The Search for Vanessa Hawthorne: Facing Fears

Fortunately for John, the Mosasaurus had moved far enough away from where he was that he wasn’t in any immediate danger. Unfortunately, the beast had decided to roam the edge of town, putting it directly between him and the locket. Out there, John would have no cover to hide behind and nowhere to run to if the predator spotted him. He had to deal with it somehow first.

Trying to kill it was out of the question. Sneaking by was too dangerous without a distraction. Hiding until it went away could be fatal… but those weren’t the only options. He couldn’t win in a fair fight, but who said the fight had to be fair? All he needed was to keep it busy for a little while, to level the playing field somewhat… and when his eyes landed on a warehouse at the edge of town, he saw his opportunity. Swaying behind the window was a shape that perfectly matched a village like this: the messy, knotted ropework of a fishing net.

John sank back down beneath the rooftops and continued his approach towards the drop-off and the Mosasaurus, picking his way uncomfortably through the tight spaces between buildings.
The shells of barnacles tore at his armor, ripping thin cuts into the cloth portions of his pants and tunic. One particularly nasty one slashed across his arm. -9 hp.

God damnit! Fuck, that hurts. Ow...

A bit of blood trickled out of the cut and into the water, to John’s surprise. Normally, Gamer’s Body should prevent that sort of damage…

You have been afflicted with Bleeding (Minor) for 1:13!
-2 hp per minute.

That explained it. Statuses seemed to override the normal protections his ability gave; he’d need to be careful with his knives or anything else that dealt bleeding damage. At least it hadn’t been septic or something much worse. The bleeding would stop shortly; it wasn’t anything he needed to worry about for now, just an annoyance. Sure enough, by the time he reached his destination, the wound had closed completely.

Getting into the warehouse was easy enough; the side door was unlocked and the interior had been flooded a long time ago… but navigating inside was nightmarishly tense. It was so murky that only the light coming in from the grime-stained windows cut through the dark. Shadows cast by the hanging nets overlaid everything with an eerie pattern that swayed with every motion and current.

John swam amidst the dark, searching through the curtains of rope for a net large enough to work, grabbing onto the smaller ones to launch himself towards the ceiling. He drifted up through an opening to the attic-like second floor, where the largest of the windows looked out over the ruined hamlet. As he let himself sink back to the landing, John paused to wipe a hand against the algae-covered glass.

The Mosasaurus was nowhere in sight, which was strange, but he wasn’t lured into a false sense of security. Wherever it had gone, the predator hadn’t given up. It had to be lurking somewhere. Searching for any sign of the beast, John’s eyes roamed the slumped rooftops of the buildings and the edge of the town. One in particular stood out, the wreckage of an old ship crashed against a collapsed dock. He’d seen the ship’s mast earlier, sticking out above the rest of the shanties like a monument… or a gravestone amidst a drowned cemetery. What he hadn’t been able to spot from the previous position was the gigantic fishing trawl that draped over the side and dipped down into the blackness beneath the drop-off. It looked almost as though it were docked and fishing in an underwater bay…

Maybe that’s what this place had been, or was? It wasn’t clear to John if the village had been dragged into the barrier somehow or was impossibly natural to this place. His gaze fell to the optical illusion of a sea beneath the surface. Somewhere beneath that black pool, deeper down, was his goal. He was getting close now; the locket was almost within reach. His fingers shivered with anticipation. John stared for a moment longer, simply reveling in the otherworldly view. Without the Mosasaur around, this place was strangely… beautiful.

He felt the rush of excitement again… no, wait. The glass against his fingers was rattling with vibrations.

John kicked back away from the glass and reached out to grab the closest net as a shadow eclipsed the light entering the building. The horrid noise he’d come to associate with the predator rattled the window frame as a malevolent orange eye blinked beyond the threshold.

How the fuck does it know where I am? It shouldn’t have any idea I’m in here!

Moving as slowly as possible, John pulled the nearest net over himself and stared back at the searching eye, waiting for the moment the Mosasaurus recognized him… but after a minute the dinosaur backed away. John breathed a sigh of relief.

It must’ve just been a lucky guess… I’m safe.

Then the creature charged.

Glass and wood exploded inwards as the Mosasaurus’ jaws smashed through the wall and snapped inches away from his hiding spot. John struggled to untangle the net he’d wrapped around himself as they opened to show row after row of curved teeth. As they loomed closer, he grabbed the rope in one hand and prayed what he was about to try would work. It disappeared as he shoved the item into his inventory, freeing his legs to kick him away from the hungry mouth. As he narrowly avoided having his legs ripped off, John held out a hand and recalled the net from his inventory.

Coils of rope exploded from the space in front of his fingers, whirling outwards as they expanded towards his enemy. The result was more effective than he could’ve ever hoped. The material contracted around the Mosasaurus’ closed jaws, entangling it thoroughly. If John hadn’t pissed the thing off enough before, now it wanted nothing more than his demise. Both eyes locked on him as the beast thrashed against the too-small hole of the former window and its jaws strained against the rope binding it. Several strands stretched and snapped. It wouldn’t hold the Mosasaur for long.

John grabbed the nearest net and cast it over the monster in the same fashion but with much less success. The second attempt bounced off one side of the predator’s head and sank down towards the floor. He needed something much bigger if he was going to restrain the thing for good.

Stashing two more nets on his way down to the first floor, John turned and booked it for the door he’d come through. He made it halfway down the street before the upstairs of the warehouse exploded. The Mosasaurus, with a few strands of loose rope tangled painfully around its body emerged, snapping the net around its mouth in one move. John stared in terror as the monster thrashed its body and tail, and his eyes widened as he realized the thing was stuck. Two or three of the nets had wrapped around the flukes of the dinosaur’s tail, and with it restrained there wasn’t much the beast could do to escape… not unless it could pull the entire upper floor of the building free.

A powerful flick of the Mosasaurus’ tail tore several ropes free, and John’s body kicked back into action. He swam straight for the boat, ignoring the cover and hiding spots offered by the huts and buildings. The time he had until the predator broke free was a precious and valuable commodity that shouldn’t be wasted, and now that the beast had shown a capability to track him, it wasn’t safe to take the slow route anyway.

His body burned with the effort he’d spent to get this far, but that was no reason not to continue to give it his all and John swam as fast as he could towards the ship. He could hear wood cracking and the enraged beast trying to smash its way free behind him with every passing second, and the sounds drove him to push himself even harder. One hand reached out towards the fishing trawl, and as his fingers closed in on his goal, he heard the warehouse give way completely.

Now if I can get that monster tangled up in this, maybe… oh. Fuck. Me.

You cannot store an item this large!
Combined items must be separated before they can be stored!

John had never tried to put anything as big as the fishing trawl into his inventory before, and only now he realized that hole in his plan. Without hesitation, he called up a pair of daggers and started hacking away at the rope, intent on cutting it down to a smaller size. If he could separate it from the ship, then maybe, maybe it’d work!

Behind him, the Mosasaurus blitzed across the distance, closing it in a fraction of the time that it had taken John. The water shook with the predator’s battlecry and the fury it intended to unleash upon him.

Smaller… it has to be a bit smaller...

He turned to see the approaching apex predator, one hand still grabbing the fishing trawl tightly. Fragments of wood peppered the beast’s body, and little rivulets of blood poured out into the water from its wounds. In its open jaws he could see a broken tooth. Pure, uninhibited hatred burned in the monster’s eyes.

The first of the two nets he’d grabbed in the warehouse was torn to shreds by a single bite, and the second one only bounced off the scales on the side of its snout, but they slowed the Mosasaurus down slightly, and that was enough.

A massive explosion of rope appeared from the end of his left hand. The edges launched outwards, spreading across his entire vision and creating a wall between him and the Mosasaurus. The creature ran headfirst into it, but the outer edges were too far away to be pulled inwards quickly enough. John stared at the open jaws a few feet away, and things seemed to slow as they exclipsed everything else.

He needed to collapse the net. The idea flashed through John’s mind like lightning, and without truly considering the consequences, he attempted to slot the water inside of the beast’s mouth into his inventory. Several feet of it just in front of his fingers vanished instead.

Items in use cannot be obtained. Targeting was altered to the nearest neutral units. Please respect the personal space of others, John.

The instant vacuum pulled in water to fill it, enough to pull the ends of the net inwards towards the beast, but also enough to pull John. He was yanked forward as the Mosasaur’s jaws snapped shut, luckily avoiding having his arm taken off but not without cost. His wrist and arm twisted painfully, and the sudden change in pressure warped and broke his fingernails and ripped the skin from his fingertips. His chest impacted heavily against the predator’s snout, and the resulting transfer of momentum threw him backwards like a rubber band, slamming his back against the hull of the ship.

He could not only feel his bones break on impact, he felt the very sound of them snapping. The pain momentarily ripped away his consciousness, causing John to black out, but he was denied even that brief respite as another agonizing moment brought him right back to painful reality. A number flashed in front of his eyes: -103 hp!

Severe Impact Damage Sustained!
You are now afflicted with Broken Bones (Ribs, Sternum, Left Ulna, Left Carpals, Lumbar Vertebrae, Ilium, Right Scapula)!
You are now afflicted with Sternum Fracture (Major)!
You are now afflicted with Spinal Fracture (Lumbar Vertebrae)!
You are now afflicted with Internal Bleeding (Severe)!
-24 hp per minute.

The Mosasaur was no luckier, coils of netting digging into its skin as the trawl entangled its body completely and weighed the beast down. Despite frantic thrashes of its powerful tail and snapping at the coils of rope, the dinosaur was dragged away from John’s drifting body until it crashed heavily through the roof of a shanty. Sand and debris floated up as the beast continued to flail against its prison.

John tried to shake his head, but the pain was too intense to move, pure throbbing agony threatening to knock him **** again. Yet even through the pain, a sense of elation lifted his spirits. He was alive! Battered, bruised and possibly broken, but alive! Seeing his scaled nemesis trapped and unable to move was satisfying in a way that nothing else could be, though he felt like he was going to vomit out his intestines.

The internal trauma of the impact was bad, very, very bad. He had no way to see what had happened, but based on the status effects that he’d made out, one of his ribs had **** its way through his stomach or something worse. He had maybe minutes to live if he didn’t do something. John recognized all this through a haze of fading adrenaline, clinging to the determination that had brought him this far to carry him another step further. His hands couldn’t move, and he could barely vocalize the word, but neither were needed to reach inwards for the Radiance he’d gained in Ulthar.

Brilliant orange light glowed through his clothes, seeping out from open wounds and patching up the worst of the damage. A spike of pain ran through him as one of his ribs re-aligned itself and clicked back into position, followed by another as his left ulna set itself, then the fractures in his lower spine… but it wasn’t enough. Before all the damage could be repaired, the light faded and he was left a host of serious injuries and mind-fraying agony.

Internal Bleeding (Severe) has been reduced to Internal Bleeding (Minor).
-6 hp per minute.

Fighting through it, he opened up his inventory and scrolled to the item he’d hoped to never use, now eternally grateful he’d stashed it anyway. The injector was easy to open, and in his state there was no hesitation before John stabbed the pointy end into his thigh. A tiny prick of pain, virtually insignificant amidst the rest, was all he felt before a rush of soothing euphoria started to spread. Every ache and muscle burn, the soreness built up by an hour of swimming and the impact all bled away. Not only that, but the warm and fuzzy sensation that replaced it felt good… safe… comfortable. Which was why he knew it was wrong.

Status Effect Gained: Painkillers ~ A++
30% damage reduction from physical sources.
-20% Intellect.
-40% Wisdom.
(4:59:53 remaining)

Warning! Consumed substance is highly addictive. Repeated usage will result in permanent consequences.

A part of John’s mind reached through the haze of the **** to seize control of his body once again, moving his limbs sluggishly as he fought against the sedation. It was a struggle to keep himself from succumbing to the allure of the pain relief, but by focusing every bit of his conscious thought on his goal, John managed. The locket. He needed to get the locket back so he could get out of here. Then he could rest. If his current state was any indication… he’d sleep for a week once he was home.

The Mosasaurus’ bull rush had thrown him into the ship so hard he’d cracked several boards, and as he let himself drift down from it, he left a distinctly John-shaped mark in the hull. A dozen meters away, the monstrosity hadn’t stopped struggling, though its attempts to escape had only resulted in entangling itself further in the confines of the net. The creature’s orange eyes glowed through the haze of silt that had kicked up about its body and seemed to stare directly into John’s soul. With the elation of the morphine running through his veins, John gave the thing a little wave before drifting slowly towards the ruined docks.

Some twenty, maybe thirty meters out, the structure had given out, but it still stretched out a significant ways over the drop off. John let his body sink to settle on one of the furthest boards and looked out at the seemingly endless ocean. From this point onwards, only a vast emptiness stretched out in every direction, above a quiet darkness that formed the surface beneath the waves. Somewhere far beneath his feet, the locket called to him. It was close now.