Game of Light

Chapter 7 - The Grasp of Mud

Chapter 7



The grass under Light was wet with dew. She opened her eyes and saw little lantern bugs as they flew over a dark black lake. It was nighttime in Other and enchanting star constellations filled the sky – not the drab stars of Firma, but the amazing clusters of Other. Light stood up from her sitting position with an uncomfortable feeling of moisture on her back and wondered where she was. The damned login just had to send you through to some unknown area of Other to drive you crazy, didn’t it?  Light glowered into the darkness, hoping a monitor would catch her wrathful glare and scare the hell out of some random game designer.

Light unwillingly pulled up her List-Map and searched for the red dot that represented her. It was blinking on the southwest coast of the continent Face. Come on!, she thought, realizing how far away she was from Main. She called out Venus’s name and swore at what the Map showed her. Venus was just as far away.

Damn, she thought, trudging through the wastelands of Other. The wastelands were a completely useless boggy area that stretched from the Silver Beaches in the extreme South to the Outpost Merlenia in the extreme east. Very few people roamed around them, because not only was there nothing much to see in them, they were also absolutely harmless in the daytime. Luckily for her it was pitch black, meaning that she could expect some exciting evil thing to show up sooner or later, and sure enough, her expectations were fulfilled.  But not how she thought they would be.

A burbling sound erupted from one of the mood pools next to Light. She jumped at the loud sound that pierced the silent night and barely avoided falling into a water puddle on the other side. The sound originated from a creature that clawed itself out of the mud. It was completely brown: Mud brown eyes, mud brown skin, mud brown hair and long mud brown nails. Light thought mud brown a very boring color to have so dedicatedly repeated. Though the being was obviously not human in appearance – a delicate fin on its back was a tipoff  -- it was definitely female. It, or rather she, was slender and small.

So the game designers did sometimes follow their fantasies, Light mused, noting the straightforward nudity. But remembering her last opponent, the stinker, she really could appreciate any hard work the designers put into a creation that was not as monstrous as that beast.

The female, who by now was only in the mud up to her hips, seemed completely harmless.  After being burned alive by a bunny look-alike, however, Light knew – the feeling of the pain still fresh in her memory - that looks were not a reliable guide to the evilness of a monster.

Lost in her own thoughts, Light didn’t notice that the female had opened her mouth until she started to sing. Light had never heard anything like it before. Her appearance might be drab, and drab it was, but her singing was angelic: She effortlessly hit the high notes in a clear and powerful voice. There came no evil with a voice like that, Light thought slowly falling into a trance. The song she sung was about the bitterness of unrequited love, and Light felt sorry for this poor creature whose heart had been smashed to bits. Light’s limbs felt lighter and lighter as the pity inside her for the singer grew more and more. Why did that man not choose this woman?, Light thought all riled up, Guys are so stupid sometimes, I can’t believe how irrational and hurtful they can be! Light’s thoughts began to stray to the loathed Image. I bet he would do something like this! I bet he would leave a girl who loved him with no second thought. How had she even begun to think the poor, weak creature before her had been a bad minded one? Compared to Image and the rest of the male species, even a slut looked like an angel. So maybe not a slut, Light decided, remembering all the bad experiences she had with girls from her grade, No let’s change that to definitely not a slut. But they were undoubtedly worse than any other kind of creature.

If I weren’t stuck in this mud, she thought absentmindedly, throwing a lob of it in a random direction, and he weren’t ages away. Well I would ring that guy’s head out until he had no brain left.

The singing stopped, probably due to the instinctively thrown mud ball, and Light came to her senses. Where the hell am I?, she asked herself, realizing she was thigh high in the mud with tentacles rooting her to the ground. Oh crap, she groaned, seeing that where the female monster’s stomach had once been there was now a huge, gaping hole that was slowly drawing near, ready to swallow her alive.

And now I’m thinking how nice it would be to just spend a grand time with Image and have a picnic, Light thought morbidly. I had no idea the day where I could wish such a thing would be so close. Light really had no patience to die just yet. Though it would probably land her straight into Main she knew it was much better for her to walk. And she really didn’t want to lose a level. Since the List had adopted her and refused to give her up, she saw only one possibility: To climb to the top.

“It seems we have a fight before us, Hook Eye,” she announced, releasing the sword from its sheath, full of new energy.

“Fight,” The sword repeated with monotone glee.

Light slashed at the mud-lady’s tentacles, only to find that they were iron hard. Not losing hope, she made up her mind that the most effective next attack would be to try and use the new ability that had been bestowed on her not long ago - the exploding sword. But the only problem was that she would probably be a victim of the blast as well. Why did every good thing have to come with a bad thing?, Light wondered, aggravated, Couldn’t good be singular? But it wasn’t, so there was no point in wishing.

Light stuck the sword between the iron rods that refused to let her go and inched it closer to the monster’s central body.

“Exploding sword,” she ordered Hook Eye, preparing herself for the hurt of the explosion.

It came and she bit her teeth together, feeling the pressure of the blast all through her body. I really hope that worked, Light thought and was seriously relived, when the grasp on her loosened. But her relief came too early. Just as she was about to unwind the coils from about her and step out of her iron prison, it tightened again.

Small frigging victory, Light scowled, pissed, Well, we’ll just see about that.

Grinning evilly, Light grabbed Hook Eye and in a fit of passion and cried “Boomerang Sword” before lugging it at the beast’s head.

The head came off with the ease of a knife cutting through butter and sunk into the mud. Hook Eye came racing back and Light happily managed to catch it without hurting herself.

When she had first learned the technique and had been eager to fully master it, she hadn’t always been so precise and had frequently killed herself by mistake. This was one of the main experiences that had made her so resistant to pain and death in Other. But experiences of that kind were better off not repeated.

So what now?, Light thought grimly, when the decapitation had no affect. Really. What was there to do? Should she give up? – No. She didn’t want to. But seriously. What could you do when the thing in front of you could survive without its head?

That was the very question that propelled her to  think further. So it seems that this creature’s only use of what I describe as its head was for singing.  That means that its brain or nervous system has to be somewhere else. But how would that explain the fact that the mud-lady had eyes on its ‘head’? Just a second, did I ever see the eyes move?, she sifted through her memories. Light, you idiot! That was a dead giveaway, she scolded herself after remembering that she hadn’t. The mud- lady’s fangs were quickly closing the distance between them.

If this monster was built similarly to others of its kind, Light decided, The brain or heart would be situated behind the mouth.

There’s only one way to figure that out, she thought gleefully, and threw Hook Eye spot on into the mouth of the creature. There was no blood that she could see. Instead the mud- lady seemed to fry up from the inside, and Light could see white sparks erupting from Hook Eye’s tip.

In a matter of a minute, the mud- lady was gone, and surprisingly so was the mud and all evidence that there had ever been a fight. Light picked up Hook Eye and heard from above her:

“New Ability: Frying Pan,” the monotone voice from above her announced, “Level: 94.”

Light climbed up to the path, a slight smile on her face, and kept on walking towards Main.