Amazon Apocalypse 4: Chapter 34

Frank and I searched the abandoned tunnels beneath the swamp, finding little more than debris and what we were pretty sure was a naga latrine.

“Damn. I didn’t realize what terrible aim the naga had until now.” Frank pinched his nose as we backed away from the massive room of waste, much of which had missed the hole in the center despite it being roughly the size of a car.

“Waste management for an underwater species is likely difficult,” I replied, also pinching my nose.

Peering into the hole, we saw brown sludge with a few dead naga floating in it. Apparently, they disposed of their dead by flushing them down the drain. Each corpse seemed twisted and mutilated too, like it had been sliced down the back to extract the bones. Perhaps that was the only thing the naga considered sacred.

We found one thing in the naga latrine worth our while. While coming out of the area, we ran into Bridget, Sakura, Myrina, and Reluna.

“I can’t take it anymore. Go on without me!” Bridget coughed and spluttered. I’d never seen her this disheveled, but she had the senses of a wolf, which meant this place probably smelled a thousand times worse to her than it did to the rest of us.

“We already cleared that place. Nothing interesting,” I said, still pinching my nose.

“Carter! You’re here too?” Sakura rushed up to my side, taking my arm in hers without care for the foul stench behind us.

“Yeah.”

“Weren’t you with Cyra on Themyscira? I figure you and she...” Sakura’s smile slowly fell as she took in my grim expression.

“There were... complications. I’ll tell you later. For now, I figured this was a good time to take out the naga once and for all. Only now when I’ve got a fire in my belly and a mind for slaughter, I can’t find them anywhere.”

Myrina had a concerned look on her face. She especially deserved the full story of what happened between me and Cyra.

“Any luck with you four?” I asked.

“We found a few of Sharky’s voidlings. After they were done hunting necromancers, Sharky and his gang came here. I bet that was why the naga left in a hurry.” Myrina pointed back the way they’d come.

“Huh. Maybe Sharky gave them a bit of a scare. To think, our hungry little buddy terrified them that much...” I shrugged.

“There’s nothing little about Sharky these days...” Bridget wheezed. The foul stench that filled the air really threw her off kilter.

“What about you ladies? Why are you here?” I waved to the three of them. Then I realized there were only three. Reluna had already wandered off. I glanced around, finding her stooped to the ground studying a rotting, excrement-covered naga corpse that must have floated out of the latrine.

“Hmm... interesting... very interesting,” she muttered. She reached into a pouch at her waist and withdrew a slender silver needle, which she used to poke the rotting corpse’s bloated belly. It exploded from the gentle prodding, and all of us except her took a step back. The only thing that kept Reluna from getting covered in the foulest mixture of substances I could imagine was a thin energy barrier.

Reluna poked and prodded the pile of offal, nodding and mumbling to herself as she pulled up a magnifying glass to one eye for a closer examination.

“Well, this confirms what I suspected. The naga are dead.”

Reluna flicked the entrails aside. We all glanced at the rotting corpse. It's head was a floppy empty mass of flesh with the skull excised, and most of its snake-like lower body had been shredded like they’d been caught in the jaws of a massive beast. It had no arms left, and it had more excrement than blood inside it. Anyone with eyes could tell it was dead even before Reluna made its guts explode out of its body.

“How observant,” I replied, dryly.

“Generally, I prefer cleaner forms of augury over the ancient art of haruspicy, but studying entrails can be superior to other forms of divination under the right circumstances. This seems to be one such scenario.”

“You can read something from that mess?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Yes, do they not teach reading entrails in schools here? Bridget and Sakura were just telling me of your world’s fascinating astrology traditions. Apparently most women of your world are well versed in the art.”

Frank groaned. “Alright, I can deal with exploring latrines and exploding the shit-stained corpses of our dead enemies, but astrology is a line too far. I’m going to help the guys topside.”

“He’s definitely an Aries. I always check that sort of thing while going over job applications,” Sakura said as soon as Frank was gone.

“Fascinating. While the traditions I’m familiar with divining fates, personalities are harder to judge.” Reluna put away her entrail-poking stick after wiping it with a cloth.

I cleared my throat. “Anyway, you four are out here because Reluna found something?”

“In my morning divinations, I sensed a climactic event occurring today. It involved the naga. The draining of their swamp is an ill omen, just like the patterns in the entrails.” Reluna glanced around the cavern.

I was skeptical. I didn’t believe in horoscopes at the best of times. And poking through entrails had even less of a scientific basis. Was this how the Dragon Lodge expected their applicants to solve those test questions about catapults and thrown stones? If so, no wonder so many of the applicants did poorly. Divination couldn’t be much more accurate than guessing. As for the draining of the swamp...

“The swamp being drained is no omen. That was me and the army of guys I brought with me. We’re draining the swamp so we can wipe out the naga once and for all. Truthfully, I thought I’d find the Lich King and his men down here hiding with the naga.”

Reluna tapped her chin with a finger. “Perhaps. But an omen is still an omen, no matter how it came about.”

I ended up joining my ladies on a long walk through the swamp. The decreasing water level exposed more hidden caves, and we walked through them. A few toward the bottom bore more artifacts than the others, but we never found the truly important things, like whatever molds the naga had been using to make their enchanted shields.

Reluna stayed close behind the whole time, leaning close to bits of debris and other nasty looking odds and ends and pouring over them with a careful eye.

“Yes... yes... another ill omen. Chaos is brewing...” she murmured.

“Can you get any more specific?” I asked.

“Dark things. Dark, dark things...” shadows shrouded her figure, and an eerie echo of her voice rang through the tunnels. I was certain it was intentional.

“Let me know when your divinations point at an actual answer...” I shook my head as we marched through the formerly underwater complex.

Reluna wasn’t the only thing who could crouch down looking at things while pretending to be a mysterious master of magic.

“Look at this! A sign!” I exclaimed as I unearthed something made of gray square plastic.

“What is it, Carter?” Bridget asked.

“A cartridge for a retro video game player. This isn’t the sort of thing a naga would value, but a few nerds-turned-necromancers might.”

“Which means... they were here?”

“Exactly.” I tucked the game cartridge into Morgathor’s satchel. I was missing this one in the series, after all.

Reluna pouted a moment, but only for a moment. She leaned close to the ground, studying scuffs in the ground.

“Fascinating... truly fascinating. I have made an even more impressive discovery. There are traces of death mana in the silt in this section of the cave, confirming that the necromancers were here and practicing their magic.”

“Yeah... well...” I glanced around for anything out of place before landing on a blank wall. “See this part of the wall? It’s dry! The other walls are wet. Given the structure of this caver, I expect it was filled with a pocket of air. I doubt undead need much air, but there were still a few human members of their necromancer gang last we saw. This room was probably for them.”

“My mysterious wizardly powers... uh... confirm your findings,” Reluna hastily added.

As the water continued to fall, we charted deeper and deeper caverns, but we never found a hint of our enemies.

While my competitive spirit lasted a little while longer, eventually, I couldn’t keep it up. Though I’d never admit it aloud, Reluna might truly be the better wizard at maintaining a mysterious and all-knowing aura, if only through sheer stubbornness. She was practically crawling along the ground with that magnifying glass of hers, and every other word coming out of her mouth seemed like made-up technobabble about divination.

“There’s nothing here. They’ve swept the place clean.”

“Not so, my dear hedge wizard. See this here? It’s a sign!”

I rolled my eyes, a bit tired of all the signs and omens Reluna had been going on about.

“Yes, yes. It’s another omen. What of it? Does it tell you where the naga fled to after leaving this? I’m worried about them ambushing us.”

“Oh, they won’t be ambushing us. Remember, they’re all dead.” Reluna waved off my concerns.

“Huh?” I stared at her in confusion.

“Yeah, they’re all dead. I divined that from the entrails of the first one we found, remember?” Reluna didn’t even bother looking up from the patch of ground she was studying, and she wasn’t even using her magical echo effect.

“I thought you meant one was dead. Not that they were all dead! How do you know this? And how’d they die?” I stared at the back of her head while she peered at the ground.

“Oh, I’d guess it was some sort of mass sacrifice ritual involving the Chaos Raven. I bet they’re now undead naga or something, with the combined boons of the Chaos Serpent and the Chaos Raven. That's where all the bones went. Now, I must divine what they plan to do with that power.”

I stared at Reluna, unblinking. Was she spouting more nonsense? I’d said before that divination seemed like flipping a coin to me, but fifty-fifty odds were better than anything I came up with.

I tapped the radio on my hip.

“Frank, we have a possible mass sacrifice situation. I want you to take a team of scouts out on patrol.”

There was a brief buzz as Frank answered. “Rodger that. Anything I should look for?”

“Not sure. Anything that looks particularly evil and mass sacrificial, I guess. Reluna?” I turned to our resident expert.

“There will be a blood-covered altar and an effigy to a chaos god. The area will feel cold but not to the touch, and lingering in the area will result in soul damage. You should get a System notification,” Reluna replied.

“Sounds easy enough. If it looks really evil, we’re in the right place. I’ll get a dozen teams on it. Over and out.” Up top, near the firetrucks, I heard Frank yelling orders and getting people moving.

I turned to Reluna smugly. “I have used my might divination tool named Frank to ascertain the validity of your claims. It’ll just be a few minutes.”

Reluna pouted, waving her corpse-poking stick. “That’s cheating!”

I chuckled, and the others joined me in cracking wry smiles as we explored the rest of the underwater caverns. But pretty soon, we heard back from Frank and the others.

“Carter, this is Frank. Come in Carter.”

I tapped the radio. “Carter here. What’d you find?”

“So... we think we’ve found your sacrificial alert. But you’re not going to like where it is.”

“Where?”

“The Torchdragon’s lair.”

<Note>
Originally the game cartridge was more specific and about a certain monster-catching-in-magic-balls game, but given all the patents and lawsuits Nintendo is now throwing around, I edited the pokemon reference out.