by Jack Conner
Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the great limb slipped back beneath the roiling waters and was gone, taking the remains of the slave with it. Waves lapped the shore.
“Gods below,” Janx muttered.
Layanna did not look at him as she said, in Ghenisan, “Quite.”
The ngvandi seemed to notice her. Led by their high priest, they wrapped up the ceremony and filed out of the great chamber, many bowing to her on their way. The high priest actually kissed her feet. She remained serene, upright, eyes on the water, and soon the members of her group were alone with the ones that had brought them, who must also be high-ranking priests, as well as a few junior ngvandi that might be guards, as they were all armed. Several held rifles and pistols, likely taken from prisoners over the years, and Avery wondered if they were to guard the members of Layanna’s group, or against them.
With Layanna between them, two priests bearing tridents strode out onto the projection of rock and into the semi-circle created by the half dozen altars at the projection’s edge. All looked slick with blood. Avery’s group had just come upon the last sacrifice, it seemed, not the only one. The ngvandi raised their tridents and shouted unfamiliar words to the beings in the water, and the roiling of the lake increased. The air shook, seeming to flex and snap and stretch, like a rubber band pulled apart by large hands, then twisted and wadded up, then pulled again in a different direction, then again, until the air buzzed with the strain and Avery felt a prickling on his skin, his hairs standing on end. He received the impression that all this was the byproduct of some communication he could not quite sense.
At last the ngvandi fell silent and bowed their heads, and the tension in the air faded, but did not go away.
Layanna seemed very alone out on the projection, very vulnerable, with priests to either side of her and gods-knew-what in the water before her. Summoning his courage, Avery stepped forward to join her, but the armed ngvandi blocked his way.
“I don’t think so,” said Janx.
He and Muirblaag moved beside Avery, and the guards, perhaps afraid to cause a scene during this most propitious moment, or perhaps thinking that friends of a goddess should be allowed to do what they would, stepped back.
Feeling adrenaline course through him, strangling the hysteria that once more reared its head, Avery walked onto the projection, and Janx and Muirblaag followed. With water on both sides, Avery felt more unnerved than ever, and he knew that any moment some amorphous limb could reach out and drag him under. As he approached the half-ring of altars, he saw littered bones and dripping blood. The stink of split intestines intensified. How many sacrifices did it take to commemorate a meeting of gods?
The filthy trident-bearing priests turned to Layanna and said something. She nodded, then spoke in Octunggen to the ones in the water. Avery wondered if she was only speaking so he could understand her. If so, he appreciated it. Likely she communicated on some other level to the beings themselves.
“Lords of the High Waters, I greet you,” she called, inclining her head. The waters frothed, and the air shook and snapped and bulged. “I’ve heard rumor of your existence here for long enough. Dark times have come to the world, and I’d hoped your time of isolation might come to an end. That is why I’ve sought you out.”
The waters roiled, bubbled, and the air trembled violently. A piercing whine filled Avery’s skull. He gasped and fell to his knees, pain overcoming him. Janx, Hildra, Muirblaag and Byron collapsed as well, shoving their hands over their ears.
The ngvandi bowed and drew back to the neck of the peninsula, as did Layanna. Making room for something, Avery realized. Hastily, he picked himself up and followed suit.
The water erupted.
Some dark Thing emerged. Gelatinous and huge, a mountain, it oozed out of the waters with a great stench of ammonia and sulfur and seaweed. Avery had to crane his neck to take it all in, and some part of his brain shut off. Another part, one that still thought rationally, recognized it as something distantly akin to Layanna’s amoeba form—only this one stretched ten times larger and higher, and was hideous to look upon. Massive ungainly limbs flailed all around, slowly, undulating, unconstrained by gravity, as if the being were underwater still. Avery gazed up at its massive black bulk and shuddered. His skin prickled, his scrotum contracted, and his mouth went dry. The thing rolled over the altar on which the slave had been sacrificed, then beyond. The air blurred around it, and strange lights could be seen glimmering through its folds and jellies, but they were no lights of this world, and they did not illuminate it.
Layanna gazed up at the great being and bowed. “Thank you for meeting me,” she said. “I’ve come to ask for your help. Octung hunts me. Our own kind hunts me. I need allies. During an attack by the Elders, my friends and I were scattered and separated. I seek news of them. I’d hoped, if any were in the region, that I might find them here. Please, my friend, tell me ... have you word?”
The air rippled. The great abomination quivered, then subsided.
Pain showed in Layanna’s face. “No ...” She sighed, blinked tears away, and seemed to forcibly gain control of herself. “All of them, are you sure?” A pause. “Very well. I ... I had feared as much.” A long moment passed. When she had herself together, she said, “This complicates things. I need to reach a functioning altar. Your own altars are probably not plugged into the nexus, but we could activate them, unless you fear reprisal. If so, you could direct me to another. Please, help me. You’ve been cut off for ages. Isolated. Made pariahs. Surely you’ve no loyalty to the Elders. I beg you ... join me. Join my attempt to end this war.”
Avery stared. She wanted to join forces with that thing? With the god-creature whose followers enslaved, killed and wore human beings?
The Mnuthra stayed silent for a long moment. The water boiled below, hinting at the movement of other similar entities.
When it moved, it moved almost too fast for Avery to see.
One moment the Mnuthra loomed amidst the blood-spattered altars, staring down at its visitors with unseen eyes. Then, in one sudden surge of movement, it shot forward. Dim, dripping limbs smashed down at Layanna, clearly meaning to crush her.
Before the limbs could reach her, she shifted. Her amoeba form grew from within her, superimposed over her, then blossomed outward, pink and white and fringed with flagella. Compared to the great, ugly bulk of the Mnuthra, she was beautiful.
She grew to a size Avery had not seen before, but she was still tiny against the vast squirming mass of the Mnuthra. The air shook and thundered as the limbs and pseudopods of the titans collided with each other. The ground quaked. A piercing shriek cleaved Avery’s mind. He cried out and fell to the ground again, clawing at his ears.
Even the ngvandi priests seemed pained and awestruck. They dropped to their knees and crept aside, to the edges of the promontory, giving the gods room.
Purplish limbs strove against murky black ones. Dark tentacles tore and ripped at soft pink-white flesh. Phantasmagoric blood filled the air, floating and majestic and flaming, purple and pink and red and black and yellow.
Layanna was strong. The Mnuthra, however, was of great size and power and age. It had surely gorged itself on sacrifices for hundreds of years. That was why the ngvandi deliberately mutated their slaves, Avery realized. They turned people into food for their gods. They only wore the ones that didn’t make it that far.
The Mnuthra’s huge bulk glommed forward, toward Layanna’s main mass.
“Don’t you touch her!”
This came, surprisingly, from Muirblaag. In some strange fit of chivalry, or perhaps in rebellion against the gods he had fled as a youth, he rushed forward. The ngvandi priests tried to stop him, but they were unprepared and he barreled them aside. Only when he neared the Mnuthra did the being seem to notice him, and then it was only to fling out a pseudopod and dash him to the ground.
Janx leapt toward him, but the two priests had picked themselves up. They blocked his path, stabbing their t
ridents at him. He cursed and jumped back. One sprang at him, and he dodged aside, clubbed it to the ground with a fist. The other leapt, its trident raking his ribs.
Avery, still overcome by the psychic cry of the Mnuthra, forced himself to his feet, meaning to help Janx if he could.
He saw that Byron and Hildra were fighting the guards on the mainland, slicing at them with knife and hook. Four had guns, though, and Hildra was using one of their brethren as a shield. Byron made a leap for one and wrestled the gun away. A shot rang out, and he stiffened. Just before he collapsed, he threw the gun to Hildra.
Avery turned his attention back to the Mnuthra. On the other side of Janx and the priests, the being began to surround Layanna, to engulf her. Avery felt a twist of fear as its dark mass enveloped her, its murky substance blocking her from sight. He could only see her dimly, here and there, through huge squirming limbs and bulwarks.
... see her ...
... her human body ...
A sudden thought chased the fear from him. Riding a wave of strength, he staggered over to one of the priests, the one that lay on the ground, felled by Janx’s blow. The ngvandi glanced up at him distractedly, even as it shook its head and tried to climb to its feet.
Avery kicked it in the face. The ngvandi screamed and pitched backward, into the bubbling waters. Before it disappeared, Avery grabbed the trident and wrenched it from its hands.
While Janx and the surviving priest circled each other, Avery slipped around them, toward Layanna and the Mnuthra. He knew Janx could take care of himself, and he had something to do that couldn’t wait.
His breath coming short and fast, unable to believe he was really doing this, he stepped forward, toward the titanic battle. The great mass of the Mnuthra loomed over him. It had all but eclipsed Layanna now. However, as Avery had imagined, it had left itself vulnerable in the doing. For, like Layanna, it had a human component.
It was a man, Avery saw—naked and wasting, a forgotten relic of itself. Likely it had existed for countless years in its other form. It hadn’t completely forgotten its human self, though. Even as it attacked Layanna, it had shifted its otherworldly bulk toward her, leaving its human part toward its rear, as far away from her striving tentacles and pseudopods as it could get. As Avery rounded its rear bulk, falling under the shadow of its glistening, rippling self, engulfed in its briny, ammonia-like reek, having to move around its immensity lest he slip into the waters—What am I DOING?—he saw that the human inside the Mnuthra was very close to the wall of otherworldly flesh that composed the being’s rear.
The man floated off the ground, head bowed, eyes closed, drifting.
“Got you,” Avery said. He raised the trident.
The man opened one eye. It fell on Avery.
A bulge in the being’s side stretched out toward him—
Avery plunged his trident deep into the Mnuthra, pushing it through the strange flesh and stabbing the man through the ribcage. With all his strength, Avery shoved—deep, deeper, feeling the crack and scrape of bone, then feeling the bone give—
The man’s face twisted in pain, and the bulge in the Mnuthra’s side faded.
The old man grabbed the shaft of the trident. Avery tried to push it deeper into him but the man was too strong. By then the acids had eaten away at the weapon enough to dissolve the portion of it inside the sac wall, and Avery staggered back and threw away the handle. Its truncated end smoked.
The entire substance of the Mnuthra boiled and shook. The air vibrated. The Mnuthra shrieked, both physically and psychically. The cry lanced Avery’s skull, driving him back. Hands pressed to his ears, he stumbled, hit one of the altars and nearly went over the other side. Blood and other bodily matter that adorned the altar pasted his shirt to the small of his back. Still warm.
The Mnuthra quivered and raged. Its flesh boiled. Droplets of it ripped free and drifted through the air, oily and dark, disappearing into nothingness. Some flamed. The whole massive bulk of the thing churned, and as it boiled away it grew smaller and smaller.
At last Layanna emerged from its tar-like substance. Still encased in her amoeba-form, she dragged herself loose. Her sac was ripped and torn to shreds, eaten by other-dimensional acids, reduced to a thin shell of protection around her. As she squirmed free and the last bulks of her enemy continued to dissolve, she released her other-self and fell gasping, panting to the floor.
Meanwhile, Hildra, enraged and standing over the body of Bryon, who was clearly dead, a bullet hole through his upper left chest, fired into the ngvandi that remained—several were already down—using the gun Byron had sacrificed his life for. One ngvandi pitched to the floor. Blood exploded out of another’s back. The rest of the ngvandi, disoriented and lost under the psychic backlash of the Mnuthra, fled from the chamber.
Avery swayed to his feet and made his way to Layanna, edging around the shrunken Mnuthra. He knew they didn’t have long. Hopefully the trident thrust would kill the being, but then again the Mnuthra might recover at any moment and launch itself at them. And there were still, apparently, other Mnuthra in the lake to contend with.
Covered in sweat and blood, Layanna retched onto the floor. Avery helped her up.
“Thanks,” she wheezed. “You ... saved my life.”
He half-supported her to the cavern wall, where she was able to prop herself up, but barely. She looked pale and shaky, and he wanted to stay with her, but he crouched over Byron and examined him just to be sure.
“I’m sorry,” Avery told Hildra. “He’s gone.”
She swore viciously, and to Avery’s surprise tears glistened in her eyes. Gasping made Avery glance over his shoulder.
Muirblaag was picking himself up off the floor. Janx staggered away from the priest he’d been fighting—the priest was down—his fists bloody, his chest heaving, and bent to help Muirblaag to his feet. The fish-man sucked in great breaths, clearly in pain.
“You okay?” Janx asked.
“Yeah,” Muirblaag said, his voice ragged. “Better than ever.”
They saw Byron and stopped.
“Damn,” said Muirblaag.
Janx, leaving Muirblaag to catch his breath, bent over the fallen man, sighed heavily, and closed Byron’s eyes.
“You went out like a champ,” Janx said, his voice as gentle as Avery had ever heard it.
Behind Muirblaag, the Mnuthra stirred.
“We have to—” Avery started
He had time to see the exhausted, pained look on Muirblaag’s face, had time to note the burns on his abdomen where the Mnuthra’s limb had struck him, before—with horrible suddenness—a tendril wrapped around the fish-man’s waist and wrenched him off the ground. Muirblaag lifted his head and screamed so loudly Avery feared his lungs would burst.
Janx bolted forward, but huge, gelatinous limbs erupted from the water—the other Mnuthra—and strove toward him. Avery grabbed him and reeled him back. Great, glistening limbs, bulwarks of phantasmagorical flesh, oozed from the lake.
“Mu!” Janx shouted, his face locked in horror. Avery could still hear Muirblaag screaming, though he was now out of sight.
The first Mnuthra swelled—Avery’s strike did not seem to have killed it, after all—and rushed toward them. The ground shook beneath it.
They had no choice but to run.
With Avery and Janx supporting Layanna, and Hildra firing backward, the band fled the grotto. They passed up the main hall and turned a bend. The floor rippled beneath them. A great psychic scream struck Avery, and he wanted to collapse, to vomit. It was all he could do to stay on his feet. The walls around him vibrated, and dust drifted down from the ceiling. The ground shook violently.
The Mnuthra were coming. All of them.
The shaking continued behind the group, louder and louder, and the floor bucked wildly. The reek of ammonia and sulfur filled Avery’s nostrils, stung his eyes, and made his head woozy. The Mnuthra were closing in.
From behind issued a great, inhuman roar, almost like th
e song of a whale, but even more awful and terrifying.
The band passed into the larger tunnels. Ngvandi crouched beside the bubbling streams and rivers. Their eyes rolled and foam beaded their lips. Some bashed their heads against the walls. Others flailed helplessly. It was clear the psychic backlash of the Mnuthra’s rage had undone them. A few made halfhearted efforts to clutch at Avery’s legs, but he kicked them away. He stole a staff from one, Hildra another gun.
The roar grew louder behind them. The caverns shook. A stalactite broke off and crushed a praying ngvandi.
The group hurried up the mining tunnels. Dust and rock rained down from the ceiling. The rotten timbers that buttressed the tunnel looked ready to split. Janx eyed them and grunted. As he passed a particular one, he stopped and said, “Wait.”
He hefted up his trident and began bashing the supports. A great anger had seized him. Hildra and Avery, seeing what he meant to do, pitched in, digging at the rock, smashing staff and gun butt against the timbers and stones. At last, with a sinister groan, the buttress cracked.
“Run!” Janx said.
As the tunnels collapsed behind them, they ran as hard as they could. The halls caved in with a great whoosh of sound and air. A storm of dust chased them down the halls and enfolded them, and Avery wheezed for breath.
He could almost feel the rage of the Mnuthra as the beings reached the blockage. A great, primeval roar shook in his head and staggered him. He knew it would not take them long to break through. How far could they go? They were creatures of the water. Avery imagined them swimming along chutes and tubes deep underground, threading their way into vast black lakes and rivers, forging their way to the sea, to chambers in other mountains. But land? He did not think they would go too far. He did not think they could maintain their otherworldly selves for long outside of the water. It had cost Layanna a great deal to do so. And they had allowed their human selves to grow too weak and frail to support them on their own.