The Northern Noble is a Grinder (Volume 2: Chapter 5)

The Northern Noble is a Grinder (Volume 2: Chapter 5)

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Commissioned by Sivantic

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Interlude: Anisette, Demigod of Love

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“Hm, I guess you’re getting to the point where you won’t die immediately while fighting with the others.” Lord Trelawney gave a hum as his eyes trailed over me. Unlike lecherous gazes or even curiosity, his eyes measured me for my strength and power. Instead of revulsion, I only felt lacking as he took my measure. “A minute. Maybe two, if you weren’t focused down. You can do a decent job of picking off some elites until they wise up and gang up on you. Then you’ll be torn apart.”

I shivered at the truth of his words, while he ceased to evaluate me.

“If you had another ten weeks, maybe even just seven weeks, it’d be a different story. But you don’t.” I’d spoken with the others enough to know what they went through. I had hoped that I could accelerate my training as Alice did. She spoke of arriving later than the others but had the same measure of strength. “It’s mostly this place’s fault. Not many things to kill. We can’t make up for the lack of quality with quantity, because the empire keeps the monster population down.”

I shuddered and forced myself to get up onto the deck of the rowboat. My body was covered in water, and I had to use magic to warm myself and see my clothes dried. Once that was in place, I invigorated myself and felt my vision and mind grow clearer.

I found my gaze aimed towards the horizon.

Towards deeper, darker depths.

Lord Trelawney took note and spoke dryly.

“Yeah, no. You’ll die. Instantly. The deep ocean is untouched by mortals. It’s where true monsters lie. If I wanted to achieve divinity within a month, I’d go out there and tango with a couple dozen leviathans.” His words made a grimace cross my lips, especially as an inkling of caution came from my blessed mother. I knew better than to not heed the warnings of the divine and someone who was almost there. “All you can really do now is see if you can earn some miracles from your mother.”

I blinked in surprise at his words and turned his way.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You’re her kid, right? You should go to her temples and cathedrals and do some rites. That way she can have an excuse to give you some blessings. At least, you can get some decent equipment that won’t mess with your head, since you’re strong enough.” Lord Trelawney spoke, and he took note of the fact that I didn’t at all understand him. “Seriously? You guys don’t do that? That’s how my enemies get their elites geared up to fight me. Pilgrimage, sacrifices, and then they get blessings so that they can last a few seconds instead of getting obliterated instantly.”

He looked my way, but not at me.

“Is that the trade-off? You get to have a couple demigods running around, but you don’t get to give them more blessings and equipment?”

Lord Trelawney spoke to my mother through me, and I felt the urge to nod.

And so, I did.

“Guess that makes sense. Can’t have you having babies and putting weapons in their hands. They have free will too, I suppose. You can’t just have them do everything you want.” Lord Trelawney rifled through his pockets before throwing something my way. I caught it by the hilt. “Consider that a tithe for humoring my inquiry.”

It was a sheathed blade between a knife and a short sword. Opening it slightly revealed a crystalline sheen. Despite the darkness of the night, it caught the moon’s rays and scattered a prismatic array of lights all around us.

Mother’s presence faded while I held the blade.

“You can’t go into the deep ocean, but you can dive pretty far down and kill things that usually don’t bother with the surface.” As he spoke, the boat lurched downward into the water. He created a series of balls of light to surround us as we plunged into the depths. I watched as inky darkness surrounded us and waves turned into solid water. We were descending into the ocean surrounded by light. Swarms of monsters came close, but they left as soon as they realized we were heading too deep. A shudder went down my spine as I looked towards the depths. Flashes of light in many colors surged, and the outlines of vast beasts doing battle scorched themselves into my eyes. “Welcome to a land untouched by gods and mortals. Where beasts and monsters have fought and consumed each other since time began. A primordial battlefield that our ancestors fled from by going to land.”

Suddenly, the boat ceased diving, and I turned to Lord Trelawney.

A smile of excitement stretched across his face. His eagerness to do battle was all too clear, but he turned his gaze towards me.

“Here.” A cord of rope wrapped itself around my waist. I felt a multitude of protections layer themselves upon me. He muttered under his breath, actually using spells and charms rather than using skill alone with magic, and ended a long chant by gesturing towards me. I felt a barrier come upon me that I knew the depths could not touch. “The diving suit is ready. Time for you to kill something from the abyssal depths. Well, the continental shelf’s depths. Here you have a chance. Go and have fun.”

He opened his palm my way, and I blearily realized what he meant to do before I was suddenly thrust out of the bubble of air into the darkness of the ocean.

I flailed in the darkness, unsheathing the blade he gave me, and gave myself light in every direction.

Only to find a scarred face of a massive predator closer to a reptile than a fish surging towards me.

I barely evaded its teeth and watched as its long neck coiled around and tried to bite me. Its body was whale-like, but it had four sets of flippers twice the length of its body, and instead of a tail, it had massive tentacles that tried to grasp at me. It shifted swiftly in the waters, turning in nearly an instant as though it were ‘standing’ while surrounded by water. Then, it opened its maw, and a massive bubble was generated that was filled with light.

Instinctively, I lashed out at it with my blade, filling it with power, and the surrounding darkness became darker for an instant before a crescent blade of light cut through the bubble.

It imploded, the heat inside was released, and water was vaporized in a flash, and a shockwave carried thousands of bubbles in every direction while an immense portion of the surrounding sea increased in temperature.

Once the deluge of white bubbles faded, however, my foe remained.

It sacrificed a long flipper to quickly turn and dive, and now its gaze was upon me.

Filled with rage and hate.

Its slew of tentacles raised up, and numerous ends pointed my way, and I swam to evade them while immense pieces of bone suddenly shot out through the waves, nearly leaving tunneling paths through the water as they sped through.

This was a creature of the ocean’s depths, and I was struggling to face it.

But if I wished to help, if I wished to succeed, and if I wished to walk my own path, I had to face it and win.

Thus, I steeled my heart and threw myself at my foe.

If strength was not enough, I needed to be cunning.

The massive creature spun on its axis and drenched the surrounding water in its blood. While light could permeate through water, it could not through the inky blood that suffused it. The creature had roared earlier, but now it was silent, and I realized that it had decided to be cunning as well.

But not to kill me.

I grasped its emotions and intentions faintly thanks to traits I had had since I was born, and I realized that it was going to try and escape.

Not only that, but its blood would attract scavengers by the multitudes.

I could stand fast and hold out against the coming creatures, killing them, as their quality would be high enough for their quantity, but I decided against it.

Instead, I focused on controlling the shell around me and recalling Lord Terlawney’s lessons in travelling through water. It was about pushing oneself through the liquid, yes, but it was also about using the currents. Instinctively, I resisted them in order to stay still, but when I released my hold, I felt the inexorable pull of the tide within the waves. There were currents, eddies, hot spots, and cold spots. In every direction the ocean was alive and inexorable, shifting with the planet itself, and I took hold of the current that would drag me forward towards my foe.

Suddenly, I was seized by the current and sped through the darkness created by the blood cloud. Bursting through it, I found the beast going against a current in order to dive more deeply. The wound it had was closed. The former appendage’s tip was burned closed. It decided that it was too much risk to keep an open wound as it descended.

That was its mistake.

It should have tried to attack me instead.

Now, with a current dragging me onward, I landed on its back and plunged Lord Trelawney’s blade into it.

Then, I poured power into my blade, and light bloomed in every direction.

The creature seized and surged out of the current and into another. Speed picked up around me. Even with the slim profile I presented. The speed it gathered and the current almost threw me off its back. A constant tidal wave was washing over me, flattening me against the creature’s hide, and I felt my bones creak and my muscles roar as my magic was consumed just to stay alive.

But I held on and kept channeling my power into the blade. Its hide was thick, its flesh was strong, and its bones were tougher than I could imagine. So, I evaded them. I narrowed the light composed by the blade into a threading needle. I made it small and lethal, as Lord Trelawney did with his manipulation of elements, and searched for gaps in the armor. I sank the weaponized light deeper into the creature while it tried to crush me through speed and pressure.

It was a race.

I did not have its reserves, so in a match of endurance it would kill me.

So, I had to kill it more quickly than it could kill me.

I was pushing my weapon through the creature as fast as I could, so now it was a matter of finding its heart as swiftly as possible.

Closing my eyes, I recalled the creature. I landed on the upper right quadrant of its back. I already went past what was construed as the back of its ribcage. Right now, I was passing through soft and smooth tissue that could be analogous to its lungs. Heading left, I pierced past it and found another lobe of smooth tissue, but different. It felt like a thin sheath rather than the organ I exited.

Out of desperation, I pushed into it and encountered tough muscle surrounding multiple chambers and realized that the creature’s heart was truly immense.

It would need to be in order to push against the immense size of the creature, as well as the pressure that constantly surrounded it.

So, I took my chance.

I trailed through the massive heart, gouging it repeatedly from within and without, cutting through ventricle, chamber, and artery again. My protection against pressure and the sea began to wane, but the creature’s pain was clear. It was filled with the desire to live, to oust me from its back, and to kill me. Its speed doubled as it strained increasingly, using its reserves to speed up, even though it feared not having enough to reach its abode.

But it wanted the small, powerful creature on its back dead before it killed it.

Still, I held on.

Still, I skewered and tore apart its heart.

Still, I wallowed in its desperation and terror.

Then, suddenly, the creature’s strength abruptly cut in half, then it became a quarter, and finally the ferocious pressure and speed crushing me against its back faded. Rage filled me, along with desperation against the end. Memories of battles against other more terrifying beasts came to the forefront of my mind. Lairs taken and abandoned. Heeding the call of powerful beasts, going to battle for territory, and searching for morsels to consume as part of a greater horde. There was so much left to do. Depths yet to be reached.

It was all undone because of a source of light and power from above that had sunk down.

Then, it faded away completely.

It began to sink.

To sink towards depths that I could not survive.

But, then, the sinking stopped, and I felt the creature and myself being dragged upward into the surface.

I closed my eyes as the last of my strength began to fade, but not before I reached for the creature’s core and began to consume it.

After that grievous struggle, I would accept its hate, its terror, and its pain and make it a part of me. The faintest embers of its consciousness remained, and I conveyed my own thanks to it. I told it that I would not waste its strength. That I would grow stronger. That I would use it for my own freedom and perhaps even reach greater heights. Heights so great that I would be able to stand amongst the greatest of the depths as a worthy challenger.

The embers asked me to show it the strength of those who I considered the strongest.

I thought of my mother, immortal, and constrained to the heavens because she could not walk amongst mortals and invalidate their existence.

Then, I thought of Lord Trelawney, my teacher who was beyond me and who could have slain it with thought.

It barely considered my mother's, but Lord Trelawney gave it pause before it acknowledged reaching his strength as a worthy cause.

Then, all resistance to my advances to its power came apart, and I felt its strength added onto mine.

The rush was intense and almost knocked away my consciousness, but still I tried to hold onto the embers of the person who I had slain.

Instead, I was refuted and told to uphold my promise and make use of all its strength while it returned to the abyss.