Down With The Gods

Somehow, the guests on the cruise ship are gradually turning into mindless zombies. Wyn, along with a few others, appears to be immune to the zombification. To make things even stranger, Wyn has a wristband capable of firing chain lightning at the press of a button. Hurriedly, he calls out to the unaffected passengers, urging them to take shelter in the supply room on the middle deck. As he fends off the horde, he encounters Yu and Mira, who also possess wristbands identical to his. An older gentleman, whose face is blurry but bears a strong resemblance to Anish, tackles the zombies at the front to save a woman and her child. However, due to the sheer number of flesh eaters, no one can tap their wristbands quickly enough to save Anish. Before the supply room door can close, another horde crashes through the ceiling and falls directly onto the people inside. Chaos erupts.

“Why can’t I have normal dreams?” Wyn complains as he rubs his eyes.

He waits out the alarm clock for a few hours before it finally goes off. After regrouping on the lower floor of Wyn’s tent, Yu fetches Christine. They then exit the campsite.

“Go for it, Landon. Call a dragon,” Wyn says.

“Isn’t that a bit overkill? Can’t we go for something less expensive but still cool?” James pleads.

“You see, I NEED TO SEE A REAL DRAGON SO I CAN IMAGINE ONE!” Yu insists.

“Let’s hope it’s a longboi,” Wyn adds.

The wait time is massive – over twenty hours – giving James the chance to cancel the reservation. However, Wyn and Yu are determined. They’re willing to wait as long as it takes to see a dragon. They kick James out of the team, return to Wyn’s tent, set the alarm clock accordingly, and hold a mini party where they chat, play board games, sing, and dance – this time with a karaoke machine, courtesy of Anish. Wyn only moves rhythmically to the tunes while sitting, though he actively participates in the board games which he seems to dominate. Once the timer is up, they return to the ride waiting area where they find James lying on the ground, asleep. Mira wakes him up, and shortly afterward, the sky darkens. High above, a gigantic portal opens. Slowly descending is a dragon. The muzzled, long dragon hovers above the team, drawing a large crowd.

“So, this is what a real dragon looks like!” Yu exclaims.

A lone, seemingly bruised handler jumps down, then proceeds to throw each member up into a line of mounted seats situated behind the dragon’s head.

“What took you so long? And how did you open a portal in the sky?” Wyn asks.

“We had to tame a wild dragon first. As for the portal, is it not obvious why I came from the sky instead of the ground? Use your brain, yes?” the handler replies.

“There’s a dragon this big on this floor?” Wyn asks after flipping off both the demon and the laughing James.

“No, but there are some on the second floor.”

The cat handler pulls the reins, and the dragon soars into the sky. The creature propels itself through the air by swinging its body side to side in broad, sweeping motions, resembling a serpent’s movement. This method of flight quickly induces nausea in both Wyn and James. The speed is intense, making it impossible for anyone to enjoy the scenery from above. Thankfully, they reach their destination in less than an hour. Feeling that his catnips weren’t well spent, James, still suffering from motion sickness, asks the handler to fly back to the starting zone and then return to zone two again. Begrudgingly, everyone agrees, including the handler, who groans and rolls her eyes.

Back at zone two, Wyn and James request a short break.

“That’s how we feel inside your cyclone!” Yu remarks.

In the distance, they faintly hear a commotion coming from the west. Following the noise, the team reaches the edge of the Enchanted Forest, where a crowd has gathered. The Enchanted Forest is a place where massive, ancient trees intertwine their roots to form natural arches and pathways. There are trees with faces, although they remain silent, and hidden groves that lead to other parts of the forest. Flowers here glow in colors that reflect the elements of the nearest entity. The forest is said to be the original home of the woot woots. While it shares many of the same creatures found in the Meadow, it’s also inhabited by the unpleasant millipede-centipedes. Unable to see the source of the commotion due to his height, Wyn asks a man who’s literally walking upside down.

“Oi mate, a party’s challenging an elephan’t!” the man replies.

“Where is he from?” Mira asks, her gaze drifting toward the man’s privates.

“Aztria, not to be confused with Aztralia,” Wyn answers.

“How can you tell?” she questions.

“He’s upside down. That’s how they live. If it’s the teeth, then they’re Brats. If they’re like this guy but walk normally, then they’re New Sealanders.”

An elephan’t is a colossal creature, towering as high as the trees, with numerous trunk-like tentacles extending from its face. Each side of the trunk has three tusks: one curving upward, one straight, and one curving downward. Its body retains the familiar robust form of an elephant but with sharp, pointed spikes on each knee. The creature’s large ears are capable of flapping to generate gusts of wind. Despite its menacing appearance, the earth-and-wind creature yields less than three thousand essence. The description reads: “It’s unelephan’t for a dead one, not elephan’tn’t.”

The party of eight struggles to bring the elephan’t down. With help from the onlookers, the creature is finally defeated, becoming unelephan’t. A nasty argument over how to split the essence follows, prompting one of them to call for a dispute. Wyn and his team leave before the nerds arrive and continue on to the Luminous Glade.

The Luminous Glade is a serene, radiant area where the ground is covered in bioluminescent grass. The trees have glowing bark and leaves that emit a warm yellow and blue light. Orb-shaped flowers illuminate this dark area, providing ample vision. Catnip trees are plentiful. The same river that flows through the Whispering Meadow and the Enchanted Forest cuts through the center of the Luminous Glade, glowing with the light of the creatures swimming beneath. The creatures here are more peaceful; in fact, many are shy and flee at the sight of a soul.

Wyn tries to fight a glimmering deer – its entire sparkling body transparent with glowing antlers – but it manages to escape. A nest of moon rabbits, round white creatures shaped like moons, rolls away as they hear Wyn and his team approaching. The flying lanterns shoot out a stream of lava from their bottoms before they drift higher into the air, fleeing.

While the rest of the team is busy chasing after creatures and collecting catnip pouches, Christine pulls James aside for a private chat.

“Do you, like, want to form a new team with me?” she asks.

“Eh? What’s wrong with this team?”

“The leader doesn’t, like, care about our safety in battles. He’s always trying to pick fights with strong creatures. You know he, like, killed himself and doesn’t care about losing his life down here.”

“Whoa, really? What about the others?”

“Well, there’s a sex fiend, a pervert, and an immature child.”

“Hey! I’m a sex fiend myself, eh. What about you? And why me?”

“I just want, like, a new team. Becoming an original member would give me more say in who we choose to keep,” Christine answers, intentionally ignoring James’ first question.

James doesn’t respond. He stands beside Christine in silence, observing the others. Yu, seeing Christine with James, feels uneasy. He calls her for a private chat of their own. Yu has been struggling to balance his time between Christine and his friends. Lately, he’s noticed that Christine has been unusually quiet, both toward the team and himself. Every time they rest at a campsite, Christine refuses to let Yu enter her tent, even when he genuinely just wants to check on her well-being.

“Your leader, like, he hates me. He, like, told me on the way to the beach,” Christine confides.

Yu has sensed the tension between Christine and Wyn, but he’s also noticed Wyn’s efforts to avoid outright conflicts with her.

“Both of us didn’t originally want to form a team with anyone else,” Yu starts, “but then we met all you wonderful people, and we just had to. Wyn’s like my big brother. I know he’s not a people person, so please give him some time to adjust.”

“He seems to, like, get along well with others,” Christine replies.

Yu hesitates, not wanting to mention that he’s the main reason Christine is even part of the team.

“Nah, he’s not getting along well with James either. Plus, it feels like…you’ve kinda taken me away from him.”

“WHAT?”

“Errr, that didn’t come out right,” Yu quickly backtracks. “I meant that I spend less time with him now that you’re around. Just give him a chance, okay? I’ll help.”

Christine isn’t entirely satisfied with Yu’s explanation, but their conversation ends on a lighter note when an unspecified bird creature mysteriously poops on Yu’s head. Wyn’s voice cuts through, calling the team to gather around a glimmering deer’s head he worked hard to track down.

“Gather before it disintegrates.”

Using the glowing antlers as a makeshift campfire, Wyn tries to catch up with the team. While most seem content with the current group, Christine and James remain quiet.

“I’ll have to see if this team is worth joining, eh,” James finally speaks.

“Didn’t you beg us to let you in?” Wyn retorts.

“You’ve been treating me like shit.”

“Maybe you deserve it.”

The two butt heads again, prompting Mira to intervene. She firmly suggests that Yu sing without his guitar to help calm everyone down, and Yu agrees. As the deer antlers finally vanish, Mira lights up the metal egg at the end of her whip and places it in the center of the circle.

“Landon, take the essence. If you’re sticking around, you might as well get stronger,” Wyn says.

James, caught off guard by Wyn’s rare display of kindness, has no snappy comeback. He quietly accepts the essence.

“Your fire is brighter than ever, Mira!” Wyn compliments.

The singing continues. Sitting in a fetal position, James rests his chin on his knees, eyes fixed on Mira’s whip. The rest of the team remains silent, letting Yu’s calming voice wash over them.