by Adam Witcher
I was already suited up, my weapons sharpened and tuned. I checked everything once over again anyway. The women did the same. Satisfied, we headed off. I tried to look nonchalant as we made our way to the library, whistling a tune with my thumbs in my pockets. Of course, nobody cared. The throngs of people thinned out once again when we reached the library, and there were only a few left when we surrounded the manhole. We opened it and climbed in, descending to the beautiful tiled floor and the great stone door. We were alone.
“I guess it’s time.” Lily opened a cloth satchel that contained the psilensus. She took a deep breath and shoved them in. She chewed quickly and without expression.
“What do they taste like?” I asked.
“Not much,” she said. “Kind of like dirt.”
“How long will it take to work?” I asked Camilla.
“Not long,” she said. “Give it twenty minutes, tops.”
We sat and waited. Lily didn’t do much at first, but after a few minutes, she closed her eyes and started breathing heavily.
“I feel… strange,” she said. “I’m seeing weird patterns, but only when my eyes are closed.”
“You’re almost there.” Camilla put a hand on her shoulder.
Ten more minutes passed. Lily suddenly stood up and opened her eyes. She looked around wildly, then let out a quick giggle.
“This place looks very… stretchy.” She spread her arms wide and laughed as she looked from hand to hand. I began to doubt this plan would be very productive.
“The door, Lily,” Camilla turned her and redirected her attention. “What can you see?”
Lily walked up to the great stone door and placed her palm on it. She paused for a moment before putting her forehead against it.
“I can feel it breathing,” she said.
“Can you see what’s inside?” Camilla asked.
“Inside?” Lily backed up and looked at the door as a whole. “Oh, yes, yes, yes, I can see inside. What a neat little design.”
She traced some invisible pattern with her fingertips, laughing occasionally as she did so.
“Can you open it?” I asked.
“Hmm…” She stretched out the sound to a great length. “Oh, no way. Not in a million years.” She cocked her head to one side, then wobbled it slowly back and forth. “Wait. I mean, yes. Yes, I think I can.”
She put both palms against the door, and they began to glow blue. She looked astonished at the sight.
“Oh my, that just looks positively magical, doesn’t it?” She turned to us.
I shrugged and nodded. She wasn’t wrong. Lily turned back to the door, this time seeming to concentrate closely. The way her tongue hung slightly out of her mouth while she focused looked cute. A web of ice crystals spread out from her fingertips and covered the door slowly before seeping in around the sides. The crackling of ice melting and reforming inside came through with metallic pops. This continued for several minutes.
“I think I almost have it,” Lily said, biting her lower lip. “So close… Gods, the ice looks so beautiful. Here we are. And… got it!”
A heavy mechanism inside the door shifted and we heard the clink of machinery falling into place. Nothing happened for a moment. Lily stuck her fingertips to the outer edge of the door and pulled. The door creaked open.
“I did it!” She turned and her face was glowing with an open-mouthed smile. “I became one with the universe!”
Camilla and I looked at each other and suppressed laughs.
“What?” She said. “I did!”
“You sure did, Lily,” I said.
She stepped back a little and I looked through the crack between the door and the tunnel wall. Another hallway extended into blackness, but along the way, flickering sconces illuminated the path. I turned and nodded to the girls, and we went through.
The hallway extended for hundreds of feet before leading us to another doorway, this one much smaller. The elegant tilework was absent here. Only smooth grey stones lined the walls and floor. We tried to tiptoe through quietly, but this didn’t stop Lily from admiring its apparent beauty a little too loudly for comfort. Luckily, the door before us now was simple, and best of all, proved to be unlocked. I took a deep breath and turned the knob.
The first thing I saw were dozens of tubes bolted across the ceiling filled with wriggling glowworms. Three must have been thousands of them, because the light they emitted made me recoil and squint. Once my eyes adjusted, I realized that we had entered some kind of laboratory. The strips of glowworm light were unsettling, but what filled the lab was even more confounding.
The chamber was filled with a variety of mechanisms, the likes of which I had never seen before. Devices of iron and stone, some that nearly touched the ceiling, others that were small and scattered about the long worktables. They largest ones were covered in chutes and gears, some running conveyor belts. I could guess that all of these devices worked toward a common goal, toward some unnatural transfiguration. Some of the devices carried the remains of gems or minerals, others fruits and vegetation. At the ends of these belts were buckets filled with all sorts of unrecognizable substances. One machine appeared to turn red apples into shiny crystalline versions that matched their shape exactly. Another took dunderflax and pressed it into long flat sheets of what looked like parchment. To my great surprise, none of the machines seemed to be producing krokum.
Gaining a little confidence that we were alone, we explored the room and inspected its strange contents. If this was indeed Tholen’s laboratory, he was not a well-organized scientist. Quills and notebooks littered the tables and floors. Several chairs were knocked over. Even so, it didn’t look abandoned in the slightest. The machines emanated the energy of recent experiments. It seemed like a well-used, if well-abused room.
“Do you suppose this is Tholen’s lab?” Camilla asked, examining the scribblings of some cast-aside notebook.
“Can’t imagine whose else it would be,” I said. “I did get those evil genius vibes from him.”
Lily stared intensely into a large purple orb. At its center, a smaller sphere of light projected electric beams that spread to the outer edges. Even to my sober mind, it was a hypnotic sight. I imagined the universes she must be seeing in it and chuckled to myself.
We became a little less paranoid the more we wandered around the laboratory and marveled at its mysteries. It was much larger than I had initially supposed, and it seemed that the further we went on, the further it stretched. Eventually, we turned a corner that led to an entirely new wing of the laboratory. I heard the soft animal cries before I saw them.
I froze in place. The lighting was different here, a deep red glow that bathed the room in crimson light. The first cage that I saw held a pig. Or, so it seemed at first glance. It had the soft pink body of a farm pig, but its head flattened out from the neck and was covered in rough green scales. Around its hard lips, a mouthful of jagged teeth jutted in various directions. The pig-alligator opened its giant maw and cried out with an unsettling anguish.
The girls both gasped behind me. The strange creature was not alone. Once the initial shock faded, I realized that this entire section of the lab contained a series of cages and nothing else, each of them containing horrifying creature hybrids. Behind the pig-gator, a beaked horse kicked its hooves anxiously in its tiny enclosure. Deformed wings breached its back and oozed a shining substance.
In another cage, the small body of a chimp was topped with the unmistakable facial features of a goblin. Its pointed ears and long nose looked disturbingly out of place on its hairy body. It emitted a disgusting sound that I could only marginally associate with the gurgled goblin language.
Lily whimpered a bit. I could only imagine how horrifying the scene must be for her mushroom-addled brain. Even for me, it was a terror to behold. The animals, driven either by our fear or simply by our presence, became more and more agitated as we stared at them. Before I could decide how to react, the cavernous laboratory echoed with
the stamps, cries, and bleats of dozens of miserable creatures.
“We have to get away from them!” I turned to the women and ushered them away. “Now!”
We ran back around the corner, paranoia even driving us to dive behind a lab table when we were already out of sight.
We sat there for several minutes, hoping the sound of the animals would die down. It didn’t. Perhaps it had been a long time since any of these poor things were paid a visit. Perhaps the presence of humans was long associated with the source of their anguish. Whatever it was, our influence didn’t disappear with us. I clenched my eyes shut for a moment and hoped for them to calm down. The discord went on.
Then, suddenly, it began to fade. The creatures settled, and we heard a new sound from the same direction. It was a peaceful shushing, the sound of a voice desperate to soothe and pacify. It had a nearly opposite effect on us.
“Someone is here!” Camilla whispered urgently.
I lifted my head to the top of the table slowly and peaked over. Even with his back to us in the red light, the long coat of Alastair Tholen was immediately recognizable. I couldn’t see him well, but he was obviously running from cage to cage, trying to calm the animals one by one. Something glinted in his hand. I ventured out a few feet for a better look, trying my hardest to sneak well. The animals that had ceased their cries were unconscious in their pens. I ran back to the girls.
“He’s sedating them,” I said.
With the noises fading, we heard the shaking voice of the scientist echo out through the lab.
“Who is here?” He yelled. “How did you get in? Where are you?” Each question bounced off the walls in different directions.
“Show yourself now, or you’ll be sorry.” The nervousness in his voice faded a little as anger replaced it. We heard his footsteps as he paced around.
“We need to do something,” Camilla said, “quick.”
His footsteps moved closer. I strung my bow and slowly pointed it out around the table at ground level. Tholen paced about the room furiously, tossing aside trinkets, notebooks, and anything else that impeded his search. It was only a matter of time before he would find us. I aimed my shot at him, but Camilla put her hand on my arm to stop me.
“We can’t kill him,” she whispered. “We need to find out what he knows about Neptos and krokum.” She had a point. He started heading our way, but he didn’t spot me. I fired an arrow toward the opposite corner of the lab. He froze in his tracks at the sound.
“I’ll find you,” he yelled. “You thieving bastards! Just wait until you see what I have in store for you, oh, just you wait.”
With Tholen heading in the opposite direction, I nodded to Camilla and we stood up to go after him. Lily began to stand too but lost her footing and fell back down.
“Maybe you ought to just wait here, okay?” I said, patting her on the shoulder.
From opposite sides of the table, we went after him. The mad scientist trudged forward toward the spot where the arrow had landed. Once it was in full view, I thanked the gods for my good luck. The area was filled with boxes and discarded machinery. Tholen flung them about wildly. Despite the subterranean chill in the laboratory, sweat poured from his neck and saturated the top of his white coat.
We snuck carefully with me in front and Camilla behind me. When we were just feet away, Tholen none the wiser, I motioned to Camilla to grab his left arm. I counted to three on my fingers and we leapt forward.
Tholen’s body jolted when we grabbed him, and he surged forward into a pile of debris. He yelped helplessly. When he hit the ground, I managed to keep hold of his right arm, but Camilla accidentally let him slip. His left arm flailed, grabbing for Camilla but failing. She quickly regained her composure and held him down again. Under my grasp, his right arm wriggled in a way that felt as if it was pulsating, growing larger and smaller.
“You’d better let go of me,” Tholen said, strangely calm despite the shock of being subdued. His words were laced with defeat. “Do it now. For your sake.”
“Not a chance,” I said. “First you’re going to answer some questions for us. How do we get to the tower?”
“You don’t want to go there,” he said. Sweat still poured from his head. His eyes bugged out a little. They were bloodshot. “You don’t stand a chance against Neptos. Not even I do. Not anymore.”
He grunted as if in great pain. A ridge in his back popped up and moved around as if crawling under his skin.
“What the hell was that?” Camilla exclaimed, almost letting go.
“Answer me,” I persisted, shoving him harder against the floor. I tried not to look at the writhing mass on his back, but it was too difficult not too. “What the hell is happening to you?”
“My metamorphosis is almost complete,” he said. “Neptos wanted me to perfect transfiguration for him, so I did.”
The back of his lab coat split apart along the spine, and Camilla and I were driven away by shock and revulsion. Two enormous squirming tentacles emerged from Tholen’s back and thrashed violently. I realized from seeing his now empty sleeves that these monstrosities had once been the man’s arms. One of them shoved Camilla in the chest and sent her sprawling against a wall. The other whipped across the side of my head, sending a searing pain through my skull momentarily blurring my vision. The blackness faded, and I was on my back, looking up at the horrid tentacle whose end was now flexed into a rigid spear. It was poised to shoot downward and pierce my flesh. There was no time to react.
Suddenly a bolt of sharp ice speared through the end of the tentacle, and the recoil knocked it away from me and into a pile of debris. I looked over to see Lily standing on the table we’d been hiding behind, a blue glow in her hands.
Alastair Tholen sat up on the floor, wailing from the pain in his mutated arm. His lab coat was completely gone, and in its place, the rippling flesh of his grey torso was exposed. Bulbs bunched up and faded away throughout his skin as if trying to decide whether or not to emerge. His face betrayed a mind clouded by insanity.
“I don’t think he’s going to be very helpful,” I yelled to the girls. “Let’s just kill him, shall we?”
I didn’t wait for their response. Camilla had retreated as far as she could, and Lily stood poised to attack, but I could tell that she still wasn’t fully back in her right mind either. It looked like it was up to me. I grabbed my bow from my back and strung it quickly before firing an arrow into Tholen’s torso. He squealed loudly, and his morphing limbs pulsed. Lily launched another ice spear, piercing the flesh of the man’s transforming leg.
Tholen shot his horrific tentacles out and suctioned them to the walls. He propelled his wounded torso forward, and Lily had to roll off the table before he crashed into it.
He rounded the corner toward the deformed animal hybrids. Those that hadn’t lost consciousness were again howling and screeching in their cages. For a moment, the grotesque tentacles morphed back into something close to Tholen’s limbs. He fell to his knees, screaming and clutching his ears at the discord. Then his arms were tentacles again and they dragged him across the room to a large port-shaped doorway that was closed with a metal wheel at the center. All the while still crying out, Tholen’s tentacles turned the hatch and opened it. He flung himself through and slammed it shut.
With the scientist gone, the creatures slowly calmed once more. The three of us leaned against walls on opposite sides of the room, each trying to regain our composure.
“Everybody okay?” I finally called out.
“I think so,” Camilla said.
“Guys,” Lily said. “I know I’m probably just tripping, but I think that scientist might be a squid monster.”
Despite how frazzled I was, I laughed at that.
“You ever seen magic like that before?” I asked. “A man turning his own body into something else?”
“No way.” She shook her head. “But I suppose… once you’ve made krokum and unholy hybrid monsters, where do you go from there?”
“Look around,” Camilla laughed and gestured to the devices around us. “Who else? But no, it can’t be in here. We’d at least smell it.”
“So, what do we do?” Lily was still wide-eyed, staring at me.
“How long until those mushrooms wear off?” I asked Camilla.
“Shouldn’t be long,” she said. “Miss Ruby favors the short-term varieties. Half an hour more, maybe.”
“It’s down there,” Lily spoke up suddenly.
We both turned to her. She was looking downward, as if she could see something through the floor.
“What is?”
“Where he’s making it.” She turned to us with a look of repulsion.
“Let’s wait until Lily joins us back in reality,” I said. “Then I say we go see what’s waiting for us below.”
Chapter Twenty-One
My heart began to race as Lily’s eyes regained their alertness. It had been a long fifteen minutes since she’d stared through the floor of the laboratory into something deep and cavernous. I could feel it, too. It was much like the feeling I’d gotten from the Wolfgang’s basement before the troll had burst out. But this was bigger—much bigger. I knew that we had to investigate it, but the prospect of uncovering something truly evil weighed heavily on my mind. I tried not to let it show.
“Is everyone ready?” I passed around a flask of water and a small sack of dried fruit and nuts. The girls took some hesitantly. They didn’t respond to the question, but their silence was answer enough.
I approached the circular door. The patter of my footsteps made some of the hybrid creatures stir. They watched me curiously as I opened the hatch. Through it was a spiral staircase that led directly downward. I held my bow at the ready.
“Let me lead the way,” Lily said. Both of her hands glowed blue. They weren’t bright, but it was better than nothing. She stepped in front of me and cast light down the stairway. We descended. The effect of spiraling through the dark was so disorienting that I couldn’t make sense of which direction I was facing. Occasional shifting sounds cut through the thick darkness and echoed through the chamber.