Macronomicon
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Chapter 181: Take Fear for a Ride
🕑 Added 2025-08-06 17:40:48 +0000 UTCI 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.
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?
Will had very little control over Kincaid’s fear.
But he did have some small control over his own…
What if I was afraid of what Kincaid was afraid of? Would the two mix? Would those slimy ‘strands’ connect? Could that create a bridge between me and him? Two points in space connected by the exact same fear?
That was so godsdamned unintuitive…
But worth a shot. All I have to lose is time.
Will sat down, leaned up against the wall and made himself comfortable, closing his eyes and relaxing.
“…What are you doing?”
“Escaping.” Will said with a long exhale.
I am Kincaid. I am very afraid that William Oh is about to escape.
Will began with that as a premise, but it rang hollow. He wasn’t actually feeling it, even a little.
Will began filling in details that the knew or surmised to be true, adding depth to the fear. In order to match his fear to Kincaids, he would have to imagine himself being Kincaid. Fear what he feared…and then do it anyway.
Will exhaled and pictured himself as Kincaid...
He was over nine thousand years old, and he had climbed his way to the top of a bloody pile of corpses, accumulating Debt, gaining size and intelligence to fulfil his purpose of taking revenge on the people who had abandoned him.
Why?
Those people were long dead, but their descendants fit the bill well enough. Even though they protested their innocence, they wore the same faces as the humans who had lorded over him his entire life, and nothing gave him as much satisfaction as seeing the light leave their eyes while they were still alive.
Will brought that attitude forward and used it to color his thoughts about William Oh.
The idea that a fae who had survived every single upheaval from the beginning until now would lose to a young upstart was-
Kincaid/Will paused as a thought occurred to them.
Isn’t that the way it’s always been though? Every time the Coil ends… THE HARBINGER!
A bolt of fear shot through both of them as a fog was lifted from their memories, the story of the Harbinger resurfacing in their consciousness.
How…!?
“What are you doing!?” Kincaid demanded
“Escaping,” The little human said, eyes closed, slowly leaning forward inside his stomach. Leaning toward the connection. Something about the human had changed, some undefineable quality in the way he inched forward tapped into a deep terror that Kincaid had never shared with anyone.
This wasn’t just the fear of losing his life. It was deeper, more primal. The fear that everything, including his legacy, would be consumed by the world-eating snake as it inexorably ground out another Coil.
Nothing would be left of him but a footnote in a doomed hero’s story.
“DON’T YOU DAAARE!” Kincaid shouted both in his stomach, and the real world, what remained of his throat going raw from that single feral scream.
“Oh, I’m gonna,” The Harbinger hyperventilated through gritted teeth, eyes still closed, leaning forward and grasping some invisible…something…that wriggled in his hand like an angry eel.
Will could feel it. The dread squirming in his guts matched the thrashing of the eel exactly.
And yet it was connected to Kincaid. Connected to both of them. Their fear was synched up. Merging. Creating a tidy little rope bridge between the two of them.
Will was absolutely terrified of what would happen if he crossed it…but cross it he must.
It’s just like falling through the Doors. Just swallow the fear and do it anyway.
Kincaid and Will’s terror redoubled an instant before Will took a firm grip of the invisible strand and dove forward.
Will’s body sank into the fear, disappearing as he began swimming through it like a fish going upstream.
“No, NO! NOOOOO!”
He’s coming, he’s coming he’s coming he’s coming he’s coming, he’s coming he’s coming he’s coming he’s coming, he’s coming he’s coming he’s coming he’s coming, he’s coming he’s coming he’s coming!
Will’s mind devolved into pure terror as words and subtlety lost all meaning. Their fear turned inward, folded in on itself over and over, swelling like a monstrous ovipositor as it protruded out of Kincaid…
And out of the folded tunnel of fear tumbled William Oh, eyes still closed.
Now let’s find out if I was imagining everything, Will thought.
Now Will had to do the process in reverse, re-establishing his sense of self and de-coupling his fear from Kincaid’s.
I am William Oh, and I am not afraid of myself escaping, Will thought, his life flashing in his mind.
Will exhaled and opened his eyes, discovering a sea of blue.
Right. Still blind. Guess that’s still a problem. Inwardly, Will was relieved that he wasn’t actually Kincaid. That would suck.
Phantom Eye
109 Charges remaining
Will’s vision was restored just in time to see a massive cancerous mass barreling towards him.
“It’s you!”
Will dragged himself backwards and slammed into a wall, rolling to the side an instant before the cancerous appendage struck the stone, creating a cacophonous crack that spread through the spacious room.
Will gained distance and took a moment to take in the scene.
They were in some kind of dark cathedral, a massive underground shrine dedicated to feeding Kincaid. The tapestries were rotten and barely clinging to the walls. Though they were old and tattered, Will could tell that they deified the repulsive fae.
The only light that he could see came from a closed door that presumably led to the tunnels that Will had violently exposed to the sky. Despite being only a sliver of light, it was more than enough for Will to study the contents of the room.
Strewn across the floor were half-eaten corpses, both human and fae, and in the center of it all, was a pyramid of tumorous, throbbing flesh, topped by a single skinny upper body with emaciated, elongated limbs.
“Three times!” The massive, distended stomach screamed at him while the upper body flopped around lifelessly, jaw slack and eyes staring.
“Three times I have deceived you! Three times I survived the turning of the Coil! And yet…here you have come for me again, Harbinger. How are you here? How did I forget!? How did you ESCAPE!? Why do you…keep coming back?”
Will shrugged, limbering up his axe arm.
“WAI-“
Will unleashed everything he had.
Comments
Patron1kj6tz
Will is currently level 52, bounties can push you over floor level caps. I don't suppose it's too much to hope that Kincaid's bounty will push Will up to 55?
Hell 5pawn
"Though I walk through the vally of fear, I feel no death..." - William Oh, approximately 31st coil After Tower.
StrollingEye
I had more of an issue with the external gut that was subservient to the sentient cancerous growth on the fey than I did of the 'Fear is a Terrain' thing. It's complex but I think it's logic held up OK. I mean, fear is a feeling, no-one walks on or builds a house or mines fear. But here will walked through it. Which is pretty gnarly.
Ethan Barrow
TFTC! The bitch finally gets what's coming!!!!! Can't wait to see what Kincaid's sacrifice can give on top of the evolution!
Max Lopo
Big dick energy
StrollingEye
While biologically he is outrageously young, by his genetics (part Great Moult) he is ancient, and by his role as Harbinger, he is also ancient, but Will doesn't know the wisdom or knowledge of those roles, he is just a kid with outrageous skills doing his best to survive a tough world.
Quazzy
I love how we're getting a peek into how high-miasma creatures are more conceptual than physical!
Jack Armstrong
Random question, but I'm lost with the timeline. How old is Will and how long has he been traveling the tower at this point?
Natalie
Think fog. Dense fog all over the place. You can see what's close, but things further away get swallowed up by fog. Now imagine it so dense that you literally struggle to see your hand in front of your face. Same principle, except it's Miasma.
Enzo Elacqua
Random question. If will can see things super close to his eye, why couldn’t he see things that are far away? Isn’t sight just eyes processing light particles into information? Does his skill somehow add miasma to the processing cortex? Or maybe does the skill actually alter the way Will looks at the world so that his eyes can process the deeper level which includes a lot more miasmic information already contained within photons? If that’s the case the issue is more that he can’t process all the information yet which means he should be able to see miasma effects on his fingertips already. Idk, I’m just spitballing here
SunderGoldmane
I bet he wears a William oh mask as a disguise.
Monus
Thanks for the chapter. Though I am a bit sad we didn't see what the Upgrade to Immortal Serpent/Phantom Hand would have been :/
Andrew
Thank you!
Natalie
Only if a connection is present to them, and he can resonate those fears with his own. From what I understand he needs to be able to make their fear his fear by meshing them together to create a bridge. If their fear isn't present then he has not material to work with to create the bridge. He needs a line of fear, like a line of sight
Nùmenor
If the fear traversal thing works across dimensions, couldn’t Will just travel to any floor he wants to by resonating with someone who fears him?
Daedalus
Well, Kinkaid *is* a Fae Lord, so the power level checks out. You aren’t supposed to survive it any more than you’re supposed to survive an attack from the Rotwitch or attacking Lord Wyrd. Will navigated the fear. He walked through it, so… none of the above, because you’re assuming that there’s a strict science component to the ability which lets Will literally grab on to people’s fear of him. There was no physical terrain connecting the inside to the outside, so Will navigated the emotional terrain instead. Kinkaid does do exactly as you described. He much prefers getting other people to fight his battles for him, which is why he put *three thousand* fae between himself and Will. It just didn’t help.
Aloysius
:))) cursed gluttony goblin hehehe I had a feeling kincaid was my suggestion.
Alan Ben Sen Clem
Not quite a fan on how this went on. The dimensional stomach ability itself is basically Lord-level. You're in a pocket dimension, but you can't nuke your way out, and it's disconnected from the real world so if you kill the guy you're still sealed away forever. The only way to get out would be to manipulate Debt and force the guy to let you out. Or mindwipe him and force him to comply. I don't get how anyone is supposed to survive this ability. And the fear is a terrain ability is confusing; did William turn into a photon and go through the wall, or did he grasp solid fear in order to build some kind of terrain wormhole that led out, since fear is connecting both dimensions? Still does not make sense since you established there are no physical connections between the tower and the stomach pocket dimension. I don't get why Kincaid would ever bother using the ability himself by the way, since you established (again) that he can grant it to people. In his shoes I would've granted it to an underling, have it use it on Will and kill the underling to cut off Will forever. Problem solved. I'll admit it. The thing with Will hypnotizing himself into believing he's someone else was a nice callback to that other Duel (and kind of makes sense since it's within the expected psychic abilities of his species), and it has a nice synergy with the fear is a terrain stuff. But let's be honest there, dimension hopping/literal teleportation should be a real ability and not something you can get with terrain bullshit. I went "I guess that's a thing" and just moved on at first with the whole escape scene but I feel like it should be better explained.
Joshua Little
Thanks for the chapter.
Tom C
Will is kind of a big deal. People KNOW him. Fairly sure his apartment (if he had one) would smell of rich mahogany. TFTC!
Nate Oppy
Reread and kind of get it more, still kinda confused about the escape and how it is possible apart from it just “being possible”
Nate Oppy
Potentially stupidly, I don’t get how any of what happens leads to him escaping and the fear connection. Kinda found myself saying, just gotta accept it and move on.
Quazzy
Fun!
Mrfacemanlol
William oh is chemotherapy
Natalie
It's only the outside of the coi that gets wiped out. Life continues inside the Tower. So any being that is immortal and isn't in the thick of the fighting has a pretty good chance to make it to the next coil. The non immortals just carry on with their life, until they die of old age. The Tower is not conducive to keeping a written accord of history alive, and oral histories only survive when also accompanied by a strong tradition. Otherwise they just become scattered myths and legends, tall tales and big fish stories. Coils are a couple thousand years after all. All of recorded human history irl is only about 5500 years.
Karim Saadi
These people living across multiple coils... What's going on.
vVip3rzzz
“William oh might not be able to cure cancer, but he sure as shit can kill it.”
Doggo
the cliffhangers are killing me
Daemion
It's all clear to me. It would be confusing if this was the first time Will assumed another personality but since it happened before, it made sense. I don't think you can improve this very much because the English language is very limited when it comes to describing this situation.
Arnon Parenti
But everyone in the tower is Afraid of William OH, including William OH, he can always just grab that fear and smack them around, if Fear is a Terrain, then him being the center of the Coil makes everything in the tower his bitz, William OH can just make his way point, doesn't need a stinky Boss to do whatever he wants.
RedInkQuill
Will uses his will to become fear and tear a whole through Kincaids stomach.
Daemion
By the time Will goes back down the tower, he'll be so (in)famous, he'll have to wear a disguise as not to terrify people.
Doggo
thanks for the chapter.
Macronomicon
ALSO! If you were confused about what happened, please let me know what confused you and if you eventually got over it! I understand that this could be a very confusing interaction and i want to make it as smooth as possible while retaining as much weirdness as I can.
Macronomicon
Author's note: this is less useful than it might seem. Since he needs to have a target in mind, and he needs to know exactly what they're afraid of in that instant, and be able to put himself in their shoes strongly enough to feel the exact same fear and create a sort of resonance. It's tricky.
