XXXVIII: Live With The Turned
I purge the instinct to fondle my amulets, instead, raising my hands and rolling up the sleeves of my uniform. Catolica's grays and blacks look good on me. And they feel good too — light and flexible. I can move freely, and hopefully, fight freely.
We take positions next to each other. Saegor outstretches his hands, forming from them a ball of hovering flame that sparks and crackles against the blackness of the forest. Zyla holds her hand out sideways and, blue mist flows forth from her palms, formulating an aether spirit: a blue, ghost-eyed wolf whose transparent form luminates like liquid night. It is my first time seeing a spirit from the aether realm — I can't keep my eyes off the damn thing. It's so… hypnotic.
"They're coming!" Kiren yells, breaking my trance. He employs a long chain with a kunai dagger on its end, whipping the metal about in a whirlwind. It is a strange looking weapon, for a mancer. I quite like it.
A roar steals my gaze. It comes from the cracking of trees of ahead, where a smattering of birds flock away, taking to the skies as their homes come crashing down. The enemy is a blur of motion — fast and far, blending in with the darkness.
When they approach, I catch my breath.
They are children, eyes pussed and glazed, mouths half formed or drooling, tentacles and spider legs protruding from their backs, carrying their unwilling bodices towards us. The children are wrought upside down, maws open in a perpetual scream, black worms wriggling from their ears and noses, mouths and eyes.
So these are the turned.
I count three children in total. Their bodies are paraded by an amalgamation of spidery limbs, tentacles, insectoid appendages. They have no soul behind their eyes. Only traces of who they once were remain — and even those are hard to grasp.
"Do not hold back!" Saegor yells, startling me. "They may look like children's bodies, but those things will rip you apart! There is no saving them now. It is kill, or be killed."
Right.
But I can't help but stare, and even shake slightly. Children. Dandy. This is what I'll leave her to become?
This… thing?
One child bolts my way, its mix of pincers and giant spider limbs raking across the rooted grounds of the forest, tearing up mud and bark. It roars a shrill, monstrous scream, mouth agape and upside down, eyes staring through me.
The aether wolf of Zyla roars back.
I hear Umbrahorn whimpering behind me. I turn to him, stare at his beady black eyes and put a hand on his head.
"Let me ride you. Let me ride you and we can both make it out of this." I say it without anger, without a commanding, oppressive tone. For the first time in a long while, I am more afraid than angry.
He hesitates at first, but then nods and I take a straddling seat behind his upper fin, slapping his flanks to ready the shark.
"Go for the legs," I tell Umbrahorn. The first child is almost upon his, pale and black haired, one-eye gone the other spewing yellow liquid. "Avoid the pincers."
"Rig—right!" he says.
"Come on Umbrahorn, come on!" I say slapping his flanks again, more aggressively this time. "Fucking kill them. They are nothing. COME ON!" I say it not out of anger, but desperation.
"RIGHT!"
Then, the first of the turned is upon us.
His mantis-like pincers snap at Umbrahorn and I. Just before they pinch, Umbrahorn leaps up and forward, roaring, mouth open wide. He clamps down on the boy's upper body — completely ignoring my previous advice to go for the legs. The boy's body wriggles and shakes and his other appendages sprawl out wildly, thrashing the trees, the grass. His back, the nodule from which all his maleficent proportions extend from, now cracks bloody as Umbrahorn bites down harder, splintering bone until the boy's upper body tears some. I hold on tight to the beast — broken leash rope tied around his right fin, other hand grasping his wooden belly.
Finally, there is a wet crunching of bone and blood spills in thick, sticky gouts.
And Umbrahorn falls from his suspended biting, having ripped off half the boy's body. Only the stem of the spine from his upper torso remains, wriggling along with his other limbs.
Yet still, impossibly, the thing moves. At first, I think it is some death dance. But when three spidery legs, black and sharp, rise up to strike at us, I tug on Umbrahorn's leash and he dives obligingly half underground, jerking me away.
There's a whiplash — a great twist in my chest. My muscles are stretched, abused.
We are not going to make it.
I realise that when the sharp ends of those legs are above me, snapping down, skimming my hair.
Then… they are gone. Blasted away, stumbling back. I crane my head to see Saegor cackling, casting pillars of pure, twisting, raging flame at the turned boy. The boy's half body, dripping with blood, now burns black and even screams — from where or how even, I do not know and do not want to know.
And still, despite half his body getting torn off, despite Saegor's relentless flame which licks up the spider legs and pincers — the boy. Still. Moves.
I don't understand it. Umbrahorn doesn't seem to either.
We just stare together, unmoving, dumbfounded.
The burning creature snaps forward at Saegor, forcing the one-eyed old mancer to dancer back, still flaying with flame. He's literally whipping it now, fire lashing across the boy's body, yet still, he keeps surging forward.
But he's slowing.
Stumbling.
And then finally, Umbrahorn and I slam into him from the back, making him fall. His spidery limbs are crushed beneath and turned into an ashy, powdery dust. The turned reaches forward one last time, pincer snapping weakly at Saegor. The old man doesn't even use magic; he simply lifts his foot up and places it upon the dark green of the pincer carapace.
The turned stops moving. A litany of black worms exits from its pores, moving with frightening speed towards Saegor. He burns them without hesitation.
Soon, all that's left of the monster is a pile of ash.
I almost breathe a sigh of relief, but I hear a roar of struggle and cast my gaze over Kiren and Zyla. They are currently engaged in a tumultuous assault against another turned, this one a girl with blonde-matted hair and mandibles extending from her upside down face. The third turned is limping away, trying to escape, but Zyla's wolf is on it, jumping and latching onto the main body of the creature.
Saegor and I share a glance before nodding to one another and joining the fray.
This second one dies easier.
Zyla sallys forth a great gang of spirits that lay siege to the creature's constitution, while Kiren uses his chain-whip to destroy the turned's foundation, breaking off her ant-like legs. Umbrahorn and I get up close and personal, risking infection to keep the beast at bay. Saegor doesn't join in on our assault, instead helping Zyla's aether wolf spirit to dispense of the other turned.
Eventually, we stand triumphant over the children. Their bodies twitch and writhe when they die, exuding those sickly black worms which we must burn. As angry and dark as my feelings have become, I still cannot stand the sight of these… monsters the witch has made of them.
"Well my fellow mancers," Saegor says, huffing with effort as he spurts more fire to kill the last of the worms. "Welcome to the Blightbriars."