54. Two Steps Back, Twitching and Screaming

The twitching in Thwain’s left eye made me grateful for my deafened state. The Gunner spread his demonic wings and took off into the air, hugging the rightmost wall of what I decided was probably more of a cathedral than a church, despite the gaping holes in the walls.

Now that we were within a few feet of the portal, Burt and Rella finally loosened their grips on my arms long enough for me to shrug them off. Burt, his hands finally free, prodded gingerly at his side. I raised my eyebrow at him questioningly, but he hastily turned away and waved me off. It probably wasn’t that serious. I didn’t miss the trail of blood that we left in our wake, but we were all suffering wounds of varying degrees of seriousness. I figured we knew each other well enough that Burt would tell me if he were in serious danger or pain.

My gaze was drawn by the three portable headache generators who were still right in front of the portal, bickering as always. Sparks’s pink hair flew in all directions as she performed a rather impressive full-body eye roll while Jackis gestured with his only free hand. Thankfully, the perpetual ringing in my ears drowned out the overly stuffy monologuing. The third one, Bartholomew, I thought his name was, was standing stock still, doing the brunt of the work that was holding up the massive headless corpse. He seemed taller than the last time I had seen him, but I figured he was probably just dwarfed by the strange equipment that had filled their underground laboratory at the time.

Rella stepped forward and barked orders at the trio. I cocked my head to the side, trying to puzzle out the exchange. Instantly, the gargantuan corpse drooped as the three wanna-be scientist rejects stared at my demon in fascination. The corpse sagged even more when Jackis let go of its shoulder entirely and took out a notebook and started rooting around in his bag for a writing instrument of some sort.

A hand gesture from Rella and an angry-looking comment later, the notebook was hastily thrown back into the bag and Jackis was doing his best to over-explain the situation while pointing from the corpse to the floating Archbishop. A dozen more spells splashed ineffectively against the barrier as Professor Archbishop McNasty prepared another death beam. From my new angle, though, I could see that the dome wasn’t--

-TION

Wispy shadows drew my vision, interrupting my train of thought. Just ahead, between me and the Archbishop, were letters forming on what was left of the wooden walls and a half-fallen pillar. They were stretched and wobbling, but they were clearly there. I limped forward, stepping to the left to get a better view of the rest of the word. Words, actually. I waved off Burt as he made to stop me from advancing back towards the fight.

NEED DISTRACTION

The two words were formed with hand-sized letters of pure darkness that wavered as lights from the battle flashed first crimson, then yellow, then a myriad of blues. I looked around, scanning for the one responsible. My first pass gave me nothing to work with. The battle was still in full swing. Yagmar was in a stalemate against the whip-wielding woman from the Church, though our raid party was collapsing upon the Church’s members who were exchanging skills with the Guild’s Blood Oats forces outside. At second glance, however, I saw a few suspiciously dark areas under fallen pillars, and what looked like shadow writing on another wall, though I was too far to make out the letters.

Power accumulated once more on the cathedral’s ceiling. Almost every metal rod jutting from the ceiling crackled with lightning, ready to blow. I ducked behind a pillar and crossed my fingers and toes, hoping to avoid the blast yet again. I slammed my eyes shut, pressed my palms into my eyes and my middle fingers into my ears. I felt the blast with my entire body. Lightning tore up the cathedral, sending shockwaves through the floorboards. My teeth chattered and slammed together before catching on the inside of my cheek. I ignored the pain, spitting blood to the side and shakily returning to Rella and the others. I didn’t dare look back at the battle. At this rate, there wouldn’t be much left to see, soon.

“We… We need a distraction,” I said, trying not to shout. Jackis stopped mid sentence to stare at me, his head cocked to the side. He gestured at his bleeding ears, then to mine, then prattled on for a solid minute. I shook my head, reaching down and retrieving Jackis’s notebook, ignoring the increase in gesticulation. I dipped my finger in the blood on my chin and wrote.

DISTRACT

NOW

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I showed the group the words, then pointed up at the Archbishop, who was apparently lazily sermonizing. That’s when I saw it again. A bed-sized chunk of stone flew through the air and shattered upon contact with the Archbishop’s defensive barrier. I saw, for the brief second that it lit up, a hole in the barrier. It was at the same spot as the dead metal rod that didn’t charge during each massive blast. The same metal rods that I had destroyed under the lake of sludge.

I couldn’t be sure if I had created the opening, but I had to take advantage of it nonetheless. I drew a very rough approximation of the barrier with an arrow pointing at the hole in its side. Then, I showed the drawing to the group and gestured towards the Archbishop. Sparks pumped a fist as she excitedly grasped what I was miming, then gestured wildly at her group members. Jackis vehemently opposed whatever plan was forming in Sparks’s mad mind, but Bartholomew seemed indifferent. He just stood there, holding up the corpse, almost unmoving. I frowned, not knowing what had changed with the man. He had been so… Twitchy… And now… He almost looked bored. His glassy stare didn’t waver as the two others argued.

I flagged down the arguing pair and gestured for them to enact whatever harebrained scheme they had been fetched for. Thwain had brought them for a reason, after all. He seemed to always know what was going on. I idly wondered what other secrets or gossip Thwain knew that he hadn’t shared, but then dismissed the thought. He wouldn’t keep secrets. Not important ones, at least. We were best buds. We shared everything with each other.

I refocused as Jackis begrudgingly accepted whatever plan Sparks had suggested. Bartholomew uncaringly threw the corpse to the ground, then got into position, both of his hands on the corpse’s chest. He received a dirty look from Jackis in return, but didn’t react to it at all. He simply stood there, waiting, looking expectantly at the other two. The corpse’s chest was massive, making Bartholomew’s hands look tiny in comparison. They… Actually, they were both the same color as the corpse. His hands were dark purple, almost camouflaged against the corpse’s bare chest. I shuffled to the side to get a better look and found that Bartholomew’s arms were also the same dark purple color, up to his elbows. Something seemed to ripple under his skin, like thousands of worms under a sheet of silk.

Before I could comment, Bartholomew started channeling mana into the corpse. He withered as the body grew in size. The man’s skin seemed to grow gray and shriveled, his entire frame shrinking as he pumped far more than simply mana into the corpse. The latter, on the other hand, ballooned outwards, gaining far more mass than Bartholomew was losing.

Jackis, meanwhile, withdrew something from his bag. Sparks assembled a contraption and waved Rella over. After a bit of confused gesturing, Sparks simply took Rella’s hand and placed it onto her own chest, then poked at Rella’s ear. Getting the hint, the demon siphoned a bit of the pink-haired girl’s life force, then nodded. Sparks swayed a bit before catching herself and taking a deep breath. She explained to a very confused Rella her plan. I tried making out the words, but I wasn’t getting the full picture. It seemed like Sparks was asking Rella to stab Bartholomew. That couldn’t be right, though. Maybe it had something to do with her draining power?

Bartholomew’s pants suddenly fell to the floor. He had grown so thin that they no longer had anything to hold them up. At a nod from Sparks, Jackis reluctantly made his way to Bartholomew and held up a familiar small red cube. I would have bet all of my coppers that it was cherry flavored. So that was it. They were going to use Hasan’s healing candies to heal Bartholomew back to normal after he was within an inch of his life. It was brutal, but if it worked, it worked. Sparks gestured to Rella, who moved behind Bartholomew.

I furrowed my brow as Rella drew her sword. The corpse must have needed a certain amount of blood, then, to complete whatever ritual they were performing. Jackis lifted the red candy and popped it into Bartholomew’s mouth. Then, he took the second candy he was holding and plunged it into the corpse’s neck, right in the gaping wound where the head was supposed to be.

The previously twitchy man had barely chewed once before Rella’s sword took his head off. Jackis caught Bartholomew’s falling head and slammed it onto the corpse’s neck. Sparks lunged forwards and slapped two pads to the corpse’s… Well, the giant corpse’s purple chest as Jackis and Rella lifted Bartholomew’s headless body and brought it a few paces away. I stared blankly between the gruesome sight and the mad experiment, not knowing how to react. I hastily dropped the sword that I barely noticed I had drawn, taking a few steps back. Rella had accepted to play a part in this, so I would just have to trust in her instincts.

Sparks pressed a button and green light flooded the conduits between the large box in her hand and the pads attached to the previously-headless corpse. The entire body convulsed in a powerful spasm. One of its flailing arms lashed out and caught Sparks in the side, sending her tumbling airborne, launching her back twenty feet. I rushed over and helped her to her feet. She winced as she tried to take a step, then tried again, hurrying back towards her contraption. Getting the hint, I slung her arm around my shoulder and half dragged her back to her box. She immediately swapped out an empty canister with a full one from a compartment on the side of the box, then slammed the button again. And again, the corpse spasmed powerfully, though this time everyone was cautious enough to stand as far back as possible.

Before Sparks could slot a third canister and try again, the corpse’s toes wiggled. They were fat, ugly things, with flared toenails as long as my thumb as wide as my palm. The nails were cracked to shit, as if their sudden growth was too much for their structure to handle. The exposed skin was equally cracked and was leaking a light purple ooze. It was almost the same color as the blood that was now leaking from Bartholomew's body.

Sparks hesitated, her finger on the button. Then, the thing’s large hand clenched. I took a step back. Its arms flexed, its muscles rippling. I took another step back. When it reached over and ripped the pads off of its chest, I simply ran.