TBATE| The Walking Catastrophe

Chapter 4 - Shackles

We'd studied the zone we were about to travel through quite extensively. It was simple enough, and fairly harmless so long as one didn't take too much time navigating it.

The portal was supposed to bring us just to the foot of a tall, snowy mountain, in a winter-like landscape. The one and only goal was to hike to the top of the mountain and make it to the teleportation gate that was near the very top.

The only beasts that had been discovered were snowy golem-like constructs that only reached about a meter or two in height.

Honestly, I was fairly confident in my ability to beat the zone solo after all I'd heard about it.

We all traveled in there with heavy, cold-resistant clothing so when we stepped in, we braced for the cold. Only, we were dumbfounded when we stepped right onto a wooden structure in a hot, humid climate.

My thoughts raced as I tried to make heads or tails of what was happening. Even the professor didn't know what to do as our group found ourselves on what seemed to be a wooden ship in the middle of an endless ocean.

I stared up at the sky and all I could see was a never-ending expanse of bright blue with an occasional cloud littered in.

"Everyone, in formation now!" The professor shouted, trying and failing to hide the panic that was evident in his voice.

We grouped up in a defensive formation, protecting the casters while the professor paced around the boat trying to gather as much information as he could.

"Alright everyone, listen up!" he shouted once again, "This definitely isn't the zone we were meant to go into, but I've come across something vaguely like this before. We need to find the exit portal to leave and it will most likely be disguised as an ordinary object."

Right as the words left his mouth, a large wave caused our entire group to stumble and I thought the water looked a bit darker than it had initially.

Our entire group abandoned our formations at the professor's proclamation. It was no secret that relictomb zones tended to follow a pattern, so it was only natural for him to recognize the type of situation we were in right now.

After a few minutes of searching, the striker from Aubrey's group shouted that there seemed to be a conch shell some 50 meters away from where we were.

The professor shouted for us to grab the oars that lay scattered around the boat so that we could row over to the shell in the distance.

Apparently, the professor seemed to think it was the portal so we began to direct the boat over to it.

However, no matter how long we rowed towards it, we never seemed to make any progress causing us all to grow uneasy.

Silently, I closed my eyes and began to shift the water from where the shell was, to the ship, but it was too far and the waves were becoming more and more erratic as the sky darkened and the clouds grew heavier.

Eventually, our whole group decided to ditch our heavy clothing and I even stripped all the way down to just a white tunic and black pants.

Soon, the clouds couldn't hold the moisture in and it began to rain, causing the entire atmosphere to shift.

Bolts of lightning occasionally rained down from above and the waves grew more violent until they were shaking the boat vigorously, threatening to capsize it.

We all began to panic and that was the moment when we felt it. A massive pressure from below somehow fell on all of us, causing everyone to stumble.

Then, suddenly a massive beast shot out of the water and hovered just above the ship that we were currently on, and my heart sank into the depths of my stomach. Staring down at us, was a house-sized creature with four legs, two giant wings, and a ferocious head, with 8 spikes protruding from the edges of its skull.