Baa-Ram-Ewe!

-Reconstituted Alien Digital Realms, Mare Melum, Caerbannog Snake-

One would think after the end of Moon Cell and the binding of the three realms everything would be fine.

They were not. To think they would be is naïve in the extreme.

There were still plenty of things to take care of and I was part of those efforts, mostly with making sure the souls that were trapped could move on and we got everything properly freed up from the civilization terrorizing computer.

That’s when some other problems started cropping up.

“You are without a doubt the most terrifying being I’ve ever met.” I said coolly as I stuck a cigar in my mouth. Nuclear capable machines, psychotic fourth wall breaking mental monsters, snipers, cyborgs and all kinds of weird military technology with cloaking being a prominent feature… and a fat guy on roller skates with bombs… none of them compared to the idea of this one being crawling into my home unannounced.

“I still miss Mr. Thunderbeak.” Poor Clef, she still wanted permission to spend more time with the alien duck and she joined us in our current adventure. “Also you’re right, Lit is kind of terrifying.”

We both looked at the little yellow tick that glared at the twenty story building, one that had an absolutely massive jagged black smoking hole through the middle of it that almost split the entire building completely in half.

Lit, the tiny Joltik, did that with one attack. He also apparently has done several feats deemed almost entirely impossible. Nobody could doubt he was a hero at the very least.

Moon Cell had not been responsible for the Eaters, Pom’s presence did have something to do with the eaters… but she wasn’t the root cause of them appearing and was more of a cause in exacerbating their showing up. Yggdrasil.sys had us working to fix the problem and working to find the root cause to stop these small incursions from becoming something much larger, extrapolating data from a previous incident with said Eaters that there was a cause for their appearances that needed to be fixed to stop them.

We still had our work cut out for us.

I’m still a killer rabbit, weird left the building a long time ago and I’m not talking about the one that was just cracked open as if it was just hit with a bunker buster. I still classified as an assassin, no longer a servant though, apparently being able to conceptually assassinating things like ‘conflict’ still counted as being one of my skills.

The carcass of an Eater finally hit the ground from the lightning blast and it slowly started evaporating. The damage was minimal this time, mostly because Lit was letting loose some frustrations.

“Best friend Lit is quite amazing yes?” Tsumemon said, capable of evolving straight into being Zanbamon the samurai centaur at any given moment. Capable of going from a baby form straight into being a Mega in seconds was quite terrifying.

Lit raised his front right leg, blue tip pointing to the sky, and squeaked in victory.

We needed to get to the root problem of the Eaters and Lit eventually needed to settle whatever quest Arceus cooked up for him.

Apparently the god of all Pokémon had challenged the Pokémon who wanted to leave his realms and protection. Lit seemed like he would definitely accomplish whatever his given goals were, as long as it allowed him to eventually snuggle up against a strange Dalmatian with semi-opposable digits.

Seriously, I’d be somewhat worried for Arceus’s survival if he wasn’t already a confirmed god. Not my god, but still as good as any other. Could almost understand why he was doing what he currently did, guy was a prideful father and basically asking them to kick his butt.

My money is on the bug already.

-Equus, Canterlot, Twilight Sparkle-

“Are you alright?” Starlight asked as I appeared through the doorway.

“I got the coffee!” Stated Moon Dancer cheerfully as she appeared not too long after I did, I levitated a cup to myself and downed the entire thing… slightly hot and my throat itches a bit. “Uh… are you okay Twilight, that coffee was boiling hot.”

I kissed Moon Dancer on the cheek and her face went straight red, no idea why, but I really direly needed the coffee and I promised I would kiss the first person that would get me some.

“I had to find a location to put all the Stonebacks and their adopted ponies where they wouldn’t bother anyone, they were already started on farming and digging themselves some homes when I left. Also the ponies we got out of Tambelon seem happy to have different kinds of food to eat, quite appreciative of it actually. Also my alicorn constitution is kicking in, that itched more than hurt.” I needed a situation report from Tambelon. Also I now knew why Celestia could eat so much cake and never get any negative side effects from doing so. “Incidentally the diamond dog warrens near Ponyville have some new next door neighbors. Anything I should know about Sunburst?”

“Yes… there was recent horrifying confirmation that Gorgar is a necromancer. The Royal Guard in Tambelon are already scrambling to deal with that knowledge by securing their base camp.” Sunburst took some offered coffee and sipped it and quickly blew out a puff of steam with a pained look on his face as his tongue was lightly scalded. “Whoo… that is hot! They haven’t been attacked by undead yet, but with the estimated thousands of years of bones to work with… Grogar has been holding back on attacking them aggressively so far, aside from trapping everyone we sent in to deal with him.”

“They aren’t doing too horribly, I had the Royal Guard pegged for half of them being dead by now… they are all still alive much to our relief.” Starlight Glimmer, ever the optimist everyone. Research into Unicorn Madness Syndrome was coming up with interesting results, like the need for friends to stay grounded and not go crazy like Starlight and a few other unicorns have. Moon Dancer had friends so that’s why she didn’t go off the rails or crazy, I didn’t realize how much she needed my friendship. “Various states of injuries from all the fighting aside and being trapped in what is termed a screaming land of horror by Earth Ponies who can actually hear the very nature of the Tambelon itself screaming at them constantly. So yeah, good job so far… we’re waiting for the horseshoe to drop given they don’t have enough anti-necromancy measures to do more than cover the staging area for Equestria and Storm Creatures invasion of Tambelon.”

“Do you think the Storm Creatures are doing most of the work?” Moon Dancer looked a bit upset, she likely remembered when the Storm Creatures invaded Canterlot.

“No, the Royal Guard are actually doing their jobs successfully… for once… the several hero groups there to help them out like the Pillars of Equestria, the Airship Mauled adventurer’s guild and several others including the Foenum Fighters doing supply runs probably helps a lot.” Thank goodness they are all working in harmony then Sunburst. I can hardly want to imagine what would be happening if they weren’t.

I’ve never fought a necromancer before, but I can certainly imagine what one was capable of. Sombra was close enough to being one or becoming a lich to really terrify me on a number of levels before he was permanently dealt with.

“Oh and Starswirl was captured by Grogar, apparently they have a history given Gusty was a friend of Starswirl’s.” Sunburst words slowly turned in my brain and the world came to a screeching halt.

Sure Starswirl might not be what I thought of him at first, but we were still good friends and he was still one of the most famous magic users to ever live.

“Did they send someone to save him?” My question had Sunburst and Starlight glancing at one another.

“Yes.” I could only pray it was the best of the best.

“Trixie brought cupcakes!” Trixie stated jovially. “Where’s the party?”

-Tambelon, Castle Tambelon, Cistern, Pom-

Given I could see some faint bubbles in the gunk covering the top of the water through the grating and the poor lighting of this dark room, that gunk was not ink and Gallus is probably thankful it floated to the top.

That and Gallus was alive and holding his breath for dear life in the electrified water, we needed to get Squirk to stop electrifying said water and clear a patch of that gunk somehow to let Gallus out or we’d lose the one who had done the most damage this entire fight in one move.

Squirks skin was stupidly thick, stone hard and we hadn’t managed to make him bleed, the golden glow of my wool kept anyone who was paralyzed in the fight by pulsing and countering Squirks magically powered screech. Technically we still hadn’t managed to make him bleed unless that bile that resembled the sewage we saw up to this point was his blood.

The bile probably was the sewage, smelled similar enough to think that Squirk probably generated the sewage.

I dodge by leaping over a tentacle lashing for me and rolled as soon as I landed to avoid another of the six actively attacking us after landing.

Dolly, Dormarch and Smolder were actively trying to get the clam shell open to get our trapped friends out, my good boys Woof, Ruff, Tuft and Puff were tearing off small chunks of stone skin from the tentacles. That was something, but not much.

I could barely scratch the skin, Squirk was practically immune to fire and my magic wasn’t effective on him.

Squirk’s weakness was definitively where his beak would be on a normal octopus, that and having an open mouth. His insides were not as armored or tough as his outer skin and eyes were.

Yona rammed into a tentacle, doing little to the tentacle other than shoving it back with her shield. Sandbar stayed behind her continuing to act defensively to assist Yona if she got into trouble, because Squirk definitely wouldn’t have any problem lifting Yona off her hooves despite how heavy she is.

Arizona punched one away with a hoof, she was actually bruising the tentacles with her raw strength. The only problem is she could do more damage if she could toss Squirk around, but that was hard to do with the suction cups attaching him to the stone path going through the center of this room.

A tentacle stabbed out at me and leapt onto the wall and ran up to avoid it sweeping up for me in trying to grapple me. Tianhuo was moving fast enough in the air to avoid getting grappled, but her flames were useless for damage and she could only impart so much impact in her jet assisted physical attacks.

We had to do something different… there had to be something. Dolly’s Gravity and wind didn’t move Squirk until Gallus popped him off the ceiling after we destroyed a section of it. I doubt we could bury Squirk alive here.

I leapt from the wall to another in a single bound to avoid two tentacles trying to smash together on me.

Squirk seemed to be scrutinizing me, he certainly doesn’t want us thinking of ways to beat him. So far I have nothing, aside from possibly get him into the water. I suddenly had to leap down to the grating as magically electrified water blasted for me, I’m so glad I’ve had many spars with Shanty.

It doesn’t seem like Squirk can control the water directly after firing it with magic…

I let out a bark blast to cancel a blast of magic fired from one of his tentacles.

Dormarch we need a way to deal with the goop in the water and stop Squirk from electrifying it… I don’t have any ideas. Is it really that surprising? None of my attacks are working and I really don’t want to use double edge techniques other than wobble counter right now, a Thousand Spear Huo would likely not do much to him either.

Also Gallus is possibly currently drowning right now… permission granted if it won’t hurt you too much and you can get him out of there safely, if not then do what you can to save him.

“Tianhuo, use fire on the gunk in the water!” I continued to use Fleet Cunning Doe to leap, roll and dodge around attacks in an acrobatic manner without using any attacks in return.

Tianhuo didn’t question me, she sent a fireball down at the gunk coating the water below the grate and the bile quickly started to burn away.

A splash occurred around where the freshly cleared away bile was, Dormarch was going to help Gallus. He managed to get through the electrified water perfectly fine. Given one of Dormarch’s evolution could use that Surge Projector attack, he probably figured out a way to handle being shocked from that. The explanation he gave was a little strange, but he was okay and not in immense about of pain.

I had other things to focus on.

-Smolder-

After watching Dormarch go off I continued my excessive biting and clawing, I was started to have an effect on the shell. Sure the giant clam was magically resilient, but I was starting really damage it. It was going to take some time, but I’d break through the clam entrapping Ocellus eventually through sheer stubbornness.

Dolly was watching my back and warning me if one of Squirk’s tentacles decided to pay attention to us.

Hearing a crack and seeing a fracture in the shell, I redoubled my efforts. You better be alright down there Gallus!

-Dormarch-

Okay, being a data type Digimon does tend towards being able to handle taking electrical attacks better. Squirks magic was generating it, but the electricity was not itself magical. Digital transference was probably more intensive than this. I scanned my surroundings, Gallus was at the bottom of the tank and he was in pain as his lungs were pushing their limits from a quick scan.

I also noted, the odd hinges on the sides of the cistern… if we could get Squirk’s full body in the water, then maybe Dolly could… Gallus first then finish that thought. ‘Ctrl S’ the idea to temporary short term memory to share with mom in the near future.

I swam down and lit up my black spots… my limited bioluminescent capability let Gallus know I was coming as I swam down. Being a hybrid aquatic and beast type digimon, like a Gomamon, except I wasn’t a seal.

He looked at me with worry and I pointed to his spear and then to me, then to him and then to portion of grating I came down through.

Gallus held out the spear and I took it in my goofy claws and looked up at Squirk. He weakly started to swim upwards, he was going to stop around the point that the water was electrified.

I flexed all three of my tails and then quickly swam for Squirk’s underside, calculating the best place to ram this spear deeply into him. Let’s see… there’s a nerve cluster… right there! I’m quite thankful for my ability to scan biology and happen to be a search engine.

I surged upward with the spear in my claws the tip point at very tiny spot that would be imperceptible and hard to hit, but I don’t think anyone counted on me.

The electricity around me didn’t bother me one bit as I aimed to hit one small spot, at worst this will just let Gallus get out of the water and will hopefully have enough time to avoid the tentacles. The best possible outcome was that this would stun Squirk for a bit.

-Gallus-

Dormarch was a good being and he was really young from what Pom has said about him, like his mother he really doesn’t like fighting and has went through a traumatic experience with becoming a monster. Felt for the little guy having to do this, I didn’t like being here much either.

At least when push came to shove, the guy was willing to fight to not only save the lives of those he cared about, he hardly knew me and was trying to save mine too.

Dormarch was making such an awesome display with the firm look on his face that I almost forgot that I could swim for it. The lightning didn’t make him pause even as the spear drew a large amount of the energy away from open hole in the left side grating.

While he was drawing all the electrical energy to him, I managed to surface and halfway gasp as I grasped at the edge of the grating trying to get air my lungs filled with air and a shadow of a tentacle tried to slap down on me. I failed to breathe since I already had water in my lungs, also there was the problem of being partially drowned and a rapidly descending shadow coming for me.

Sandbar bodily pulled me away with his sand in time to avoid the crash of the tentacle and the sand protected me from the Squirk suddenly crying out in agony as his entire body became electrified by his own magic and the grating lit up along with it.

Had I done what Dormarch just did, the lightning would have fried me. Even with the protective magic on my Royal Guard armor. I’m going to have to get my armor upgraded steel grade electrum coated armor some of the elites in the guard used… that stuff was expensive though.

“Gallus… are you okay?!” Sandbar stated as he looked over me.

My response was to barf a mass of unhealthy looking water into his face.

“Give me… a minute…” I stated as I gasped for air and Yona smacked a tentacle back she stood protectively over us. “I almost drowned, always thought it would be while kissing Silver Stream underwater… of course she’d save me afterwards and would give me beak to beak resuscitation. Don’t want to die… in the bowels of a literal ‘Tartarus damned’ castle.”

“Tell me about it, I’ve been trying to drown out this world’s screaming with more important things to worry about.” Sandbar wince as he deflected a tentacle with turtle shell shaped mass of sand. “I’m probably banned from sand castle competitions.”

“You would be the king of a beach at that.” I grabbed his hoof with my talon and was helped back into a standing position.

“Where’s you’re spear?” Sandbar asked curiously.

“Where do you think?” Where the sun doesn’t shine on the monster and he looked to be in quite a lot of pain, my gaze was followed by Sandbar and I notice his tail slam down between his hind legs in partial sympathy for the monster that ate a semi-intelligent being alive in front of us. He has likely eaten ponies and troggles in gruesome torturous ways too.

Dormarch must have really shoved it far in there. Even then his tentacles were still attacking despite the central body not looking happy with have a pointy stick shoved up what is hopefully his backside.

Squirk grunted as a blast from beneath almost toppled him. That was the first time we saw him bleed… he was bleeding both ink and actual blood was coming out of his bottom and staining the stone pathway.

Squirk of course seemed quite angry after this.

“That’s it!” Squirk slapped all eight of his tentacles against the grating sent some magic throughout it, then he continued to fight back with a few of this tentacles, his other tentacles moved him back at a quick speed to avoid a blast of energy shooting up out of the water.

Looked like Pom’s Bark Blast, probably Dormarch’s version of it.

“Sandbar can you lift yourself in the air on your sand?” I was motioning to Yona and Spindle as I said this as the grating groaned loudly.

“Why?” A creaking noise answered Sandbar question.

The floor of the cistern collapsed out from under us, I managed to get in the air and avoid one of the tentacles stretching out to try and slap me down into the water. Now Squirk was in the water, he was going to be fairly dangerous unless we could get Foenum Velvet free.

He wasn’t going to simply let Dormarch attack his soft spot again as one of his tentacles was already in the water going after him. I could vaguely see the three tailed shadow trying to avoid being grabbed.

Sandbar floated into the air using his sand, he couldn’t really fly, but he could hover above the water well enough.

“Yona?!” Sandbar called out as Yona was the unfortunate one of us that didn’t have a method to avoid the floor coming out from under us.

Woof, Ruff, Tuft and Puff? They spun their tails and flew into the air, apparently Canis Minor could fly somewhat. Puff seemed to be doing it well enough.

Arizona had roped a jagged chunk of the broken ceiling and was now climbing up and putting the rope back under her bandanna to avoid Squirk grabbing it.

Tianhuo was fine, as long as her wings weren’t extinguished by the water.

Pom was clinging to a wall with her wool.

Smolder was on the staircase and had dug her claws into the sudden slope it turned into, this was to prevent the clam from sliding into the water. Didn’t want Squirk holding the hostages after all. Dolly was helping her with that and looked wide eyes at the tentacles seemed to look at them menacingly.

“Got you, you little freak of a nuisance!” Squirk announced and Dormarch came up out of the water struggling in one of the octopus’s tentacles. The spear was probably still embedded in Squirk. “Honestly still think you can kill an immortal? Sure you can hurt me, but you don’t have the power to finish me.”

While Squirk was stating that Sandbar created a platform of sand on top of the water and managed to keep our heavy yak friend above the water.

Yona was not a decent swimmer, unlike many other yaks that were and took baths in freezing cold water without their temperature dropping, so she was the outlier in this. I would never make fun of Yona for requiring floatation aids.

“So many targets to choose.” Squirk glanced at Sandbar struggling with yon, the dangling Arizona and the two holding the clam that held our friends hostage. “AGHH?!”

When I wasn’t looking Pom at some point had dropped into the water, she came surging up out of the water and caught Dormarch as he dropped, she looked like she was wearing a scuba suit made out of her own wool. I knew Paprika could do that, so it wasn’t that surprising.

“What did you?” I called out to Pom.

“Bucked you’re spear in further, you probably don’t want it back!” No Pom, I did want it back. As gross as it might be afterwards, that was still a gift from my… ugh… family. I actually appreciated it and was willing to do what I had to just to get it back.

The lambkin was trying to swim away and Squirk started to do something odd with his tentacles as his eyes glared her down.

He swirled them around in a spiral, but why would he...

“Get out of the water!” I picked up on it before anyone else did as he swam towards Pom and Pom seemed to know what he was about to do too given what she did next.

-Pom-

Okay rescued son, who was helping me swim away, don’t think we could get to either side of the cistern’s entrances before Squirk caught up to me… also how was he still fully functional and speaking with Gallus’s entire spear being in him now?! You could barely see the tip of the back end of it after I bucked it in.

Again, nobody called my son a freak and gets away with it while I’m around, nobody! Also I know Squirk says he’s immortal, but why isn’t he dead or in constant agony from that?! I would not be able to ignore what amounts to a giant splinter taking up most of my internal organs. I really hated fighting things bigger than me like this.

When Gallus’s warning came and a surging Squirk bringing up the rear with all of his tentacles spiraling around his body… oh no…

I hefted Dormarch from the water and threw him towards sandbar and got sucked into the massive whirlpool now taking up most of the cistern when Squirk flexed them all outwards at once.

“Mom!” Dormarch called out as Sandbar lashed out some sand to catch him while trying to avoid being sucked into the vortex with me.

I watched as Sandbar managed to attach his sand to the wall and drag himself to the edge of the spinning waters with Yona and Dormarch in tow.

I’ll be fine Dormarch. I reassured him even as I was slapped by one of the tentacles and slammed against the bottom of the cistern and threatened with being crushed again, the impact hurt quite a bit from the force of it. My good boys were busy distracting the other tentacles try to grab everyone to drag them all into the whirling pool.

While Squirk was busy putting pressure on my wool, breathing was going to be hard to do under these condition, I gave Dolly a single command and used my ability to see what Dormarch was looking at for the area the magic should take effect in.

Fire couldn’t do anything… but what about freezing his rubbery stone hard hide into something a little more rigid?

I might have an explanation for why exactly Squirk grabbed Foenum Velvet, Ocellus, Edith and Silver Stream first now. It wasn’t exactly just randomly grabbing up some of us, it was actually targeted.

He couldn’t have possibly known that Dolly could cast ice magic. Ocellus and Velvet were obvious because they could feasible use magic to cause him problems, he didn’t know about Edith, but why take Silver Stream? I’m thinking it’s because her quiver specifically had ice arrows in it.

Squirk thought he had taken out all our best advantages at dealing with him first.

Couldn’t be more wrong.

-Dolly-

…

“Blizzard!” I was going to be leaving Smolder with the clam, but this was going to change the entire fight around. I kicked forward into the air and onto my board and used my momentum abilities to surf in the whirlpool.

Pom wanted me to cast three spells.

My first target was just the swirling water. The results were… freaking amazing!

Hundreds of shards of ice started slamming into Squirk as the heavier ice surged downwards swirling into his body from all sides.

“Aghh… what… NO!” The icicles seemed to go right into his rubbery stone hide. Also that ‘no’ sounded quite scared.

“Blizzard!” I cast the second time on the ice embedded in Squirk and it began spreading and encasing his entire body. He was struggling against it until he couldn’t any longer.

“Arizona, Mom wants you to drop onto Squirk and hit him with everything you have in one blow after Dolly casts her next spell!” Dormarch called out, I had a grin as the third spell Pom wanted me to use popped into my head.

I counted down from ten seconds of surfing the water before doing as asked.

“Haste!” Target, the super strong cow and then bug out with what remaining magic I had before my brewing headache got any worse.

-Arizona-

A wild grin crossed my face. Oh yeah, whatever this was felt like liquid fire in my veins and I feel like taking it out on Squirk!

I flipped upside down and braced my hind legs against the ceiling preparing to kick off it right at Squirk.

-Pom-

Frozen solid as he was and knowing that Arizona was soon going to go berserk for five minutes… as the tentacle pinning me let off enough for me to squeeze out into the now colder waters. I turned to face the frozen octopus.

“RRrrrRRRRRRRrrrrRRRRRRGGGHHHhrRR…” Found it, also water was quite a good conductor for sound. So this was going to hurt him… A LOT. “Yip.”

Arizona was probably falling toward Squirk right about now and I just shattered his skin… not just a small portion of it… all of the thick stone hard skin… across his entire body. Gone, leaving exposed soft insides exposed to attack.

I watched in the swirling waters as the skin turned rigid by the ice shattered and was carried off by the whirlpool Squirk started to bleed all over the place as his musculature was exposed, he was now thrashing in agony and the whirlpool immediately ceased thanks to this.

Arizona’s following impact with Squirk sent me flying upwards, also she knocked most of the water and recent bloodloss out of the cistern into the sewers below using Squirk’s own mass to do so.

Smolder got hit with a mass of water and she and the clam were dragged down here with me.

I looked at the water as I stood up and looked down at my legs, the only skin Squirk had left was around his eyelids.

He roared started firing magic everywhere and trying to electrify the water, but after shocking himself… he no longer could threaten us with using lightning on the water. I still had to dodge the magic missiles his eight flailing tentacles were sending out.

“Attack!” I called out and dodge to the side as a tentacle slapped down for me, I slashed a normal magical wolf claw, unlike his stone hard rubbery skin that resisted damage… three chunks of the tentacle fell off and my claw cut through the entirety of it in seconds. I continued to shred the tentacle I was on.

Another tentacle burst into flames and blacked painfully as Tiahuo tackled it with her front hooves in a flaming. She increased the inferno surging around her body boiling that tentacle.

Woof, Ruff, Tuft and Puff were all tearing into a different tentacle with their teeth and eating chunks of muscle around the base of it trying to tear it off, which is usually what they did to most snakes who threatened me and didn’t get the memo that Canis Minor were aggressive little protectors. I wasn’t going to stop them, they were probably quite hungry for seafood and I haven’t fished for them in a while.

Arizona busy wailing on Squirk skull with one of his own tentacles, without the protective skin she had apparently ripped it entirely off without trouble. The thrashing tentacle was being used to brain the octopus into being incapable of thinking well enough to fend us off.

Yona was bashing a tentacle with her shield and Sandbar was quite liberally rubbing his sand in the rupture wounds.

Dolly was attacking the fifth tentacle with her board and doing quite a bit of damage.

The sixth tentacle was being torn apart at the base by Smolder who was taking cues from my favorite puppies, she used her teeth to detach that tentacle violently. By that time I had torn through mine in a number of claw slashes.

As for the seventh tentacle, well Gallus was likely going for his spear and after tearing apart the muscle around the base so that it’d stop flailing violently with his sharp talons he ducked into the water. The flat look on his face as he did so while diving under the tentacle said everything about how much he relished the idea of doing so.

I would probably do the same thing, which was a really good spear.

We had brutalized Squirk quite badly in such a short amount of time.

Unfortunately the lack of anyone to get his last tentacle allowed him use his magic to protect his body in a think barrier. He glared at us in anger.

“This… is… just a minor inconvenience. I’ve… I have… lived through worse including the seas receding from the land!” Declared Squirk without an ounce of quivering in his voice. “I’m ancient and immortal… this is only a mild setback at best, I will heal from this and when I do…!”

Squirk stopped speaking as Gallus ripped out of his body with his spear held aloft in his talons and was looking entirely grossed out as we all felt.

My puppies calmly moved to attacking the last tentacle and ingesting it. I think we stopped caring about the existence of the possibly toxic bile dripping from Gallus’s form and he flicked some of the stuff from his wings as he made his way over to the clam shell I couldn’t bark break open and motioned for us to help free Ocellus, Silver Stream, Edith and Foenum Velvet.

“That… was indescribably gross.” Gallus stated bluntly and crawled away from Squirk’s skull. “It’s a good thing that probably killed him.”

A groaning noise met Gallus’s words.

“Not quite… I still live yet…” Wow with as messed up as Squirk was, you would expect him to have perished from having a griffin rip his way out of his head.

“Dude, I stabbed half your brain out on the way out, how can you still be alive after all of this!” Probably for the most unfortunate reason Gallus. He was probably functionally immortal, even if his body was an agonizing mess to look at.

“Heh hmhmhm… do you really think… you can beat Grogar?” Squirk his lone eye staring at us with a pale grin on his face.

“It’s a good thing that’s not our top priority to worry about that.” I stated flatly.

“You will never…” Squirk started to say until Tianhuo blasts his main body with fire and I exhaled a blast of flames as well to join in after Smolder started doing so too. He was likely in too much pain to really say anything else.

The resulting steam from the boiled and charred octopus left the cistern without water.

“I think… we might be done here.” With tired tone Tianhuo motioned us forward, we quietly agreed with the sentiment.

It took a bit of doing, but we easily pried open a hole in the clam shell and retrieved our friends and warily looked back at Squirk’s unmoving form. Then we set off for the next area climbing up the slope that used to be a staircase.

Arizona was quite hyper much to Foenum Velvet’s chagrin that it reminded of the younger version of Arizona’s cheerful disposition. She still had about ten seconds on haste left after assisting with pulverizing most of Squirk into a fine paste.

After climbing the stairs, we came into what had to be dungeons.

-Back at the Cistern-

A damaged tentacle lifted up and slowly a face started to form out of the tip of the horribly mangled limb.

The face gave a weak toothy grin and was about to start chuckling at the fact that he would continue and when Grogar was done with them…

A pair of webbed feet slapped against the floor drawing Squirks attention away from his thoughts of torture and revenge.

Squirk squeaked and looked at all the froglins glaring down at him, one froglin tapped a club against the palm of his webbed hand slowly several times. He’s definitely terrorized them for far too long, in his weakened state he didn’t exactly have the magic to fend them off.

They descended upon the weakened tyrant octopus fully intending to get their own pound of flesh out of him.