Chapter 45

  Configuring the [airburst shells] on the {steel wyvern} took time. This wasn’t like playing with the {astral mortar} or casting a pre-existing spell. The {steel wyvern} carried specific weapons and performed a specific selection of skills. A {support golem} had to be sent down from the {voidstalker} to change the {steel wyvern’s} inventory and respec its skills. Dalex used the opportunity to make a few more changes as well. There was a lot of potential in the [airburst] concept.

  In the meantime, Arnaut and Dalex kept track of the general area of the hydra by following its occasional impacts against the ground. The creature moved randomly, going several minutes without any sign that it was nearby, and then suddenly it would blow a hole in the forest a hundred yards across. It didn’t make any obvious attempts to attack the humans hunting it. It behaved more like a tornado than a living creature.

  The time it took to prepare his spell gave Dalex a chance to come up with some new names. [Airburst shell] became {blossom of death}. He thought of a name for the new non-lethal variation just as the {steel wyvern’s} inventory finished updating.

  Floating high in the sky at the center of what he deemed to be the hydra’s general location, Dalex let {Skull Anchor} dissolve and formed a small piece of the {astral mortar} into the shape of a thick leather-bound book. He held his fake grimoire open at the middle with one hand and lifted his other hand to the sky, palm open as if beckoning to some celestial being.

  “{Canvas of discovery}!”

  As usual, nothing happened for several seconds. It took time for the {steel wyvern’s} skills to descend from so far up in the atmosphere. And then a pervasive whistling sound consumed the air above him. Dalex rose a little higher so as not to be caught in the effect. Arnaut, still on the ground, would have to deal with it.

  A dozen different projectiles shot down out of the sky. Spread evenly over the hydra’s zone of activity, the shells exploded simultaneously two hundred yards above the ground. They did not burst into fire and shrapnel, but twelve enormous clouds of purple paint. The paint rained down on the forest, splattering a circle roughly three miles in diameter.

  Most of the paint descended through the atmosphere to hit the treetops. Arnaut, standing at the center of one of the hydra’s craters, was dyed purple with a good splash of the stuff. Dalex expected him to jump around and shout in indignation, trying to get the paint off, but the hero took it in stride and barely flinched. Dalex hadn’t told him what was coming, but Arnaut had figured out the main idea of the spell right away. They both scanned their surroundings for where the paint didn’t make it to the ground.

  And there it was, a cloud of swirling purple paint a mile away, floating a hundred yards over the forest. The center of the cloud was hollow, just empty air as if nothing were there at all. But the paint flowed in and out of the area, disappearing and then reappearing on the other side. The hydra and {adamantine} were somewhere at the core of the cloud, and the paint was orbiting around it.

  “That’s not what I expected to see,” Dalex said aloud. He had thought the paint would simply outline the contours of the hydra, if only for a brief moment before the paint itself became invisible. But it was as if the paint was reacting to the creature, flowing around it in an endless cascade.

  The anomaly moved erratically through the sky, zooming up and down and side to side, losing paint with every change of direction. As Dalex watched, it slammed into the ground, leaving another vaguely hydra-shaped imprint in the forest. Something long and thin like a tail whipped through a section of the paint, scattering a fountain of the liquid away from the anomaly.

  Seventh spoke up, “It seems the benefine is exerting a gravitational effect on the creature. The hydra is trapped in its influence. That is how it is capable of flight.”

  “I wouldn’t call that flying,” Dalex said. “Poor thing looks more like it’s in a pinball machine.”

  “I have not previously observed benefine to cause this sort of reaction. It is… interesting.”

  Dalex felt a little bad for the hydra. It was clearly at the mercy of the {adamantine’s} whims. He wondered if the creature had eaten some of the metal, or if the {adamantine} had become attached some other way.

  He quickly checked to make sure his achievement challenge had not been invalidated. Arnaut using his sword on the hydra might have been against the achievement’s guidelines, but it was still tracking as active. Dalex had set the achievement system to be strict with him, but not too strict.

  Dalex glanced down to see a blur of purple-coated armor sprinting toward the anomaly. Arnaut was on the hunt, his prey finally in sight. Dalex zoomed forward to catch up. Whatever the current condition of the hydra, it was still dangerous. If the anomaly drifted too close to Dugan, it might crush someone’s home or even an entire district of the town.

  And Dalex had a new goal. As nice as the payout for this job would be, it was much more important that he get his hands on the {adamantine} itself.

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  He and Arnaut reached the hydra at roughly the same time. Dalex paused before attacking, curious how the hero would surmount the hundred yards of empty air between him and the hydra. Dalex heard Arnaut shout something indistinct and then the man leaped into the sky like a grasshopper, soaring toward the bottom section of the creature and the anomaly that was trapping it.

  Dalex shrugged and charged in, the freshly summoned {Skull Anchor} leading the way. He crashed through the paint cloud into the side of the beast and plunged the axe into the hydra’s still invisible hide.

  In the same moment, he went blind. At first, he was simply consumed with darkness, but then it became true blindness, the kind that had been described to him by some of his hospital friends. He simply did not see. And then his vision was blasted with a trillion colors, none of them from the spectrum he was familiar with.

  He had once considered trying hallucinogenic mushrooms to alleviate the symptoms of Owen Little’s Disease, but he had decided against it. Was this what he would have seen?

  Dalex couldn’t hear anything either. And then suddenly he could hear everything. Birds twittered. Rocks vibrated. The sun buzzed. The inter-astral void bubbled. Then nothing again.

  But even if he couldn’t see straight and he couldn’t hear right, he could still feel the grip of his axe and the way its blade dug into the hydra’s skin. He ripped it free and struck again, swinging wildly to inflict us much damage in as short a time as possible. Something pulled him toward the creature with a gentle touch, making it easy to stay attached to the hydra while he chopped at it. He wasn’t sure what part of the hydra he was hitting. Was he doing any significant damage?

  Then the anomaly shifted and he was thrown away from the hydra, the gentle pull not enough to trap him like it did the paint.

  He was knocked several yards away. As soon as he was out of the range of the anomaly’s influence, his vision and hearing returned to normal. The paint cloud drifted away, and now another downpour of blood came off the creature, raining again on the paint-covered ground. The blood came from two points, one where Dalex had struck it and another where Arnaut had found a vulnerable place to strike.

  Dalex spotted him on the ground again. It seemed Arnaut had been thrown off as well.

  Before Dalex could rush back into contact with the hydra, Seventh appeared by his side.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Dalex gestured at the churning purple cloud with the head of his axe, though the cloud was starting to dissipate as it threw off more paint. “I’m fighting the hydra.”

  “The creature has most likely consumed the benefine,” Seventh said. “Killing the hydra would not eliminate the problem.”

  Dalex felt suddenly stupid. Of course. The hydra didn’t seem to be in control at all. It was just being tossed about by the whims of the anomaly. Killing the hydra would only result in a floating corpse. Why hadn’t that occurred to him earlier?

  “Are you sure it ate the metal?”

  “Indeed,” Seventh said. “With such violent and erratic movement, it is likely the creature and the benefine would have become separated otherwise.”

  “DALEX!” Arnaut’s voice swam up from below. “It’s going to disappear again!”

  He was right, the paint cloud was getting dangerously thin. The liquid orbited around the anomaly only for a short time before it was thrown free. And the blood spouts they had created by wounding the hydra had closed again. This creature healed fast.

  Dalex looked down and found Arnaut on the ground. He watched the hero leap up again into the grasp of the anomaly, continuing to fight the hydra. At least Dalex wasn’t alone in miscalculating the futility of slaying the creature.

  “Stop trying to kill it,” Dalex shouted in Arnaut’s direction. “That won’t do anything.”

  “He can’t hear you right now,” Seventh reminded him.

  Right. That close to the hydra, Arnaut would be consumed by the anomaly, experiencing wild visual and auditory hallucinations. While Arnaut went to town, causing a fresh blood rain to pour from the creature’s body, Dalex cast {canvas of discovery} a second time. More explosions of paint scattered across the area, this time concentrated more closely around the hydra. Quite a bit of the paint got on Dalex’s armor this time, but the mark on the hydra was applied more strongly. They wouldn’t lose track of it any time soon.

  “What should we do?” Dalex asked. “How do we get the {adamantine} out of the hydra’s stomach?”

  “If the creature were to vomit, it may dislodge and regurgitate the metal.”

  “Sure, maybe. But how do we do that? Stick my fingers down its throat?”

  He couldn’t even see the creature’s head. Of course, it was a hydra so it would probably have multiple heads, assuming Gaia Eta’s hydras were the same as what Earthlings had imagined in their mythology. Did that mean it had multiple stomachs for multiple heads? Or did all tubes go to the same place?

  “An interesting idea,” Seventh said. “I believe I am capable of the correct stimulation.”

  “No, I was just kidding. What are you—?"

  Before Dalex could say another word, Seventh flew forward into the anomaly. She disappeared, hidden by a massive swell of purple paint and then by the invisibility effect of the anomaly itself. Dalex almost rushed in after her but held back. He didn’t think he would be able to find her once he was in the anomaly too. But how did she plan to make the creature throw up?

  And what did Dalex do in the meantime?

  The anomaly shifted again, throwing Arnaut off the hydra to plummet back to the ground. Before the hero could launch himself back into the fray, Dalex descended to his location and said, “There’s no point in killing the hydra right now. It swallowed a… a magic rock that’s making it go out of control. Even if we kill it, it will keep going.”

  “I see.” Arnaut brushed a smear of paint off of his helmet’s visor. He let his sword dangle at his side and took a breath. “I am not sure I believe that explanation, but neither do I think I was making much of a difference.”

  The most recent wound he had inflicted on the creature bled for a little while longer and then closed like all the others. It healed too quickly to inflict any permanent damage.

  The anomaly shifted again, changing directions to move toward them. They easily dodged out of the way and let it pass. Dalex thought he heard an animal hissing sound escape from the otherwise silent storm of paint, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “However, we cannot simply do nothing,” Arnaut said.

  “My friend is working out a way to make it throw up the rock. If we wait, she should be able to calm it down and make the hydra visible.”

  “How long will that take her?”

  “Hard to say. Why, are you in a hurry?”

  Arnaut pointed with the tip of his sword toward the anomaly. “Indeed. While we have been fighting it, the hydra has shifted closer to Dugan.”

  Dalex stared at the anomaly for a few seconds before it occurred to him that it was making right for the town.

  “Oh.”

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