by Zack Archer
“That which slumbers in the water.”
“What is it?”
“A creature spoken of only in legends,” she said. “The monster that other monsters bow before.”
“That don’t sound good at all,” the Kaptain replied.
Kree nodded. “It is the beast that’s waking up in five, four, three, two, one…”
Something exploded through the ice out in the middle of the lake.
I whipped around and spotted a thick, tentacled arm the size of a light pole protruding from the ice. Instead of suckers, the arm was coated in what looked like glassy eyes. The eyes rotated in our direction.
“Guys, I have a very bad feeling about this.”
I turned to see that the others were obviously feeling the same way, because they were sprinting across the ice, running away from whatever it was that had been taking a nap under the goddamn ice.
I stepped back and the thing roared—and then I ran for my life.
45
I launched into a mad dash across the ice, slipping and sliding, trying to maintain my footing.
The others galloped along the shoreline and I was hoping to reach them before I was cut down, but sounds were building behind me.
A dragging, soggy kind of note echoed across the ice. It was the sound made by a creature, an extremely large creature, as it shifts its immense bulk.
The ice splintered next.
Titanic plates of ice exploded to my left and right, casting frozen shrapnel in every direction.
I covered my head and dove for the shoreline where Liberty and Lyric grabbed my arms and pulled me toward the others.
“Don’t look back, Quincy,” they whispered.
“I didn’t plan to!”
They didn’t respond and I shouted, “Please don’t tell me it’s as bad as I think it is!”
Liberty’s look told me that it was.
“What is it with this fucking place and monsters?!” I exclaimed.
The ladies didn’t say anything. I glanced back and immediately wished I hadn’t.
The creature, the Grymworm, had pulled a good portion of its upper body up out of the water, its tentacles snapping in every direction, shattering the ice.
The thing was immense, a beast straight out of a lunatic’s fever dream.
For starters, the thirty-foot long abomination appeared to be albino with a pale white hide and pink eyes that goggled like a goldfish’s. Its misshapen head was the size of a school bus and its mouth opened to reveal rows of blackened teeth that looked like they could bite through steel plate. The monster didn’t appear to have any anatomical arms or legs as you or I would think of them, which made its movements, a kind of halting slither aided by the tentacles, somehow more horrific.
I could see it leaving a shiny slick on the ground like a snail as it bellied toward us, grunting, long runners of pale, viscous matter oozing from its mouth. You’d think a monster of that immense size wouldn’t be able to move as fluidly as it did, but the thing reared up, its black hole of a maw snapping wildly at the air.
The worm’s head rotated toward us, its body lurching chaotically from side to side. I peered up into the beast’s gaping mouth, a bottomless well of nothing, as it hissed, creating a shroud of foul-smelling air.
I’d gone hiking with an uncle when I was younger and we found that a black bear had been following us for some time. That feeling, the realization that comes when you discover that you’re being stalked, that you’re no longer at the top of the food chain, is unnerving. I felt the same thing staring up at the worm, only a million times worse.
I stayed on the balls of my feet and studied the Grymworm. The way it slowly probed in our direction, but not directly at us, made me begin to think that maybe the thing had poor vision.
“It can’t see us,” I whispered. “It’s blind and we’re going to be able to slip right by it.”
“Um, Quincy…” Lyric said, grabbing my arm.
I put a finger to my lips and shushed the others when the colossal invertebrate spat a wad of bile that landed on top of me, covering my entire body in a ball of slime that was greenish-white and several inches thick.
The smell of the glistening jelly, a combination of dead fish, burning rubber, and feces was so strong that I nearly passed out.
Then I heard Kree shriek that the worm had marked me and I knew the worst was yet to come.
Conjuring up a ball of plasma, I burned my way through the mucous and threw the ball at the worm.
The plasma hammered the creature’s exterior, carving a divot in the monster’s hide, causing it to wail like an animal at a branding.
“IT’S ON!” Lyric shouted, taking up a position on my right, opening her mouth to let rip with a sonic blast that made it seem like we were standing next to a jet engine.
I didn’t like the noise at all.
The Grymworm liked it even less.
It reared back, exposing its soft belly which began quivering.
“TAKE COVER!” Kree screamed.
“WHAT IS IT?!” Kaptain Khaos yelled back.
“BONE STORM!”
Kree told us to crouch and we did, huddling together in a ball as she darted in front of us. Grabbing the edges of her suit, she withdrew a pair of what looked like oversized wings made from an anthracite-black alien alloy that resembled scales. The scales rotated, locking tongue-in-groove style, as Kree extended them just as the worm’s belly opened.
What looked like hundreds of black darts erupted from the monster’s stomach.
Kree turned and covered us with the scaled wings, forming a shield as the darts slammed into them, making a sound like golfball-sized hail slamming against a metal roof. One of the darts clattered to the ground and I plucked it up. It was made of some dark cartilaginous material, the end winnowed into a razor-sharp point.
“What are those?!” I asked.
“What’s left of the creatures the worm devours,” Kree answered. “The worm repurposes them.”
I tossed the bony dart aside and rolled away from Kree, firing plasma balls at the worm, which tore holes in its exterior, black blood sheeting the ice.
The monster rampaged in every direction, swinging its tentacles wildly.
I dodged the first few swipes, but one of the tentacles eventually found me.
The suckered limb jackhammered into my chest and it felt like I’d been struck by a car.
The impact drove me across the ice as the others did their best to draw the worm off. Unfortunately, the monstrous invertebrate appeared to have a hankering only for me. I hitched myself back upright as it bounded toward me.
I took aim and fired a large plasma ball that struck the thing near the mouth like a wrecking ball. The creature staggered, released a spluttered groan, seemingly wounded. My pulse was racing, but strangely I felt no sense of panic.
Then the worm launched itself into the air and landed with sufficient force to cause the entire cavern to shudder as Kree strode before it.
She pulled an orange metal ball from a hip pocket. She squealed at the worm, holding up the ball as if warning the worm to get back.
The monster wouldn’t budge so Kree tossed the orange ball, which rolled in front of the beast and then burst apart into a field of pure light that turned the cavern’s perpetual twilight to high noon.
I shielded my eyes as the worm reacted, retreating back onto the ice and crashing through the surface of the lake before vanishing from sight.
“What was that?” I asked, standing.
“Firestock,” Kree replied, her eyes momentarily glowing yellow. “It’s used in the mining operations.”
Before I could ask what mining operations she was referring to, Kree padded off into one of the caverns as my gaze hopped to Atlas and the others. “I’m really beginning to think that this place is—”
“Unusual?” Lyric asked.
I shook my head. “No, that’s not what I was looking for.”
“Fucked up?” Splinter asked.
I snapped my fingers. “That’s the one.”
“Yeah, well, consider yourself lucky, kid,” Splinter said. “You’ll have a cool O-story to tell the kiddos.”
“A what?”
“Origins story. Every superhero has to have one, and yours is especially awesome since it involves traveling to a distant planet to help save the universe while battling dragons and giant worms.”
“Too bad nobody’s ever going to hear about it since we’re all gonna die.”
“Stifle that,” Atlas said, firing a nasty glance in my direction. “You need to get fierce and stay frosty, Quincy, because we might be down, but we are definitely not out.”
“Except for the fact that we’re trapped in an underground cave with a foxy fox-woman and giant killer worms,” I said.
“It could be worse, Quincy,” Liberty commented.
“It literally could not be worse!” I shouted.
Something bellowed out over the ice and we jumped and hustled after Kree. “What’s the plan?” I asked, looking back over my shoulder.
“We find a way out of here,” Splinter said.
Kaptain Khaos nodded. “And then we hunt down Aurora, secure the trap bottle, and deal with the Morningstars once and for all.”
46
Kree moved briskly, dashing through the pitch-black cavern, following a course that only she could see. There was a faint halo of light around her head and when I got close enough to study her I saw that it was coming from her eyes. That same yellow light shone from them so I reckoned she could see in the dark.
She moved with a sureness through the gloom and at one point alighted on a wall, hanging there as if she was suctioned to it, observing the way forward.
We continued down through the cavern for more than thirty minutes. One moment the path ahead was featureless, the next there’d be knots of strange plants that cast a weak, blue light. The path sloped down through a network of what looked like large lava tubes. I couldn’t tell if the tubes were natural or manmade, but they’d been carved out of rock that I imagine was formed at the beginning of time.
Gradually a stronger, warmer light built in the distance and I surmised that we were nearing the end of the path.
“Where are we going?” I called.
“Home,” Kree said, without turning back.
“Look, we’d really just like some directions out of here.”
Kree paused and looked back. “There is no way out.”
My eyes found the others, whose faces fell at the bad news. I didn’t buy it though. If there was a way in, there had to be a way out.
Kree jogged ahead and I followed alongside Splinter and Kaptain Khaos.
“What happened up there?” Splinter asked.
“I don’t know. I did my best to create the energy ball and—”
“I didn’t mean that,” he cut me off. “I meant what happened with Aurora?”
My head sagged. “She used me to help her get the Light Breaker so she could take the Harbinger and all other villains out once and for all.”
“You got played, man,” Splinter said.
The Kaptain threw a few air-punches. “She betrayed all of us.”
“She also said she’s related to Big Dread.”
Splinter and the Kaptain shared a look. “Yeah, that was always a rumor,” Splinter replied.
“It’s not a rumor anymore.”
The Kaptain pursed his lips. “Can’t say it surprises me. Greylock was dipping his fingers in a lot of wells if you know what I’m saying.”
“I thought he was this great ruler.”
The Kaptain smiled, but there wasn’t any levity in it. “Real talk time, Q. The truth, and you didn’t hear it from me, is that Greylock was a bit of a dictator.”
“A benevolent one,” Splinter added.
“What does that mean?”
Splinter paused as if searching for the right words. “It means if you crossed him he might have his boys rough you up, but it was always with a smile.”
“And you guys put up with that because?”
“We didn’t have a choice,” Splinter replied. “Besides, he might’ve done some wrong, but it was for all the right reasons.”
There were, as somebody much smarter than me had once said, three constants in life: change, choice, and principles. The notion that Splinter and the others didn’t have a choice was bullshit, but I held my tongue, not wanting to get into an argument with the Shadow Catchers who continued ahead, leaving me with the thought that nothing was as it appeared in Fiasco Heights.
“Don’t lose hope,” a soft voice said.
In the cavern’s granular light, a figure stirred.
It was Lyric.
“It’s a little hard to keep the faith when your friend has double-crossed you.”
She moved toward me. “There was always something different about Aurora. You could never get that close to her.”
“I thought you were friends.”
“More like…colleagues. In order to have friends you have to let your guard down and that’s just not something she does.”
“She’s a warrior.”
Lyric smiled, drawing near. She held up her tiny puppets. “So are you. You were so brave back at the pool, Quincy.”
“I was an idiot,” I replied. “I wasn’t thinking and I shouldn’t have gone. People got killed.”
“It wasn’t your fault and when they came, you didn’t fold.”
“I was just doing what you’d do.”
Her hand slid to my dick which she began to rub.
“Are you nuts?” I asked, clutching her wrist.
She grinned. “Absolutely.”
“There’s no time.”
“We might not get another chance.”
Before I knew what was happening, she’d pocketed the puppets and was kissing me long and deep. Then she pulled down the left portion of my singlet to expose my chest and nipple which she sucked on.
With a mixture of excitement and supreme apprehension, I kissed her back. I realized it was incredibly stupid to go at it with Lyric given the situation, but lust took hold of me and before I knew what was happening, her breasts were exposed and I was running my tongue over them while she pulled my singlet down and pumped my dick.
Lyric’s face glowed with sexual desire. She smiled slyly and dropped to the ground and took me fully into her mouth. My cock swelled and stiffened into a raging hard-on.
She swirled her tongue around my balls and I cupped her breasts, terrified at the prospect of being caught by the others. How long did we have? A minute, maybe three at the most?
I bent down and kissed her and then she feverishly deep-throated me until I felt ready to explode.
She continued to work her magic, her tongue darting up and down over my balls and cock. I rolled her nipples between my thumbs and fingers, lightly squeezing them until she moaned while feverishly sucking on my member until I couldn’t take anymore.
Anticipating that I was near climax, she withdrew and took my sex in her hand and slowly pumped me while our tongues flirted.
She moaned some dirty words in my ear, biting my lip hard, telling me all the things she wanted to do with me. I gasped and exploded all over the wall.
Lyric squeezed every last ounce of juice from my shaft and then, shaking with lust, took my face in her hands. She pulled me in close and sucked on my tongue until it felt like my head was going to burst.
“I think we both needed that,” she whispered, leaning back to appraise me.
Still in shock from the rendezvous, I just smiled and babbled something in reply. Somebody shouted for us and we quickly shrugged back into our clothes and moved out.
47
Twenty minutes later, we exited the cavern into a chamber which was illuminated by tongues of orange fire that circled the middle portion of the immense ice and stone walls that loomed in every direction.
The flame reminded me of what you’d see at the end of one of those butane tor
ches and I surmised it was some sort of natural gas that was burning off. Whatever it was, it seemed to be odorless and did a fine job of highlighting a vast, multi-tiered plain of gray ash that lay between the cavern walls.
The plain rose some ten feet above our present vantage point, and the lower portions of it were studded with strange machinery and conveyor belts that fed back up and over the upper tier, which we couldn’t see over.
I strode forward to see that the ground was cratered everywhere as if the plain had been devastated by a series of meteor strikes. Splinter dropped down into a crater and hefted a piece of rock that he tossed up at me.
It was a hunk of Akash, the material from neutron stars.
The natural resource that powered Fiasco Heights.
It dawned on me that the chamber was the center of some kind of mining operation, undoubtedly the one Kree had referred to earlier. But where were all the drones? What had the others called the machines that allegedly did all the mining? The Weaver.
The sound of an animal arrested my attention.
I looked sideways to see a strange beast whose species was impossible to discern. The creature had the body of a bulldog and the head of a serpent with bat’s ears. It strained at the leash, which was held by the hand of a tall male figure dressed in a dust-shrouded gray cloak who bore a faint fox-like resemblance to Kree. The figure’s tawny hair was sculpted into a mohawk, and he was squinting at us.
Kree clucked her tongue and the male figure clucked back. Then he raised his hand in a gesture of goodwill and beckoned for us to follow him up a stone path that led up and over the plain’s upper tier.
I shot Splinter a look. “How’s your fear-meter?”
“Steady, but slowly ticking up,” Splinter replied.
“You boys might want to slather on some ‘HTFU Cream,’” Kaptain Khaos said.
My brow furrowed. “What’s that?”
“Harden the fuck up cream,” he replied, pinning me with a look.
Atlas whistled and signaled for us to follow Kree and soon I was at the back of the line, padding over the large stone lozenges, trekking up toward the top of the dune of ash.
