The irradiated downpour was relentless, but so too were the more aggressive enemies that began to rise out from the sea in the rain. Acid Eels launched themselves from the water, trying to clamp onto Sid's face, while strange-looking toads sat around doing nothing except explode into goo whenever someone got too close. Flying mites named Sulphurous Skaters swarmed above the sea. Sid summoned his own swarm of Ice Claspers and some Daedalus Golems to keep them away. He saw Meg firing her Icicle Trident at some Irradiated Slimes, the shards of ice carving their way through the enemies. Red Beard the Pirate was standing on the wooden platform bridge, firing cannonballs and his minigun at a swarm of Orthoceras that kept launching themselves from the water only to end up flopping onto the bridge. One of the Orthoceras burst apart and dropped its shell.
Sid landed there and picked it up. Another summon weapon! Instantly using it, he saw it spawned in a floating Orthocera that kept itself in mid-air using a pair of leathery purple wings, and it began to spit glowing green acid at nearby enemies. It was a sentry weapon like the Staff of the Frost Hydra he had once used back in Firstworld. This would be a welcome addition to his growing army.
He watched as the rest of his summons kept on attacking the enemies, but Sid himself was attacked and knocked off the bridge by a school of flying fish. He fell in the water, but wasn't too worried – the Effigy of Decay he had placed earlier was still active and keeping the water non-toxic. A few enemies began to swarm him – Skyfins and Trilobites and Acid Eels, but his Ice Claspers were already on the scene, their frozen jaws tearing the creatures to pieces. A Flak Crab leapt at him, which Sid had mistook for a brown spike-shaped rock, but it was knocked away and torn to pieces before it could even reach him. It dropped some Corroded Fossils and a weapon named the Flak Toxicannon, which rushed into Sid's inventory.
That was when he spotted another enemy disguising itself as an underwater rock formation. But much bigger – about the size of the Hive Mind. It was constructed from hard brown scales with jaws and spikes ringing its top. A massive mouth embedded in the ocean floor, named the Cragmaw Mire. But as soon as he laid his eyes on it, the creature seemed to disappear, burrowing into the sulphuric sand.
Yeah, you'd better run!
That was when he was slammed down from above.
The Mire had crashed down on him like a Thwomp, a gaseous mushroom cloud erupting from it. An array of green shots was also launched upwards, curving through the water and down towards Sid. He thrust out his grappling hook, dodging the shots, and began to flap his wings so he could rise out from the water, dodging Trilobites and Leeches on the way up.
"Meg!" Sid shouted. "There's something quite strong down there!"
"And you're running screaming to me to help?"
"I don't need help, I just thought you'd be interested!"
That was when a massive green laser pierced upwards from the ocean's surface, seeming to come from where the Mire was. It lingered for a couple of seconds, shining with its radioactive radiance, before dissipating.
"Sure you don't," Meg said.
She and Sid dived down into the water, Meg firing at the Cragmaw Mire with her Icicle Tridents while Sid summoned some Daedalus Golems to shoot at it. The Mire kept on burrowing and thwomp-ing a few more times, and fired its green laser directly upwards again, but it was quickly destroyed. Sid picked up its drops and flew up to the surface, landing on the platform bridge next to the Pirate.
"A Nuclear Rod," Sid read out on one of the items, "+1 max minions and minions release an irradiated aura on enemy hits... awesome!" He equipped the accessory. "And a Spent Fuel Container. 50 Rogue Damage. War never changes. Throws a fuel container with trace amounts of plutonium that causes a nuclear exp–"
"Sounds powerful. I'll take that."
Sid spun around just in time to come face-to-face with someone wearing what looked like a purplish-grey spacesuit, orange lights trimmed across the armour and the faceplate being an opaque gradient that ran from oranges to aquas.
Before he could react the suited person had thrown several knives in his chest, sparking with a yellow intensity, causing him to stumble backwards and lose his grip on the Spent Fuel Container.
The rogue!
She scooped up the weapon in her hands and lobbed one at the Pirate.
An irradiated explosion.
The Pirate getting knocked off the bridge.
Sid scrambled to his feet and cast forth some Daedalus Golems to stand in front of him and shoot at the rogue, but she was already disappearing into invisibility.
Sid grit his teeth and leapt into the water.
To his horror he realised the Pirate had been standing directly over the gaping maw of the Abyss. There was no sign of him around the edges, so there was only one place he could have fallen.
He acted quickly, thrusting out his grappling hook down to the ocean floor to pull him straight to the entrance of the Abyss. On reaching it he let go of his hook and dropped into the shaft, but the speed that he was sinking was still too slow. He'd never catch up in time.
I can't let another citizen die out here! he thought to himself. Especially not one he had known for so long.
That was when he remembered the Iron Boots he had found down in the Abyss. On equipping them, he felt himself plunging much faster, his ears beginning to pop from the increasing pressure. He held out a glowstick and tossed it downward.
He caught a flicker of a dark shape directly below him, silhouetted by the glowstick's green light. There he is!
On dropping he saw it wasn't the Pirate. It was a Moray Eel, dark green with a single red fin running across the length of its back. He quickly summoned a Daedalus Golem to knock it away, and threw another glowstick down.
There! This time he was sure that was the Pirate. He sunk down to Red Beard's level, taking off his Iron Boots so he'd stop sinking so fast, and grabbed hold of his arm.
Now there was the problem of how they were going to get out. Recall potions and magic mirrors didn't work for citizens. And already Sid could see the Pirate was struggling to breathe, his health dropping slowly. Thankfully they hadn't sunk deep enough into the Abyss for the water pressure to get too extreme.
But without a way up the Pirate was still doomed.
***
Renee smiled to herself, comfortably hidden by her stealth. She had managed to knock that Pirate into the Abyss, and like a fool who didn't understand the meaning of a lost cause, the summoner had gone straight down after him.
That left just the mage alone, who was deftly pointing around with her icy trident, a brown spell tome with a picture of a slithering eel on its cover in her other hand.
"It's just you and me!" the mage shouted. "Come out of your cowardly stealth like a true warrior and face me!"
That will be your undoing, Renee thought to herself. She held one of her weapons in her hand – razor-sharp spiky-balls named the Nychthemeron. She hurled them, her stealth strike allowing her to throw ten of the projectiles at once.
The mage's reflexes were quick, as was expected, but no matter. Renee hadn't been aiming at the mage. Her Nychthemerons struck into a target dummy she had sneakily placed underwater just beneath the platform she was standing on, and the weapon's special ability caused an entire solar system's worth of black and white orbs to start orbiting her. On recalling the Nychthemerons, every single one of the orbs then shot towards the mage, slamming into her for massive damage.
The mage fell to the bridge on her side, weak from the low health she had been left on.
Renee slipped a Stormfront Razor – an electric knife – into her palm, ready to finish her off.
"The Tyrant has trained you well, clearly," Renee said. "He will pay. For the death of my master." She hefted back a knife, ready to strike. "And for the death of the God of Slimes."
The mage just shot to her feet and cast forth a green-and-purple eel from her spell tome.
Renee's first knife sliced through the eel straight down the middle, but more eels were fired. She took to the skies, demon wings spreading, throwing a Spent Fuel Container down for a radioactive explosion at the mage's feet. But the mage dodged that too, switching to her icy trident and firing waves of icicles at her.
The two of them continued to fly and fight, Renee throwing knives and bombs while the mage fired magic back, but both were moving so fast that neither of their attacks could hit. Renee's strengths lay in her stealth, but she knew the weakness of a mage always came out in a sustained battle. Soon, any mage would run out of mana, and be unable to attack for a short time. Renee would use that opportunity to get in close and finish her.
There was just one problem. This mage was keeping her attacks going for a considerably long time, longer than any other mage Renee had had to fight. Some mages kept their mana up with Mana Potions, but Renee hadn't seen a single sign of this mage drinking one.
How is she still attacking for so long?
She was getting so frustrated she didn't notice the three eels that had been fired away from her were arcing through the sky and coming at her from three different directions. She dodged one but the other two raked across her Titan Heart Armour.
"Aagh!" she cried out, but that was when the mage followed up with an attack of a calibre Renee had not been expecting.
She didn't even see what it was, only feeling the blast as she was launched high into the sky, cleanly away from the Sulphurous Sea and into the adjacent forest. She slammed straight through a tree, snapping its trunk in two, and then crashed against the base of a small rocky hill.
There, she groaned, unable to move, her armour's stealth just coating her in its veil once again.
She had underestimated the power of that mage.
***
Sid surfaced, the Pirate gasping for breath next to him.
"Ahoyyy..." he shouted, albeit weakly. "Ye saved me from Davy Jones' Locker, aye!"
Sid grappled up to the wooden bridge, bringing the Pirate away from the water.
"We were lucky," he said. "My summons killed that Moray Eel, and it dropped a pair of Flippers. Just the item I needed to swim us both out of there. Now, where's Meg..."
He spotted her with her back to him. Her health was a bit low, and she too looked to be breathing hard and on edge. The rogue must've put up quite a fight.
"You okay?" he asked, approaching her.
Meg turned around and slowly nodded. "It was close, but I blasted the rogue away."
Sid nodded. "Sorry I left you alone to fight her... I know you always get mad at me for –"
"It's okay," Meg said, giving him a smile. "I learnt something about her, you know."
"What's that?"
"She thinks we're on Yharim's side."
It took Sid a few moments to process that statement before he laughed.
"Wait, so she thinks Yharim sent us here? Is that why she keeps attacking us?"
"I can't think of any other reason," Meg said.
Sid put an armoured finger to his chin. "You know, there's a saying. The enemy of your enemy is your friend. We shouldn't be fighting her. We should be working together so we can take that cactus Lord down!"
"I don't know if she will see it that way though."
Sid gazed off at the ocean, now once again bright with its turquoise seas now that the acid rain had subsided.
The mystery of the rogue deepens... as does the mystery of the vote button.