But wait. Something’s changing. “What’s it doing?”
The Genglot straightens, still must be consuming anything it can find; it’s head is twenty feet above the surface of the lake, now. It cocks its enormous head, watching, the same tic from before, just before it walked into the lake.
It’s about to try something. I can feel it. “Get ready!”
An arm the size of a tree trunk raises until it’s parallel with the water’s surface. Huge fingers reach for us, grasping even as we get further away. For a few moments it stands there, frozen in place, almost beseeching.
Then, without warning, the arm explodes forward, stretching toward us like lightning. It chases us across the waves, impossibly long, and as it does, the rest of it diminishes. First the Genglot’s head disappears into its torso, and then its other arm. Then its body shrinks with a sickening shlup shlup shlup as more and more of it feeds into an arm that will catch us in moments.
I raise my bow, know it’s futile, and loose lightning into the Genglot’s grasping palm. The arrow covers the distance in a heartbeat, and its hand explodes across the waves, buying us moments. But even as the pieces rain down around it, they pause, hang in the air, and then pull back, reforming.
This is pointless. We can’t fight this thing.
Siri releases her gift, gasping. She staggers up, banking the oars, raises her axe in a shaking arm. “What do we do?”
Emeree holds her blade before her like a shield as grasping fingers speed toward us like a cannonball. “I don’t know. Ewan, if this goes bad, get away. Siri and I will survive. But you...Just run.”
“I won’t leave you behind!” The Genglot is close, hurtling at us. The noise it makes is sickening, rotten flesh slapping against itself as the arm flows, reforms. How can there be so much of it? How can there be anything left at its core?
“Ewan, I…” Emeree says, voice desperate, but doesn’t finish. It’s too late.
The hand hangs over us, hulking, forms a fist, death waiting to descend.
Emeree triggers her gift.
She blurs, shifting away, disappearing in a flash. Above us, the descending fist splits, shreds, as a lattice of dozens of strikes appear between one beat of my heart and the next. The hand falls, cut to pieces, tries to reform, but more slices cut pieces smaller and smaller in the air. I still can’t see Emeree, just the brush of her gift as she lands in the boat only to leap upward again.
I reach for Emeree’s bond, ready to pull, but freeze, remember what Siri said. If I pull strength from her now... Shit.
I raise my bow, loose again at almost point-blank range. The arrow impacts the thing’s wrist, tearing it to shreds, and even as those pieces arc outward, slices rip them to smaller and smaller shreds.
I lose track of the cuts to the creature, but there must be hundreds. It’s incredible. She’s torn it to pieces, a thousand slices in ten beats of my heart.
But it’s not enough. Something changes, and the wet pieces of flesh shudder, pull inward with speed too fast for her to keep up with. Her invisible cuts come slower, and slower, not fast enough.
There’s a growl, a deep reverberation that I can’t hear but can feel deep in my soul, and then it’s over. The pieces snap together like lightning, reforming into a fist bigger than the boat.
A fist that grips Emeree like a landed fish.
It squeezes, and she screams.
“No!” I fire, again and again, at its wrist, anywhere that I won’t hit her, but each time my arrows do less and less damage. Its flesh moves so quickly now that it’s fully formed before I can draw another bolt of light.
Siri throws her axe, which spins and rips a furrow through the creature, but it does nothing. She growls, curses, recalling her weapon, which appears in her hand in a mist of crimson.
“Emeree!” There must be something I can do. Something I haven’t thought of.
Gods, help us.
But there’s nothing. I’m powerless.
Huge white fingers tighten, and Emeree shrieks a final time as thin black lines split her skin like puzzle pieces. With a final moan, she disappears, misting away into her sword.
The Genglot absorbs her blade. It melts into white flesh.
“Ora, no. No. Siri, is she –” Before I can finish, the creature shudders, hisses. It feels...Angry, in pain. One massive finger flicks out, snapping forward with thunderous force, and it casts Emeree away, rejecting her, sending her skipping far across the waves. Her black length winks in the firelight, once, before slicing into the deep.
It feels like my heart rips free, goes with her. I scream, defiant, loosing again and again, but it’s pointless.
This can’t be happening. How did it all fall apart so quickly?
Realization hits me like a blade.
We can’t win this.
But I know what I have to do.
I turn to Siri, hand her my bow. “Find Emeree. Come for me.”
“Ewan, what are you –” she stops, eyes wide. “Wait!”
But I can’t. Not if we’re to survive.
Asha’s gift floods me, and I leap, straight up.
Into the Genglot’s grasping palm.
Everything goes dark, and I have a moment to wonder if I’ve made a terrible mistake before consciousness dissipates like smoke.
***
Pounding.
The sound snaps me awake with a terrified jolt.
The sound is relentless, coming over and over, and the world shakes with each deep reverberation.
But I can barely hear it. Everything is muted, and I can’t open my eyes. My ears and nose are thick, filled with something wet, disgusting. I’m paralyzed, blind, body rigid, surrounded by something, with only my mouth free to the open air so I can breathe. I’m naked, no idea what happened to my clothes, and my skin is wet, pallid, as something moves against it. It feels like thousands of moist worms churn around every part of me, violating, disgusting.
Oh, Gods.
I’m inside the Genglot.
Another pound. Footsteps. It’s carrying me, taking me back to her.
Panic seizes me, animal, instinctual. I made this choice, but that doesn’t matter anymore, not ingested by this...this thing. I reach for the Sirens, calling for them, but can’t find them. The connections to my soul, my new constants, are gone.
No. Please, no. Are they dead? Did the Genglot finish them after I gave myself up? I’d counted on it leaving when it caught its quarry, but what if it didn’t? The image of Emeree, crushed into her blade, fills me with desperate terror.
It can’t be that powerful, couldn’t have killed them. Desperate, I reach deep, strain against the boundaries of my awareness, stretching my senses further than I ever have.
Emeree! Siri!
I can’t feel them.
They’re gone.
***
Thanks for Reading!
Steel Sirens II
Cocidius II
Half-Drowned & Hanged
Coming 2019
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