“You’re doing fine, boys. Just over this ridge.” Logan muttered to the old, exhausted hounds. He had long since had to descend them, as shifting between them had proven too much of a burden for the geriatric beasts. For days and nights, their journey had been tireless but had been fruitful. Four crates of powder, one crate of rifle-ammunition and a large handful of his pistol-ammunition had been lent to the aid of Anza, but it had come at a price that he imagined he’d have to pay back sooner rather than later.
With the hounds hot on his heels, he sprinted up the hill to see the sun dawn on Anza’s walls. Already from afar, he could see the changes on the battlements - the cannons had been moved and his desired roof had been built over the north-facing partition.
“I’ll lead the way, all right?” He turned around to see the hounds’ raised, white eyebrows turned up with relief upon seeing their precious home and the comfortable stables within.
The last steps were torturous, but he had finally made it - the first time in years he had been pleased to be behind walls. A large congregation had gathered to welcome him, but they seemed more frantic than usual as they approached him with low brows of worry. But none were as quick as the agile creature in black shoving her way through the congregation to face him with dire news.
“The boys are missing. They’ve gone to the station!”
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Their Ghastly training had already paid off. All the hours of blood, sweat, more blood and scant tears had taught them to move silently over the moss leading up to the station door. Under optimal conditions, they agreed it would’ve been best to wait for nightfall, but the night shift had confirmed that Bear had left the town the night before and hadn’t returned. They had hoped to find him along the path, but to their horror and dread, they’d only found his hammer further up on the hill.
The decision had been unanimous - they’d sneak in and, if the tales of slavery were true, they’d save him and pay him back for all their years together. Marcel had been the one to insist they not let their minds stray further than to the goal of their mission - to rescue Bear and plan as if he were still alive, fore anything else felt impossible.
Their hearts all pounded as they had crept up on the deathly silent lake and stepped cautiously on the moss to stare out across the greenery. Although beautiful at first, they’d soon seen the signs of the infestation by looking at the water itself.
Just beneath the brown surface, something pale and ungodly long was writhing and shifting - bending the surface, but never breaking it. Whatever it was, it was moving erratically as if muddying the waters.
None had spoken a word as they saw it, only signed through the air to head to the right - towards the stacked slabs with the door; the opening point of the station.
The door had already hung open and in a swift, smooth motion, Marcel - the frontman - had swung it open, his shield held up before his chest. Behind him him, Michael aimed the spear over his shoulder and far in the back, Abe’s hands were at the ready to bring out his powers, should the need arise.
They had already seen how Logan had killed them - quick, easy and with fire to seal the deal. They carried each their vial of his accelerant with a tinderbox for safety, if the worst should come to be.
Marcel had to swallow back a mouthful of vomit as soon as he saw the interior of the chamber and felt the warm, flatulent air brush past his face. Down there, past the doorway, red flesh crept across the walls as if they were looking into the guts of a fish.
The floor and ceiling were likewise covered in writhing, pulsating red flesh with veins arising to vasculate curious structures of unknown functions - organs in a meshwork of tissue. This was the ‘creep’ Logan had spoken of - the basal membrane, the organism itself.
They could tell that the layer of tissues was thick by the gaps in them. More importantly, there was something embedded into the flesh - sacs of yellow goop with something dark writhing within.
Had Marcel not been the frontman, their journey might’ve come to an end there. Michael and Abe would not have been able to stomach the sight and smell, but in the shade of their courageous Brother, they felt his inspiring aura give them the bravado they needed to silently descend the stairs to glance around the large hall.
The generator hummed beneath a thick layer of skin and heavy vasculature, veins that contained fluids flowing to and from a circular grid wrapped around the warm apparatus. It led down, past the stairs and into the bowels of the plant - past where the light bleeding through the door would illuminate.
Abe took Logan’s lamp from his belt and held it high - filling the chamber with the mysterious, blue light while Marcel and Michael plotted a course through the writhing mess on the floor. This was it - the moment they had been training for their entire lives. Their opportunity - their calling to heroism. But it was hard to think of heroism, when all they felt was paralyzing fear and dread; broken only by the thought of Bear enslaved somewhere below.
The ground seemed to pulsate with every step they took and every tubule and string on the floor seemed to bleed a deep red in the black light of the lamp, but their intrusion had yet to be noticed, at least judging by the silence.
Finally, they peered down the last set of stairs leading into the cavernous depths of the once-granite station; now an organ of its own.
Marcel stopped onto the last fleshy floor and felt his feet sink into the tissues lining the rocky cave. In the lanternlight, they spread out in a triangular pattern, looking to the walls in every direction. This level was overgrown with gore and red strings- all connecting to a monstrous cocoon in the middle of the hall, a cocoon writhing and jerking with powerful movements. In the blue light, it was difficult to make out any colors or shape, but the longer Marcel stared at it, the more uncomfortable he felt. The sheer size of it alone was mind-boggling, easily the biggest thing he had ever seen save from the walls of Anza itself.
A whimper stole away his attention and turned him backwards to see Michael and Abraham’s frozen forms - staring at something on the wall. It only took him a moment to notice it and when he did, he felt his gut wrench in horror - despair - dread.
The beard was what gave it away. There, in the flesh of the wall, a thin membrane concealed a form writhing with life. A massive torso hung suspended inside the sack - its legs and arms eaten away by countless insectoid creatures. Small and red - a perfect example of Logan’s admiration for the monstrosities. Larger, fingernail-long critters cut into the bloodless stumps of arms and legs, severing bits of flesh that finer dots of red carried up along his chest and beard to finally be dumped into the form’s mouth.
Thick bundles of vessels grew like cabling from where his arms and legs should’ve been - likewise his throat was riddled with inserted arteries and veins that pulsed with a rhythmic heartbeat.
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They thought at first his mouth hung open, only to realize that his cheeks had been sliced apart with surgical precision, disallowing him from ever closing his mouth. But his eyes - the eyes were the most horrific detail. They were still open, staring at the boys in turn in between frantically motioning towards the door.
“N-no! Bear!” Abraham shouted and raised his hand to the membrane, only to have his wrist grabbed in a near bone-breaking grip. Michael’s teary eyes were closed at his side as he bit into his lip to stifle his screams and cries. Bear was telling them to leave him there - to quickly depart before they made everything worse. But they couldn’t leave it as it was - not as he was.
A loud splash sounded from up the stairs, then another then - then a third. Before their eyes, warm, yellowy fluids rolled down the tissues covering the old, dilapidated wood and distinct movement could be seen up the second floor.
Abraham began to mutter something before he used his free hand to grab something from his robe pockets - Logan’s flask of swirling, yellow liquids.
They looked to one-another in turns, agreeing that something was coming for them - something they’d have to battle to reach the outside… and that it was a battle they would very likely lose.
Abraham splashed the liquids on the sack containing their Master, daring not to look at those wild eyes. He couldn’t - none of them could. But everyone knew what to do if a Brother couldn’t make it back from the field of battle; if he had been taken by the enemy.
Behind his back, Marcel and Michael had taken their place on the stairs, training the shield and the spear up towards the darkness - preparing for the attack.
The beasts were long and thin - skinless and bared muscle wrapped around solid bones. Their heads were but small nubs between their shoulders, but their arms were far more disturbing. In the dim, blue light they saw the creatures’ profiles, dragging their long arms along the fleshy ground while balancing on their two short, stubby legs. Had Luna seen it, she’d have likened them to primates in the ancient recounts - bipedal, yet somehow more adapted to walking on their four oddly lengthened limbs.
Marcel finally broke from his spell and charged up the stairs, shortly followed by his brother. The monster was no slower and quickly turned to face them, just in time to have the golden-haired twin’s shield slam into it, pinning it to the floor.
In that same moment, Michael’s spear pierced the nubbish growth between the second monster’s shoulders, skewering its head.
The walls bled as the ground shook and in a horrific realization of their mistake, the brothers shared a moment of terror as the monstrosities wrapped their long arms around them - pressing claws into their backs. Marcel looked into the white protrusion of its neck and absorbed the dawning realization that these were to be his final moments - torn to shreds by a shapeless, eyeless monster.
Glints of silver appeared in the air around them, shimmering and swirling before the pressure behind the claws embedded in their backs loosened. Next, an unnaturally strong hand grabbed Michael by the wrist and Marcel by his leg - dragging them over the floor before they had even had the time to process the preceding moment’s happenings. The next thing they knew, they were outside - soaring through the air before slamming into the solid granite; head-first.
Logan stood in the door, holding Abraham by his shoulder - the silver blade ready at his side. The dark form tossed the last boy to the granite; to the sunny plateau they had given up on ever seeing again.
“Go! Run!” Logan shouted at the three - not with fury, but with the authority of one well-versed in giving commands.
The three young men shambled to their feet for Abraham to protest: “B-Bear’s in t-there… h-he’s…” Logan looked over his shoulder at his apprentices and drew out his second blade.
“He’s dead. Zeke! Take them!”
Logan shouted. The tall, red beast leapt out from behind the entrance, the hairs at his back raised and at the ready. They’d never seen Zeke in this mode - so vicious-looking and hostile, staring at the doorway where Logan held guard. With a huff, Zeke grabbed hold of Abe’s wrist and sternly, but gently nudged him towards his back.
“W-we fucked this up. We’ll deal with it-”
Logan kicked the door shut, but kept his mask trained on the wood as he backed away.
“If you want to deal with this, go warn the town. The Behemoth’s waking up.”
Atop Zeke’s back, the young men swallowed down endless regret as they watched the red monsters pour forth from the door. As expected, Logan’s swift movements sliced off arms, legs and cut right through chests with every movement of his blades. Dozens spilled forth in the first minute, but already the mountain was beginning to crackle and shake with a building pressure.
They had seen how the monsters never stopped moving - even as they burned. Yet seeing their Master slice off appendages, only for those appendages to crawl towards him was a sight none could ever get used to - even Logan.
He moved backwards while swinging - he needed to buy time, more than anything. They came in three lanes at first. Then, a forth. First and foremost, he needed to limit their mobility so that they’d stay away from his envoys. These were not invaders - they were guards, sluggish and slow, but effective in the darkness of the tunnels. But outside, their short legs and long arms became cumbersome and a simple kick could send one toppling into another.
Their chests heaved for air - their costae deforming with every powerful flex of muscles. In a flourish, he leapt from the ground to slice across a beast’s chest in a vertical cut and in so doing saw Zeke’s red tail disappear behind the nearby hill - meaning he’d given them the head start they needed. He jumped back to gain distance and verified that the lumbering monstrosities were slow. Still faster than a regular man, but needlessly slow in comparison to him. He holstered his blades and turned to run after the hound, seeking to gain as much distance as possible before-
The entire mountain shook as deep, wide fissures appeared all around the lake’s plateau. He had to leap not to fall into the widening cracks, but fell flat on his back as he arrived at the top of the hill, just in time to see the monstrosity erupt from the flat of the mountain.
Boulders of granite exploded in every direction, creating a thick cloud of gray-white dust to obscure its legs and waist. There were few who had seen more of the horrors than Logan, but even he struggled to take in the demoralizing, new morphotype shambling to its legs.
The bipedal Spawn of Hell resembled nothing he had ever seen before; a being that made his insides churn with disgust with its vaguely human-like characteristics.
As the dust settled, Logan stared up at a twenty meter tall humanoid creature with caved-in orbits and a loose, cavernous, empty mouth - the lack of a tongue and teeth made it all the more disturbing; giving it the appearance of a being forced to live the same, eternal suffering it was doomed to wreak upon the world.
As it rose up from the sunken pit in the mountain, it dragged its long arms along the ruined plateau, still touching its knuckles to the stone.
He felt a retch welling at the back of his throat as the Monstrum turned its empty, black eye-sockets unto its prey - its thin skin squirming with life. When the sun struck its pallid flesh, he found its color matching the stew Ethel and the Anzanites had consumed to sustain themselves for hundreds of years. Now, it befell to him to prevent them from becoming the creature’s sustenance - if that had ever been its purpose.
While staring its empty eyes unto the Ghast, an inhumane screech exploded from countless holes in its short neck - expressing the tortured, newborn babe’s murderous hatred for a world of pain and starvation; a new morphology Logan had never even heard of. It was a scream not to shatter eardrums nor shake the mountain. It was a scream to demoralize and frighten.
This was by far its most cruel manifestation to date.
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The Anzanites had all heard the scream - it had been enough to deprive some poor souls of their footing and cover their ears, shattering their until-then stalwart morale. Luna stood with her leg atop the closest cannon as strong men compressed the fresh gunpowder in the barrels, topping it with heavy balls of iron.
The scream had rippled the air, but more importantly, it had made Luna’s skin crawl with a terror she had not felt since the destruction of Sitabee. It had renewed her disdain for herself - reminded her how peaceful that scene had been; the silence of a People torn apart deep below the surface of the sea and for a moment, she had looked back on that event as preferable to hearing yet another one of those screeches.
“It’s coming! Hurry up and load the cannons!” She roared out at the already panicked men. The sound of heavy breathing, thumps and clicks of metal rung all around her and down below, more than a few struggled with their resolve - weeping and sobbing as the looming doom succeeded from quiet expectancy to a coming full-blown battle for their survival.
Even to her, it had seemed a distant thing and, like the others, she had sheltered a miniscule hope that Logan had been wrong - that nothing would come for them. But that ungodly howl had washed away any such notion and now that she knew it was likely charging across the mountain, she found herself coming short.
As the Sitabee second-in-command, she had isolated herself to the office - only ever engaging with her subjects when it was strictly necessary. She had no experience in combat, nor was she a great talker - this would require both… but did any of the others? Were there any better than her to fulfill this heavy duty?
“Hurry the fuck up…” She muttered at the distant hills of granite, hoping to see that fiery flash of red fur return the only one who really knew what he was doing to relieve her of her duty.