MY ONE-SHOTS
Summary: On our way to Rata Novus, we encountered a camp of Pact escapees that a strange monster was terrorizing. Me and Braham went to find and kill it, while the rest of the team stayed behind. Three different paths led three different ways - the center path seemed most likely to lead where I wanted to go, so I chose that one. Surprise, surprise! This is where the storyline diverges greatly... there are two questions - who do we find, along with what? Not anything like what you'll be expecting. Kind of uses a different scene for the center path... This'll be out of character, definitely.. I'm bad at making everybody in character... except me, cuz she's me... kinda gamified. reviving and stuff.
Chapter one: Tendrils of Terror
Author's Notes:
If I put something in {curly brackets} that is me giving you information that it would be hard to transmit in story mode. Note: I might continue this, but I doubt it. If it ever amounts to something, I'll put it in a separate fic.
Okay, here's the story now:
"Looks like there are three ways forward," Braham observes. "Which one do we take?"
"We're trying to find the magister, and hopefully kill whatever's been terrorizing the camp. I don't like the looks of those other two, and the center path most likely leads straight to the beasts' lair."
"Let's go,"
The Commander goes cautiously down the path.
"Whoa. Those grubs might seem friendly now, but I bet they'll be terribly vicious if we invade their territory. There's vines and rocks all around, though, we can probably get across without bothering them." she observes.
She leaps from one vine to the next, carefully. There are some rocks embedded in the walls, and some along the floor. Then, as she lands carefully on one thick vine, she notices movement below her, on a large rock. As she peers around the vine, a small form moves closer to the wall, away from the water.
It's Zojja! 'How did she get here?' The Commander wonders. 'Lieutenant Morrison said that she and Logan and Trahearne had created a diversion, not escaped with them. And even if she had escaped, how did she get in this cave?'
'Whatever. However she got here, she's here', the Commander decides, jumping down from the vine, careful not to get too near the water.
"Zojja, are you alright?" she asks.
"I'm fine... I don't think Taimi is, though."
"Taimi's here?" the Commander says in surprise. "I thought she was back at the camp?"
"I only know that she's a little ways ahead, over there. I can't find any way off this rock. I think she's stuck, as well."
"Do you think those grubs could do much?" the Commander thinks out loud. "If we just ran past them, they'd probably be easy to deal with once we're on firmer ground."
"Commander? Is that you?" comes a voice deeper in the cave, echoing off the walls. The source is out of sight.
"Yes... is that you, Taimi?"
"Yeah... I'm fine, but I'm stuck."
The Commander looks back the way she came, to see Braham by the edge of the water. "You okay there, Braham?"
"Yeah. This water seems like it's deeper than on first sight, if you look closely." he responds. "It's probably full of a lot more grubs, too."
"Okay, we can do this." the Commander says. "There might be a lot of them, but they're just grubs."
Nevertheless, as she wades into the water in the direction Taimi's voice had come from, she tries to avoid the grubs. It is deeper than it looks - almost waist-high.
All of a sudden, the grubs writhe for a few moments as if in pain, and transform into long tendrils... not the type of tendrils she's seen before, though, more like tentacles. Mossy tentacles. Immediately, the Commander dashes onto the next rock, which is were Taimi is.
The Commander looks back in surprise, and the rock she'd found Zojja on is only a few feet away, in clear sight. She shudders - something is playing tricks with her senses.
"Come on, Taimi, this is creepy," she says, but the mossy tentacles have surrounded the rock. "Let's get this over with."
"Commander!" Braham shouts just before she jumps, but too late - she leaps over the tentacles into... clearer water, followed by Taimi. Braham runs into the water.
Braham had seen something the rest of them hadn't - the floor of the cavern, under the water, had turned slimy and mossy. The Commander slipped, and slid to the base of the large rock.
Then, the tentacles suddenly multiply, and then they weren't tentacles at all, they were moss-snakes, or snakes made out of moss. Or vines. Or something, anyway. Sentient moss. The Commander wasn't hanging around to find out. She scrambles onto the rock that Zojja is still on, pulling Taimi after her.
Braham scrambles backwards out of the water, and the moss all sinks into the water, and everything becomes still. It is as if it was watching. Waiting.
The Commander, Taimi, and Zojja are as close to the wall as they could get, holding their breath and hoping the moss-stuff couldn't climb rocks. Braham is several feet back from the water, nearer the beginning of the cavern.
A surprisingly short time later, all the ripples had faded out against the walls of the cavern.
A splash, loud in the silence, sounded from the end of the cavern where Braham was. The Commander saw a solidly thick tendril of vines retreating into a hole in the wall, after having pushed Braham into the water.
Braham tries to get back on the land, but the other mossy stuff pulls him back.
The Commander rushes into the water to save him, but another tendril of moss grabs her from behind.
The same happens to Zojja and Taimi.
The three can only watch while Braham wrestles with the moss - hard to do, when it's moss.
"Get my staff, Zojja!" the Commander says. The moss tightens it's grip on her and Zojja - how does it do that, it's moss - and around the Commander's neck, restricting her air supply.
"How do you have a - ?"
"Not - now!" the Commander snaps, struggling with the moss. "Just do something with it!"
Zojja, knowing she can't do anything about the moss tendrils that were pulling Braham further from the edge of the water, instead crispifies the moss holding her, Taimi, and the Commander. The moss surrounding Braham freezes for a moment, allowing him to try getting anywhere with fighting it, but resumes it's attack almost immediately.
"Come on!" the Commander says recklessly, running into the water again.
The mossy tendrils latched onto her and pulled her out, to the middle of the surprisingly wider cavern, but still too far from Braham to do anything.
The Commander pulls out her sword and whacks the moss away, cutting it close to the water, which frees her for a moment and she scrambles up onto a separate rock.
Meanwhile, the moss around Braham seems to have increased a lot, and was all over him, and it was pulling him downwards. He was unsuccesfully trying to get out the same way the Commander had, but failing, on account of the moss having apparently learned to not let people draw sharp weapons. Or any weapons.
"Braham!" Taimi shouts, trying to run into the water.
"Taimi!" Zojja shouts, pulling her back. "We can just revive him later, but those tendrils of moss could easily hide you at the bottom and we'd never find you!"
"We won't be able to!" Taimi says frantically, in hurried words all jumbled together, and she is hardly understandable even if Zojja did know exactly what words she was using. "It eats its victims, and even if we kill the bit over there, it's all one! We can't kill the whole thing!"
She struggles out of Zojja's grip and ran into the water. Zojja was right about Taimi being too small to find afterwards - the moss seemed to increase in mass sometimes, and decrease others.
"Taimi!" Zojja shouted frantically. She tried using her affinity with water to clear the way, but the water didn't respond. She tried raising a platform of earth up on which to stay out of the water with, which did work, but it was slippery and mossy.
"I can't do anything with water here!" Zojja said frantically.
"Ignite my arrows!" the Commander said, shooting at the mass surrounding Braham. She was careful not to hit him with her arrows.
At the same time, Zojja notices moss creeping along the walls, half-way up by now. As she ignites the Commander's arrows, she burns the moss on the walls as well, remembering the moss freezing when she'd burned it earlier.
It kind of worked. The parts on the walls burned to a crisp, halting it's battle against Braham, but the moss surrounding him didn't burn at all, it simply smoked a moment.
"It's got an affinity with water! Fire can't hurt but in large amounts!" the Commander shouted.
"I can't overcome that without hurting Braham!"
"It won't kill him though! Try it!" Taimi says. She is on the earthen pathway to Braham, but hadn't made hardly any progress - it was slippery, and the moss was breaking it up and it was unstable to begin with.
Zojja calls in a strong wind to maybe dry out the moss, but a sheen of water seemed to come up over the dry spots. The air forms a pocket in between Braham and the moss, effectively keeping the moss out, along with everything else but air. Having found that air was the most effective, Zojja kept using it. She pushs the moss back even more.
Tiffany's arrows still aren't doing anything, passing through the moss like... well, like moss, but her sword still did something, now she had more breathing room. She launched herself over the water, slashing at the moss.
The moss simply fell to the bottom of the water, when cut, where it regrouped with itself and came back. Tiffany gasps. It was all one.
Braham, now he had enough space to draw his weapons, and erected a large shield the surrounded him from all angles.
{ Guardian skill with a shield: Create a dome around you that pushes foes back and absorbs projectiles. Guardian skill with a mace: Surround yourself and nearby allies with a shield. Damage foes that strike protected allies, and then apply boons in a radius. I researched Braham's weapons.}
The tendrils of moss, unable to push through Braham's barrier, smarms over to the Commander, who slashes at the tendrils, buying time.
"I'm fine!" Braham shouts. "Protect the Commander!"
The Commander tries shooting at the moss for her stealth effect, but the arrow passed through like before. Slashing and cutting the moss wouldn't work forever - it just regroups. It is effective for delay, but she couldn't keep it up for long. Zojja again burned the moss that had crept up the walls, which made the tendrils freeze again for a moment.
Braham, now that the tendrils had left him alone, scrambled onto the raised earthen path and out of the water.
The Commander, still on her rock, was being overrun by tendrils of moss. Zojja couldn't reproduce the air-bubble effect she'd been able to around Braham, as the Commander's sword swinging through the air would cut the bubble and negate it's effect, and the Commander couldn't afford to stop long enough for the bubble to form.
Zojja raised another earthen path like the first, leading to the Commander. Braham got to the Commander and re-erected his shield. Zojja and Taimi joined him, so the four were surrounded by the shield.
"We can't escape this!" the Commander said. "Braham can't move with his shield, and the air-bubble takes too much concentration to maintain. We'll have to wait until someone rescues us."
"We can't wait!" Taimi said. "Holding up this shield also takes alot of energy, and we can't hold it up forever."
"Me and Braham can take turns - with the shield, I have enough space to put up the air bubble until Braham's recovered enough to use the shield again. We can trade it off like that until help arrives."
"Can you do that?" the Commander asked. "Doesn't it take a while to recover from long usage of something that way?"
"The moss might not be affected by fire," Taimi said, "but fire will still keep it away."
"Will it?" the Commander asked. "The grubs it was before it was mossy tendrils looked to be the fire-spitting kind."
"We'll just hold out as long as we can." Braham said.
"We don't have any way of contacting everyone, back at the camp."
"They'll be along sooner or later, I'm sure." Braham said. "In the meantime, mind telling us how you two got here?"
"After you guys left, I was poking around the camp where the Lieutenant was when Scruffy started picking up readings - he can tell whenever Zojja's around, remember when you set that up?" she asked Zojja
"Yeah, you kept running off and getting lost, and needing help getting back. So I gave you a device and tuned it to pick up readings from a device I constructed. I got in the habit of carrying it around with me - and it's odd not to have the weight of it. So I never stopped wearing it."
"Yeah, and then I put my end of it inside Scruffy so it would be easier to use, and Scruffy picked up the signal. And so of course I tried to find you!"
"But how did you get here, Zojja?" the Commander asks.
"Apparently, Mordrem don't know much about asura. When the dragons awoke last time, Mordremoth awoke before Primordus, I suppose he doesn't know what asura are. He didn't have any sort of prison cell woven tight enough to keep an asura in. So I got out while all the other commotion was being made with the other prisoners escaping. I was just running from the one Mordrem that noticed me, and ended up here somehow. I suppose the Mordrem got eliminated by the moss. And then Taimi came from that end, and then we were stuck, and then you came."
"But how did you get here before we did?" the Commander asks Taimi.
"I didn't know which way you'd taken at the split, and I took the dark path. I got most of the way, but then Scruffy's readings changed direction - I programmed it to point the quickest route to you, Zojja, and not tell me to go through a wall - and I didn't know where I was. I suppose all the paths meet up, and I stumbled into this cave. I left Scruffy near the entrance to the far end of the cavern."
The mossy tentacles swarmed to the far end of the cavern, out of sight. "No!" Taimi yells.
"They're gone, let's get out of here!" Braham said, letting the shield drop.
"Zojja, they're out of the water, burn them!" Taimi says.
It worked, at least, better than before. Zojja tried the method with drying the tentacles out, which sort of worked, but the moss was still touching the water, spreading it over itself in protection.
Instead, Zojja used the air to lift Taimi over the water and land her by Scruffy. She did the same to everyone else, and then did the air-shield like before. They were now at least in a better position than before, and they had Scruffy with them now, too.
The moss tentacles writhe, as if in anger.
"What were you shouting, about the moss being one, earlier?" Zojja asks Taimi.
"It is!"
"But what does that mean?" the Commander asks.
"Back before you got here, Commander, the grubs were kind of... hunting. I could somehow tell they weren't hunting for food, but just to kill stuff, but it ate it anyway. So, I knew it just ate it's victims. And back when the tentacle things pushed Braham into the water, it was really thick in mass. And when it grabbed us to keep us from helping Braham, it seemed to increase in mass when you told Zojja to get your staff, like it knew we were trying to kill it. And whenever Zojja burned the moss, the other moss would all freeze, like it was hurt. And when the Commander cut it with her sword, it was still wriggling, until it got back together. So even if one little section had done anything, it would join back up with the bigger part and we wouldn't be able to get to Braham or anything. And when you tried to dry it out, Zojja, it just got wet again. I think that was it shifting, replacing the dry parts with wet parts, and so drying it out wouldn't do anything, and it's invulnerable to fire because of the water."
"That... makes a creepy kind of sense." the Commander said. "And you're right, I don't think we could kill it, not if it regroups when hit by a sword and is pretty much invulnerable to the elements."
"Where did you get a staff from, Commander?"
"Oh, I specialized in Druid. It lets me use a staff, and when I'm using it I'm much more healing-oriented. So I had the staff on me. You keep it until we get out of here, and even after, I suppose, until we find one for you. I got along without it fine before I had it, I'll manage."
"So, any way we can go and save the magister now?"
"Not until those tendrils go away or until we're rescued, no." the Commander says. "You okay with that bubble, Zojja?"
"It's fine," Zojja replies.
"Hey!" Braham says, getting an idea. "How about you just make a wall that keeps the tentacles out, and we can escape this way? We couldn't do that before because weren't near a way out, but half the trouble with maintaining the bubble is that it's hard to keep up and near you while moving."
"Neat idea!" Taimi says. "Try it, Zojja!"
The mossy tendrils instantly try to go around them, but in order to do so it had to sever contact with the water, and Zojja took the chance to dry it out and burn it again - at least the parts close by. Once it had retreated enough, a wall of air formed at the narrowest part of the cave.
"Let's go!" Braham says, and the Commander leads the way.
"Whoa! That's definitly no Mordrem," Braham says, as he caught sight of a large beast.
"And there's the magister," the Commander says. "I'd thought the thing terrorizing the camp was the moss thing in the cave, but it seems reluctant to leave the water."
"And the bodies," Braham adds. "They weren't eaten. It must be this thing."
"Let's kill it."
"I need to maintain focus on the air wall back there, guys. You'll be on your own for this fight." Zojja said.
"That's fine." the Commander says, releasing a volley of arrows at the beast. "It might not be Mordrem, but it'll still die."
After the beast was defeated, the Commander tries to speak with the magister.
"Commander?" he says weakly.
"We're going to get you out of here." the Commander tells him firmly.
"No... just save the other prisoners... Marshal Trahearne and Captain Thackeray..."
"I know. Where did they go?"
"Due... south," the magister replies with his dying breath.
"We didn't get here soon enough to save him." Braham says.
"The Itzel said the jungle provides, but it provides nothing but death and Mordrem." the Commander says sadly.
"But we provide vengeance," Braham replies.
"That's right."
"Commander?" Taimi says. "...Come and see this."
The Commander and Braham go over to Taimi.
"There must be hundreds of them!" Braham gasps.
"We're not wading into that." the Commander says decidedly. "We need to get back to our mission."
"Commander?"
"Kas! What are you doing here?"
"Some more Pact soldiers showed up and secured the camp."
"What did we miss?" Rytlock asks.
"A bunch of moss." Taimi says dryly.
"And a giant...bug... thing." Braham added.
"Taimi! There you are." Rytlock says.
"And how is a bunch of moss worth mentioning more than that?" Kasmeer asked, pointing to the large chak.
"It was sentient moss, of course." Zojja says.
"Zojja?" Rytlock said. "I thought you were with Marshal Trahearne and Logan?"
"Mordrem are very bad at keeping asura prisoner. And others are bad at keeping an eye on them." Zojja says.
"That's great."
"Anything about where the caravan is headed?" Rox asks.
"The magister said it was headed south. Is that what you've got, Zojja?"
"Yeah, pretty much. Trahearne and Logan were both in rather bad shape."
"We need to rescue them!" Kasmeer says.
"I admit it's a hard choice, and I'm all for saving them too, but we can't just abandon the trip to Rata Novus! The Novan scientists and their research on elder dragons could prove invaluable!"
"Rata Novus?" Zojja says in shock. "You found Rata Novus?"
"We found where it should be located," the Commander replied. "But yes. The Exalted in Tarir said that they were researching the Elder Dragons. But we also can't just leave Marshal Trahearne and Logan in the hands of the Mordrem."
"Why don't we split up? Me and Taimi can go to Rata Novus, along with a few others, and you can go after Trahearne and Logan." Zojja offered.
"I suppose that could work..." the Commander replies slowly. "You sure you can get there on your own? This place seems to be infested with chak."
"We'll be fine. Especially with Mr. Sparkles and Scruffy."
"Mr Sparkles was destroyed in the crash, Zojja." Rytlock tells her. "At least, that's what I heard from the Commander."
"Yes. I'm afraid he didn't survive it."
"Oh." Zojja looks surprised for a moment. "I'm sure we can make it with just Scruffy, though. Of course, if somebody else wants to come, too, it wouldn't be a problem."
"If this lost city has a dragon kill switch, I want to come." Braham says.
"That'd work," the Commander nods. "Rox'll leave signs for you to follow once you're done there. Oh, and Taimi? If that Exalted device that showed us where Rata Novus is had it's connector things degraded, I'm quite sure that if Rata Novus is deserted like I suspect, everything there will be degraded, too. You might want to take some repair parts."
"Great idea, Commander. Let's go!"
THE END