Godsforsaken

Chapter 16: Beware The Jabberwock

“What the fuck is a Jabberwock?”, the Chosen One asked as he approached.

“They're creatures of the Black Goat, same as the Hecatoncheir”, I explained. “Except they're some bizarre hybrid of goat and dragon.”

“A fucking dragon?”, the Chosen One asked.

“Not a real dragon”, I said. Absolutely nobody wanted to piss off a real dragon. Real dragons were huge, all but impervious to mortal weapons, smarter than most people, and they knew magic, because that was fucking fair on a giant beast with razor-sharp teeth and claws, wings and some sort of highly dangerous breath attack that varied by species. “Jabberwocks are nowhere near as tough, but they're still incredibly powerful and their fire breath is laced with Darklight.”

“What's Darklight?”, he asked. “You mean shadow magic?”

“If only”, I said. “Darklight is something Outsiders use. In short, nothing except for blessed cloth can protect you from Darklight. And in this case not even blessed cloth helps because that doesn't protect you from the actual fire.”

“So what do we do if this Dark Lord has a Not-A-Dragon in his corner?”, he asked.

“We take it down”, I said. “But it's going to be a rough fight. You're the Chosen One here. Go see if the guards up on the walls are willing to help us.”

He nodded. “Good idea.”

He walked off and I started to rummage in my bag of holding. Given how the guards had been perfectly content to watch us fight rather than help I doubted they'd help us now so I started working on a solution that wouldn't involve them.

Alisha came up to me and saw me place a tiny little wooden frame on the ground. “What is that?”, she asked as she looked at it.

I smiled, then pulled out my crossbow and placed it on top of the frame. It fit perfectly. Obviously. “See, my crossbow has a dirty little secret”, I explained. “Namely that it's not a crossbow.” The crossbow placed on the frame made it look like a miniature ballista.

“What do you mean?”, she asked as I dug around in my bag for another item and then I pulled out a small, unassuming magic wand. I had no talent for using mana but anyone could use items that had been charged with magical energy by someone else.

“My crossbow is actually a ballista that has been shrunk down with magic”, I explained, then waved the stupid magic wand through the air, sparks trailing behind it, and then I tapped it on the miniature ballista and hurriedly stepped back as it began growing back to its original size. And its original size was huge, the bow wider than my outstretched arms. The frame had a complex joint that made it easy to rotate the weapon up and down and sideways and when I was satisfied that it would turn the way I wanted it I dug around in my bag of holding again and pulled out several spears. Except they weren't spears, they were enormous barbed bolts for the ballista.

“I did not see that coming”, Alisha said. “Why haven't you been using this?”

“It's cumbersome”, I said. “It takes a while to prepare and even longer to put away again. And most of the time the bad guys aren't courteous enough to tell you that you're about to need heavy artillery.”

“But this time they did”, Alisha said.

I nodded. “This time they did.”

Just at that moment the Chosen One returned and, well, I would say he looked unhappy, except he always did. He always looked like he'd just bitten into a lemon but now he looked like he'd just bitten into a lemon and found half a cockroach in it.

“I take it they're not going to help?”, I asked.

“Right”, he said. “They said they don't want to attract its attention so they're not even going to offer fire support. And where the fuck did you get a ballista?”

“I pulled it out of my bag”, I said cheerfully.

He stared at me, then narrowed his eyes. “Yeah yeah, fuck you too”, he said and walked off.

When I was done setting things up I explained my plan on how to deal with the Jabberwock.

“The first thing we need to do is get it out of the air”, I said. “We can't beat it so long as it's flying. That's what the ballista is for. I'm going to try shooting it out of the sky. Even if I hit its body instead of its wings, the force of impact should smash it out of the sky. After that we need to focus on its wings.”

“What can I do?”, Yume asked, earning a surprised glance from the Chosen One. He was probably wondering why she was being so helpful when we were around but she'd been doing that since before her and I fell off that cliff, so it wasn't that suspicious.

“You'll have the most important job”, I said. “First of all, we absolutely cannot get hit by its fire breath, so you'll have to keep Phantom Step active at all times.”

She nodded.

“Second, remember the wendigo we fought together?”

She nodded again.

“Wait, you fought wendigo?”, the Chosen One asked.

“Yeah, on our way to rejoin you”, I said, then turned back to Yume. “Anyway, I fear the Jabberwock will be the same and your Stupor will only work for a moment. I need you to use it to help me get a clean shot off with the ballista.”

“Understood”, she said. “Phantom Step all the time and a short Stupor at the right moment.”

“Good”, I said, then turned to Alisha. “How many miracles do you have left?”

“Three”, she said. “I used two Heals during the last fight.”

“Alright”, I said. “Then we cannot rely on your enhancement miracles. Would you be willing to use your war horn miracle on us?”, I asked, looking mostly at the Chosen One but also at Selene.

“Would the effects even stack?”, Selene asked as the Chosen One nodded tersely.

“They come from different gods, so I don't see why they wouldn't”, I said. Honestly I was hoping that both miracles together would give me the same surge of power that Alisha's enhancement miracle did. The few minutes of preparation had been enough for me to recover a little bit but I would need every bit of strength to fight this thing.

Do you have a moment?, Syr's voice rang through my mind as I walked over to the ballista again.

What is it?, I asked inside my head.

A while ago I heard my body talk about Jabberwocks. I didn't really think it was relevant until now, though, she said.

What did she say?, I asked. Are they mutated like wendigo as well?

I don't know about that, she said, but she did say they have something called spirit sight.

Shit, I said, does that mean Yume's Phantom Step won't work?

I got the distinct impression that Syr was shaking her head. That might be true, she said. But I'm more worried that the thing might see my footprint on your spirit.

You think it might report back to her, I said slowly.

Yes, she said.

Well, that just means we need to kill it, I said. We can't just fend it off, it has to die.

You always make things sound so easy, she said.

It won't be easy, I said. But it is simple. There is a difference.

I couldn't see her expression but I heard the smile as she said: Alright then, good luck.

I had expected that the first we'd know of the Jabberwock would be a piercing screech as it arrived on the scene but instead the first thing we noticed was a deathly quiet shadow gliding through the air. It completely ignored our assembled party and flew straight for Odin's Crown. Clearly their plan of not pissing it off hadn't worked. It kept itself steady in the air, furiously flapping its wings, and then breathed a plume of fire at the guards manning the walls. The orange flames had bizarre, distorted outlines, wavering as though the edges weighed heavier on the world than the rest, and anything the flames hit melted. The guards, the walls, even the bones surrounding the walls, all of it melted like wax in an oven, except not like wax because when the fire breath stopped all the melted surfaces were coated in rime. The poor fuckers didn't even manage to scream they were gone so quickly.

Unfortunately I couldn't take advantage of the Jabberwock holding still because we were too far away from the fort. Oh, I could hit it, but by the time we reached the downed beast it would have had all the time in the world to get back up again. Yume and I could have used Qi Bursts to reach it faster but then we would have had to explain how we both knew that technique. Never mind that the two of us couldn't have kept it on the ground alone.

Instead we used Plan B to get its attention. Both Selene and the Chosen One used their war horn miracles at the same time, creating a deafening sound that was sure to get the beast's attention. Two forces, similar in effect but also wholly different, slammed into me. The Chosen One's miracle was wrath and aggression, brutal martial power that pulsed through my veins like liquid fire. By contrast Selene's miracle was a warrior's pride, calm and steadfast, cool and immovable. The heat and cold should have canceled each other out but instead they clashed inside me, again and again, the war between them creating a source of power greater than the sum of its parts. This wasn't as good as Alisha's enhancement miracle. This was stronger, more savage, and I felt like I could use a thousand Qi techniques until the miracles had run their course.

If nothing else, the loud noise sure got the Jabberwock's attention. The beast had been about to unleash a second swathe of fire, this time on the civilians inside the fort, but when it heard the sound it flew over and attempted to breathe fire down on us.

Just as I had it in my sights I felt Yume's Stupor slam into it. A beast like this didn't plummet out of the sky from being momentarily dazed but it rocked back as if someone had slapped it and had to flap its wings frantically to keep itself steady.

As the Jabberwock hung in the air I got my first good look at the creature. I'd never seen one in the flesh before, only in monster manuals, and the sight would haunt me. At a very casual glance the Jabberwock looked like a dragon. Reptilian snout, long neck, four legs, wings, long tail, all there. But then the odd details started coming into focus. It didn't have two eyes. Instead, it had a cluster of seven eyes, all staring straight ahead and all of them orange with rectangular pupils like those of a goat. It had horns like most dragons but unlike most dragons they were curled down and forward like a ram's. Thankfully Its body was not covered in scales that were all but impervious to mortal weapons. Instead its body was mostly covered in bumpy lizard skin except where it had thick brown fur. Its long neck in particular had long strands of hair hanging down the underside. The forelegs were those of a typical dragon, with large clawed feet, but the hind legs were clearly bovine, backwards bent and ending in large cloven hooves. And then I noticed the underbelly. Athena's bush but it was ugly. Its entire underbelly consisted of cancerous growths with tufts of long stringy hair and teeth randomly growing out of them.

I didn't gawk for long, though. Instead I used my newfound reserves of power to try something I'd been thinking about for a while. Qi Projection transferred the force of an attack to another point. So far I'd used it to send my slashes forward or to increase the surface area of an attack, but I'd seen Yume do something else with it. Her Sen technique multiplied the slashes to make them cover a larger area.

That's what I tried. I sent my Qi into the enormous bolt of the ballista, willing it to hit an area right underneath it, creating a second phantom projectile. If it worked the way I thought it should, I would fire one projectile but strike with two.

I waited for the precise right moment and then fired the projectile. The bolts were five feet long, the metal tip barbed so they'd do a lot of damage going in and even more grueling damage if someone tried to rip them out. Had Yume not taught me her Qi techniques I would have tried to use these bolts against the giants back in Shackled Hollow.

At first I feared I'd screwed up the aim or even the Qi technique but the bolt flew true and buried itself in that disgusting underbelly. Even better, at the same time, a second hole opened up in its flesh, the same size as the one the projectile had torn except with no visible projectile sticking out. The lack of a projectile to plug up the wound also meant that it began bleeding much more heavily than the real impact wound and I noticed that its blood was a thick, viscous black substance and I thought I saw something wriggling inside it, but I was so far away from the beast it had to have been my imagination.

Even better than the knowledge that I hadn't missed was the fact that the impact rocked the beast out of the sky, crashing down to the ground, kicking up dirt. The others had to shield their eyes, but I was far enough away that I could instead concentrate on putting another bolt in and the moment the dust settled but before anyone could charge the beast I fired that one, too. It hit the Jabberwock right in its left shoulder. Shame, because I'd tried to shoot the bolt right down its gullet and end it then and there.

After the second bolt I grabbed the third, but I didn't load it into the ballista. Instead I grabbed it as a weapon and charged right at the beast alongside my party. Against a normal dragon this bolt, or rather this barbed spear, would have been worthless. Gods, against a real dragon anything less than a weapon with a Legendary armor-piercing enchantment would have been worthless. But this wasn't a real dragon. This was a Jabberwock. Its breath attack was scarier but its skin was far softer, its flesh more yielding.

Our main priority right now was to keep the beast stuck to the ground. To that end we needed to cut off its wings but I didn't want our entire strategy to hinge on us crippling the wings in the scant seconds we had before the beast could get up again, so instead I held the spear overhead and used a Qi Burst to ram it downward, into the Jabberwock's left claw, staking it to the ground. That might only keep it grounded for another moment but that moment might end up making the difference between us crippling the wings and it flying off again.

After letting go of the spear I pulled out my ax and ran past the staked claw to swing at the wing. To my surprise the wing was far tougher than I had anticipated. It was like the arm of a lumberjack, all muscle and sinew and bone and even with a Qi Burst I only managed to get halfway through it.

The beast howled in pain and swung at me with its tail. I braced for the pain but then Selene was right beside me, blocking the blow with her shield.

“Do that again”, she said through gritted teeth, letting me know to hurry up and that even with the shield the attack hadn't left her unscathed.

Instead of worrying about her I focused on my Qi, summoned it back up and finally chopped through its left wing. The thing crashed to the ground and fell on top of us like the sail of a galley.

The leathery membrane pressing down on us felt disgusting and it didn't help that it was slick and wet. It was the type of slick and wet that reminded me of other slick and wet sensations, which made the fact that it came from a freaky goat canker dragon even more unfathomably gross than it otherwise would have been. But that didn't matter. What did matter was that we were stuck underneath an enormous heavy blanket that pushed us down while the beast I'd cut it off from started throwing a tantrum. We would be trampled or burned or bitten if we didn't get out, and quick.

I took a second to fumble for my scimitar and once I had it I used a Qi Burst to carve my way through the wing membrane, then grabbed Selene and held her close to my chest before using yet another Qi Burst to dash out of the hole I'd just carved. And it was a good thing I did because just a moment after we got clear the Jabberwock spewed a gout of fire right at where we'd been.

“You have got to teach those tricks to me”, Selene said.

That's right. This was only the second time she'd seen me use these techniques and the first time she'd been completely out of it from the post-orgasmic bliss.

“Of course”, I said and then the Jabberwock was upon us again. This was the first time I'd seen it upright and it finally occurred to me just how big the fucking thing was. The body itself was seven feet tall, but on that long neck the head looked down at us from ten feet in the air. It still hadn't managed to pull its claw free but it had rotated around it and was staring at us before its mouth opened and it unleashed another gout of fire.

I tried to grab Selene and dash away but all those Qi techniques in such a short time had taken their toll and I stumbled as I tried to take a step to turn away. I thought we were screwed but then...

“Protective Warmth!”, Alisha shouted and instantly a circle of glowing orange knots appeared on the ground around us, creating a dome of orange light that covered us. The fire breath, even laced with Darklight, a substance so destructive it had no right to exist in this world, couldn't find purchase and simply slid off the dome and all we felt was a bit of warmth and I was all but certain that it came from the miracle itself.

When the swathe of fire finally stopped I felt the cluster of eyes focus on me. Directly on me. They seemed to glow with a weird negative luminescence, a glow that sucked light from its surroundings, and I tasted the color blue before it opened its maw again. I thought it was going to breathe another gout of fire at us but instead what came out were words. They were somewhere between a hiss and a growl but they were comprehensible.

“Liiiiiiittllllle... ssssiiiiissssssterrrrrrrrr...”

I went cold at those words. The Jabberwock had seen Syr clinging to my spirit, just as she had suspected. But then I stood up straight and faced it. Sure it had seen Syr. And sure, given how chummy the one who'd taken her body seemed to be with Outsiders it might tell her about it, but it was still an Outsider. A piece of filth that didn't belong in this world. It wasn't as if I would have let this thing live anyway. It having valuable information that I couldn't afford to hand over to our enemy didn't change things. This thing was going to die anyway. It had signed its own death warrant by showing its ugly mug in front of me.

If I'd had my crossbow I would have planted a bolt right in that disgusting cluster of eyes but I didn't and so I pulled out a trident. It wasn't a very good weapon. A trident was a fisherman's tool, meant to spear fish, the three prongs increasing the chance of hitting a fish despite the water skewing your aim. For normal combat it made a terrible spear. That same quality of the trident to hit a bigger area also kept it from sinking deep into flesh the way a spear could. With my Qi Bursts I could rectify this problem but it still made the weapon awkward to handle. In fact, the only reason I had it was because of a little joke I'd made years ago, trying to piss off a Chosen One of Poseidon, that no-good prick who made fishermen worship him on hands and knees and then still gave them a shit catch at the end of the day. But in this very specific situation the trident was just what I needed. I lifted it over my shoulder and hurled it like a javelin and the trident hit the Jabberwock right in the cluster of eyes. A normal spear would have poked out one eye but the three prongs of the trident did what they were supposed to do and ruptured one eye each, destroying three of its seven eyes in one fell swoop.

I'd expected the Jabberwock to throw a tantrum and it didn't disappoint me. It stomped its claws and hooves, tearing loose the claw I'd staked to the ground in its fury, and when it bellowed I knew it was about to unleash another swathe of fire at us, but I was prepared for it.

I had pulled out my trusty mace, raised it above my head and channeled Qi into it, and when the beast leaned forward to breathe a plume of fire at us I slammed the mace right down on top of its head. Backed by the Qi Burst the result was slightly spectacular. The head slammed to the ground and kept going, sinking a couple inches into the dirt, and I heard something break.

I began wondering what the fuck the others were doing but it soon became clear they'd waited for just this moment. Yume sent another one of those fire snakes at it, singeing its fur and crawling all along its body. Alisha sent a barrage of air lances at it, which stabbed into its surprisingly soft skin and had the added benefit of fanning on Yume's flames and the Chosen One sent his fire storm miracle at the Jabberwock, burning its remaining wing to a charred skeleton.

I almost felt bad for the thing, lying completely broken on the ground. Its jaw was broken, one of its wings was burnt, the other cut off, and it had a dozen holes and another dozen burn marks along its body. But then it just had to remind me of why I'd been so furious with it.

“Liiiiiiittlllle sssssiiiiiissssssterrrrrr...” it hissed and Selene walked over and raised her sword high over her head, intending to cleave through its long neck.

“Syr sends her regards”, I told the Jabberwock before Selene cut off its head.