Gwil sensed it before the others, like gentle fingernails caressing his scalp. Swinging from a lock of Leira’s hair, he spun around.

Three dark figures had emerged from the ruined main entrance of the manor. Their silhouettes possessed an inky sheen. They were humanoid, but protrusions jutted from their twitching forms. They moved across the gardens in pursuit.

Leira screamed bloody murder.

And then Ansoir: “Brock!” He thrashed against Ophelia’s hold on him.

The Talus came staggering out of the manor, behind the creatures.

Bile burned in Gwil’s throat. They had left Brock behind.

Unforgiveable.

Gwil leapt down from Leira’s shoulder and hit the ground running.

“No! Gwil!” Leira shouted. She dove to catch him, but he darted away. “Stop!”

He was gone.

“But you promised…” Leira buried her face in the ash and the dirt.

“Brock! Brock!” Ansoir cried.

Dammit. These tiny strides made him so slow. The manor might’ve been five kilometers away accounting for scale.

Weaving through giant raindrops, Gwil glanced back as heavy footfalls closed on him.

Cort. Gwil veered to get away.

He would not leave Brock behind. Diom was dead. He had no choice but to accept that. But Brock was still alive.

“Get on, you idiot!” Cort said. “We’re gonna get him out.”

Gwil jumped up into Cort’s open palm.

“Brock! Brock!” Ansoir’s cries echoed, piercing the pattering rainfall.

The three figures had a strange way of moving, jerky yet flowing, as if they drifted on the current of a raging river. Their bodies were lanky and thin, and they were over three meters in height.

As one, they stopped and leaned forward, extending their heads like prowling animals. They watched Cort’s approach with a childlike curiosity.

Tattered strips of cloth hung from carapace-like armor. The plates formed a shell around their bodies, segmented around the points of articulation. Gwil thought of a centipede.

Their shells were dark, but not black, rather a mottled mix of green, purple, and red, all in their sickliest hues. The pattern matched Leira’s hair color. Pinprick orange glints shone through the folds in their helmets.

Twisted horns punched through their plating. The horns were grayish white, like mold or ash. The horns looked invasive, parasitic. And the creatures’ movements seemed to favor the protrusions as if they caused them pain, forcing them to hunch and writhe.

Cort and Gwil—riding on his shoulder—were close to the creatures, less than a hundred paces away. None of them carried weapons. They stared mindlessly, like fish in a bowl.

Brock rolled along in their wake. The creatures paid him no mind.

“I’m gonna throw you past them,” Cort told Gwil. “Do what you can. Get the rock out while I hold them off.”

***

Leira clawed the soil with her fingers as the rain splattered against her back. It was over. This was her last sliver of freedom.

Ophelia’s hard finger prodded at her. Leira wished the statue would just crush her skull beneath its stone foot.

Gwil didn’t know—couldn’t know. He and Cort were dead.

Those creatures—they belonged to her. To Queen Anesidyra.

How? How could she be here? So far from…

Everyone would be taken. Gwil, Cort, all the escaped prisoners. Anesidyra would metamorphose them all. Except for Leira.

Her fate would be different, and there was no escape. Misery, until the very end.

***

Twenty paces. The air grew warmer as they got closer.

In perfect harmony, the three creatures bowed their heads almost to the ground. The masks of their helms unfolded. They began to gag and retch.

Chunky brown slime poured from their faces. It formed a writhing pool around their feet. The stench… shit and rot and death.

The impurity that gushed from their faces was an impossible torrent. So much that it could not have been contained within their selves.

The creatures sank down as the ground on which they stood started caving in.

The chunks inside the waste were eggs, gelatinous and yellow. In sequence, they ballooned and then burst. Coiled centipedes sprang free, each as long as a cat, and as thick as Cort’s arm.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The chittering grotesqueries spewed out more of the rancid brown fluid. The pool flooded across the ground. Raindrops sizzled as they hit the surface.

A Monarch. Cort did not expect to survive this. But maybe they wouldn’t see Gwil. Maybe he could get out with Brock.

Cort hoped the prisoners realized they needed to run for their lives.

He drew his arm back to throw Gwil.

But a geyser erupted. Cort turned and covered his face with his arm, closed his fist around Gwil. He winced as acidic droplets disintegrated his clothing and scalded his flesh.

Splashing and squelching, frenzied chittering and guttural roars.

“Brock!”

Cort took a moment to realize that it was Gwil yelling with his tiny voice, not Ansoir’s distant wailing.

Cort could only squint—a sticky substance clung to his eyes. He glimpsed the Talus frantically mashing his way through the swamp.

Brock had plowed right through the three creatures and knocked them off their feet.

Pale, colorless blood squirted from the mass of centipedes that Brock crushed beneath his feet.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Gwil chanted.

But Brock’s heavy body was sinking into the deteriorating, muddy ground. He revved his boulder legs, kicking up a storm of putridness.

Cort moved closer, inching so he wouldn’t fall into the swamp himself. He placed Gwil back on his shoulder.

Acid was chewing through his boots. Fucking hell. He already wanted to take a bath.

Cort dug his feet in and sank up to his ankles. Then he took his hammer and, reaching as far as he could, lowered the head down to Brock. The three spawners splashed about in the muck like jumping salmon.

The Talus clamped his boulder hands—the least dexterous appendages in the World—around the hammer.

They gave it their all, Cort heaving and Brock flailing through the muck. Cort could feel the acid chewing through his feet, but no pain, just a cool, pleasant numbness.

Brock managed to plant one of his legs on something firm. A rock probably, Cort mused. One of his insentient, subterranean kin. Cort giggled and found that he felt giddy and very lightheaded. Way better than being drunk.

He really wanted to sit down. And why not? He did.

Brock rumbled up out of the ditch. His stone body was pocked with divots and chewed-out gashes where the acid had melted through.

The Talus scooped Cort up and zipped away, smoke pouring from his engine as his boulder legs churned like tank treads.

Cort adjusted himself so he could see behind them. One spawner had lost its helm. Gross little worms covered its face. Except for the beady orange eyes, the only feature was a gaping round hole, like a mouth, but in the center.

“You kind of look like weird anuses,” Cort called. He’d tried to yell, so they could hear him, but his tongue was too big. And they didn’t have ears, anyway.

Gwil started laughing, and that got Cort going too.

But the swamp grew like a rising tide, carrying a wave of centipedes. Not funny at all! Cort began smacking Brock on the back, trying to hurry him along like a horse.

The three spawners drifted along the surface of the pool, spasming, slime spraying from their faces like they were loose hoses.

***

“Leave me alone, you fucking stone bitch,” Leira screamed, whipping around. Ophelia had resumed prodding at her. “Just let me wallow in my—holy shit!”

She did not believe it. Brock was blundering across the gardens. The Talus had Cort in his arms. Leira squinted and saw Gwil standing on top of Brock’s head.

Alive. It didn’t matter though, did it? They still had nowhere to go. There was no hope of escaping from Anesidyra.

The familiar scent of Anesidyra’s corruption made Leira shiver and sweat. Her skin crawled.

The Queen’s scourge was spreading. Leira had witnessed it many times before. And it had plagued her nightmares for the past three years. She shuddered—so much worse in person.

But Gwil had promised her. And he would try until he died.

Leira turned and ran toward the mob of escapees. “Run, you fucking fools, run!” she screamed. “Get down the wall. Run as far as you can!”

They’d at least been smart enough to get to the cliff’s edge. A warpship hung in the sky and the earth putrefied before their eyes, so it didn’t take a genius…

Ansoir knelt, one hand clasped around his bandaged stump, lips moving in silent prayer. Ophelia clung to his shirt as he tried to run toward Brock.

A booming, distorted voice rang out. “Stop! Stay where you are, prisoners.”

Leira wanted to rip off her own skin. “Fucking hell, what is it now?” she shrieked before forcing herself to turn around.

Another goddamn flyer! But this was a janky-looking, blimp-style airship. Not Leviathan. A crumpled hunk of junk that she wouldn’t have believed capable of flight if she wasn’t looking at it.

The airship slowed on its approach and descended to the level of the cliff.

“This is your savior speaking. That’s right, it is I, Doctor Buzzard, here to rescue you.”

A hangar door in the airship’s main cabin opened, and a ramp deployed. More than a hundred people were crowded inside—the escapees that had stayed behind, and a bunch of strangers too.

Leira’s heart skipped. She wanted to weep and laugh and scream all at once.

The escapees crowded the ramp and began pouring into the hangar, helped along by those who were already aboard.

Leira turned back. Brock was so close. Just a few more seconds. Please, please, please.

***

“More like Doctor Butthead!” Cort said, cackling.

Gwil didn’t know why Cort was being so goofy—this was pretty scary—but it had him cracking up.

He’d thought they were gonna die, but instead he'd get to ride on an airship. It didn’t look like the ones he’d seen in pictures, but it flew, and that was what mattered.

Doctor Buzzard! Gwil needed to remember to tell him something.

Without slowing down, Brock scooped up Leira and the three Jaqlovs in his arms and held them close as he rolled up the airship’s ramp.

The thing heaved at Brock’s weight, but they made it inside and the door closed behind them. Gwil grinned. He was flying!

“All aboard?”

Gwil looked around—so many people!—as Buzzard’s artificial voice sounded throughout the cabin.

“Let’s be off then. Let it be known, I haven’t tested this airship’s ability to fly in the rain. It’s fine, of course, but well, don’t bother holding on tight. If we crash it’s a death sentence, heehee, so just cross your fingers.”

Brock set them down. Cort stumbled like a drunk and then landed on his ass. He laughed, slumped over, and began snoring like a pig.

Leira snatched Gwil and brought him close to her face as he tried to scurry up her cupped hands. She clapped them together to trap him.

“Buwuhuh,” Gwil groaned.

“Never scare me like that again, you goddamn idiot! I told you they were dangerous, and you promised me-promised—you would keep me safe.”

“It worked out,” Gwil said, straining. “And look, luxury travel.”

Leira sighed and shivered. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”

Gwil nodded. “I won’t. I’m sorry.”

He climbed up onto her shoulder so he could see better. The escapees were hooting and hollering, hugging and crying, celebrating as much as they could in the crowded cabin.

And then he realized it wasn’t just the escapees in here, but a host of finely clad townsfolk, and a bunch of servants from the manor. Wow! Everyone did such a good job.

With a thunderous metal clang and a terrifying lurch of the airship, Brock collapsed. His engine was sparking, and a bit of smoke trailed out, but he gave a thumbs up.

Ansoir was passed out next to Cort, his head resting on Cort’s shoulder.

“Aw, how cute,” Gwil said.

Ophelia knelt beside them, hands on her head, stuck in her smiling panic.

Gwil was surprised upon noticing Stondemaier. It was hard to remember he was a person since he was so similar to an amorphous pile of rocks. His eyes were open but lolling with creepy vacancy.

“Erm, I think Ansoir and Brock need medical attention,” Leira said.