Smile held Luna with a strong arm around her neck and pinned her backwards against her chest at an awkward angle. In the building cloud of smoke, Serah could hardly see the pair of them and despite her best efforts to fan the poisonous gasses away, her throat and eyes burned from the constant inhalations.
“Y’all best stop fightin’ or we’re all gonna choke to death! Pupper’s gonna be fine - she’s got the instincts of a survivor.” Serah was, of course, referring to the hound that had since, they first saw the burning fields of corn, escaped.
“Let me go, you whore! We’ve gotta save them - we’ve gotta find Pupper!” Smile scoffed into Luna’s ear.
“If they weren’t already dead, then they’d kill you too. And every hound knows to shy fire - she’s fine. Now, calm down and get down on the ground or you’re gonna choke from the fumes!” Again, the Ghast attempted to press the girl into the dirt, only for her surprisingly strong legs to resist her.
“What the fuck do you care!? Last time we met, you made it clear you don’t like me! You said I have a fat ass!” She could feel the Ghast jerk with acknowledgment.
“I’m trying to help you because he likes you. Now, you either listen or you die. Either’s fine with me.”
Luna finally saw the head of blonde hair on the ground and the blue pair of eyes staring up at her from the dirt. Serah’s leather vest dripped with the evaporates of what had once been stalks of corn.
The Logoruum dropped to the ground to glare daggers at the dark shape joining her on the dirt.
“So that’s what it’s all about, after all, huh? Couldn’t have been more obvious if you’d tried.” Luna grumbled from next to her two companions.
As if determined not to let Luna know that she could hear her, Smile turned over her shoulder to question Serah: “Anything you can do to help us out here?”
Serah’s lungs burned with the toxic fumes of flesh, corn and wood, but knew that the air was still breathable - at least for a while longer. The Longmirian shook her head. “It’s amazin’ we ain’t dead yet. We need to get further out from them bombs - those are the problem. Spewin’ out all sorts of shit.” Luna felt pained just looking at Serah’s naked legs and thighs scraping against the coarse dirt of the road,
The Logoruum might not have trusted the Ghast, but the nimble miredweller’s determined pace hinted that she knew where to head as she continued to crawl along the dirt.
“Keep up!”
Low on the ground, Luna could feel every dropped bomb shake her innards and as much as it pained her to crawl away from the battlefield, she knew there’d be little point standing around in a cover of smoke - especially against an enemy that so vastly outgunned them.
When the air finally thinned ever-so-slightly, she glanced sideways to see that she could see what appeared to be the smoldering skeletons of the stalks of corn and, judging by Serah stopping ahead of her, they were as safe as they could be for the time being.
Smile quickly overtook Luna and lay a hand atop Serah’s lower back to question: “Is it ever going to let up?”
“How the fuck should I kno-”
Their muttered conversation was cut off by a sound of leather scraping against gravel shortly behind them.
Something had come from the smoke to grab Luna by the leg - wrapping a slimy, cold tendril around her left boot to pull her backwards towards the field of slaughter. Her desperate hands clawed against the dirt, but to no avail. The tendril was far stronger - far more potent than her meager human frame could ever be.
Serah grinned as she saw Luna’s backmeat tear through the back of her coat and jam the two spikes into the ground, finally gaining her enough traction to resist the tentacle.
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“Fuck!” Her red, wide eyes met Serah’s as yet another tentacle wrapped around her right leg. Deciding that fighting was no longer off the table, Luna turned around and readied to strike at the screen of smoke, only to see the numerous writhing shadows dancing in the backlight of the raging fires.
And every last one of them… was coming towards her.
She squeezed her eyes shut and crossed her arms in front of her - hoping the symbiote would assist her yet again. But to her surprise… to her joy… to her dismay, a calm, collected voice spoke: “Run.”
She opened her eyes in time to see Smile’s black frame dart around her - knife in hand.
Warm spurts of blood sprayed across Luna’s face as the Ghast swung out in the smoke, cutting through the monstrosity’s appendages to instantaneous effects. The constraining vines around the Logoruum’s legs loosened, but before she could fully rise to her height, she heard a disheartening crackle of porcelain.
“Run.” A choked voice spoke from behind. Luna turned briefly over her shoulder to see that where she had lay a moment before, Smile stood stationary - knife in hand while dozens of the vines wrapped around her wrists, legs, neck and across her mask.
Porcelain rained down on the dirt as the smoke roiled around her still form. A snap and a series of crackles followed her body’s violent jerks of broken appendages. But there, in stead of the white mask, Luna saw why Logan had seen it fit to give her the name. She saw the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen - a pair of full lips curled into a peaceful smile.
And just like that, she was gone. Drawn out into the obscuring gasses, never for Luna to see that smooth, pristine, peaceful smile ever again.
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Back atop the building, Jorn and Logan had seen what appeared to be a development in the direction where Luna and the rest had last been seen - an increase in the slithering and writhing. The wet, eager slaps of the tendrils sounded louder than even the artillery as the Monstrum produced something from the wall of smoke. Something black… something solid.
Logan quickly jerked his hand into his inner pocket to produce the binoculars, to verify that there, writhing in the mess, he saw four pieces of black being dragged backwards by the tentacles - towards the gory jungle of bubbling, boiling flesh.
The longer he stared, the quicker - the harder his heart would beat. A torso clad in a black shirt, a dismembered arm, a torn-off leg and-...
Logan dropped the binoculars to the wooden platform. Her silver hair was undeniable - the size and proportions of the torso.
Jorn watched Logan raise his hand to his mask and raise it to uncover his face. He took determined strides forwards to the ledge, where he watched the black-clad pieces of flesh disappear beneath the waves of crimson - swallowed by the enemy of all mankind.
As soon as the last of her had disappeared, a loud rumbling followed - a profound shaking of the earth itself, as if the entire world had begun to quiver upon seeing his face.
But something had happened to the jungle of red - something quick and undoubtedly transformative.
Partitions of the flesh thus far untouched by the fire had begun to wither. The thick, pulsating vasculature’s lumens seemed to shrink before his eyes and the until-then lively hives quickly turned to dehydrated husks.
This wave of degeneration spread through the jungle faster than the fires had - shrinking vessels, dropping vines and retracting those tentacular growths back to wherever they’d come from.
Logan’s roar was loud enough to shake the dust from the battlements; his fury so great it made even Jorn bat an eye at his boy. But the old man’s attention was quickly stolen away as Logan’s howl was followed by the most ungodly psychic shriek he’d ever heard.
If what the man was doing to the symbiote on a regular day was torture, there were no words for what he was doing as he grabbed both his blades and forced his will upon the endoparasite.
Six pairs of tentacles erupted from the young man’s back, quickly followed by an explosion of another six from his chest.
The writhing, powerful muscles slapped the air menacingly as he leapt from the building, his blades raised high above his head.
“Toofy, no!” Jorn shouted as he watched Logan disappear into the smoky streets.
Logan slashed through what felt like an endless field of dry reeds, cutting down the unmistakably dead remnants of what had just been a bustling hive. There - ahead of him, he saw the retracting members and kept his momentum up, eventually not even bothering to cut as the false hives popped and exploded into dry, clay-like dust as he sprinted through them. He knew where they were going - he knew exactly where Smile had gone.
By the time he had arrived at the church, the tentacles had nearly all retracted down the stairs, leaving behind yet more of the dehydrated husks. He hadn’t seen a single person - dead or alive, throughout his journey through the streets. Already, the winds had begun to erase them - their living ashes clouding the streams of air brushing past him as he sprinted down the stair to find the lamp was still lit.
The rumbling had nearly ceased by the time he arrived in the cellar- it had become distant and weak.
“No! No!” His demonic roar shook the church - knocking down dusted remnants of the vicious infestation that had ravaged the town of Cadia and reduced it to a ruin within hours.
Where he had pressed the priest in the wall, he now saw nothing. A break in the bricks led into a massive cavern of pitch-black. He stepped closer, snapping his inhumane disfigurements through the deathly still air of the dusty chamber, only to reach the same conclusion upon his arrival.
He retrieved the lamp and stuck it into the hole in the wall, expecting to see the darkness of his newly discovered abyss fade. Alas, no - as he put the lantern in, the walls were simply too far away to be lit up by the comparatively meager source of light.