It was casino time again but Aejaz didn''t remember falling asleep... He could have sworn he was awake, and talking to Ares not even a moment ago, so how he ended up here was anyone''s guess... Although he did have a strange thumping sensation rattling his head with every step he took so that must have had something to do with it. What was Ares saying before all of this again? Something about the next encounter in Aejaz'' dreams being real and not just a prank? Aejaz seriously hoped not! He just wanted to relax here and spend all his days lounging as the stardust rolled in... Aejaz took a gander at all the slot machines and nothing seemed amiss on that front. No weird monsters crawling out of them or anything. There were no bombs hidden in the roulette machines and there weren''t any Sharp proficient card-wielding assassins looking to murder him in cold blood. But still, things had been fine last time he was here too and yet the situation deteriorated quite rapidly the second he left this space and tried going anywhere else. In that case, all Aejaz had to do was stay here forever and hopefully that would work! He was like a kid pretending the world disappeared if he just closed his eyes... What he couldn''t see couldn''t hurt him but, unfortunately for him, that was not how any of this worked. What was about to happen to him was not a dream and he would be woken up from this place soon no matter where he tried to hide. In fact, signs of the inevitable were already starting to seep in but Aejaz had yet to notice the small puddles of water gradually building up in the corners of this large room. A few of the customers had already stepped in them and complained to the staff but Aejaz either hadn''t heard them moaning or was passively ignoring it because complaints were a little detail he''d long since added into his dreams. People wanting refunds on their drinks, whiny losers who''d lost everything, etc...
...
But the complaints weren''t stopping in a timely manner. Aejaz usually had guards deal with anyone who kept incessantly complaining about small and irrelevant ''problems'' as those people were typically looking to try and fleece Aejaz out of his goods... But the guards weren''t throwing anyone out. Aejaz decided to look into the issue himself and he soon found out that it was far more damning a problem than he''d initially given it credit for. The complaints were very much justified because entire sections of the casino now had a thin layer of water covering them, making it impossible to walk around without getting your shoes, socks, and the bottom of your ankle wet. The people here paid good money for their clothes so they wanted an explanation and rightly so! Plus it was disrupting business so Aejaz really had to do something about all of this. Normally he would use the power of dreams to gift himself some kind of treasure or magic to fix everything right up but, no matter how much he kept wishing for a giant sponge to materialise and absorb all the water, nothing was appearing and everyone was only getting progressively madder with the unchecked flow of water. Some customers were already leaving and that included those who were too fed up to keep arguing or those who were concerned that the intake of water in this place wasn''t stopping any time soon. Aejaz was at a loss! This was a casino, not an aquarium! He would never have built this place anywhere near water either, as busy towns and cities were where all the real money lay, so this entire situation was spiralling out of control in a weird way...
The water was still rising and it was getting a little ridiculous now as it was creeping up to above everyone''s knees. Unsurprisingly, everyone was running for the hills, even the security, because the problem was going to evidently keep escalating until it reached a point of no return. It was painfully obvious this building was going under and nobody wanted to be trapped inside it and submerged when that finally came to pass. Aejaz watched everyone disappear and, with a belaboured sigh, started leaving as well. This place was just a figment of his imagination and could come back again as many times as Aejaz wanted it to so no amount of destruction would ever put it out of commission for good. Had this been real then Aejaz would have definitely stuck around a little longer to figure out what was going on with his beloved paradise. Revenge would also definitely be in the cards as, even though this whole mess was fake, he still felt annoyed seeing the result of his ''hard work'' go up in smoke like this.
Aejaz shook his head and opened the front door, taking a step outside, but something unusual had just happened. He saw the unfinished surroundings he''d yet to imagine properly but, the second he blinked, he was transported back inside the damn casino! This was it wasn''t it? This was the problem that Ares had mentioned? The casino would fill up to the brim, Aejaz would wake up in some disastrous situation not dissimilar to his current predicament, and then he would either figure out a solution in time or die?! Why couldn''t Ares just ever be upfront with Aejaz and teach him things without doing it in convoluted and mysterious ways like this. Was the health hazard and imminent threat of death 100% necessary? Sure it could be argued that experiences like this forged a cultivator but Aejaz didn''t wanna be forged! He wanted to be coddled! He didn''t care if he had the consistency of a marshmallow by the end of it, this crap was annoying! If it wasn''t for what happened back in the snatcher town, Aejaz would have seriously picked a fight with his ruthless brother by now!
...
Then again, if it wasn''t for all the training since then it''s not like Aejaz would be able to put up a fight against Ares for even a split second. With no dagger mastery, no creative uses of thievery magic, and no will to spar, Ares would wipe the floor with him so Aejaz couldn''t deny it had all been effective. Yes he was still cowardly as ever, and reluctant to take part in these tiring games Ares kept making him play, but he was also now confident in his own ability to make it out of these sort of situations as he had the skillset to do it. Plus there was the bravery buried deep beneath the cowardice, and the bloodlust that his assassin training was developing, so he wasn''t helpless, he was just lazy and not in the mood to have his life thrown about so haphazardly by Ares all the damn time! That guy seriously treated Aejaz'' wellbeing like a softball and chucked it with all his might whenever he got bored, only to then demand Aejaz go fetch it and bring it back to him so he could do it all over again! Was this what Stockholm syndrome was like?
Right now, Aejaz was wondering how the situation was going to develop going forward. If it was the kind of case wherein what was happening reflected what was going to happen back in reality then he was going to end up underwater? How? If he was in bed, inside a safe room, atop a boat, ending up underwater felt like it should surely be impossible? The water was already up to Aejaz'' neck now but he couldn''t figure out for the life of him what was about to go down because there were no other context clues present. All he knew was that this place was flooding and he couldn''t leave even if he wanted to and would just be thrown back into this room. He''d tried leaving through the front door again and even launched himself into the fire exits and out the windows but nothing worked as one singular blink later and he was right back where he started.
It took roughly another twenty seconds before Aejaz was forced to duck his head underwater as the building was now completely submerged and the roof of the room was equally as drenched as the floor. Aejaz floated around inside the water without being too immediately distressed as cultivators could last a considerable amount of time while underwater. At Aejaz'' current cultivation he was good to stay here for a couple of minutes at least. Of course various factors affected this, like sustaining attacks or foolishly opening his mouth for whatever reason, but typically it was easy to get some air back in a person''s lungs before it became an issue. You would really have to be tied down underwater to drown as a cultivator but drowning could still occur and was quite terrifying due to how long and inevitable the process would feel in the moment.
Whoosh
Aejaz spun around in the water and craned his neck to try and peer over at the corner where he just saw a shadow zoom past. Something was lurking nearby and it was clearly a creature familiar with this sort of watery terrain as its movement was completely unimpeded. Whatever was going to assail him here was going to have an inherent advantage over Aejaz which just made him all the more worried that things might truly go wrong here. If Ares was undergoing something similar, and thus he was too busy to save Aejaz'' hide, then maybe he could actually die here? He imagined a lot would have to go wrong, as Ares didn''t seem too fussed earlier, but it wasn''t impossible and that result couldn''t be ruled out entirely... Ah but now the panic was starting to set in a little because that nagging thought was harassing him constantly in the back of his head. If Aejaz knew heaven and hell existed, and that Ares might be able to find a way to bring him back while he chilled in the afterlife, maybe he wouldn''t be as overly fearful as he was now but that wasn''t the case and so his heart rate was spiking. Every time he caught wind of the circling shadow, creeping gradually closer while observing him like a vulture waiting to feast upon his bones, Aejaz became more uncomfortable in his own skin. He wished he knew how to swim better as maybe he could then outmanoeuvre this thing but he had no such tools available to him and had to just meander out in the open, subjecting himself to being the prey in this environment. Worse still, he felt sluggish. Not just as a result of the water slowing him down, though that absolutely played a large part in this, but because it seemed like this dream was about to come to a gruesome end and thrust him back into reality where an even greater danger awaited him. He would not be permitted to defend himself from what was coming and remain here in the land of his subconscious; reality awaited and this shadowy monster was going to send him right back there any time now.
WHOOSH
Aejaz shuddered and swung his heavy arm sluggishly behind him, hitting nothing despite the monster having literally just nudged him in the back. It was toying with him before it went in for the kill and was displaying its superiority over him like a puppet master pulling his strings. This was a smart and evil creature at its core, that much was made apparent when Aejaz heard the distorted tinkling of a warped ''laugh''. It was like a high pitched cry with small shrieks dotted in it and that made it abundantly clear Aejaz was being mocked for being an easy victim by some kind of wretched abomination. He couldn''t put up a resistance under the current conditions so the monster kept ramming into him and knocking him about through the casino, not once giving Aejaz a chance to even catch a mere glimpse of the thing provoking him as he slowly wound up bruised and battered. It was getting harder and harder to hold his breath while his lungs were receiving blow after blow but it looked like things here, in this dream land casino, were about to come to an end as the monster was done circling.
The monster had just hidden behind a slot machine directly in front of Aejaz and shrieked again like it was playing hide and seek and giving the dull hunter a hint to make things go by faster. Aejaz guessed that the next time he saw it, the thing would charge him down and deal a lethal blow, forcing him to wake up from this dream and thrusting him headfirst into a very real nightmare that was infinitely worse than even this. He could feel his body getting colder and colder but he wasn''t entirely sure that was a part of the dream and nothing more. Something was happening to his body in real life and it was unnerving, numbing, and made him feel claustrophobic. He almost wished the monster could just wake him up already as something was pressing down on his real body and he wanted desperately to address it. At this point, Aejaz was more scared of dying while still in this dream than he was of the monster haunting it but it also seemed to understand that and was playing with this new type of fear by letting out another demeaning shriek of laughter instead of immediately waking him up. ''Fear of the unknown'', that was what this monster was tugging at and drilling into Aejaz because he knew nothing about anything. He didn''t know where he was, what was being done to him, or what by. Still, this dream couldn''t last forever and it was time for the monster to make its move and reveal its true form to Aejaz.
This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Aejaz braced himself as a crescent shaped, dark blue and mauled animal weaved its way through the water towards him... A dolphin? A dolphin with one glowing eye, a heavily scarred, burnt, and mangled face, and half its body chewed off and missing. This was an undead dolphin that had died and been infused with necromancy mana to be revived into this ugly creature. It still wore the same smile it did before death but part of its jaw was leaking, hanging by threads as its flesh was torn and ripped off in multiple locations. Its teeth were rotten and jagged, crooked and misaligned based on what Aejaz could see peeking through the remnants of the dolphin''s jaw. This thing had been bitten into and had its corpse feasted upon by other animals and monsters before coming back to ''life'' incomplete and not entirely whole. It let out another shriek as it closed in on Aejaz before curling around his body and opening its jaw wide to chomp down on Aejaz'' throat. Aejaz shut his eyes to avoid watching himself die but something strange happened, he didn''t suffer any kind of injury whatsoever... Part of the dolphin''s teeth were missing near the back and his neck fit snugly into the gap between the rows of teeth. he was being clamped down upon and his head was stuck but he was technically safe, just immobile and locked in place. The twisted dragged him through the casino, taking him on a wild ride around the room at speeds he himself couldn''t match even if he were free. To end this dream, the dolphin barged through the front door one more time as a wave of dark water washed over Aejaz, ramming him in the face and forcing him to blink and regain consciousness.
Aejaz'' situation wasn''t drastically different now than it was before he woke up. He was still held within the monster''s teeth and had a close up view of its disfigured and hideous face as it''s smiling face and neon eye beamed down at him from above. He was still underwater too but, this time, it was serious. This wasn''t a dream and he wasn''t in his casino, he was directly underneath the Federation and he was drowning. The dolphin was dragging him down to the depths of the ocean and the pressure was rapidly increasing, putting a strain on Aejaz'' flimsy body that was failing to muster any strength. The dolphin''s body, curled around him and sinking with him, was constricting around various nerves making it hard to escape using raw physical strength. Plus the water was obviously inhibiting his movements to... How on earth did he end up here? If he''d truly been asleep in his bed then how on earth did this monster snatch him from the Federation? Did it jump up onto the boat from the sides and slink around on the Federation before dragging him to the nearest bridge and jumping off? That sounded utterly preposterous and Aejaz didn''t believe it for a second. Still, now wasn''t the time to be concerned with the how or why, he needed to escape and pronto because sinking too deep would make escape impossible. Beyond a certain depth his arts wouldn''t even really be effective anymore, as the sheer pressure would block most mana from flowing freely, so he needed to act quick and save himself from the jaws of this monster. "Relo... Bleugh."
Shit! Aejaz was so out of it that he completely forgot he was underwater right now and couldn''t chant.... What despicable creatures... They stole you away in the dead of night and drowned you without giving you the ability to fight back. Aejaz almost respected these damn things as a fellow assassin. This was devious in the most insidious way... But what was he supposed to do here exactly? Honestly, even if he managed to cast Relocate, and swap his position with the dolphin to free himself, he wouldn''t be able to resurface before it coiled around him again, making all his efforts pointless. Relocate was clearly not the answer Ares was expecting of him but Aejaz was already running out of ideas. He kept going over every single art he knew but all of it seemed to only benefit him temporarily and not outright solve the issue. Of course, none of this then changed the fact that he couldn''t chant underwater to begin with so whatever magical solution he came up with wouldn''t benefit him at all! Even if he could maybe use invisibility to escape the dolphin, he couldn''t free himself right now... He was getting drowsy and his head was starting to hurt again but, this time, it wasn''t because he''d been whacked by Ares but because his skull was starting to draw ever closer to cracking. He could feel himself dying and getting weaker with every passing moment so he tapped into his survival instincts and thought through everything once more... He possessed the solution, Ares assured him of it, so he couldn''t die here!
...
Wait... Fuck, it was that obvious?!... But what do I do after?! Silent casting! Normally, it was a tool to sneakily cast arts without the victim being aware but it also technically meant you didn''t have to open your mouth or speak to chant. Aejaz could chant his arts in his head! But that only solved one issue, what was he supposed to do after? Relocate and go invisible? Would that really work though? The dolphin could probably detect shifts in the water nearby and track him down that way even if it couldn''t see him... Aejaz was thinking a little clearer now despite the pain wracking him so he didn''t make the mistake of relying on his invisibility... But he still didn''t know the answer to this problem and time was running out. He had, at most, another ten seconds to work this out before he would need external aid to prevent his death at the hands of this creature.
Bloodlines were out, that was clearly not it. The silent casting was definitely a part of the solution, however, as this seemed like the kind of lesson Ares wanted Aejaz to learn... So what else?... Wait, wasn''t his line of thinking earlier, about all the irrelevant stuff, maybe actually relevant? This dolphin possessed a skillset like any other living creature. It was strong, sure, but if that was its only power then the question of how it snuck onto the Federation still remained to be answered in a coherent way. There was something that enabled it to perform this sneak attack and Aejaz knew that such a method existed... So why not just steal its pillar affiliation and find out the hard way? Aejaz didn''t always have to know what his target was capable of before stealing their affiliation and copying it, sometimes it was best to steal it and find out on the fly so he knew what he was working with and against! Up until now, he''d been quite conservative in his usage of the affiliation stealing art, mostly targeting Ares for reasons that were self-explanatory, but this was a use for it that honestly hadn''t even crossed his mind. He could use the Stalkers, track a person, test out their own magic to know what measures they had up their sleeve, and then go in for the kill when he was certain they couldn''t fight back or escape! It was time to find out what this damn fish had that enabled this chicanery! Appropriate Skillset!
Aejaz felt himself unlock a new affiliation he''d never tried before and, yet, it was familiar. It was quite similar to the nothingness aspect but also diametrically opposed in every way... The spatial aspect?!... It took Aejaz a second but then it all clicked and suddenly this creature''s existence was laid bare before him. These dolphins would phase through the floor of the Federation and drag their victims back down through the floor with them! They would ambush people from directly underneath the Federation! Bastards! Wasn''t this extremely dangerous? If they hunted in packs, it wouldn''t be impossible to wake up one day and a tenth of the Federation''s population could have just randomly disappeared with no one being any wiser about what went down during the previous night. These things could come and go like ghosts, freely phasing around though the Federation and bringing slumbering victims straight to their demise...
The monsters in this world were not to be trifled with as even a relatively weak and even dead creature like this had the tools to do in an expert if they weren''t hyper aware of their surroundings at all times, even in their sleep. Had Ares not warned Aejaz of this, he would have maybe still been panicking and in need of saving... What Ares had said earlier, about even those with the skillset needed to escape dying to these things, was making so much sense right now that Aejaz almost felt guilty for complaining earlier. This was truly a valuable lesson and he needed to learn it in a relatively safe environment like this first before he was flung into the deep end later on in life where there were no second chances. Now that Aejaz was looking around, he could see others in the same position as him but everyone was being rescued one by one. Ares knew this would happen so he must have informed the Federation so they were well prepared to conduct rescues in a timely manner... Aejaz'' life was never in danger here but it was still a good teaching moment that Ares had found... Though Aejaz still wished it didn''t have to be this unpleasant! Well, whatever, it was time to free himself from this fish and head back up to the Federation where he could wrangle more information out of his moron brother. The solution was simple now, use his silent casting to steal the dolphins'' affiliation, which was step one and he''d already done it, and then phase through the dolphin so that it can''t touch him no matter how many times it tries to curl around him again. Aejaz could even fight back once he was free if he wanted to but, really, he just wanted to get back above the water as it was getting really disorienting right now. The pressure down here was hitting him hard so he just wanted to ascend and leave the dolphin behind. it was already dead anyway so killing it once more would actually take considerable effort Aejaz couldn''t be bothered to spare right now.
Aejaz used the phasing magic and passed right through the dolphin''s putrid body, confusing it but not quite diminishing the smile on its crooked face. It seemed to be having fun with its new playmate and the fact that he could use the same magic as it seemed to make the monstrous fella quite happy, actually. He tried to give Aejaz another hug but slipped right through his body and the dolphin realised he wasn''t going to get to keep messing around with nis new friend anymore. This made it a little sad but it understood that things were done here and so it actually gave up on Aejaz and instead headed back up towards the Federation to try and search for a new pal in his stead... As Aejaz watched it go, he couldn''t help but feel that maybe his original assessment of these creatures was off slightly, they didn''t seem altogether too evil or anything when he was watching them from the side-lines like this... And yet they were still undoubtedly killing thousands of people per year... Now he was honestly curious about them so he swam back up the Federation in search of both air and Ares as he wanted answers! What were these things, exactly, and what on earth where they trying to accomplish? Aejaz'' head breached the surface of the water and he took in a large amount of air with a loud gasp. As he did so, he felt his hair being tugged and his body being lifted like he was some kind of planted vegetable being plucked out of the ground. Sure enough, there was Ares at the ready to help him up and out of his predicament regardless of whether he failed or succeeded. Aejaz thought he did pretty ok given how sudden everything was but Ares seemed relatively indifferent.
"Took your sweet time. You may have accomplished the task but only because I warned you in advance. You would have been buried at the bottom of the ocean by now if you took this trip by yourself and I wasn''t here, Allie would wake up tomorrow alone searching for you and never find you ever again, never forget that. I''m not saying it for you to be thankful to me, I''m saying it so you can be fearful of everything else around you. Your cowardice regarding just about everything isn''t necessarily misplaced, just highly exaggerated. This world will kill you before you can even blink but it''s about having composure to save yourself from whatever the world throws at you, whenever it throws it at you. As long as you can keep calm in the face of death then it won''t be so daunting. Anyway, I''m guessing you want to know more about the twisted?"
Though bells were being rung and everybody above the Federation were turning night lights on and scurrying about to complete their own tasks and save everybody at risk, Ares seemed to be utterly unbothered by the noise as if the surrounding chaos didn''t involve him. That just summed up Ares as a whole though, stuff like this was beneath him and his pillar and these undead were really just a bunch of rowdy dolphins to him. His pressure alone was enough to fend off the dolphins with a wave of his hand so naturally he wasn''t afraid of them in the slightest. Aejaz could do nothing but sigh in jealousy and listen to his brothers explanation mid war zone. Weird though this situation was, at least he was finally going to get answers...