Chapter 20 –Puma Strikes Back

“Puma Check, quadrant two,” cried Shart, blasting the area with magical darts.  A limb shattered and one of the drop pumas slammed to the ground where Badgelor pounced.

“That makes 89,” yelled Badgelor.

“Ha, that was totally my kill,” replied Shart.  “You just got to dispose of the garbage.”

“Fine,” grumbled the badger good naturedly.  “So that makes 88 vs 79 then?”

“Yes, and we are cooperating and working together as a team, team Jim,” said Shart smiling at me happily, “It looks like the game is over and I lost.

“It’s okay, I’m sure you’ll do better next time,” said Badgelor jovially. “I also lost and am fine with that.”

“Yes, Jim totally won by several hundred kills,” said Shart examining the devastation, “Could you please stop now?”

“Kill Drop Pumas,” I muttered, BioLightning flickering on both palms as I held out my flaming whip and the femur of one of the drop pumas.

· You have learned a new spell: Puma Zapper.  This BioLightning field surrounds the caster, striking out at all Fecking Pumas that come in range.  Is controlled enough as to not also attack allies, probably. At least not again. Probably.

“Hey, he said words in a sentence this time,” said Shart.  The demon looked kind of frazzled, obviously there must be more Drop Pumas nearby.

“You win Jim, you are up to six hundred and forty-two.  You win.  We are playing a game and you beat us both,” said Badgelor as I turned and spotted another group of Drop Pumas in the brush.  Strange, they seemed to be scared of something.  I couldn’t quite understand what could scare those hellspawn so I began casting a plasma spell and a portal spell simultaneously with my dual casting perk.

I opened the portal right under one and shoved my plasma fused hand through its midsection before aiming at a group of the smaller ones.  The blast obliterated everything.

“I’m pretty sure those are cubs,” said Badgelor uncomfortably.  He didn’t like killing cubs but they were pumas and those needed to die.

“One that size bit my bum,” I muttered, spinning around for more targets.  There weren’t any I could see.  Damn this Master Perception skill, I needed it to go higher.  There must be a Drop Puma hiding somewhere.

Not in the trees of course, I’d knocked every single one of those Puma allies down as soon as I got in range.

“That castle, Jim, we should go to the castle,” said Shart.  I would have looked at him, but I was doing a puma check.

There were more trees though and more Drop Pumas.  I took a halting step towards the next stand of trees.  Badgelor glanced over at Shart and then back to me.

“Yes sir, you need to go save Jarra,” said Badgelor.

My world shook.

“Where are we?” I muttered, looking around.  The entire forest around me had been destroyed.  “Who destroyed the forest?”

“Not Pumas, that’s for damn certain,” yelled Shart.  He was lying, but I couldn't see any pumas.  Odd.  I opened a portal and teleported closer to the castle.

I moved behind cover, thankful that no pumas were around. Shart and Badgelor followed me cautiously, which was wise. There could be Puma’s about.

“Jim are you sane now,” asked Shart.

“Yes?” I replied carefully.

“Good, because you freaked us right the feck out,” said Badgelor, plopping down next to me.

“There were pumas,” I said.

“And you only need to fight them until they start running away,” replied the badger.

I shook my head, “No, maximum damage, that’s the only thing pumas understand.”

“Kay,” said Shart glancing over at Badgelor, “Well, you are the expert. Now I know, the first thing you should do in fighting pumas is to destroy an entire forest by yourself to get a handful of them.” Badgelor shrugged and looked over to the castle.

“How do we get in,” I uttered, looking up at the melted form of the great castle.  The walls surrounding the place were still about as tall as on Ordinal, but the whole place looked decidedly warped.

I gestured towards the top causing a portal to flicker into existence then wink out.

“Anti-teleportation warding inside the castle walls,” said Shart.

I held my palm out and started gathering the energy for a plasma blast.

“There is a goddamn door,” yelled Badgelor rushing towards the gate.  I paused, considered and followed him.  Doors were good.

We passed through the cleared land towards the castle easily enough and found the gate.  It was wide open, so we ran through into the broad courtyard.  There were buildings here I didn’t recognize, but they must be the mirrors of the buildings in Windfall.

“If I damage something here, does it affect the real building in Windfall,” I said as we moved towards the castle.

“No, these are a dark reflection of Ordinal, the reverse is not true,” said Shart.

I let my Puma Zapper fade for a moment, before reactivating it.  Sometimes you had to give those blighters a chance to attack.  Apparently, the local area was clear of pumas.

“I assume that’s the castle guardian,” I said gesturing towards a massive Behir wrapped around the castle.

“Yes, it's a,” began Shart.

“Behir, we had those on earth,” I said looking at the legged snake. That must be true, I remembered seeing one during a trip to the zoo, they were near the polar bears and the dragon Badgelor tried to eat. The behir looked like what would happen if someone threw a snake and a centipede into the teleportation chamber from the fly.  The head was less dragon like and more like someone took the worst qualities of a snake and a housefly and merged them together.

It was already watching me.

“Insect eyes should not be that large,” I grumbled pulling out my whip.

“Are we killing it,” asked Badgelor as he strode over to me.  I glanced around the courtyard and considered my options.

“I figured we had to,” I said.

“We should be able to sneak around, behir are on the prowl for life energy. This one probably has the scent of a living creature somewhere close,” said Shart looking at the castle.  “Jarra might actually be alive.”

The creature stirred, wondering if I was good to eat. I let the end of the burning whip fall to the ground where it writhed. Like any predator, the Behir calculated the risk/reward ratio of its next action and then stilled.

“Glad those things are stuck here,” I said, examining the level 60 monster.  I could take it but that was going to be a fight.

Shart nodded, “There shouldn’t be any way for them to get onto Ordinal, but if they did it would be a mess.  Lots of paperwork.”

“And the downfall of human civilization,” said Badgelor.

“Possibly, this is an advanced Shadow creature, they aren’t supposed to exist on Ordinal. If it got up there, it would be much tougher than it is down here,” said Shart.

“There’s only one,” I said, disgusted. “Moving something to the wrong environment is supposed to make them weaker.”

“There’s only one here,” replied Badgelor.  “Just be careful.”

The creature’s tongue kept flicking out and I was very happy that I wasn’t projecting any life force at the moment.  The eyes started to appear more mesmerizing though and I found myself reinforcing my mental resistance to the maximum level.

“We still need to go into the castle?” I asked.

“That is where the dungeon should be,” said Shart.

The behir had enough and uncoiled from the castle and started moving towards us at disturbing speed.  Badgelor ran out in front, firing off a blast of laser vision at the creature which only managed a glancing shot.  The beam deflected off of its scales, that was the first time I’d ever seen something no sell a shot from Badgelor.

“That’s bad,” I offered.

“Shadow creatures aren’t real enough for Void based spells to work all that effectively on them,” said Shart as he twisted his hands around into several patterns.  Gouts of flame exploded from the ground, one singed the creature.  The heat didn’t bother it, it was the light that seemed to burn away its outsides.

Not that the fire bothered the creature too much, it just moved in a more erratic pattern as it closed with us.  Badgelor raced towards it, trying to intercept the creature before it got close enough to attack us but it weaved around him heading straight toward me.

Fortunately, I had enough time to prepare a Plasma spell.  Everything was weak against plasma.

Leveling the shot, I cast the spell.  Unfortunately, the behir had other ideas and dodged to the side at a speed worthy of the Sphinx. The green ball of lightning and fire flashed past him, blasting a hole into the castle. If the creature could grin, he would have done so at that point, but he’d run right into my secondary attack.

My whip bound his mouth shut as I pulled on it, dragging myself straight at the creature.  The behir tried to jerk itself back, but that only caused me to move at it more quickly.  The instant before I impacted it, the behir finally managed to move out of the way and I sailed past it, releasing the binding from my whip.

I landed only a few dozen logs short of the smoking doorway that my plasma blast had created.

The behir realized it's mistake instantly and used the same superhuman speed to chase after me, unfortunately it forgot about the war badger behind it.  The entire massive serpent stopped abruptly as Badgelor’s feet dug into the ground, his claws tearing huge rents into the creature’s back.

The behir shrieked and turned to attack Badgelor as I sprinted into the castle.

To be honest, I hadn’t really been paying much attention to Windfall castle while the behir was on it.  The ground floor had been completed, but without any furniture or decorations it was just a large open stone building.

The shadow version of the castle was at least furnished.  There were dark tapestries, dark carpets, dark chairs and everything looked like nightmare fodder.

“Freaking hell, did the Addams family buy this place,” I groaned looking for the stairs down.  I didn’t have a lot of time, but fortunately the entrance to the dungeon was right off the main hall.  I rushed down the stairs and found the entrance.

“Open, just like I said,” offered Shart, gesturing to the scars in the wall that indicated where a massive explosion had gone off.

“Great, I choose you, Badgelor,” I said, causing the bloody badger to appear on my shoulder.

“I had him,” said the badger.

“Focus, we need to go save Jarra,” I said.

***

“Found you,” thought the shadow.

Her tainted soul was too badly damaged to be allowed to reincarnate, and so she was dumped down here like garbage.  She’d appeared in the shadowy copy of windfall, which was surprisingly empty.

Not surprisingly, the Walker of Siers pulled his army from somewhere and that somewhere was here.  The little shadow larvae that infested the Fast Lanes were drawn into that accursed place by his presence.  That meant while he was pushing into Windfall he emptied out the shadow copy.

She was free, finally, and hungry.  Not that she wasn’t always hungry, she had always been hungry.  Ever since she lived on Ordinal, each and every day had been trying to fill her hunger, however her hunger never had anything to do with food.

There was no one to kill here.  She’d given up her soul to feed that hunger, and now she was locked into the worst place imaginable.  A dark place where there were no living creatures around.  There was nothing for her to kill.

Now that she was a being of pure Shadow, she wanted to kill again and she was denied in this horrible place.  There was no worse place that she could imagine but here, here in this vast wasteland.

Then she saw the light, she knew that purple light.  It was a war badger, and that meant that something was alive down here.  She’d flown to the place, eager to kill but when she’d arrived the foe was there.

She hid immediately, of course.  The foe was perceptive to a fault.  He would find her and she was weaker than before.  They had still cleansed her soul before dumping her down here, and all of her precious experience should have been taken.

But it hadn’t been.

The same accursed collar that blocked half of her power, kept half of her power locked away from the machine. Without her experience, she would have become a mindless shade, but with it she could plan her escape.

Certainly, the foe would know a way to escape this place.