MekanipWrites
patreon
Chapter 44 - Stormspawn
🕑 Added 2024-07-19 23:43:35 +0000 UTCThey pounded across soft hills and leapt over small gullies. Akhil and Oris rode ahead of the group side by side, chasing after Madeen's shadow. Trailing behind them were Jeris, Madrian, Sperloc, Mkari, and Menik, whom Vincent was riding with, and about fifty more soldiers. Since Tuls didn’t have any combat experience, he had been left behind with the rest of the expedition. Vincent wasn’t sure why the relos had been sent on this quest in the first place when there were clearly plenty of channelers who had the “sight”, each of which had battlefield experience.
As they galloped, wind whipped at his ears, rushed down his back and tried to inflate his restrained wings. He felt a trill in his gut at every leap and bound Menik’s landrider made. There were aches in his limbs, but he was too busy deciphering the language of the landrider's rhythm, learning how to coexist with its power. He became numb to the battering and moved to the tempo of its cadence. His arms and legs were not supports, they were shock absorbers. Riding on a landrider's back at this speed on uneven terrain was both terrifying and thrilling. The raw power beneath him felt capable of rending apart the crust on which it tread.
***
“You're sending me to...face down the storms?” Vincent had asked in disbelief that morning. Though it had been his purpose to seek out the storms, his mind had been preoccupied with the deceased channeler's bleeding mug, so The La'ark's words failed to register.
“You have the power to quell them, do you not?” she asked as Akhil and Oris barked orders at their subordinates. There was a coordinated rush to grab storm wards and make preparations.
“Y-yeah. Supposedly. Like I said–” The black-feathered zerok circled a few times before landing. Her wind sent a gust of dust flying his way, so he covered his eyes. “Like I said,” he continued, “I don't know how it works. It's only happened twice.”
“And you are still willing to chance a third encounter?”
“I can't forget what I saw the last time,” he said, referring to his fabricated vision of dying children, “I'll go.”
“Then do so. It heads toward the port of Heldair with no signs of stopping.” She gave him a brief, scrutinizing look. “You need your armor. Follow me.”
“I have armor?”
Vincent followed the La'ark to one of the wagons. She barked an order to the soldier towing it and he tossed her a key. She used it to drop the gate and step on in.
“Well? What are you waiting for?” she called, “kick the dirt and get in here!”
The wagon’s walls were lined with crates and weapons. But Vincent's eyes were drawn toward the middle where a suit of leathermail armor hang. With a pointed headpiece and empty circles for eyes, it resembled a plague doctor in appearance. The La'ark rushed him over and commanded him to hold out his arms and legs.
“This was commissioned for you before we left Meldohv,” she said as she clasped a segmented cuirass around his torso. “But the preservative needed time to cure as it is toxic when it is wet. Keep your arms up!”
Next, she had him step into a pair of boots whose tops flared wide. Inside, his feet found steep arches whose peaks would have destroyed the soles of a human being's foot. Instead, his lacertine form, triggered by some innate instinct, gripped the arches. Then came the grieves which she strapped to his shins. Before long, she had pieced together protection for his legs, torso, and chest, until all that remained were the wings, head, and tail.
The last to go on was the headpiece. She briefly demonstrated how to slide it on by tucking the snout in first so that it went into the beak. Two slots, one on either side of the headpiece slid over his horns and ears, and a thick strap buckled underneath each of them. An opening in the front of the beak allowed him to breathe and speak. He picked up an aroma whose sweet smell reminded him of petroleum.
“That will do,” The La'ark said, “it is stiff, but the more you wear it, the more it will break in.”
The leather was rigid, and it resisted when he bent his arms or lifted his legs. However, it was a perfect fit for his form. Beneath the leather, he could feel plates protecting his torso. The headpiece hugged his features and a lining not unlike cotton padded the inside so it didn’t chafe against his cheeks. He saw his distorted reflection in a tall broadsword: a horned plague doctor with lambent eyes.
This is it, he thought, they are slowly chipping away at my identity by giving the “Saedharu” his first set of armor.
But wearing it caused a very small tinge of exhilaration at the new identity Falius strove to create, a geeky impulse to simply throw himself into this role.
“This hide is lightweight and tough,” the La'ark said, “but it will not protect you in a prolonged fight. The storm you intend to face gives birth to armies of stormspawn.” She gave him a quick look over. “Go now. We wasted enough time already.”
***
So here he was, arms and legs bracing and flexing as needed to meet the landrider's rhythm, despite having turned to jelly. The beasts had been galloping almost nonstop from the moment they left the expedition, only pausing briefly to drink from lakes and rivers. They were truly incredible animals, capable of coursing over land without exhausting themselves. If a horse had been pushed even half this hard, Vincent was certain it would have died.
He sat behind Menik, whose armor resembled his own, except that it was capped in places by steel plating. His helmet was a triangular carapace, with its alloys resembling an exoskeleton. Straddled across his back was a massive halberd whose length was almost as tall as he was, its blade formed of green crystal that scattered emerald rays when it caught the sun. Segmented leather ran down the length of his tail before topping off its tip with a bladed cap. There were four blades surrounding the cap, each running toward the tail's end. It was clearly designed to be used as a flail.
Akhil and Oris rode side by side, clad in full armor like steel behemoths. Both of them were armed with enormous longswords. The swords weren’t the only weapons they were armed with. Chains dangled from the satchels on their beasts’ flanks. Something inside weighed the bags down. Vincent caught a glimpse of a severe-looking spike in one of them, attached to the chains. Jeris, in contrast to the twins, had barely any armor at all. Indeed, his outfit was tight-fitting and he had a crossbow strapped to his back. Mkari also donned a crossbow in addition to a black blade.
They chased after the storm for the whole day. Despite their haste, the expedition encountered only clear skies. Vincent could feel blisters forming inside his armor due to the constant rubbing and banging. The long-necked creatures, whom he had been told were called tantalons, looked up as they passed by. Some of them fled as the group raced through their pastures. Herds of massive long-legged insects also scattered from the galloping beasts, their glimmering green shells making the hills sparkle.
Madeen led them this way and that. Sometimes she received new information from her distant brethren and took a turn, leading them ever closer to their destination. It wasn’t until early evening that they spotted a few scattered clouds in the sky, coasting innocently across the heavens as if being pulled by a larger current. Like rapids in a river foreshadowing a waterfall, the clouds continued to appear, growing denser by the moment. When the sky began to burn with the oranges and reds of evening, the group scaled a large hill and came to an abrupt stop.
The rolling fields continued on into the horizon where a formidable system gathered, suffusing the land in the distance with curtains of rain and darkness. The sun was well on its way into its descent, its corona grazing the tops of the storm, limning the clouds with flames. Its beams scattered into the heavens as the storm devoured it. Lightning flickered silently within the depths of the system, illuminating ribbons of rain that showered the fields. The silhouettes of battered trees flickered to life with each strike.
Akhil called a group of dire looking channelers to go ahead of them while Oris brought his mount to Vincent's side.
“This is it, Vincent Cordell. Somewhere in that system is a black storm,” he said, “ready yourself.”
For a moment, he thought he heard hints of the distinct “yawning” he had come to associate with the black clouds. He thought he even felt a little bit of the “ill” the channelers sensed. But with a deep breath, he was able to get these doubts under control. These storms had his memories and he wanted them back. Oris was right, it was in there somewhere.
But now Vincent felt rocks in his chest and a hundred fears coming to his mind. What if he was wrong? What if these storms weren't his memories and he was leading these people to their deaths? What if he himself was killed? Or worse...he had a brief flash of his transformation. What if the Stalker was in there? What if it subjected him to a fate even more horrific than the one, he had undergone?
“Let's get this over with,” he said.
Oris nodded and with a wing, he gestured to Menik.
“Sit in front of me,” Menik said, gesturing toward his front.
“What?” Vincent asked, temporarily distracted by the sight of Sperloc unsheathing a sword and hanging it on his belt.
“Is it true you sleep when you encounter these storms? I will do a better job of protecting you if I can ensure you don’t fall off. Kick the dirt. Get up here.”
“Right.”
Menik shifted to the side as Vincent made his way to the front. The shandan pushed aside his limbs, manipulating them as needed to so they could both sit comfortably. When they were ready, Vincent was left sitting with one of Menik's legs to each side, his tail tucked under one of the creature's knees so that it wouldn’t be sat on. Menik removed his wing strap and switched to using his wings to control his mount, since he was now too far away to use his hands. The webbed limbs made Vincent feel as though he were enshrouded in a cocoon.
“Now listen to me,” Menik said, “we don’t know what we will find in there. But I may need to fight from the saddle. If this happens, then I will need you to stay low. Do nothing else. Just stay low and hold on.”
Oris and Akhil gave them all a look, then they barked out the “go” order. Landriders reared up, then they hit the ground and launched toward the storm. Vincent held on to the horn of the saddle as wind rushed into his helmet. Menik bunched up his wings so they would not catch the air, but he could still hear the creature's flesh flapping like a kite. Menik slapped his arm to something attached to the saddle and Vincent felt flux lines erupt around the landrider: a storm ward. The wind popped back from them momentarily before resuming its onward rush.
As they closed the distance between them and the churning system, he was struck by the eerie beauty of those clouds. There was an ethereal grace to the slow dance and roil of their movements. They tumbled into each other like water cascading down a stream. Frothing towers basked in the sun's waning light before collapsing in on themselves. Lightning illuminated their cottonous bodies with strange pareidolia, forming shapes with insidious connotations. He leaned to the side to see past Menik's wings, trying to pick out any hints of the stormspawn among the storm's shadow. All he would see was a rapid descent into a night-like darkness.
They approached the threshold when a change came over the wind. Gusts of chilled air mixed with the warm, buffeting them with pockets of high and low pressure. The storm's gray fingers reached out above their heads as if intent on snuffing out the sky's light. Scattered herds of tantalons and the large insect creatures fled, bounding away from the storm's center. The group dodged left and right to give the beasts passage, allowing the animals to flee toward the clear skies behind them.
Overhead, the clouds grew thicker. Wards flickered to life as the first bursts hit the group. Vincent could feel their lore analyzing the contents, the force, and the patterns of the wind. They pushed back softly against the storm's winds, redirecting them as needed. But the further they penetrated into the beast, the more violent the weather became and the harder the wards worked to fight off the virulent eddies.
They entered a curtain of rain and were slapped by a wall of chaos. Vincent felt his ears pop as the squall hit them from all directions. The ward pushed the rain and wind away, creating a tear-shaped bubble of calm around them, allowing the landriders to carve a path into the gale. They splashed through newly birthed streams that raced across their trail, bounding over stray logs and fallen trees. Occasionally, a landrider would slide in the mud before stabilizing.
The hills themselves seemed to scream under the storm's fury. Vincent's ears were filled with the sound of ripping wind and whistling crevices. And his sight was filled with darkening gray mist, turning the features around them into silhouettes. The wards acted as torches, pushing away the storm to reveal its hidden secrets. Lightning crackled and trees exploded where it struck. Branches ripped from their trunks and flew across the air. Menik grabbed Vincent's horn and thrust him to the landrider's back, both of them narrowly dodging a tree limb by ducking just in time. Up above, the clouds retained their misty gray coloration.
“A black storm hides within the clouds of an even bigger storm.” The La'ark had said.
It was getting more intense by the second, quickly approaching hurricane levels of violence. The wards, working as hard as they could, grew lopsided in their shape as they struggled to keep up with the increasing ferocity. What would happen once they actually entered the black storm? Vincent couldn’t tell if they were even close to approaching its threshold because rain and chaff blinded their sight. Surely, they would be torn apart.
Somebody summoned a spark, a levitating orb of light Vincent had seen in use numerous times now. Several more followed the first and Menik activated his own in response. It rose above their heads and trailed along, blissfully ignorant of the storm's violence. But even these motes of light were reduced to mere circles by the dense curtains of rain. The group had to stay close so they wouldn’t lose each other.
Vincent's imagination worked against him, making monsters of the shadowy shapes hidden within the storm's veil. Though he couldn’t see far into its depths, he knew in his gut that they were approaching the black storm and so, he became paranoid that at any moment, they would encounter its spawn. Lightning flashed above, superimposing the surrounding terrain only briefly, flash-freezing after-images of battered grass and swirling leaves. Every shadow during these fits of flickering was a threat. The swaying flora and drooping branches became claws and tentacles.
Many trapped tantalons tried to find shelter from the storm, their large forms too massive for any cave or to hide under the branches of some tree. Their long-necked shapes were outlined in white spray as rainwater glazed their leathery flanks. As the party passed, Vincent thought he saw them turn to look, their movements were stuttered by the intermittent flashes of lightning. Their elongated necks appeared to stretch toward the passing group, but the storm swallowed up their shadowy silhouettes before he could be certain of what he saw.
The storm screamed at him, clawing away at the ward so it could claim its prey. Rain and mist parted reluctantly, racing along the boundaries of the invisible force field. Another flicker of lightning revealed more shadowy tantalons in the distance with their necks pointed toward the group. But they disappeared into the darkness once the lightning stopped. Behind him, Menik hollered something.
“What?!” Vincent hollered back.
Menik leaned down so he could be heard over the storm's din.
“Look ahead!” he shouted, pointing at two bright blue lights in the distance. “That is the channelers' signal! We approach the black storm! Ready yourself!”
Vincent had no idea how to “ready himself” so instead, he just held onto the landrider and braced himself for whatever violence the black storm hurled upon them. The blue lights led the party closer and closer to the system's epicenter when suddenly, they stepped across a threshold and everything went quiet. The party had been slapped by a wall of silence. The abrupt transition had him thinking he had gone deaf. His ears were still ringing from the violent squall behind them.
Above their heads, an inky blackness permeated the natural grays. They were past a boundary beyond which the laws of nature were changed, corrupted. The rain from the black storm, in contrast to the virulence just yards behind them, drizzled steadily, softly even, from its blighted heavens. The domain resonated with the distinctive “yawning” of the abnormal cell, but it had none of the violence he had expected.
“Do not let your mounts drink the water!” one of the channelers barked.
His snout, painted in the ghastly blue light of his spark, looked both sickened and horrified by the things his senses picked up. His voice was oddly resonant. In fact, all the sounds reverberated as though they stood inside a large chamber rather than being out in the middle of a field. The labored breathing of the landriders reflected from the surfaces of unseen passages.
“Do as they say!” Akhil barked as he pulled up alongside Vincent, “Cordell. Will this suffice, or will we need to penetrate further into the storm's depths?”
“I don't know,” Vincent said, wondering the same thing. “I was asleep the first time it happened. When the second one hit Meldohv, I just passed out.”
“Then we will proceed further.” Akhil pulled back up and resumed his position next to his brother, weapon in hand. They both led the way into the darkness.
“Vincent,” Menik said, “do you have the shryken The La'ark gave to you?”
“Yeah...but I haven't...quite learned how to manipulate it.” He put a hand on the sheath where he had the liquid dagger stored. There were knots in his stomach.
“No need. Have it ready if we are attacked. It will immobilize you, but it will also protect you.”
The twins led them deeper into darkness until pure blackness obscured the moiling of the clouds. Vincent was no channeler, but even though he lacked their senses, he could tell the squall above them was abnormal. Glistening raindrops fell from the midnight canopy in steady, uninterrupted streams like glass jewels catching the sparks' light. They made practically no noise as they showered the land. Each drop seemed to follow the same path, as though sliding down invisible strings. Even the rivulets seemed to rush by with a hesitant shyness. He found himself entranced by the way the wards caught the rain and gleefully tossed it aside. Only the fear and revulsion in the channelers' eyes kept him from reaching out to touch it. There were no pockets of wind in this cell, just an uninterrupted, uniform cascade of water.
Aches shot up his arms as he gripped at the landrider's fur, tension tightening his chest like a vice. He felt the dog-like canines inside his mouth digging into his lower gumline as he clenched his jaw. This was wrong. This storm should have been the most violent part of the system. One of these things had devastated Pearl Wood, another had done a number to the land around Tulian's Waypoint. Why then, was this one, located in the middle of a violent monsoon, so quiet? How come the only noise he could hear was the drizzle of the never-ending rain, the soft yawning of the unseen clouds above, and the landriders' panting? Why was it doing strange things with sound, distorting it to imply caverns?
I am here, Vincent thought, you were looking for me, well now I'm here. He flinched in anticipation of a response from the darkness, a response it did not give.
“Are you well?” Menik asked.
“Y-yeah. I'm fine.”
What are you waiting for? I am right here. You have something that belongs to me, and I came to get it, so get it over with.
Nothing. No flashes of memory, no glimpses of his lost past materializing in front of him. Only rain and silence answered his challenge. But he thought that perhaps the shadows became just a little darker. More blackness seemed to encroach upon the light cast by the bobbing orbs and the air thickened. Or perhaps none of these things happened, perhaps it was his mind working against him as it usually did. He lurched forward as the group came to an abrupt stop and unsheathed their weapons.
“Your shryken,” Menik whispered in his ear, “prepare it in case it is needed. And stay low.”
“What is...” Vincent's words trailed off when he heard something. It was a subtle sound, hidden behind the soft patter of rain drops and the landriders’ shuffling. But it was a noise that had slowly been growing from the moment they passed through the storms’ threshold. It was a rhythmic rise and fall of a thousand distant breaths, a deep, sickly wheezing that rattled behind the rain. It was the respiration of sickness, phlegm-rattled throats, and engorged esophagi.
Disturbed murmurings spread among the soldiers as they raised their weapons and looked for the source of the noise. A circle formed around Menik and Vincent's mount with blades and crossbows pointed outward. A few dropped some expletives as the sound drew closer, filling the air with the strange panting. Several of the landriders brayed and stamped the ground in agitation.
“Can you tell where the sound is coming from?” Akhil muttered to his brother.
“I cannot,” Oris said.
Akhil reached into one of the satchels on his landrider’s flank. Vincent didn’t see what he did, but something inside twitched. Chains clanked. Oris did the same thing.
“Ware yourselves.” Akhil barked at the soldiers. They raised their weapons.
Vincent flinched when he felt, rather than heard, a voice vibrating inside his skull. Its words burrowed into his mind. “The horror took me into its darkness” it began, emulating the inflection of a woman's voice. “It laughed as it showed me its work.”
“What...” he mouthed.
Sticks snapped nearby in the storm's shadows. Dislodged rocks tumbled unseen down a hill. The nearness of these noises startled him, for it was at odds with the panting, which had a muffled quality, as though it resided on the other side of a window.
“I saw the Weaver's creations: twisted and malformed into malefic mockeries. They were changed.”
Vincent felt something strange in the air, a pulse and ebb that beat softly, almost imperceptibly against his skin. The atmosphere had a soundless heartbeat, a sinister thrumming that oscillated the pressure against his entire body. There was a bellow that sent his flesh crawling, a bovine groan that contained within it, human-like inflections. The air itself seemed to breathe, beating in sync with the thousand choked breaths that filled the darkness.
Somebody behind them screamed and Menik whirled his mount around, causing Vincent to plunge his head into the landrider's fur. When he looked up, he shouted a stream of expletives. The light of the sparks illuminated a massive grinning countenance spanning at least a meter wide. Its swollen flesh was bleached to a pale tan and the bloodshot orbs of its engorged eyes bulged from their sockets, staring in opposite directions. The skin stretched over shifting deformities in its bone until it resembled a sapient skull fighting its way to the surface. Another appeared beside it with the same grinning visage. Menik grabbed Vincent’s horns and shoved him back down, but not before he saw two elongated necks reveal themselves in the light.
He had no idea what happened next, only that he was fighting to maintain his grip on the landrider's saddle as the beast thrashed about. The air filled with shouting, the clashing of weapons and the barking of orders. Next thing he knew, Menik was putting distance between them and whatever the hell those things were.
Those...were tantalons? Vincent thought.
He could hear the clatter of combat, but he could not get a good look. Every time he tried to turn around or lift his head, Menik pushed him back down.
“Keep your head down!” he growled.
Vincent heard bows thrum as arrows let loose, striking their targets with a volley of satisfying “thunks”. But judging from the shouting, the attack did very little to stop or even slow the afflicted tantalons.
“Stars out!” Akhil commanded. A few moments later, there were several loud flashes, followed by explosions. Vincent felt his armor slap against his skin from the shockwaves. They waited a bit, Menik’s mount pacing back and forth.
“You...may raise your head now,” he said, “but stay low.”
The two beasts lay on the ground with steam rising from their bodies. One had its head blown open, its neck spewing fluids. The other...it was as if somebody had slashed the side of a swimming pool. Only instead of water and floaties pouring out, its guts spewed onto the ground like blue-green pasta. An odor with the scent of sewage and bile filled the air, coating the inside of Vincent's mouth with a cloying taste. The beast's face did not belong on its body. It was stuck in a strange, uncanny valley where it was not quite human, but it was not completely animal either. It still had remnants of a snout, but its nostrils had been stretched to slits by the deformation. The effect was ghastly in the sparks' light.
“We must keep moving!” Akhil barked, “our purpose here is not combat, we lack the resources to maintain a prolonged fight with these creatures. So, we will move further into the storm and evade them. If Cordell can dispel its malice, then we must allow him to do so. That is our priority. Do not leave your mount. This rain has not yet affected zerok or groundwalkers, but that could change, so stay within the wards. If yours begins to fail, hop on a brother's mount and leave your own behind.”
“Hey. Do you feel that pulsing?” Vincent asked Menik.
“Pulsing?”
“Yeah...I feel something in the air, it feels like a heartbeat. I felt something similar to it back in Meldohv when they took me to see Ayrlon's Tear.”
The Runite Vault had a similar ebbing in its air, but its fluctuations were far less unsettling than the 'heartbeat' he felt in this darkness.
“None of us feel a 'pulse',” Sperloc growled as he dashed a few notes onto a few strips of ohnite he had tucked up his sleeve, “I would hear more of this intriguing development if I did not hear more of those things panting like women in labor.”
Vincent heard them as well and he willed Akhil and Oris to hurry the hell up with whatever it was they were doing. He didn’t like the fact that he was the only one to feel this phantom sensation. His skin seemed to recoil from it.
The shandan organized the soldiers into a formation resembling a lengthwise oval with him at the center. Spearmen lined the outside, backed by archers and bombers, while channelers led up front, using their extra senses to navigate the storm's traps. Akhil and Oris trotted up to either side of Menik's mount.
“Vincent,” Oris said, “it would be better for you to confront the storm sooner rather than later.”
“Yeah...I know. It would be,” Vincent said, trying not to sound panicked. “But I don't have any control over this. I don't know why it's not working.”
“Then we will navigate this storm until something happens or until we are forced to flee. Menik, keep him safe.”
Vincent didn’t know why the storm failed or refused to release his memory. He tried not to let it get to him. As he and his guard continued onward into the silent rain, he found himself whispering to the clouds as silently as he could, demanding it release his past. Nothing. The shandan who had gone up ahead to lead the group, steered them through the dark, turning when they got too close to the corrupted tantalons.
The realm of the storm resonated with the beasts' unsettling respiration. They breathed in sync to the same tempo, an agonized rhythm that was far too fast for creatures of their size. Their voices had both bovine and human characteristics, creating an unnatural conglomeration that screamed of wrongness. Vincent did not subscribe to the idea that some things in nature were just wrong, nature simply “was”. That was the way of things. Mutations happened all the time. Kittens were born with missing legs, some pigs were born with two heads instead of one, people were born without eyes. All of this logic seemed to disappear the longer he listened to those things. They were wrong.
The further the group penetrated the storm, the harder it became to evade the monstrosities. Vincent jumped several times when their grinning faces ducked into view and the group veered sharply, the archers lighting them up with arrows. After that, they ran into a cluster five... no, ten... fifteen more tantalons who gave chase, slow and shambling like the kelta. But they disappeared into the darkness as the group left them behind.
The pulse licked at Vincent's arm, working its way into his flesh until he could feel it in his muscles. It was the throbbing of a migraine, beating with an intimate softness. He expected to see the rain itself flinch with each passing thump, or the land which they trod over pulsate as though it were inflamed. But the ethereal ebbing was in the air only, invisible to all senses except touch. Yet it seemed to permeate everything, leaving him feeling sullied.
A scream came from the front right of the group as a tantalon came bounding into view without warning. In any other circumstance, the sight would have been comical: a dinosaur-sized beast bounding almost happily toward them, neck swaying as if drunk. The soldiers in the direct line of its charge were quick to react. Their mounts leapt out of the way, but those behind them were not so quick. The beast plowed into them as if they were pins in a bowling alley. Several riders were knocked from their mounts as it tripped over them.
It fell, head swaying care-free as it plummeted. But at the last second, it opened its maw and plunged onto a soldier who was too slow to evade it. It clenched its jaws shut around his torso and began to grind until it crunched into his armor. He didn’t even have time to scream. He opened his mouth in surprise, there was a snap, and that was it. He was like a captured moth whose twitching wings stuck out of the tantalon's lips at odd angles.
Several black blades materialized in the air and ignited with the same blazing orange heat Vincent had seen in Slade’s weapon. The soldiers who wielded them hacked away at the tantalon as the beast writhed in on the ground in ecstasy, with huge globules of saliva running down its cheeks. A second one came bounding into the opposite side of the group, snatched a soldier off its mount and devoured him whole before turning and prancing away. Five mounts broke away from the group and gave chase.
“Get down!” Menik barked.
But Vincent was hardly aware he had spoken, his ears were fresh with the sound of the soldier's bones breaking. His jaws clenched as his eyes followed the group pursuing the prancing tantalon. Two of them drew up to its side and slashed its legs. As it dropped to its knees, one of them stood up on his mount and prepared to jump onto its back. But just as he leapt from his saddle, a huge section of skin and muscle peeled back from the beast's flank like the petals of a rose, ribs parting to welcome its prey. Inside, there was a tangled mass of arachnid limbs that sprung to life the moment the soldier landed in them, scraping and scuttling on his armor like an army of spiders. They pulled him into the tantalon's gut.
“Vincent, get down!”
The snared soldier ignited his blade, but it was no good, the petals of flesh slabbed back in place with so much force that they broke his wrist and the blade dropped. Only his head poked through the seams between the fleshy flaps. Menik grabbed Vincent and forced him down for the second time. He could still hear the soldier struggling, frantically shouting at his comrades to free him. His frantic cursing quickly turned into agonized, horrified screams.
Vincent's nostrils picked up the scent of burning flesh and imagined thousands of wriggling spiders tickling and working their way into the soldiers’ skin. Before he could be saved, a third horror barreled its way into his comrades, allowing the other to get back up and limp away. As the beast made its escape, the captured soldier was pulled into its side and its flesh sealed over his head, muffling his screams. In that moment, Vincent no longer heard a seasoned warrior who had gone through training and had his mettle tested. Instead, he heard the agonized, muffled cries of a child screaming for his mother.
His ears rang with the sound of bombs as Akhil barked orders. Something whizzed overhead and he looked up just in time to see a length of chain lash the tantalon. With a spike on its front end, it shot straight through the tantalon’s neck. The chain dragged with it a metal sphere the size of a cannonball, which was hooked at its other end. The sphere crashed into the tantalon’s skull, caving it in. As the stormspawn began to fall, the sphere remained where it was, floating in full defiance of gravity. It ripped the chain free from the creature’s head, tearing off a good chunk of its face. The spike dripped with the stormspawn’s blackened blood.
Another chain, identical to the first, shot through the air toward the second beast. It wrapped itself around its massive neck, strangling it. The tantalon teetered and stumbled. Several bombs landed by its feet and detonated, turning them into stumps. Soldiers stormed the beast that had devoured their man, dropped to the ground, and began to hack away at its flank. They cut the flesh back, slashed at the twitching arachnid claws and pulled their limp comrade out. Dozens of chitinous digits hung from segments in his armor where they had pierced him, dripping with his blood. One was lodged in his right eye. They carried him over and lifted him up onto a mount. He did not appear to be conscious.
Akhil and Oris raised their hands hand and summoned their chains. They flew the air and stopped right before hitting their owners. They grabbed the weapons from the air and draped them across their landriders’ flanks.
“Admoran's West, toward Shella’s Island!” Akhil barked, “we will cross the bridge and hold it! Move!”
A howl exploded through the air, thrumming against Vincent’s chest as several of the creatures came bounding into view, tongues hanging, eyes bulging and ecstatic. Menik’s landrider reared up, causing him to hang by his hands, then it slammed back down to the ground and leapt out of the way, narrowly dodging as one of the tantalons swept its long neck overhead and snatched a nearby soldier off his mount. It tossed him in the air like a toy and grabbed his head in its teeth. Another grabbed his legs and they pulled like dogs fighting over a treat. A blood curdling shriek was cut short by a ripping sound. Viscera slopped out like noodles as the two halves of the soldier were pulled apart, spraying Vincent and Menik with a splash of blue.
Vincent’s thoughts went numb. Menik was jerking his beast left and right, narrowly avoiding being crushed. Grinning faces, stretched and humanoid, materialized from the darkness. The tantalons seemed to strike from the sky itself, necks swooping in to pick off soldiers like food. There was yelling and screaming, but Vincent registered none of it. His helmet was slick with blue blood, dripping with the soldier’s essence. Even when somebody sent a spark out into the darkness to reveal a forest of swaying necks headed their way, he could not vocalize his terror. He was flat.
Menik grabbed Vincent, shoved him into his beast’s fur again and held him there, snarling at him to stay down.
What did “stay down” mean anyway? Vincent could not remember, he could not understand. Menik’s words were meaningless. He was separate from this world, a vicarious observer watching through the holes in his helmet. He didn’t know the import of the carnage being fed to his eyes: wings being torn off like petals plucked from a flower, giant jaws clamping down on squealing landriders, stripping the flesh from their bones.
Leering faces leaned into the light, bloated and corpselike, human faces trapped in dinosaur bodies, yowling and panting. Another soldier was devoured, eyes popping from his sockets, mouth gasping as a tantalon clenched its jaw around his skull. It collapsed with a “pop”. Another had his arm ripped off when one of the creatures picked him up and thrashed him around. Explosions rattled Vincent’s ears and he felt them slap against his armor. Tantalon chunks flew through the air and several of the nightmares fell. But more of the afflicted creatures took the place of their deceased brethren, stumbling over their corpses, filling the air with their synchronized gasping.
Menik weaved between legs the size of tree trunks. One of the terrors tracked his mount, making a sound not unlike crooning. A smile stretched its face, but its eyes showed only pain and terror. It stepped in front of them and lowered its head, mouth gaping open, stretching wider than its jaws should have permitted. Its quiver throat waited for them to run in. A torrent of screams erupted from its maw, vibrating the creature’s cheeks with a thousand voices. Vincent closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was no longer on Falius, but on Earth.
Comments
Joseph Sikorski
Also-also, I really like the uncanny environment under this black storm, excellent atmosphere.
Joseph Sikorski
Now the real fun is begun… and hey, you’ve got your memory coming, Vince! Probably, anyway. Hopefully you don’t wake up full of spider legs or torn to shreds. Or both.
ealize
Holy shit, the imagery of it all is truly terrifying
TheBaldWizard
I wonder, does the situation he is in effect the vision he sees? Maybe each storm holds its own vision? The entity controls what he sees? So many questions…
