Can't Look Back (War for Dominance Book 1) (22 page)

Being swallowed alive was a totally shitty plan, Dantes thought; unfortunately, it was the only one he could come up with at the time. They had used up most of the crew and had only killed half of the heads; Dantes didn’t see how the few remaining people would be able to kill the other three.

As expected, Dantes survived the process of being eaten. Solim had been so mad that he hadn’t stopped to chew Dantes before swallowing him. The whole reason for the force missiles was to infuriate Solim enough to get swallowed whole. Dantes’ skin was incredibly dense, due to his heritage, and he might have been able to withstand a little chewing without completely coming apart, but he didn’t think that he would have enjoyed the process very much.

The acid in the creature’s digestive system was slowly wearing away his skin as he slid down Scylla’s esophagus. Full-blooded devils were able to withstand the acid pools in the first level of hell, so Scylla’s stomach acid was less effective on him than if he’d been made of flesh. His father would have laughed at the weak acid while clawing his way out of the belly of the beast. Of course, his father wouldn’t have been eaten in the first place, though, since he would have been on the orc ship with the rest of the evil creatures.

Dantes dropped into the creature’s stomach. He tried not to think about the things he could feel bumping into him. Acid found a way into a cut he had received fighting the heads, and it burned. A lot. He figured that he had about three minutes until either the acid killed him or he ran out of air. Unfortunately, ‘hard to kill’ wasn’t the same as ‘impossible to kill.’ He sighed. This really was a shitty plan. He hoped it worked.

“
Murus Incendi!
” he said, casting a Wall of Fire spell. A 10-foot tall curtain of deep-red flame sprang up in a five-foot radius around him. The light it cast danced and shifted, giving him a view of the inside of Scylla’s stomach. Even for a half-devil, whose father had forced him to see many a disturbing sight, it was too much, and he closed his eyes.

The stomach acid and other assorted fluids came to a boil, and a toxic mist soon filled the beast’s stomach and began pushing it out. As Dantes had hoped, the valves in the monster’s digestive tract were all one-way. Things were pushed through, and then they closed and wouldn’t let anything back up. While normally a helpful mechanism for a creature that swallowed live prey, it was not good if the beast needed to relieve gas pressure in its stomach.

He had learned this from his father. As it turned out, his father
had
been good for something. When Dantes was young, his father had taken him to the seashore and had given him some chalky tablets to feed the seagulls. The birds would fly up, expecting a treat, and his father would have him toss the tablets into the air for the birds to eat. After several had been fed, Dantes asked what he was feeding the birds. Even at a young age, Dantes had thought it seemed too nice an act for his father.

“Powdered seashell,” his father replied. “It reacts with the birds’ stomach acid and makes gas in their stomachs. Eventually they will burst because the birds don’t have any way to get rid of the gas.” Laughing all the while, his father had made him watch as the birds fell from the sky in agony.

“Don’t ever trust anyone who seems to be giving you something for nothing,” his father said in explanation when they were done. “They’re hiding something from you that you just haven’t figured out yet.”

Scylla’s stomach seemed to be made of stronger material, though. It didn’t seem to be expanding any more, even though the flames continued to roar. Maybe a little more flame, he thought. “
Globus Incendi!
” he said, casting his last Fireball spell. It burst, cooking the lining of the monster’s stomach and making it comfortably warm inside, but the lining still held together.

Acid had now found its way into a number of cuts and was wearing through in a number of other places. Dantes’ remaining spells were useless. He could try to claw his way out, but the acid was starting to have a greater and greater effect on him. He didn’t think he could get out before the damage done to him reached a critical level. He hoped that Scylla’s stomach ruptured before the Wall of Fire went out; if it didn’t, he was going to be in trouble.

The interior of the beast’s stomach was plunged into darkness as the fire went out. Dantes started clawing at the stomach’s lining, trying to break free, but he knew he was going to be too late.

John thrust the sword into the side of the monster, and the creature
exploded
, its skin tearing both up and down in an eruption of boiling gas. The force of the blast ripped the sword from his hands and drove it into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. He doubled over as a wave of hot acid washed over him. His skin aflame, he felt himself being pelted with something. He straightened, opening his eyes to see that he was being hit by pieces of what used to be the
Dancer’s
crew. He lost his lunch, adding to the already disgusting mix of…things…he was swimming in. At least he had killed Scylla, he thought, although he didn’t know why the creature had exploded. The monster had stopped moving and was beginning to settle in the water as it started its trip to the bottom. “Good riddance,” thought John.

He started for the surface, but caught a flash of red out of the corner of his eye. He looked back and saw a red hand holding onto the edge of Scylla’s torn stomach. John knew it had to be a trick of his imagination; nothing could have survived the environment or the explosion.

Scylla’s corpse started to pick up speed, and John watched it slide out of view. A second hand and the top of Dantes’ head appeared just before the corpse went out of sight. John equalized the pressure in his ears, turned and swam downward, chasing the corpse. He saw that he wasn’t going to be able to catch up to it; it was already going almost as fast as he could swim, and its rate of descent was still increasing. Scylla disappeared into the darkness. John knew that he was needed on the surface, but he decided to follow it a little further.

He was glad he did; seconds later he saw a small form flailing at the edge of his vision. He continued a little further and saw that it was Dantes. Although he struggled upward, Dantes wasn’t making any progress. John swam down to meet him and moved behind the struggling teufling.

“Gotcha,” said John, putting an arm around Dantes. He kicked toward the surface and understood why Dantes was struggling. Dantes body was incredibly dense, and he weighed a lot more than what he looked. He wasn’t able to swim well enough on his own to make it to the surface. With John’s assistance, they began making progress.

“Don’t know if...I can make it,” said John after about 30 seconds. He had already been swimming for a while and was quickly running out of energy. His entire front also seemed to be burning.

“Let me go,” replied Dantes, struggling to talk underwater.

“No!” said John. “We’re...going...to make it.” As he said it, light flashed above them several times, indicating they were getting closer to the surface. John put all of his energy into one last burst.

Dantes looked up and could see a timber floating above them. He gave a few last desperate strokes and reached up to grasp the wood.

Exhausted, John let go, pausing about ten feet below the surface to recover.

They had done it.

“We must leave,” said the captain of the orc vessel. “If we continue to stay here, the storm is going to swamp us.” As if in response, several more strokes of lightning flashed nearby, and a roll of thunder hit the ship hard enough to shake it.

“I need the book,” replied Solim, “but we don’t need to stay here. The storm should take care of killing any of the ones that survived Scylla.” He didn’t know what had happened to kill the monster, but it had felt like its stomach burst. It was probably something that damned teufling had done. Solim realized he shouldn’t have used Scylla to swallow the devil whole, but it really didn’t matter now; the teufling was dead.

“You may proceed to the island,” said Solim; “I will find the book.”

Reaching out, Solim found a seagull nearby. He had to push hard to take over the bird; the seagull didn’t want to fly in the storm. Once airborne, it didn’t take long to find the wreck of the ship although the storm was spreading it out over an increasingly large area. The wind shear made flight difficult, but the seagull was used to looking for and identifying things on the water, and it made an outstanding search platform. A flash of lightning lit the wreckage and he saw it, sitting on a rectangle of wood that might have been a door. An artifact of magic, the spell book wanted to be found.

The lightning also illuminated the half-orc Ghorza, who was swimming toward the door. In another 30 seconds, she would have it. That would never do.

Solim landed the seagull on the door and walked over to the spell book. He was surprised at how plain it looked; he had expected the Spell Book of Aran-Than to be much more ornate.

“Shoo, bird!” said the half-orc, arriving at the floating door.

“If you insist,” said Solim through the seagull. “I’m going to go ahead and take this, though.” He had the seagull put a webbed foot on the book and thought about the book being in its smallest and lightest form. The book obediently shrank to a small cube the size of one of the dice that Solim had seen the sailors using.

The half-orc reached for it, but Solim already had it in the seagull’s webbed foot, and he took to the air. He made one circle over the wreckage so that he could laugh at the few remaining survivors, and then flew toward the orc ship, which was already heading toward the Mountain of Frost.

John inhaled a lung-full of water and choked. He couldn’t breathe. He had been resting about 10 feet below Dantes when his water breathing spell ceased suddenly. It didn’t slowly end or give him any warning; it just cut off in mid-breath when he had a bunch of water in his lungs.

He struggled up toward the surface, but it was too far off. Doubled over, gagging, he couldn’t swim. He couldn’t breathe. Somehow he made it to the surface, but it didn’t help. He couldn’t get the water out of his lungs. He was too tired.

Too weak.

Dantes saw him and tried to grab him. He missed, and the blackness closed in on John. He was out of air and couldn’t clear his lungs to get a breath.

He was done. His head went under.

The last thing John heard was Solim’s maniacal laughter, somehow blown to his ears by a trick of the gale.

John came back to consciousness bit by bit. He was lying on his back, he noted without opening his eyes. He took stock of his situation. If this is what being dead feels like, he thought, it sucks.

He hurt all over. The light breeze irritated his skin for some reason, causing a burning sensation across most of his body. His stomach hurt worst of all, but he couldn’t think of why that would be.

In contrast to all of his aches and pains, his feet felt good and seemed to be floating in some water. They bobbed up and down as small waves came in.

He realized that he could feel the ground all along his back. It felt like sand, but what was strange was that he could feel it all the way down his back.

He was naked.

With that realization, he flipped over and opened his eyes. Movement irritated his skin and caused new areas of his skin to come in contact with the sand, which hurt. He looked at his arms and saw they were red and blistered all along their length. He had no idea how that happened.

He shook his head once, but stopped. Shaking it made it hurt too much. Looking to the right, he saw that he was lying on a beach. There seemed to be an abnormal amount of driftwood and debris along the waterline. Looking to the left he saw a similar collection of debris, along with a figure in silver armor. The visor was up, and he could see that the silver armor held a beautiful woman. Lady Ellyn.

It all came back to him. The battle with Scylla. His stomach hurt because the monster had exploded when he stuck the sword into it, and the sword had been driven back into him. Hard. At least he understood that pain; he had no idea why his skin burned all over. He had then gone down to rescue Dantes, and then he had drowned. He remembered the water breathing spell ending suddenly and getting a mouthful of water. And then the laughter…he would always remember the laughter.

“I see you’re back among the living,” said Dantes. John looked up to see the teufling standing in front of him holding a tunic.

“Barely,” replied John taking the tunic. He turned away and sat up so that he could throw it over his head. It hurt, but he managed it. Partially clothed, he stood up. As many injuries as he had, the process of standing took a while. “What happened? I feel like crap.”

“What’s the last thing that you remember?”

“I remember the water breathing spell ending as I got you to the surface, and then I think I remember drowning.”

“The spell didn’t end,” said Dantes. “Solim took your spell book. Ghorza saw him get it. When he did that, you dropped two levels and you were no longer able to cast the water breathing spell, so it ended. You did drown, but Ghorza dove in and brought you back up. Fitzber fashioned a raft of sorts, and we were able to collect everyone from our group, as well as the two little girls. Over the course of the next four days, we were able to sail the raft to the island.”

“
Four days?
”

“Yes, you’ve been out for four days. Lady Ellyn has, too. She took a blow to the head during the fight and hasn’t awakened since.” Seeing the questioning look on John’s face, he added, “Apparently her armor is magical. It kept her afloat while she was unconscious. Anyway, the current was against us, and we weren’t able to make a sail, so it took a while for Father Telenor, Fitzber, Ghorza and me to paddle our way to the island. I wasn’t much use for the first couple of days until my skin regenerated. I lost most of it to the creature’s stomach acid while I was inside it.”

“Stomach acid? Is that why my arms and face are burned? After I stabbed Scylla, it blew up in my face.”

“I imagine so. I had cast a couple of fire spells to make its stomach burst, but it was too strong. It didn’t blow until you stabbed it. When you did, all of the burning acid must have sprayed out in your face.”

“Well, that makes sense. Is Father Telenor around? I would love a healing spell or ten.”

“He will be back soon. He went into town with the rest of the group to get a wagon to transport you two, while I stayed here to watch over you. Sorry about having to leave you unhealed; it took all of the healing spells that Father Telenor had memorized to save Lady Ellyn and me. We lost all of our gear and spell books in the wreck of the
Dancer
, so he wasn’t able to re-memorize any of them until we got here and he could use one of the local priest’s spell books.”

Looking around, John saw a snow-capped mountain in the distance. “Well, it wasn’t pretty, but at least we made it to the Mountain of Frost,” he said nodding toward the mountain.

Dantes nodded, frowning, but didn’t say anything.

“What?” John asked. “Why are you making that face?”

“We made it here,” Dantes replied; “however, we were the second group to arrive. We met one of the townspeople when we came ashore, and he told us that Solim and his orcs landed here three days ago. They drove off a small force of local troops and went to the mountain. Solim and a much smaller number of orcs came down from the mountain yesterday. They’ve already left.”

“So, we’re too late?”

“We’re too late for getting here first,” replied Dantes, “although no one knows whether they got the scepter or not. It doesn’t matter, though. Our quest was to go to the Mountain of Frost, and I still intend to. I don’t know what we’ll find, but the Magistra told me to go, and I intend to do so.”

John looked up at the mountain. He wasn’t sure he could walk a hundred feet, much less scale a mountain, but that wasn’t going to stop him now that he’d come this far. “If you’re still going,” he said, “then I am, too.” He gave a wan smile. “But I’d still like to get those healing spells, first.”

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