Cutting ties with Maria was the right call. Her subjects, grafted into furniture, would be more hindrances than useful assets. I suspected they weren’t very loyal as far as Wolves went anyway. Maria twisted their forms, using them as conduits for her vindictive behaviour. In this room alone, four different pieces of furniture had been immediately targeted by Nell’s deadly influence, stripped of their camouflage, becoming miniature trees in a matter of seconds.
Fighting against the convergence. Growing roots. Nell is resisting the Lacuna formation process. How is she able to remain so level-headed while projecting such intense emotion?
It was because she had a goal. My head on a stake.
Nick’s corpse had stopped moving. The waves of emotion still pulsed, but they weren’t as intense for the moment. Her attention was elsewhere.
I motioned to one of my followers.
“Circle around Nick and go close the door.”
They obeyed, following through on the orders even after they exited my domain of influence. I’d only picked the most dedicated of my disciples for this mission. The ones that I had molded slowly over time, breaking down their inhibitions, making the coming and going of my apathy feel natural and comfortable so that even when they were without it, they still thought they were doing things because they wanted to.
I watched as a few buds formed on my follower’s skin. They gave Nick a wide berth, shut the door and returned hurriedly. The moment they were back in my range, a look of relief briefly passed over their face as their emotions drained away.
Turning my attention to the freshly grown trees inside our room, I observed their odd trunks that were widest in the middle. Fruit was growing from the branches, ripening in mere seconds before being absorbed back into the branches. The trees groaned as if under pressure and my Shape observed a small increase in diameter of the trunks.
Bark fracturing, branches unfit for sustainable growth. Not aligned with any known tree species. Intentional. Likely building something within.
“Shoot them.”
My soldiers opened fire, ripping into the trees with a hail of bullets. They were quickly decimated into chunks of wood and globs of sap. One of the trees split open and a large placenta sac spilled out. The inside was murky with blood. A spiky limb flopped out from the membrane and I felt chills.
She’s making new life. Experimental life.
It was time to reassess. I’d planned to weather the Lacuna’s formation indoors, but that no longer seemed prudent. Nell’s rational mind wasn’t as consumed as I had expected. Still, the grief would overwhelm her eventually. We would have to play this at the perfect speed, not too fast or slow.
Chiara held her head with both hands, hunched over like she was about to puke onto the carpet. Brambles had overtaken her neck and shoulders. I would have to keep an eye on her.
I glanced back at Nick’s standing corpse. A small bonsai tree had emerged from the hole in his head and a fruit as big as the tree itself hung down like a giant beading blood drop. The weight became too much and it broke off.
Not good.
The fruit splattered open to reveal a pathetic shriveled thing, barely the size of a fist. With bow-legged limbs and a sunken head, it looked like the cross between a chicken and some insect larvae. None of that mattered because it had eyes. Green veined orbs with black sclera.
I immediately ducked down and a wave of needle-like growth erupted from the front row of our group. The creature swept its head left to right, Nell Shaping anyone the creature laid eyes on.
A follower toppled to the ground next to me, his skull cracked open by a plant akin to a bamboo shoot. I tore off his deer mask and put it on, making sure it was securely in place before I peeked out and saw that the creature had turned to face Nick.
It cooed and reached a handless limb out to touch him. I could feel a shift in the waves of emotion. The creature curled up to die at Nick’s feet.
Then Nick’s body went limp, the vines releasing him and allowing him to sink slowly to the ground until his chin touched his chest.
“Oh Nell,” I breathed. “You were in denial. Just realizing now that you’ve been puppeting a dead body. You’ve been so used to channeling your will through him, you didn’t really stop to acknowledge the difference, did you?”
White leaves began to grow around the corpse, wrapping him up in a burial shroud the same colour as his antlers. His eyes were shut by slender shoots and I got one last look at my rival’s face before he was given his rest. It looked like Nell’s sentimentality won out over her desire to have another tool to hunt me down.
Thanks for the good times, Nick.
I turned back and ordered the group to proceed into the next room. I was confident that we’d weathered the worst of it. The resonating emotions felt different now. Grief, guilt, the kind of feelings that made a person withdraw into a dark room to be alone.
So I shifted my focus to what came next: the God in the Lacuna that Organ had been calling out to. Once we were outside, I should be able to verify if Nell’s resonance had finally called it down to Earth.
I thought back to when I had first conversed with the unknown entity that claimed to be the emissary of God.
At the same time the Sillwood Beacon had become the sole focus for the world powers, Organ had triggered another Beacon in South America, where they had another Witch of high potential. I had gotten wind of this operation months in advance and decided to mess with Organ, not knowing what an earth-shattering secret I would uncover.
It wasn’t until the moment I laid my hand on that pulsating Beacon, with its branches like bat wings, that I discovered this game had players even I hadn’t been aware of.
“You… I know you,” the entity had said to me. “You were there when I sent my follower down to Earth. You called it the Pianist.”
The voice chuckled, reverberating deeply within my mind.
“How astute that observation was. I had sent him to find the ‘key’: the metaphorical music box that would awaken my God. To think you so readily interfered with a messenger of God with such gleeful violence… Hmm. But perhaps I can convince you to help.”
My Shape had nearly overwhelmed me that day, new connections blazing to life, expanding my understanding a hundredfold in the blink of an eye. I could feel the heat inside my brow like an ignited forge.
The Beacons make contact with the Lacuna through emotional waves, resonating with what is being perpetually broadcast to Earth from the Lacuna. The Aberrants are being controlled by this ‘emissary’. No, more like he is giving them little shoves one way or another. The true source of the Aberrants’ malice towards humanity is this ‘God’. But the God is dormant, dreaming. He needs the Beacons to wake it. But they aren’t strong enough. He’s looking for something bigger. There are currently two Lacunae, but we haven’t made contact with the other one, it doesn’t respond to our signals, as if it’s dead. But what if…
What if there was a way to make another?
My grin was as wide as the Cheshire cat. “I don’t think I will take much convincing. How should I use this key?”
That conversation had connected all the loose puzzle pieces, giving me a glimpse at the complete picture. And now that puzzle was nearing completion. When it did, a new future would come to life.
I snapped my fingers. “Get out the acid. Start controlled burns of the plants as they encroach.”
My followers obeyed, taking out containers that held potent acid. Splashing it onto the marble floor created puddles of the dangerous liquid, a barrier against plant matter. The vines that crept under door frames browned and curled up when they touched it.
Then the door behind us slammed open and I whirled around. Figures stepped out onto the floor, misshapen feet sizzling against the acid. They were human-adjacent creations, as if evolution had once seen a picture of humanity and made a fledgling attempt to create them in one go. The skin of the creatures were made of dense overlapping leaves, looking more like scales than plant matter. The heads were masses of flowers, like each body had been beheaded and a bouquet placed into the neck.
Each flower had rudimentary sense organs at the center, black eyes and gaping holes meant to intake air, scents, or sounds. Limbs differed in length and carried all manner of frightening appendages, from thick wooden clubs to fingers like cactus needles.
That door was previously locked and sealed… Sabotage? Did Maria do this before she died?
If it had been Maria, I’d already done all I could to put a stop to this new kink in the plan.
My followers opened fire against the new threats. Every second the Shapes perceived us we were attacked by Nell’s deadly Shaping, as our pseudo-invisibility to her sixth sense was overridden.
Staying low, I ordered a retreat, rerouting our escape path in my mental map of the mansion. Smoke grenades were deployed to block line of sight and we exited into another room. I checked the lock on the door myself.
No latent Shapes are built into this one. No chance of hidden sabotage.
Still, I kept my head on a swivel as my followers deployed more acid and waited, listening to the creations bang on the door and shuffle around.
Who was left? 90% of my remaining forces were Wolves, with constitutions that were sturdy enough to handle the Shapings that they had been exposed to. Good. These losses were within an acceptable range.
Then I spotted something strange. A part of the wall was melting. The wallpaper looked like it was turning into molten wax before being sucked away. A massive hand, gnarled with roots, placed itself in the created gap.
My Shape fired out a response: Wolf assimilation of the material left behind by the Phasing Aberrant deployed by Maria.
That was a surprise. Had Maria planned this in advance? Something that would deploy if I killed her, circumventing my attempts at a defensible fortress? And who was the Wolf absorbing the wall? They would be suffering terribly under Nell’s influence, so how could they be acting against us?
I swept my eyes over my forces. Who?
I didn’t get more time to mull it over as the rest of the wall came crashing down. The creation on the other side loomed taller than the gap until it stooped down to look through. A cluster of eyes sat in a hollow on the creation’s face. Its hands and legs were better formed, more refined than what we’d already seen. It even emitted a low moan as it served as the witness to a fresh wave of destruction at Nell’s hands.
Time to take our chances outside.
“Exit the building!” I shouted, feeling a sting as a fresh flower bloomed on my leg.
I kept low and used the bodies of my followers as a moving shield as we made a break for it.
Staying on the move was the right call. Fresh air breezed through the eyeholes of my mask. High ceilings were replaced by an oppressive sky, an imperfect red sphere dominating the space. The red Lacuna crowded out the gray Lacuna, which still only looked as big as the moon.
Small black silhouettes ascended into the air, coalescing into larger shapes against the pulsating background of red.
We passed a group of runners. They weeped and tore at their own heads, breaking into new cries of woe with every wave. A car had veered and hit a wall, burying itself in stone and fire. Screams echoed down from the skies.
I’d seen what chaos a Beacon could produce.
This would be worse.
It was a birthing wail. The beginning of a whole new world.