Nell and Wire clung tightly to me as I gave them the most extreme version of a piggyback ride anyone could ever ask for, leaping great distances from branch to branch while keeping an eye on the lowering of the maze-prison to ground level.
“I need to confirm it will work with my own eyes,” Nell said. “Otherwise our plan won’t only fail, it’ll give the Skin a hundred times more biomass to work with.”
“From what we’ve seen, it checks out,” Wire said. His favourite book had found a place inside of my armour. The best we could do to keep it safe for the moment.
“Honestly, as strange as it sounds, seeing the Skin will also help me relax a little. Right now it’s like trying to wrangle a living bar of soap inside of a pitch black box. I know its general location, mostly just because it’s the only thing that feels like that-” I felt a shiver along our connection. “But grasping it is impossible.”
I slid down an above ground root until I reached solid ground. My legs almost tripped me up at the firmness of our landing. It was like being at sea for a while, it felt unnatural not to feel any movement beneath me.
The lightning rod Aberrants with their towering scarred bodies stood unnervingly around us.
Nell hopped off and scrunched up her face as she rearranged the maze one last time into a funnel shape, with an open doorway at the bottom, the door swinging loosely on its hinge.
Wire turned to the lightning rod Aberrants and started gathering them closer.
I eyed them with pity. It was important to remind myself that all of these things were once human. Organ had somehow managed to replicate a “failed” result in Dice across many subjects, but despite their uniformity, they were all individuals who deserved better than their bodies to be abused long after their minds had gone. It really made me wonder about the soul. If such a thing were real, would it be trapped inside of these husks?
Wire whipped around with fear in his eyes. “Here it comes!”
Flesh began to ooze out of the door, squeezed out like some horrific paste full of eyes, limbs, and mouths. It just kept emerging, far beyond the point where I thought we had seen the last of its bodymass. It had found more victims to consume. The torrent of pinkish-red skin was pockmarked by bits of forest greens and browns. The Skin had distributed these patches away from joints and other moving parts.
“We were right,” Nell said with relief. “It doesn’t have the ability to change the composition of the organics it absorbs. The plants are getting in the way. We’re lucky that it didn’t absorb any Witches or it might be a different story.”
“Doesn’t look like it has absorbed much though,” I noted.
“Right, it has some awareness not to immobilize itself with rigid plant matter.”
An intact outer wall of the manor lowered to the ground gently, forming a barrier between us and the Crawling Skin and there were tall windows that let us still see it.
The Skin began to reassemble, concentrating limbs to form larger composite ones, the individual arms and legs wrapping together like fibers in a muscle. The eyes did the same, converging into a diamond shape, each pupil darting in a different direction, creating a dizzying pattern, almost like it was trying to communicate with us. I shivered at the thought and looked away. It was too hard to look at those human eyes in search of the humanity that once lay behind them.
Properly supported now for its increased mass, it lifted its slug-like front end and the eye grid zeroed in on us. Many mouths split open and a choir of inhuman noises sung from human throats. One amalgamated limb dug into the main mass of flesh, tearing out a chunk and flinging it at us. The flesh splattered against the glass. The separated flesh twitched, but it didn’t have the strength to move itself. I exhaled slowly.
Wire bounced anxiously on the spot, finally displaying the kind of energy I would expect from someone so young. “Have you found it yet?”
Nell gritted her teeth. “It’s coming. Give me a second.”
“Just drop it!”
“Stop trying to move it on your own! It’s not helping me shake it loose.”
The Crawling Skin lurched towards us, one limb already raised high, poised to smash the barrier.
A large black metal box plummeted down. It smashed into the Skin, staggering it. The box sank halfway into the flesh. The front cover of the box popped off, revealing a pulsating mess of wires and tissue. The wires sparked and moved on their own, creeping across the Skin, tiny filaments jutting from the wires acted as centipede legs. Coolant sputtered out from the computer as a deep shade of red.
The lightning rod Aberrants began to move forward and I scooped up Nell and Wire and jumped with Locust Legs, bringing us a fair distance away.
Wire was concentrating hard, his eyelids twitched but he didn’t blink. The Crawling Skin was distracted, absorbing the biological components within the computer, but the wires and metals were making the progress slow.
It was up to Nell and Wire to execute the plan, I just had to run damage control.
I looked around to see if anyone was near the base of the tree that might be at risk of touching the Skin. Any allies we had left had retreated, although there were still bodies scattered around. I sprung into action, going for the ones that were closest to the Skin first.
It didn’t matter now whose side each person had been on. I tried to treat each of them with care as I moved them to a safer distance and laid them down.
Then I spotted someone observing from the tallest hill.
My blood started to thunder in my head, above the wind and the keening of the Skin.
“Keep going!” I shouted to Nell. “I need to take care of something.”
Nell nodded and I sprung high into the air.
I landed close to the top of the hill and the Hermit turned towards me.
He dropped his gloves and raised a hand, as much of a threat as it was a greeting. “Careful, dog. Remember that I’m a Cast. My power doesn’t have an off-switch.”
His words felt like they were a lesser version of his exiling, obliterative touch, hearing them made me want to slap my hands to my ears and run away. I stood my ground, my heart beating madly at the thought of Jason.
“Must be lonely,” I said as I started to pace in a circle around him.
His hand followed me, shaking either with age, fear, or both. His expression remained steely. “It has served me well. It kept me on the true path, saving me from the distractions of the common man.”
“How enlightened of you to not have to care about the common man.”
“Oh Nick,” his eyes grew distant. “If you had been there to hear it you would have felt the same as I do. That sound is as clear in my memory as the day I first heard it. The day when everything changed. We had made our first viable Beacon out of the bodies of orphaned children gathered from all across the globe. We had more desire to be surreptitious back then.”
His hand stretched out and his finger lifted. “I touched it and heard something divine. An alien instrument, so complex and powerful, the sound could not be described. The closest comparison I can make is to when I was a child at church and I rested my head against the organ. A deep and revelatory reverberation.”
His arm wavered as he eyed me with distaste.
“Don’t you have a Skin to take care of?”
“My part’s done. I have some free time.”
“A mere taxi service?”
“Yup.”
“Hmm, I expected more. Quinn had such intriguing things to say about the two of you. Now I’m left wondering if I should have intervened sooner.”
“Nell’s got it. I trust her.”
He sighed. “And so you came to try and kill me? Revenge is such a gauche motivator.”
“You could still help.”
His mouth drew into a thin line. “I will not. I would rather die than risk contaminating the future.”
I turned back towards the tree. “It’s a lot braver to try and keep living,” I said to myself, “despite everything that’s happened.”
Parts of the tree were breaking apart and the last of the shattered manor it held was freed. But Nell was even aware of that, making sure that the debris didn’t hit her or Wire. The impacts of the rubble created plumes of dust as the air rumbled.
Something metal plinked to the ground next to me. It was a polished silver fork. More cutlery fell around us as a strange sort of rain, followed by a fluttering table cloth. I thought of Conrad as I let it drape across my hands.
The Aberrants formed a tight circle around the Crawling Skin. Their heads tilted towards the sky. Streaks of light leapt across the clouds, flickering faster and faster.
The Skin reached out to the nearest Aberrant, causing its knees to buckle as its skin began to froth.
Plants erupted from the ground and extended their wide leafy branches into a canopy that surrounded the Skin.
The hairs on my skin stood on end. The taste of metal was in the air.
It was time.
I shut my eyes and the world became white instead of black. The ground shook and an ear-splitting sound rent the air, so loud it was like the earth was an egg that had just been cracked open.
I opened my eyes to see the aftermath. A smoking crater of blackened earth. Nell’s net hadn’t caught it all. The smallest bits of burnt skin had scattered far and wide. I didn’t dare to breathe as I watched nearby pieces of the Skin curl up and crumble to ash.
The main body had been split open like a trunk cleaved by an axe. It tried to move, cracking the blackened surface of its body.
Nell’s triumph surged into our connection, flooding me with elation.
“Got you!” she shouted as she flung out her hands.
The Crawling Skin cried out in distress as its flesh began to wither and reduce. The degenerative disease Quinn had spoken of had activated and immediately set to work. The withering spread inwards, slowly taking over territory, mirroring the process the Skin had started.
The Skin raised a decaying hand of composite limbs and plunged it into the core of itself, ripping free a piece and flinging it into the recesses of the roots of the giant tree.
“It’s escaping!” Nell cried out.
An idea appeared in my mind and spread across our connection like a wildfire. Nell immediately started to act.
I turned to the Hermit, rubbing the dirty tablecloth between my fingers.
“You know I’ve learned a lot about fear in the last year.”
I stepped towards him.
“You can think about it in advance all you want. You can make plans and preparations for each outcome…”
The Hermit unbuttoned his shirt and the wind blew it open, revealing his bare wrinkled chest. “Not any closer!” he shouted.
I spoke louder, “But you’ll never know how you’ll react until you’re there, in the moment.”
I easily avoided his clumsy swiping attempts to touch me and threw the tablecloth over him. My heart skipped a beat as a finger almost brushed me.
Then I wrapped him up tight, hugging the tablecloth around him so he couldn’t move. His gasps for air were muffled.
I whispered to his shrouded head, “Hear that?”
He was silent, save for his panting. The wind grew quiet too.
At first it was a single crack, the kind that would send your imagination spiralling if you heard it in a dark forest. Another followed like a response to the first, crack. Then a dozen more tumbled down to our ears. A twig hit the Hermit’s head and he flinched. Bark split as the wood underneath gave up the ghost. A thousand ghosts in fact, noisily escaping like fireworks above our heads.
A deep groan rang out as the roots began to lose their hold on earth.
“You’ll die too!” the Hermit screamed.
“You’ve been acting so high and mighty,” I shouted above the noise. “Controllers of the fate of the earth. Now the tables have turned and your fate comes due. How does it feel? Can you hear your heart pumping up to your ears? Can you feel your bones shaking?”
The tree tipped and fell, a shadow against the sky, growing larger, blotting out the meagre light.
“I know I can!” I said, laughing.
Then I tore the tablecloth free and threw myself to the ground.
The Hermit’s eyes bulged as he finally saw the gargantuan tree falling towards him. His arms flung up in self-preservation.
The tree vanished as it touched his hand and the world went silent.
The Hermit collapsed, breathing ragged as he cradled a broken finger.
My legs felt like jelly as I stood up.
Nell let out a cheer and threw her hands up. Wire gazed at her for a moment before raising his own. She gave him a double high-five that almost made him tip over. I grinned.
Suddenly my vision sharpened. I swept my eyes over the hills and spotted the cause. Daria’s startlingly red hair was being braided by Neve as she rested her head in her lap.
I felt warmth spread across my skin and I looked up.
The clouds had been scattered in a long line, letting the sun shine down. It had already been morning for some time.