The Rifleman - Bk1 - Ch.7

Chapter Seven

The Ick Factor

Entering the swampy landscape around the village was like walking into a steam room full of rotten meat and plants. Which, as it turned out, was not too far from being an accurate description of the place anyway. Within a few steps, Wes felt sweat running down his back. 

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Gem asked as she took a deep breath and sighed happily.

“Not exactly my thing,” Wes equivocated. Telling her he would rather be almost anywhere else was unlikely to go down very well. He had the feeling that Gem had been waiting for this particular environment before she was willing to make the journey to the Unnamed City. 

Only another few steps, and he had to pull open his tunic. The thick, tough, hard-wearing fabric didn’t exactly do him many favors in this heat. Frowning, Wes noticed the smears of dirt, blood, and even some grease covering his clothes. He could use a laundry and perhaps some needle and thread. He was already starting to get a couple of rips and tears. At this rate, he would be naked in a couple of weeks, or worse, wearing what passed for clothing around here.

“The first thing we need to do is find something to kill,” Gem said, eyes narrowed. “Something humanoid for preference.” She looked back at Wes, “And no burning the bodies like you did to those things last night.” She grinned. “I need ‘em juicy.”

“And there’s the ‘Ick Factor’ I was talking about,” Wes said with a smile.

“You think that’s the ‘Ick’? Wait till you see me raise them.” Gem laughed.

So, Wes followed her into the swamps and bogs to try and attempt to find something for her to raise. His boots sank into the wet soil, and his body was slick with sweat. The pack on his back seemed heavier with every step, and he was starting to think something was very wrong…

He woke up on the floor of the swamp with Gem standing over him, some strange green light moving between her hands in intricate patterns. 

“Wha’ ‘appened?” Wesley asked.

“You are under attack,” Gem grunted. “A Wisp is trying to drain you.”

“Oh, good.” Wes sighed and laid back.

“Good?” Gem frowned. “How is that good?”

“For a second, I thought I had heat stroke.” Wes chuckled weakly.

“This is worse,” Gem growled. “Trust me.”

“Spoken like a lady who never had heat stroke,” Wes tried to grin but gave up.

“Wisps are pure energy,” Gem grunted. “They can’t be killed, just contained.”

Wesley rolled over. He still felt frail and struggled just to lift his head from the wet ground. Not far away, peaking out from behind a tree, was a glowing orb of pale purple light. A net of green energy was slowly weaving around it, forcing the light to dim slightly as the opposing energy pushed it back.

“Almost,” Gem grunted. “There!” The net closed, and Wesley gasped as energy rushed back into him.

“Run!” Gem gasped. “Fast!”

Wesley didn’t wait to be told twice, scrambling up and following as Gem sprinted off through the boggy landscape. Twice, he stumbled, tripped and fell. Each time, he ended up with a face full of fetid water. At that moment, however, he couldn’t care less. Just having the energy to move again felt wonderful. 

The attack had been slow, insidious. He had put the creeping weakness down to tiredness, then the heat, and by the time he realized there was a serious problem, he was already falling asleep. Without Gem, he would be sleeping now, snoring away as the wisp drained the last of his life.

They pushed through a plant with large, flat leaves, and Gem finally slowed. Still, they kept jogging for almost another hour before she finally seemed to relax and come to a stop. Wes collapsed again, gasping for air. It had been a long time since he did long-distance running, which his legs and lungs had been pointing out for the last twenty minutes with increasing urgency. 

“Thanks,” He gasped.

“How the hell is one that strong even in this area?” Gem kicked a tree. “It must be third tier at least.”

Wes watched as she stalked back and forth, grumbling and kicking things. 

“We got away, right?” Wes tried to calm her. “Thanks again, by the way.”

“We did not get away,” Gem barked. “It will track you; it has your signature now. It will just keep coming.”

“So, any advice?” Wesley asked as he got to his feet.

“You don’t understand,” Gem said. This is not something that should be in such a low-tier area.”

“Can we just keep moving?” Wesley asked with a sinking feeling. “How fast can it move?”

“It’s slow,” Gem admitted. “The problem is, keeping it at bay will take all my mana, so when we leave this area and cross to the next zone, I will have no minions at all. If we get attacked on the way there… I won’t be able to fight back. I need minions to do anything.” She looked at him and bit her lip anxiously. “I’m sorry.”

“Gem?” Wesley called. “You have nothing to apologize for, seriously. You saved me.”

“I didn’t,” Gem sighed.” That’s what you don’t get. I could save you, maybe. If I escorted you back to the village, then maybe you could get away… but even then.” She ran her hands through her hair again, and then her face seemed to set into a cold mask. “I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”

“You’re leaving me, aren’t you?” Wesley said in disbelief.

“It’s you or both of us,” Gem said coldly. “I really am sorry. I need to get back to the Unnamed City.”

“How fast do I have to move to stay ahead of it?” Wesley asked.

“A fast jog for a first tier,” Gem replied. “But it won’t stop. When you sleep, it will keep moving, keep closing.” She gave him a tight-lipped smile, “It won’t be painless. I could… I could make it fast. If you prefer.”

“I’ll pass,” Wesley said blandly, feeling emotional whiplash after everything going so bad, then good, then bad again, all in a scant hour and a half. “Wish me luck?”

“It won’t make a difference,” Gem said bluntly. “I’m sorry.” With that, she turned and ran off into the mess of swamps and bogs lined with giant mushrooms and weird, half-dead trees.

Wesley watched her go, fighting a petulant urge to shoot her in the back. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand her reasoning. It was very logical, if she was telling the truth. Somehow, that didn’t make him feel any better as she disappeared into the distance.

“Well, fuck you too,” He muttered to himself. Wes wasn’t sure if he was speaking to Gem or the whole system that ran this place. In the end, it didn’t matter. 

Somewhere, not too far away, a glowing ball of light was drifting this way, looking forward to draining him like a juice box. 

He had to get moving. 

His first thought was to head in the same direction that Gem went. It made a particular sort of sense. She would attract and hopefully kill anything in that direction. Theoretically, he could draft along behind her pretty safely until she stopped to rest or raise the things she killed. The biggest problem was that he wasn’t sure of her reaction. She was obviously willing to leave him behind; she might be willing to kill him to prevent him from leading that thing her way.

“This fucking sucks,” Wesley sighed and headed off in a random direction, still trying to keep away from both Gem and the Wisp. 

The air was still heavy and stinking, but as he moved through it, Wes started to feel something he had not expected to feel. He was scared, but more than that, he felt determined.

“I will not die in this fucking swamp,” Wesley grit his teeth and pushed on. The idea of being able to keep to a fast jog was a complete joke as the ground tried to steal his boots with every step, but he did his best. The headlong dash was not exactly silent, so he wasn’t surprised when he heard a loud croak of excitement and saw a large frog, the size of a damn great dane, leaping toward him. He didn’t hesitate, firing five rounds in quick succession and then fixing his bayonet to the rifle. Its mouth opened, and a large, flat tongue shot out, wrapping around his leg. He stabbed the tongue with his bayonet and yanked the blade to the side. The tongue was nearly severed, the frog croaking loudly in protest before he spun the rifle back up and put three more bullets into it in quick succession. It finally stilled, and he immediately looted it, ignoring the chalky writing that was still scrawling across the corpse as he did so. 

Wesley also ignored the meat that had dropped, but he noticed the strange, slimy-looking leather and shoved it into his pack before moving on.

Two more giant frogs and one snake later, Wesley felt his boot hit stone as he scrambled madly through a bog. He kicked with his other boot, sending the black water flying, and saw, of all things, cobbles. He kicked a few more times and found a half-sunken road unless he was very much mistaken. 

With no better options, Wesley started to follow the roadway. Even half sunken into a bog, the road let him move a lot faster. Now that he was on it, Wes could see the break in the plants caused by the stones. There were a few places where plants or large mushrooms had broken through, but once you knew to look for it….

Wesley ran as fast as he could, rifle held in one hand, as his boots splashed through the stinking water, soaking his pants and everything else. He had good reason to run.

About an hour before, he felt a strange tug, almost like someone had pulled on his pack, and saw a dim glow far, far behind. Almost at once, the creeping weakness had returned. Wesley had thrown himself forward, feeling the weakness vanish, and had since been rushing with everything he had. Not that it had helped. If Wes slowed or stopped for even a second, the tug came again.

This road was his only hope. 

Holding his helmet on with one hand as he ran with every last bit of energy in his body, Wes made a decision. If this road led to some kind of monster, it could eat him. Just to deny the fucking Wisp its meal. 

Wesley cursed the wisp, the swamp, Gem, and the entire system as he ran on. Most of all, he cursed Todd. Because fuck Todd. Fuck all Todds in the universe. The thought made him laugh as he ran, desperate and exhausted, along the half-submerged road and into the gathering darkness.

/////////////////

“Flare!” Wes yelled as he cast his last flare spell high into the sky. Off to the left, he saw the telltale gap in the plants. He scrambled toward it, feeling the cobbles under his hands, got to his feet, and continued to run. A sudden turn in the darkness had sent him head-first into a body of water of some kind. Croaking noises suggested some of the Giant Frogs, but they luckily couldn’t see him in the dark. Nevertheless, he had felt a couple of sprays of water as their tongues were sent in the general direction of the noise.

At this point he was starting to regret not bringing some dry sticks with him. It just hadn’t occurred to him that he would need it. Twice now, he had stopped and tried to get something, anything in this fucking swamp to burn. Nothing would. Every inch of it was sodden and soaked with the horrid excuse for water.

The darkness was only broken by the occasional firefly or a bit of strangely glowing moss. Wesley Lancaster was not proud. He had tried to pull up the moss and use it, but its light died the moment it left the water-soaked ground.

Something slammed into his side, clawed arms scrabbling at him as they rolled down the road. A click right in his ear suggested teeth snapping closed less than an inch from his flesh. Wesley roared and stabbed with his bayonet, arm pumping like a piston as he stabbed blindly in the dark. It stilled, the form becoming heavy, and Wes looted it in the dark just to get the weight off him.

A tug at his back sent him scrabbling forward and up into a run again.

“Fuck off!” Wes screamed back a the Wisp as it followed relentlessly along behind him. “Just piss off! Piss off! Piss off, ya fucking glow worm prick!”

The Wisp didn’t seem to react, just keeping its slow approach as he swore and screamed. He then turned his back on it and sprinted off up the road.

A little after the sun had set, Wesley had lost track of exactly how long he had been running. In the darkness, there was no way to tell. One thing he was sure of was that he must not be running the right way. Wesley was sure he would have left the zone by now if he had.

“Flare!” Wes yelled the moment the cooldown was up. He finally saw something up ahead. 

The soft yellow flare light showed the road emerging from the water and rising to a set of steps leading to a vine-wrapped archway. The center of the archway didn’t show a swamp despite there being nothing around it. What it showed was a silver-like rippling liquid that reminded him of mercury. 

Wesley stumbled up the steps and reached for the surface, feeling his hand pass through it without any resistance at all. 

Wes felt the sudden and urgent tugging and tried to push forward, only to feel something holding him back. Turning to look over his shoulder, Wes screamed. The Wisp was right there, mere inches away, tendrils of light wrapping around his shoulders and legs. It was trying to pull him away from whatever it was.

Already, he felt the strength leaving him as sleep called to him. Wesley fought it with every bit of his will.

It made no difference at all. He grabbed the archway's frame and, with one giant yank, pulled himself halfway into whatever it was. A high-pitched keening came from the wisp, and Wesley felt like his head was being squeezed in a vice. 

“Fu–u-u–ck y-o-u,” Wesley said as he used the last vanishing seconds of wakefulness to force them both through the archway.

Sound, light, and even his sense of his own body were cut off as he passed through the silvery surface. It felt like a silver shroud, wrapping him from head to toe. In the resulting blackness, he saw the first chalky word appear.

Dungeon Discovered…

Minimum entry Tier - 2

Requirements to enter not met…

Essence required to upgrade to Tier 2 detected.

Upgrade to Tier 2?

Warning: Will consume creature: Will-o’-the-Wisp Tier 3

Upgrade? Y/N

“Yes!” Wesley yelled with joy. “Eat the bastard!”

Unable to completely consume Will-o’-the-Wisp due to immortal nature….

Take Wisp as your Totem Animal?

Warning: Refusal will result in expulsion of both of you from the Dungeon.

Wes had no idea what a ‘Totem Animal’ was, but he knew what it would mean to be expelled from the dungeon—it would eat him. Looked at that way; he didn’t have many choices.

Totem Animal Selected: Will-o’-the-Wisp.

Incorporating…

Unable to incorporate at current strength.

Upgrading subject to Tier 2…

Skill selection delayed….

Unable to incorporate at current strength…

Safety protocol bypassed…

proceeding.

Something like fire burned through his mind and body, one he could feel for only a second as the pain took him. Wesley screamed into the silver darkness until it passed.

Wisp incorporation beginning…

Wes grinned as he heard it screaming. The bastard was getting its turn now. A second later, he panicked when he saw the glowing orb flashing toward him through a tunnel of silver liquid. It slammed into his chest with a dying scream as a new power flooded through his system. The power built and built until it burned and scorched his whole body.

Shell unable to contain Totem…

Tempering…

All thoughts stopped. The universe was a pain beyond imagining. 

Tempering…

The pain came again, finding new levels beyond all reason. 

Tempering…

Wesley felt his mind snap like a twig and knew nothing more….