Chapter 67: Boar Hunting (pt. 2)

In the battle between Lumesh and William Oh, a black keystone of the Tower was broken, and horrible secrets and nightmarish entities from the in-between gained the opportunity to escape their confinement.

-          Jason Salazar

Travis whistled, flushing the toilet before washing his hands as he appreciated the mansion’s running water.

It wasn’t like their current accommodations didn’t have running water, but he’d found his appreciation for all its types blooming ever since he’d begun his Climb. The 4th floor especially was awful, with standing water as far as the eye could see, but no way to get clean.

The question is, how would we easily get water pressure while out in the middle of nowhere? The simplest form of achieving water pressure was a large tank on the roof that gravity-fed water back into the house, camp, whatever. The problem was filling it, whether it be from a Climber summoning it or a Relic, or some kind of pump tapping into a natural stream.

There was a pump he’d heard of that could send a small amount of water against gravity while losing a much larger amount as it operated. Oiltons liked their pumps.

Typically you wouldn’t want a leaky pump, but if it was inside a stream anyway, who cared about the efficiency?

Some kind of collapsable camp water tower and a pump that you set in a nearby stream to fill it overnight for a shower?

Even if it was collapsable, it would be damned heavy…

Probably easier to just have a relic that produces water, and heat up water in a pan.

Blech.

Travis dried off his hands and considered that the young lady he’d invited to join him upstairs hadn’t showed. Not that he’d really expected her to.

Ah well. One day that’ll work, Travis thought with a wry smile, opening the door and stepping out into the hall. The fact that he would have no idea how to handle the situation if a girl did take him up on his offer to slip away didn’t really factor-

BOOM!

An explosion in a distant room shook the whole second floor and sent Travis reeling backwards.

The door to a room at the end of the hall exploded outward in shreds of wood as a massive man wearing a boar mask plowed through and began sprinting down the hall, straight towards Travis.

The ceiling and walls began to strip away as strings buried under the wallpaper began to whip inward under tension, flinging razor sharp blades smeared with foreign substances directly into Boar’s sides.

Boar grew wiry spines from his skin as he ran that managed to shrug most of the damage off, his bloodshot gaze landing on Travis.

The Boar’s foot shifted mid-stride. It was a miniscule difference, but Travis knew what it meant.

Travis lunged back, triggering Mirage, causing two copies of himself to lunge different directions, out into the hall, running away. The Boar juked straight into the bathroom, ignoring the mirages and focusing on the one furthest away from himself, which also happened to be the real Travis.

Damnit.

“There’s an exit that isn’t trapped. Where is it!?” Boar said, grabbing the much smaller Travis by the throat, the tusks of his mask nearly putting out Travis’s eye.

“The exits are trapped!?” Travis choked out. “What are you talking about!?”

And who the hell are you!? Travis hadn’t seen any people on the guest roster that would’ve had a Boar mask and full kit. Matter of fact, he was fairly sure he was the only one of them who actually had read the guest list.

Travis had no idea what exactly was going on, but from context it was obvious…Will had done something stupid while Travis was in the bathroom.

“There’s more than one way to get you to tell me what’s trapped and what isn’t.” The lumbering mass of muscle and scar tissue said, lifting Travis off the ground with a single arm and winding up.

“Wai-“

The air was driven from his lungs as Travis was sent straight through the tile of the restroom and into the next room over, tumbling to the ground amongst cleaning supplies.

Mirage

21-20 Charge remaining

Upon hitting the floor, Travis folded the air such that he seemed to split into two wavering illusions while his real body charged straight forward.

This time it worked, as Boar lunged for the one going towards the door, while his real body dropped to the ground and slid beneath the warrior, leaping back into the shattered bathroom and sprinting for the main hall.

“You must be one dumb sonofabitch!” Travis shouted over his shoulder, triggering Taunt.

20-19 Charges remaining.

Once he hit the main hall, he spotted Will and Loth, exiting from the shattered doorway the oversized warrior had originally burst from.

At least he thought it was Will. It was the same flashy outfit, but the new mask really brought it together, making the rhinestones look like abstract scales.

Travis would never admit it looked even a little bit cool, though.

Over his shoulder, he saw a flash of the warrior glancing towards the oversized window, obviously considering jumping out of the mansion and resetting the circumstances of the battle that was in the palm of Loth’s hand.

But Taunt played hell with people’s critical thinking skills.

With an angry growl, Boar twisted on the ball of his foot and began chasing Travis.

This really helps narrow down what kind of secondaries I should get. I’m perfectly good at getting into trouble, but my escape game could use some work. That was where 99% of Decoys got killed, after all.

Mirage was good for opening opportunities to escape, but Travis needed some actual speed and possibly stealth Abilities in order to break contact as well.

Food for thought.

Loth wordlessly gestured for Travis to lead Boar towards the staircase, and Will scampered up the hallway’s wallpaper, until he was sprinting nearly upside down, just out of sight of the boar as the warrior burst into the hallway, furiously chasing Travis.

Gods I hope I don’t get caught in whatever trap this is. Travis thought, putting his head down and sprinting.

Travis had no doubt there would be a trap.

The image of his uncle’s shredded foot came to mind.

Travis turned the corner and hit the stairs at outrageous speed, marvelling that he didn’t roll an ankle at the sudden change in direction.

Click.

Click?

Oh god.

The wallpaper shredded as thick strings of spiderwebs whipped inward and cocooned Travis in the blink of an eye.

It didn’t do anything to stop his momentum, though, and Travis continued flying down the stairs, his neck absorbing most of the force of his speed as he came to a sudden, brutal halt.

If his Resistance hadn’t been in the mid-sixties, Travis probably would’ve broken his neck.

Already he could feel Loth’s insects crawling against his skin, cutting a line in the webbing along his midsection. The sensation made his hair stand on end.

“Told’ya you’d tell me where the traps were,” Boar said, slightly out of breath as he picked Travis up.

“Buuut…not quite done yet.” Boar cocked his arm as if to throw Travis the rest of the way down the stairs, when the bugs finished their work and the cocoon exploded off him like It’d ben springloaded, wrapping around Boar and attaching to the nearby staircase, looking for all the world like an egg-sac, or the recent kill of a spider.

Travis scrambled away from the restrained warrior who was covered in a thick layer of webbing that strained as he slowly moved his arm forward, the staircase flooding with a crimson aura that rolled off him like fog.

“GAAAAH!” Boar’s face turned red as he struggled to escape, and Travis could see the thick ropelike strands begin to snap or pull bits of wood off the bannisters.

He was gonna get loose. It was a matter of when, not if.

Suddenly the warrior’s scream took on a more urgent, pained quality as Loth stepped around the corner into view, a sickly glow around her hand pointed at Boar.

Travis’s eyes widened as a bulge began forming in the webbing, and an instant later, a bloody wasp the size of a child burst out of Boar’s stomach.

Travis might’ve shrieked a bit. He wasn’t sure, but he did know he was backing away from the monster as quickly as possible, only realizing what he was doing when his back rammed into the wall.

The giant wasp immediately turned and began biting Boar’s face with its razor-sharp mandibles, struggling to pierce the mask.

The red aura seemed to crystalize around Boar as he ripped the rest of the way out of the webbing, swinging a brutal fist at the wasp crawling over him.

The wasp simply lifted off him, dodging the strike before returning to continue biting.

On the other hand, Will dropped off the ceiling, riding a chef’s knife, plunging it deep into Boar’s back.

The rest of the fight was a bloody affair of Will, Loth and the terrifying wasp harrying the increasingly slowing Boar until the massive warrior raised his hand.

“Urrender-“ He gasped, his voice choked with blood.

A moment later, a second wasp emerged from the warrior’s back, collapsing the mountain of muscle to the floor before the two wasps chewed off the man’s head.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Loth said, glancing up at Will.

“Me neither,” Will said, walking up to Boar’s disembodied head and kicking the mask off.

Floor-wide Alert!

Aaron Kultz has been spotted on Floor 5.

Aaron ‘Boar’ Kultz is wanted dead for a staggering number criminal acts, primarily including Murder, Assault, Extortion and Human Trafficking.

Bounty: 3000 gold, 20000XP, to be shared among the party that claims the bounty.

Floor-wide Alert!

The Party of William Oh has claimed the bounty!

Many thanks to our Climbers for enforcing the rule of Law.

“He surrendered!” Travis said.

Will’s snarling pearlescent dragon mask turned towards him, devoid of any human emotion.

“He was a very bad man and leaving him alive would present a risk to my Party. We don’t have the means to restrain him, and I learned a valuable lesson about loose ends from the first Party I ever worked with. Remind me to tell you about it sometime. Besides…he works for the Wyrd family.”

“Oh,” Travis’s shock went out the door, his blood turning cold. “Then it’s fine.”

“Shouldn’t have removed the mask,” Loth noted.

“True. Damn.” Will mused.

“WILLIAM OH! COME DOWN HERE!”

**William Oh**

Will was nowhere near as calm as he’d like to convey, but the mask helped, and he didn’t have time to let cold-blooded murder really sink in, because the voice from downstairs sounded urgent.

Especially when it said:

“IF YOU DON’T GET DOWN HERE, I’LL START EXECUTING YOUR PARTY MEMBERS.”

Will glanced at Loth and motioned for her to go back the other way.

Loth nodded and grabbed Travis’s hand, pulling their Decoy up and away from the conflict.

The enemy hadn’t seen either of them yet at all, so why expose them now?

Will strode carefully the rest of the way down the massive staircase, the main hall coming into view as he did.

It was full of other guests restraining the rest of his Party and a few other guests.

Wait. No. Will looked closer. The guests restraining the others had blank, expressionless stares, pale skin.

They were dead.

Will flashed back to Void’s Ability to kill and revive in the same swing, when he’d surrounded Will with Kaith zombies.

Damn. Will’s stomach twisted with guilt.

Reggie didn’t look so good, June was nowhere to be seen, Mason was curled up around a sword sticking through him, Ria was strung up, and Alicia was sitting next to Reggie.

Seemingly she hadn’t done any fighting, so the enemy hadn’t labeled her as a ‘party member’. Still she was under close watch from a couple extra zombies, her fame causing them to give her special attention.

Anna was still alive. That was good.

Will wasn’t sure where Bee was, or even if she was still alive. The shapeshifter could be any one of these zombies…or none of them.

The void-mask’s teammate was resting against a nearby pillar, his neck had a puckered scar bisecting it, and a mat of clotting crimson blood down the front of his shirt. Though he looked weak, his eyes were sharp, watching the hostages, his weapons floating around him, splayed and trembling with agitation.

Will’s axe included.

Void looked singed, bruises forming up his arms.

“Here I am.” Will said, hand raised as he stepped off the last step, into the main hall, his heartbeat nearly blocking out the sounds of suffering.

“Was it worth pushing me this hard?” Void asked, motioning to the surrounding undead Climbers with his oversized scythe.

Will thought about it for a moment.

“I guess it depends on whether or not you planned on leaving witnesses. Personally I don’t think you wanted the Baron to find out what the Wyrd family is doing in his city. Easiest way to stop that from happening is to simply round up and kill everyone. People will cooperate if they think they’re just being robbed, but not if they think they’re going to die.”

Void laughed.

“That’s some cold-blooded logic. But you’re not wrong. I was going to kill all of you.”

Here comes the offer. Will thought.

“Buut…You. Your Party is worth quite a bit more than you were on the second Floor. If you surrender, I will leave you and your Party alive, instead delivering you to the seventh Floor where you will become Vassals of my Lord.”

 The shoe was on the other foot, now. If Will didn’t surrender, Void would start killing Hostages. If he did, there would be nothing to stop him from killing everyone, as originally intended.

Will needed to gauge the authenticity of Void’s Offer. If Void didn’t have a reliable way to restrain Will’s entire Party, there was no way he would keep all of them alive for the journey to the seventh Floor, and if that was the case, he would simply kill all of them once Will surrendered.

“Do you have a way of keeping all of us under control?” Will asked.

Arms grunted, and Will’s tomahawk flew out to land in Void’s hand.

“This should work.” Void said, brandishing Will’s axe.

It would work. It certainly could keep us under control until we get to the seventh floor. Everyone would be alive, but working for a monster I swore to kill. Unless I could find a way to escape…

The chances of my Party surviving are higher if I negotiate, than if I simply chose dying right here and now. I just need to buy time for June, Loth and Travis to blindside these two.

Just keep him talking.

Will opened his mouth to agree, when a slender, balding man approached from where he’d been crouched beside the onyx coffin.

The balding man mopped sweat away from his forehead as he approached, his voice quiet and trembling.

“Excuse me, V-void?”

“Yes?” Void asked, not looking away from Will.

“I’m sorry…but I just can’t do it without the missing tools.”

Good job, Stevie.

The butler must’ve misplaced the safecracker’s tools in the few moments of time he spent sabotaging the enemy.

Void held up a finger.

“Excuse me for one moment, please.”

He turned toward the safecracker, raising his cursed scythe.

The safecracker yelped and stumbled backwards, hitting the coffin before dropping to the floor and scrambling away an instant before Void brought the butt of his weapon down on the lid of the coffin.

BOOM!

A shockwave of sickly blue miasma radiated outward from the strike, and the stone of the coffin lid cracked in two.

“Can you work with that?” Void asked.

“Y-yessir,” the sweat-gleaming safecracker nodded vigorously and began prying half the lid away with a crowbar.

“Apologies. Where were we?”

“You were threatening to kill my Party if I didn’t surrender.” Will prompted. “Also the coffin is trapped,” he said, pointing.

“Eh?” Void glanced over just as the lid came off, and an explosion of light made the entire room white for an instant.

Dozens of blades emerged from the floor and ceiling, perforating the poor safecracker in an instant while Void recoiled from the blinding light.

Will reached out with Phantom Hand and snagged one of Void’s rings. The connection between Void and the relic was hard to sever, clinging harder than he’d expected, but Will pushed through the resistance and tucked the Relic in his Dimensional Storage, severing its connection to Void.

20 Charges remaining.

Next the amulet. I-

Will’s thoughts went white as an undead fist caught him in the side of the head, sending him sprawling.

In a heartbeat, Will was boxed in by no less than half a dozen zombies, as Void swept forward with unnatural speed, malignant scythe carving a slice out of the marble behind him.

Will tried to jump out of the way, but the zombies were faster and stronger than the Tangled had been.

Overwhelmingly so.

One caught his ankle and dragged him back down to earth, wrapping its limbs around him, intending to allow itself to be bisected along with him as Void brought the scythe up for a full body swing with every fiber of his being.

Malleable Space

19 Charges remaining.

The scythe swung right past Will’s stomach as he artificially created distance between the two of them.

Will’s vision was covered in stars as the zombies latched onto him and began beating his head with their unnatural strength. His eyes went blurry with tears and concussion as he struggled to fight his way out, but all of the zombies had at least one hand locked around one of Will’s limbs.

Above him, the blurry figure of Void raised his scythe high in the air.

“Death before slavery? Not a bad choice, William Oh,” Void said, his thin arms tensing to deliver the killing blow.

Desperately, Will shot a knife out of Phantom Hand at Void’s neck, pushing the hand to the greatest speed that he could.

Will didn’t see exactly what happened through his fuzzy eyesight, but it looked like some kind of spirit warded off the knife just as Void’s hand exploded an instant before he brought his weapon down, sending the necromancer’s scythe clattering to the ground.

…What?

“…Huh.” Void grunted, staring at the truncated arm.

“Cease, in the name of Baron Akul!”

Ah.

A young man floated through the main entrance, wearing gaudy silk robes and a full kit of Relics that oozed power.

“Ah.” Void echoed Will’s thoughts as he glanced over his shoulder, spotting the Baron.

The zombies around the room collapsed like puppets with their strings cut, and as if he didn’t have a care in the world, Void sat down, plucked the cape off a dead dandy and began wrapping it tight around his truncated arm.

Arms looked similarly nonchalant, grunting and reaching into his pocket to retrieve a stick of gum, his weapons clattering to the ground.

“Luis,” The Baron said after floating over and peering into the coffin, prompting the jowel-faced old man to approach at a jog and kneel.

“Yes, father?” the white-haired man asked.

Father!?

“Who is responsible for this?” the baron asked, his voice deceptively even.

Luis pointed at Will, whose heart stopped beating for a moment.

“William Oh-”

Aw crap.

“Nearly died protecting us from these mercenaries who were trying to steal the coffin.” Luis then pointed at Arms and Void.

…That could’ve gone a lot worse.

“Arrest them.” The Baron instructed, his gaze locked on whatever was inside the coffin as  guardsmen began rounding up the mercenaries and guests alike. Will assumed they were going to be debriefed rather than blindly presume innocence.

“Well, kid...” Void said as two high-level warriors in full kit dragged him to his feet. “To be continued, I suppose.”