Heretical Fishing-Chapter 65Book 4: : Assemble

Beneath a predawn sky half concealed by a form so black it reflected neither light nor life, I sensed the power about to be unleashed from the body of an octopus larger than gods-damned a whale.

Like Claws, it was an elemental, it’s chi both obvious and terror-inducing. Abyssal—its aspect was abyssal. That realization lit a candle of excitement within me, but I had to snuff it out. The thing was about to explode, and the detonation would annihilate every soul for kilometers.

I grieved the losses that would follow, genuine despair gripping my heart and squeezing it tight. Then, I accepted them.

Rest in peace, Bob, I thought. I grabbed his golden throne as I wrapped all my friends in essence, preparing to teleport us to shore. At the same time, I would encase the cephalopod and our ship in a funnel that ensured only their destruction, redirecting most of the force skyward.

But before I could act, a small, opportunistic, and stupidly ambitious mammal made his move. The raccoon slipped from Claws’s pocket, stole the strength of and tendrils I tried to grab him with, and zipped through the air faster than I’d ever seen him go, arriving at his destination before we could stop him.

He wasted not a second. His forepaws plunged into the still-growing bubble of earthen chi. Before our very eyes, and in the path of a blast that would turn him into stardust, the fuzzy little idiot swiped the power for himself. He glowed like a miniature sun, blue and white and lacking remorse.

Claws let out an incoherent screech. Cinnamon and Borks watched in awe. Bonnie and Barry both just looked confused, unsure what to think. Even the octopus—or was it a kraken?—seemed startled by the wild-card play. He delayed the detonation, and by the ripple of his eyes, I assumed he was weighing countless possibilities.

“Frack me,” I said, already redirecting my will.

I had wanted to avoid this. I’d been willing to sacrifice Bob only because doing otherwise would have left me and the network below with almost no power. The thieving little bastard had forced my hand—I couldn’t let him die. Both partitions of will snapped into place, and I created a giant sphere around the midnight-colored eldritch horror, its prismatic walls thick enough to withstand the blast.

Now, the kraken could only destroy itself. Part of me was thankful I’d been pushed to this course of action—Bob would survive—but most of me was still perturbed. To meet a creature right out of legend, only to immediately facilitate its annihilation…

But then the situation changed again.

The kraken foresaw its own demise. Before its blast could go off, it halted the detonation. My heart sank. I’d just used almost all of my essence to forestall an attack that hadn’t come. I saw no way out.

Until, that is, the raccoon did something downright dastardly, revealing that his machinations went deeper than Claws or I could have ever imagined.

He’d never intended on stealing the earth elemental’s power for himself. It was too much energy. It’d eventually overwhelm him, and Claws would rip it away.

Why had he stolen it, then? Well, because he could. There was only one way to ensure the success of his heist, and that was to offer the spoils to someone, or something, that could handle it.

His chittering laughter was distorted by the billowing cloud of earth flowing through him and down into the ground. The network below, its reserves as emptied as I was, readily accepted the offering. The chi poured down into its depths, which, by extension, sent it pouring into me. I gasped as the essence flowed into my heart, its touch foreign and heavy and wrong.

Claws unleashed a string of expletives as she rocketed toward her familiar, a bolt of lightning and chaos made manifest. He responded to the murder on her approaching face with a small grin that conveyed his thoughts with unerring simplicity.

I had to—it’s who I am.

She hit him like a three-hundred-pound linebacker, but the bubble of earth didn’t cease flowing just because he’d been forcefully ejected. Nothing short of a miracle could stop it anymore.

Borks’s nose twitched as he looked at me, sniffing the foreign essence filling my body. His ears drooped, but Cinnamon lifted them back up.

He’s still our master! she batted him on the noggin.* He just smells bad!

Before I could take offense, the kraken, its lightless eyes now exuding a black aura, flew into an apoplectic rage. Fortunately, it no longer planned on releasing a warhead’s worth of energy. Less fortunately, it was absorbing the essence instead, flooding its many tentacles with an incomprehensible amount of power. Like the pressurized depths had opened up before us, my very senses were sucked away from me, drawn into its abyssal void.

Before it could lash out and break Bob in half, I teleported everyone. Well, almost everyone. Claws had crash-tackled her raccoon from sight. They were off in the dunes somewhere having a slap fight, and I thought it best to let them hash it out for a minute.

We appeared on the shore south of Tropica. I hadn’t wanted to exert too much of the wrong-feeling chi just in case—which had apparently been a prudent move, if the spike of pain in my everything could be believed.

The kraken, an abyssal force of righteous fury and sprayed water, darted through the waves, blessedly leaving Bob whole. Behind its midnight form, the first rays of sunrise breached the horizon, adding a lovely pink backdrop to the Cthulhian nightmare racing toward us.

I raised a hand and prepared to experience even more pain in my everything, but just as I was about to snap my fingers and bring others here, they came to me.

Teddy barrelled through the now-splintered door of the Church of the Leviathan, the religious group’s deity lobster riding his back like a suit of pinchy armor. Their head priest, Gary, held onto said deity’s mighty tail for dear life, the rest of him trailing behind.

Teddy’s eyes were just as incensed as the cephalopod bearing down upon us, so he didn’t give his customary wave. Pistachio picked up the slack, lifting a gigantic snipper in greeting as his steed skidded to a stop on the sand.

Speaking of skidding, Rocky had released twin explosions from the north side of Tropica’s rockwall. His volcanic carapace left a massive line in the shore as he used friction to slow his flight. He took one last hit of a cigarette, threw it into his mouth, and stared down our attacker, striking a pose both effortless and supremely cool.

The next to arrive had been my only pal to ignore my mental orders. She’d started gathering her power the moment I teleported Bob back to Tropica, and now that the call-to-action had finally arrived, that knot of essence erupted from the shore.

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At first, it was only a lump in the sand. Then, thick roots exploded up. A sprawling canopy formed, and as I gazed over at the trunk, I blinked. It was neither citrus, nor the blue-tinged variety she’d originally occupied. Lemon, my trusty tree spirit, had grown into a mangrove tree. Spearlike roots popped up around its base, and despite her being my friend, I had to fight off a shiver at the power swelling within them.

Woe is the enemy that makes the mistake of stepping on those…

Her other tree-spirit bud, who’d yet to receive a name, didn’t come, but that was okay—I had aerial reinforcements to focus on.

When I’d sent a mental command to Pelly and Bill upon my return, our connection had felt… different. Lacking the time and capacity to inspect the changes, I’d let it go, knowing they’d tell me eventually. As I stared up at them now, though, I couldn’t believe what my eyes and core were telling me.

They had broken through, as had the birds sailing in behind them. Abruptly, I recalled an image of two glowing forces Claws had shown me earlier, along with her comments and insinuations about colored feathers and avian-directed violence.

You little shit… I thought, which caused a cackle to roll over the dunes from the south east—followed by a thump, which I suspected was her head striking a certain raccoon.

Focusing back on the flock zooming down like arrows in flight, I marvelled that they’d managed to keep the advancement from me. My senses were all whacked out by the weird chi running through me, but I could absolutely tell the corrupted cultivators had bonded with them. Maria had succeeded in healing them. She—

The pelicans, in all their multi-colored and uniquely patterned glory, slammed into the shore. But they weren’t who’d interrupted my thoughts. Just within the bounds of Tropica, an army advanced. Someone at the forefront had been hiding their approach by abusing their connection with me. It showed a new level of control I’d not previously seen from them.

But I supposed that made sense, considering all that she’d accomplished.

When Maria came skidding around the corner, the only thing that stopped me from teleporting her into my arms was the pain it would cause me. There was a layer of exhaustion plastered over her expression, but it did nothing to reduce the strike her unparalleled beauty delivered to my chest. The next to appear from behind the buildings were those I’d known she could heal, followed by others I hadn’t.

The former princess and queen, both sticking close to Trent. Flames flickered about the trio’s limbs. Then the handlers skidded into sight. They, too, had fire swirling around them. Keith trailed them, and when I felt that same chi dwelling in his core, I let out a soft whistle. Whatever Maria and Trent had done, it was similar to the pelicans’ breakthrough; the handlers and Keith had inherited the royal-family’s flames.

I sensed the following duo before I saw them. I smiled at the alchemists’ freedom. They truly deserved it. Buuuut then the next two rode in atop thick vines. My face fell. Tom and Jeanne Osnan. They always left a bad taste in my mouth. Considering Maria hadn’t turned to punt them over Tropica, though, they were trustworthy. Probably.

The man that arrived after them was akin to a fistful of blades, a few of which were aimed at the Osnans on the off chance they got any ideas he deemed stupid. Roger’s razor-sharp aura sliced away any remaining worries, so I let the two royals slip from my mind. Besides, there were others to witness.

The procession that came through after Roger was a palette-cleanser of the highest order. The OG congregation members were at the front. Sharon. Brad and Greg. Danny and Peter. Sue and Sturgill. All my pals—with the exception of a handful I had sent elsewhere, and a couple I’d told to hide.

On that note, I spotted a cloud of dust cresting the closest mountain, the one the king’s arrival had burned down.

“Damn,” I said.

Barry let out a muscular snort beside me. “She wasn’t happy about being sent away. I imagine she was even less pleased about you bringing only me back…”

“Yeah, well, it was for her own good. If… wait.” I spun to face the ocean. “What’s taking lil-Cthulu so long?” freeweɓnovēl.coɱ

The Kraken should have been almost here by now, if not already lashing out with its tree-sized limbs, but it was only halfway between us and Bob. I hadn’t felt it slowing, because it absorbed and tendrils of awareness sent its way. Its abyssal eyes sucked in all the surrounding light, replacing it with lines of dull nothingness, as if each peeper was a miniature black hole.

The pattern in its sclera had changed. Gone were the swirls of mercury, replaced by a galaxy’s worth of white stars. It seemed to be considering us as it approached ponderously, my core receiving the lion’s share of its attention. That was all well and good, but I had something else to witness right now—an arrival I wouldn’t dare miss.

Starting as a low hum, they grew louder with each passing moment. By the time I caught sight of them, my chest was buzzing with the sound. Queen Bee and Bumblebro, both having recently broken through. An insectoid army of impossible size flew in their wake.

“B… Buzzy Boys?”

I’d seen none of these fellas before, but as each of their compact eyes locked with me, I knew they were of the same hive mind. They differed in two ways. First, obvious to even regular humans, was how many of them came our way. There were thousands upon thousands upon thousands of the helpful little buggos. The other dissimilarity was much harder to spot, yet I couldn’t have missed it if I tried—it was physical.

These souped-up scouts had retractable stingers loaded with a potent venom. One of them produced a drop of green liquid to confirm my suspicions, the needle-like delivery system retracting a moment later. On top of this offensive enhancement, their segmented bodies were covered in jagged sheets of carapace, with serrated pincers that looked wicked enough to bite through steel.

Knowing I was watching them, a few of them attacked each other mercilessly, tiny little clings and clangs ringing out into the world as they collided. None were harmed. One of the original Buzzy Boys flew from behind Teddy’s ear when he saw the exchange, and I wondered how the new brood would react to the arrival of a predecessor.

When the OG Buzzy Boy got to them, he waved hello, froze in midair, then exploded.

I almost had a gods-damned heart attack, but then I realized the truth. He hadn’t popped like an over-inflated balloon. He’d evolved, his old skin torn to shreds as armored plates, a new set of pincers, and a retractable stinger appeared on his body.

“Well, I’ll be…” I said.

I wanted to praise Queen Bee and Bumblebro for their… okay, maybe baby-making wasn’t exactly hard work, but it was certainly somethin’ worthy of mention. The world, however—as it so often did—had different plans.

A giant shadow cast itself across the shoreline, and as the limbs blocking out the light of the coming sun undulated behind me, I spun. Maria was at my side a second later, her arrival punctuated by a swift peck on my cheek, a soft slap on one of my lower cheeks, and her fingers of her right hand lacing with those of my left.

“Hi,” she said, her voice as soft as her touch.

“Hey,” I replied.

“I’m a boyyy,” Slimes whispered.

“Fooool!” the eldritch creature bellowed, its guttural voice about as enjoyable as a garbage disposal full of forks.

I opened my mouth to say as much—in the face of a literal horror from the deep, I absolutely intended on using humor as a coping mechanism—but before I could utter a word, the ocean exploded in a semi-circle directly behind the kraken.

Dozens of figures leaped into the air. They bore different sizes, shapes, and personalities. What they shared, however, was a resolute and unflappable inclination toward violence. Before the abyssal demon could spin all the way around, each airborne crustacean launched at least one blue arc of energy at it.

A single attack stood above all the others. The blade of water was smallest by far, but its potency… Like an ocean had been condensed into a cup, the thin line of essence promised to crush any fool stupid enough to stand in its path.

Just as surprising was the crab who’d launched it—I barely recognized her.

“Snips…?” I asked.

“No fracking way…” Maria said at the same time, her comment better articulating the scene before us.

They were the last words uttered before a barrage of anime-esque, ocean-infused aura blades struck a being of incomprehensible age and power.