The Search for Vanessa Hawthorne: Fangs of the Deep

Having resolved his breathing problem, John set to work. Switching to his armor was a no-brainer. Fortunately, that component of his inventory was still functioning and for a moment he was wearing dry clothes against wet skin. It didn’t last long. Next on the list was tracking down the damn locket. True to the description of Spell Focus, he was able to get a general sense of a location when he concentrated on the idea of it. Strangely, that direction was straight through the floor below the mirrors… and a long way away.

It wasn’t much to go on, so he relied on his system incorporating something every good game should have: quest objectives showing up on the world map. Fortunately, the Developer had thought of that. Though only the direct surroundings were penned in with any detail, at the very edge of the screen in the direction that John’s sense was pulling him was a small, blinking, white dot.

John took in a deep breath and rose from his sitting position, then swam towards the door to the bathroom and pushed it open. He’d seen many wonders of the Abyss in the last few days, but even amongst them the scenery on the other side was nearly breathtaking.

Beyond was a world torn between biomes; his immediate surroundings were reminiscent of ‘Pride’, but only to a point. Walls were overgrown with coral, such that it was impossible to tell where they ended and where the natural growth began. The proper entrance to the club was filled with more of the overgrown rocks that lay scattered about the floor. Fish aimlessly swam about the rusted stripper poles and about a gigantic hole in the structure where the stage should have been. There, the coral had formed around it like the shell of a gigantic barnacle. Light poured in through the opened gap from a distant surface.

His tracking sense pulled him outwards, through the hole, and John cautiously swam up to follow the trail… when his body seemed to vibrate. There was no specific reason to be afraid, and yet his skin tingled with instinct, his blood running ice cold. Every muscle in his body was screaming to hide. It dawned on him that the fish had all disappeared.

A shadow of something gigantic crossed by the opening.

It was impossible to make out precise detail in the sudden gloom, but where light pierced through John saw ridged scales, fins and finally a long, muscled tail. Whatever it was, it looked distressingly like a monstrous crocodile… or a dinosaur. It was a little of both.

Dire Mosasaurus
Level 46 Beast
A larger, more violent version of the undisputed ruler of the Late Cretaceous seas, evolved further due to the fierce competition of the Everdeep. Its jaws are powerful enough to tear through flesh, bone, rock and most metals.
2,217/2,217 hp
291/315 mp

Conditions met for special event.

Advanced Barrier ~ Predation
This environment contains an apex predator that you cannot overcome at your current level. You must avoid detection while you complete your objective. Do not attempt to directly confront the predator.
Bonus Reward: Undertow Research, Fang of the Deep Sea

John tried to move as slowly as possible into the shadow of the nearest bit of rubble and waited for the monster to pass by. Only when he saw the triangular shape of the creature’s fluked tail go past did he cautiously swim out from cover, and even then he gave it a couple minutes until the other fish came out of hiding to swim up to the exit.

The club was perched half-buried above a ruined city that lay at least sixty or seventy meters below the distant surface above. Amidst the broken buildings were the hulks of ravaged ships, some archaic wood and others more modern metal. One huge freighter stuck out of the sea wall to his left as though it’d been impaled there by a vengeful god, piercing all the way up to the surface above. Several gigantic holes had been punched into the structure, showing rust-riddled innards.

He looked around for the Mosasaurus, catching the motion of a finned shape moving towards the city below. It seemed to be headed away from the surface… but the light above was so distant that John didn’t like his odds crossing that much space with no cover. He’d be practically begging to be eaten. Besides, his senses called him further down.

On the far edge of the city, the buildings seemed paradoxically more recent and also older, made of wood rather than crumbled concrete and rebar. Skeletons of leafless trees cast strange shadows over wooden huts with roofs of mismatched slates. A belltower rose above the rest from the stone structure of a church. It looked like an archaic European village. Beyond even that… was an expanse of pure black.

It was as though the town was settled on the side of the sea or a great lake, a rippling layer of shadow that stretched out into the distance until he could see it no longer. John wasn’t sure what he was looking at, an ocean underneath the surface or a mirage of some sort. Whatever the reality, it was somewhere in that murk that his way out lay.

Ok, this won’t be too bad. I just have to cross an underwater city while a gigantic crocodile-shark-monster wants to eat me alive and then take a dip into the dark to find that stupid necklace. Easy.

John’s heart hammered in his chest.

Fine. It’ll be fine. I can do this… I can do this.

Checking to make sure the Mosasaurus had gone out of sight, John slipped out of cover and began to swim after it towards the ruins below. For five endless minutes, he swam in the open with no cover to shelter his **** body, exposed to the world and anything that might look up at him. The cold pressure of the water clung to his body and welcomed him deeper. A current breezed past like the wind, stirring up the sparse vegetation that grew from the cliff rocks.

He allowed himself to land on his feet as he arrived at the edge of the sunken city. It wasn’t possible to walk underwater, but his body unnaturally sank, allowing John to make short leaps and then drift for a while as his weight brought him back down. Here at the edge of the ruins, broken glass and metal glinted in the filtered sunlight: the remains of modern-looking buildings. Almost everything had been savagely torn apart, though by what he couldn’t tell. Brightly colored fish circled a bent streetlight, and a crab scuttled over the shards of a window.

John kicked off the ground, stirring up a bit of sand, and allowed himself to fall down the incline of the cracked asphalt towards another flat part further out. He drifted up and over a coral formation, only realizing it was a rusted car when he glanced back. The license plate read ‘Springfield’. The state identification was too badly marred by the damage, but John had no doubts where it had been drawn from. In fact, as he continued down the street he began to recognize where he was. It was a facsimile of the Ruby Road…

The schools of fish suddenly dispersed, and John instantly recognized why. Even before he saw the shape, he heard the creature. A noise somewhere between a rumble and growl reverberated through the water. The Mosasaurus was back. Scales rippled at the edge of his vision, between two of the buildings on his right. A current of electricity ran down his spine, and a hit of adrenaline coursed through his system; why had he thought it’d be safe to go down the middle of the damn street?

On his left there were only shattered shells of high rises, but on the right was a small corner shop overgrown with kelp. While the oceanic dinosaur circled the building, John swam for his life towards it and took cover behind one of the displays. Several fish had the same idea, peeking out from between cans or the shadows beneath the shelves at the kelp blocking the doorway. As one, they all froze as a shadow drifted past the entrance.

For several long seconds, John covered his mouth with one hand to keep from exhaling. He couldn’t afford to give the beast even a hint of his presence. When the creature moved on with a parting rumble, the fish around his hiding spot all scattered as John let out a painful cough and inhaled frantically. Bubbles trickled up to bump against a layer of colored plastic against the ceiling of the store. He blinked. Dozens of floating potato chip bags covered the ceiling.

The sight of something recognizable arranged in such an unusual fashion was eerie, but a part of John recognized the opportunity in front of him. Floating bags meant air, and that meant more time to search. He tore each one open and collected the burst of oxygen that spewed forth from each before leaving the store, pushing his remaining time up by a half hour. It wasn’t as much as he’d hoped, but it was better than nothing.

Slowly and cautiously, sticking to the back alleys where he could and avoiding the attention of the circling Mosasaurus, John managed to reach the terminus of the city in just under an hour. The methodical approach had prevented any further encounters and rewarded a level in Concealment that he’d put to use immediately, or tried to at least. It wasn’t clear just how much the skill had contributed to his survival.

Wooden shanties continued from this point onwards, until they reached the edge of the underwater lake. John ducked into the shadow of the first one and assessed the change in situation. The tightness of these buildings and the strange chaotic rooftops would provide better cover from the roaming predator that was currently circling the tallest remaining skyscraper a few blocks back, but if the Mosasaurus sniffed him out, then they wouldn’t do much to get in his way.

He’d need to be extra careful.

Creeping through a tight, barnacle laden alleyway, he was once again eerily fascinated by the oddity of this place. These buildings weren’t as well built or maintained as modern architecture, but they looked lived in. He pushed past a line of hanging clothing and drifted out into a wide courtyard. A stone statue loomed in the middle like the ones he’d seen in Ulthar. Only instead of featuring cats, this one was of a twisted mess of humanoid and fish. The creature stood hunched on two legs and had one arm reaching up in supplication to the sky or surface. Its ribs were visible against the frame of its body, and the face resembled a human… but that was where the similarities ended. Fins sprouted from the thing’s arms and legs, though he mistook them for seaweed at first. The eyes were too big, bulging and rounded like the glassy eyes of a fish, and the mouth stretched horribly widely with pointy, thin teeth. An engraving around the base read ‘-he Esoteric Orde-’, but John was too horrifically entranced to read the rest.

What the actual fuck is that thing?

Boa oeh nuk nifrwpwej kvwh Nceuox!

John backed away instinctively from the abominable effigy, tangling himself in the clothesline behind him. He panicked immediately. One of Lerna’s Jaws snapped into his hands, and he tore into the line with desperation until he’d shredded it into bits. The clothes drifted about, several floating up and over the rooftops. In amongst them something caught his eye: the reflection of himself in the window of the nearest shack. Something was off… about it.

The reflection’s bulbous eyes blinked.

Vuxtnfehfrdtnse! La, Oo, n vaifviiis srr zvr gekdsdtnse!

It was impossible to keep the outburst of bubbles back as a deformed body pressed itself to the window of the shack, the form of one elongated arm horrifically visible. John didn’t think or hesitate, he just swam. Away from the thing behind the window, away from the grotesque statue and whatever twisted creature it depicted, desperately trying to reach his goal. Half-visible nightmares of spindle-limbs and lurid dome-eyes appeared in every window along his path, only compelling John to swim faster and more desperately. The monstrosities were all around him, chasing him, they-

He felt a vibration against his skin. The Mosasaurus! In his flight, John had alerted the beast to his presence! The realization snapped him out of the fear he’d been mindlessly following, and a blinking window helped him focus.

Horror status overcome! You are now immune to mind-altering effects for 2:23.

John’s mind did its best to process the information as he looked around for somewhere to hide. The phantom limbs and eyes he’d seen in the windows had only been drifting seaweed, twigs and deformations in the glass; the monsters had all been in his head. All but one: the Mosasaurus was no hallucination.

He found a narrow alleyway, concealing himself in the shadows beneath two overlapping awnings, and not a second too soon. The water surged as the shadow of the predator passed directly overhead, the lower tail fluke knocking a shingle from one of the rooftops. This close, when the beast let out a rumble, the volume was overwhelming, and though John tried to cover his ears, it did nothing. His bones shook painfully, and the glass of the nearest window cracked. A cloud of silt burst into the air and covered everything.

John remained curled up in the murk, eyes shut as the monster searched for him, waiting for a sign the monster had moved on. Only when the vibrations diminished to a tingle on his skin did he open his eyes. That had been too close. Way too close. Why the fuck had he ever thought this would be easy? This was insanity! He couldn’t do this, nobody in their right mind could possibly do this! He couldn’t! It was suicide! It was, he knew that as a fact, and yet...

The glowing bar hovering perfectly visible in the murk reminded him that he had only one hour left.

If I stay here and just keep hiding, I’ll drown. Game over. The end. Rest in pieces.

It was a simple thought, not a motivational one or a heroic call to action, but just a simple, painful truth. He could gamble his life on a hope that the monster gave up eventually, or… there was one other path forward, really. Erica wasn’t coming to rescue him, there wasn’t time. Neither was Moira or Trynity or Adorabelle or anyone. There was one person who could get him out of this… only one.

Desperation forged on the anvil of iron will turned to determination; the only person who could, the person who had to step up was himself. No matter how terrifying the situation was, he had to face it. No matter what it became, he had to find a way out. He’d managed to get this far… he couldn’t give up now. Not as long as he still wanted to live, and John rather enjoyed being alive.

I have to go back out there.

That decision spurred his sore muscles to action and allowed John to push himself up from the ground. Mud and sand clung to his clothing and skin, slowly falling back down. He savored the feeling, imagining it to be the cowardice and fear holding him back, and when it was all gone, he swam out of the alleyway.

Behind him, a missed message lingered in the dark.

Skill Rank Overload!
Fear Resistance ~ 2 -> 4
Removes the action penalty while affected by Horror.