Fantasy Cursed Island

[Darkling0096]

Lyak nodded and clung a bit closer to Erina as the group went about making their rounds and checks.

Hours later, all the rafts were moved, and the movers returned winded and sweaty, muddy and wet. "Boats' in the water," Adran said, taking a seat on the back of the horse cart. "We built those things way too heavy!"

 

[Fangs9090]

Shuffle nodded as she sat down. "I'm surprised they even float."

Asta shook his head. "There better be a lot of water to cross. If we did all that just for a short trip..."

 

[Darkling0096]

Jerry glanced over at Asta's muddy fur. "That bad, huh?"

"Can't even make them shrink like Asta," Adran shook his head, "Not a living being, too complicated."

 

[Fangs9090]

Niudisa crossed her arms. "So then what is the plan for once we hit land again? Just leave rafts behind?"

 

[Darkling0096]

"We've got a folding boat, it just isn't big enough for everyone at once," Jerry shook her head, "I didn't even find out what it was until Thoradin almost knocked me out with the bow this morning."

"And you did not tell anyone this?", Joanne demanded.

"It seat twelve in its largest form, there's nineteen here, plus the carts and supplies, it would take four trips to move everything, versus shifting some rafts once to get it all in one trip." Jerry shook her head, "We don't know how deep that swamp goes, or how long it would take to cross. Breaking the party into four pieces for potentially days on end is too big a risk down here."

 

[Fangs9090]

Niudisa nodded. "A fair point. Let's just hope the path doesn't go under the water, like where we encountered that turtle."

 

[Darkling0096]

"Don't give these gods-forsaken caves any ideas," Jerry warned.

"We gonna get this done, or not?", Emfa demanded, "I want out of this grove."

Joanne nodded, "We have left the rafts anchored in the water on the other side of the tunnel, we should go."

 

[Fangs9090]

Shuffle nodded and hopped back to her feet. "Right!"

Erina got herself hooked up to her cart, with the help of whoever was willing.

 

[Darkling0096]

Nalla lifted Erina's cart and set it back down on Erina's abdomen, easy as opening a door. Adran hitched up his demon horse. While that was happening, Jerry did her best to give Asta a quick spray to get some of the mud off with the flask, before climbing into the saddle when she realized everyone was ready to move on. "Hopefully getting shoulder deep in mud won't become a habit," she said to the chimera as the group walked, rolled, and rode to the tunnel.

Through the tunnel, Jerry had to shrink Asta down so he could fit on one of the rafts. Because of the group makeup, they had to split into several smaller groups to fit on the rafts without tipping one over. "Let's try and keep this simple," Jerry noted as everyone boarded and pulled anchor, picking up push-poles to navigate through the flooded forest of muck and mud.

 

[Fangs9090]

“Hopefully. I will endure either way.”


Once they were on the rafts and setting sail, Most of the group settled down for the ride. Shuffle did not. She perched on the edge so that she could watch the water, moving along the edge any time she thought she saw something beneath the surface.

 

[Darkling0096]

The tarrasques that once occupied this part of the swamp were nowhere to be seen. Occasionally, Shuffle could glimpse the shape of a large shell deep underwater, swimming by, but otherwise there was no sign of them. In fact, there were no signs of life at all within the swamp until they were well past Yidi's mess of huts. The huts took some navigating for the party to get around, but the party managed. Lyak clung to Erina's legs while they were under the bridges, and didn't let go until well after they faded from sight.

"Looks like we've got some fog coming up, everyone be on guard," Jerry called as a mist rolled in.

 

[Fangs9090]

Shuffle looked up from the water as the fog came in. She sniffed curiously at the air as tried to see through it. Emil kept his ears alert.

 

[Darkling0096]

Around the movement of the rafts, it was hard to hear the sound of something swimming just under the surface. In the dense fog, they couldn't see more than a couple feet in front of them in any direction without the rings. Soon, the fog was so thick they couldn't even see outside their own rafts. And then something assaulted Emil, Shuffle, Beri, and Asta's ears. Emil heard it first, followed by the others. A low hissing. Emil being from the surface could recognize the crocodilian nature.

The rafts shook as something bumped the bottoms. "Probably just some roots, we're probably fine," Jerry called. And then another bump, this one harder. A third bump, and Jerry lost her footing, falling into the water with a splash, along with Adran and Emfa. Emfa was fast enough to get her axe caught on the edge of the raft and hoist herself up before she sank completely underwater. A fish flopped back onto the raft with Erina before polymorphing back into Adran.

"Those are not roots!", Adran barked, drawing his bow.

 

[Fangs9090]

Shuffle quickly got down on all fours, partly to stay balanced and partly to be ready to fight. Emil looked around. "This goes without saying, but stay out of the water if you can. Is everyone still onboard?"

 

[Darkling0096]

"I can't see anything!", Emfa called, "Sound off!" Before anyone could sound off, though, there was loud splashing around the party as saurians leapt out of the water onto the rafts, spears in hand. Jerry had still yet to surface, leaving Asta alone on their raft.

"Guys?", Veo called backing up from the saurian that had jumped onto her raft, "We've got a problem!"

"We know!", Adran barked, "Grab a weapon! Pyra!", A fireball lit up his arrow and the blast shot the saurian on his raft back into the water spearless.

 

[Fangs9090]

Asta fought back as best he could at his current size.

Emil stepped in front of Veo with his rapier to protect her.

Shuffle blasted fire at the nearest saurian.

Raine drew her sword, but she was trying to avoid being seen.

Erina lashed her whip at the nearest saurian. “Stay back!”

 

[Darkling0096]

Joanne's sword glowed, thunderclaps and glowing valkyrie brands showing where she was in the fight, back to back with Lyak, the little goblin sorceress working some kind of spell. Emfa was cutting off limbs and tails with her axe, giving the saurians on her raft hell. The number of saurians did decrease as they fought, but as they killed saurians on their rafts, the piles of rotting meat grew too, and so the lure to other corrupted creatures grew. "They just keep coming!"

When Shuffle and Fia set fire to a saurian, its corpse did not actually turn into rotting meat, it burned to ash quickly. The saurians on Emil and Veo's boat almost seemed amused at the tiny bat with his rapier, not taking him seriously at all until they found out that toad sticker could actually pierce their soft bellies and sever their tails. Then they got angry. With the end of the fog nowhere in sight, there was no way to tell how many saurians remained. The sounds of fighting on the other rafts started to become distant as, without being actively piloted close together and being knocked around by Saurians, the rafts were drifting apart.

 

[Fangs9090]

Emil kept doing what he could to fend off the saurians in front of him. “This isn’t good...”

Shuffle and Fia kept on burning, able to keep the reptiles from getting close to either of them, even as Fia started getting tired.

 

[Darkling0096]

The further apart the rafts got, the fewer saurians that went to each, reducing the load on the fighter's respectively, but also pulling the group apart.

The party got a brief break when the saurians seemed to stop, as they finally found the edge of the fog and were within sight of each other once more, in between trees. The current was taking them towards a massive mound of soil where one saurian even larger than the ones they'd been fighting was patrolling around nests. The saurian broodmother seemed off, Shuffle could see. The one she had fought with Jerry in the beginning was massive, this one was even larger than that, but it moved like it was injured in a more substantial way than the slash marks all over the thing would suggest, considering the unnatural vitality of corrupted creatures. It looked like Jerry's handiwork, with all the shallow cuts on the thing.

 

[Fangs9090]

Asta looked around as the fog cleared, spotting the other rafts. “Where’s Jerry?”

Shuffle flicked her ears as she watched the broodmother. “Looks like she went that way.”

 

[Darkling0096]

"Definitely Jerry," Adran nodded, "She really likes stabbing the meaty parts."

"How do you know that?", Veo asked.

"My record is thirty two in one night, she is brutal."

The current sent them up onto the shore of the mound, at which point the saurian looked over at them and roared, readying her spear. She paused halfway, looking down at her belly as a bump, and then a blade appeared slicing through.

"Found Jerry!"

And then an enormous serpentine head dropped down from the sky and closed its jaws around the broodmother, swallowing it whole and rearing back up, black scales and a huge yellow eye, wider across than Fia was tall, with fangs as large as Emfa and a neck thicker around than Asta's full-size wingspan.

"Hydra titan," Joanne breathed as the thing hissed, four more gigantic heads looming down out of the darkness above.

 

[Fangs9090]

Asta did not hesitate before running towards Adran. “You can return me to full size! Do it!”

Shuffle hopped forward on all fours, looking for how to fight this thing.

 

[Darkling0096]

"Crescere!", no time to argue, that thing was too big to fight at half strength. A gigantic eagle shot into the air from where Nalla had been, wildshape in action as the goliath went for the hydra's eyes.

Joanne and Emfa, for once, did not have an immediate way to damage the thing. The heads were too high up, and the body was nowhere in sight. "Mark the head that swallowed Jerry!", Joanne called, "It'll take it two hours to swallow the broodmother, it's neck is too long!" She was using contractions, Joanne was scared.

 

[Fangs9090]

Asta let out a roar before taking flight. Shuffle flew up as well. Hearing Joanne’s call, she targeted the head that had gotten the saurian and charged with her acid cloak.

Niudisa was moving about the mound, looking around in hopes of finding a body that hadn’t just been swallowed whole. It was unlikely, but she had to check.

 

[Darkling0096]

There were no immediately accessible body parts, not from the broodmother, anyway. There was an abundance of saurian eggs, some crushed bby the party's frantic efforts to save the rogue. She did, however, find something poking out of the destroyed nest. It looked like some kind of structure the nest had been build off of.

The offending head hissed, serpentine tongue whipping about in the air like a whip the size of a tree trunk as it took another snap at the potential meals in front of it. A snake this large could eat enough at once that it did not need to eat again for decades, and it intended to do so here with the party. the head reeled in surprise as Shuffle's acid burned the soft tissues of its tongue and mouth. Its scales held out somewhat better against the acid, sizzling, but they were thick and hard enough not to immediately dissolve.

All around them in the swamp, they could hear something massive moving. As thick as this hydra's necks were, its body had to be enormous, it might have even completely circled the swamp and was closing in to block off its prey's escape. More to taunt them than to secure victory. Something so large was impossible to escape, but trapping them amongst its coils made the job easier on the beast.