by Lee Isserow
Then, she came to the information that was actually relevant to the matter at hand―which was unfortunately connected to his sexual proclivities for non-human entities. . .
He discovered this interest when he was young, his parents had a tank of dward-wyrms, which Ana thought looked like three inch long fat slug monsters. They had wide mouths that opened when they were stroked, revealing long throats that looked as though they went all the way through their bodies, ridged on the inside with gums that would become filled with rows upon rows of razor sharp teeth as they aged. But when they were young, they were the perfect size and shape for pre-teen Lincoln to experiment with encouraging them to open their mouths, and placing them on his loins. . . Which was the start of the slippery slope that he was destined to slide and snowball down as he grew into his body, and his body grew beyond the confines of a young wyrm's gullet.
The Circle gave him the opportunity to encounter tentacle beasts and spectres, fish monsters and marrow suckers―all the way through to the giant gelatinous blob creature that she recognised as the Teloah brood mother.
He sneaked into its holding pen whilst the guards were otherwise engaged on their feeding routines. He only intended to get in and out quickly, literally and figuratively, but as he unzipped his fly and penetrated the outer layer of the gelatinous body of the rhythmically undulating sentient jello, he found himself overcome with desire to be a part of it. Lincoln stepped inside of her, tentacles of purple and grey goop slipped up his anus and down his urethra, it climbed under his clothes and up his chest, glided down his throat, in his ears, and up his nose, even seeped in through the minuscule gaps between eyeball and socket.
He had the greatest orgasm of his entire life right then and there, and as the slime withdrew from every orifice, returned to the body of the great globular creature, he had a new intent in mind. A new resolve that was unlike any other that he had experienced.
For the first time in his life, he cared about something other than himself. he needed to do whatever it took to help her, to break her out of that ungodly prison and take her somewhere better, somewhere she could be free.
*
Ana pulled herself out of Lincoln's memories, and found herself seeing him in a very different light. He had issues―and she needed a long, cold shower―but that would have to wait.
She knew where the brood mother was hiding out, and it was about time they paid a visit to mummy dearest.
Chapter 39
Family reunion
Ana tried to summon a door to the location she could see clear as day in her mind's eye, but a door would not connect.
“He's warded it, right?” Rafe slapped their captive over the back of the head. “Probably blocked off translocation within a mile or two, that's about as far as her spores will hang in the air, eh Linc'? Act as a security system if anyone with harmful intent comes wandering by.”
“Mist?” Ana asked.
“Mist,” Rafe agreed, he grabbed hold of Ana's jacket, and laid his other hand on Lincoln's shoulder. She had never turned more than the two of them to mist before―but Rafe knew she could do it. Hell, he was convinced that she could turn half of London to mist if she truly wanted to. Of course, whether she could put all those atoms back where they belonged was another matter entirely. . .
She nodded a silent count as she cast. Three, two, and on one, they exhaled. Their bodies exploded into an expansive cloud of vapour.
Rafe could feel Lincoln's atoms trying to break free of the mass, and solidified himself as best he could, wrapped his atoms around each of the magickian's, and held them tight as part of their cloud. When he had a firm grasp on him, he sent an unspoken nod through to Ana, who took the lead. She whisked them out of the tunnel into the sodium orange glow of the outside world, flew up high into the air, and whipped around as soon as she got her bearings. From where they were, they had to go north and east, towards Essex.
Even though she was well practised at flying through the air as a cloud of mist, she still felt incredible joy and freedom in the experience. It never felt routine, being weightless, hurtling at incredible speeds, being able to compress the molecules of her body to a long and thin rod, or stretch out as wide as an aeroplane.
The first few moments were always a little bit of a shock, she still naturally attempted to inhale for breath, but no longer needed to breathe. There were no blood platelets to carry oxygen around her body―and even if they were, the atomised body she was flying across the country could just absorb that oxygen straight from the air they were travelling through.
She decided to use Lincoln's memories as a mystical GPS to guide them to their destination, intentionally going out of their way to cross over Bank, where he freed the brood mother, so she could just retrace his misty footsteps. This was how he had broken her out of her prison―and how he had broken himself out of prison when The Circle attempted to detain him. She tried to make a mental note to write them a letter, to tell them just how dumb it was to have someone in 'solitary', and yet somehow forget that if the person is a magickian, they probably have a thousand ways they can break out. . .
Rafe sent a thought across to her, explaining that they probably didn't expect him to want to escape. After all, it would only lead for them to put out a notice to everyone in the agency that he had congress with a blob monster―and nobody wants the whole world to know that their sexual proclivities are that estranged.
Ana could hear Lincoln shouting silently in his own defence: that they didn't understand, that the two of them couldn't understand the love he shared with the brood mother. He sent mental images of his love for her across to the other two―images that would stay in the back of their mind's eye for months to come.
The farm was in sight up ahead, only a mile or so from their current position, but she could feel hesitancy on Rafe's part, causing her to come to a complete stop. Their atoms were no longer just mingling with the elements on the air, the spores were floating through them on the breeze.
She shot a query over, asking if they could be infected as mist. Rafe was certain they were safe whilst dispersed, but couldn't say the same if they became solid again over the top of where spores were present. . . Ana pulled them back farther away from the farmland, where the spores weren't as numerous. She broke off from Rafe and Lincoln, whipped herself around in a circle, created a vortex of her atoms, a whirlwind to grab hold of any spores in the vicinity. As soon as she had them in her grasp, she rocked violently through the air, and sent them in the opposite direction from Rafe and Lincoln.
Ana returned to them, latched back on to their dispersed bodies, doing her best to feel out for all the atoms, to make sure she hadn't lost any in transit, and began to put them all back in the right place.
The breath returned to her chest, she could feel Rafe's hand on her back, his grip tight on her jacket. Their eyes met, a proud smile on his lips. “Nice work, partner,” he said.
“You are so cheesy. . .” she chuckled.
He let go of jacket, and checked Lincoln over. “You in one piece, idiot?”
Lincoln grunted in the affirmative.
“It's about a mile that way.” Ana pointed towards the farmhouse, its silhouette hung over the top of a field of corn.
“So, we've got to walk through an ominous field of corn to get there?”
“Would you prefer to be put back together with spores in your head?”
“No. But, y'know, you could have put us on a path or something. . . Horror movies take place in corn fields for a reason.”
“I can leave you as mist if you're going to whine.”
“Not whining,” he said, as he kneeled down to inspect the feet of the chair Lincoln was tied to.
“Sounds like whining.”
“Can you keep it down, I'm trying to cast wheels on to this damn chair.”
“Oh, poor Rafey, Do you want a hand? I can cast for you, don't want you to break a nail!”
“Oh, I'm the one who worries that casting might br
eak a nail?”
“Gods!” Lincoln grunted. “Do you two ever stop arguing?”
Rafe and Ana exchanged a glance.
“You think this is arguing―” she said.
“We'll show you arguing.” Rafe concluded.
The two of them burst into laughter, practically falling off balance at their self-ridicule.
Lincoln grimaced. He was not entertained by their bickering. And he was less entertained at the notion that they were intending to kill the woman―or more accurately, female blob monster―that he loved.
He wouldn't let them hurt her, wasn't going to let them even get close to laying a damn finger on her perfect, delicate, slimy skin.
As the wheels formed at the base of the chair he was attached to, and Rafe began to drag him behind them through the cornfield, Lincoln felt for the spores crawling around in his skull.
He embraced the brood, sent out a message to all his surviving children. Let them know that daddy was coming home, and their mother was at risk.
But not for long.
Soon, there would be a family reunion, and after the violent celebrations, there would be no further risk.
Chapter 40
Honey, I'm home
Corn, Ana discovered, was much more annoying to walk through than she expected. Having seen all the kids in movies run through fields of the stuff, she assumed it was just going to be a simple case of walking through the rows. However, it appeared that either corn is grown much closer together in real life than it is in films, or this farmer in particular was trying to conserve as much space as possible, sowing the rows barely five inches apart from one another.
The deeper they got into the field, the more she understood Rafe's hesitancy to go through it, rather than find a path to walk down. For one thing, the muttered cursing coming from him seemed to imply that dragging a chair through a cornfield―even a wheeled one―was not a lot of fun. Then there was the spookiness of the whole place. The sky this far out of the city was a deep, dark blue, pinpricks of stars dotted far and wide above them. But the moon was behind the farmhouse, the darkness encompassing them. Any manner of fiendish creature could be hiding mere feet from them, shrouded by corn, and they would have no idea, until they were within lunging distance.
She glanced over her shoulder at Rafe, a heavy sweat on his brow as he dragged the large frame of Lincoln behind him. He caught her eye, and forced a smile out, which she mirrored, despite seeing how laboured it was.
“I can take over,” she offered.
He shook his head, and continued onwards. They both knew that she needed her hands free to cast, and both feared that she would need to be casting all too soon.
Ana saw the wild black eyes of the brood member before she saw the thrashing tentacles of the jello squid at its mouth. Damn thing wrapped around her hand before she could react. She could feel suckers on her skin, hear the sickly slurping sounds, and felt a thousand pinpricks as a myriad minuscule spines tore into her flesh to try and pass its infection along.
She lifted up her other hand right in front of its face, aimed with her first and middle finger right between its eyes, mimicked the movements of the fire adept at Anaglyph. She brought her ring and middle finger to the thumb and clicked them in a double crack that rung out through the cold and quiet night.
A fracture in reality formed across the Natural World, it branched out from the centre of the infected man's head, all the way through the length of the tentacles at his mouth. The body fell to the floor, spurted thick, viscous grey goop on to the corn around it, and the slime continued to pour out of the corpse on to the soil below.
Ana turned around, and wiped her hand on Rafe's coat. He glanced up at her and she shrugged, with an innocent smile that he just couldn't be mad at. Although at a later date, he intended to request that she pay for the dry cleaning. . .
“There'll be more,” he said, as his eyes scanned the corn all around them.
“There are always more,” she sighed, as she glanced around the field. “Enough of this spooky crap.”
The breath filled her chest as she raised her hands in front of face in a praying motion. With a twist at the palm, her fingers met her wrists. She was going to try to call on her adept for a gigantic, spectacular act. If she were being honest, she wasn't sure she could do it―but she felt Rafe's eyes on her, and felt his support, his knowledge and belief that she could do anything she put her mind to. And that gave her the encouragement to try something completely insane.
Ana pulled her hands apart, and threw out her arms. It sent a massive crack across the realm, shook the very ground they stood on, as though it were a thunderclap or earthquake that lasted barely a second. It seemed to take a moment or two for the Natural World to realise what had happened―then it caught up, and the entire field of corn fell to the floor, only a foot of stalk remained upright.
The crack in reality had also cut through the brood that had been making their way through the field, and severed their legs below the knees, sending them to the floor with fleshy, inhuman squeals and unholy gurgled screams.
She turned back to Rafe, whose eyes she had never seen wider.
“Well. . . That's one way to deal with a spooky cornfield,”
“And a bunch of critters hiding in it.” she added.
“They're not critters.”
“Don't be a pedant!” she barked, leading the way towards the farmhouse. Although she did what she had to with the brood members in the field, she was going to make damn sure nobody else would have to die because of this thing.
As the came to the door of the farmhouse, she threw a massive fist-shaped blast of light at the doors, blew them right off the hinges, and exploded them to pieces as they flew across the barn. What was left of them collapsed to the ground with a colossal thud that threw dust and hay into the air. Ana was done with playing. This was going to end right then and there.
“Honey, I'm home!” she shouted, as the dust settled. Ana might have been done with playing, but she sure as hell wasn't done being facetious.
Chapter 41
A black fog
The brood mother was just as disgusting as Ana had pictured it―even before experiencing it first person from Lincoln's perspective, as he made love to it.
Its goopy, grey flesh was translucent, constantly undulating and rippling around its body. There was a permanent tide that looked as though it were switching directions on a whim. The dust and hay kicked up by the exploding door was, at first, absorbed into the thing's gelatinous body, but it looked as though it were being expunged by a natural process occurring within the creature.
Its viscosity changed, becoming thicker, wider, and tentacles burst out of its centre mass. They latched on to the sides of the barn, lifted the disgusting beast up into the air, and lunged it forward towards the trespassers. Another tentacle shot out of its core, rocketed straight between Ana and Rafe, wrapped around Lincoln and severed his bonds. Its partner freed, the tentacle shot back into the brood mother's body.
The gloopy jello monster was obviously angry―not that it had any identifiable face to express such things. But between having to interrupt its breeding cycle, and the resulting death of so many of its brood, Ana was pretty sure it wasn't exactly about to invite them in for tea.
The front of the creature sucked into itself, like a watery navel, then exploded outwards in a thick, cloud of spores. A black fog filled the barn as it belched in the direction of Rafe and Ana. The stench of sulphur filled the air around them, and the couple covered their mouths and noses as the torrent of foul, demonic microbes rushed past them.
Ana turned her back to the creature, took a deep breath and cast. She whipped back around with a barrier in place around her and Rafe. The rush of spores continued to flow round them, but their speed and number seemed to decrease―as if the creature was aware that expelling so many of her seed was a waste of time and energy.
“We're still protected, right?” Ana asked, hands raised in front of
her, insuring the the barrier held.
Rafe checked his glyph from the previous day, it was still present. “Yeah, but it's not going to do much good if she―” He didn't get a chance to finish his sentence.
As if the brood mother was taking a cue, she reeled back on the tentacles attached to the walls of the barn. Her body balled in on itself, and she flung her entire mass through the air towards them. The tentacles released themselves from their holds, and swung round ready to assault.
Her tendrils slapped around the barrier as her main bulk slammed into it, the centre mass tore open into quarters, the goop of her body forming into sharp teeth at the edges of the four glutinous lips, that tried to tear into the shield around them.
Ana's knees buckled as the creature reared itself up on its arms and slammed itself into the barrier all over again, impacted over and over, trying to tear through it. Ana wasn't going to let her gravestone say “crushed to death by angry jelly”, forced herself to stand steadfast, and held the great slimy beast aloft above the barrier.
The monster tightened the grip of its tentacles around them, as if it was trying to squeeze the entire barrier down its gullet. Thousands upon thousands of suckers appeared on the tendrils, latched on to the surface, each of them tugged the magickal defence in a different direction, in an attempt to rip it apart. Ana felt like it was trying to crack the shell to get to the delicious creamy human centre lying just out of its reach. Her hands were shaking, and Rafe threw together a sigil to reinforce the barrier, attempted to take the strain from her. She grit her teeth, knowing that his assistance was more a gesture than actual support. He didn't have the magicks to hold the pissed off blob monster back, and she didn't know the casting well enough to reinforce it herself.
It began to cave in behind them, buckled under the massive weight of the brood mother and brute force of its jaws and tentacles. Rafe spun on his heel, stretched his fingers out wide, trying to keep the barrier from crushing them.