Vigil's Valor: 31 – Kraken Killjoy

I dismissed my shotgun and swapped it out for my axe. None of my weapon forms would work while stuck under the water with a tentacle wrapped around my gut and a hungry kraken beak clamped over my thigh, but the axe still had a sharp blade and a wicked spike to work with. I flipped the weapon over and drove the spike on the back directly down into the rubbery appendage, then ripped with my enhanced strength. A jet of inky black blood erupted into the water like a geyser and the tentacle unwrapped and retreated like a hand that had just touched a hot burner.

Creeping veins of black spread quickly outward from the sight of the wound.

[Lake Kraken afflicted with Hellflayer Rot – x1]

Despite the wound and the Hellflayer Rot, the Kraken’s beak, tenacious and blood thirsty as ever, didn’t let up on my thigh for a second. Instead, the creature barrel-rolled, dragging me along for the ride. The world spun, flashing by in a carousel of brilliant blue sky above and fathomless dark depths below. My lungs felt like they were on the verge of exploding and black creeped in along the edges of my vision. I needed to get to the surface.

Finally, the death roll stopped.

My head was still spinning as another fleshy tentacle reached for me.

I took a swipe at the Kraken’s bulbous noggin, but its pebbly hide turned my axe blade with ease. I just couldn’t generate enough force under the water to cleave through its skin. But there was one point of vulnerability I could exploit.

I dismissed my axe, unwrapped the rope from around my arm and clutched the meat hook with my right hand. The original plan had been to try and get the Kraken to swallow the hook and reel it in that way, but since it wouldn’t let go of my leg, I needed to come up with a new plan. I pulled my arm back and drove it forward like a piston, triggering Rend as my gauntleted fist connected with the glassy surface of the monster’s single black eye. Unlike the rest of the creature’s body, piercing its eye was like punching into a wet sponge. There was an audible pop and more inky blood jettisoned out in a cloud.

[Lake Kraken afflicted with Hellflayer Rot – x2]

This time the beak released my leg as the creature squealed and thrashed in pain.

I desperately needed to get to the surface for air, but this was my one shot to hook the Kraken and I knew I wasn’t going to get another. I forced my hand deeper into its gelatinous eye until I felt a ridged chunk of bone or maybe cartilage. I wasn’t sure which, and it didn’t really matter. The important thing was that it felt solid. I triggered Rend again and drove the barbed tip of the hook into the bony structure, then yanked my hand free.

The creature reflexively pulled away, trying to retreat back into the depths below, but the hook held.

My stone spider armor was too heavy for me to swim in, so I activated Armor Evocation again and switched into my much lighter Grass Hound leathers. Though lighter than full plate mail, the leather armor—complete with boots, puldrons, and pouches loaded down with coins and scales—was still heavy as hell. I used my fleeting Stamina Reserves to trigger Peerless Warrior, which temporarily increased my Brawn and movement speed by ten percent. With a surge of new power rushing through me, I kicked frantically, pulling my body through the water with my arms.

I breeched the surface a handful of seconds later and greedily gulped down a lungful of air, savoring every sweet breath. Fuck water levels, I thought.

I turned and hollered, “Reel it—”

A tentacle wrapped around my calf and dragged me back down.

I caught a brief glimpse of my teammates scrambling into action, pulling at the reinforced rope with every ounce of strength they could muster. Water swooshed around me as the creature hauled me back toward its beak. Nope, not this time. I had exactly zero plans of getting anywhere close to that meat-grinder of a mouth.

I slipped my hand into a leather pouch and pulled free a break-glass-only-in-case-of-life-or-death-emergencyitem that I always kept handy for the absolute worst case scenario situations. Like being dragged into a lake by a tentacled horror. Clutched in my hand was a tiny glass marble. A True Form Transformation Token.

Unlike most other Transformation Tokens, this one wouldn’t allow me to become a monster I’d already killed, but the monster that lived inside of me. Just as every Vigil was bound to a weapon, each was likewise bound to a fearsome totem creature. There were a thousand different possible forms—all as unique as the Vigils themselves—but they were one and all killing machines. There were two small catches, though. One, the tokens were damned hard to come by and two, the transformation took a grueling toll on the body.

But the way I figured it, things couldn’t get much worse than they already were.

A wild, chaotic blast of energy surged through me, racing along every inch of skin, every fiber of muscle. My limbs lengthened and bulged, bones snapping and cracking as they morphed. My armor and weapons transformed with me, melting into my body. Claws erupted from my fingers and talons burst from my toes while my mouth elongated into a muzzle filled with vicious cutting fangs. Fissures of yellow and orange light zigzagged across my forearms and legs, bleeding terrible heat like rivers of magma.

I was eight feet of muscle, fur, fire, and rage. I was an actual Devil Dog.

Even under the crystal-clear lake waters, my claws glowed like hot coals. I punched them down into the tentacle wrapped around my legs and sliced through the rubbery flesh like a knife through a pad of hot butter.

[Lake Kraken afflicted with Hellflayer Rot – x3]

The creature howled in pain, bubbles shooting up from its mouth, as pieces of the appendage drifted down into the murky gloom. Instead of retreating for the surface, I launched myself like a torpedo at the Kraken, which was now straining mightily against the rope that connected to its ruined eye.

I landed on the creature’s head and went to town, carving through its flesh with my claws and tearing huge chunks out with my teeth. It had tried to take a bite out of me; I was only returning the favor. Creeping, toxic black veins crawled and snaked across the kraken’s skin as more and more instances of Hellflayer Rot stacked up.

x4 … x5 … x10 … x15…

As I scrambled across the creature’s body, avoiding its beak and fending off its flailing limbs, I noticed we were moving. The waters parted around us and we breeched the surface as my teammates strained against the taut rope, pulling us closer to shore. Cal had transformed into a hulking Sasquatch-like creature and had joined the effort. We were twenty-five feet out now and the Kraken was already starting to waiver. I wasn’t surprised. It had lost several limbs, had a ruptured eye, a litany of deep gouges carved into its rubbery hide, and twenty or more instances of Hellflayer Rot rampaging through its system.

I threw back my head and howled in triumph.

This battle was over and what remained was a formality.

I renewed my assault while the others finally beached the Kraken. The oversized squid lashed out in a blind rage with its suction-covered tentacles, but now that it was on our turf, it didn’t stand a snowballs chance in hell. Berk maintained control of the rope and Cal slipped behind the monster, ensuring it couldn’t fall back into the icy waters of the lake. Marina kept her distance, unleashing concentrated javelins of fire while Colin took the beast head on, dancing among the hammering tentacles, narrowly avoiding every blow as he severed the smaller tendrils with his razor-sharp rapier.

In one final, wild effort, the Kraken reared up, towering over the Vigils on the beach, and let out an undulating cry. Its body began to pulse with an otherworldly green light, and I could feel a massive surge of Arcana building in the air. It was preparing for some kind of final assault.

I needed to stop this thing now.

With a bestial roar of my own, I sank my claws deep into the Kraken’s head and let loose a magical attack of my own. Electro Arc surged out from my core, sprinted down my arms, and exploded from my claws, sending a concentrated blast of electricity directly into the Kraken’s body.

It bucked and shuddered, tendrils flailing wildly. Then, before I could cut the flow of power, the Kraken swelled like a birthday balloon and exploded beneath me.

[You have killed a Forlorn Lake Kraken! The world has been cleansed! You have been blessed with 5,000 Essence!]

Raven black blood drenched me as I flipped through the air and landed on the sandy shore amongst smoking chunks of supernatural squid meat. The power of the True Transformation left my body as quickly as it had come. My rocky hide disappeared, my claws vanishing, my fangs reverted. I groaned as I tried to sit up. I couldn’t. It felt like I’d been hit by a freight train. Even worse than the pain was the stench that filled my nostrils. It smelled worse than I felt, and I felt like a bag of hot garbage.

Still, as far as I was concerned, it was the scent of victory.

There was a crunch of boots on gravel as Kerra appeared. “It was still the worst plan I’ve ever seen.” She glanced around at the pools of black gore and the chunks of squid meat. The tiniest smile stretched across her lips. “But I suppose the results speak for themselves.” She offered me a hand, even though I was covered in Kraken entrails. “Tonight, I think we’ll splurge for an Inn and a bathhouse. As a reward for your hard-fought victory.”

“I’m sure that’s the reason,” I replied, accepting her hand, “and not because you don’t want to share a tent with me tonight since I smell like a slaughterhouse.”

“Why can’t it be both?” she shot back, quirking an eyebrow playfully.

***

True to her word, Kerra booked us rooms for the night in Sarugia. We all shared a bathhouse, scrubbing away a week’s worth of grime, on top of rancid whale blubber and Kraken guts. Just like everywhere else, the bathhouse were co-ed. Marina and Colin had grown quite a bit closer during our time in the field, and both looked equally horrified at the prospect of bathing naked together. I felt almost equally horrified when Kerra joined us, wearing nothing more than the grimace that usually graced her face.

She had the tight, sculpted body of a professional gymnast, but the army of scars covering her shoulders, arms, legs, back, and chest told me she was a warrior through and through. I saw her openly eyeing some of my own scars in clear appreciation. At least, I think that’s all she was admiring.

After that we hit up the Inn, where the people of Sarugia were in full on celebration mode. And they had plenty of reason to celebrate.

Not only had we avenged Henri’s death, we’d killed the Kraken and hauled in enough Essence-infused Mortka meat to feed the village for a month. Regular people couldn’t absorb Essence in the same way those with the True Gift could. A small portion of a Mortka’s Essence lingered behind in the meat and bones, however, and they could absorb that through consumption. Essence-infused meat could cure sickness, strengthen the body, and fix pesky old wounds that refused to heal. I’d heard it could even cure things like chronic arthritis.

If cooked right, it also tasted pretty damned good, and the people of Sarugia knew their way around a fish fry. Or a supernatural squid fry in this case.

We listened to music, soaked up the warmth of the fire, filled our stomachs with fried Kraken, and stayed up later than we should’ve playing cards and getting hammered on watery beer. Or as hammered as Vigils ever get, anyway. Even Kerra lightened up and let her hair down as the evening unfolded. With a few beers in her, I managed to get her out onto the dance floor. Eventually, I hit the rack and slept better than I had in ages. No sharp rocks poking into my ribs, no guard watch in the middle of the night, and no bad dreams.

We woke up late and set off without much fanfare.

The trip back to Wildespell took two days, but we rode at a rather leisurely pace, enjoying the unseasonal bout of good weather while we divvied up the spoils from our week together.

We’d recovered a large variety of different armor types—banded mail, scale mail, studded leather armor, full plate—plus helmets, shields, and a small arsenal worth of swords, axes, spears, and bows. None of the items were especially impressive to me, but Colin, Marina, and Berk were over the moon with the haul. Since none of that gear came even close to my own enchanted equipment, I let them have it all.

I was more interested in the small fortune worth of Affinity Scales, Transformation Tokens, and fabrication components we’d collected from all the various bounties.

There were twenty-odd Wither Husk Transformation Tokens, six Dread Shadow Tokens, and ten Craighounds Tokens, which I split evenly with Berk, since he was the only other Vigil who could use them. I was bummed that we hadn’t picked up a Lake Kraken Token—the thought of feeding one of those to Cal and unleashing him on the Chaos Aberration gave me a chuckle. But some things were not to be, apparently.

We also brought in over a hundred and fifty Affinity Scales in total, which we divvied up evenly amongst the four of us. I’d restocked my supply of Glamor Scales from the Ettersirens and Hunger Scales from both the Glutenous Devourer and the Lake Kraken, but I also ended up several new types of Affinity Scales that I’d never seen before.

The Dread Shadows dropped Umbra Affinity which, when consumed, allowed the user to slip from one pool of shadow to another and dramatically increased the Stealth Step, Deft Touch, and Crystalline Shell abilities. We picked Razoredge Affinity from Metalflayers, which increased weapon damage and conjured a whirling aura of metal shrapnel that refracted melee damage back for a short period.

The biggest haul by far came from the Wither Husks. They’d dropped Barkform Affinity, which had an active effective similar to the Stoneform Scales I’d harvested from the Stone Spiders back in Ironmoor; these caused a thin layer of bark to form along the skin, granting extra protection against slashing and piercing weapons. Even better, they drew Essence directly from the earth itself, increasing passive health regeneration while the Scale was active.

I’d put all of those to good use.

I also ended up with a bagful of raw fabrication components—almost enough for me to finally craft one of the other firearm weapon skins I had waiting for me back in my Soul Vault. [15 x Raw Silver Ore, Fabrication Ingredient], [4 x Mortka Horn (Adept), Fabrication Ingredient], [7 x Mortka Steel Ore, Fabrication Ingredient], [5 x Wither Vine, Fabrication Ingredient], [13 x Wither Bark, Fabrication Ingredient], [7 x Umbra Elixir, Fabrication Ingredient], [1 x Lake Kraken Hide, Fabrication Ingredient].

Other than the crafting components, the real prize was the friends I made along the way.

That and the two Sage Class Items I’d received for finishing off the Eldritch Wither Bloom and the Kraken. The first was an Arcanum Token, which came in the form of a small purple flower, with a yellow marble at its center.

<<<>>>

Eldritch Wither Heart Seed

Token Type: Weapon Inset, Infernal

Class: Sage

The heart seed of an Eldritch Wither Vine brims with powerful Fae Magics and lies dormant, waiting for the ideal conditions to take root and spawn once more. In the right hands—or the wrong ones—its potent power may be harnessed, bound, and forged into a devastating weapon.

Effect 1: Equip to a Soul Forged Weapon Skin to add Vampiric Leech to all attacks, allowing you to harm enemies and absorb a portion of their health with every successful hit.

Effect 2: Plant the Wither Heart Seed into fertile ground and reawaken the power of the Eldritch Wither Vine.

<<<>>>

According to Renholm, Eldritch Wither Vines were creatures of the Faewylds, and would routinely move from location to location, corrupting a new area and sucking the life from the place before shriveling up and going dormant. Eventually, some hapless wanderer or witless animal would pick up the majestic, brightly colored purple bud that remained behind and carry it to some new location where the cycle would begin anew. The one we’d killed in the grove outside of Willowbend had been through the cycle countless times and had likely killed scores of people during its existence.

And now I had its seed in my Soul Vault.

I’d need to take great pains to make sure the flower never made it back out into the wild, but the Vampiric Leech Ability was too good to ignore. It was easy enough to envision attaching that to an assault rifle and going to town on a pack of hungry Mortka, mowing them down and stealing their life force with every shot on target.

The other prize I’d received wasn’t an Arcanum Token or a piece of armor, but an enchanted ring that I’d taken off the smoldering corpse of the Lake Kraken.

<<<>>>

Sage Ring of the Fishermen

Token Type: Jewelry, Enchanted

Class: Sage

In his youth, the great fisherman Henri Lindholm managed to reel in a behemoth of a fish from the depths of Lake Sarugia. This was no ordinary fish, but rather a Divine Wishspring Catfish, an intelligent and benevolent beast, which generally dwells in the Plane of the Celestials. How this creature came to be in Lake Sarugia, no one knows. In exchange for its freedom, the great Catfish offered Henri a celestial boon, the Sage Ring of the Fishermen.

Effect 1: Grants the wearer a movement bonus of 15% while submerged in water environments.

Effect 2: Bestows the wearer with the Water Breathing ability while the ring is equipped.

Effect 3: The ring exudes an unearthly aura that bewitches fish within the area of effect and draws them toward the ring.

<<<>>>

I couldn’t help but grin as I read over the effects. Henri had managed to hook a Divine Catfish and all he wanted was a ring to help him catch more fish. That was my kinda guy. If I ever got a chance to take a vacation, I knew exactly what I’d be doing. I just hoped I’d never have reason to use the rings other benefits. Fuck water levels.

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