Chapter 50
Embracing Monstrosity
I let the worms loose into the bedrock, into the cracks and fissures that ran through the ancient stone. The cliff face was old and weathered. Full of hairline fractures where water had frozen and expanded over centuries.
It took some time, as the stone was dense, and the worms had to compress themselves into thin, wiry strings to fit through cracks as thin as a hair. But they were patient, and I was patient, and the woman in the cave was still laughing at her trap while Zo vibrated with murder beside me.
They reached the cave floor.
The feedback came back in pieces… the ceiling was low, sloping down at the sides. A bedroll at the center with her backpack. She had a shortsword, close to her bedroll. And the woman sat cross-legged near the cave mouth; there were two small, round objects in her hands.
Another bomb. She was ready to throw them.
I pulled my hand back from the ground and looked at Zo. Her eyes were still black. Her arm still burned under my grip.
"It’s only her," I said. "She has a shortsword, and she's sitting near the entrance with another bomb ready to throw down at us. The cave's got one room, and no back exit."
"So what’s your big plan… Why can’t I just plow through this bitch?"
"The plan is simple, I can get worms up through the stone behind her. She won't see them coming."
The black in Zo's eyes shifted. Her origin was fading, just a fraction. She looked at the cave mouth, then at me, then at the ramp.
"...You want me to be a distraction?"
"I want you to be as loud and crazy as you can be."
That wild and beautiful grin of hers came back. Wider this time and full of bad intentions.
"Fish," she said, "that's the first smart thing you've said all day."
◆◆◆
Zo hit the ramp at a dead sprint.
A trap blew under her, and she was met with the same white flash and concussive roar of force that would've turned an unprotected body into red mist. But Zo just ate it.
Her Origin flared, the veins ran across her, radiating heat, and she didn't slow down.
She didn't even stumble. The kinetic energy coursed through her, emerging as pure speed; her boots crackled, and the stone cracked as she powered up the incline.
The next trap caught her, but she shrugged it off. The third detonated at her side and peppered her with rock fragments. She absorbed the impacts of the shrapnel, too, each one feeding her, each one making her faster and stronger and more dangerous and deadly.
From inside the cave, the laughter stopped.
I had every worm I could spare threaded through the cracks in the cliff.
They'd reached the cave floor. They were spreading through it, thin as thread, working through the cracks in the stone directly beneath the woman's position.
She was on her feet—I could feel her weight through the vibrations in the rock, feel her pivot toward the cave mouth where Zo's war cry was rattled off the walls.
Zo reached the entrance. Another explosion, this one was from a bomb the woman had thrown, the woman hurling it from inside the cave.
The blast lit up the cave mouth in white and gold flames, and Zo took it full in the chest, her body absorbing the impact with a thunderclap, her Origin screaming with stored power.
"What the hell are you?" the woman inside shouted. The amusement was gone from her voice. What replaced it was something I recognized. Something I'd heard in my own voice enough times to know exactly what it meant.
Fear.
I pushed the worms up through the cave floor.
They came through the cracks in the stone behind the woman.
Erupting from the fractures in thin white ropes that thickened as they hit open air.
They caught her ankle. And more wrapped around her right calf.
Another cluster worm shot up and bound her weapon arm, snapping her wrist to her forearm, locking the blade flat against her own body.
She screamed.
It was a raw, animal sound of shock and pain and the sudden, total understanding that the fight was already over.
Her legs buckled as the worms tightened, pulling her off balance and dragging her down toward the stone floor.
The short blade clattered against her thigh, useless, her fingers spasming as the worms bent and broke the bones in her wrist.
I walked across the minefield. The worms in the ground told me where the remaining traps were buried, and I stepped around them, clearing a path through the killing field that only I could see. Zo was already in the cave mouth, axe raised, her whole body humming with absorbed energy.
The woman was on the floor. She was in her mid-twenties, maybe. She had dark hair cut short into a short bob. Her uniform was stripped of insignia, the patches torn away, and the stitching left ragged—she was a deserter—she'd kept the uniform but thrown away the rank.
Her eyes were wide with fear. They were an ordinary shade of brown. And at this moment, they were locked on the worms binding and breaking her limbs, and the terror in them was so complete it had gone past panic into something still and frozen.
"I-I surrender—" she said. Her voice cracked on the second word. "—I surrender, I'm done, please—"
"You almost killed Zo," I said. No anger in my voice, because the anger was deeper than my voice could reach—down in the place where the worms lived, where the hunger lived, where the thing I was becoming kept its fangs.
The woman's eyes flicked to Zo. Then back to me. The worms on her legs tightened, and she gasped, her back arching off the stone.
"I didn't… I didn't know who you were… please, I'll tell you anything, I have supplies, I have—"
"...Fish…"
I looked at her. The black had faded from her eyes, the magenta returning, but the stored energy was still there, a low hum in her body, a wild and beautiful charge waiting to explode. She looked at the woman on the floor, then at me.
She didn't tell me to stop.
She just looked at me, and in that look was something I understood without words.
I turned back to the woman on the cave floor. Emilia. My worms, already tasting her from the fear on her skin, already beginning to read her the way they'd read the frost-wyrms and the dire wolves and… Cedric.
She was a deserter. A Dragoon who'd thrown away her duty and run. The ritual campfire, the bone arrangements, she’d sacrificed her own comrades for power.
But she'd set up a death-trap at the base of this cave and laughed—She fucking laughed—when Zo was hit by the first blast. She'd thrown another one at Zo's chest, trying to kill her.
Zo could've died—I could have lost her too—Zo could've been a red smear on a cave wall, and I would've been left alone in the Hearthlands.
The worms tightened, and more of her bones cracked.
"Fish—" Emilia said. The worms squeezed her tightly as they spread from her limbs toward her torso, across her skin. "—Fish… please, I can help you. I know the Hearthlands. I know the waystation schedules, the caravan routes, I know where the patrols—"
"I know… and so will I."
The worms broke through her collarbone. The bone gave with a wet pop, the sound muffled by the meat of her chest. Her back arched off the cave floor, her spine bowing, tendons standing out in her neck.
More of them burrowed through her sternum, their barbed mouths biting into the muscle of her heart.
She gagged and choked as blood bubbled and spilled from her lips.
One of them punched through the soft flesh under her chin, the tip glistening with spit and blood as it blindly tore at her tongue. Her scream came out as a gurgle, her windpipe collapsing under the weight of them.
Her eyes were wide and bloodshot; they locked onto mine.
Pleading. Accusing. The worms reached her cheeks next, burrowing in from the sides, her skin bulging as they tunneled toward her eye sockets.
Her eyelids twitched. Then the worms were pushing up, her eyelids peeling back as the first thin, pale tendril tore its way out.
Her last breath came out in a wet rattle; her body jerked. Then she went still. The worms kept moving. I could hear them chewing, her skull shifting under the pressure. Her mouth fell open. A fat, bloated worm slithered out over her bottom lip, dripping dark gore onto her chin.
Her face didn’t look like a face anymore.
You have slain Emilia Sourez.
Regalia Received: LadyBomb (Fleeting): A ladybug that sacrifices its own life to create a massive explosion.