Chapter 171.5 - The Fox, the Turtle, and the Cowardly Duck

Blinking exactly three times, Sylvia looked over the edge of her tiny canoe and gazed into the whirlpool that had stolen her companions. It was not a natural occurrence, but one enabled by the artifact attached to the ship they boarded. The fox was unfamiliar with such devices and remained incapable of deciphering its precise functions, but she could tell, by using her tail-antenna, that it was the sort that would malfunction if not perfectly controlled.

Humming a quick note, she magnified her vision and focused on the ship’s deck. All three familiar faces looked unharmed, but none were able to break free from the magic boat. They continued to plunge deeper and deeper into the ocean, vanishing completely after a brief delay, and leaving nothing but the swirling sea behind.

“Uhmmm… guys? I think you were supposed to get off…”

The words, of course, went unheard by their intended listeners. Her voice was unable to reach them with the waves in the way. She would have to give chase.

Humming a quick tune, she enveloped her tiny boat in a large bubble and forced it beneath the waves. She tried following the currents the whirlpool created, but they vanished as quickly as the aquatic vortex took form, dispersing before she got even halfway down to the depth at which they had disappeared.

For any other, it would have been a disastrous outcome. They were completely lost, outside even the 50 kilometer range that her sonar could reach. But the fox was unconcerned. The tracker she had placed on Claire, when they first parted ways at Borrok Peak, was still perfectly functional. It provided her the lyrkress’ precise coordinates, all the information she needed to warp right to her side.

Raising a hand in front of her, the vixen tried just that, but found her magic blocked. Something was preventing it from going through, likely a sort of barrier. She tried to probe at it again with a more powerful wormhole, but was rudely interrupted by a large fish. The deep sea creature had opened its jaws and extended its tongue. The muscular appendage, which was still at least five times the size of her boat, opened up to reveal its own second pair of fangs. The teeth made contact with her bubble and reeled her in, an attempt to consume the entire vessel.

Mildly annoyed, she spun around and turned the tables. Nibbling at the water, she warped half its face inside her mouth and swallowed the rest with the bite that followed. She tried to turn her attention back to the strange magical phenomenon, but was greeted with another fish, and then another and another. Only half an hour later did she finally find herself free from their presence. The total amount of biomass she consumed was something in the range of seventeen thousand tons, but the fox girl was unbothered, and her waistline appeared exactly as it had before.

It was only after basking in her attackers’ rich flavour that she recalled the task at hand. Her mark was telling her that Claire was on the move; it would only be a matter of time before she grew anxious, just as she had during their previous separation.

The thought prompted a smile, as well as a burst of motivation. Pressing both hands on the tiny boat’s oars, she rowed as quickly as she could and propelled herself through the sea. The physical motion was entirely unnecessary; her bubble was the true source of her speed, but the game of pretend made for a more enjoyable experience. A song erupted from her throat as she continued, an ode that roughed the seas around her and summoned a storm in the skies above.

Had her father been present, his jaw surely would have dropped far enough to hit the floor. Because the boat had become a willow, and the oars her swords. The trump card he had taken so many years to learn and perfect was stolen entirely in passing. It wasn’t a perfect copy. Her version of the song was incomplete. She had only heard half the elven hymn, so the scene she crafted warped and differed from his as she was forced to improvise. The beautiful autumn leaves were turned into the abyssal horrors that she so often crafted in her downtime, and the boat soon morphed from willow to shoggoth. The paddles went from swords to tentacles, propellers that drove the many-eyed blob through the waves and into the depths.

The magical coordinates led her to a distorted, underwater structure, another magical whirlpool. Unlike the previous swirl, the one before her was effectively a portal, an arrangement of vectors meant to take her to another plane.

“So that’s why my spell wasn’t working.”

The fox twisted her lips into a small frown as she stared at the god-made structure. It was difficult to determine exactly which deity it belonged to, but her first impression was that it likely lay with Flux, for she was the goddess that ruled the seas. Further observation, however, revealed that it was not the flow that had formed the vortex. Its dimensions were too regular, too orderly for it to be the work of a greater being aligned with chaos, a testament to Griselda’s handiwork. Though less proficient, the goddess of the moon and tides was certainly capable of interfering in the waters and their affairs. Whatever the case, her task was unchanged. The poor lyrkress would cry if she didn’t hurry, and as adorable as her heartbroken, tear-stained face was, the fox wanted little to do with the petty aftermath sure to follow.

Giggling to herself, Sylvia rowed through the portal and warped into a boring, grey room with nothing but a dimensional rift behind her and a sealed door to her front. It was covered with chains, the very same ones that had barred Farenlight from escaping its den.

A small sigh escaped her lips as she carefully observed the immovable objects. The fox lacked the divinity required to interact with them directly, and suspected that breaking through was less than an optimal choice. Such an act of violence was likely to anger the goddess that owned the dungeon, and she had no intention of earning herself a dose of divine fury.

“I guess I just have to persuade it.” Twisting her lips into a pout, she walked up the door and gave it a quick knock. “Hello, Mr. Doorgateportalthingy.”

There was no audible response, but the fox’s ears perked up, as if there was. From an outsider’s perspective, the scene appeared as would an absurd ruse, but Sylvia was an aspect and reality was in the eyes of the beholder.

“I know,” she spoke again after a moment of respite. “But I don’t actually exist so it’s okay if you let me through.”

Silence.

“No she isn’t! Flitzegarde doesn’t think I exist either, so it’s gonna be fine. No one’ll ever have to know.”

More silence.

“Yeah, I promise!”

There was another brief delay. Followed by the door suddenly swinging wide open on its own, closing behind her as soon as she moved through and cast her eyes on the artificial world that lay beyond.

It was a city, or at least the remains thereof. A beautiful, ancient civilization that belonged not beneath the depths, but well above the waves. There were stone buildings with stained glass roofs shattered by the pressure of the deep seas, temples and cathedrals maintained only by the divine powers that were, and homes aplenty, slowly eroded by water, time, and the countless monsters therein.

The coordinates lay somewhere in the center of the city. It was a large district, spanning at least a dozen square kilometers, but it was completely out of reach. An opaque barrier kept it isolated from the rest of the subspace, maintained by three bright beams of light, each attached to an obelisk.

Knowing exactly what she had to do, the fox stretched her back, rowed to the first stone tower, and prepared to obliterate it with a bolt of arcane magic. A large cetacean burst out from the ground in front of the stone right as she loosed the spell, an imposing beast with a spinning blade growing out of its head and five more attached to each fin. But imposing was not the only word that could be used to describe it, nor even the most accurate. Because it was just as impressive and striking as it was dead.

The sea creature had bashed its blade into her spell, only to find itself obliterated by the very same explosion that destroyed the obelisk behind it.

“Uhmmm… oops?” The mage blinked as she cast her eyes on the half evaporated corpse. Its tail was the only part of it that remained. The rest of its flesh had been completely and utterly erased.

An awkward, troubled smile on her face, the murderer-in-denial put her hands back on the paddles and quickly rowed away. Distancing herself from the scene of the crime, she zoomed towards the second tower and prepared for its destruction. Having learned from her first experience, she waited half a moment for the guardian, an oversized duck, to spawn before moving it out of her way with a force and crushing the obelisk with another.

The bird’s aggression came to an immediate end as it realised the fate of its charge. Blinking rapidly, it looked between the fox and the ruined stone structure before dropping to the seafloor and scampering behind a building, its massive orange feet quivering with terror.

“It’s okay! I’m not going to hurt you!”

Sylvia teleported on top of the stone-skinned bird and gave it a light pat, but her sudden movements only added to its hysteria. Going into full panic mode, it quacked up a storm and sprinted away at top speed. The first building it found was immediately destroyed, battered and broken by one of its wings. Quacking another three times, the duck closed its eyes and stuck its head into the resulting pile of rubble. A desperate attempt to pretend that there was no threat to be observed.

Its antics were met with nothing but a quiet giggle. Unlike a certain friend of hers, the aspect cared very little for the experience the traumatized canard offered. Of far greater value was the chance to play with its feathers, so she took a moment to roll around atop the waterfowl’s back. Once satisfied, she plucked a Claire-sized feather to keep as a souvenir and stored it in her tail before returning to her ship and rowing to the final generator.

Its guardian was no more impressive than the last, a phantom in the shape of a large boat. It spawned an illusory army of undead, the strongest of which was only a greater lich. But because it was only level 1000, it was hardly worth considering; the legendary undead would have failed to qualify as a threat, even in the case that it had been more than just a hallucination. A single soul rend saw everything destroyed. The lich, the ghost ship, and the obelisk were all shattered and turned to dust.

Rowing her boat again, she moved towards the region the barrier had previously veiled, but failed to find the lyrkress within. What awaited her instead was a massive marine monster, a sea turtle with a neck five times the length of his shell, and a tail that was even longer. Fierce heads sat on the end of both, lined with jagged teeth, tusks, and horns aplenty.

One of the heads turned to her as she arrived and offered a light nod.

“Hi!” She reciprocated the hello with a wave of her own. “Have you seen a dopey deer-snake thing anywhere?”

“State your name, intruder.” Ignoring the foxgirl’s question, the giant fish narrowed its eyes and began with a demand. Both its heads were trained right on her, its eyes glowing with an eerie yellow light.

Though a bit miffed, the half-elf soon decided that there was no harm in playing along. If the local was friendly, then there was a chance it would be able to tell her where her lyrkress had gone. “I’m Sylvia. Sylvia Redleaf.”

She expected the appetizer to name itself in kind or provide some sort of format greeting, but she received none of those things. It returned only a sneer, like a hunter that had caught its prey.

“Then as the immortal protector of this dungeon, Sylvia Redleaf, I invoke upon you the curse of lost time.”

A magic circle flared to life beneath the long-necked turtle and marked the ritual’s completion. Calling upon the curse god’s power, it cast a powerful hex that would grind the named target’s perception of time to a standstill. It was a powerful ability, but only lasted until the target was first struck, and required a strict set of conditions to activate. He would have had to change his plans had she not named herself mid-rite. In essence, it was a cheap, impractical party trick, albeit one that remained undeniably effective. Its use had aided the turtle in felling decades of intruders, some of which had levels much higher than his own.

He could tell from the fox’s aura that she happened to fall under that exact category. The sheer amount of magic contained within her tiny frame was great enough to shatter him under its weight. In a fair fight, he never would have been able to last long enough to cast a spell. But the battle was over the moment she fell for his trap.

His heart brimming with confidence, he opened his mouth and prepared his most powerful attack, the ultimate skill that he had acquired upon the acquisition of his thousandth level. It required thirty seconds to charge, but its potency was so great that it could tear through the spacetime that kept him confined within the dungeon. In just a few more decades, he was confident that he would finally be able to blast a hole large enough for him to leave.

It was as he mulled that thought that he realised that something was off. The girl’s tail was swishing. A look with his second head confirmed that she was anything but lost in time. Her eyes were moving around, and she was holding a finger to her chin, as if to scrutinize either him or his attack.

When he next blinked, he found neither head looking in her direction. All four of his eyes were focused instead on the ruined buildings that he had spent the past few decades observing. He tried to filter a breath through his gills, but couldn’t. Something was wrong with his throat, and it took looking down for him to realise just what that something was. His necks were tied together. Each had been used to restrain the other, and they were entangled in a way that made it impossible for them to part.

Disbelief flooded his mind. He had no idea how she had resisted his curse, nor how he suddenly wound up with his body tied in such a knot.

Terror followed soon after. He began to tremble as he looked down at the strange fox, who only smiled and stuck out her tongue, with her hands behind her hips.

“Don’t worry, I’m not here to fight,” she said. “I’m just looking for my friend.”

He tried to open his mouth to speak, but the words refused to come out, not with his neck crushed beneath its own weight.

“Oh… uhh… oops. I guess you can’t talk anymore, huh? It’s okay! I think I can probably still fix you.” The world suddenly spun. It felt like he saw everything go round a dozen times in a fraction of a second. So blurry and imperceptible were the sights that he wasn’t even sure what he had really seen. But once it ended, he found his heads back in their previous positions, and his necks unrestricted again.

Gasping, he filtered as much water through his gills as he could before bowing his head in panic. “I yield. I’ll do whatever you say, so long as you leave right after.”

“Ughhh… you don’t listen when people talk, do you?” mumbled the strange elf. “I told you, I’m looking for my dumb friend! She’s really long, and has hooves and stuff. Oh, and she has silver hair. And a really sittable head.”

“I haven’t seen anyone in the past few weeks, let alone anyone like that,” he said.

“Oh…” The fox’s ears drooped visibly. “That’s not good. I guess I just have to investigate the coordinates…” She dropped to the seafloor and walked up to a particularly large clam. “It should be right here? I think the flow of magic is kinda off, but…”

A smirk appeared on the monster’s face as she closed her eyes and focused. Her guard was down; it was the perfect chance to strike. A chance he took in stride.

Rearing back both his heads, he lunged at her with all the force he could muster, opened his jaws wide, and closed them around the witless forest dweller. A sickening crunch followed, a sound that signified the breaking of bone and rending of flesh.

But it was not the fox that was devoured.

“Ughhh… you’re so annoying!”

Sylvia spoke as she swallowed the creature’s skull. The entire front half of its body had found itself in her mouth as soon as she parted her lips.

“And you’re not even tasty! You're so yucky and muddy that I can’t even tell if you’re supposed to be a fish!”

Its second brain raced as it desperately tried to make sense of the situation. But it too was consumed. Before it could so much as process the source of its pain. There was nothing left, the only proof of its existence the holes its fangs had punched in its attacker’s ship.

“And you ruined the boat! What the heck! I hope Claire doesn’t get mad at me…”

Groaning, Sylvia turned her eyes from the ruined vessel back to the strange point in space. The nuisance was out of her hair. She could finally focus her efforts on tracking her lost pet.