Our situation tumbled into a precarious mess. While the fully stacked, massive shipment boat provided ample space on top of cargo crates for us to traverse, it also meant there were tons of precious goods for this deranged mummy to deconstruct and reshape to her heart’s content. While I possessed enough endurance to keep up with her absurd test, I knew based off of their earlier states my allies could only endure so much more.
The stench of the waters, ah, it held the strength of the most horrid stink bombs up close—as if we swam in a long abandoned sewer of rot and mulch. The smell fused into the air, a noxious gas blasting us whenever a light breeze brushed by.
Far, far too many times to count.
“Why, why, why, why, why, why!!?” Ale threw himself to the ground, barely managing to get off a crate that vibrated with energy. As it blew to pieces, the wood chips combined and reshaped into a small, dead tree which flitted and swung through the air by the whims of an invisible batter—all before it fell into the waters.
“Gh…” I looked around for any sort of opening, but the way she flitted and floated around us meant we’d need a lot of momentum to reach her—or good aim.
Dori landed right next to me after narrowly ducking from a wooden stake to the throat, though he managed to land in a way which had him up on his feet in seconds. “Erna…”
His voice trickled out so quiet and monotone I almost missed it, but when I caught on I turned towards him. “I think I can get her out…but, not by myself. Can you…distract. Distract her.”
He had a plan?
Hmph! So be it, then. I would trust his methods.
With a nod, I stood up and glared at the mummy, who floated against the raised sun. A body encased in shadow, yet her eyes still gleamed so brightly. She twirled her scepter to and fro, casting wood into simple swords, into stakes, trees, planks—no, while it resembled constructing a device out of materials, building something new, in truth, each spatial force mutated a material into a new form, each more dangerous than the original.
And she did it with such ease. But no longer.
I pointed my sword at her. Soul energy flooded it, and with a few swings I created aerial slashes of magical power that shot towards her. When she laughed and dodged like a child playing a game, I created more and more. I dashed to each corner of the ship in an effort to keep her distracted, the sound of creaks from underfoot cutting through nearly every second. How precarious, dangerous, yet necessary.
From behind me, their conversation weaved between the noises of the battle.
“So just…right, this works…”
“Ah, are you sure!? I don’t—I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Trust me. I think…I’ll live.”
The mummy raised a digit to craft a large tree out of several crates, swinging it in my direction. I threw my blade up and parried the tree, but the mummy pushed back with such tremendous force, all I could do was keep us at a stalemate. Out of the corner of my eye, Ale bent to the ground and pressed his hand against a crate Dori stood on. A pattern crawled around Dori’s feet, though instead of another implosion, the red lines split from the ground and crawled up his ankles as he raised a pistol.
She stopped. Stopped, stared, and smiled before she teleported away.
Dori turned around, squinted and pulled the trigger. From the barrel, a massive blast of red energy shot out as fast as a bullet, but much more powerful. For a moment, nothing seemed to be there to meet his attack, but when I managed to pick out the crackle of spatial manipulation against the mess of clouds, I realized what he had been aiming at the whole time. The mummy had the pleasure of blipping into existence just as the shot collided with her, knocking her out of the sky and into the waters below.
“Shit!”
I ran to the side of the boat and, ignoring the calls of my allies, dove straight into the—
The…waters…the treacherous…
My stomach lurched, and I choked on the sludge spilled down my throat.
Ah, no wonder this river reeked so bad. Only at a surface level did I notice the broken sewage pipe almost hidden by the brush which invaded the banks. Garbage infested water poured out nonstop, consisting of all kinds of bodily excrements.
Which now permeated my body, my flesh, my spirit.
Hah, yes, so it became my fate. As my being immersed itself with smelly, hot garbage, I too could feel my soul twist and turn in utter disgust. No matter how hard I tried to fight it, my very essence became consumed by the rot around me. My thoughts? Nothing but garbage, icky, sticky garbage. My movements so suffused with trash I couldn’t even attempt the tiniest struggle.
My mouth stung with such a great variety of disgusting flavors, I tasted the dankest muck of the universe. The rivers of a blessed afterlife flowed with strawberry syrup, so I felt. And so, the currents of a cursed afterlife would surely have nothing but garbage such as this.
They say if you mix together colours too much, it all turns to black. If I were a colour, then I’d be…green. That’d always been my favorite. Yet the world, in all its nasty glory, stained me in so many hues you’d never be able to guess from the color of my coat. All these toilet water remains would surely wash out this spirit of mine so gleaming bright, staining me black. No, in a way, we were all stained in such a manner as to remove our—