Down With The Gods

“It’s impressive. I can see it from here,” Mira remarks.

As the team descends toward the bound man, he notices them and becomes visibly excited, screaming intermittently while they work to untie him.

“Shut up already!” Yu snaps.

“It’s just to fool them into thinking I’m still crying for help,” the man replies.

“‘Them’?” Wyn asks.

The man refuses to answer, instead urging them to release him quickly. The four locks securing him have a snap-on mechanism that clicks into place when pushed from behind the back of the table. Wyn realizes he’ll need a special key to unlock them.

“We could just cut off your arms and feet. They’ll grow back,” Wyn says flatly.

“NO! JUST NO!” the man shouts, clearly ungrateful.

“Where’s the key?” Mira asks.

It’s only then that the man seems to notice her. Stunned into silence at first, he finally responds after Mira delivers a slap to his face.

“The key’s with one of the woot woots.”

A woot woot is a creature known for its distinct "woot woot" sound in varying tones and lengths. They are social and typically move in groups of five or more.

“There are, what, ten tree houses? Which one has it?” Anish asks.

“This group’s bigger than usual. Look for the one with twigs forming an ‘X’ on the roof – that’s the leader’s house, and the key is inside.”

“Creatures that craft and work as a team…,” Wyn muses aloud.

“They can command spooderfaces. I don’t know how, but they seem to work together. So, be careful, eh,” the man warns.

“‘Eh’…?” Wyn mutters.

The stone table in the center is a sacrificial altar, where prey are regularly offered up to appease what the woot woots believe to be a divine being. Normally, the sacrifice turns into essence, but in this case, the prey is meant for the spooderfaces to feast on. The woot woots themselves have no need for food – they exist solely to appease their so-called boohoo.

“There were two others before me, eh. They’ve already been sacrificed in the most horrifying ways. You HAVE to save me!” the man pleads.

“How do you know so much about them?” Wyn asks suspiciously.

“I have the bestiary.”

“And yet you were caught?”

“Now’s not the time to be a smartass, eh!”

On this semi-stealth mission, Anish leads Yu and Mira toward the woot woot leader's tree house. The windowless house is dark and silent, with only a single, small doorless entrance. Their plan is to sneak in, kill the leader quietly, find the key, and free the man.

However, things quickly go awry when an electric web shoots down from the branches above, ensnaring Yu. Anish manages to hold Yu up while dodging more webs, and Mira’s fireballs scorch the incoming threats. They descend to a safer spot, just as Wyn unleashes a fully-charged snowy cyclone at the treetops.

“Fuck it. I’m sorry!” Wyn shouts.

He turns back and launches a cyclone at the restraint table, obliterating it and sending the man flying away from the fairy circle. More trees rustle as additional spooderfaces join in, firing webs at the team.

They regroup, dodging and fending off the webs, while Mira burns the remaining webbing off Yu. Encircling Wyn and team, the spooderfaces’ attacks cease. The woot woots have been awakened.

A dozen woot woots drop from the treetops, unfazed by the height. These armless creatures stand about as tall as Wyn's chest. Each has long, oak-brown hair growing from its head and extending beyond its body, dragging along the ground as it moves. The hair is divided into six equal sections – three on the left and three on the right – stacked on top of each other. Their only facial feature is a pair of large, puppy-like eyes.

“Which one is the leader?” Wyn asks.

“Doesn't matter anymore, right?” Mira replies.

“Do we still need the key then?”

“Not right now. We need to deal with these guys first,” Anish says.

As usual, Wyn unleashes an enveloping cyclone to protect the team. However, he feels a trembling beneath the ground. Sensing danger, he summons a large rock pillar to elevate everyone. As the pillar rises, he notices something pushing through from within. He lets Anish carry the team upward, and looking down, he sees dry brown vines emerging from the rock, rising up to chase them.

Mira’s fireballs are effective at keeping the vines at bay. When Wyn’s cyclone dies out, more than half of the woot woots have already ascended to their level, lifted by the vines that have twisted into sturdy platforms. The creatures stiffen their hair and use it to punch at Wyn and team. In response, Anish descends, dropping the whole team momentarily to avoid the attacks.

“Mira, Anish, Christine – take the ones on the vines. Yu and I will handle the ones on the ground,” Wyn instructs.

Wyn takes Yu with him, knowing Yu’s water is ineffective against plant creatures but seeing a use for Yu’s crescent blade. After sending Wyn and Yu down to the ground, Anish and the girls ascend above the descending vine platforms. Anish boosts Mira’s whip toward one of the woot woots, which counters with every section of its hair. The whip explodes, blowing off a large chunk of its hair. The woot woot pauses, reacting to the damage with concern.

Anish and Christine create a floating snowman to distract the remaining woot woots. Using his other hand, Anish flies Mira toward two distracted enemies. She whips one, burning it to a crisp with a fully-charged strike, and the explosion sets the other ablaze, killing it as well. Realizing Mira as a threat, the woot woots regroup. The remaining five stand on the same vine platform, combining their hair sections into one massive braid. Due to its thickness, Mira’s fire can’t burn through it fast enough. Their first sweep attack causes Mira to lose her balance. The next attack punches through the snowman, heading straight for Anish and Christine.

As Anish ascends to avoid the attack, he loses control of Mira. While she’s falling, Mira desperately tries to regain her balance. Flames erupt from her palms and feet, propelling her erratically to the midsection of the vine platform. She wraps herself around it tightly, and with the flames intensifying, the platform catches fire – an evil grin spreads across her face.

Meanwhile, Anish, dodging the relentless attacks, thrusts his javelin through the eye of a woot woot in front and embeds it into the forehead of the one behind. Suddenly, his weapon begins to glow with a bright light. Its shape shifts, becoming thicker and longer. An extra head materializes at the bottom of the handle, and the heads extend slightly, forming a downward-curved section that resembles a hook. As the platform catches fire and starts to crumble, Mira, still airborne, summons a big, concentrated fire pillar. The pillar engulfs the falling woot woots, burning them to their ends.

Wyn, quick to act, creates small cyclones and combines them with Yu’s water fountain to soften their landing as Anish’s wind abruptly fades. Without hesitation, Wyn unleashes horizontal cyclones from both hands, blowing away two woot woots into the forest. The remaining three on the ground emit a "wooooot wooot" sound, summoning nearby spooderfaces. The spider creatures, now preparing to be mounted by the woot woots, are more numerous than the woot woots. The unmounted spooderfaces shoot webs, while the rest lunge forward at the team. Wyn constructs rock pillars to block the webs and creates a maze for the advancing enemies. Yu, using his creativity, summons a fountain from the ground, trapping a woot woot and a spooderface within it. He extends the fountain, bends its tip into the rock maze, and maneuvers it through to sweep up the remaining enemies.

A few of the unmounted spooderfaces make it to the top of Wyn’s rock pillars. However, Wyn summons another pillar beneath himself and Yu to elevate them, avoiding Yu’s water. The spooderfaces then fire more webs at them. As Yu focuses on drowning the enemies within the maze, Wyn releases a powerful enveloping cyclone that destroys part of the maze and pulls Yu’s water along with it.

“I was working hard on that!” Yu exclaims.

“Sorry! Didn’t think that far ahead,” Wyn apologizes.

Wyn then releases two cyclones, each containing a chakram. Both hit the standing spooderfaces, killing them on impact. The woot woots, which had been submerged and sucked into the cyclone, rise again, though their spooderface counterparts lie lifeless on the ground.

“So hard to kill these things with water!” Yu complains.

Before the battle resumes, a rapier thrusts into a woot woot, causing ice to form around the wound. An ice punch follows, chipping away at the frozen wound. It appears the naked man is back, but still bound by locks on his wrists and ankles.

Wyn finishes off another woot woot with a descending cyclone carrying the chakrams, while Yu’s water-boosted crescent blade takes down the last one. One of the woot woots previously blown away returns to the fray, only to be caught in Mira’s fire pillar.

“I killed the other one you sent into my direction in the forest,” the man says.

“Then that should be all!” Wyn responds.

“Woot woot! You’re the man, Mira!” Yu shouts, giving Mira a virtual high-five as she’s still airborne.

The woot woots live in a tight-knit community, though disputes over how to butcher their prey sometimes lead to conflicts. Losers of these disputes either find a new group or establish their own. Instead of dying, old woot woots transform into tree logs when they reach a certain age. Unbeknownst to Wyn and team, destroying tree houses or restraint tables grants essence equivalent to the number of retired woot woots.

The team regroups. While they marvel at Anish’s evolved two-headed javelin, the man asks them to find the key. Anish and Mira retrieve the key from the chief’s tree house and free him. He quickly changes into a pink polo shirt, white chino shorts, and clean-white sneakers.

The young man introduces himself as James but doesn’t mind if the team calls him by his last name, Landon. James, with his white skin, is between skinny and lean. His dark brown, broccoli hair frames a slightly chiseled face, and his blue eyes are set beneath dark eyebrows. Standing at one hundred eighty centimeters, he dwarfs Wyn’s one sixty-five. According to him, his party of three entered the fairy circle during a woot woot sacrifice. He was the only one caught by a web while the rest fled after realizing they were outnumbered. His party membership status now shows he’s been kicked out.

“They know I’m still alive and yet…”

“Tough luck with the wrong people,” Wyn says.

“Can we go back to the campsite? I want to rest before we go anywhere else.”

“Errr, ‘we’?” Wyn questions.

“Yes, I’m following you guys.”

“NO! No, you aren’t!” Wyn insists.

“Think about it, Wyn. He’s white, male, and gorgeous down there. He’s a rare item these days,” Mira points out.

James and Mira lock eyes for a moment. Mira then gazes intensely at James’ crotch, while James’ gaze lingers on Mira’s bust. After sharing essence equally with James in the hope he’ll leave them alone, Wyn directs the rest of his team to head toward the Mystical Land.