CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Stringy Meat Scraps

 

By the time we made it to the researchers, it was already too late. Human bodies lay scattered about and torn to pieces. Their once-white lab coats were stained deep red with their blood. There were more shouts, and a head-splitting shriek reverberated off the glasteel dome. My heart sank into my stomach and boiled in bile. A massive, armored shell with dozens of black tentacles had dug its way under the earth and into the dome. Shen'roth had returned from the dead to kill us all, to exact his revenge. We had to get out of there, or we were all going to die.

 

I called out a warning as one of the many tentacles flew at us. I ducked and rolled behind a downed pillar. Doctor Rupert and Glennsworth dove into safety with me. We debated what to do as we watched researchers being slain one by one. The tunnel was open.

 

“We should run past him while he’s busy with the others!” I said. “That way, we can get help!”

 

Doctor Rupert protested. “No, we have to help the others! We can’t leave them here to die!”

 

Another tentacle flew our way. I rolled backward as the bumpy, black appendage slammed into the pillar, smashing it in half. Sand flew into my eyes and blinded me. I screamed out in pain as the coarse grains scraped against my eyeballs. A pair of hands grabbed me and flung me to the ground. Lukewarm water was dumped onto my face. Glennsworth commanded me to open my eyes. Despite the pain, I forced them open. With his other hand, he dried my eyes, using the back of his cloak. I thanked him as he helped me up.

 

But where was Doctor Rupert? I searched the area like a frantic, fear-crazed madman, but all I saw were more dead bodies.

 

There she was; over by a cordoned-off area of sand. She struggled to get up as I ran to her. I threw her arm over my shoulders and tried to hoist her up, but her leg was broken, and she could put no weight on it.

 

I groaned, trying to support her weight, and for once, I cursed the Pantheon for endowing me with such a small stature. I felt her slip from my shoulders. I turned around. A tentacle grabbed her by the legs and tugged her toward Shen'roth. With all my might, I stomped at it, kicked at it, and slammed it with my fists, but it maintained its vice-like grip on her. She reached for my hands, and I grabbed them, digging my feet into the sand. Her arms felt like they were going to rip from her torso. Tears fell from her eyes. Her face sent chills up my spine and forever cemented itself into my memory. It was the face of someone who knew they had met their end, who had taken their last breaths. She was going to die, and there was nothing I could do.

 

A metal rod cracked down onto the tentacle like lightning. Shen'roth shrieked, and the tentacle went limp as a dead fish, releasing Doctor Rupert. I looked up to see Glennsworth, coming down on it with another attack. He looked to me and shouted, “Get to the tunnel! Now!”

 

I tucked Doctor Rupert's arm over my shoulders and started dragging her toward the tunnel. Some of the researchers had fled, while the few who remained came over to help me carry her. Behind us, I could hear more shrieks as Glennsworth distracted the giant creature.

 

We were almost ten feet away from the tunnel when someone yelled, “Watch out!” I turned to see a long, unbroken pillar tumbling in the air toward us. I threw my body weight against Doctor Rupert's. We fell to the side of the pillar as it crashed into the tunnel entrance. Now, there was about a ton of sandstone rubble blocking our only way out. If we weren't screwed before, we most certainly were now.

 

I watched in terror as Glennsworth was smacked away by one of Shen'roth's many arms. My body was paralyzed. The lumbering daemon turned his body away from Glennsworth and started to squirm and slither toward us. He reached for one of the researchers, snatching them up and crushing them in his grip. Their legs hung from their torso on little more than bloody ligaments and bone. The researcher screamed in agony as they were tossed aside, like stringy meat scraps. My stomach churned and nausea overtook me from looking at all that carnage. It looked like some kind of twisted butcher shop in there.

 

Thank the Pantheon, Glennsworth sent his metal rod flying through the air, and it bashed at Shen'roth's flailing limbs, prompting him to go after the blue-robed maniac again.

 

Behind me, in the blocked tunnel, I could hear shouting. I yelled for help from somebody, anybody. We were trapped. Then, the voice became clearer, and I couldn't have been any happier than I was at that moment - it was Jord.

 

“Sai! Get your green ass away from the tunnel!”

 

I told everyone to spread out and move away from it. An arctic, gassy mist covered the pillar and hardened over it like ice. There was a ear-splitting, humming sound, and the pillar cracked and chipped as it turned into a pile of icy rubble.

 

Jord walked through, armed with his Mark V gauss gun, and the cryoflayer slung to his back. “Heads up,” he said and threw me my customized plasma pistol. He looked at the other survivors. “You three, get Ellen back up top to the infirmary and put that leg in a splint.” He looked back at me. “Does your dad's book say anything about monsters coming back from the dead?”

 

I reset my sights and flicked the safety off. “Very funny, asshole. It did mention what to do with disobedient, drunken employees, though. If we get through this alive, you're fired.”

 

“Fired? Oh, so, you're my boss now? When did that happen?”

 

“Since Day One, buddy. The business address is in my name, and I bought the ship.”

 

“You mean your dad bought the ship, rich boy.”

 

Glennsworth tumbled through the sand and thumped at our feet. He groaned as he propped himself up with his metal rod. “You two can help me at any time.”

 

I pointed at Jord. “We'll settle this after it's dead.”

 

Jord nodded and opened fire on the mass of inky, black tentacles in front of him. His gauss gun hummed as it chopped into Shen'roth's wet, fleshy limbs. The great daemon swiped at us and sent sand and boulder-size hunks of rubble flying in all directions. I leapt out of the way, desperately trying not to get crushed. I joined Jord and fired away at the dozens of flailing monster limbs that were squirming, striking, reaching, and grabbing at us. It was like running through a massive gauntlet. You might have been able to dodge the axes, clubs, and buzz-saws for a bit, but at some point, you would get sliced or bludgeoned into tiny pieces.

 

If we had any sort of advantage in the fight, it was that Shen'roth's movement was much more awkward and slow, compared to how quickly he moved underwater. Despite our engines needing repairs and a thorough flush, we were able to kill the thing pretty quickly with the Lady Luna's railgun. But as I severed and maimed another tentacle with my plasma pistol, I worried that Shen'roth still had the upper hand in the scenario.

 

I noticed something strange, as well - it looked like all his limbs had grown back after our first encounter. Was there some kind of amorphous blob inside that shell, like a freaky, radioactive, mutant mollusk from an old movie I’d watched? How did a daemon have regenerative powers?

 

Another boulder flew at me. I dodged. There was no time to stand and think. But, we had to do something. The cryoflayer! That was it. Maybe we had to completely freeze and crystallize that thing, then blow it into a million pieces, so it couldn't regrow its limbs.

 

I looked at Jord, who was blasting away with his gauss gun. “Jord! Use the cryoflayer!”

 

Jord leapt and tumbled away before a pillar could slam down and crush him. “I've only got a couple shots left. If I miss, we're dead!”

 

“You won't miss!” I yelled. “Just do it, or we'll all—”

 

I was swept from my feet. The back of my head thudded against the sand, and my vision went blurry. My head pounded from the blow. I struggled to sit up and see what had happened, but my vision failed to straighten out. Something black wrapped around both my legs and tightened, constricting like a hungry snake. My body was dragged through the sand, and I reached out for anything to grab a hold of. Nothing but fistfuls of coarse sand slipped through my fingers. I jerked as I was lifted into the air upside-down.

 

My vision finally started to focus. I looked below and saw Shen'roth's shell open. Inside was a gaping maw with hundreds of rows of razor-sharp teeth. An eye appeared, blood-red and piercing with an abyssal, black pupil. The eye swelled as it glowed ever more sinister, until it was bright red.

 

My dad's book slipped out from inside my jacket. I shouted, “No!” and reached out to catch it. I failed. It fell into Shen'roth's mouth. Shen'roth coughed and tossed me across the room. I slammed into the glasteel dome, the wind completely knocked out of me.

 

I looked up and saw Jord blast a stream of misty gas from the cryoflayer. Shen'roth shrieked as a number of its limbs hardened to ice. Glennsworth sent his metal rod soaring through the air and smashed the frozen tentacles to shards of meat which thudded as they hit the sand.

 

Shen'roth turned to Jord, his shell open and exposing that evil red eye. It glowed, casting a red tinge onto Jord's cybernetic parts. Jord stopped firing his weapons and dropped them to the ground.

 

Glennsworth called to him, “You fool! Don't look at his eye!”

 

It was no use. It was as if Jord hadn’t heard him. He couldn't have heard him. His attention, his entire focus, was obsessively transfixed on Shen'roth's eye.

 

“Jord!” I yelled. “Look away!”

 

Jord slumped to the ground like a burlap sack. I sprinted to him. I had to see if he was still alive. His organic eye was closed and he was limp, but he still had a pulse. Thank the Pantheon.

 

Glennsworth yelled at me, but I couldn't understand him over Shen'roth's shrieks, reverberating through the dome. He pushed me back and stood in front of us, book in one hand, his other outstretched toward the daemon. The red eye shined upon him, but Glennsworth kept his focus on the book. The ground swelled, and thousands of grains of sand and shells rose into the air around him, swirling like miniature tornadoes.

 

His voice boomed and sank lower in timbre and pitch as he spoke: “SHEN'ROTH RA NORT NAER'NATH! SHEN'ROTH YAR GEZH'MET FIL KAERN'A!”

 

The sand fell to the ground, and a deafening bang struck Shen'roth. A dull, grayish shield engulfed the dome, its edge just stopping short of us. Shen'roth lashed out at us, but the semi-invisible wall buzzed and sizzled as his tentacles struck it. The daemon's shell slammed shut, and it retreated back toward the temple in the thick of the ruins, shrieking as it squirmed and knocked over pillars and rocks.

 

It was gone, and the nightmare was over — if only for now.

 

“What did you do?” I asked, cradling Jord's head in my arms.

 

“I incanted a daemonic ward,” he answered. “It acts as a barrier that he cannot pass, as it causes him immense pain. But, it will not last for long. We must retreat to the surface.”

 

“Help me carry Jord. He's too heavy for me.”

 

Glennsworth and I sloughed through the long, dark tunnel leading up to Melville. My legs, back, and head ached. Sweat dripped from my face and drenched my clothes. I'd never carried someone so damn heavy in my entire life. Jord must have weighed over three-hundred pounds, including the cybernetic half of his body.

 

I checked the pulse on his wrist. Still there. C'mon, buddy, I thought. Stay alive. Don't die on me now. Don't deny me the satisfaction of firing you. Not when I know you were the one in the wrong.

 

After what felt like the length of eternity itself, we finally made it up to the beach. The survivors of the attack were laid out on gurneys. There was no more room in the infirmary. Some of them were covered in blood-stained dressings, while others had intravenous bags of drugs and saline coursing through them. We laid Jord on an empty gurney next to Doctor Rupert. I collapsed to my knees, completely spent. I couldn't move another inch. I breathed the ocean air in deeply and shut my eyes, hoping it had all been just a dream.