The three trolls stared at the gate, somewhat afraid to go in. Latula leaned in, and Mituna held her hand. Kurloz followed them in, and they emerged on Mituna's world. There a massive, transparent, jellyfish like creature hovered above them. Its long tentacles dangled ominously in the air, and the transparent film covering them seemed to shimmer red, then blue, then yellow, then back to red before their eyes. Above the tentacles, a massive stormcloud concealed the body and face of the Denizen. It spoke, and its voice was suprisingly calm, monotone, and singular:
"Greetings, Knight, Prince, and Heir. I am called Prora Methos. You wish to challenge me, yes?"
"Don't be so pompous. Your death is at hand," Mituna said, floating to meet the creature, facing the cloud.
"Quite the bold one. Let us begin."
"Indeed," Mituna replied. Latula ate the marshamallow and cried, "m4m4llow pow3r!" Mituna looked at her as if she were insane.
"1t's for good luck," Latula explained sheepishly. Mituna nodded in understanding, floating up to Prora Methos. Kurloz did the same, and so did Latula, who had gained the floating ability by eating the balloon-shaped marshmallow.
"Let's see which one of us is really doomed!" Mituna said challengingly. Prora Methos did not reply, but instead shot out a tentacle.
And thus the greatest battle of Player against Denizen began.
Mituna flew upwards and to the right of Prora Methos to dodge the tentacle. Latula used the severers to, well, sever the tentacle.
"My means of attack are infinite," Prora Methos said nonchalantly as he sweeped 3 tentacles into Latula and Kurloz from the side. They took the air with Mituna, and the three of them tried to enter the stormcloud that protected the eldritch monstrosity. Prora Methos grabbed the 3 of them as they attempted to diverge, slamming them back to the ground.
Mituna helped Latula to her feet, and they and Kurloz split off again, with Mituna aiming for the center and Latula the left and right. Prora Methos sent out a thin blue ring that hit the trolls like a shockwave, knocking Latula and Kurloz down a few feet in the air and making Mituna shudder with the psychic energy.
"You'll suffer the most," Prora Methos said informatively. As he shot out another tentacle, this one pointed at the end to skewer Mituna, the troll fired an immense blast of red and blue electricity from his forehead, zapping the tentacle and making it numb. As it dropped, Kurloz chopped it off with his battleaxe. Mituna strafed to the right, reaching for Latula. She held his hand as he fired another mental blast at Prora Methos, this time at the storm cloud hiding him. Although the monster appeared to crackle a bit, nothing seemed to happen. Prora Methos shot out more tentacles at Mituna, aiming to grab him as Latula moved to see if she could catch Prora Methos by surprise from the rear. Mituna grabbed the tentacle as it came toward him and severed it with a laser from his hand, but Latula was completely cut off guard and was stabbed with the tentacle aiming for her. The male trolls gasped as Prora Methos pulled Latula into itself, thinking that she was doomed. Instead, Prora Methos fired Latula out into the air, whizzing far away from the scene of the battle. Latula stopped herself from flying indefinitely and returned to the fray before she could crash into anything.
"Latula, what did you see in there?" Mituna asked her telepathically.
"noth1ng much! why?" she asked.
"I was hoping he would have some weakness in his core, if we can call it that."
"I'LL TAKE THE TENTACLES. YOU TWO TRY AND ENTER THE MOTHERFUCKIN' CORE," Kurloz suggested, also telepathically.
"I should warn you now that your conversation isn't private," Prora Methos cautioned. "Your every word is remembered and added to my collection of knowledge."
"Sur3, wh4t3v3r, just shut up!" Latula cried out loud.
Prora Methos said nothing more, as if to comply. Instead he fired out several yellow lasers from the storm cloud, each one targeting the trolls where they were. Kurloz blocked his with his battleaxe, causing it to stop firing. Latula dodged hers and tossed a grenade into the storm cloud. Prora Methos simply picked it up and threw it back out, at her, and it exploded in front of her, knocking her down. Mituna immediately surrounded himself in a psionic bubble and launched it at Latula.
"Stay in there until you feel ready to fight!" he cried. Prora Methos tried to shoot out with another tentacle, but a jolt from the bubble told him it was useless. Kurloz took the opportunity to sever this other tentacle. Prora Methos then sent out dozens of tentacles and spun them rapidly in a circle all around the storm cloud, taking care not to touch Latula's bubble. Mituna tried to fire another psionic blast with his eyes and hands, but the tentacles resisted and knocked him away. Kurloz held up his battleaxe, hoping that each one would be chopped when they touched the blade, but instead the battleaxe was knocked away, and as Kurloz went to retrieve it he was shot with a powerful and wide red beam that sent him crashing to the ground with Mituna.
Latula was still wounded, but she completely disregarded this and flew out with her severers and the RCM (no, I didn't forget about it!) and opened up the former in front of the tentacles, blocking each one as they came between the giant scissor blades. With a simple motion, Latula cut off all of the tentacles as they piled up. She then took the RCM and threw it into the stormcloud. It returned to her out from the top, and Latula caught it. As the spear flew in, the storm cloud crackled and boomed. Kurloz tossed Latula his battleaxe, and she attached it and another grenade to the RCM. The weapons again flew straight into Prora Methos's storm cloud, and the explosion from the grenades sent the weapons undamaged out from the eldritch's mysterious core. Latula and Kurloz grabbed their weapons, and Mituna hovered in astonishment.
"How did you do that?" Mituna asked.
"You just h4v3 to try 4 bunch of stuff and s33 wh4t works," Latula said casually. "Th1s 1s st1ll just 4 g4m3, r3m3mb3r? 3v3ry boss h4s to h4v3 som3 kind of w34kn3ss, 3v3n yours. Oth3rw1s3 th3r3'd b3 no w4y for us to w1n!"
"If you remember from your gaming experiences, many bosses have mutiple phases," Prora Methos added. "You've only forced me to change strageties. Nothing more."
And with that, Prora Methos grabbed the three trolls with his tentacles and sent them into his storm cloud.
They awoke to find themselves in a giant, turbulent, gray sphere with no solid objects at all. Red, blue, and plain old yellow lightning shot not just vertically but horizontally and diagonally across the sphere almost haphazardly. Prora Methos himself hovered in the center, much smaller then one would have thought him to be. He now appeared as a small, light blue jellyfish-like creature, with a transparent body and much shorter tentacles that weren't useful for attack. He was about two feet long and five feet tall.
"This is who I was prior to receiving my knowledge," Prora Methos explained. "I was one of the few residents of the Furthest Ring who had definite mass and size. I was the lowliest of them all; now they rightly fear my power. When I'm finished here, I will kill them by expanding to a much greater size than what you see now. I have only shrunk this way for the battle; the game won't allow me to give myself an unfair advantage."
"I don't care what you are, we're killing you!" Mituna cried.
"But perhaps I could be in a timeline in which you do not? There is only one way to test this."
Prora Methos directed one of the richocheting lightning bolts and aimed one at Mituna. It struck him, and he fell downward to the bottom of the sphere. Latula tried to use the severers to cut at the lightning that was aiming for her, but it went too fast and simply traveled through the scissors to her. As her damaged body drifted to where Mituna was, she put the severers back in her sylladex for later use. They wouldn't be much good now, she knew.
Kurloz flew rapidly to Prora Methos, who teleported to avoid the swing of his battleaxe. Kurloz would've gasped if he had been able to when Prora Methos suddenly grabbed him with his much shorter tentacles and spun him around to face him.
"What a foolish one you are. If only you had not blasphemed your Master all those years ago. Then none of this would be your problem. If only there were some way to redeem yourself."
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN?!" Kurloz demanded. "TELL ME, YOU WICKED ABOMINATION!"
"If you survive this, he will tell you himself," Prora Methos replied. He then reached out and pulled off Kurloz's wings off. The monster then threw him downward with Mituna and Latula. Mituna caught Kurloz as he fell, but a lightning strike shot through both of them, hurting them severely. Latula fired her RCM at Prora Methos, but he simply teleported away, only reappearing when the weapon came back to her.
"how 4r3 w3 suppos3d to h1t h1m? h3 just k33ps dodg1ng!"
"Maybe it's only something I can do!" Mituna yelled over the booming thunder. "Hold on a second, guys!" he formed a psychic bubble and surrounded his matesprit and his moirail. Prora Methos sent more lightning blasts at them, but they bounced off and hit him instead. Mituna raised an eyebrow as Prora Methos recoiled from the shock of his own attack. The psionic Heir flew over to where he was, and this time Prora Methos didn't warp away.
Mituna focused all of his mental energy and fired a massive burst of electricity from his forehead as he had done before, also firing lasers from his hands, eyes, and even his mouth. As he kept the blast firing, he felt himself feeling a little dizzy. As his vision blurred, he coudn't tell whether or not Prora Methos had left the spot where he was firing or not. He could make out a light blue shape, but was the Denizen?
Mituna closed his eyes and mouth, and his hands fell to his sides. When his vision cleared, he could see that Prora Methos was gone.
"Where...did he go?" Mituna asked himself aloud.
"To answer your question, there is a HorrorTerror currently residing on your skull," Prora Methos replied. He used a tentacle to deliver a punch to Mituna's head, the blow penetrating through his skull with its psychic reach. Mituna could feel his brain bleeding yellow as Prora Methos delivered more blows, finally lauching Mituna across the sphere. More bolts of lightning hit him as he crashed into what was apparently the wall of the sphere. Prora Methos finished his attack by extending his tentacles vertically from the top and bottom of the sphere as they crackled with multi-colored electricity. A massive wave of energy that encompassed the entire half of the sphere where Mituna was hit him at full force. The blast left him stunned and defenseless.
Latula was crying now, struggling to break free of her bubble. But only Mituna could open this one with his powers, and he was far too weak to do so at the moment.
"M1tun4!" she cried, his name being the only coherent word of her screams of dismay as Prora Methos hovered slowly over to where his body lay.
OH NO! THIS ISN'T GOOD!
"C4ns, h3's dy1ng! Wh4t do 1 do?" Latula cried.
JUST DO WHAT I DO: PUT OFF YOUR PROBLEMS BY SETTING THEM BACK A LITTLE, IF YOU CATCH MY DRIFT!
"th3 b4dg3!" Latula cried in realization. She put it on and punched the bubble again. She took out her RCM once more and threw at Prora Methos as he was grabbing onto the unconcious Mituna. The RCM hit him at full force, severing his tentacles and lodging itself into Prora Methos' membrane. Latula, not bothering to wait for it to come back, went over and delivered a powerful punch with her gauntlets to Prora Methos, and the monster vanished.
. . . . .
But where did Prora Methos go? How far back in time did the blast send him?
Years in the past (very many) the young eldritch monster hovered with awe and terror as he saw an object hurtle towards him from the black emptiness of the Furthest Ring. It was the same size as he, but it was faster than he ever could, and emanating energy that he had never perceived before, at least from his own physical body. As the object grew closer, the young Prora Methos began to probe the mind of this being, realizing that it was very much like himself-ambitious, headstrong, yet calculating. But for some reason, Prora Methos felt that none of the traits he had been blessed to have been spawned with would matter very much now, nor eons in the future.
Prora Methos, from eons in the future, saw this young eldritch being, and tried to speak to it. He could have told it to move out of the way, but his infinite knowledge told him that such a thing would be impossible to do; the child would be too terrified and ignorant to understand him.
"The levels of irony in my fate are as infinite as the stars," Prora Methos said to himself.
And when both had collided, a tentacle from a much larger HorrorTerror reached out and flung their corpses across paradox space. Whatever happened to the trash was inconsequential.
. . . . .
Latula watched as the sphere of storm clouds vanished, and she suddenly found herself plummeting down to the ground and landing with a thud. When she got up, she found that her weapons were still in her sylladex, but Kurloz and Mituna were nowhere to be found.
Confused and worried, she returned home alone. Mituna's non-dream body was still sleeping peacefully, unharmed by the battle. But what had happened to the Mituna that had fought with her, and where was Kurloz?
Those questions weren't ones that she felt like answering to herself, mostly because she dreaded her conclusion: she was the only survivor of the battle.
