50

They stood before the great double doors of the Inner Sanctum, the four of them–five, or even seven, if Fyodor, Biggs, and Wedge counted too. Given the role they were about to play in that desperate Hail Mary pass that was their plan, Hunter’s little menagerie had every right to. They traded a few glances and nods, and Hunter knew they’d crossed some kind of Rubicon. There would be no last-minute backing out now–not for himself, not for any of them.

It was time.

Fawkes unsealed the flasks and dripped a few drops of the thick crimson ooze on the severed limbs and hunks of low-dweller flesh they’d carried with them, then used a rag to spread it around as much as she could and added the clear liquid she’d said would act as an accelerant. The ooze started bubbling and spreading as soon as it came in touch with the liquid, coming alive with an acrid smell that made Hunter’s eyes burn. It ate at strips of dead skin and meat scraps for a couple of minutes, much like a handful of kindling that’s trying to decide whether it wants to catch fire or not. Then the ooze more or less exploded, splashing everything in that grisly body bag and eating away at all that dead flesh ten, twenty, fifty times as fast as it had before.

“It’s ready!” shouted Fawkes. “Quickly now, go, go, go!”

Sister Peregrine shoved the great runed doors open, and Hunter and Brother Aurochs dragged the gore- and Phage-filled makeshift sack inside the Inner Sanctum. Fawkes rushed first through the proverbial breach, saber and pistol in hand, ready to shoot and cut down anything that got in their way.

What followed after that, Hunter could only recollect as a jumble of images, sounds, smells, pain, thrill, exhilaration. And, near the very end, despair.

The first thing that hit Hunter as he crossed the threshold and stepped inside Mother’s domain was that eerie whispering, that muffled chant of a thousand cracked lips and broken voices that permeated the fabric of being itself. It was stronger than before, strong enough to leave Hunter stunned with its sheer intensity. Its tempo had grown faster, too, like a fevered staccato prelude inexorably leading to an even more fevered crescendo.

The second was the gigantic silhouettes that were waiting for them on the other side of the doors. Two of the low-ogre honor guards loomed above Hunter and his companions, brandishing their huge spears and barring their way like the world’s ugliest gate guards. Mother had prepared for a rematch, it seemed, just like they had.

What she hadn’t–couldn’t–prepare for was how pissed off Fawkes was this time around. Just as the low-ogres raised their spears, desiccated corpses still dangling from their business ends, the veteran swordswoman was already on the offensive; she shot one in the face, danced around the second, and slashed at his hamstrings, all in one lightning-fast, fluid motion.

“Don’t stare!” she screamed at a still-stunned Hunter. “Fight!”

Not about to give the hulk a chance to recover, Sister Peregrine was already pumping arrows at the low-ogre Fawkes had shot in the face. Hunter drew his rondel dagger and flanked it, too, looking for an opening to stab the thing behind the knee. The dagger’s pointy blade sunk in the low-ogre’s mottled flesh with surprising ease, cutting through gristle and bone, drawing black blood. Fyodor rushed in and savaged the thing’s other leg, effectively pinning it in place.

The other low-ogre dropped its weapon and swung at Fawkes with its huge fist. She rolled with the blow, never losing her footing. The thing prepared to throw another haymaker, but it never did; Brother Aurochs bull-rushed it and plunged two feet of his spear right into its belly. Fawkes pounced again, leaving deep bloody gashes across the low-ogre’s hamstrings. It roared in pain and fury and toppled to the floor, its Achilles’s tendons both severed. Brother Aurochs held fast to the grip of his spear and used it as a fulcrum to keep the low-ogre in place. Fawkes weaved around its thrashing limbs and plunged her blade through its eye and into its brain, finishing the job.

Above the fray, Biggs and Wedge were doing their part, too. They flew back and forth, grabbing Phage-infested pieces of flesh from the body bag and dropping them on the mob of Mother’s followers further inside the chapel. Hunter was too busy to pay attention to the whether what the ravens did had any effect yet, but judging from the excited chattering in the back of his mind, things were probably going well on their end.

Fyodor had clamped his powerful jaws around the second low-ogre’s thigh. Hunter kept stabbing at its knees, trying to bring it down, and Sister Peregrine kept shooting arrows at it from almost point-blank range, turning the thick gorilla-like arms it had raised to protect itself into pincushions. They were wearing it down and keeping it on the back foot, yes, but that wasn’t enough. Time was of the essence. They had to find an opening and deal the killing blow. Brother Aurochs thought so, too; he picked up the other low-ogre’s discarded spear, waited for the right moment, then pushed the gigantic weapon under the low-ogre’s guard and straight into its bulky throat. It wasn’t dead, not yet, but now it was just a matter of time.

A few feet away, Fawkes was already dealing with the first wave of Mother’s misshapen faithful. Fighting with a merciless bitterness Hunter hadn’t seen before, she was a whirlwind of steel, black blood, and death. Three or four low-dwellers lay slain at her feet already, and she was fighting off another two. Shit slit the throat of one, got rammed off-balance by the second, then got clawed at the shoulder a third that had just joined the fray. She regained her balance with a whirl, barely managing to dance around a pouncing fourth, then turned back to lop its forearm off with a lightning-fast counterattack.

Still, more were coming. Dozens.

“Cover me!” she shouted.

Sister Peregrine let a few arrows fly blindly towards the oncoming mob, slowing them down. Hunter signaled Biggs and Wedge to throw a few blasts of Ill Omen, too, which they happily did. They didn’t do much damage, but they bought Fawkes enough time to retreat without anything biting at her heels or clawing at her back.

“Use the dead ones as cover!” Hunter spat, carefully picking up a few choice pieces of Phage-covered meat and chucking them at the low-dwellers. Fawkes gave him a grim nod and ducked behind the corpses of Mother’s honor guard–right as Mother herself chose to make her own move, too.

Hunter felt the crushing pressure of Mother’s ungodly magic before he even saw the telltale flash of golden light. Then an almost palpable wave of dreadful eldritch force washed over him, assaulting his very will with the force of a tsunami.

You have failed a contest of will against [?? ???? ????????].

Kannewik Corpse Hair Charm has been consumed to protect you from the effects of Auric Authority.

Just like last time, the charm took the brunt of the attack and Hunter managed to resist the mind-crushing effect of the spell. Unlike last time, though, so did his companions. The charms had worked wonders. Now he just had to hope Mother didn’t have the chance to pull off another spell like this.

Moments later, a small mob of misbegotten swarmed Hunter, Fawkes, Fyodor, and the Brethren. They rushed at them from all sides, even climbing atop the dead bodies of the low-ogres, looking to pounce from unexpected angles. Mother had probably intended to stun them with her suppressing magic, then have her followers tear them apart as they were just standing there slack-jawed.

What the dozen-or-so of low-dwellers found, however, was a death-drunk Fawkes that sprang at them screaming like a banshee. Hunter followed her with Fyodor at his side, if only to make sure she wouldn’t be surrounded. He wasn’t accustomed to using a dagger yet, and he found he missed the relative safety that a glaive’s reach afforded. One of the low-dwellers hit him with a body tackle, slamming the breath out of him. He haphazardly grabbed his dagger with both hands and drove it in the soft flesh under the thing’s jaw, just in time to stop it from biting his face off.

On his one flank, Sister Peregrine had abandoned her bow and arrows in favor of a slender spear. Brother Aurochs had recovered his own from the corpse of the low-ogre he’d impaled earlier. They were fighting side by side with a degree of synchronicity that was almost supernatural; they moved, evaded, stabbed, dropped one enemy after the other with ease that looked nothing short of uncanny.

On his other flank, Fawkes was weaving through the low-dwellers like a goddess of death. She danced her bloody waltz with savage grace, leaving behind a trail of brutally mutilated dead bodies. There was no trace of her usual reserved efficiency in the way she fought. She reveled in the violence and the killing. Under all the blood and viscera she was drenched in, Hunter could swear she was almost smiling.

A trio of Mother’s misbegotten followers spotted Hunter from afar and started to rush at him. There was something seriously wrong in the way they moved, he noted. It was the Phage. It had reached its awakened state. The things had been infected, and what the crimson ooze was doing to them made his stomach turn.

It was spreading through flesh like flame burned through paper, and disintegrating it almost as fast. Hunter had expected the Phage to be some kind of caustic acid of sorts. It wasn’t. It was a living thing with a mind of its own and a hunger that could not be stopped. He watched horrified as it ate cleanly through the leg of one of the low-dwellers that were charging at him, chewing at flesh and bone alike. The thing dropped to the floor, and the crimson ooze continued to work its way through the rest of its body, inch by bloody inch. Still the low-dwellers kept crawling, animated and pushed onward by Mother’s merciless will.

“Don’t let the Phage touch you!” he heard Fawkes shout.

Hunter looked at the dagger in his hand – sturdy and wickedly sharp, yes, but still no longer than a foot or so. If he fought any of the infected up close and personal, there was no way he could avoid touching the consuming ooze.

“Biggs, Wedge”, he projected. “To me!”

He ran towards the Brethren, trying to put some distance between himself and the low-dwellers that were pitifully shambling their way to him. If he could keep them at a distance long enough – kite them, in essence – he wouldn’t have to fight. The Phage was already killing them one crumbling piece of flesh at a time.

“Don’t let the red stuff get on you!” he relayed to the Brethren, who were finishing off a couple of low-dwellers. They didn’t look infected, but one could never be sure. “Remember the plan! We skedaddle!”

Sister Peregrine threw him a glance and nodded, hard-pressed to keep the things’ fangs and claws at a safe distance.

Biggs and Wedge flew to him just as another couple of misbegotten zeroed in on him. He immediately sent them to blast any infected-looking ones with Ill Omen, spread its slowing curse as much as possible. There weren’t as many left as he’d thought – or, at least, not many of them that were in any condition to be much of a threat. While he and the rest of his companions were fighting up close and personal, the Phage had been wreaking havoc among the throngs of Mother’s followers further inside of the chapel, painting whole rows of seats lush and the lush carpets on the floor with its morbid crimson.

The plan had worked.

So far, so good.

But what about Mother herself?

Hunter tried to look for her, but all he saw in place of the dais and canopy at the other end of the chapel was a cloud of flickering, distorted haze, like waves of heat rising through the air.

The telltale sign of her puppeteer’s glamour and illusion.

More importantly, there was no sign of the Phage anywhere near that place. It was as of there was an invisible hand keeping the infected away – which, given what Hunter had seen Mother do, was quite possibly exactly what was happening.

“Biggs, Wedge!” he projected to the ravens. “Screw the rest, focus on Mother!”

They gave him the empathic equivalent of a solemn “Aye aye!”, flew to the body bag to grab a couple of infected parts to bombard Mother with, and flew off again.

Around the illusory haze that hid Mother and the creature that controlled her stood the rest of the low-ogre honor guard – three of them, all untouched by crimson and in perfect fighting condition. One of the low-ogres zeroed in on him and started marching across the hall, its stance defensive. From the tip of its spear, Hunter noticed, hung Reiner’s body.

The two familiars flied past him, paying the hulk no attention. They had almost reached Mother’s illusory haze, ready to drop their payload of weaponized flesh-eating ooze right in its middle. One drop of it was all it would take, and then it would be just a matter of time.

It was almost over.

Hunter held his breath and watched.

Something swatted the ravens right out of the air, launching them and the infected low-dweller feet they carried at the opposite direction. Hunter felt their surprise and pain through their empathic link. His eyes were drawn to the illusion and felt the unseen gaze of something stare right back at him, sending chills down his spine, eating at the edges of his sanity. Thoughts and images flashed before his mind’s eye – thoughts and images that were not his own.

Something was very wrong. Something was changing.

As if draining the light itself from the air, the illusory haze started to shimmer with a golden luminosity. The whispered hymns of Mother’s faithful resounded through the halls in a feverish pitch, undisturbed by the fact that the blackened tongues and cracked lips that had been chanting them had been reduced to crimson ooze pooling at the floor of the chapel. Then the chorus ramped up to an ear-bleeding crescendo and changed tempo and timbre altogether. Deep voices joined the hymn, powerful, deep bassos that made his bones themselves vibrate, followed by the unearthly sopranos voice of Mother herself.

If this wasn’t boss music, he didn’t know what the hell was.

The golden nimbus parted then, revealing the eldritch form it had been concealing all along. Its light burned his retinas and a cascade of system messages assaulted his HUD, just as grim insights were hammered into his brain like railroad spikes. A thin line of blood trickled from his nose, and he felt his ears pop.

An urgent notification appeared up before him.

Grand Foe Discovered: It That Whispers.

You have beheld the true form of the otherworldly entity only known as It That Whispers. Your understanding of forbidden things deepens – but at what cost? Your Insight quality is now 5.

“Crystal dragon Jesus save us”, Hunter mumbled, suddenly feeling very, very small. “Why do they always have to have a final form?”