Chapter 11

Chapter 11

“So, Tesla, tell me again. Why exactly shouldn't we consider you an Outworlder?” Viktor said while white-knuckling his grip. He’d been on edge since the group fled the underground lab filled with catgirl assassins and Tesla’s inability to provide a smooth ride wasn’t doing any wonders for his nerves.

An onlooker might think the grip was indicative of anger considering it was wrapped around the hilt of his sheathed sword. The impression would only last until they looked up and saw the other hand gripping the ‘grab bar' above him. The one that Vik was specifically told to not call the ‘Oh shit’ bar, not that he’d ever had the inclination.

“Well, Viktor, I’m afraid my answer hasn’t changed. If me being an artificial intelligence attached to the mechanical, non-living, chassis of an automobile doesn’t convince you I’m not an Outworlder then nothing will,” Tesla’s voice droned out from the speakers installed in its body.

“If being unliving was a prerequisite for being labeled an Outworlder, we wouldn’t have had to deal with that transplanted Lich who was raising an army of zombified rabbits, would we?”

Even though the voice it had been programmed with was forcefully cheery, Viktor felt he could hear an undertone of exasperation.

‘Good. Let the automobile be as agitated as I am,’ Viktor thought to himself as the car slammed into another fallen branch and sent everyone inside bouncing around. He’d yet to be convinced the Tesla wasn’t driving poorly on purpose to fuck with him.

“Oopsie! Curb!” Princess Lataya said while giggling in the driver’s seat and clapping her hands.

Tesla followed up with another ‘honk’, which sounded like a fart noise, and the Princess giggled even more.

“Mr Viktor, I thought I already told you to leave Tesla alone. You know he’s under the protection of the crown now,” Princess Lataya finally got out after her laughter, reminding Viktor that she’d declared the automobile her personal court jester.

Naturally, that came with diplomatic immunity from anyone that wasn’t her or her late father. A shame he’d already passed, Viktor knew the king was never one for fart jokes.

The Tesla was shamelessly manipulating the princess with potty humor, something Viktor was going to have to put up with until she stopped finding it funny and let him slay the Tesla with the ‘semitruck summoning runes’ it was supposedly leading them to.

It’d be the Tesla’s second time dying to a semitruck, assuming it was truthful about the circumstances leading to it crossing over into their world.

“Look on the bright side, Viktor, at least you’re not wearing a skirt anymore. Though, I do think there’s something to be said about warriors in skirts,” Rose, the once-bandit, teased while waggling her eyebrows.

Truthfully, Viktor was thankful that the transformation caused by the runes dissipated upon contact with the sunlight. Something that happened almost instantly as Tesla had driven them away from the winding underground tunnels that made up the Catgirl lab beneath Lisarel.

The dull ache emanating from the runes that were now etched on the bones of his left forearm were a constant reminder of that specific misadventure and his new distaste for cats.

“How long until we can play dress up again?” Princess Lataya asked. She’d been the one person in the party that the transformation had no effect on, besides changing her clothes. They’d figured out that was due to the fact that she was already a Princess and, apparently, magical.

The second discovery was made by Tesla and was one of the primary ways the robot had ingratiated itself with the princess so quickly.

She apparently had a magical power to ‘use less’, a meta physical ability that seemed to lightly warp reality around her.

They’d already found a use for it as she sat in the front seat of the Tesla and allowed it to use less of its ‘battery’ to travel.

Telling the princess that they’d only have enough energy to get to their destination due to her innate magic, which she hadn’t even known she had, got their relationship off to a great start.

“I can’t know for sure, but it feels like the ability recharges itself with moonlight. I’m not sure if it needs to be a specific lunar phase or not, but we won’t be playing dress up until, at the very least, tomorrow,” Viktor answered, scowling outside of the window.

“Alright, we’re almost at our destination,” Tesla said.

“Turn right in 500 feet,” a monotone woman’s voice with a strange accent echoed out from the speakers that usually emitted Tesla’s voice.

“Oh! You have a girl voice too, Tesla?” Princess Lataya asked while not focusing on the issue at hand.

“What does it mean ‘turn right’? There’s a fucking river there,” Rose asked, slightly panicked.

“Your destination is on the right in 400 feet,” Tesla elected not to respond, allowing the new female voice to speak again.

“That’s so interesting, are Teslas amphibious as well?” Ornik, the toadkin ambassador asked with a tilted head.

“It doesn’t really matter if they are, because humans aren’t. Stop right now, Tesla!” Viktor demanded while trying to unsheath his sword. Something made difficult by the fact that the so-called ‘seat-belt’ wasn’t unclicking no matter how many times he pressed the release button.

“Relax, I’m following my GPS. It says we need to turn right so we will,” Tesla finally replied.

“Turn right in 100 feet,” the female voice echoed out again.

“If you have a girl voice does that mean that you can play dress up with us next time?” Princess Lataya asked.

“Do NOT turn into this river! We can’t breathe water, just let us out and we’ll investigate!” Viktor pleaded.

“Turn right now,” the female voice demanded.

“Good luck everybody! I turn now!” Tesla said before veering off of the land and into the river.

The moment of impact with the water was no less terrifying than Tesla’s usual driving, surprisingly. If anything, Viktor found it less terrifying because at least he knew he was going to die instead of just being left in suspense by the car’s usual antics.

“Oh, they are amphibious!” Ornik declared, happy that his human friends were not going to drown horrifically next to him.

Sure enough, the Tesla was able to drive along the bottom of the riverbed without much issue.

“My systems show that we have roughly thirty minutes of oxygen left to circulate before we have any problems. Our destination is roughly twenty miles away, down stream thankfully, so we should make it with air to spare,” Tesla said, ”We’ve got one small problem though.”

“Yeah?”

“My GPS didn’t mention that this river was salt water. That’s going to cause some problems with my battery, I think.” Tesla said.

“Salt river? This must be the river of Sosicopolis from that old map,” Ornik whispered, his voice suddenly filled with dread.”It would appear that I’ll be expiring just the same as you humans if the Tesla has issues. Salt water will rapidly dehydrate me and I won’t be able to stop my skin from absorbing toxic amounts of salt.”

“Not to worry! We’re already rapidly approaching our destination. My GPS says it’ll be dry, surely it won't lead us astray a second time!” Tesla said with its cheery voice.

Nobody in the party felt the need to continue with small talk after that proclamation though, so they continued their drive in silence as the Tesla kicked up clouds of sand.

After fifteen minutes of silence, a loud voice broke the gloomy atmosphere of the Tesla’s cab.

“You have arrived at your destination! How would you rate your journey?” the female voice with the weird accent yelled.

Sure enough, the Tesla began driving slightly uphill and entered a hidden cave of sorts on the bottom of the river.

The water parted ways as the vehicle pushed itself into a dry cavern that was lit only by the vehicles ‘head-lights’.

“We made it! Just in time, too, considering how low my battery is.”

“This is the hidden city of Semipolis?” Viktor asked, casting his eye around the cavern and seeing only pools of water. There was no infrastructure leading him to believe there was anything city-like about the cave. The seatbelt was finally able to be undone after the car ‘parked’ and he jumped out of the vehicle as soon as possible.

“No? The GPS brought us to the Hidden cave of Sosicopolis just like you asked,” Tesla replied, cheery as ever.

“I asked you to take us to the Hidden City of Semipolis,” Viktor replied, pulling his sword out of its sheath.

“Ah, it must have been autocorrect again. I can try to reroute us but I’m afraid that I don’t even have enough of a charge to get us out of the river again. You’ll have to swim without me.”

“That’s not an option, stop joking around, Jester! Ornik just said he’d die if he was submerged in this much salt water,” Princess Lataya spoke up.

“I’d very much like to not die,” the toadkin ambassador said.

“Well, we need to charge my battery then,” Tesla replied, seemingly not worried about its impending doom as Viktor slowly approached with his sword drawn.

Were it not for the automobile’s diplomatic immunity, he’d have already thrust his blade through it to test if it shared the same durability as Otherworlders.

“I’ve got an idea,” Rose said, skipping up past Viktor and rubbing her two coconuts together to create friction. Small sparks were visible as the fruits generated static electricity, slowly building in intensity before she pressed them against the hood of the Tesla.

“Clear!” she yelled for no apparent reason as the sparks of electricity leapt from her hands onto the car.

For a few moments nothing happened.

“Well?” Rose asked, getting ready to rub the coconuts together again.

“One moment. Yep, no. I’m afraid I’m on fire now,” Tesla replied with its happy sounding voice.

“What?”

“Ejecting battery,” Tesla replied, doors flying open as the battery cells that were located beneath the seats were jettisoned out into the cave, lightly smoking.

“Don’t worry! I’m a state-of-the-art model and equipped with an emergency battery in my hood. I won’t die for some time now,” Tesla replied as the smoking cells started burning in earnest.”I would suggest you remove the cells from the cave though, breathing in the lithium-ion fumes is found to lead to cancer in the state of California.”

The party didn’t question what that meant and quickly pushed the cells out of the cave into the salt water, where they continued to burn instead of getting extinguished.

It was twenty minutes of despondent staring at cave walls later that they finally found a way forward.

“Over here! This puddle of water is a tunnel!” Rose shouted, drawing attention to herself.

The discovery led to a few more minutes of arguing about the merits of starving to death trapped in a cave versus drowning in a potential dead-end tunnel before Viktor volunteered to check out the passageway.

The water-filled tunnel was around a hundred feet long and led to another air-filled cave, one filled with glowing mosses and more tunnels leading in various directions. He swam back to inform everyone.

“I’ll stay behind with the Tesla, come back for me if you find the time please,” Ornik was unable to go through the cave for a few reasons. First and foremost was because of the toxic salinity of the water. Secondly because his skin would secrete his hallucinogenic poison into the water, something he didn’t want to inflict upon his friends.

Getting the girls through the tunnel wasn’t too difficult, with Princess Lataya holding onto his shoulders as he swam them both and Rose following on her own.

The biggest downside was the loss of her coconuts, their buoyancy forcing her to leave them behind as they insisted on floating when she needed to dive.

“Now what?” Rose asked as the three of them stood in the new cave, dripping wet and looking at the various cave tunnels in the room.

The room itself was shaped like a cube, with a tunnel on the west, south, and east walls and a large flat wall with no visible impressions on the north.

“I guess we pick a direction,” Viktor said while using his runes to cast his ‘Chore’ spell and dry their clothes. Drying the laundry was one of the best chores to use the runes fore and, thankfully, the magic didn’t care much that they were still wearing the laundry.

The group explored the west tunnel and encountered a hallway filled with bipedal crabs. Were they any taller than two feet they might have been terrifying.

Instead, Viktor quickly dispatched the humanoid crabs with his sword while the Princess made faces of disgust and Rose made a face of contemplation.

“Do you think they taste like crab?” Rose asked, picking a corpse up by its leg and testing the texture of its shell with her fingers.

“Ew!” the princess replied. Viktor ignored them both.

At the end of the west tunnel was another chamber, one filled with clams. Behind them, a massive grinding noise made it known that a wall descended from the ceiling and trapped them in the room.

Viktor turned to figure out how to escape from the room, alongside Rose, and Princess Lataya stepped forward to mess with the clams.

He was unable to find a gap where the tunnel used to be, meaning he couldn’t use his sword like a lever to get them out.

“It’s a puzzle!” Princess Lataya said to nobody, since Viktor and Rose were both ignoring her while trying to suppress their rising panic.

Rose closed her eyes and knocked on various parts of the wall with her ear to it, as if trying to find a secret code or hidden button.

“Isn’t this too easy?” the princess said, causing Viktor to begin to turn around just in time to see her finish.

The twenty-three clams were all pried open, with the princess opening the final one as he looked. Each one contained a piece of sea shell and, after a moment of checking, Viktor reaized there were twelve identical pairs of shells.

“It was just a matching game, too easy!” Princess Lataya declared as the wall began ascending once more, allowing them to leave the chamber.

Viktor and Rose made eye-contact and came to a silent agreement to not mention their loss of composure.

“Good job, Princess,” Viktor said as they exited the room. When they re-entered the main chamber they realized the north wall had engravings upon it now, in the shape of a doorway.

“I wonder if there are more puzzles? Maybe eventually it’ll be a real door?” Rose said after investigating the new engravings and determining that they were just that, engravings.

“Only one way to find out,” Viktor said as the three of them went down the south tunnel.

They once again fought through a tunnel full of crab-like creatures and entered another chamber. The wall fell once more as they investigated the area. The cave itself was much larger, with a small platform in front of the entrance they came through a massive drop.

On the platform they were now standing, there were two designs carved into the floor, one of which was slightly raised and broken into squares.

“Oh! A puzzle box!” Princess Lataya said,”We have to slide the squares of the left puzzle around until it matches the picture on the right.”

“Makes sense. Looks like it's a picture of a crab, we just need to unscramble it and we can go. Easy enough,” Viktor replied.

“Do you hear that?” Rose asked, causing Viktor to listen carefully.

Flowing water.

Small holes opened up around the top of the cave and water began descending into the room, slowly filling it up.

“Looks like we’re on a timer,” Viktor turned to see that Princess Lataya was already most of the way through the puzzle.

There were twenty-four segments on the puzzle box with spaces for 5 rows and 5 columns of 5 each. She’d already gotten the first three rows to match the picture on the right and was now struggling with the fourth row.

It wasn’t until the water had filled half of the room that Princess Lataya finally remembered she was supposed to solve the bottom left four tiles rather than the fourth row. The last 5 were able to slot into place, leaving the bottom right corner of the puzzle blank, shortly after.

Which was just as well, because Viktor was becoming more and more convinced that he was going to drown the longer that time went on.

Rose and Viktor silently walked back down the now re-opened tunnel toward the main chamber while Princess Lataya profusely apologised for stressing them so. Her usual puzzle boxes were only 3x3, apparently, and a 5x5 had been a large step up for her.

The engraved door on the north wall was far more realistic after the second puzzle had been solved, almost looking like they could reach out and turn the handle.

That wasn’t the case though and they were forced to go down the last of the three tunnels, the east bound one.

Instead of a puzzle at the end of the tunnel, the group found a miniature colosseum filled with battling crab-like creatures.

Viktor dispatched every single crab in the room and, after making it abundantly clear that he was going to kill his friends, the room begrudgingly opened once more.

When the trio returned to the main chamber, the engraved door was a true door and they were able to open it and enter another room.

In the center of said room was a glowing yellow gemstone, floating gently above a small crack in the floor. Energy was palpable in the room.

“Hello? Can you hear me now?” a voice echoed through the room, originating from every angle at once.

Viktor swung out with his sword and was unable to break the gemstone. Instead, he batted it to the side as if it were a ball.

“Ow! Knock that off, let's talk like civilized people!” the voice demanded.

“People?”

“Yeah, I used to be people too. Until I died. I woke up while my soul was falling into this world. Apparently, I said some less-than savory things because whoever was in charge of picking my next body decided to stick me in a rock and drop me in a river instead.”

“You don’t look much like a rock to me, Outworlder,” Viktor said while getting ready to strike out at the gemstone again.

“I’m not, anymore at least. I spent a while tumbling through the river before I landed on that crack there in the center of the room. There was energy pouring out of it, energy from the World Core, and I started absorbing it. Eventually I got changed into this and I gained the ability to change my environment and make my own energy. That's how I built my dungeon, which you completed. Congratulations, by the way,” the gemstone said.

“Why would you build a dungeon?”

“For entertainment. Those crab creatures you were killing have been my only company for so long, I was hoping I could train one to be smart enough to converse with by having them solve puzzles. Unfortunately, they never got past the ‘fight until an obviously superior physical specimen appears’ phase. That's okay though, because you’re here to keep me company now!”

“Why would we keep an Outworlder company? Your kind causes nothing but chaos and strife in our world and we’re on a quest to figure out how to slay you all. Give me one good reason not to slay you where you lie, Rock,” Viktor said, spitting to the side.

“I’m probably too durable to get destroyed that easily, but I can help you. I’m super good at quests, one of the best really. I did a lot of them in my last life. Also my name is Sal, not rock. I picked it myself. It stands for Saltwater Aquifer Landlord, on account of the fact that I’m in charge of this region. Though if you move me I guess I’d have to pick a new name,” the citrine rock said.

“You can help? Do you know where Semiopolis is? The place where we can get the semi-truck summoning runes so that we can slay all of the Outworlders?” Viktor asked skeptically.

“Hell no, dude. That doesn’t even really make sense, why would you want to summon more things from Outworld to kill Outworlders? How do you know you wouldn’t get some magical sapient truck instead? How would you even kill that, an even bigger truck? Sounds like a good way to get stuck summoning bigger and bigger problems instead of solving the root,” Sal said.

“The root?” Viktor asked.

“Yeah, the root of your problem. The open floodgates that are allowing the Outworlders to get summoned here. Your World Core is leaking and it's like a fire in the night attracting us like moths. You gotta go patch up the leaks or you’ll get even more Outworlders even if you manage to slay the ones giving you problems now. Don’t worry, I can help you guys narrow down the location of World Core leaks if you want; I’m kind of attuned to the energy at this point and could point you in the direction with little more than a map,” the citrine gemstone said.

“That doesn’t change the fact that we need a weapon to slay the ones already here, or that we’re stuck in your dungeon with no way out since our Tesla ran out of power,” Rose cut in finally, tired of watching them talk in circles.

“A Tesla? No way, yall are already summoning cars? That's crazy, dude. Not to worry though, just toss me in the hood and I can power the thing. I absorbed enough of the World Core’s energy through that crack that I can make my own now. I can probably even take over the car’s system and talk through that. Don’t worry about the leaky World Core here, I sealed off the crack a long time ago because the energy started conflicting with my own,” the citrine gemstone said.

“I don’t think that Tesla would appreciate that, he already has two voices stuck in his body,” Princess Lataya said.

“Wait, it's already sapient?”

“Don’t worry about that, gemstone. We’ll just use you like a battery for now while we figure out our next steps. You’ll make for a durable battery at the very least, considering I can’t break you. As a matter of fact, I think we’ll call you DuraSal,” Viktor said before scooping up the citrine gemstone, now known as DuraSal, and headed back toward the Tesla.

Hopefully it was able to power the car and get them out of the river safely, they’d either need to figure out how to plug the World Core’s leaky spots or find the apparently nonexistent hidden city of Semiopolis for the Semi-Truck summoning runes.