the debris field, a void which was quickly filled by the surrounding cloud of dust and sand. Ah. Well. At least he got what he deserved. Assuming he died. Oh who am kidding, he's a wizard. He's probably watching me comfortably from inside its guts, sniggering at the thought that I believe him dealt with. Rats.

As for me, the short-lived vacuum tossed me around, forcing me to curl up into a protective ball lest I crack my head against the vortex of stone surrounding me. I was still falling, which was a slight problem. Last I checked, magical-girl-spider-vampire-things hadn't quite evolved wings yet. If the other Custodians could've caught me, they would've, pretty sure. For a moment, I even saw a flicker of that blinding yellow above.

But then a rock as large as a car bashed my rearward eyes, and all I could think of was that I had to un-cast them to remove the blinding pain. Where is up? My [Proprioception sensors] were pretty sure it was… that way. Where is everyone else? The giant kaiju-fish had swum over the top of the cliff, likely to cause trouble wherever that tasty Fowl-flavored morsel had come from. Am I going to die? More productively, how could I prevent that?

If the little speedometer on my interface was correct, I was already approaching terminal velocity. Whatever disappeared into the abyss never resurfaced, or so people claimed, and I was already well past the first layer of clouds. If I died, would the system revive me at the top, mid fall, or at the very bottom? I couldn't gamble on that. Does that mean I'm giving up? Hell no. I tapped the camera on my glasses.

They were free, courtesy of Red Hill Forward Base's armory, just like the small kevlar vest I was wearing. The camera was intact, and with a flick of thought, I bundled the recordings of our fight into a package with all the notes I'd taken over the past few days. The Pactmaker wants to usurp Custodians… The Pactmaker can shapeshift into animals. Here's a non-exhaustive list of other spells… He's got an ego. Exploit that…

While the system uploaded that to a cloud before sending it to Addy, Becca, and everyone I thought might be able to do something with it, I was still falling. Falling fast. I suppose it is time. I didn't want to be too cliche. But you leave me no choice, fowl wizard!

"System… buy the web gun." [Engaging autobuy] [Web-gun 3000: Shoots a sticky web. Twist nozzle left for thin, long range webs rated x5 stronger than bungee cord. Twist right for wide, area-denial webs, perfect for catching villainous ne'er do wells or live prey. Web goo can be reloaded by fermenting biological protein within the ammo container. Store-bought web goo comes in various colors (WE ARE OUT OF WHITE STOP ASKING FOR WHITE WEBS). Price: 350] [Determining preferred color through purchase history.] [Soulcoins: 375->25] I'd been eyeing this one for a while. I would have bought it too, were it not for the extenuating circumstances of the past week. If I had, there would have been no antidote for Maya. She'd be dead. Now, she and Rufus were safely in the hands of another Custodian specialized in medical emergencies and— Oh my god, I don't have my backpack! [Delivery time: 1min 17 sec] Oh my god, I don't have the coins to insta-buy the web-gun! Big panic!

Well, I suppose now it's just a question of whether I hit the ground before it arrives or not. Slightly less panic! The rubble of the entire hillside had started clearing a few moments ago, drag leaving the lighter dust and tiny particles in a cloud further above. I was among the nearly-me-sized chunks of stone which hey, thanks physics for calling me heavy. So rude. Was I trying to deflect from the horrifying fact that I was falling to almost certain death? Maybe.

But if anybody had earned the right for some coping, it would be me. As pain and panic approached nominal levels, I unfurled my arms in an attempt to slow down my fall, if only slightly. The heavier chunks fell away beneath me, lighter ones starting to pelt my back. The great mound of The Cauldron whipped past right in front of my eyes. LT wasn't entirely right; it wasn't just like one tiramisu, it was a thousand tiramisus stacked on top of each other.

Layer after layer wooshed past, like a cutaway of a geological probe. Creatures nested on the outside or burrowed into holes in softer strata, peeking out to see what the commotion was about. Sometimes the walls opened up into massive cave complexes that took entire seconds to fall past. Some had Murderbots fighting giant plush teddybears, some had teddybears fighting giant carnivorous plants, and yet others combined creatures I had never seen before, all vying over territory, resources, or power. [Warning! You are have passed the edge of teleportation network support] [Warning! You have passed the edge of system signal coverage] [WARNING! Soul cannot be reliably retrieved beyond system reach] The Web-Gun appeared in my hand moments before the two system messages hit. I barely gave them a glance. I was moderately busy trying not to get eaten. A giant scintillating bird had peeled off of the wall and was diving down with a beak pointed at me like a spear.

With one hand, I aimed my Lucky-7 at the damn thing, and charged — what charges did I have left in this magazine? — one shot of anger." Echo!" One shot turned into two. The explosion hit it on the upper left wing, yet didn't do much besides knock it off course. The feathers gleamed like metal. A sheen of energy coated them before the bird suddenly accelerated downwards at speeds that blatantly ignored physics. The bird could cast magic. I was so screwed.

With my heart trying to jump up my throat and strangle me for my hubris, I eyed the stone massif, spotting a cave system opening up below me. Just have to wing it. I pointed the Web-Gun at the wall, no charge for [Arms & Arms Proficiency] to guide my aim. The bird was close. I pulled the trigger. A neon-pink line of liquid shot out of the gun, solidifying in flight into a stringy rope.

It hit the wall, a good four to five feet of the bubblegum-colored rope slapping right against it before it snagged well enough to divert my fall. What seemed like a good idea a couple miles above now met with terrifying practice. The line went taught, stretching, extending, and thinning in equal measure. I was roughly tugged to the side, the whoosh of a large body whipping past my hair too close for comfort.

My heart and stomach smashed into the tip of my toes as I dove into the upside-down parabolic swing, whooping and hollering all the while, like a mad girl making a mad dash for wonderland.

"Wooo! Ha-hah! Suck that, bird! Can't catch this magical girl spider vampire thing — OH CRAP!" The sting of pollen and leaves whipping my cheeks came closer as I sped towards a large mass of plant life. This close, it quickly became clear that atmospheric drag was barely slowing me down at all; I was just changing my vector from vertical to horizontal. At nearly a hundred miles per hour my right shin hit the crown of a tree, taking it clear off and sending me into a ballerina spin. Then came the rest of the canopy.

Branches, leaves, vines, insects, old bird-nests, and so much more all slapped me in the face, chest, legs, arms, and in every other part of my body. The web caught on something, twirling me around a sturdy branch in quickening loops, before snapping, slamming me straight into the muddy ground. I blacked out. I woke up. No clue how much time passed between then and now. I had the worst migraine in history, and when I tried to move up, my arms spasmed in pain.

In total, two were broken, leaving me with one arm missing, and three only moderately bruised. I couldn't put any significant weight on my right leg. Everything hurt. I wanted to cry. I coughed and it tasted like iron. But hey, at least Addy's vest was okay. [Warning! Soul cannot be reliably retrieved—]"I know, dammit!" I coughed some more, retching into the mud.

"What did you want me to do? I can't grow wings." And now, now I was stuck in the land of pain and pollen, some five or six miles below Hill 43. This was fine. Everything was under control. I planned this, or, well, some part of this. The Pactmaker probably thought I was never coming back. If anything, that meant he had no reason to threaten my family. In fact, me lying here in the mud, some tens of miles below the surface of the Cauldron was a good thing.

[Attempting to reconnect to system network] [Reconnection failed] [System shop unavailable] [Messages unavailable] [Geolocation unavailable] [...] [Switching to survival mode] [You woke up in captivity in a cave filled with fractal polyps, unsure where you end and the wall begins? You've been stranded on an alien world, with no hope of return? Don't fret! As a Custodian, you can still contribute to the safety of the people of earth. Gather information, survive as long as possible, then deposit your findings in the soulbound Custodian blackbox and activate the transponder. With any luck, future generations of earth's agents may stumble upon your corpse still clasping this lore-relevant item.] Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. [Fight on, Custodian!] A black suitcase slammed into the muck next to me, sinking two inches deep. I think now I'm allowed to cry, right?

I'm in pain, the system is expecting me to die for real, I'm in immense pain, and I'm never going to see Addy again. And also, I'm in pain. Have I mentioned the pain yet? I can feel my humerus and radius scraping along their respective breaks. I groaned into the muck. A shadow sped past above me. Suddenly, an instinct as old as time took over. On three arms and one leg, I pulled myself from the muck, and hid under a leaf three times as large as I was. The bird, that damn bird was still looking for me.

Please don't find me please don't find me. It whooshed past once, then again. As minutes ticked past in agony, hope turned to certainty. It didn't know where I was, and it wasn't bothering to stay long enough to keep on searching. Perhaps it too had to fear a predator trying to eat it whole. Like one of those kaijus. That was when I looked around for the first time, at this jungle I'd landed in. Jungle didn't do it justice.

Winding trees as large as redwoods and just as wide stood hundreds of feet tall, like kings laying claim to everything their shade fell on. Moss-overgrown vines along the thick bark made climbing easy in theory, while everything between seedlings and shrubs grew in the shadow of these titans. This cave, no, this small world was so alive. Even the trampoline-sized leaf I'd hidden under had that characteristic softness and color of new growth.

When I stopped moving and just listened, I could hear the plants growing; a crack here, a stretch there, a squealing sound like sliding across a dry balloon's surface followed by a pop. For the time, I stuffed the marveling to the back of my mind. I needed medical attention, and I needed to get away from the crash site before some other predator took an interest. Crawling on three arms and a leg was difficult, and made things slow. On the upside, I wasn't drawing much attention to myself at all.

On the downside, now there was mud in my bra. I found some young trees whose trunks I could use as splints, breaking and twisting and tearing them apart. The string came from shoelaces, and when those weren't enough, I wrapped the rest in thin green vines. It held… poorly.

"S-system, how do I make rope?" [Survival mode says: Find any fibre-y plant and rub it between your hands until the fibers loosen. Twist the fibers into string, then twist the string into rope. Useful for snare traps, climbing ropes, object crafting and, when all methods fail, a noose!] I whimpered at the stupid survival mode system interface. It felt even less benevolent than the normal system messages, and it seemed to have lost a few IQ points. It was nothing more than a glorified search machine at this point.

Relying on it was the mark of a fool, or of desperation, and I wasn't quite there yet. I felt pretty close though. While I worked, unfamiliar sounds bombarded my sense from all around. Big sounds, sounds of things screaming danger, screaming 'I want babies', screaming their last scream. I felt naked, barely armed, and entirely inadequate given the size of everything around me. This must be what a spider felt like. I could have done with less immersion. I'm hungry.

Truth is, while I'd been eating the requisite amount of food for one person in Hill 43, I was long past needing the calories of just one person. My Body was at 196, and that Body required upkeep. At the time, I was afraid that buying more MREs would have prevented me from reacting to any other bullshit The Pactmaker and the Fowl clones had sent my way. Now, I was regretting not having eaten two people's worth of rations. I want blood. Oh god, I really want blood. I've been starving myself for… a week? I NEED blood.

Blood blood blood. I looked up, spider eyes spotting a fat green something among the ferns that screamed 'food' to my instincts. It was an aphid, its butt green as grass and as large as a basketball, clinging to the stem of a succulent succulent with comparatively tiny claws. It flinched as I poked it, clinging onto the branch for dear life. The spider-me wanted to sink my teeth into it, to suck it dry. But the image of this huge aphid awakened an altogether different part of me. Aphids. Aphis Nerii. Sap-suckers.

This bug is basically one big balloon for sap. What is sap? A thin liquid mainly made of water and sugar, plus some amino acids, trace minerals, and a low amount of protein. Aphids process high volumes of sap. Excess sugars within sap are harmful to the insect. They are excreted from the anus in large globules, especially when putting pressure on the sides. I wonder… I grabbed the aphid and squished it. Within moments, a golden-colored glob of honeydew squished out its rear end.

It sorta reminded me of soft-serve ice cream. My stomach rumbled. I swallowed nervously. It's a secretion, not an excretion. It's a secretion, not an excretion. That was a lie. There were no special honeydew secretion glands. So yeah, I ate aphid poo. It tasted oddly like nothing much, besides sugar and a strong aftertaste of cut grass. It would do, for a while. Could I survive purely off of honeydew? No.

I needed proteins or my body would start cannibalizing itself, and fiber, or I could start looking forward to all sorts of gastrointestinal issues. Somewhere in the near distance, there came a set of clicks. Then more and more. The air filled with a heady acrid smell. I wiped my mouth, then staggered as far away as I could while still keeping the aphid in sight. Large, chitinous legs appeared from out the underbrush, then a skull, a thorax and petiole, then a gaster with a nasty stinger the length of my forearm.

An ant. It was the size of a pony. The ant tapped the aphid, the aphid wiggling in response. It continued on to another aphid, which didn't wiggle. Its mandibles dug into the sides, and soon that aphid too gave up a globule of honeydew which the ant lapped up with a long, spear-shaped tongue. While the ant harvested this cluster of aphids, there was movement from above.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a creature with the sheen of invisibility around it fall from a leaf high above and latch onto the back of the ant. It was a wasp… thing, with sixteen legs and eyes glittering like jewels. The ant, or what I thought kinda looked like an ant, fought briefly, its gaster bending unnaturally upwards, like that of an earwig, while its arm-length stinger dripped lethal venom. The wasp stung first. Whatever toxin the ant was injected with made it docile, letting the wasp do its work.

Fascinating. Also, moderately terrifying. Slowly with [More Spider Eyes] reforming to grant me full 360° vision, I backed away, not needing to see for myself how an invisible parasitic wasp did its deed up close, nor wanting to fall prey to one myself. Everything in this forest looked like it belonged to a normal tropical jungle on earth, except sized up to ridiculous degrees. Apparently the animals could all cast magic. And I didn't have a way to buy more guns, or ammo. I'm so screwed.

I am so, so, unfathomably screwed. I'm going to be eaten alive by the end of the week. As I snuck around the side of a tree as wide as a house, something wrapped around my ankle and tugged me into the air. It was a snare trap. And I didn't have a knife on me. Alternatively, I could just die of embarrassment. Thank you God, very cool. +++ The snare was functionally indestructible, a fact which I'd proven over the past two hours. It didn't budge when I tried to tear it apart.

Trying to abrade it along the bark of the tree I was hanging from was just as useless, as was trying to lift the snare past the edge of the branch. I even tried shooting my Web-Gun at a nearby giant tree, then pulling myself towards it until either the web or the snare gave way. By now, I was yoyoing between violently spasmodic episodes of gnawing on the damn thing and just hanging there apathetically. Because of course my damn Lucky 7 was on the floor, right next to the suitcase, both just out of reach."

Summon: Suitcase." The suitcase appeared in my hands. I tore through it. It had a notepad, various pens and pencils, a roll of duct tape, a cyanide pill, and a pencil sharpener. Taking the pencil sharpener apart without any tools while upside down was harder than expected. But I did it. Now I had a tiny razor blade, and a dream. The tiny razor blade cut all of half an inch into the rope before it snagged, got stuck, and sunk into the gooey substance. I cried a little. Quietly.

And continued hanging until my head felt as empty as my heart. I could summon my bazooka. Blow up the tree. That would definitely not attract every predator within a mile, nope. Wait. I'm an idiot." Summon: Rico." The pixie of violence popped into existence half an arm's length away from me, covered in gore, and in the middle of trying to make himself a cloak out of a torn piece of cloak-Fowl's clothing article of choice. He froze, gaze slowly panning around the forest canopy before locking with mine.

Then he began screaming. I grabbed him, cupped him in my hands. Now the screaming was muffled, but still audible.

"Shhh, stop that! Something's going to hear us!" He stopped screaming and popped his head out from between my fingers.

"Oh yeah? And why do you suppose that's my problem now? Because you summoned me somewhere entirely ridiculous! Where even is this place?"

"A couple miles below Hill 43." He stared at me for a short moment, then screamed into his hands.

"Okay, no, this is fine," he said with a mad giggle.

"It's just The Jungle, and we're… in the middle of it." His giggling was threatening to turn into a full on nervous breakdown.

"Hey. I'm sorry I pulled you down with me, but I seriously couldn't figure out any way out of this pickle, and I need help. I'm in mortal peril." At the words 'mortal peril', his ears flicked to attention. Rico glanced up at the snare, cursing to himself which the system only translated as <<Various anatomically impossible contortions upon this land>>. To his credit, he was quick to work with the large razor I'd given him.

Within ten minutes, the impervious snare was cut so thin that I could snap the final bit with brute force. Rico clicked his tongue. There was still the barest tinge of fae magic binding the two of us.

"Apparently your life wasn't in enough danger. Great."

"What even is this stuff made of?" I tugged a piece of the snare that had caught me, failing to snap it with all my might. It smelled like day-old eggs. Definitely biological, possibly protein. Mayhap spider silk? Except, spiders weren't intelligent enough to build snare traps. I wanted to take some with me and put it in my backpack when I remembered that I didn't have that with me either.

"Right. No backpack. No gear. Rats."

"We're all going to die," Rico groaned.

"Worrying, but irrelevant." I offered a hand for him to land on. He chose to straddle my wrist instead, like one of those mechanical bulls.

"You seem to know something about this place. Care to share?" He sucked on the inside of his cheek, mulling it over.

"It's a big forest."

"Uh-huh."

"But also, it's not just a forest. It's mixed with dirt from fae lands, with living metal veins, and things from other, darker worlds." His gaze flitted around nervously.

"My previous handler—""The elf-person ghost?" He nodded.

"She had a theory about the folded world."

"Which is what you call the Cauldron?" Another nod.

"There is, er… so, there's magic, right? Like, some places have lots of magic, some places have little. And it moves, sorta like <<Mushroom men>> at a <<Humus party>>, which is to say slowly, away from places with lots and… well, something something and then magic happens everywhere. And this is where it flows through, the folded world, like lots of paper stacked and folded in on itself." He looked so proud of himself.

It sounded like he was trying to explain an advanced metaphysical theory while being fuzzy on the details and short a few technical terms.

"So, if magic flows like water from places of high concentration to low concentration then… it's flowing from Faeworld through The Cauldron to Earth?" He nodded vigorously.

"Exactly! Except, everything that's too big sorta gets stuck."

"The Cauldron is a semi-permeable membrane."

"That's the weirdest word I've heard you use yet." He rocked back and forth.

"So yeah, anyways, anything big gets stuck in the middle, where it sorta just grows more and more like a pile of trash."

"Which creates a place of high pressure."

"When there's that much magic, things turn real weird. Like, not <<a certain flavor of pixie prank>>-weird. Like weird- weird. Animals turning inside-out without feeling pain. Portals, randomly appearing and disappearing. People and places suddenly taking the place of their reflections and the other way around."

"The Cauldron can't handle so much pressure, and so reality starts breaking down?" I asked.

"Yeah, pretty much." A sudden rustle in the canopy had him jumping into the back of my admittedly torn-up hoody.

"Speaking of, have you shot your shadow recently?"

"What? Why would I?"

"To keep it in line. Make sure it knows why you get to step on its feet day-in, day-out." I squinted at him, then raised an arm. My shadow followed suit.

"I… sorry, is this some sort of fae idiom I'm unaware of, or—" I watched in horror as the shadow of a tree branch slowly coiled around the neck of my shadow. The scrape of bark and silent tightening of the branches felt so very real on my own neck. I tried to pull away, but when I did, my shadow remained stuck in place. I too was stuck in place. It was my shadow after all.

"Shadow-snatcher," Rico hissed.

"Kill it, quick!"

"I… can't…" There was nothing around my throat, no matter how much I clawed or grasped. I grabbed my Lucky 7, charged anger, and— and I'd already shot anger. I didn't have the ammo. So I palmed a rock and tossed it at the nearest tree, all the while shadows grew at the edges of my perception.

"You have to punch it!"

"What do you… mean?" He zipped out, flailing his razorblade at thin air. But his shadow cut the branches' shadows. From somewhere above, a number of twigs rained down. Just punch the shadow. No biggie. I mimed an uppercut. The branches twitched, though it didn't feel like I hit anything. So I did it again, punching, whacking, chopping. Every hit sent a reverberation through the coils around my neck, and yet with every hit they loosened.

"Again! Left, right, hook — yes. Ye-hes!" Finally, with a devastating double right hook, the shadow lost its grip on me. I jumped back, watching the shadow quest around for its missing prey before slowly returning to a natural branch-like position.

"That was… terrifying," I said between gulping breaths.

"How do I avoid those?"

"Keep an eye out. Or two." He glanced sideways at my extra eyes.

"Should be doable since you're… you. That aside, either carry a powerful light, or find a completely dark place. No light, no shadows, just darkness."

"Isn't darkness and shadow the same thing?" He giggled.

"That is such a silly question. C'mon, get up and get a move on. Staying in one place is a bad idea no matter how armed you are. We have to introduce ourselves to the lord of this forest stat, or we'll be in big trouble."

"I wasn't aware forests worked on a feudal system."

"Well, maybe you should go outside more." Wow. So rude.

"So, got any more of those sweets?" he asked after we'd quietly walked away from the shadow tree thing for a few minutes. I shook my pockets out, finding exactly one piece of hard bubblegum, and offered it to my pixie companion.

"Just don't swallow. It's made for chewing and blowing bubbles."

"You earth people dream up the weirdest things." He snatched it out of my hands and immediately took a huge bite. His cheeks bulged, his entire face distending to accommodate too much gum.

"Tho, what'th the plan?" he asked.

"First, I was thinking of foraging for some food and water. I saw some berries that looked like giant raspberries. I'm also hoping that following that dip in terrain over there will lead us to a small creek or river. From there, I'll have to figure out surviving and how to send a message all the way back up. I'm, frankly, under-armed here; I can't make the climb on my own. So, I'll need a weapon, maybe a spear, maybe something else like a—" Something wrapped around my feet and tugged me up about ten feet.

It was, against the odds, another snare trap.

"Oh come on! Rico, some help—" Something sharp prodded my ribs.

"Eh?" On the jungle floor below me there were half a dozen pillbugs standing upright, one of them poking me with the tip of a long-as-heck spear. Oh come on, can I not have a single moment of peace?