A network of filaments, tens of thousands, spun into existence in a moment, as if all the web ever spun in the city suddenly manifested. Thin as silk, they were supple and bent easily to Ranvir and the other’s tether-senses. They spun ever outward from whatever creature had just punctured the dome, ice and snow still pluming outward.
They seemed inactive until finally reaching them. Delicate touches on each of them, then one descended into the pit. It struck with tension, tight as the strings on a lute. The distant wall of the palace burst inward, similar to the frozen dome. Ranvir stepped back as the creature slammed down next to the crater.
Twelve feet tall, it appeared humanoid. Its face was almost entirely featureless. The brow sloped low over the eyes, lowering them into dark pits. Its nose was made with flat indifference, too low and thin for a human. Its mouth was a bulbous and wide, flexing and shifting, as if it had a dozen tongues all fighting for space.
It was a flat gray all the way down and thin as a rail. Deformed musculature and veins could easily be made out, a twisted knot of muscle on its neck gave it a deformed look, while veins by the dozen pounded thick and strong across its chest and down the ribs. The torso was elongated and thin, half the muscles seeming to cramp so hard they twisted in on themselves.
The hips ended in an insectile nightmare. Twisted sharp, bone-like protrusion, occasionally cutting through paper-thin skin, revealing naught but muscle fiber and ligaments. Each of the four limbs attached to the hips in an incomprehensible knot of flesh, pulsing arteries, and bones.
Long fingers, in the same sharp fashion as the legs, grazed the ground despite its mostly upright stature. The arms, though human-seeming, were overly stretched, casually reaching the ground.
“What is that?” Amalia whispered, staggering away.
Ranvir shook his head, readying himself. The creature twitched and seized Saleema in a vast hand. Hauling her up, its mouth split open, three pairs of mandible pushing free with a bloody fleshy rip.
“No!” Saif cried, dashing forward. The creature moved in a blur, side-stepping while its arm swept out. The ancient tethered slammed to the ground, clutching his ruined throat as the creature bit into the soft tissue at Saleema’s neck.
Ranvir gazed from the downed Ankirian to the creature and back. Its strange mandibles working in tandem, picking apart spirit, flesh and mana. Before he had time to decide, Saleema slapped to the ground. Glassy eyes, staring at the ground, her neck tilted at a dangerously broken angle, revealing the gaping hole in her throat.
There was no more of her. Mana and spirit were gone. All that remained was her flesh, of which the creature seemed indifferent.
“Get away,” Ranvir said, waving to the others. They eagerly agreed, though with the speed it had showed, there might not be enough room to run.
The creature convulsed, and a dark bruise spread across its chest. Ruptured blood and muscle trapped underneath the thin surface. It seeped through in small droplets as the convulsion continued throughout its soul.
It felt like no creature Ranvir had ever known. Almost more like an object made to live. And now it was tearing itself apart, he realized. Blinking, he readied Sand Bastion and a storm bolt. Heart hammering in his chest, he watched as the creature looked at him. Eyes bloodshot and seeping, left red trails down sunken cheeks, now that the mandibles hunk flaccid and spent from its mouth.
Its spirit surged and attacked. Ranvir crossed his arms as the creature hit him with all the force of a collapsing building. Bone splintered and blood sprayed as both their limbs shattered on impact. A wall exploded behind Ranvir and chaos erupted. He tumbled along stone hallways, shattered arms churning his insides into flashing lights of pain and warning.
Finally, he came to a stop. Brick, mortar, and dust filling the hallway. Looking down at his arm, both shattered at the forearms. He blinked sweat from his eyes and focused — blood spilled onto them, his throat and breath vanishing in red gore.
The creature was already on him. Five needle fingers punched holes in his chest. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. A kick took him in the ribs and darkness overcame him.
He was lying on the snow again, a trail of dust and debris trailing him. Most of his right wing was covering him, most of his left was sticking into his stomach.
Bend, he thought, forcing the world to his will.
A silhouette formed in the cloud.
Bend!
The form appeared as a servant scrambling away before a sudden spray of blood took head from shoulders. The creature walked into sight, one arm swinging from a still broken shoulder.
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“BEND!” Ranvir bellowed, the ground and air vanishing around him.
Surging towards him, the creature raised its arms. The injured one somehow still functioned despite the severity of damage. But Ranvir had recovered, however shakily. Sand surged forward, slamming together around the creature. It slowed down. Storm bolt hammered into an exposed leg, shattering it halfway up. Dune Blow drove it into the ground. Another. Then it scrambled downward.
Ranvir blinked, tracking its spirit. It was well below him. Burrowing at such speeds… but he had no more time to consider. Dune Blow lashed out even as it burst from the ground. Its ribcage was sanded down to bare bones and what passed for organs, yet it moved as if uninjured. A single mandible rose sharply out of its mouth, spitting out in a flight of gore and hammering into Bastion.
Dune Blow caved in the skull, spilling half the mass onto the ground. Its spirit twitched and snapped as it fell over, legs kicking wildly.
Gasping, Ranvir doubled over. The mandible lay on the ground, covered in some strange fluid. A foul odor rose from it and he staggered to the side, leg buckling. Falling to his knee, he caught himself on his hands. He felt shaky as a day old foal, bones soft as mud.
Still gasping for breath, he looked over to see it had stopped twitching. Looking into its chest, he could still see some activity going on. In fact, what looked to be a lung was slowly melting. He winced and almost looked away before noticing. It was shifting, changing appearance. Gray and wrinkled.
Blinking, he straightened slowly, the effort dizzying him as the organ finished forming. Ranvir hadn’t seen a brain intact since that time his father took him to the butcher as a kid. The creature burst into action. Speed that broke the air, before hammering into him arm first.
Driving backwards, they once more struck the palace, though this time they didn’t plow through. The wall broke and Ranvir staggered away, his chest burning. His wings wouldn’t fold properly and he could barely breathe. The creature lowered the remaining half of its arm, blood trickling, then slowing.
A searing pain was taking up inside Ranvir. Its hand was jutting out from his sternum, hand flat against his chest. Ending in a jagged twist of bone, Ranvir pulled it out. It tugged against his back and left a thick substance on his fingers. Clear and viscous enough to droop but not fall off.
The creature was limping after him now, a leg and arm missing. Though he didn’t think it was slowing down out of exhaustion, but some sort of transformation. The integrity of its soul was breaking apart. The further it shattered, the stronger its soul grew.
Pulling again, Ranvir felt the stone against his back jerk, and he gasped, forcing it to tug free. The burning pain in his chest was getting worse. The lingered still coated his hands, also left a clear wet mark on him, wetting the dust and dirt on him.
How would he render the poison from himself? He clenched his fist and turned his attention to the creature. Its soul was calming down.
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Amalia could track it, clear as day. This creature, whatever it was, had been created to fight Saleema. At least on a level similar. If Ranvir had been fresh, he might have been able to defeat it. But if, when, it started eating him, like it did Saleema.
The creature power rose in bursts. Its soul growing tempestuous before settling stronger and fiercer than before. How long did it have? Hours? A day? Too long for Ranvir.
Reaching for the fold-breaker on her belt, she thought back to when Ranvir had shown her the knotting point of the school. Kirs had raised a gate nearby. Accessing the strength Amanaris granted her had become reflexive, and she leapt down from the rickety stable and rushed towards the opening.
She hesitated before the opening, but the creature’s soul was growing harsher again. Her hands shook as she stepped inside. The first steps of the stairs were covered with a mucky layer of slush, and she stepped carefully down it.
“You have the soul of a fortress. Strong as a mountain and protective at its heart. You are and have always been safety, comfort, and warmth.” Elpir’s words swam in her head as she reached the bottom. Not so far from the knotting point now. She unclipped the fold-breaker. “You are dedicated to your friends and those you deem family, of which any person should be honored to consider themselves, I most of all.”
Even in here, the creature’s strange soul-sight had spread filaments into every groove and corner. She hadn’t just been pretty that day. But there was beauty to her. Her smile, her hair, it had been around her dancing in the air. The way she held herself. She fished into her purse, enhanced to protect delicate items, and retrieve the gold armband. Inset on it was a single midnight dark nyketra, matching the one Elpir wore even now. Brushing her fingers over the nightstone, thousands of lights ignited within.
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“How much can you take?” Kasos voice was harsh as blood in his ears. “When is it too much? What is hiding worth?”
“You wouldn’t understand my thought processes.”
“Afraid you will lose a little piece of belonging?”
He jerked, and the old man nearly died in that moment. Below, Ranvir fought on, resisting the inevitable. The world and all that stretched beyond wanted him dead, it seemed.
“How much is that belonging worth?” Kasos whispered, words dripping like acid into his ears.
“The life on an individual is unimportant. It’s a harsh lesson that only distance and responsibility can teach.”
“Except for Arkrotas.”
Us less so than all the others.
The creature struck Ranvir down again. If this continued, the palace would soon crumple entirely.
“Pho—“
“No.”
“What responsibility are you fulfilling now?”
One of its many sensors was twigged, and the creature hesitated. He tracked it to one of Ranvir’s space abilities. Amalia was at the end of that sense.
Kasos clutched his shoulder, sensing the same thing, obviously. “He—” Kasos choked off as he leapt to the ground between the creature and Amalia. Already, the illusion was shifting off him. Slightly taller, he lost the sturdy look of a soldier, became gaunt. His hair grew long and damp, slicking wetly to his face and body.
A cloud gathered around him, dark and heavy with water. The creature, twigged once more by Amalia, burst from the palace. Its body was a ruin from its fight. It flew through the fog in an instant, a single limb flying past Morphos and into the basement. Below him, Amalia flinched as the leg skittered across the dark, compartmentalized floor.
Cloud Crush held the creature two feet off the ground. He hadn’t made it strong enough to kill outright, yet it was insubstantial enough to keep it from tearing free with ease.
Morphos smiled one last time, as the cloud cleared and the last of the illusion truly faded away.