Grand Game 495: Trouble Comes in Fours

Your nether absorption has increased to level 203.

Six hours later, I was still following the river. The hydras had not deviated course even once, which I took to be an encouraging sign. They were obviously heading somewhere, and it was a good bet that that somewhere was a nest.

Every three hours or so, I halted as Anriq recalled the seeker, skipped over into the tundra, and had Safyre or Adriel recharge it—and him. It made my task more tedious, but only slightly, and I was not about to complain given the risks associated with exploring the nether-infested sector.

The enforced rest stops were also an ideal opportunity to restore my mana reserves. While my void armor saw to it that I was protected from the surrounding mists, there was an associated cost. Every bit of damage my void armor repelled drained my mana a little. Thankfully, though, the rate at which I could regain my spent magic through channeling was significantly higher, so much so that whenever Anriq returned from the tundra both my void armor and mana were at full capacity.

Around the seven-hour mark, sometime after my second stop, I drew to a sudden halt.

In front of me, the hydra tracks continued their unrelenting march north. To my right, the ground rose sharply, creating a narrow and heavily shadowed corridor that was about two-hundred yards long. A cliff wall bordered it on one side, and open water on the other.

Something is off.

Frowning, I tried to figure out what. It was not the corridor itself that disturbed me. Yes, it made for an ideal ambush spot, but it was definitely empty. As was the water to my left and the clifftops to my right. Both my mindsight and senses attested to this fact, and unless the stygians had found some new way to hide themselves, I was certain the corridor was safe.

So, why am I hesitating?

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have. I would have dismissed the niggling worry and continued on, confident I could handle whatever came at me. But I had taken Safyre’s warnings to heart and a new wariness infected me.

Nothing seemed off, but something definitely was. Remaining stock still, I scanned the area once more. 

And came up empty again. 

Nothing was nearby, I was sure of it. Although, I supposed it was always possible that a group of stygian spores lurked in the corridor. The things were nearly impossible to detect. When I’d run across them in Draven’s Reach, it was only thanks to the Adjudicator’s warning messages that I had managed to find them.

But the spores were harmless on their own. Yes, their truesight would reveal me, but unless there were other stygians nearby to take advantage of that fact, the spores were no threat.

Still, I did not set foot in the corridor.

Maybe the ground’s trapped? Maybe the shadows are hiding—

I broke off.

The shadows.

That was what was off. It was just past noon, which meant the corridor should have been brightly lit—not occluded in shadows. 

A cold chill ran up my shoulder as realization set in. 

The threat was above—from something hanging in the sky. Craning my head back slowly, I peered up.

And spotted an overlord.

I’d not seen one properly before. And if not for my nethersight, I wouldn’t have spotted this one either, I realized. Nor the trap it had set. 

The mammoth stygian creature was exactly as Ghost had described it all those many days ago. It was a round ball, with hundreds of gray tentacles extending from its bottom half—all presently motionless. It hung high above, perhaps at an altitude of three or four hundred yards. Still, I managed to perceive a few more details.

Thick reddish hide. Crate-like pockmarks. No eyes. No limbs—unless you counted the tentacles. And no obvious explanation for how something that large was hanging motionless in the sky. Has to be magic.

The most startling thing about the overlord, though, was its size. It was larger than Sunfury. Larger than the harbinger. Hells, it was larger than ten harbingers all rolled together. 

How do I even kill something like that? For sure, my blades—tiny by comparison—were going to be next to useless. Reaching out with my will, I inspected the stygian.

The target is a level 308 stygian overlord.

I exhaled a troubled breath. The Adjudicator’s response contained a distinct lack of information, and other than for the stygian Power’s level, I had little else to go on. Yet, given that overlord hung motionless, I could only assume it was not aware of my presence. I bet that’ll change if I enter the corridor, though.

“Are you seeing this, Anriq?” I asked, reaching out to him through the farspeaker bracelet.

A pause. “Seeing what?”

I sighed. His words confirmed my suspicion. Despite its otherwise superior abilities, the sylvanain seeker obviously couldn’t see through the nether like I could. “Never mind. When last did you check on the overlord at the Reach gate?”

A longer pause. “This morning.”

Well damn. Based on my own experience and what Safyre had told me, I knew the overlords moved slowly—which made it unlikely that this was the same creature Anriq had observed earlier in the day. “I guess that means there are two of them.”

“Two?”

“There’s a stygian overlord almost on top of me. Mark the location and send the coordinates to the others.”

Alarm shot through the link. “Don’t engage it!”

I chuckled. “That’s the furthest thing from my mind right now,” I assured him. I thought for a moment. “I’m going to circle around.”

“You should head back,” he protested.

“I will soon,” I promised. “But wherever those hydras’ trail ends, it isn’t here. I have to find the nest.”

“Be safe,” he said, sounding resigned.

“Always,” I replied and cut the link.

✵ ✵ ✵

Just to be safe, I backtracked a few hundred yards before I cut a wide arc around the corridor. 

The entire time, I kept one eye skyward. Now that I knew it was there, the overlord’s presence was impossible to ignore. The thing did not so much as twitch. It was unnatural, but then again, that could also be said about every other stygian. 

An hour later, with the overlord behind me, I rejoined the river, where to my delight, I found the hydras’ footprints once more.

“I’m back on the trail,” I murmured for Anriq’s benefit.

“Alright.” He paused. “What’s the nether toxicity like? Has it increased again?”

Before answering, I turned my attention inward and queried the Adjudicator.

The nether toxicity at your current location is at tier 5. 

“Not since the last time,” I replied. About thirty minutes ago, the concentration of the surrounding mists had increased—which I took as a good sign. From my previous encounters with the void sapling, I knew the nether was always stronger in their vicinity of the void’s ‘chosen.’ 

Something lay ahead, and if I was lucky it would be the void tree itself.

✵ ✵ ✵

The nether toxicity at your current location is at tier 7. 

Five hours later, I was still heading north, following the hydra’s tracks. About an hour ago, the stygians’ and river's paths had deviated, with the first continuing north while the second turned west.

Of necessity, my rest stops had become more frequent as my mana drained faster. Full night had fallen too, but despite both these things, I had no intention of turning back.

The nether toxicity had increased twice over, and I was sure the void tree couldn’t be far off. The only thing that led me to doubt this was the case was the absence of stygians. Except for the lone overlord, I had yet to encounter another nether creature.

That changed, though, as I crested an incline peppered with dead trees. Spread out before me was a shallow valley.

And it was teeming with stygians.

“Wow,” I exclaimed involuntarily.

“What is it?” Anriq asked tersely.

“A stygian nest.” But I had discovered more than that. “I’ve also found the void tree.” I paused. “And two more overlords.”

“Two more?” Anriq asked in a strangled voice.

“Yes,” I replied. “That makes four.” Four stygian Powers—well five if you counted the void tree itself, all in the same sector. 

Damn.

The two overlords hovered mere yards above the valley floor, which is why I had not seen them from afar. The thick mass of tentacles on their underside was buried deep into the ground, either anchoring the two in place or doing something more nefarious. What’s more, the pair were belching a near continuous stream of nether, saturating the entire valley in thick, yellow smog-like plumes.

Bracketed between the two stygian Powers, was problem number two: the young void tree.

In many ways the tree was the same as the sapling I’d encountered in Draven’s Reach. Only this one was larger. Much larger. 

The tree was ash-white and tall enough that its uppermost branches overtopped the adjacent overlords. And just like sapling, its rail-thin branches were covered in ebon-black thorns. 

“Get out of there!” Anriq urged.

“In a minute,” I replied absently, scanning the valley. It was not just the stygian Powers that was cause for concern. The ordinary nether creatures were just as troubling. Or rather their numbers were.

There were at least ten thousand stygians in the valley.

And here you were thinking of reclaiming the sector. No way was that going to be possible. Not against a force of the size of the one below. Not yet. 

And certainly not with that, I thought, my eyes drifting to the fourth point of concern in the valley. 

The rift hanging behind the tree.

Its inky blackness framed the tree’s ash-white limbs perfectly. The rift was active too, and a near continuous stream of stygians drifted both in and out from… elsewhere. Tearing my eyes away from the void of nothingness, I took in the rest of the valley. 

The river that had turned west earlier had returned to form a horse-shoe shaped valley in which the stygians nested. It made the nest unassailable from the north, west, and south. The valley itself was huge too, with the nest’s closest corner some four hundred yards northwest of me.

“Michael, it’s too dangerous,” Anriq tried again. “You should retreat.”

Sighing, I conceded he had a point. I had already seen everything I needed to, and going in for a closer look was not going to add anything substantial. Still, there was one more thing I had to do.

Reaching out with my will, I inspected the three nether Powers.

The target is a level 325 stygian overlord.

The target is a level 321 stygian overlord.

The target is a level 340 young void tree.

I sighed again. The harder I looked, the grimmer the picture grew. 

“Alright, I’ve seen enough. I’m on my way back.”