Strength Based Wizard

Chapter 12

Gate Initiation, Part VI (Full Jelly Jacket)

I look up. And immediately regret it.

Hovering above me is a nightmare. A gigantic, roiling mass of green plasma, undulating and pulsing like a living storm cloud. It’s at least ten feet wide, stretching twice as long, its bloated, spectral form shifting like something trapped between realities. The thing looks like a gigantic Slimer from the Ghost Busters series.

It grins, mouth splitting open to reveal large, all-too-human teeth. Like a yellowing pair of dentures one size too large. Its eyes, two red orbs, glowing with something deep and unnatural, lock onto me with unblinking hunger.

Ding!

I feel the System’s pulse in my mind and an immediately welcomed by a notification window.

[You are in the presence of a splinter of the Cardinal Hand.]

My gut twists. My breathing hitches. I don’t know what the Cardinal Hand is, but I already hate it.

Two spindly, clawed hands emerge from the roiling fog of its form. Long, skeletal fingers flex, twitch, and curl, beckoning, like its looking down at a fresh box of donuts and excitedly trying to decide which one to try first.

The room darkens as its sickly green fog expands outward, curling through the factory. It slithers up the windows, blocking the weak, struggling sunlight that had barely made it through the factory’s grime-coated glass in the first place.

I step back, heart pounding, pulse hammering in my ears as the factory floor grows increasingly dark.

Jelly Boy’s made his way to my side. The slime shakes in fear, pressed against my leg.

Good, I think. That means I’m not just imagining how monumentally fucked we are.

The massive green specter shifts, its grotesque, fanged grin widening as it looms closer. Words generate in my vision, floating over the thing’s face as if they’re plastered on its forehead.

[The Gluttonous Bob, Fused Elemental, Level 6]

I blink.

I blink again.

The Gluttonous Bob?

I don’t have time to process how wildly ridiculous that is, because The Gluttonous Bob’s fingers twitch and his gigantic mouth drops open.

NOPE! I scoop up Jelly Boy and take off running.

I bolt past abandoned machinery, dodging broken crates and rusted tools, my boots slamming against the factory floor. The room is green-lit and swirling with Bob’s fog, and it’s getting darker by the second, making it feel like I’m sprinting through a haunted house designed by someone with a sick sense of humor and a grudge.

I spot an empty conveyor belt—its gears rusted, its rollers caked in factory grime—and slide behind it, nearly eating shit as I drop into a crouch. I set Jelly Boy down at my side.

“Stay put,” I whisper. Jelly Boy quivers in response. Same, buddy. Same.

Above, Bob floats effortlessly through the factory, his grotesque grin never faltering. He begins to cackle as he soars through the factory, sweeping low before retaking to the rafters.

He swoops down again and snatches up a pukwudgie. The tiny, shrieking creature kicks and flails, but The Gluttonous Bob’s clawed fingers curl around it like a vice.

The Gluttonous Bob brings the pukwudgie to his gaping, drool-filled maw. He bites down and there’s a wet crunch. A scream from the poor pukwudgie, cut short. Blood and bits of fur drizzle through Bob’s translucent body, floating inside his gelatinous form like ingredients in a goddamn murder soup. I clamp a hand over my mouth, stomach flipping, bile rising.

The Gluttonous Bob doesn’t stop.

He snatches another pukwudgie from the ground.

This one he tosses into the air and lets fall, screaming, crashing against the factory floor. Bones snap on impact.

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The pukwudgies panic.

They scatter, shrieking in their strange, chittering language. My ears continue to adjust, and the language shifts into panicked shouts in cockney English. The Gluttonous Bob glides after them, effortlessly plucking them up, chewing, swallowing, or simply dropping them to their deaths. It’s horrifying.

I can’t move. I can barely breathe. The devour cloud of green plasma isn’t hunting the sad little factory workers. He’s playing with them.

God dammit! Think… think!

My mind races as I try and find a solution.

The Gluttonous Bob’s putrid green fog crawls over the glass, snuffing out the final sliver of light like a fist closing around a candle flame. The factory is plunged into a suffocating darkness. I can’t see my hand in front of my face. I can barely see anything.

But I can hear. Oh god, I can hear everything.

The swoosh of The Gluttonous Bob’s massive body as he glides overhead. The wet squelch of a pukwudgie being snatched up and snacked on. The shrill, panicked screams.

Swoosh, scream, crunch, thud! . . .

Swoosh, scream, crunch, thud! . . .

The absolute nightmare orchestra of sounds that tell me The Gluttonous Bob is still very much on his “eat everything that moves” spree.

I need to move. I need to get the hell out of here. The rooftop—if I can get back up there, maybe—maybe I can—What?

I don’t know. But anywhere is better than being where I am, crouched cowering behind a piece of heavy equipment, waiting for my turn to be turned into a human-sized snack.

I pick up Jelly Boy, tucking him tightly under my arm and shift to move when my ears latch onto an entirely different sound I had nearly forgotten about in the horror show of The Gluttonous Bob.

I freeze. Somewhere in the factory, not far from my position, a sawblade whirs, a conveyor belt rattles, and a piston hisses and slams downward with enough force to pulp a gobblin.

Oh, right. That whole ‘accidentally turning on deadly machinery’ thing.

…Maybe running blindly isn’t the best idea.

I take a breath, shove down the panic clawing at my insides, and yank my wand from my Inventory.

I grip it tight as I access my Spell interface and cast the Light cantrip. A soft, cool glow blooms to life, swirling before condensing into a baseball-sized orb of white light. The orb hovers in the air beside me, casting flickering shadows along the rusted factory walls.

I guide it forward, twenty feet away—the limit of the spell’s radius—attaching it to a hulking piece of machinery. I’m surprised how well the orb responds to my mental commands before realizing that it might be a result of me leveling up.

The gliding mass of devouring plasma stops, freezing midair. The air hums with a sudden, unnatural stillness.

Then—Bob screams. It’s a horrid, bone-shaking wail, like a dying elephant crossed with a malfunctioning air raid siren. He lurks just outside the glow, his teeth bared. His spindly fingers twitching, as though he wants nothing more than to snatch and thrash the light orb.

But he doesn’t move forward. He doesn’t enter the light.

No, he won’t enter the light. Oh. Oh, hell yes. He doesn’t like it. That explains the fog, the window-blocking. The Gluttonous Bob doesn’t just want darkness. He needs it.

Alright. No time to think.

I summon my interface and cast the Light cantrip again, and a fresh ball of cool white light bursts into existence right in front of me.

Just as it does—pop!—the first orb winks out.

I blink.

…Oh.

Apparently, I can only have one of these damn things up at a time. Would’ve been nice to know that before I was trapped in a dark factory with a flying murder-slime!

The Gluttonous Bob screeches above me, an earsplitting wail that makes my skull vibrate, but he doesn’t dive in. Not yet.

I take off.

Jelly Boy is tucked under my arm like a football, and I command the orb to follow me, hovering just over my shoulder like a little holy bodyguard.

The Gluttonous Bob descends. I hear the rush of wind, the shifting, seething mass of his disgusting, plasma-like form closing in.

Whoosh!

It’s working. Holy shit, it’s actually working!

I don’t let myself celebrate yet. I’m already at the stairs. I hit the first step, then the second, then the third, and eventually am taking them two at a time.

The Gluttonous Bob shrieks and dives again, but the light still holds him at bay.

I reach the walkway and sprint down the rusted metal path, eyes locked on the final flight of stairs leading to the rooftop.

Almost there . . . Almost! . . .

Whoosh!

I skid to a stop as the flying monster rushes the walkway. “Oh, shit!...” I exclaim, thinking perhaps The Gluttonous Bob may have adjusted to its initial aversion to light and that I was next up on the menu after his pukwudgie hors d’oeuvres.

His massive, sludgy body slams forward, stopping just short of my light. I just about hit myself. His huge, yellowed teeth grind. His spindly fingers twitch. He’s pissed. But he still won’t cross the light’s threshold.

I don’t move. I don’t breathe.

Jelly Boy starts vibrating. Like, really vibrating. Like, tiny blue gelatinous earthquake levels of shaking.

Before I can even react, he shoots out of my grip—

“JELLY BOY, WAIT—!”

But it’s too late. He’s leaping through the space between me and The Gluttonous Bob, passing straight through the orb of light.

The light vanishes.

But Jelly Boy doesn’t. No. The slime’s absorbs the orb, the light intensifies and fires from every inch of the slime’s blob body. He’s lit up like a goddamn disco ball.

The Gluttonous Bob doesn’t even have time to react. Because Jelly Boy’s trajectory is already locked in.

Straight. Into. Its mouth.

The big bastard swallows him whole.

And then all hell breaks loose.

The monster’s entire form pulses. His plasma-flesh bubbles like an overfilled pot of boiling sludge. The spindly limbs extending from his body spasm. The red, glowing eyes bulge from the increasingly-distorted surface of the sickly green blob.

His mouth stretches wide in a horrible, soundless scream—and then he explodes.

Green slime, pukwudgie gore. It all rains down over the factory floor like some kind of nightmare gelatin sprinkler system.

And just like that, the fog clears. The dim sunlight streaming through the grime-covered windows returns.

I stumble forward to the railing, heart still slamming in my chest.

“JELLY BOY?!”

I scan the wreckage, my stomach in knots, my mind racing.

And then I see him.

Right there, in the middle of the carnage.

Still glowing with the power of my Light cantrip like a tiny divine miracle.

Jelly Boy, you crazy son of a bitch.

He’s vibrating happily in victory.