Mage Tank

I began to think that pushing Reckless Shortcut to its maximum distance had been a mistake.

My eyes bulged as the delayed onset agony of my body being thrust through a dimensional blender and spat out through a hole in reality that was several sizes too small caught up to me. Unlike the last time I’d used the reforged spell to extend the teleport’s range, I currently had my entire brain available to process the consequences. However, my knee-jerk decision to blink to the opposite side of the mountain was making me question how much of my ‘entire’ brain I actually used. This was especially true after I took a second to glance at my health and saw that I’d hurt myself nearly as much as the three-limbed, exploding slap from a sentient mountain of hatred had.

HP: 475 -> 291

Screaming at the monster was also a mistake, as my body made clear to me via piercing pains throughout my battered joints. Trying to stand atop Gracorvus was also, also a mistake.

My left forearm was broken and the shoulder dislocated. My right knee was shattered and both of my tibias had multiple fractures. This was on top of the usual snapped ribs, scorched skin, and body-spanning muscular damage that resulted from having three-quarters of my HP beaten, burned, and exploded out of me.

If I’d been able to bruise normally, I would have been more purple than tan. Fortunately, Just a Flesh Wound saved me from the inordinate amount of internal Bleeding that I’d normally have suffered when my veins and organs ruptured. Likewise, Body of Theseus saved me from collapsing and was the only reason I could stand at all. My leg bones were in several more pieces than they should have been, after all.

And yet, these decisions had been made. I stood in the blistering wind. Rain battered my armor and the frigid dampness of my recent dunk penetrated every cell of my body. It would have been miserable, had I not been wholly focused on the hundred tendrils heading toward me, moving at a speed just south of Mach 1. As such, my mind was preoccupied with how fucked I was.

The remnant’s limbs were in bad shape. They left trails of blood and smoke in the air as they hurtled my way, burning with insatiable flame, and pulsing with toxic veins. Their 20-second journey saw a dozen of their number collapse, overwhelmed by some combination of debuffs. The Pit’s single remaining eye was inflamed with creeping veins of venom, pulsing with each arrow Nuralie landed. I could still make out the loson a mile distant, and it looked like she was dipping new arrows into prepared bottles of poison, having exhausted her supply of pre-coated arrows.

She’d had a lot of pre-coated arrows.

The surface of the remnant below its head was steadily becoming engulfed in Xim’s divine fire which spread without opposition while The Pit was fixated wholly on me. Meanwhile, Varrin continued intercept whipping limbs, cutting another two down with the 20-foot length of Kazandak as they made their way to me.

Meanwhile, Shog leaped from limb to limb until he was at the foremost tendril, greatswords stowed and feathers being blown off his tentacles from the sheer speed of his ride. He was looking in my direction, legs coiled and body ready to pounce.

I held Somncres clenched in my remaining usable hand, weighing the benefits of hurling some Void Hammers against the brief burst of flight my 58 remaining mana would get me with Gracorvus.

My gains in Wisdom and Intelligence combined with the spatial understanding granted by my Coordinated Thinker evolution allowed me to do a pretty decent job of plotting the path of the tendrils–especially as their number reduced–but at the end of the day, I just wasn’t fast enough on Gracorvus. The duration of my flying mobility wouldn’t be good enough, either.

Thankfully, Shog seemed to understand my situation. As he grew closer, I even saw Grotto latched onto one of the c’thon’s feelers like he was Shog’s little octo bro, tagging along for the adventure. A disdainful psychic communication quickly dispelled that impression.

[Are you aware that the overwhelming majority of all discomfort I have suffered in the last several million years is from our Shared Fate connection?]

“Several million?” I thought back to my familiar. “Wait, how old are you?”

[Too old to keep counting and too young for your bravado to become my end.]

“Are you saying that you’re here to rescue me?”

[I am having one of our subjects rescue you.]

“One of ‘our’ subjects? Pretty sure Shog is my summon.”

[Irrelevant. We are so closely bound that your summon may as well be my own.]

“Yeah? How do you feel about that, Shog?”

“Say the word and I will consume this c’thon pretender.”

“Ha. No, please don’t do that. The psychic feedback would probably kill me.” The limbs were a few seconds from impact. “Plan?”

[I will unify our minds and allow you to treat Shog as your wings.]

“You’re gonna what?”

[You will be able to control him.]

“Like an RC car?!”

“I will respond to your mental commands. You will not control me.”

[Regardless, it will only require you to imagine the movement as you would one for your own body. No need for formulating orders.]

“Wait, why? And how long have you been able to–”

Shog launched off from the lead tendril, using its momentum to hurtle toward me at a speed several times faster than his normal flight. A shockwave pulsed out from his body as he exceeded the sound barrier and I hastily flew Gracorvus in reverse to try and lessen the speed of the incoming grapple.

As Shog blasted by, he slowed as much as he could and his tentacles stretched out ahead of him, wrapped me up, and then gave way to my body as he soared past, softening the force of the snatch. It was still a pretty brutal yoink, but the whiplash was manageable and I only passed out briefly from the pain.

After my consciousness skipped a beat I felt Grotto establish a mental connection between myself and Shog, layering a mental impression of the c’thon’s body atop my own. I suddenly felt as though I’d grown two feet taller and had twenty extra arms, which is to say I had no good way to describe what I felt. It was similar to a dream where the logic only makes sense while you’re asleep. The moment you wake and try to describe to someone the sensation of morphing into a dimension-stalking, apex predator, you get nothing but smiles and nods politely letting you know that the person to whom you are speaking neither cares nor is interested in your deranged ramblings.

Shog spun and decelerated, orienting us back toward The Pit. He dove to avoid a lashing limb and I felt the action pull against a thread in my mind. When he moved, I could sense the mental connection like a phantom tugging on my own limbs. It was surreal, but I could also pull back, forcing the c’thon’s body to respond to my ‘suggested’ movements.

“Why are we doing this?” I asked, trying to get used to Shog’s level of mobility. His Speed was at least as high as Varrin’s, maybe higher, but he wasn’t nearly as agile. I experimented with trying to issue commands to my summon as though I were piloting my own body. It wasn’t exactly a smooth ride.

[Shog cannot see in every direction at once. You can. Further, the c’thon’s mental attributes are abysmal.]

Shog growled but didn’t contradict the core.

“See in every direction?” I asked. “You mean with Soul-Sight?”

[Indeed.]

It was amazing how often I forgot to utilize one of my most potent abilities. I made a note to practice using Soul-Sight as a persistent, automatic function, the same as any other sense I possessed. I didn’t need to remind myself to use my fucking eyes. My capabilities with the Sight needed to be at the same level.

A flaming limb whipped within inches of us as I began to focus on the world through my Soul-Sight. Only a single pustule exploded as Shog barely dodged the passing limb, many of the aggressive growths having been used up or destroyed by my party’s efforts. The arm that blazed past failed to rise back up, exhausted by Xim’s fire, but many more were on the way.

The rest of The Pit shone in my Sight, granting me a comprehensive view of the battlefield. I began trying to issue directions to Shog through Grotto’s psychic link. We avoided a limb swinging in from Shog’s rear, but there was a delay between my mental nudge to Shog and his response. It passed so close that the wind disrupted Shog’s flight, taking us into the path of another limb swinging in from the side. Shog raised half of his tentacles to absorb the strike, and I felt the muscle within six of his feelers get reduced to mincemeat. The c’thon had protected Grotto and me from the attack, but he wouldn’t be able to take more than two additional direct hits like that.

My Soul-Sight gave me a 360-degree view of the incoming limbs. My high INT, WIS, and Coordinated Thinker evolution combined to allow me to predict the paths of the rapidly moving tangle of arms and plot escape vectors much better than the c’thon on his own. However, the translation to action was imperfect–like playing an FPS with 200-millisecond ping–frustrating.

I was also distracted by the persistent waves of pain from my body letting me know that I was really, quite very, fucked up. I felt Grotto boost my endorphin and adrenaline before I could even consciously send him the thought.

[I have already pushed these levels beyond the limits of ordinary physiology. Your thought processes will continue to become more clouded from here on out. The fact that you can form a coherent thought at all is a testament to how significantly your evolutions have altered your body.]

“Noted.”

I steered Shog to one side, but the delay caused us to cut it close and take another explosion. Gracorvus and Shog’s feelers soaked much of the damage, but my summon’s limbs were being disabled faster than The Pit’s. Shog was more wound than c’thon by this point. Something had to change or else we would all be crushed before my allies could finish their work. I needed a better solution.

Which is when the obvious came to me.

I closed my eyes and pushed Soul-Sight beyond a mere sense for the incoming limbs. I felt Shog’s soul, heard the rhythm of his movements, tasted his feelings and motivations, and touched the history of his body and how it operated. I brought that awareness to the mental model Grotto had created in my mind, overlaying it to create a much more robust understanding of and connection with the c’thon. I felt not only the movements of Shog’s body but also how his soul flowed through and animated his flesh.

Then, I used Reveal to connect directly with the souls of Shog and Grotto both. The link came with virtually no effort or resistance since they were both entities that were profoundly intertwined with me. I took my understanding of Shog’s body and sent it to my summon with Reveal, hoping the connection would allow me to communicate to Shog exactly what I wanted his body to do in real-time, without the awkward thought, transmission, and response series that created the delay.

My thoughts directing Shog to do were no longer an abstraction that my pair of companions had to translate into meaningful action through their combined capabilities but were instead instructions sent directly to Shog’s soul. I absorbed every nuance of Shog’s body through Grotto’s psychic link and my Sight. Then, that comprehension was instantly mirrored and sent to Shog using Reveal.

Combined with the ethereal mental state induced by the overabundance of fight-or-flight chemicals saturating my brain, the line between myself and my summon blurred until I could no longer distinguish between my own body and the c’thon’s. Reveal imparted that sensation onto my summon as well while keeping Grotto looped in as a psychic mediator for the communication between our physical brains.

I was a mortal man, piloting a murderous mana fiend like a flesh suit. Our souls mingled to transmit haptic feedback and our minds were psychically unified and stabilized by an ancient, marginally sociopathic Delve Core. Where Arlo ended and Shog began became a vague suggestion, the distinction between our thoughts no more discrete than two hemispheres of the same brain, with Grotto serving as the corpus callosum between them.

We were fused into something new. Someone distinct. We were now Grottarlog? Grothuarlo? Tuagrotar?

No, we’d become the mighty Arlottog.

Four of Shog’s tentacles secured me at the center of his body, protected by his bearded mass of feelers with Gracorvus over my chest and stomach. Grotto was wrapped around me at the small of my back in the most protected position between myself and Shog. As two more of The Pit’s tendrils struck, I saw them from all directions with my Sight, and we moved instantly to avoid them.

We spun through the limbs, our combined minds able to see the paths they would take, to predict the corrections they would make as we dodged. We feinted and dove, driving into the freezing waters to break The Pit’s line of sight. We emerged and climbed, seawater spraying off of us as we moved at over 200 miles per hour.

The limbs that attacked us continued to die–incinerated, decayed, or exsanguinated. We moved as little as possible with each dodge, skirting just outside the blast radius of the pustules and giving ourselves as much time as possible for the next maneuver. The enemy limbs were also growing more sluggish, and a few even struck at places we were nowhere near.

While The Pit’s attention was wholly on Arlottog, my allies were still not completely safe.

Xim’s transformation ended, her shrinking body assaulted by the vicious barbs that covered the surface of The Pit’s island body. Her mana was empty and she was no longer able to heal through the damage, her health pool dropping precipitously as she was pierced by a dozen lancing stingers. The world burned around her.

We swooped down, already angling toward the cleric as the last of her mana was spent. We grabbed her with a pair of feelers, snatching her up from the grasp of the barbs, and went back on the run. We moved around the remnant’s massive head, its eye–now fully corrupted by black and green veins–no longer gazed at us with unmasked hatred. The pupil was dilated and flitted from side to side, looking at things the rest of us couldn’t see. Its mouth oozed molten rock, the edges turned up in an absent grin.

The drugs I’d administered were kicking in.

As I realized that The Pit was starting to feel real groovy, Varrin fell from one of the tendrils.

His stamina had fallen to 0 during his mad assault on the tendrils, rendering the warrior unconscious. He descended between the swiping limbs, and we plotted our flight to take us to him without any of the tendrils crossing his descent in their search for us. We caught up and our c’thonic arms wrapped the big guy up.

Most of our working limbs were now occupied, the rest too injured to hold anyone or anything. Fortunately, The Pit suffered from a combination of dying and dosed up. Despite our burden, we made it back to The Pit’s central head without injury, the lion’s share of attacking limbs destroyed or flailing at invisible enemies.

We dropped Xim and Varrin onto the top of The Pit’s head next to where Etja had collapsed, her mana dry and her health around one-third. Sweat poured down Nuralie’s face as she dipped an arrow into her poison, drew it back until the muscles in her arm pushed taught against her tight leathers, then released it into The Pit’s skull alongside tens of others. She looked up as we approached, eyes wide from the effects of one of her stimulants.

“I won’t ask,” she thought to us while looking Arlottog up and down.

“Tell me it’s time to use Venemous Escalation,” we thought to her. Nuralie looked a little uncomfortable at the psychic harmony of our combined mental voices, but she nodded and began casting the spell.

Threads of mana shot out from her core, connecting to the webbed veins of Toxicity crawling across The Pit’s head and body. Her eyes flared a sickly green, and a pulse went down the threads. When the energy connected, the veins exploded into growth. In a handful of seconds, they were twice as thick and numerous as they’d been the moment before. There was hardly an inch of the remnant’s surface that was untouched by the corruption.

Our chest and bones rattled from another infrasonic roar. A few of the remaining tendrils began to flail weakly toward the top of its head where we stood. We didn’t have enough feelers or stamina to carry the entire party away from the assault. Meager as it was, it was still a lethal attack in our state.

Grocorvus moved from my chest to hover at our front. We drew Shog’s greatswords and we uttered a command to The Pit, its alien mind vulnerable, already teetering on the edge of breaking.

“You will Despair.”

The mental attack rolled across the Pit and made the last few tendrils hesitate. We flew forward, raking our greatswords across the stuttering limbs. Gracorvus moved to protect us from the weak blasts of a few pustules as their smoldering remains sputtered.

Finally, only a single limb remained, and we mana-shaped an Oblivion Orb with the last of my mana, increasing its size as much as possible. Despite The Pit’s dimensional resistance, the orb at the palm of our c’thonic hand carved a hole into the center of the limb, large enough for us to pass through. We flew within, then cleaved the limb in half from the inside with our greatswords.

The limbs were all broken and The Pit’s remaining eyes rolled in its socket. Its flesh sagged and sloughed away and smoke filled the sky from the divine fire ravaging most of its body like an unchecked forest fire. Our bodies shook from another inaudible roar.

After a minute of silent agony, The Pit finally perished.

Nuralie dropped her bow and fell onto her ass. She leaned back on her hands, breathing hard and staring at the sky as the rain beaded and ran down her face. Eventually, she turned back to us.

She started to say something, but my thoughts were hijacked by a notification that plastered itself in the center of my vision.

Your Crumb-Cruncher Traveler’s Amulet has evolved! Inspect the item to see its new ability and any requirements that must be met to trigger the next evolution.