“CALYPSO!” Gale exclaimed. Before waving, gesturing her slimy arms, stopping at times due to the shock being so overwhelming to her. “WHAT THE HELL, MAN?!”

Calypso couldn’t help but laugh, as her claws held the remains of the monster she unceremoniously eaten. Maybe it was the potency of the outcry, but Calypso never not done such a thing and not feel terrible ever.

It was freeing.

“What do you mean, ‘what the hell?’” Calypso responded, craning her unempathetic expression towards her. “It’s what we came to do, no?”

“I—Yeah—but—” Gale then sighed, to regain her wits. “It wasn’t doing anything, though… Heck, it talked! Isn’t that… Not normal?”

“Sure,” Calypso tossed the rest of the body to Gale, who in turn shrieked—stumbling to catch it. “I only encountered ones that just growl and grumble. But even if I should be amazed over them flapping their gums—god, I’m spending way too much time with my family—What does anything they have to say mean anything to me? It’s conversations with cattle the hunter-gathers spent days in rounding up.”

“W-well… Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

It was looking at the soft, off-balanced shuffling of her feet. The palpable unease that radiated from the girl. Gale looking downward, which covered her eyes due to the mushroom-flower-hat.

All proof to Calypso, she was no better than who the poor girl had been with.

Calypso turned forward in a huff mixed with a growl.

Face alighting once more when she heard soft whispers from afar. A chorus of soft whispers from afar.

“Hey, at least knowing that they babble—they give themselves away~” Calypso coyly teased. “Stay with me, Gale. For we’re feasting tonight!”

Calypso didn’t bother to wait, the monster girl dashed forward on her claws and peds. Running full throttle, trying to focus on what she was hearing over the sounds of her own scrapping against the ground.

Listening—being driven by, this one and nonsensical phrase.

“Terrortide!”

“Terrortide”, over and over, at different tones, enunciations, and volume. “Terrortide, Terrortide” again and again. Any curiosity Calypso had immediately perished, after hearing this ad nauseum. But she’d be continuing to lie to herself if she thought she had any to begin with.

Bounding from the floor of dirt, leaves and fallen sticks—Calypso sprung right into the spot that looked the darkness, where the moon light couldn’t shine down on. The moment her eyes caught that segment of shade, she didn’t even take anything else in.

So when Calypso landed, ready to attack with keen vigilance on all sides…

What she finally saw took her by complete surprise.

It was like… They were maiming themselves. Purposely destroying themselves, bit by bit.

A circle with a wide, reaching range. It didn’t matter the height, the width, the shape nor matter. Each of them took their tooth, their claw—horns, extra eyes, feelers, pincers. Anything that defined them, they painfully ripped from their now featureless forms and threw them into a growing void in the middle.

All chanting, “Terrortide!”

“Whatever that is—” Calypso charged forward, rabid. “—I’m not letting it make you all less sorry than you already are--!”

She felt a grip on her shoulder, forcing her to turn on a dime and drive her balled up claws to pierce deep inside of the fool that tried to test her right now.

Gale winced, face contorting with rising pain, as Calypso buried her fist deep within her abdomen.

Calypso’s face in turn surged in a plethora of emotions. Flashes of different events, but with the same regret that hit so hard. She would’ve immediately stumbled backward, run away, but Gale’s muck was very… “Rich” the more deep she got. It felt impossible to rip away out of, and Calypso’s entire arm was enough to tear flesh into shreds.

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Gale used her other, trembling hand to grip Calypso’s shoulders tight.

“You. Have. To. Slow. Down. Please…”

Calypso didn’t know if the emphasis was for getting the message through to her, or she was in immense pain.

“i-I—” Calypso swallowed, and yet her throat was still so dry. “I-I’m sorry—”

“Hey… ‘Cocktail of issues’,” Gale winced, now only squinted the one eye. “Hold on, I’ll help ya’ out—”

Before she knew it, Calypso was kicked squarely into her own gut, propelled directly into her quite literal boney butt. But now free from Gale’s stomach, her arm covered in slime but free.

“No, that’s very much deserved…” Calypso then coughed. “I need a kick right into the stomach from time to time—”

Gale completely covered her line of sight, as the swamp lady offered her hand, as the other clamped down on her wound. Calypso grabbed it as Gale effortlessly hoisted her up, despite not deserving it in her mind.

“But yeah—that… All of that behind you, that’s actually happening and not some twisted dream, is any of this normal for them or--?”

Calypso looked back, “… At this point, they could all dance towards the Moon, and I’d believe that this is what they simply do this on Tuesdays…”

It was insanity made physical. The void that was being created, it fanned outwards, under the “feet” of the Subsumed. Fanning out, thinning itself out, until it created a bowl. The shape and the scale were too taxing for the living material, as it broke as it formed.

But it wasn’t done. Various shades of blacks, greys, and whites. The bowl constructed whatever survived of itself into a broken auditorium. It was hard to tell what were stairs and what were “seats”, the groves bled into the structure causing it to warp. And once again, as this process happened, the auditorium construction itself made the structure tear itself apart, to the point of it breaking like a dinner plate. But it didn’t matter so much, despite segments being higher than the other ones, and others being so low that they sunk into the ground.

Pillars. They shot from the tainted ground, manufacturing themselves into the auditorium’s outside walls, then finally erecting inside of it as well. To the point that they acted as goal posts, for the walls to lance forward and mirror the now-bottom of the area to create the top level of such. Bending, buckling for moments before righting themselves with a flicker and wave.

They were detailed, rendering a sculptor’s life’s work null and void for what took seconds.

And they were made of faces. Heads. Legs, eyes, lips, cheeks, antlers, gills, hearts—made into various forms and shapes. But ultimately in a fashion of twisting.

“Terrortide!” Now echoing within these horrible halls. And rocking within the cold air, as the stragglers made their way into them.

“You think we can take them now…?” Gale laughed, uneasy.

With a low growl, Calypso took one step before being grabbed by the wrist by Gale. Who sported a face that Calypso didn’t think she was capable of.

“Can we at the very least look into this…?” Calypso tried to ease her tone for her. “To make sure that they’re not… Starting up a campaign of murder or something…?”

Gale sighed, making Calypso unsure if she could see through her bullshit.

“Just the ones outside, Cal…” Gale responded, proving that she did.

Calypso raced to the crowds that ambled away from her. As if she didn’t matter. And did that sting from the inside.

“The hell are any of you on about?!” Calypso was impatient at this point. “I’m right here! At least terrorti—terrorize me like before, damn it!”

She tried to provoke, she tried to at the very least kill so they could take something of any meaning from this. But whatever they did to themselves, they were just physical shadow more than ever. Ghastly specters that muttered the one phrase, constantly. Looking towards the hazy night sky as they made their way into the halls.

Calypso huffed from her mouth, a blast of steam following it, trailing as she craned her head back. “I promise that I won’t go in, but I’m looking into the tunnel, okay?”

Rushing forward, Calypso leaned to her side to angle her view.

It was just that. Subsumed piling into the seats, still muttering the nonsense word. Looking up at the skies, and weirdly enough… Calypso felt jubilance. She practically could taste such, let alone feel it in the air.

Now she wanted to really know what “Terrortide” was. So that she could find it and stomp on it for all of them to see it. Calypso hoped it meant something for these pitiful spawn, so that she could take it away from them, and make it this performance they staked so much for.

“Man… Sorry that I’m such a bad luck charm, haha…”

Calypso snapped towards Gale, who was walking up with her closed eyes and wavering smile. “I’ve missed up your mojo and how these monsters usually work… But don’t worry! I have my Root stash and maybe we can try again tomorrow—”

“Gale. You have a massive, caring heart. Do not let these living shit stains into it.”

Gale’s eyes opened and they were wide as tea saucers. “…Night and day. Actual, like, night and day. It’s so crazy and… Scary at time…”

Calypso gritted her teeth. She had to be nice, for her sake.

“Regardless… They’re the definition of unstable and unreliable. It’s why hunting for them is pure chance at points. Maybe we’ll find a way to actually conquer them, but yeah, it’s not tonight certainly…”

Calypso pouted, walking towards Gale. “I suppose we just trigger ol’ Plan B—which really should just be A at this point… Wait and see a suicidal bastard march along to test their mettle—”

“And so it shall be tested… Half-breed… Witchling… Vermiiiin…”

Gale stiffened and screamed, towards the terror that faced the duo.

But Calypso stared on. Stared on with a razor-sharp grin, and soft panting, steam escaping from the openings of her glistening fangs.