Chapter 10 Achilles and the Tortoise Hunts

“Daughter, let those fools fight in their Gates. We remain heroes because there are things in there that will not draw their punches.” - Glory Man to his daughter, Gloria, on his deathbed before he died of old age.

Aiden spat out a tree branch when they finally stopped. The stick swiftly bursting into imaginary fire as it left his mouth “Gah! Could you have given me a warning?”

“Would it have helped?” Jun asked. She was breathing short and- no, everything was sped up for her, Aiden remembered. She was actually taking deep and heavy breaths. Her speech was slowed. That’s why she sounded normal speed right now.

He looked around them, noting the nigh featureless expanse of the outback around them. Except this time the trees were burning with pink flames that weren’t hot. Some trees still had that strange water liquid substituting for leaves. A leftover of the first Gate.

‘And annoyingly,’ he thought as he felt the empty ridges of his ear, his glasses had fallen off during the run. “Thank you for helping me, but I would’ve liked time to get my glasses into a safe place.”

Thankfully, that origami rabbit was still in his hand, apparently, it flattened itself to avoid damage from him clenching his fist. “I couldn’t catch what happened to Freddy and Alexis, did you-”

“Notreally,” she interrupted, “couldn’tgettoAlexisfastenoughtograbher. Freddyseemssafethough.”

He remembered the last sight he saw of the man. Of dozens of daggers flowing out of his clothing like a living swarm. How did he hide that many daggers in his clothing?

“Which direction did Freddy say was the direction out?”

Jun pointed north of them, “Bad news, space is warped, Ithink. Maybe. I’mnotsurehowfaritactuallyisnow.”

“Or if even it’s in the same direction,” he muttered. He checked Oros, the serpent was still mostly white, but the black tip on the end of its tail had slightly expanded. In fact, a painted sapling seemed to have sprouted out of that blackness. “I’m still good on Hume, you?”

“Toppedup,” she answered after a cursory stroke of her mask.

“We’ll have to try and get out as fast as we can,” he continued, “Not being with everyone else is unfortunate but we need to focus on our own individual survival-”

The rabbit kicked him.

Immediately he looked around, before tsking as he remembered his myopia. “Rabbit just kicked me, there might be something dangerous about.”

It kicked him again. And again. Its kicks seemingly speeding up in intensity.

“Idon’tseeanythingaroundus.”

“Rabbit keeps kicking me,” he hurriedly said, “I think they’re coming closer. Rabbit, turn towards the direction you sense the danger coming from.”

It turned towards the right of them, except it kept turning and turning. Until it went past Aiden and made a full circle.

“Thatmeanswe’resurroundedarewe?”

“Probably,” he muttered as he finally saw movement in the bushes. Blurry, it was difficult for him to pin how many there were. Doubly so without his glasses.

“Dingoes,” Jun said first. “Theylookfuckedup.”

Aiden finally saw them, dingoes, but their normally sandy-red coats were sprinkled with purple crystal outgrowths. Not to mention their complete lack of eyes. Only black ash and charcoal was where their eyes once were.

“Theysurvivedtwogates?”

He furrowed his brow, “Might be a thing where neither Gate changes something that’ll be actually lethal. Regardless their behaviour is strange-”

One suddenly lunged at him. He instinctively threw up his arms for defence, but Jun was already there. Her right hand palmed the creature, that sun symbol glowing for a brief moment before she pushed it away. The dingo fell towards the ground as if in slow motion. Unnaturally slowing in mid-air as it approached the ground. It was still falling when Aiden took his arms down to have a look.

“You can slow things down?” he yelled.

“Onlyoneatatime!” she yelled in reply. “Becareful!”

The bushes were getting ruffled far closer to them now. He quickly reviewed his inventory of premade animals. Oros, rabbit, beetle, snake…

Freddy quickly dodged as something fell from above him. A large, heavy bear-like creature. Its fur sprang out in wild ways as its eyes were gone, replaced with a dash of charcoal and ash. It rose on two legs, snarling at its missed prey.

Before it froze.

“Damn dropbears,” he muttered. Making sure Isaac was still fixed firmly on his back before the dropbear exploded into blood and gore.

“This happened at the worst time!”

Isaac stirred on his back, “Frederic? How long was I out-”

“Hume level,” he stated. More an order than a request.

He crossed his eyes for a moment, “log(x)C + F Squared = (47 x M / A) x 0.39% [NADH]?”

“So pretty bad huh,” Freddy replied.

Isaac’s Status was his power giving him Newton's Second Law, F = MA. The more corrupted the formula his power gave him, the lower his Hume was.

“Was there another Gate event?” Isaac asked, his voice low and weak.

“Yes. Don’t talk right now, you need to recover. This is at least a Cnoc, Vento and Keneq. Maybe even Jebel and Bufera.”

“Where are the kids?”

“Searching for them right now,” he replied. His senses extended over dozens of blades racing around him.

“Don’t die here,” Freddy muttered. Around them, dozens of dropbears closed in.

A massive block slammed into the ground, pulverising the skull of the creature. It looked like a kangaroo, but it was buffed as all hell. Its eyes similarly gone.

“Blyat,” Alexis muttered as she dismissed the tetromino. “I came here to avoid the worst of this damn thing.”

Another beast jumped in from her right,

“Korobeiniki!” she yelled, and its chest was swiftly caved in by another tetromino.

Picking off the fragments of skull and brain, she muttered, “Which direction was I supposed to go…”

...mouse, rat, gecko.

That was all Aiden had prepared. “I don’t have a fighting set up with me right now.”

“Wellthinkofsomething!” Jun yelled as she rapidly punched another dingo. “Idon’thavemuchpower!”

Scratching his chin, he walked towards the slowed dingo, still in mid-air. He touched it, “Dire Wolf,” that was loyal.

“Whatdidyousay?” Jun yelled as fly kicked another dingo.

The tattoo flushed out of his body, towards the tips of his fingers, but there was rejection. “Can I not do it with living things?”

“Hmm…” he thought for a moment, letting the rabbit who was still kicking him onto his shoulder. He glanced at Oros who swimming around his skin.

“If you’re active even when you’re not possessing something…”

Looking down, he picked up two thin sticks from the ground. Sticking one between his index and middle, and middle and ring finger.

“Black-banded sea kraits.”

“What?” Jun yelled as she kicked another dingo away. There were still plenty of them

“I believe they have the fastest-acting venom neurotoxin. Remember to tell me that later.”

“What?” she yelled again. Just as a tattoo of a black-banded snake appeared on his arm.

It slithered forward. His tattoos couldn’t possess a living object it seemed, however, he was the exception.

The two tiny sticks curled into fangs as the serpent possessed his hand. His hand became its head and Aiden noted that he still retained control of his arm.

“Release your slowness on this dingo.” Then he bit, the fangs sinking deep into the dingo’s neck. It collapsed onto the ground, weakly spasming as the krait pumped venom into the creature.

He put his other hand on the dying beast, the one with the Dire Wolf tattoo. And kept channelling it.

With one hand he kept pumping lethal venom, the other he kept trying to take over its body. All while the rabbit was kicking his shoulder like a broken record.

Jun noticed what he was doing, and though she hasn’t managed to put a single one down, she kept the pack back. Blurring as kicked, punched and slapped them away.

Aiden finally let go with his snake arm, as the Dire Wolf that was Loyal to him fully possessed the dead corpse. Brown grey coloured fur overcoming the dingoes sandy-red fur.

The wolf rose up, its teeth bared and growling at the encroaching pack. Cowing them somewhat.

“That’suseful!” Jun yelled as she retreated next to him.

“Fascinating,” he muttered. Glancing at the snake on his arm. “I still remember what a wolf and snake is…” ‘Does specifying by species not use up the prime concept?’

He reabsorbed the snake. ‘So it was a sea krait.’

“Canyoupayattention?” Jun asked, noting that Aiden was more absorbed on the liquid dripping off the sticks.

“Sorry,” he apologised, finally taking in their current situation.

The rabbit was still kicking him, and the wolf he created was snarling and growling, its body spread as if to make itself larger. There were eight of them in total, with the ninth helping him.

The dingoes were slowly circling them, only the growls of the wolf seemed to keep them back. Some primal instinct not making them walk another step further.

But they were still surrounding them.

“Any plan on how we can break this?” he muttered.

“Noidea,” she replied, “canyoumakeanotherone?”

“If I recall there are about thirty-eight subspecies of Canis lupus,” he replied. “I know thirteen of them. So-” He felt a gentle pinching on his wrist, ‘Oros.’

Looking at his status, he noticed that a quarter of the snake’s body was now filled. Its scales turned black with multicoloured plants decorating the inky darkness.

“-Nevermind,” he finished.

Jun glanced at the white serpent as it slithered off the fork bracelet, “That’syourstatus?”

“Yeap,” he replied.

Just creating one wolf took up a quarter of his Hume. Did he have a size limit? Or was it something else? He was fine pumping out a bunch of small critters, but upscaling already cost him this much?

“Annoying,” he muttered. “I may be able to make another one, but I’ll be at 50% then.” How much did having the black-banded sea krait and wolf active at the same time cost him?

“Hmm… Maybeyou’llbefine?”

“I don’t know,” he replied.

The rabbit kept kicking his shoulder, “Rabbit, can you stop that-”

All the dingoes froze. Then they turned and ran from them. But it was strange, they saw them running at full strength, but no matter how far they ran,

They never moved away from them.

He looked at the wolf, it rapidly turning behind them, its ears were suddenly down and it was whining in fear.

At that single moment, Aiden realised something strange.

This whole time where they stood here, he barely felt that alien feeling. He barely felt the effects of Bleed, even though he was almost disabled by the Bleed of the first Gate. He didn’t vomit, spit or was weakened. He didn’t feel the effects of Bleed.

He came up with a theory as he slowly turned around.

Hume could be manipulated. Either through a power or through a Meta Technique.

Hume density mattered. The thicker or higher it is, the more real something was.

Different realities had their own version of Hume.

He was not feeling the effects of Bleed. No, only when the Bleed area was expanding, did he feel it for the briefest moment.

When Isaac used a Simple Expansion, he felt a feeling of calm for a brief moment.

When the Gate expanded, he felt that alien feeling for a brief moment.

Perhaps the reason why he felt no Bleed, was because something was pushing the Gate’s reality out faster than it could mix with Hume reality. Till the point it was stretched so thin that continuous Bleed didn’t occur.

He turned around and saw it.

Dozens, hundreds, uncountable numbers of grey arms. Each grabbing the other to form an eldritch weave. Forming the base of a slow-moving stump, the arms moved together like a wave, overhead, they opened up in an eldritch flower of nothing but arms, and in the middle, there was a ball of flesh attached to a fleshy pistil. And covering that ball of grey flesh, were infinite mouths. Each opening and closing, ravenously biting at the air. Like wild unchained dogs hungering for flesh and blood.

‘Invader.’

A living creature from another dimension that similarly triggered. That like them had powers.

For some reason, that alien feeling only appeared when he laid his eyes on it, but it appeared in force. He couldn’t move. He stood only because his muscles were too stiff to fall. It was like he was drowning in fear, and every moment, he only sank deeper.

That primal part of his brain that told him to run was silent.

Because it already thinks he was dead.

Its numerous arms reached over them, the petals unfolding in a beautiful harmony of movement as it scooped up the still running dingoes. They were running this entire time, yet no matter how much they ran, they did not move a single step.

The arms briefly went towards them, covering the sky above them like a roof as he felt the wind shift as hundreds of arms bent in unnatural ways towards them.

But they stopped.

They could not bend any further, those arms could not bend any further in towards them. They were, paradoxically too close to be caught by it.

And so the arms retracted, bringing the eight howling and whining dingoes upward, slamming them into the ball of mouths.

He saw those dogs struggle, he saw them bite and claw at the arms that held them, but no matter how sharp their fangs, how sharp their claws, they didn’t leave a single scratch.

The mouths were all normal and human-sized.

The creature could not eat all the dingoes up in a single gulp. So instead, the arms pressed them against that ball. Pressed further and further as the ravenous mouths took singular, small, normal-sized bites out of the still living and screaming creatures.

Blood flowed, bits of flesh fell inside the waiting flower as the mouths took bite after bite of the dingoes. Strangely, they never swallowed, instead, spitting out blood-red bits of meat and gore out inside the petals.

And when the blood spilled out of the tiny gaps between the arms, they flowed, directed by small crevices formed by the arms into eldritch symbols and alien drawings.

Jun turned and ran.

Tears were flowing from her face as she ran full speed away from them. She was struggling, her steps were uneven and she was breathing heavily.

And the reason Aiden saw all this, was because no matter how much or how fast she ran, she never moved a single step away from the monster.

Until finally, she tripped and fell, falling forward. Still crying as she tried to crawl away.

Still making no progress.

For they were trapped by an ability.

They were trapped by Achilles and the Tortoise.