Author's Note: I'm going to post all the other 4 chapters in the book all at once. I'm 123 pages into my next novel, which will be released in chunks, so I figured it's about time I posted the rest of Monster's Dwell in Men on RRL.

Chapter 51: Eruption

With the pulsing of the veins inciting my apprehension, I hurry across the tiled floor with the setting sun pouring through windows. They light my path as I open the door and reveal the beginnings of this building’s twisted defilement.

Pieces of stone and craters line the marble floors and stone walls. Scorch marks and broken glass from broken windows dirty the floor while fine wood of several old desks lay scrunched in piles of wreckage. Streaks of blood along with two splattered corpses line the far right side of the room while windows allow light in from the left. The orange light angles onto these sites highlighting the grim spectacle with an orange hue. They omen the darkness leading to this lair’s center.

The scattered veins grow in size and density as they connect into the corpses, sucking out the little blood remaining in the dried husks. As I pace towards the source of the loud shuddering of the floor, the smell of ruptured insides thickens in the air. In spite of this, I never grow pale or sick or appalled - I grow hungry.

A part of me strangles the urge before I step onward. With an ever growing tremble in the ground, I reach into the next room before a collection of burning souls comes into my field of vision right as Deluge says, “Do you see the souls there? They are being...used for something.”

Before I reach into the room adjacent to the rumbling, a weak yet scathing groan enters my ears. As I roam across another room full of smashed desks and blood covered tools, I enter a room that defies my comprehension.

A set of several teachers line the edges of the walls while shackled so they hang by their arms. These limbs stretch and contort beyond their natural limits from dislocating long before they were dead. These swollen shoulders lead to swollen faces covered in patches of burned and peeled skin. Each member's mouth gapes on the wall while hanging without any tension.

Each person shows missing teeth with split tongues. Several show exposed portions of their skull from scalping. Several show exposed ribs from flaying. Others rest on skeletal feet with cauterized wounds. At the end of the room, a shirtless and portly man covers his face with a burlap sack pierced with two eyeholes for sight. He drools over a pair of rats that eat at the feet of a tall man whose hands have numerous fingers bent backwards with missing fingernails.

The visceral sight evokes a wince from me despite my own experiences, and even Deluge remarks, “I see your kind has developed advanced methods for manipulating flesh. They bring my own efforts to shame.”

His words ring true as I near the hanging man, but as I near him, a pair of broken and circular glasses catch my attention for a moment.The torturer turns towards me as his aroused breathing scrapes against me ears and I notice his nakedness...He’s pleasuring himself to these sights.

A light groan escapes the victim of his torture, distracting the numbness coursing through my body and mind. The man’s bloody and matted mane of auburn hair along with his torn ears and ripped nose adorns the face of my previous soul forging teacher. These harrowing signs of torture line the body of Sophia’s savior, Alistair.

He now hangs, tongueless and with maggots crawling in several of his wounds. He whimpers out weak cries from ruptured lips and in blindness since they gouged out his eyes.

As reality sets in, my emotions flatten for a moment before I fall to my knees. The air around me contorts as a familiar black wrath distends and swells in me. Deluge whispers, “There is no way to save him any longer. I can not restore him.”

Unlike with Joan, there is no one I can save. There is no purpose in numbing my fury. Instead of culling this eruption, I assimilate it. The joints of my body pop as Deluge’s own anger melds with mine. I hear his outrage growing in the back of my mind. He continues his words after a moment, giving them a volatile anger of his own, “He was a noble soul. He was Sophia’s salvation, yet they tore him apart as he breathed.”

Deluge’s words build my anger until I lift my head in utter abandonment of all rationality. I howl until my cheeks split. The spine breaking roar grows in volume until the windows of the room crack and crumble. The rats scurry away from me as they stumble over their swollen bellies full of Alistair’s flesh. The torturer leans over covering his ears, but blood leaks from them just as blood leaks from Alistair’s.

By the time my bellowing ends, the man weeps while curling in a ball on the floor. I stomp towards him with my steps cracking stone. He scrambles away from Alistair before I reach my old teacher. I place a palm onto his forehead before I grit my teeth until they shatter and my hands shake. It must be done.

A spike stabs into Alistiar’s skull before Deluge consolidates his soul, and as his suffering ends, I say aloud, “May you rest in peace dear friend. Your efforts will not die in vain. Your memories shall live on in those you left behind. Your legacy shall live through them.”

After a moment of silent mourning, the torturer’s weeping registers in my mind. As I turn towards him, my form radiates power. My mind quakes. An unquenchable hatred claws into me before the door behind me opens with several gemchainers pouring into the room with cold sweat dripping from their faces.

Before they approach me, I pace up to the torturer and dig my hand into his stomach. My skin melds with his own before my fingers mold into worms that crawl into his organs. They suck out his insides as he screams in agony before I lift him into the air for the others to see.

They wait, paralyzed by utter despair as the torturer's bulging gut slowly caves inwards. Each of my fingers rips and tears the nerves inside him as he howls with a pain Alistair never withstood.

Several of the gemchainers fall on their knees before I glance behind me with my fingers writhing under the skin of the torturer. The once bulbous man hangs with a skeletal thinness as he weeps before my body crawls out his nose and into his eyes. He convulses for several seconds before all his movements cease. After I finish, I turn towards the gemchainers.

A dreadful spite permeates me as I say, “You all knew of what happened here. You all knew of the torments, of the torture. I would let you all live, but those who watch murder and idle are as guilty as the murderer themselves.”

In a visceral jerk of effort, I bend over while stabbing a set of grown claws into the stone floor underneath me. Pulling with my arm, I unleash an explosion of force on the ground through my heels.

Instead of helping, they each run towards the doorway after I charge into a man, ripping him apart in a shower of blood. I spit Acidic saliva onto the face of the nearest guard while Deluge never consolidates a single soul. As I dash towards each member and rip them apart, they cry like children, and after I tear off the last guard’s arm, I impale the limb through his chest, ending the carnage.

However, the hatred pounding in my head never wanes. I grasp at the last piece of my mind that retains sanity as I focus on the veins that writhe towards the corpses. The slimy tubes burrow into the bodies before a stomach-turning suction begins. These arteries try draining blood towards the abomination in the other room before I embrace the desire in the back of my mind.

Without the time to formulate a cleaner plan, my maw expands before I devour entire corpses at a time. I no longer chew, I shove them into my throat that swells with pouches of skin before Deluge assimilates them in mere seconds. Even though my mind understands how filthy and disgusting the process is, it manifests differently. For a fraction of a second, I enjoy the moment. I live deliciously.

After I quell the emotion, Deluge laughs in my mind before saying, “You’ve prevented these veins from feasting on their blood while I can use these nutrients to help us destroy whatever lies in the room ahead. It does seem like a rather gruesome burial.”

My hands clamp into fists as the last carcass becomes my own flesh. I hiss in my mind, “They deserve no better.”

I roll my shoulders before I pace into the next room full of meat and memories of Alistair’s deformed posture. After this all ends, I’ll find his family and give his body to them. It’s all I can do...

The thought causes my hands to shake with fury before I pace into the next room. After walking through the decrepit space, I reach beside the doorway leading to the source of the rumbling from earlier. As I drive my fingers between the doorways, I pull my arms outward, splintering the doors in a series of loud pops.

The sight before me leaves me speechless. I blink for a moment as a deformed and globular human with gray hair pulses at the center of the room. The corpses of numerous students pile around it along with several of the gemchainers I remember from my training sessions at the GC.(The gemchaining building) The veins dig into them as they wheeze, still alive as this monster saps their life.

These colossal arteries lead to twelve different pieces of alexandrite on the joints, chest, and forehead of the monster’s body. The souls collect in these gems while siphoning power through a series of metal wires and spines connecting the gems across the mounds of flesh.

Where the gems lay engraved in its skin, bulbous mounds of flesh peak outwards between the pulsing capillaries, deforming and tearing the skin of the humanoid thing. The monks around it carry all kinds of bloodied instruments and charged gems as they scramble to collect the valuables in the room. I hone in on their shouting as they scream towards one another,

“How did the corruptor get here?”

“It doesn’t matter. We need to leave. The counter measure’s finally operational. We just need to pray to Gaia that it can handle the demon for us.”

In desperation, I shout my words over their clamoring, “Why? Why have you forsaken all the students here to create this abomination?”

A monk with a head of gray hair turns towards me with eyes wide with panic and fear. After a moment, he shouts, “Gannon, the gemchainer you spared, has spoken with the oracle. She has laid out her edict.”

He spreads his arms wide as he grins despite his trembling, “The crusade has begun. We shall Destroy the corruptor and prevent the dark age you omen. We crafted our greatest champion using our kingdom’s greatest minds to this end. It will obliterate you, harbinger.”

His words shake with a deep, zealous madness as he grins from ear to ear. He laughs after he finishes his words before the others join in his lunacy. The chorus of laughter echoes on the wall before the creature at the center of the room beats like a heart. The sound overcomes their shrieking as the slosh of liquid expands the creature to 12 feet in height.

Two slit like eyes open under the gem on its forehead before it rips itself from the mound of capillaries. These vessels pop as gaping and bloody holes tunnel into and throughout the mutant’s body. As it convulses for a moment, the creature’s mangy hair bristles. The creature’s eyes turn around the room for several moments before they set onto me.

I stand beside the only escape in the room as sweat pours from the clammy skin on the monk’s faces. Gritting my teeth, I ground my feet while clamping my hands into fists. The disgusting, wet beast just stands with sharp eyes as it suveys me. My breaths grow shallow before the gems glow on the creature. The thing speaks with a low gurgle of a voice,

“I’ll kill you, demon.”

I dash towards the creature before it alters its stance towards that of a gemchainer. An ear splitting shaking occurs before the gems pulse energy through the wires in its body. As I reach it, the being moves with a swift and precise turn of its two stump like legs. A mound of veins harder than steel slams into my chest launching me across the room and into the wall.

The bones in my back break as my chest caves inward from the blow. I keep my mouth closed, but a rush of blood rushes into my ears and out of my nose. The wall powders under my weight while my body absorbs several crushed monks before I glance at the creature’s eyes.The agony in my torso dies down as it says with the same malformed voice,

“You stole Joan. You stole everything.”

At the declaration, my anger evaporates before I shake my head and speak with a paralyzed shock, “Are you...Petra?”