The Monster Mage

9

^^ the Door/Amulet ^^

The trench descended almost seven miles into the earth, which I new to be the deepest point of Earth's oceans, but still deeper it went, and it seemed there was no end in sight. I remembered, after a while, that the crust of this world was thicker than Earth's, and that was because this planet was bigger than earth, by about half. At nine miles, however, the turtle slowed, and then settled into a current, skimming right above the very bottom and lazily snapping up creatures that passed into its path.

"Please tell me we're going home soon..." Alice whimpered softly, looking more terrified than I had any right to make her.

"Don't worry, Alice, you're going to be fine." I pet her hair gently, and landed on the back of the turtle. There were numerous barnacles interspersed along his shell, each about twenty-forty feet tall and wide, and I intended to take advantage of that.

I carefully crafted a new barnacle, smaller than the others at only about six feet tall, looking cracked and weak as if it'd already been broken into and eaten, to dissuade any of the little scavengers I could see swimming around the turtle from bothering it. If I needed any more proof that this was an apex predator, other than killing and eating a Kraken for a snack, the scavengers it didn't bother eating sealed the deal.

This new barnacle was a trap, though; it was hollow, made of Hard Light Fake-Adamantite, and engraved with magical sigils to make it into a Demiplane. The coordinates were dynamic, and technically located inside the turtle's stomach, (I hope,) so if anyone ever escaped by simply destroying the Demiplane, they'd be inside the belly of the beast. Literally.

The door, at the bottom of the barnacle's well, was a stone slab that looked shattered, with the face of some Eldritch Beast at the center, a ring of runes around it, then a second ring around the edge. These runes were only to keep the door shut, and to prevent anyone from using magic to find this place, or anything within it, without the appropriate Talisman; a black coral amulet that looked exactly like the door itself.

The cracks in the stone were cleverly hidden runes, in the shape of the ones that'd been on the crystal that had turned me into an elemental, though in a different order; these were focused on the turtle, as the stone door was directly in contact with his body. It wasn't focused on turning the turtle into an elemental, per se, more feeding the turtle elemental energy, as an experiment, and to extend its lifespan. The mana crystals inlaid into these cracked runes thrummed with the heartbeat of the Fantastical Beast, and activated, sending a pulse of Earth Elemental Energy into the creature, causing it to writhe a bit.

Instantly I sent Alice and I into the Demiplane, to avoid the wrath of the creature who could likely destroy me with a single flipper/claw.

She relaxed greatly, seeing we were in a glowing purple space, and sat down bonelessly on the floor I created with a thought. "What is wrong with you, Boss? What'd you have to piss him off for?!?"

"Because it was necessary for my research. Don't worry, I just needed you to know where it was, just in case my Look Not At Me spell manages to wipe my memory at a later date. You can go home for now, if you want." I opened a portal for her, and left it there, building the room that the door opened up to.

I intended for Explosive Decompression and then the weight of the Ocean (which the inside of the turtle was compressed just as much as,) slamming down on top of you to kill just about anyone; even diamonds would be crushed to powder by the two consecutive changes in pressure. As such, the room was effortlessly airtight, and then pumped over-full of breathable air, to a point where most anyone human would have trouble breathing, but with the raw physical power of the Elementals, they probably wouldn't even notice the difference. The plan was simple, but efficient; due to the density of the air, the air-elemental's crystalline form wouldn't be able to control the air the same as the outside without a comparably larger amount of Mana. The interior temperature wasn't managed by radiation or vibration, like the outside, but by simply holding every person's body temperature near them; this self-isolation would prevent elemental energy from affecting the space at all.