Ferdie and the Elementals

Althea, the Knights, and I roll up on the Elemental of Chaos' fortress as the sun begins to set, casting long shadows across the ground. The sky is a dull orange, and the wind whips up dust and debris. The huge jet black walls are so dark that they seem to eat the light, and they are bending and twisting like metal lightning. They have a mixture of sharp angles and smooth curves, as if they were molded from clay and then hardened into stone. There is no mighty keep or tower here, just those wicked, winding ramparts with their enormous gates left wide open.

"At least Zazel was kind enough to leave the front door open," I turn to Althea, who wears a sliver of concern on her mostly cool face. "We're almost there. You good to go?"

She nods without saying anything, so I giver her and the Knights my best "okay, let's do this" expression and take them straight into the compound. The vast, earthy courtyard is completely devoid of life, but there's plenty of trash: tons of broken booze bottles, old bits of moldy food, a bunch of broken furniture, and a few busted sex toys are scattered about.

I smile and nod with approval. "Zazel sure knows how to party."

"Please be on your guard," Althea scans the area, hammer and shield gripped tight. "Any one of these artifacts could be a part of one her devious traps."

I chuckle. "Yeah, beware the booby-trapped Dildo of Doom!"

"Please take this seriously. She is the very incarnation of chaos and nothing in her domain can be ruled out as innocuous."

"Even rubber dongs?"

"Enough, Hero. We must still find a way to gain entry," she tilts her war hammer forward. "I suppose that is the entrance."

On the ground, near the back of the courtyard is a super wide square platform made of the same black metal as the walls of the compound.

I nod. "You stay here and I'll-"

A powerful metallic shriek breaks out as the platform cracks in half and opens like a giant iron book. The two halves fall to the ground, creating a huge, thundering noise that sounds like two freight trains were dropped from the sky. There's a cloud of dust left behind when everything settles, revealing a dark hole with an eerie dark purple light radiating from somewhere deep within.

The wind blows through my hair as I smile. "Neat. I'll go in first, and I'll call you when the coast is clear."

Althea nods. "Very well. Though, I would prefer to stay by your side."

"Yo, we talked about this. It was risky enough to bring you even just this far."

"I have not forgotten our discussion. But even you must exercise caution against an Unreleased elemental, especially one as foul and devious as this one."

"I'll be fine. I can't die, remember?"

"I have not forgotten that, either," she calmly plants the butt of her war hammer into the ground. "However, it is worth bearing in mind that there are fates worse than death."

"Wow, try not to sound so encouraging. Anyway, I'll holler for you when I've cleared it out. Stay close to the Knights."

She nods and I make my way down the creepy, cavernous stairway to the first chamber. The air is damp and cool one moment, then hot and dry the next, and the blue light down becomes green, then red, then white, then back to blue. My senses start to feel a little out of whack, and I feel like I'm entering the home of some unhinged horror movie director, and the feeling only gets more intense the deeper I go.

I finally hit the landing and check the first chamber from behind the threshold, moving my head a bit from side to side a couple of times before stepping in. The entire place is dimly lit and decorated in a very colorful, yet sinister style, with nonsensical paintings, statues, and furniture that all look like they belong in a horror movie, yet there is a shit ton of brightly-colored paints all over everything. It's like a hall in a creepy medieval castle that got vandalized by a bunch of kindergartners on a sugar high. I also spot the stairwell on the other side, and more garbage, but no Spawn.

Where the hell are they? I check every inch of the weird, dark room for spawn like a detective dusting for fingerprints. After a good couple of minutes, I feel satisfied enough to call Althea and the Knights down.

Althea comes down with Sir Biscuit and the Knights following closely behind in a tight, lockstep fashion. Their metallic armor clangs together, creating at bell-like chorus that grows louder and louder. In rows of four, the Knights flow down from above like a slow stream of platinum syrup, spreading out in an orderly fashion at the landing. They only stop marching when they finally get the idea that all one hundred of them won't be able to fill the room.

I scratch my head. "Althea, I don't think all your dudes are gonna fit down here."

"I am aware. I will ensure they are able to follow without obstructing us or each other."

"Alright. Anyways, I'm about to make your dreams come true: you're up front with me."

She blinks. "Very good, Hero. I will do my best to meet your expectations."

"Ha! You know how to talk to a man," I point back with my thumb. "There's a maze down there, I'm pretty sure. Can you sense Zazel from here?"

"Her presence is everywhere; it is as though I am submerged in a fetid pond."

"Gross. But you can more or less sense exactly where she is, right?"

"Unmistakably."

"Good. You get to play bloodhound for a bit and help me get through that maze."

"Bloodhound?"

"Nevermind. Just help me get through the maze. But stay behind me, yeah?"

"Yes. I will be your guiding light."

"Let's move."

We make our way down to the second level, and my eyes are assaulted by all the lights and colors on the way. The little glowing spheres that light the stairwell flicker, fade, and flash pretty much randomly while changing colors, and the walls look like something straight out of the mother of all acid trips. Here and there, we see weirdly-shaped doorways leading into different kinds of messed up chambers.

I stop after passing a door that's shaped like a leg of fried chicken. "Yo, you sure we don't need to check any of these?"

Althea stops, looks inside the chicken room, which is neon pink and full of milky white bubbles, and nods. "They are irrelevant distractions. We must go deeper to reach her. "

We travel down even more stairs, Sir Biscuit and other Knights streaming down single file not far behind. Eventually, we land in a short corridor that breaks off into a seemingly endless maze of twisting and turning passages. We see all kinds of insane rooms, each with different features. It's the place is all some huge contest by an army of batshit crazy architects to see who could make up the most confusing possible room.

One chamber is totally empty except for the ceiling, which looks like someone let a million toddlers loose in a paint store, and another has what looks like a mashup between a giant video game system and a pinball machine with a billion flashing lights, buttons, and levers, and even a featureless bright white room with a little black box in the middle that whispers indecipherable nonsense when we get close to it.

As we continue to explore, we discover rooms with bizarre clown logic architecture. One room has an illuminated pink ceiling made of clear glass with metal balls rolling across it , while another has a floor that is completely submerged in an ankle-deep layer of purple jelly. In yet another room, the walls are made entirely of mirrors, and I can see myself reflected endlessly in their shiny surfaces.

Things only get worse as we go deeper. Walls break apart, melt together, turn inside out, or just plain disappear while the lights and floors shift colors, flicker, and buzz on and off. Entrances and halls appear out of nowhere, and others vanish. Even the air lacks consistency; it is foul and earthy in one place and sweet and warm in another. One corridor smells like pasta, another place smells like wood, and another hall smells like cigarettes.

Basically, everything is totally fucked up and I'm pretty sure my sense of reality is going to suffer some permanent damage after all this, as if it wasn't already enough to be in some fever dream of an alien world punching piles of shit while getting henpecked by a magic priestess.

To her credit, though, the priestess sees through all the bullshit and doesn't make a single error as she navigates behind me, even as the place cranks the crazy dial up to eleven. We have to wait a couple of minutes for a passageway to reappear, and there is one place where we have to knock down a giant tube full of bouncy balls to unblock an entrance, but it's pretty smooth sailing considering every place we step into tries its hardest to reality on its head.

As we pass a room filled with neon green liquid and strange mushrooms, things start to become a little bit more normal and I see a long, relatively ordinary-looking passage with a faint dark blue light at the end.

I look back to Althea: "You stay here."

She hesitates before nodding. "Be vigilant. I sense an unusual amount of mana coalesced in there."

"Everything is unusual in this place."

I head down the long, narrow hall and roll up to the big chamber at the end. It's a big round room with a domed, arched ceiling about eight meters high. There are columns arranged in a circle that supports the roof, and they are made of black stone that glistens in the dark blue light. At the center of the room is a wide raised platform about half a meter high. Slopped on top of it is a huge, towering, ugly blob that thinks its real fucking clever, sitting still as a statue and pretending not to be the nastiest pile of shit ever.

Oh, you must think I'm stupid, I crack my knuckles. But you ain't seen stupid yet.

I close my eyes and feel around for that little source of power inside me again, but the Butt Ugly Bastard decides just then to make its move. It spins and strikes at me sideways with a massive whip of an limb. The nasty tentacle smacks me hard as hell and I go flying back. I tumble along the hard floor of the chamber until I hit the wall.

I growl real loud and crack the floor with my fist. "Sonuva bitch!" I stand back up, fists clenched hard as hell.

The freak as its hundreds of fish-like eyes bubble up and lock onto me. The Big Ugly Bastard is like big pile of cowshit mixed with tar and puke. It's pretty much a Spawn, but bigger, uglier, and smellier. Its huge pile of a body is a twisted mass of black goop, flesh, and bone, with long arms and legs that end in razor-sharp claws and its giant, gaping mouth could swallow a horse whole. From beneath its tar-like body emerges a bunch of brownish yellow bones, claws, teeth, and other dangerous-looking things. It stares at me silently, its body sloshing and bubbling deeply as it starts lurch at me.

Pop my neck and spit. "Damn, you're ugly!"

As I get ready to bull rush the monstrosity, I hear a storm of metal rushing toward me from behind. I twist around to see Sir Biscuit and a detachment of Knights rush in like a blast of steel wind. Swords and shields in hand, the brave suits of shining metal armor rush past me attack Bub like a bunch of starving dogs on a rack of ribs. Their blades slice through its tar-like hide and sending gobs of dark slime flying all over the chamber.

"Hey, I told you to stay back! I got this!"

Bub responds with a powerful swipe of its razor-sharp claws, sending a Knight sailing across the room, followed by another, and another. The metal warriors keep up the assault, but the fecal monster doesn't back down.

"FOR ORDER!!" Sir Biscuit leaps into the air from behind me, swinging his blade down on Bub's head with a mighty battle cry. But the monster is quicker than it looks and catches the Knight's sword in midair with a snap of a tentacle. It whips the metal warrior around and throws him against the far wall of the chamber and immediately goes back to whipping, stabbing, and beating the the shit out of the rest of the Knights.

I sigh and shake my head. "Don't blame me if you get your asses kicked!"

As I pause to dip into my power, the Knights regroup and form a wall, locking their metal shields together and fending off the noodly blows, slashing claws, and pointy stikes as the monster closes in with its massive sloppy, snapping maw. It looks like its going to chew through the wall of metal warriors.

"Not happening, asswipe!" I flip my switch and get a rush of that sweet, sweet Hero power and charge headlong at the Butt Ugly Bastard again. The power surge bursts inside me and quickly concentrates itself in my right fist; it makes me feel like I could punch through a mountain.

Still, Bub is smarter than it looks; the turd knows it's about to get flushed. In a flash, it whips out with a spiny tentacle, but misses by a mile, apparently distracted by Sir Biscuit and his huge sword coming back for round two.

"Nice fucking try!" I cock my fist back hard and I rush toward the fray. I leap like a tiger over the cluster of Knights punch Bub as hard as I fucking can. My fist connects, and the power of the punch pops Bub like a massive zit, scattering his black goo like buckshot in all directions. A shockwave bursts out at the same time, and it ripples through the air, knocks the Knights to the ground, and makes me go damned near deaf.

As I recover, I keep my eyes on Bub. Still as shit, dead as shit.

"Yeah, bitch!" I shoot my fists into the air, sending chunks of Bub flying off my jacket. "Who's the fuckin' man!?"

A slimy Sir Biscuit raises his blackened blade high into the air. "PRAISE THE HERO!"

The black speckled Knights copy their golden, Bub-stained leader: "PRAISE THE HERO!" Their metallic cheers fill the dark blue chamber.

I pump my fists even more. "That's right!" I puff my chest out and pace around like a cat that just caught a bird. "Praise my heroic ass!"

Althea marches up to you, a small detachment of Knights surrounding her. "Well done, Hero."

"Yeah, baby! I love punchin' shit!"

"Your enthusiasm is quite endearing, but you would do well to not lose track of where we are."

"Yeah, yeah." I point back with my thumb to the dozen or so broken and chewed up Knights that got their asses kicked by Bub. "Just fix your guys so we can-"

I hear something that sounds like sliding mud from the other side of the chamber and I spin around. Before I can even raise my dukes, the room rushed by a huge swarm of Butt Ugly Spawn. They slip, bounce, and slide in every direction, picking up a little piece of the Big Ugly Bastard with each disgusting movement. The Knights do their best to hack and slash at them as they jump and skid around, but there's just too many of the little shit stains around to make much of a difference.

You slide in front of Althea and her detachment. "I don't know what the fuck they're doing, but you need to get outta here!"

"Hero, please!" Her Knights move aside as she steps forward. "We must work together!"

I shake my head and I feel my face begin to get hot. "NO! IT AIN'T SAFE!" I turn and point a finger at her. "I TOLD YOU THAT YOU NEED TO-"

I go cold as soon as I notice it. Somehow, some fucking way, the hallway where we came from is completely gone. There's no sign whatsoever that there ever even was one. No outline, no missing bits, nothing.

I turn and hold my arms out. "Stay behind me!"

"You must listen! If we-"

We notice it at the same time. The two of us watch as the nasty little monsters absorb every drop of the Butt Ugly Bastard's remains, their goopy, sticky bodies expanding as they soak up every last trace of his scattered body as they bunch together in the middle of the room.

I continue to cover Althea as I point at it. "The middle! Focus on the middle!"

The Knights break from their skirmishes instantly and rush the middle, swords raised high.

The little freaks continue to bunch together, their forms rapidly expanding, transforming, and swelling. A new, even more disgusting creature begins to takes shape: a massive, bulbous abomination with multiple sets of gnashing fangs, dripping maws, dozens of tentacles, and hundreds of sharp pointy bones.

The Knights, who've already lost more than a few dudes, do their best to trim away at it. But no matter how fast or hard they hit, they can't keep up with its out-of-control growth.

"You gotta be shitting me."

Then, it begins to stretch, forming two thick arms and two fat arms that look thick and heavy enough to crush a car. It is still for a second, then, all at once, it flicks its hundreds of nasty slitted yellow-amber eyes flash open all at once and the overgrown puke pile blitzes at us like a tank on legs, scattering and crushing Knights on its way over to use.

"Althea, get ready!"

I hear Althea's armor and shield rattle. "Bulwark of Preservation!"

A transparent dome of golden light flashes and surrounds us in an instant, like a bubble floating on water.

"It will not hold!" Althea's voice strains slightly as she braces. "You must prepare your attack!"

I reach inside my core again for the power, but the slimy fucker is way faster now. It swings its slimy, spiky arm in a massive sweep, striking the barrier with the force of a speeding bus.

The golden dome flashes off, and me, Althea, and her bodyguards catch serious air we go flying off in one direction like some kid's action figures during a bad tantrum. I lose my shades and the world swirls black and blue as I spiral through the air.

I can't move as I hit the ground like a brick, rolling across the black, slick surface until I stop next to the side wall. My vision shakes and swims for a second and I get to my knees and shake my head, then look up: the thing is coming back for round two.

My eyes dart back and forth, looking for Althea. She is on the ground in a crumpled heap beside one of the columns. "Shit! Althea!"

I race over, but I stumble and freeze as I feel a powerful, sharp sensation in my abs. It's the kind of pain that tells me something isn't right, and as I look down, I see it: a shit ton of blood and something that looks like a pink, wet rope dangling out of me. One of that fucker's bony little pig stickers got me good.

I turn my attention to the looming behemoth, who is still barreling in my direction. Everything seems to slow down to a crawl and I feel myself getting really, really hot in the face. I look toward the Sir Biscuit and his guys. Biscuit is in a dozen pieces and the ones who haven't gotten mowed down are way too weak and far too slow to keep up. Then I turn back to Althea. She's still not moving.

My breathing gets faster and deeper and I clench my fists. I head, my chest, and everything else begins to burn inside me. WHAT THE FUCK!? HOW CAN SHIT GET TURNED ON ITS HEAD SO GODDAMNED FAST!? I look back at Althea, then back at Bub. Althea, Bub. Althea, Bub. NO! NO, I AM NOT LETTING THIS HAPPEN! FUCK. THAT.