Chapter 181: Take Fear for a Ride

I need more information. Here’s the important follow-up question: Will thought, using his snakes to freeze the terrain in place. Kincaid made a strangled whimper, like someone had just stepped on his throat.

Is this flesh surrounding me actually Kincaid or a projection created by an ability?

Will walked up to a lump sticking out of the wall and hacked it off with his tomahawk before offering it to the Tower.

Do you wish to Sacrifice Dimensional Stomach to Aspect of the Immortal Serpent?

No.

Hmmm. Doesn’t say ‘Kincaid’ or ‘Fae Lord’. I guess it was too much to ask for to get a piece of him that easily.

This also meant that damage Will did here probably wouldn’t directly affect Kincaid.

“Why are you suddenly afraid, Kincaid? Will asked, his Phantom Eye’s gaze flitting across the spot in the floor that he’d damaged in his surprise attack on the decoy. It was gone now, but Will knew for a fact that he’d hit Kincaid’s real body with that one attack.

“You don’t take any damage from anything that happens in here, do you?” Will asked, pacing the confines of the stomach, the acid trying and failing to bother his skin. Not only did Will have a passive to resist ‘exposure’, his Resistance was criminally high. The acid was no more powerful to him than water.

“Or maybe…you just realized that it’ll take longer to kill me than it’ll take the psychic venom you got hit with to break your grip on me?”

Will detected a fountain of fear spilling out of the center of the room as Kincaid reacted to that statement.

Will’s tomahawk had a lovely on-hit debuff that grew over time, and Will had tagged him with it. Kincaid was on a clock, and to Will, this stomach might as well be a fleshy spa.

“You may speak.”

Will released his grip on the terrain enough that Kincaid could speak again.

“…”

Kincaid didn’t speak for a good while, seemingly considering his words carefully.

“The wound you dealt will spell my demise. However, that demise will come from another Lord taking advantage of a crippling injury. I will either consume you or you will die as this pocket dimension becomes untethered when I die. You will not escape. I will not lose to you.”

Will felt his hair stand on end as he realized what was bothering him.

This was just like the Trial Room that almost killed him. Except there was no door.
Will felt his breath hitch and his heart jolt in his chest like a spooked horse.

Will did what he always did when he was afraid: Make shit up.

“If you’re going to die either way, it would be better to be killed by a legend, wouldn’t it?” Will asked, pacing back and forth in the room like a trapped predator.

“…What do you mean?”

“I don’t know if you know this, but I’m a pretty big deal in The Tower,” Will said, trying a tactic he had never tried before against someone he was fairly sure it wouldn’t work on.

“You seem ill at-ease. Can I offer you some stomach acid to settle your nerves?”

To spite him, Will formed an air-cup and knocked back a quart of the potent acid with a zesty burp.

“How do you know this pocket dimension is disconnected from reality when you die?” Will demanded, pointing up at the ceiling. “Have you died before?”

I think there’s a porthole in the floor where the fear is oozing out from. That has to be where the connection is formed, but does it allow the physical to cross or just thoughts and feelings?

I know this pocket dimension is disconnected because I have done many experiments with many subordinates granted this Ability. Up to and including killing them while they were using it.

Damn, that’s a pretty good answer, Will thought, continuing to pace across the floor that he was holding in place, the fear gushing from himself nearly tripping him.

Oh great, now I’M afraid, Will thought, glaring at where his fear and Kincaid’s mixed together on the floor, creating a stringy mess.

They didn’t seem to want to mix well, like oil and water they slithered across each other, twitching slightly as their owners interpreted their fears differently.

As he looked at the two fears sliding across each other, a spark of an idea arose.

No…that couldn’t possibly work…but on the other hand…don’t really have much to lose.

At the core of Will’s idea: What does one do with terrain?

Ignore the weird, fancy uses that Will had created as cantrips. Those were perversions of the natural order. One doesn’t normally manipulate the terrain to that extent. You don’t turn it into lenses or make it into ripples and pillars that break your opponent’s legs.

So what do you do with terrain?

You navigate it.

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You traverse it.

Kincaid is feeling the exact same fear here and in the outside world.

Can I use it like a bridge?

“…what are you doing?”

“Trying something.” Will said, stepping on Kincaid’s fear, causing the entire room to shudder with terror.

Will lunged forward, moving forward along the fear as fast as he could…and slammed face-first into the fleshy pink wall.

“BAHAHAHAHA!” Kincaid’s laughter was exuberant, but with the way the fountain of fear began drying up, Will was not amused. That was his door out, and it was closing.

That realization caused Will’s fear to begin to gush out of him again unbidden, obscuring Kincaid’s fear as it retreated back into the floor.

I need to get him to be afraid again, Will thought, scowling at the floor as he paced back and forth.

“I see you have discovered the link between my consciousness and my stomach. I must inform you that it does not exist in the physical sense. Dig down to it all you like, you will find nothing.”

“I believe you,” Will said, pacing back and forth as his mind worked at full tilt. He needed to get Kincaid scared again so he could try again. But each time he did it, Kincaid would get less afraid, and he’d have to come up with some new provocation.

Will had already wasted the best fear Kincaid would ever feal. The fae had seemingly come to terms with his own death.

The only thing Kincaid feared now was Will’s escape, which would make him look like a chump.

How do I…

Will paused for a moment and watched his own fear slide across the last remaining tiny pool of Kincaid’s fear.

Oil and water.

Two opposing fears by two opposing people. What Will was afraid of, Kincaid wanted. What Kincaid was afraid of, Will wanted.

The two would never mix.

Unless they did somehow?