NOVEL SIMPLE 64 - Swamp Boss_1
David had been completely correct, and Claire was not happy.
He could feel her cold reptilian gaze boring into the back of his head as he perched on a log facing away from her, ears pointed purposefully forward. She hadn’t responded well to the information that their opponent was a slug the size of a small van, yowling loudly in protest and threatening to clobber him with a log she’d seized in her enormous jaws. The very same log he was now perched on, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she’d have been capable of hitting him with the log based on the way she’d swung it around before eventually hurling it into the air.
“Tell me again how we’re going to get to the damn thing without dying?” Claire sulked from the water, her voice breaking the silence like a dropped piano.
David sighed, shuffling around to face her, “Pretty simple actually, I go and fly right above it, piss it off, then hit it with some Gloom.”
“Then I what, sprint straight at it and hope I get there before it melts you down into bat soup?” Claire snarled grumpily before splashing out of the small pond, “I’m not gonna bite it if I can get away with it…”
“You can go full Chad Norris on it probably, it’s not that much bigger than Herold is. You outweigh it by a lot, I’m guessing a few good kicks and an ass-club or two will probably have it on the ropes.” David replied, “I spent a little while fucking with it before I came back. Our spitball world champion can barely turn, and when it does it takes them forever to finally come around. As long as I get it pointed in the right direction to start with, I think this should be workable.”
Claire spent the next few minutes grumbling about flying rats and creepy crawlies as she stomped in circles through the reeds and gestured violently with her nubby little arms, snapping her jaws in frustration at every random bug that buzzed near her head. David’s eyes widened a bit when she crunched down on an extremely hefty specimen of sting-tailed dragonfly, its body popping with a juicy sound that caused Claire to freeze mid-grumble, eliciting a full-body shiver of revulsion in the large reptile.
“Not. A. Word.” Claire rumbled evilly after she’d finished rinsing her mouth out in the nearby pond, “Let's just get this over with, I hope the Bloodline turns you hairless and gives you slug-eyes.”
David failed to suppress his own full-body shiver at the thought, “Okay, that’s just uncalled for. Here, check this out.”
He fluttered down to the ground a few feet away from her and sketched out a quick map of the blight, trying to keep everything roughly proportionate to what he’d seen from the air. When he was finished he rinsed his talon in the water and began using it to direct her attention to a few things.
“It’s going to be in this mini-lake thing here, I’m going to go around this way.” David gestured in a wide arc around the location, “I’ll go past it a decent bit into the marsh, then lure it out. It’ll get mad and set up to start blasting, and I’m going to blitz around to the side of it and hit it with Gloom until my wings are bald. There’s nothing else in there with it as far as I can tell, damn thing’s too aggressive.”
“How far is it from the mini-lake to the uh…” Claire trailed off and leaned in closer, “Little twig next to the pebble by the ugly smiley face?”
“What? That’s supposed to be the borderline into the territory and a couple of little ponds…” It was David’s turn to sulk at the criticism of his map, “I can’t move my fing- talons that much, cut me some slack okay? Anyway, it’s probably a bit more than a mile if you start here at this spot.” When you feel me start moving fast…well, start moving fast too.”
“Fine”, Claire drew the word out snottily. “You’re gonna owe me one after this though.”
David nodded, “Thanks…You don’t think it’ll actually turn me into a slug do you?”
“The Crusher Bloodline gave me better armor and the ‘ass-club’. So no, probably it’ll let you spit, or give you turbo-hearing or something. Who knows.” Claire sighed, “Are we gonna do this or what? It’s gonna be dark in a few more hours and not everyone can see perfectly in the dark you know.”
David nodded and hopped up onto her head to drape himself over the bony crest, and together they spent the next few minutes circling the Boss Territory from a safe distance as David directed her toward the best possible starting point he’d found for her. They chatted a bit while he clarified a few things as Claire asked questions about the beast in question, and as they moved, he went over the plan once more while discussing a few of the finer details as Claire posed questions about their strategy.
"You're sure you could smell its trail from that position?" she rumbled uncertainly. "That whole area reeked something fierce to me."
David bobbed his head. "Positive, the scent was way more pungent and...I don't know, thicker I guess? Like it had been stewing in its own nastiness for a while. Trust me, even without the Pack System you’d still be able to smell exactly where it is with that sniffer of yours once you get a little further in."
Claire grunted acknowledgment, her tone taking on a grim edge. "And you really think making a racket and drawing it out is smart? Those spit globs were nasty."
"Which is exactly why we hit it hard and fast before it can use them," David countered. "I'll come in screaming from the other side, make it think I'm the bigger threat. You charge in and smash it after the Gloom sets in, my instincts are absolutely positive about this, and they haven’t failed me so far."
He paused, ensuring she tracked his movements with her snout as he gestured with a wingtip. "That little rise there is the spot. I'll hit it from every angle but the front, I’m pretty sure if I get right overhead it can’t do anything, it’s super slow."
Claire's nostrils flared in anxiety. "Just don't get in its face please, those globs are big enough to stick your wings together."
David smirked, a feral gleam in his eye. "You let me worry about that. It’s not the only walking biohazard around here right now."
She rolled her eyes, and with that, they separated, Claire skulking into position near the raised hummock while David winged off to get into his starting position. Now that he knew where he was going it took only a minute or two to reach the Boss's location as David surfed the stale air over the bubbling pit, circling low over the pit's roiling, burbling surface, senses primed for any sign of movement within. The viscous waters gurgled and belched constantly, pocked with bubbling air pockets that formed and popped with wet splorts.
He glided away towards the far side, sailing past the Boss’s lair as he drifted away into the skeletal trees on the far side of the marsh, eventually snagging onto one just within sight of the rancid little lake.
Okay, now for the hard part. God I hope this works, if this backfires and we both get messed up I’m never listening to you again, spooky voice. Alright… let's see if I can do this on-demand.
David closed his eyes briefly, sinking deeper into himself and clearing his mind as he allowed his natural prey drive to rise up and settle in just behind his eyes. Everything began to feel more surreal as all nonvital thoughts faded away, and everything became much more immediately vivid. The stench of the rotting marsh deepened, the faintest movements of the still air stood out sharply as they ruffled his mane, and the silence suddenly became so crisp his breathing suddenly seemed thunderous. A sense of satisfaction accompanied the sensations as if this was the way everything should be, without any of those pointless higher functions cluttering up a good thing, before he asserted himself a bit more strongly.
Oof, that was weird. I should probably practice with this until I can get in and out of the headspace without having to take a minute to do it every time. Okay, quick readout check then we get started.
–Health 190/190–
–Stamina: 418/425–
–n/a–
Finally satisfied, David began to screech and shake the dried tree he was hanging from loudly, keeping the volume just below what would trigger his Ability to activate before purposefully plowing through some of the smaller branches. They snapped and fell to the ground as he leaped into the air and darted away from the pool the exact second that his now extra-sensitive hearing picked up the first waves from the stagnant lake. A quick glance behind him confirmed that the plan was working so far when he sighted the hateful eyestalks rising above the water. They focused in his direction as he made a beeline away from the lake at full speed, weaving through the sparse dead trees and stopping after a few minutes to land on a particularly rickety specimen that was leaning at a crazy angle. He hopped furiously, continuing to hiss and snarl as he clawed at the dried bark and generally did his best to be as annoying as was physically possible before his instincts pinged him that it was time to move when he felt Claire begin to accelerate toward him.
He hurled himself into the air and began to loop back around in total silence, a wave of vindication not totally his own filling him as he picked up the faint sounds of the Boss beginning to bombard the area he had just been in only seconds ago. He sunk a little deeper into his feral state, allowing his body free rein to move and suddenly cut hard to the right, blitzing directly toward the source of the noise, nimbly spearing through the air as he pushed himself a bit to accelerate further. Within seconds the bulk of the pale slimy creature came into view, now situated in a depression a fair distance from its lair at the end of a long trail of slime while it horked another wad of gel toward where he had been previously. Every shot was preceded by a muscular ripple that traveled from the middle of it's body and terminated at it's blank and featureless head, which wrinkled into a tube before the slime rifled out and away into the distance. Little splatters of slime dripped down to coat the ground in disgusting fan of sticky fluid directly in front of it.
David answered with a wordless, ear-splitting shriek of aggression as he dive-bombed straight for the thing, the shriek rapidly swelling until it activated Screech. The sheer volume made the Boss's eyestalks retract violently as its corpulent body pulsed and contracted in weird spasms. He braked hard only twenty feet overhead, continuing to batter it with the point-blank sonic assault before David dropped even lower, taking full advantage of its momentary blindness to shake out as much dusk powder as possible with his wingbeats. Clouds of off-color silvery dust billowed down, enveloping the flailing horror and sticking easily to its slightly slimy hide.
Leaning hard left, David curved into a tight circle, the Boss disappearing behind him in a choking cloud of Gloom. He cut off the Screech and angled around for another strafing run, the vibrations still reverberating through his skull as he prepared to hit it again from a new angle.
–Squamous Corruptor is immune to |Deafened| |Sleep|–
–Squamous Corruptor is afflicted by |Gloom| |Paralysis|–
C’mon Claire!
David’s blood froze in his veins as the eyestalks suddenly emerged with twin pops, and his subconscious started howling for him to dodge. He desperately tried to correct his angle of approach when the creature began to rapidly blast a chain of attacks straight up into the air without bothering to aim a single one, and he swore he detected a hint of smugness from the hideous thing as the shots began to fall all around him.