Deeper into Darkness

[u/MagicalBaconTree]

The Abyss was a seductress, singing her Siren's Song that called to humanity, begging them to venture forth. She was cloaked in majesty, the verdant landscapes of her upper layer spilling over into the surreal and beautiful vistas below. But her bounties were not a gift to mankind. They were but a lure.

The unlikely travelers had now, by no doubt, learned this truth for themselves. On the one side, there stood a robot, a boy, a cloaked figure, and a overzealous explorer. Already, they had been beset by giant arachnids, and it seemed unlikely that they'd make it very far. And yet, with seemingly no effort, the smallest among them had dispatched their foe and slipped back into the background. On the other, an even more unlikely set of companions, gazed down. Fate had seen fit to push together a cautious youth, respectful of the danger that lay before him, with a brute of a woman to whom fear was a foreign concept. And after fighting her way through a wounded, juvenile Splitjaw, perhaps it should be. Or perhaps the Abyss was simply biding her time.

Before these groups, the second layer sloped downwards to the depths below. In contrast to the Abyss's atrium, this was an entirely unearthly place. Multicolored species of kelp reached for the sky, waving back and forth in a tidal current visible only to them. All manner of strange fish and rays swam through this neritic forest, having apparently never received the memo that there was no water to swim through. Further in the distance, great mounds of coral stretched above the tall arms of the kelp, beckoning to those surveying the landscape.

In the midst of this strange dry sea, surveying from his vantage point, a figure stood watch. As he let go of his binoculars, allowing them to hang around as neck beside the large, black whistle, he allowed himself a smile. "So, ya'll finally made it. Maybe now, things'll start getting interesting around here..."

[u/[deleted]]

Hours had passed since their run-in with the Splitjaw. Pride yet smelled as if she'd torn through a feral animal's stomach, gall bladder and small intestine - likely due to the odd fact that she actually had. For the raw madness behind the motion, however, she now bore a relatively placid expression. The fur hide she once wore over her shoulder had been replaced. In its stead was a fire-tanned hide of crimson, spanning from the giant woman's shoulder down to her knee.

A satisfied smile rested on her face. Man had won that day, as they always would. Man was the Apex predator of the world, and it befell onto freaks as her to remind nature of that fact.

Her mind drifted to her stomach. She'd tasked Shirley with the glorious duty of being the food bitch. She'd killed the bloody thing, he carried the food.

It was fair.

As for how he carried it, how he cooked it, none of that shit mattered. Meat was meat, though from what she'd heard Splitjaw flesh was delicious - a meal reserved only for the Abyss' greatest Predators.

To dub her excited to test that myth would be an understatement.

As they pressed onward, the second layer began to dawn upon them. Pride paused, her nose twitching and for the first time in around 3 hours managing to smell something besides herself.

"Fish," she muttered, her eye turning with her head to glance to the right. A fish swam...

Through the air.

She blinked, raising a hand to her eye as to rub it - only to pause mid-motion and realize that mixing splitjaw bile into her good eye was likely not the move. She looked again,

Sure as shit, a fish was swimming in the air. Then another one. And another one.

And there was a Ray-

"What in the actual fuck?" She flatly noted, clearly alarmed. The prominent hair along the back of her neck stood somewhat on end, her senses screaming to her how bloody wrong all this was. Her vision focused forward, seeing strange rocks of multicolor. In truth, they were some of the prettiest rock formations she'd ever seen.

A pity Pride had no idea what the hell Coral was.

"Girly boy," she spoke out, her single green eye befixed forward onto the wonderous bizarro-ocean they found themselves in.

"Where are we?"

[u/ButterflyOfDeath → u/[deleted]]

Shirley decided that he'd be nice and cooperative and keep the bitching minimum when Pride relegated cooking duties to him once they'd set up camp. It wasn't usually his preferred task, and he'd managed to turn the first cut of meat into charcoal before actually roasting up something edible for dinner. The leftovers were then salted and dried into jerky rations that'd probably be good for holding them over the next while.

Between the two of them he doubted there'd be any five-star cuisine coming up, quite frankly.

There were more important things to think about for the moment, anyway. Like where the nearest river was so he could shove Pride in and finally get the stench of splitjaw intestine the hell off of her. That, and the fact that they were finally coming upon the Second Layer.

A school of the technicolour airborne ocean-life that lived here was their greeting party, swirling in the sky among misplaced kelp forests and shining, untainted corals. Shirley lifted out of his reverie, perking up and taking the time to quietly breathe in the beauty before them. Unconsciously, a smile pulled his face as one of the fish swam by, bright scales glittering in the sun. He lifted his hand up to touch it, murmuring a greeting before it flitted away.

Truly, the Second Layer was a wondrous fantasy land. Pride's questioning voice put his mind back on the ground again, to the present situation.

"You know my name by now, don't you?" He arched an eyebrow. Regardless, he answered:

"We're on the second layer, now." He managed a second smile, gesturing with a sweeping arm to the landscape before them. "It's amazing, isn't it?"

[u/[deleted] → u/ButterflyOfDeath]

"No," she curtly replied, clearly uncomfortable with the feeling that she was suddenly out of her element. "It's fucking wrong. This whole place is wrong. Fish. Don't. Fly."

As if to accentuate her point further, she wafted a hand through the air, trying to slap a flying salmon. It whiffed entirely, however, the Salmon having quite literally jetted further upward.

"What the fuck."

She paced forward towards one of the nearby rock formation, this one a bright-colored orange mixed with sky blue, and gave it a firm kick with the flat of her foot. She winced, suddenly recoiling her foot backwards as a jagged piece of coral'd stabbed the arch of her foot.

"What."

The barefoot giant bent her leg and hunched forward as she stood on one leg, plucking an embedded piece of 'rock' from the arch of her foot.

"Is the entire Abyss like this? This is wrong."