A Nuisance
First, let's take stock of the situation.
From where we stood, there were three directions we could reasonably go.
To the left, the world had flipped on its head—sky and ground reversed. Straight ahead, we'd tested with a pebble earlier, and it had been crushed to powder in an instant. To the right, everything floated weightlessly, as if gravity itself had simply given up.
"The center's out, for starters."
"Agreed."
"Anyone can see how dangerous that looks."
Factoring in the anomalies visible in the distance, gravity had almost certainly gone completely haywire.
"Let's take the left."
Huey's voice cut through my deliberation.
"Not the right?"
Lucy asked, sounding puzzled. I ignored her and turned to Huey.
"Your reasoning?"
"If we end up having to fight in all three places, that one looks like our best odds."
Fair enough. He had a point.
Still…
"So how exactly do you plan on getting over there?"
The real problem was that we had to set foot on ground at least several dozen meters away from where we stood.
"We'll figure it out when we get there."
With that, Huey picked up a pebble from the edge of the land we were standing on and tossed it toward the left-hand cliff. The stone plummeted for a moment—then the instant it entered the inverted ground's domain, it fell upward.
"Oh."
"Starting off brutal, I see."
We swallowed hard at the sight.
"I'll go first, then."
"I'll take the rear."
To prepare for any unexpected trouble, Lucy—our vanguard—threw herself off first. Once we confirmed she'd landed safely on the ground above, Huey followed.
"I'm going too."
He launched himself without hesitation. Watching him stand upside-down on the inverted earth without any real trouble, I took a breath.
"Here goes."
I threw myself after them.
"Whoa."
For a moment I was falling—then my body was yanked upward. I unfurled my wings with a sharp flap, summoned a gust to slow my descent, and touched down lightly.
Just as I was starting to get used to the bizarre sensation of walking while standing upside-down—
"Get ready! Something's coming from the ground above!"
"Got it."
"…You say 'ground' and I still keep looking down by reflex."
A dozen-odd presences were racing toward us at high speed. I shouted a warning to Huey and Lucy, who'd been scouting ahead.
With a violent CRACK-CRACK-CRACK, the ground shuddered—and something long and thick burst straight through the earth. A brown worm roughly two meters long and as thick as a grown man's torso came flying at me, dozens of razor-sharp teeth flashing.
"Sandworms, huh."
I lashed out with a leg, snagged the charging worm with my claws, and crushed it into the ground. Then I looked ahead at Lucy and Huey.
"Lucy!"
The worms must have sensed the two of them up front and swarmed. Ignoring me entirely, they kept charging Huey and Lucy. Huey shouted Lucy's name from the middle of the onslaught.
A sharp CRACK of lightning. The moment Lucy ducked behind Huey—who was gripping two talismans—a white bolt of light lanced out. Six sandworms, skewered by the beam, fell to the ground blackened and charred. Huey tossed the spent talismans into the air and drew another from his robes.
"Oh."
I crushed another sandworm that lunged at me, watching as Huey affixed the new talisman to his sword with a fluid, practiced motion.
"That bastard. He could do that the whole time and still slacked off last time?"
I'd thought the sword was just for show—he'd been standing behind a barrier muttering like he was casting a spell. Now he wrapped flowing lightning around the blade and, together with Lucy, finished off the remaining sandworms.
"I was not slacking off!"
"Oh, you heard that?"
"I was trying to wipe them all out in one go, but you burned through the barrier!"
Huey protested that protecting the carriage and Jason had been the best he could manage. Lucy crushed the last sandworm underfoot with a wet crunch, then shot Huey a withering look and clicked her tongue.
"All that bluster for a guy who tried to show off and flopped—when you had other techniques available."
"Ahem."
"Honestly. When I'm not around, you can't even prepare your techniques properly and just swing that sword around—and you still don't appreciate me."
"Shut up. Taoist magic lives and dies on concentration."
"…A man who uses a technique that 'lives and dies on concentration' jumps at every little thing?"
"Ugh."
I watched Huey grumble, looking thoroughly wronged—as if he'd been about to unleash some grand technique just to deal with a few living dead—and opened my mouth.
"Want me to teach you? How to swing a sword."
"What?"
"As a bonus, you'll build up your focus and your guts at the same time."
From what I'd seen, he seemed to know the basics of swordplay. But he only ever used it for putting down bandit types and the like.
"I've never really taught anyone before. What do you say?"
"I think it's a fine proposal, Master. Think back to what you heard at the temple."
Huey hesitated at my offer—but Lucy's follow-up must have sealed it. He nodded with a resolute expression.
"I'm counting on you."
"Good. Then we start the moment we're out of here."
I'd been feeling stiff from missing my daily training anyway. Teaching Huey would be a good way to work out the rust.
I was just about to move on toward the next zone when—
A sudden flinch.
"…Ngh!"
A faint cramp twisted through my abdomen.
"What's wrong?"
"Ren?"
Damn it.
"It's nothing. Just a sudden chill."
"Now that you mention it, it is a bit cool for daytime."
"Probably because of the shade."
I wrapped one wing around my stomach and quietly counted the days where the two of them couldn't see.
Thirteen days since I'd last laid an egg. Carol had said the cycle was roughly every two weeks.
…Tomorrow night would be the critical point.
"I'd like to reach that passage before the day is out."
"That would be ideal, but we should still be as careful as possible—just in case."
I followed behind Huey and Lucy, keeping my voice as natural as I could.
"The distance looks manageable, but you can't trust what you see in a magical anomaly."
There was no guarantee some warped space wasn't sitting between us and our destination.
We reached the edge of the ground we were standing on.
"Nothing ahead but that one stretch."
"It looks normal enough from here."
We stared down at the vast expanse of land below, trying to decide our next move.
"I'll just toss a rock and—Stop!"
A sudden prickle of dread raced over my entire body. I lunged at Huey mid-throw, wrapping my arms around him and locking him in place.
"Ren!?"
"What on earth—"
"Both of you, quiet! Shut your mouths and stop breathing. Kill your presence as much as you can."
My urgent tone must have clued them in. Huey and Lucy dropped low and held their breath.
A deep, rolling rumble rose from beneath our feet—as if something enormous were tunneling through the earth.
The thing that passed below us was so vast I couldn't even begin to estimate its size. Fortunately, it didn't seem to notice us. It circled the nearby underground once and moved on.
"…Hah."
"What the hell was that just now?"
"The size of that thing…"
Only then did we let out our held breath and sink to the ground, trading impressions of whatever had just passed beneath us.
"Damn. Looks like the Hero still hasn't shown up."
"Ren. Don't tell me that was…"
"Disaster-class?"
"Almost certainly."
A creature of that sheer bulk couldn't be anything less. If I weren't stuck in this form, I wouldn't have been reduced to cowering in silence like this.
"Just in case… let's rest here a bit before we move."
An uneasy feeling I couldn't quite name made me say it. Huey and Lucy both nodded.
"Yeah. That stretch below has me nervous too."
"Agreed."
And sure enough—
"Shh. It's coming."
Not long after, the ground rumbled again. We held our breath and watched the earth shake—closer this time than before. Then, finally, it seemed to leave for good. We could see rock debris tumbling in the far distance.
"Hah. That time it actually left."
"Ugh, my legs are still shaking."
"It seems fairly intelligent, too."
Once we confirmed it was gone, Huey carefully tossed the pebble he'd been about to throw earlier. This time it fell completely normally, with no sign of anything wrong.
"I'll go first."
Better to reach the passage ahead without any further delays. Lucy jumped down first.
"Let's go."
"Right."
Watching Lucy land safely and wave up at us, Huey and I threw ourselves after her.
"…Must be nice, not having to roll when you hit the ground."
Given the height, he'd had to tumble roughly across the ground both earlier and now to disperse the impact. Watching me land softly on a cushion of wind, he grumbled with clear envy.
"If you're jealous, go tear an arm off yourself."
"I'll pass."
Figured as much.
We traded a few more jokes as we walked—until Lucy, who'd been leading, stopped and pointed somewhere.
"You two. Have you ever seen something like that?"
"What is that? A statue?"
What stood there was—
"Ah. That…"
"You know it?"
"It doesn't seem like an ordinary statue."
A grotesque figure with a dragon's head, a demon's wings, a human body, and the limbs of a beast.
"…A nuisance."
It was a gargoyle.