Chapter 133 (Patreon)

(Cliffhanger warning. Sorry in advance)

I opened the pocket watch and set off the alarm in hopes that Henrik would respond. I had my ink quill ready to write him a note, but he didn’t answer. He hadn’t replied since that first time. I relayed this to Juice Box via Langley. He said she was concerned about her brother, so much so that she was about to go in there herself. I told him to try and talk her out of it.

Meanwhile, the tomb raider guys had finally started moving toward the water line, which was about halfway down the necropolis. The water had done a fine job of killing almost every non-ghost mob in the quadrant, but it’d only triggered about half of the traps. Bobby, the trap-finding spy, was on the verge of a literal breakdown and kept stopping to compose himself. Hopefully nothing happened to him because he was our only remaining point of contact with the group.

Chris and Maggie My remained in their tomb. I still didn’t know what we were going to do about them. Mordecai was having little luck finding the supplies he needed to kill the parasite. I had Langley’s crew physically drag the decapitated top floor of the house containing the stairwell to just outside of Hump Town. That way, Donut could open up the chamber, and Katia could use her remaining rock-monster-paralyzing bolts to knock them out. We could then easily toss the paralyzed creature through the portal if we had to when the time came.

I did not want to do that. Chris clearly didn’t want us to do that. Since we probably wouldn’t teleport to the same place, it would just unleash Maggie onto the sixth floor, and all of this bullshit would start over again. Imani was insistent we do everything to save him. It felt like the wrong move, but what could we do?

None of this would matter if we didn’t take the final castle. The Necropolis of Anser.

The first step: draining the rest of the water. In order to do that, we had to turn off the pump inside of that submarine.

The town of Pandinus was smaller than Hump Town, but it still featured several inns and taverns. There was no Desperado Club here, but there was a Club Vanquisher. Of all of us, the only one who could get in was Gwen. She said there was a big fight in there recently, which was unusual for the club. Apparently Miriam Dom had her membership revoked once she’d turned into a vampire, which caused Prepotente to lose his absolute shit. He unleashed their third companion—that scary-ass hellspawn familiar goat—into the main lounge, and it had devoured a bunch of clerics before they fled. There was now a “Holy Crusade Bounty” on the trio, whatever that meant. But in the meantime, the club was closed so it could be cleansed.

We met up at a tavern called “The Death Stalker” that was nothing more than a few tables and a bar. And, inexplicably, a gelato cart. The scorpion guy behind the counter had about twenty flavors of the stuff, and you could get it in a waffle cone or in a bowl. The moment I saw the cones, I was reminded of another cone of ice cream I’d eaten earlier in the dungeon, one made of worms, and I suddenly felt ill. Both Katia and Gwen got themselves cones. Donut happily bought a bowl of raspberry while we all sat down. She’d talked the Pazuzu down from two gold to one for the bowl.

It was me, Donut, Katia, Gwen, Tran the human swashbuckler guy, and two newcomers, both crawlers from Ukraine.

I examined the two strangers. One was a human named Britney Yeltsin, and she was a level-27 Pit Fighter. The dark-haired woman was outfitted in a fur bikini and carried a spike-covered stick over her shoulder. She was really leaning into the barbarian theme that the dungeon had chosen for her.

The other crawler was a level-28, spotted gecko-like creature called a Kuhli, which I thought was weird because I knew that was a type of fish, not lizard. His name was Vadim Zbar, and his class was something called a Gut Rearranger, which was apparently a healer/rogue combo. He was covered head to toe in little sheaths filled with daggers of all types.

These were the two other survivors of the water quadrant. It turned out Vadim was a cosmetic surgeon in the real world, and Britney had been in his office for a consultation when it all went down, and they were the last two survivors of their original party.

“I’m not going back down there,” Britney said the moment we sat down at the table. “I’ll tell you what you need to know, but I’d rather die than go back in that water.”

“Oh, I just love your furs,” Donut said, after coming up for air between bites of her raspberry gelato. “And I feel you. I’m not going back in there, either.”

She just looked at Donut, not showing any emotion.

“What about you?” I asked Vadim, the gecko man.

“I’ll go,” he said.

“No, you will not,” Britney said. “You will die. Everybody who goes down there dies. We were lucky to get out the first time, and we had the personal subs then. They’re gone, now.”

“I’ll go,” he repeated. “I think I know where the pump controls are.”

I nodded, pointing to Katia and Tran the swashbuckler. “The four of us are going into the water, we are getting to the submarine, and we’re going to turn off the pump. Once it’s off, we’re going to get the hell out of there. I hope to be in and out in an hour, tops.”

Tran turned to Vadim. “Do you own a red shirt? I feel as if I should put one on.”

“What does that mean?” Vadim asked.

~

The gnomish Drop Bear remained in the garage of the house. The garage was the only part of the uprooted, flying home that still had a roof over it. Louis and Firas did an admirable job of lashing the small biplane down. I inspected it as the entire garage and the rest of the house rose into the air, the ground swaying under us.

Donut was in a foul mood. Apparently the AI had showed her a message from the intergalactic internet that had pissed her off, and she’d been grumbling about it for an hour straight.

“‘No redeeming qualities whatsoever,’” Donut muttered. “He said, that, Carl. Can you believe it? He also said I ruined the viewing experience and almost made him stop watching the whole show! Stupid Shuruga36. What kind of name is that anyway? Shuruga. It sounds like the noise one makes as he’s getting whooped by a group of angry toddlers.”

I peered into the rear-facing backseat of the airplane. The tail gun was still loaded with a semi-circle-shaped magazine, but I couldn’t tell how many rounds were left. “You spend too much time reading that stuff. Don’t pay attention to it. It’s just people talking. It doesn’t mean anything.”

She ignored me. “Plus, he insulted Mongo. He said, and I quote, ‘Donut and her stupid dino-chicken irritate me to no end.’ Mongo is just a child. If he could read, he’d be appalled. I can take criticism, but picking on a child? That’s just uncalled for. I bet he sucks his thumb and thinks of his grandmother when he touches himself.”

“You can take criticism?” I asked.

“I’m serious, Carl.

Katia entered the garage.

“I still can’t believe you guys flew that thing,” she said.

“We didn’t really fly it. We just kinda went up into the air using it as a balloon.”

“Well, the chum bombs are ready.”

“Okay. Go ahead and start dropping them. Donut has the detonator in her inventory.”

The chum bombs were nothing more than triple-ply garbage bags filled with various dead bodies along with fused, 1/8th-strength hob-lobbers, each with a piece of hobgoblin pus attached to them. They were all timed to the same detonator, so when Donut hit the button, they’d all blow at the same time, sending a mighty plume of gore out into the ocean.

We were dropping them near the edge of the current from the draining necropolis. The bags would probably start leaking before we got into position, but that was okay. All I really wanted was a distraction for the first layer of underwater security, the concierge sharks. We needed them as far away from our position as possible.

We had not dived deep enough to meet any of the other denizens of the ocean. Vadim spoke of several, including jellyfish and squids and hammerhead sharks. The man was very matter-of-fact and emotionless, unlike his companion, Britney, who seemed to be on the edge of hysterics the whole time.

“Did Langley tell you about that Vadim guy?” Katia asked as I finished inspecting the airplane.

I paused. “No. What about him? How do they know each other?” They’d never even met as far as I was aware.

“I guess Doctor Vadim is, or was, pretty famous in the Ukraine. He had television commercials and billboards and stuff everywhere, advertising his cosmetic surgery clinics. He was always getting sued for botched surgeries. Langley says he has like 50 children. He’s known for impregnating many of his clients.”

“Oh my,” Donut said. “I just love gossip like that when it’s extra delicious. I wonder why he turned himself into a lizard, then? I once knew a red Persian like that. Someone who pollinated his seed everywhere. His name was Santana’s Little Secret. He once got out of his cage at a CFA event and impregnated a Sphynx. Can you imagine? It’s the equivalent of royalty impregnating an uncooked chicken. It was quite the scandal. Do you think Vadim has knocked-up Britney? She looks like the type who’d get knocked up by a plastic surgeon.”

“How does Langley know about some Ukrainian guy?” I asked.

“That’s where he’s from,” Katia said.

“I thought he was Finnish.”

Donut made an exasperated noise. “He is from Finland. Really, Carl. Sometimes I feel you don’t pay proper attention. Langley is originally from the Ukraine, but he immigrated to Finland not that long ago. Almost all of those guys in his group are from other countries.”

I didn’t actually care where anybody was from as long as they were from Earth, though the story about Vadim did worry me somewhat. If it was true, and who knew with this sort of thing, then it made him sound like a weasel. Not the sort of person you wanted to go with into dangerous situations. Especially when you had a large bounty on your head.

“Britney is not pregnant,” Katia said. “If she was when she went in, she’d probably be showing by now. Women can’t get pregnant in the dungeon. Our periods stop, and we get a notification informing us we are no longer able to conceive until after we fulfill our crawl.”

“Wait, really?” I said. “I never received anything like that.” I realized how stupid that sounded the moment I said it out loud. I, did, however remember an oddity from the cookbook. Rickard, the guy who’d written the most recent version of the book, didn’t add too much content, but he did mention that he’d entered the dungeon with his pregnant wife, but the moment he went through the gate, she’d disappeared, and he never saw her again. I thought it was just one of those things. I knew dudes still had the ability to knock creatures up. The whole reason Brandon had died was because another guy in their party, one of the formerly-ancient residents, had banged a succubus in an alleyway on the third floor, and she’d given birth to hundreds of baby monsters with the guy’s face.

“Has anybody seen any pregnant women in the dungeon?” I asked.

Katia shrugged. “I don’t think so. Except Fire Brandy on the last floor.”

“And Eunice the dwarf on the third floor!” Donut added.

“Those were both NPCs. I wonder if they do something special with pregnant crawlers,” I said.

“Probably something awful,” Katia said. “But I can’t imagine someone who was pregnant would come in here voluntarily.”

Firas popped his head into the garage. “We’re in position to drop your chum bombs,” he said. “The barrel launchers for the depth charges are all installed, too. They’re ready for you to load them. We have five hours before it gets dark and six before the first of the equinox sand storms hits, so let’s get a move on.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”

~

After we dropped the chum bombs, we quickly flew around the side of the necropolis and directly over the position of the sub. Louis and Firas had some system where they could adjust the elevation of the house, and it’d hit an air current that would blow the balloon in the direction they wanted it to go. They were very good at it, and Louis said they’d received a half dozen achievements for flying the magical balloon.

“Hit it,” I said to Donut as we sank toward sea level.

Donut did a little hop and then hit the hobgoblin pus detonator. We were too far away to hear the sound of the bags exploding, but I knew there would now be blood and guts and floor-four wrath body parts spreading all over.

“Carl, Carl, I went up a level! I’m now 38!”

“I guess some of those sharks got into the bombs before we could blow them,” I said. I was hoping that would happen. With those missing five days, both Donut and I had lost a lot of grinding time. We hadn’t done nearly as much fighting and leveling as we should have by now, and we needed everything we could get.

“Does anybody see anything down there?” I asked as we hovered about fifteen feet off the calm surface of the water. The water level had risen somewhat once we’d turned the drain on, but it was still lower than when the floor opened. That’d change, hopefully, once we finished here.

“I can see the sub on the map,” Katia said. Tran, who also had the Pathfinder skill, nodded in agreement.

“Donut?” I asked.

“I don’t see any monsters. I see some small fish here and there, but they’re all white on the map.”

“Okay. Remember. We don’t roll the depth charges into the water unless I say we do. They are a last resort.”

Donut jumped from my shoulder. “Aye, aye, Captain Carl.” She paused, looking between me and Katia. “You two be safe. It’s horrible down there.”

~

“This is really damn weird,” Tran said as we watched Katia form into the diving bell.

“Fascinating,” Vadim agreed, walking in a circle around Katia.

I continued to marvel at Katia’s growth. She was forming this on the fly without having made it before. We were at the corner of the house, standing on the crumbling ground of the garden, and Katia hung off the side, with a single arm anchored to the magical brace that held the balloon high above. The whole house and balloon dipped at the corner as she continued to add weight.

I remembered when she first started playing with her shapeshifting abilities, it physically hurt her to make even a small change. Now she could contour herself into just about anything at a moment’s notice. She still wasn’t perfect with faces unless she sat in front of her makeup table, but with this sort of inanimate stuff, she was an expert.

The Akula was 500 meters under the surface. Although that didn’t sound like much, it was an alarming depth. Vadim said the massive submarine had a chamber on the roof to enter and leave, but one of their mini-subs had been docked to it before they started their assault on the bridge. After they’d succeeded, something happened, and the mini-sub had blown, which caused the Akula to fill with water. The nose of the sub was now physically attached to the base of the necropolis below the waterline, and the massive torpedo tubes along the bottom were somehow pumping vast amounts of ocean water directly into the structure.

Like with the extreme height of the Wasteland, I knew diving 500 meters below the surface simply wasn’t something that’d normally be possible. The crush depth of most submarines was around 400 meters. But Vadim and Britney both insisted they’d free dived those depths—and much deeper—with no real issue with the help of the water-breathing scrolls.

Whatever physics engine was running this shitshow, it was designed to allow us to do the impossible. It didn’t want us dying from stupid environmental hazards, unless it was a deliberately placed trap or mob. Dying from the bends wasn’t nearly as entertaining as watching us get eaten by a shark.

“Be careful,” I said to Donut as Katia opened up an entrance for me to step inside of her. “Katia is really heavy right now. The moment we drop away, this thing is going to fly up into the air. I don’t want you falling in.”

Donut just nodded. Despite her loud insistence that she was never going back into the water, I could tell she was struggling with guilt over this. I patted her on the head. “We need you to keep us safe. Okay?”

“Be careful,” she said, rubbing her head against my hand.

I stepped inside. Katia was spread thin, which allowed her to make herself pretty large. The three of us—me, Tran, and Vadim—stood in the middle of the shape. She’d helpfully grown three poles in the middle so we could steady ourselves. She called it the diving bell, but she was really shaped more like an elevator with a ring of heavy, dense metal at the bottom to prevent her from flipping. She would grow flaps and pull some mass and attempt to slow our descent as we approached the sub. We wanted to acclimate to the water as soon as possible, so we weren’t sealed in. With Tran’s pathfinder skill and Vadim’s Torch spell, we’d hopefully be able to navigate the drowned halls of the submarine and quickly accomplish our task.

The boss had been a borough boss, not a neighborhood boss, so the map it left showed Vadim monster types in an area, but he still didn’t have a full map of the Akula, which was unfortunate. There had apparently been a sentinel gun thing that’d been a neighborhood boss, but he said he’d never looted the map. Things had been happening quickly.

“Everyone read a scroll,” I said. All around us, we each cast Water Breathing on ourselves. All four of us now had enough of these things in our inventory to last at least four hours submerged, four times the amount we’d hopefully need.

I nervously watched the little needle that kept me apprised of our viewer count, and it was starting to spike. That was always a bad sign.

“And away we go,” Katia said from a mouth that sat against the interior wall of the diving bell, right next to my ear. I almost crapped my boxers at the sound of the voice so close to me.

Before I could say, “Jesus, Katia,” we dropped. The elevator hit the ocean and only gave the slightest pause before we were underwater. We sank, and the force of the water rushing inside almost pulled all three of us up and out.

I kept my eye on our altitude as we rapidly fell. We moved at about five meters a second, rocketing toward the depths. I did feel the increasing pressure of the water above us as we passed 100 meters, then 200, then 300, but it wasn’t nearly as much as it should.

“I see it,” Katia said after only a minute, her voice carrying through the water. “I’m pulling my mass in small amounts now and flapping my wings. Oh, wow. It’s bigger than I thought. The whole top part is ripped away. There’s a strong current. I can actually see the water getting pulled in. It’s mostly under the sub. It’s like water is being sucked in like through a vacuum cleaner. The whole front of the submarine is stuck in a hole. The whole sub is the pump.”

I felt us start to slow. The Akula finally showed on my map, the structure stretching to completely fill it. The thing was a the size of a carrier, maybe even bigger.

“There are a bunch of jellyfish near the entrance,” Katia said.

“What color are they?” Vadim snapped.

“Blue. They’re big.”

“Okay, good. Watch out for the white ones. The pain amplifiers. They’re smaller. The big blue ones will wrap around you if you get close, but they’ll leave you alone if you avoid them. But you must watch because they drift.”

“Okay, I’m aiming for an area without them,” Katia said. “Landing now.”

Crack. We hit the hull, and Katia’s form instantly changed. The elevator opened like a flower, revealing the deep, dark world. It wasn’t completely dark. Some light still filtered in through above, but everything had a deep, blue hue to it. I crouched, still standing atop Katia’s form. It felt as if someone was standing on my shoulders, but the pressure wasn’t too bad.

The Akula, like Katia had said, was huge. It looked more like a damn spaceship than an actual submarine. The slick, metallic structure spread out into the darkness in every direction. The whole thing vibrated. I could feel the water deep below being pumped through the vehicle. Directly ahead, the sail—the conning tower-like structure on top of most submarines—had been violently ripped away, giving me an unobstructed view of the bottom of the necropolis. From here, it was nothing more than an imposing, dark wall.

Katia continued to change. She was transforming herself so she’d cover the hull, camouflaging herself. She was going to stay out here and keep an eye out for the large, dangerous monsters while the three of us entered the sub. The ripped away entrance was about twenty feet away. In most subs, the con was directly below the sail. That wasn’t the case with this submarine. According to Vadim, the con (called a bridge by the game), was at the fore of the vessel, just short of the nose. That’s where the stairwell was. I couldn’t see it, but Katia could.

Vadim had described a room directly below the bridge that I believed was the fire control. That was our target.

Above, the glowing, blue jellyfish floated like sentinels. Each were about fifteen feet in diameter, and their tentacles dangled underneath them ominously, hovering about twenty feet over the top of the submarine. They drifted aimlessly, bouncing off one another.

Their dots were white on the map, meaning they weren’t naturally hostile.

Big Boy Blue – Level 40

The good ol’ Big Boy Blue is the largest of the jellyfish one might find floating around. They’re a little like that guy you used to know in high school who was always wearing either overalls or a jersey of some sort. The dude is like six foot five and pushing 300 pounds when he was a freshman. He always had a crewcut. Dad’s a trucker. Never talks. Never does his homework. He’s just always, you know, kinda there. He doesn’t mean any harm. But he’s so goddamned dumb he does harm anyway if you get in his way. Plus he always has a super-hot girlfriend for some reason, but that has nothing to do with the damn jellyfish. Anyway, you get the point. Harmless as long as you don’t touch them.

I put my hand on the now-silver-colored edge of Katia and said, “We’re going in. Be safe. Keep that salve I gave you in your hotlist.”

“In and out, Carl,” she replied. “If you can’t figure it out, set the bombs.”

I patted her, and the three of us half-walked, half-bounced along the top of the submarine and headed inside.

~

Entering the Akula.

Vadim cast his Torch the moment we sank through the destroyed superstructure hole into a round room. Mechanical parts floated everywhere as we swam down a tunnel. The water smelled of oil and smoke, and it was oddly calming. Familiar. The whole place was flooded. The hull creaked and moaned ominously.

Donut: ARE YOU OKAY?

Carl: We’re fine. We’re moving in now.

Vadim led the way. “The submarine was in terrible condition when we first got here. There were skeletons of bugbears and a bunch of robots we had to fight on our way to the bridge,” he said. We pushed our way through the tight corridors, swimming by pulling ourselves along the walls, which were warm, not freezing like I expected. “Only three of us survived.”

“Did you get the gear of those who didn’t make it?” I asked.

“No. Usually there wasn’t anything left. There was a gun outside the bridge that just blew them up. Nobody could get past it except Chris. He had some ability that made him invisible to the thing. He went past and into the boss chamber alone. When he killed the robot thing with the head in the jar, the gun blew up on its own.”

“You never had any hints he was really two people?”

Vadim shook his head. He swam under a floating, blue barrel. The man moved quickly in the water. I grasped the barrel and took it in, and it appeared in my inventory filled with sea water.

“It didn’t surprise me,” Vadim continued. “Chris was a higher level. Never talked much. Was a fierce fighter, but emotionless. He did have a lot of spells. He insulted us when we didn’t do what he said. Britney never liked him.”

“That’s most definitely not the real Chris,” I said.

Tran picked up what looked like a robot arm and let it go. I was taking everything and tossing it into my inventory. Most of this stuff was worthless, but some of it was made out of bugbear metal, which appeared to be very light.

We passed through what had once been a mess hall. I really wished we had more time to go exploring, but I knew we were on a timer. I finally saw the stairwell on the edge of my map. We were following the water party’s original path through the Akula. I was deliberately making Vadim go first, lest he lead me into a hallway or trap.

“Did you guys loot any journals or notes from the boss?” I asked.

“Yes,” Vadim said. “There was a note. Chris took it and read it. He didn’t show us, but it had a key code on it to the escape tubes above the bridge. We all agreed to go to the land quadrant because it was the closest, but he somehow ended up with you guys.”

“He said there wasn’t room for him to get to the land quadrant,” I said.

“That was a lie. There was plenty of room. We could’ve fit a whole party. But each escape tunnel can only be used once.” He paused as we entered another hallway. We stopped in front of a hatch with a round, spinning wheel dogged closed. We were only a handful of rooms away from the bridge.

“What’s wrong?”

“This was open. We left all the doors open so we could escape to our sub.”

I moved forward to inspect the door. Uh-oh. “You don’t see anything on the other side?” I asked.

Vadim’s gecko face looked grim.  “No. But it’s a small room on the other side. Like one of those rooms where you can drain the water away.”

“An airlock,” I said.

Katia: Uh, guys, there’s something out here. It’s big. It just swam by underneath the sub. I didn’t get a good look, but the damn thing is bigger than the submarine. It’s gone now.

Carl: Okay. That’s probably what really broke the sail off the sub.

Katia: We should be fine as long as you guys don’t bring attention to yourselves.

I spun the wheel. It turned easily, revealing a small room with a switch on the wall. A red light glowed. I read another water-breathing scroll. “Come on, all of us inside.”

Tran and Vadim looked at one another then followed me inside. I shut the door, locking us in. I hit the switch, and the room started to vibrate. A loud noise filled the chamber, my ears popped, and the water started to suck away. A minute later, and the room hissed. I spun the wheel on the second door, and I opened it.

“Tada,” I said, stepping into the room.

The water was gone, but puddles appeared everywhere. This section had been drained, but not for long. I took a breath. The air felt stale, but it was air. I didn’t receive a warning about low oxygen. I knew if there was none, the water-breathing scroll wouldn’t help. We’d have to flood the chamber if that was the case.

Tran was the first to vomit. We all waited for our spell to fade. When it hit me, I went to my knees, spewing brown water everywhere. Christ, this is awful.

“Why did I volunteer for this again?” Tran asked, rolling onto his back.

Vadim was unfazed by the vomiting. “You get used to it after a while. It’s really bad if you’re under for more than an hour.”

We recovered and stepped into a large, semi-circle-shaped room. The center of the room was filled with removable grates. The metallic room appeared to have no purpose, which was unusual for a water vessel. A hole in the ceiling sparked. That, I realized, was the remains of the sentinel gun. The neighborhood boss. This had been a boss chamber. I didn’t see a place to loot the map. I probably had to go a level higher or lower to grab it. Our feet echoed when we walked.

The next door was a similar portal to the one behind it. Just beyond it was the bridge. Within the bridge, I knew, was the captain’s chambers, a separate room which contained the floor exit. There was also a real staircase that went below to the fire control station where we could, theoretically, turn off the pump. And if we went up instead of down, there was yet another room where the three escape hatches were. Two of the three had already been used.

“That door was open, too,” Vadim said.

I really wished I had Donut with us. That way we could use the Hole spell to peer inside.

“There,” Tran said, pointing to the ground. I finally saw what he was pointing at.

There was a grate on the floor here. I moved to it, and I pulled it. The moment I moved the grate, the X appeared on my map.

Lootable Corpse. The Welcoming Committee. Neighborhood Boss. Killed by System Deactivation.

It was a small box that one had to destroy in order to turn off the gun. Maggie had somehow circumvented it, which in turn allowed her to kill the borough boss on her and reap all the experience. I reached down, opened the small control panel, and looted the neighborhood map along with a Blown Heavy-Duty Fuse.

The moment I took the map, the entirety of the Akulapopulated on my screen. Multiple red dots appeared, mostly in the lower decks. There was also a red dot moving back and forth across the bridge right in front of us, along with multiple Xs of corpses. I first focused on the Xs, and my heart quickened.

The red dot kept disappearing and reappearing. It was moving back and forth between the bridge and chamber just on the other side, outside the sub. Outside the water quadrant, even.

“Fuck me,” I muttered.

“What is it?” Tran asked.

“It’s a ghost. One that shouldn’t be in here. It’s…”

Before I could finish, an ear-piercing screech filled the submarine. The entire hull shuddered. A glowing, green head of a goddamned pterodactyl appeared, leaning in through the wall of the bridge. It screamed again, and my vision flashed red. Vadim fell to the ground, his health suddenly in the red, and I wasn’t sure why.

Before I could even examine the ghost, it disappeared back into the bridge. But I knew who that was. Quetzalcoatlus, the supposed boss monster of the subterranean level.

The dot disappeared, but a moment later, I heard her scream again, and it was somehow louder. The entire hull quaked. Tran used a Heal Others spell on Vadim.

Katia: Something green and glowing just shot out of the side of the submarine and went down. What is that? Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. I can see it. The green thing just smacked it and turned around.

Carl: Blow your ballast. Get out of there. You don’t have time to get to us. Get to the surface.

Katia: The flying green dot just flew back into the temple I think. But the large thing is coming. Carl, there’s music. Music I haven’t heard before.

Carl: GET OUT NOW.

Donut: DON’T LEAVE CARL.

Katia: It’s coming. Oh, god. Oh, god. It’s reaching for the sub, Carl.

***
Hey all. Thanks so much for reading! Sorry for the lateness and the cliff. I always try to avoid those, but when we're at the endgame, it becomes almost impossible.

I just submitted the final-ish edits for book three to Amazon, which comes out April 2. I'll have a DL link for you guys soon. I'm also starting work on the book cover for book 4 (which is this level). Can't wait for that. I might go with the scene you're going to read the next chapter, but I'm not sure yet. Take care and have a great week.