Act 3, Chapter 95: Liora’s help & Liana’s stand

Day in the story: 29th January (Thursday), around 1 p.m.—12 hours into the time trial

Elle Erikson

Darkness swallowed me. It was as if the entire centipede of tongues and fingers had been quickly jerked back, with all of us caught in its grasp, into the hole in the ground it had slithered out of just moments ago. I felt every impact against the hardened soil of the tunnel as I was dragged along its walls. I smelled earth and something acidic, sulfuric maybe—like rotten eggs. And I tasted blood in my mouth, accompanied by the grunts of Bastien and Milo, and a whimper from Liana.

The first light was red and bloody, tinged with white. Shadowlight gathered on Piotr’s skin somewhere behind us and suddenly the dragging stopped, and the beast was the one making a whimper. The jerking motion of that abrupt change of pace threw us against the ground and the fleshy walls alike before we landed back onto the wet soil.

I saw Milo plant his legs, those wide calves of his firmly pushing against the ground, illuminated by electrical currents of shadowlight running over his limbs. He managed to free one of his arms from the crushing grip of the tongue that held him and was now striking the teeth of the mouth that had become of the woman calling for help. Supported by shadowlight, he was stronger than a mage without the coating, but not nearly as strong as he would be with a bat in hand.

I tried to teleport toward one of the paper birds I had left outside, but they were beyond my aura. Forced to act on self-preservation as I felt the creature trying to drag us deeper in, I decided to teleport toward my suit—the one I was currently wearing—but appear outside of it, hoping that would put me out of harm’s way. That failed too, as the creature’s Authority to keep hold of what it had captured worked against me.

I began fighting it, but I could not rely on victory. I needed another plan.

So I called for the image painted on my back—a tattoo portraying the Domain, a few items that seemed important, and one creature: Liora. I touched it with my power, and the tether of meaning and connection that linked us brought my lóng to me.

Suddenly Piotr’s shadowlight wasn’t the only thing illuminating the round cavern we fought in.

“I will help you, human!” he hissed through the mouth he created from his color-changing scales and turned into brilliant light that flew like a ribbon caught by the wind toward the face of the monster holding us. He did not stop there, however. Incorporeal as he was, he pushed deeper into the creature disappearing through into its flesh. I saw through the eye on his forehead as he moved through its insides until he found himself in an acidic chamber that had to be the monster’s stomach.

There he stopped and his paws became more than shadowlight.

They slashed from the inside, cutting through delicate flesh and spilling bile from the organ. Liora’s own scales hissed too and began releasing smoke as they were eaten away by the acidic environment, and yet he jumped from one wall of stomach tissue to another, marking each with his claws. Finding purchase and tearing the organ apart from within.

It was Laurent who was released first as the creature thrashed in response to the damage inflicted by my dragon.

I was thrown hard against a nearby wall.

So hard that my glasses shattered despite the hood and mask protecting most of my face. I must have hit some protruding rock straight with my forehead, because my skin split open and my body went limp for a brief moment.

Flashes from Bastien’s camera lit up the cavern as he jumped over and away from the tongue lashing out to grab him. He hit the wall of the tunnel with his back, trying to edit something, but the next extension of the wet tissue wrapped around his ankle and yanked him so hard he slammed into the ground with a loud thud.

Suddenly, however, two blades sprang out from beneath the devices mounted on his arms and he slashed at the tongue, lacerating it.

“Pierdolony robal,” Piotr whispered, short of breath as he kept striking the extended trap-mouth that held him. His legs had begun shaking from the strain of keeping the entire thing from pulling us deeper in.

At the same time, I noticed that Liana wasn’t idle. Despite being entangled just like me, she released a swarm of large red ants from beneath her skin. The insects quickly marched across the surface of the tongue holding her, biting into it and pushing farther inward, toward the mouth from which it had sprouted.

Then that very tongue lit up with greyish shadowlight and thinned substantially, probably altered by whatever Bastien was doing.

Liora darted out of the monster to witness the chaos.

He leapt across platforms only he could see and, when his gaze found me, rushed to my side. He grabbed hold of the tongue restraining me and bit through it while pinning it firmly with all four paws.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, concern clear in his voice while still holding the creature in his jaws. His whiskers brushed against the wet tissue, as if trying to understand it through touch as well. “Speak to me, human, please...” he whispered through the mouth he had created and been granted the Authority to use.

“I am... in the... head,” I managed to say—each word an effort. Through the eyes of the birds circling above, I noticed that Patricia and Kito had already leapt into the tunnel after us. Kito had grabbed Milo’s bat on the way down and both were racing to catch up, their figures jumping into the darkness of the passage.

It was impossible to tell how fast we were being dragged before or how deep underground we already were. The creature twisted and stretched very quickly, robbing me of any sense of distance or direction.

“Fuck!” Piotr’s shout was the last thing I heard before the world lurched back into the same wild motion. His legs gave out beneath him, and the creature immediately retreated deeper into the hole from which it had emerged. Its finger-like legs scraped against the walls, filthy nails carving grooves through the earth and showering us with dirt as it dragged itself downward.

Liora, still clinging to the creature’s tongue, did his best to sever it, but achieved no more success than Bastien with his slashing attacks or Liana with her ants gnawing at the thinned flesh. Whatever this thing was, its durability was proving monstrously difficult to overcome.

Anansi, tell Liora to paint over those tongues, to make them as black as he can, then add stars. I’ll try to make them become nothing. Make him start with the one holding me.

[Already conveyed the message,] Anansi replied.

Liora flared green briefly, most likely out of habit, as he was dragged along just like the rest of us. Still holding firmly to the appendage pulling me, he began carefully using the tuft on his tail to apply black paint across the surface of the tongue.

It wasn’t easy. The slime coating the flesh mixed with the condensed substance he produced caused it to spread in difficult-to-predict patterns, but he still managed to create a dark splash upon the tissue. Illuminated by the shadowlight he emitted throughout the process, and seen through the film of that filthy substance, it already resembled the depths of the ocean—the deep abyss, the nothingness beneath the sea.

I was about to reach out and sever my connection to the monstrosity by granting it the identity it needed with my sense of verisimilitude satisfied, when we crashed into a larger cavern deep underground.

This one was almost spherical and illuminated by the eyes of the enormous head at its center, it shattered the illusion created by the previous darkness of the tunnel. The black nothingness became just paint again, smeared across living tissue.

Instead of being freed by my magic, I was slammed against the ground along with all of my teammates and reeled in by the Scolopendra-like monster, which was in truth a tongue attached to the aforementioned head. The rest of the face belonged to a middle-aged man with a characteristic short moustache, black combed hair, and eyes full of hatred that shone with red light.

This detached Führer’s head had no neck. Instead, two enormous hands protruded from either side of it, reaching outward and serving as de facto legs. And then the mouth opened wide, dragging the tongue centipede—and all of us caught within it—toward itself to be devoured.

“No!” Liana shouted, and something that looked like a swarm of thousands of bugs poured out from between the folds of the tongue holding her. She gasped for breath with a long, dry inhale, and the black mass of insects, illuminated by golden and green shadowlight, attacked the thinned appendage restraining her.

Liora abandoned me and went to help free her on my behest, conveyed through Anansi. Both he and the insects chewed and clawed through the flesh, severing Liana from the creature’s slimy control within seconds. Her eyes rolled back and her body spasmed as she dropped to the ground.

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“Liana!” Laurent thrashed within his own trap as the threat of being devoured hung over him. He was the closest to the enormous face, which skittered impatiently around the cavern, its massive fingers tapping against the rocky floor. “Call them back!”

The swarm reacted either to his plea or to her control and abandoned the monster. Blood sprayed from the wounded tongue as the insects flew and crawled back into Lia’s body. The shadowlight they carried shone briefly across her skin and she slowly pushed herself up onto her arms, drawing one deep breath as they did.

At the same time, Liora returned to the painting he had been creating and latched onto the thing holding me. He planted his clawed paws into the flesh and used the tuft of his tail to add stars in broad strokes, making them resemble distant nebulas or entire constellations rather than singular points of light.

I noticed how mangled his paws had become. The scales that remained were broken and splintered, while others had been torn away entirely, exposing pink flesh and, in places, grey muscle beneath. Bloody blisters covered the wounds, bursting whenever they pressed against the creature he fought. A few of his claws remained embedded in the creature’s tongue when he pulled his paw away, refusing to come free with the motion.

The enormous finger-legged tongue curled and rolled, seeking its place within the equally monstrous mouth, and in doing so its movements slowed. Liana, having regained her footing, recoiled briefly as if still searching for the strength simply to remain standing. Her knees bent a little too much, her arms hung limply at her sides, and her chest rose and fell in exaggerated breaths.

Then she raised her head and saw us all being dragged toward the mouth of our doom. At that very moment I finally granted Authority to Liora’s painting. The attack severed a large section of the tongue holding me away from the rest of the creature. I hit the ground with it and, with the appendage weakened, shoved the abhorrent thing away from my body.

At the same time, Liana clenched her fist and pointed toward Laurent. He was the closest to being devoured now.

At her summons, the bees within her swarmed free, each one trailing a filament of shadowlight that tethered it to its queen. In that fleeting moment, she shone like a celestial star-god, casting blazing prominences into the endless abyss to strike at a far-off foe.

The bees flew swiftly and defiantly toward the monster, but I was there to help as well. I grabbed my explosive cards and hurled them into the gaping mouth. One after another. Until at least ten of them were inside.

The explosion shook the innards of the repulsive creature.

Fire burst outward with the wave of force, expelling teeth and hurling them against the distant walls. The tongue-crawler that held us—and still hold on to Piotr and Tien—was severed from the main mass and thrown toward the ground along with Bastien and Milo.

Smoke followed the heat, billowing from the bloodied, deformed mouth. The thing had lost most of its upper jaw all the way to one of its eye sockets. The head collapsed onto its finger-legs on the left side, while the right hand supporting it held for a few more seconds before giving way as well. The entire thing rolled onto its cheek and then onto its face.

In the meantime, the severed tongue, despite the damage to its stomach—a ragged hole torn through one side—and despite its far end having been brutally cut away from the rest of the body, curled like a snake and squeezed both Laurent and Milo even tighter. With a quick, revolting motion, it spewed bile across the ground before itself and, seemingly no longer interested in feeding us to the Führer's head, yanked Laurent into its own smaller mouth in a single gulp.

“Kurwa!” Piotr shouted at the sight. He flared red briefly before his shadowlight dissipated as well in a futile effort to squeeze more out of himself than his soul was willing to give. Liora flew to him, forcing apart the closing halves of the woman-shaped mouth as they tried to snap shut and devour him too.

“That dragon is yours!?” Liana shouted.

“Yes!” She looked at me briefly, expressionless. Then her swarm followed her command and descended upon the thumb extending into the section that held Milo. They began stinging, pinching, and gnawing at the flesh there.

The creature did not appreciate that. It reoriented itself and charged straight at us. I responded by pulling several sound cards, infusing them with the identity of steel, and hurling them at its legs. As they flew, I made them scream with ungodly noises, hoping to draw its attention elsewhere. The lacerations weren't enough to stop it nor was the sound it disregarded. Its mad rush continued, accompanied by the rapid tapping and scraping of hundreds of filthy fingernails against the cavern floor. The rocky hall we were in was illuminated only by the monster's blown-up head-like body, fuming and burning where it had fallen.

Enraged the creature barreled toward us all the same.

Liana, meanwhile, pulled a phone from a small pocket in her suit. A crack of shadowlight erupted from it and spiraled around her arms before settling around her chest in a strange, localized grey brilliance. A heartbeat later, the swarm on the thumb rising from the enormous hand where the face of the Scolopendra was, shone with the same light.

Each and every bee turned into solid grey puddle of quickly solidifying concrete. The sudden weight constricted the appendage and shifted the creature's center of mass. Unable to compensate, it lurched to the side and crashed heavily into the ground.

“Fuck!” Piotr shouted as he was thrown against a cluster of protruding rocks.

I silenced the cards, which had done little more than annoy us instead of the creature, and sprinted forward. Reaching the exposed underside, I stabbed into it with a makeshift claw fashioned from several steel-hardened cards, each one placed between my fingers.

As I attempted to eviscerate the monster, Liana’s insects crawled between the folds of the tongue restraining Piotr and turned to concrete there as well, wounding it and creating enough of a nuisance for its grip to loosen.

Milo wasted no time. He kicked off the injured flesh and tore himself free.

Then Liana with her lanky antelope-like body moving at full speed, sprinted toward the creature’s mouth. The monster tried to stop her with one of its remaining tongues—the one that had been halved by Liora’s artwork and my Authority.

She vaulted over it, supporting herself with one hand, and to my surprise disappeared into the beast’s mouth with a quick slide.

Liora did not hesitate, but with quick transformation into a ribbon of shadowlight, he followed her inside. When he arrived, I saw through the eye on his forehead that Liana was already kneeling against the creature’s inner tissue—finding him through the light offered by the fireflies I never knew she held inside of her—holding Laurent by one hand while the other released another mass of insects. They skittered over Bastien’s body and deeper into the creature, where they piled atop one another before abruptly turning into a wall of concrete, sealing off the entire air passage along with the route leading deeper toward its stomach.

Liora was only briefly surprised. Then he leapt onto the tongue and began gnawing at it as well.

**********

The bonfire made from my fire cards and the monster’s body lit up the cavern and provided us with much-needed warmth during our rest.

All four of us sat against the wall, watching the dance of the flames, taking in the smell of burning meat, and observing the smoke drifting through the many bores branching upward from this place. Only the tunnel we had been dragged through and another on the opposite side had a working airflow strong enough to pull the smoke away, meaning those two likely led outside.

None of us, however—not even Milo—had either the strength or the mood to continue our journey right away.

“So...” Bastien started, looking at Liora as he munched indiscriminately on a fragment of the head I had exploded. He preferred raw meat, and the fires resulting from the blast had long since died out. “You never said you had a pet dragon.”

“He is bound to me, but I didn’t want to put him at risk if I didn’t have to. He is usually inside my Domain, doing lóng stuff.” I answered. It seemed that if they had noticed the painting he had made, they attributed it to him rather than me. Or maybe they had not noticed it at all, which was even better.

“You kidding?” Piotr said. “He’s a fucking beast! He should be with us all the time, right, little fellow!?” He cupped his hands around his mouth to make sure Liora heard him.

Lio looked in our direction with a strip of the Führer’s skin hanging from his maw. He chewed once, spat it out, and I could have sworn he grinned at the big Polish man.

He was so proud of himself.

“I stink.” Bastien changed the subject, raising his arms and with a quick swatting motion removing a layer of sludge made from bile and saliva from his clothes.

“You do,” Liana replied while staring at the ceiling. Her body was overrun with ants diligently removing the same substances from her skin and clothing. “We all do. But we made it.”

“Wasn’t that hard.” Milo said, pushing himself away from the wall and onto his feet. “If I had my bat...” He made a striking motion as if he were still holding it. “It would have been over in seconds.”

“If you were more careful, you’d still have it.” I said.

“Same applies to all of us,” Liana added.

“Yes.”

“Fuck that. It was still kind of fun. And we blew up Hitler’s head when he tried to eat us with his finger-tongue. That’s a motherfucking win, guys. That’s a motherfucking win.” He repeated it for emphasis while turning toward the monstrous corpse. “I bet that’s the shortcut we were meant to find too. That other tunnel where the smoke goes.”

The echo of footsteps and distant voices began carrying through the tunnel.

“Kito’s coming. He’s close now. I can feel his insects.”

“I swear, if he didn’t think to take my bat, I’m going to kill him.”

“He took it. I saw it.” I replied. “Is this how those training sessions of yours went in England?”

“Not really. They were more controlled, and against enemies our instructors were sure wouldn’t kill or eat us. But they were challenging enough to stop us from shitting our pants in situations like this. So next time we’re drinking, I’ll be toasting them.” Milo raised an imaginary cup and drank from it.

“Sorry for using that soulmark.” Liana’s expression carried genuine regret as she lowered her eyes to the ground. “It’s wasted now.”

“You saved us... me,” Laurent whispered shyly.

“I wasn’t really looking forward to making it anything permanent. I’m calling dibs on the Terror one, so keep your hands off that one.” Milo answered. “Good choice with the concrete. It’s good that it worked the way it did.”

“It felt like the only thing that made sense in the situation.” she replied.

At that moment, her brother jumped into the cavern. Enormous insectoid wings sprouted from his shoulder blades, and his arms had transformed into serrated mantis-like blades.

He landed ready for combat, looked around, found us, and stood there in surprise for several seconds before turning his attention to the burning corpse on the ground.

The four of us started laughing at the seriousness on his face. The sound of happiness and all release of the post-battle tension echoed from the walls.

“What the hell?” Patricia said as she entered behind him carrying Milo’s bat.

“Oh, how I’ve missed you!” Milo shouted, making her blush. He ran toward her so quickly that she seemed unsure what to do once he arrived. In the end, he stopped directly in front of her, took the bat from her hands, and hugged it like a long-lost pet.

“Good God,” Liana muttered, watching the scene unfold.

“Humans,” Liora hissed from the distance.