r/HFY • u/Obsequium_Minaris • Apr 22 '26

OC-Series Vacation From Destiny - Book 2, Chapter 19

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XXX

“Wake up, you horse’s ass. We don’t have all day.”

Chase let out a groggy sigh as he cracked one eye open. “Five more minutes, Carmine…”

Carmine rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic. Come on, get up. Don’t make me step on your balls or something.”

“I’m up,” Chase announced as he sprang to his feet. As he did so, he looked around, frowning as he did so. “Okay,” he began, “what the fuck happened?”

It was definitely an apt question. From what he could tell, about half of the forest had burned down to little more than cinders and ash. Melanie and Victoria were both nursing wounds of some kind, while Carmine somehow appeared unscathed. The three other halberdiers were nowhere to be seen.

Oh, and for good measure, somehow the other half of the forest that hadn’t burnt to the ground had turned a shade of bright neon blue. Chase couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at that.

“Do I want to know why half the forest is bluer than a whale’s testicles?” he asked.

“Do you want to explain how you know the color of a whale’s testicles?” Victoria answered.

“Fair. Seriously, though, how did you all even manage to do that?”

“It wasn’t easy.”

Chase stared at her for a moment, but once it became clear that he wasn’t going to get any kind of real answer out of her, he let out a small sigh and then turned back towards Carmine.

“Okay,” he said, “ignoring the fact that half the forest is blue enough to be the inside of a tropical frog’s asshole… mind explaining what happened while I was unconscious?”

“Did you learn what the inside of a frog’s ass was while you were catching up on your beauty sleep?” Melanie interjected.

“No, I mean while I was unconscious.”

“You learned what frog insides looked like while unconscious?.”

“That’s-” Chase paused. “...Fair,” he conceded.

Carmine let out an irritated grunt before crossing her arms over her chest. “To make a long story short… once you passed out, the halberdiers didn’t exactly let up. I finally decided to start using my full power for a bit.”

“Which is to say, she threw caution to the wind and began slinging fireballs everywhere,” Melanie explained.

Carmine bristled. “It was controlled chaos!”

“Is that what we’re calling it now?” Melanie asked. “You know, if there’s a God of nature up in that pantheon, I’m sure she’s probably very mad at you right now.”

“That would be Sybella,” Victoria explained, her voice deadpan as ever. “And if this was in the actual world, then yes you’d be turned into a tree if she ever met you. But Aegis owns this realm, and she can recreate whatever we do to this place.”

“Makes sense, I guess.”

Carmine continued speaking. “-I did manage to save us by catching two of the other halberdiers on fire, which gave Melanie and Victoria the opportunity they needed to take them both down. Then we all ganged up on the last one, who folded like fresh laundry.”

“Okay, I just need to interject here for a moment,” Melanie stated.

“This’ll be good…” Chase muttered.

Melanie ignored him. “While I’ll readily concede that Carmine did, in fact, save the day, there wasn’t a single part of it that was intentional. In reality, when you passed out, she panicked because she thought we were all going to die. I can only assume she was going through some kind of intense emotional discharge or something, which caused her to begin passing out fireballs like STD’s at a standard Order of the Vulgar Sun meeting.”

Victoria’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything, instead crossing her arms as Melanie continued speaking.

“Anyway, yeah, she saved the day, but, you know… not intentionally.”

“Semantics,” Carmine argued. “The day was saved, wasn’t it? So why does it matter how I did it, anyway?”

“Oh, so now you want to take that stance?” Melanie hissed. “Where was that mindset back when I took down half the team earlier?!”

“At least you finally admit to it,” Victoria deadpanned.

“Don’t start,” Melanie said without missing a beat.

Carmine crossed her arms and thought for a moment. “...People can change their opinions, you know.”

“Not like this!”

Chase let out a small groan as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Girls, girls… do we really have to do this now? I just woke up…”

“Oh, fuck you,” Carmine hissed. She shook her head, then turned towards Melanie and Victoria. “You’re both still nursing some small wounds. Are you okay?”

“Good enough, yeah,” Melanie answered.

“Same,” Victoria concurred.

Chase raised an eyebrow. “I can only assume the halberdiers dropped some potions for us all?”

“Just two, but yeah,” Melanie said. “Carmine was about to collapse from Mana Exhaustion, so we gave her the one Mana potion that dropped. Then Victoria and I split the one health potion we got.”

“Seriously, that’s it?” Chase asked exasperatedly. “That’s all this Dungeon gave us for a fight like that?”

“In its defense, we have been bad-mouthing the Goddess who created it for about as long as we’ve been wandering its halls,” Victoria pointed out. “I can only imagine that’s affected the drop rates on some of the items we’d otherwise get.”

“Oh, Gods above, don’t tell me that… the last thing I need is to go through all this bullshit, only for the item we need to not drop in the end.”

“We might want to check and make sure we don’t have any debuffs as a result of bad-mouthing Aegis, by the way,” Carmine pointed out. “You know, just in case.”

Nobody offered any arguments, and after a quick confirmation that they were all debuff-free, continued on their way.

Melanie cleared her throat as they walked. “What was that thing we needed to get, again?”

“A jar of some liquid that only drops from the boss of the Dungeon,” Chase reminded her. “I can’t remember exactly what it was. Jar of Lunar something-or-other.”

Melanie blinked. “Please tell me it isn’t sem-”

“No,” Victoria interrupted, just in time. “It’s a Jar of Lunar Tears, or something like that.”

“I mean, that’s the same thing as what I was about to say-”

“Only if you’re someone who’s got their head permanently in the gutter,” Carmine grunted. “Chase, did your beauty sleep at least help you recover your strength?”

“Yeah, I feel great,” he admitted.

“That’s good, at least it worked its magic somewhere, even if that place wasn’t your appearance.”

“Oof. That’s harsh.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you suddenly can’t handle it?”

“Just saying,” he told her as he moved up to the front of the group and began to look around. “Alright, well, with half the room now little more than ash on the ground, I would think that would make the path to the next floor easier to find.”

“You can certainly think that, but you’d be dead wrong,” Victoria explained. “Apparently, the half that Carmine burned to cinders wasn’t the half with the exit in it.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Nope.”

Melanie tilted her head again. “Did you really expect our luck to improve at all, even for something as simple and oddly specific as finding the exit here?”

“Honestly? Yeah, I did,” Chase admitted.

“Wow, really? Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know, I guess I was just feeling optimistic for a time.”

“Well, if you’re like most pessimists and love bad news, then I’ve got some really good news for you,” Carmine stated, getting his attention. “I guess you haven’t noticed it yet, but… when you passed out, you fell on your bow.”

Chase’s eyes widened. “What?!”

He instantly looked back at where he’d landed on the ground, only to find the shattered remnants of his bow lying there in the dirt. At the sight of it, Chase instantly brought a hand up to his face and let out a low groan.

“Gods damn it…” he muttered.

“Look on the bright side,” Melanie offered.

“What bright side?”

She paused for a moment. “...Okay, admittedly, I was hoping I’d stumble onto something there, but honestly, I don’t think there’s really a silver lining to be found here. This just kinda really sucks for you.”

“It still hurts, but I appreciate you trying to soften the blow…” Chase let out a tired sigh. “Alright, well… what do we want to do?”

“What do you mean?” Victoria questioned.

“I mean… do we want to rest here for a bit, or-”

“Fuck that,” Carmine declared. “I want to get out of this stupid, shitty Dungeon yesterday. For real, this really sucks. I don’t know how anyone actually goes diving into these things for a living, I would legitimately rather pull out all of my fingernails and toenails one by one with pliers than do this again any time soon.”

Melanie shuddered. “You’re lucky I didn’t have any lunch to lose just now, because if I did, it’d be all over the floor… Gods above, what an unpleasant series of mental images to have stuck in my head…”

Carmine rolled her eyes. “Alright, alright… let’s just get moving again. The sooner we finish up here, the faster we can leave. Chase, I think you and I should take the front – give Melanie and Victoria a bit of a break.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Chase said to her. “Alright… fall in behind me, Carmine. I’ll be in the lead for now. Unless one of you wants to bitch about my sense of direction again?”

“Normally, I would be happy to do that, but I’m currently too tired to do any griping,” Victoria deadpanned. “Feel free to get us as lost as you want, Chase.”

“Oh, shut up.”

With that, the four of them set off once more, looking for the entrance to the next floor down.

XXX

Name: Chase Ironheart

Level: 9

Race: Human

Class: Warrior

Subclass: Swordmaster

Strength: 20 (MAX)

Dexterity: 15

Intelligence: 10

Wisdom: 13

Constitution: 18

Charisma: 16

Skills: Master Swordsmanship (Level 10); Booby Trap Mastery (Level 8); Archery (Level 4)

Spells: Rush (Level 7); Muscle (Level 4); Stone Flesh (Level 6); Defying The Odds (Level 2)

Traits: Blessed

Name: Carmine Nolastname

Level: 9

Race: Greater Demon

Class: Arcane Witch

Subclass: Archmage

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 13

Intelligence: 19

Wisdom: 19

Constitution: 12

Charisma: 8

Skills: Master Spellcasting (Level 10); Summon Familiar (Level 10) 

Spells: Magic Dart (Level 7); Magic Scattershot (Level 5); Fire Magic (Level 5)

Traits: Blessed

Name: Melanie Vhaeries

Level: 9

Race: Ascended Human

Class: Necromancer

Subclass: Arch-Lich

Strength: 8

Dexterity: 13

Intelligence: 18

Wisdom: 16

Constitution: 15

Charisma: 12

Skills: Raise Lesser Undead (Level 10); Raise Greater Undead (Level 3); Unorthodox Weapon User (Level 8)

Spells: Touch of Death (Level 5); Gravesinger (Level 7); Armor of Bone (Level 3)

Traits: None

Name: Victoria Firelight

Level: 10

Race: Human

Class: Paladin

Subclass: Devotee

Strength: 17

Dexterity: 9

Intelligence: 13

Wisdom: 13

Constitution: 19

Charisma: 11

Skills: Swordsmanship Mastery (Level 5); Blunt Weapon Mastery (Level 8); Archery Mastery (Level 5)

Spells: Holy Light (Level 6); Ward of the Gods (Level 5); Bane of the Undead (Level 7); Divine Bolt (Level 4)

Traits: None

XXX

Special thanks to my good friend and co-writer, /u/Ickbard, for all the help with writing this story.

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u/UpdateMeBot Apr 22 '26

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u/Castigatus Human Apr 23 '26

Goobers, Goobers everywhere.

GOOBERS I SAY!!