The Eros Expansion

by Prax Venter

The cat-girl next to him doubled over and bared her teeth as her mind and body tried to handle the gushing flow of raw energy. Ahnix reached a new threshold, threw her head back and screamed at the ceiling. As she did, her whole body became engulfed in white flame.

  After it was over, the extra-enhanced, glowing cat-girl turned her exotic flaming eyes toward Mark. He backed away as she went down on one knee in front of the door.

  “Dooooom-KICK!” she screamed and performed a rising backflip that seemed to slow time as she reached the apex. Trailing after the path of her foot, a cataclysmic black rip formed in the door and then vanished with the sound of screeching metal.

  Ahnix finished her flip, landed on one knee again, and her golden fur ceased to glow. In front of her, a substantial gash had been torn in the formidable door.

  Mark saw Ahnix teleport a few steps to her right just before Vale’s huge, armored body zipped right through where she had been. The giant naga continued forward and slammed into the compromised door with her shield leading the impact. The thunderous clang shook the floor, but she had forced open a big enough hole for them all to pass through.

  Vale pointed to Ahnix then jerked her head once toward the hole. Mark could feel their mutual connection throb with a powerful new balance. All three of his girls had joined the next level.

  Ahnix nodded and faded from sight. She was gone, but Vale, Mark, and Roo all knew exactly where she was, and all of them received Ahnix’s perceptions as she moved forward through the tear. Roo gasped when Ahnix looked up.

  “They trapped a whole sun,” Roo said, awe in her soft voice.

  - 22 -

  “Let’s keep moving,” Vale said after they had paused for a moment, hypnotized by the blue and pink, throbbing eye-candy that was the station’s fusion core.

  Mark followed behind Vale’s weaving black body as they raced around a suspended walkway to another door. Security from the inside was much less intense, and Ahnix was able to get its massive weight to swing open after a few seconds.

  “This way,” the cat-girl said, jogging to the hallway on their left. “We’re taking a new route- walls no longer matter.”

  She led them through a few twists and turns. Without warning she stopped, yelled, “Doom Kick!” and her tight backflip ripped a gouge right through the wall.

  Ahnix stood and turned her exotic eyes to Mark. “Shoot it.”

  Without hesitation, Mark pulled up his magic crossbow and took aim. His furry love stepped just out of the energy explosion’s range as he squeezed the trigger.

  The resulting concussive boom in such tight quarters made his ears ring, but the hole was now considerably larger. Mark peeked in and saw a dark, empty space and then the smooth curve of a sphere.

  “Is that the Adventure Dome?” Mark asked.

  Ahnix walked up next to him. “Yes. We are making a straight line to our destination.”

  “Good,” Vale said, joining them by the hole. “Now what?”

  “We need to punch through, and there’s no room for me to kick it open.”

  Roo stepped up to Mark’s other side, tilting her head as she looked at the metal sphere.

  “Mmm, hold on.”

  Mark felt Roo concentrate on creating something in her soft palm and a moment later, a thick, pointed rod emerged. The tip was white hot, and Mark heard a hissing noise as she pressed it against the sphere.

  “Vale, bash this.”

  Vale wove over to the far end of the hallway, lined herself up and then zipped across the hall leaving afterimages of her black armor as she moved. Her diamond-coated shield connected with the shaft of iron sticking out of the hole, punching it all the way through and sent it sailing into Adventure Dome One.

  “I see a safe spot,” Ahnix said looking down through the hole. “To me.”

  Mark placed his hand on her sleek furred back along with Roo and Vale. They were turned inside-out for a moment while Ahnix teleported them through and then he found himself standing in sparse, brown forest.

  The ground was soft and spongey- and upon closer inspection, Mark found that he was standing on bread. Fluffy, white hills surrounded them with a pink sky in the distance.

  “This tree is meat,” Ahnix said, standing by something that suddenly looked very much like sausage instead of wood. Movement from the corner of his eye drew Mark’s attention to the ground. Hopping toward him were two rabbits that looked to be formed from solid, white cheese.

  Before Mark could process what he was seeing, a loud bellowing noise echoed to them from over one of the soft bread hills.

  Mark and his Enthralled all pushed their way up to the top of the edible hill and faced a nightmare. Filling the rest of the dome was an unfathomably large blob of flesh. The thing had a head of greasy long red hair but otherwise was just a mass of pink, bloated skin.

  Its colossal head lifted into the air, and its jaw hung open to wail into the sky as if in pain. Its partially formed face was just a pudge of loose flesh, a cavernous mouth, and bulging green eyes.

  Perspective was difficult with something so big, but its mouth seemed large enough to fly a passenger plane through with room to spare.

  “It’s immense…” Roo whispered.

  Ahnix pulled up the station map and checked their orientation. “The only way to Lab E102 is through that thing.”

  Vale reached across her hip and took hold of her powerful laser shotgun. “We knew it would be,” the giant naga said as she wove her armored body down the slope and toward the city-sized monstrosity.

  He exchanged glances with Ahnix and Roo before they followed the rut Vale had left as she flattened the fluffy ground.

  Mark caught up with the determined giant naga as they raced past a lake of steaming chicken noodle soup.

  “What’s the plan?”

  Vale kept her vivid violet eyes forward as she answered. “I need more information- but right now? We shove ourselves down its throat and reach our destination.”

  “We have trouble ahead,” Ahnix said and everyone tapped into her mental broadcast. Within his mind’s eye, Mark’s vision sharpened, and his ears twinged with enhanced perceptions.

  The shared sensory overlay indicated a swarm of strange-looking screeching orbs. As they got closer, they resolved to floating, disembodied eyeballs. It wasn’t until they were much closer that he saw they were the size of his head and had mouths of sharpened teeth where the iris should be.

  The giant naga called a stop to their approach as they crested a hill a small distance from the swarm. They were disgusting things with rubbery bundles of torn nerves and blood-dripping veins. They hovered through the air like a flock of birds- or school of piranhas.

  “Wait here,” Vale said. “I’ll test if they’re hostile. If they are- enhance my Stinging Hex and, then help me take them all out.”

  Vale waited for a nod from everyone before she turned to leave, and Mark felt a newly forged steel determination within the giant naga. He watched her strong back remain perfectly still as her bottom half swayed back and forth, pushing her up the next hill.

  The moment she drew close, one of the dripping severed eyes with mouths turned to screech at her. Like a spreading flame, all the other floating monsters each turned to screech down at Vale as she stood alone on the hill.

  Calm as could be, Vale extended her shotgun upward as the first one flew toward her, and the powerful blast obliterated the floating eyeball in a shower of gore.

  Mark closed his eyes to focus on his enhancement as the swarm condensed and descended on the giant naga. As he focused on her Stinging Hex ability, Mark remembered he had finally heard Vale sing, but the memory turned sour when he thought of Erica. Mark sighed and modulated his energy to match the intended effect of his targeted ability, pulling on the sorrow and rage within.

  From a distance, Mark channeled a torrent of pure energy to Vale, and it felt like a perfect resonant harmony to her own inner turmoil. He opened his eyes when he heard the giant naga screaming.

  Val
e’s mouth and eyes were spewing out white, translucent flames as her mind and body dealt with his powerful enhancement.

  Behind her, the abomination of flesh lifted its partially formed head away from the ground again and bellowed into the air as the eyeball creatures bounced off Vale’s armor.

  When she was fully charged, the giant naga let out a roaring screech that only gained in volume and intensity. The shockwave from her powerful Hex almost knocked Mark over. Her ability was effective though, and every floating eyeball was now glowing red. In a swirling clump, they descended on her, and Vale swung her solid Judge 559 around with a thickly muscled arm, clubbing eye after eye to pulp with shocking speed.

  Her grim determination had reached a fever pitch as she quickly pulled the trigger, erasing five with one attack. One of the swarm made it past her defenses and its tooth tore open a large gash on her cheek. She was starting to get overwhelmed.

  “Mark!” Roo called out, and he received a quick mental message- shield Vale. He popped up his protective bubble just as the velvet-girl lifted her soft hands into the air and yelled, “Metal Rain!”

  A clump of sharpened needles shimmered into existence centered over Vale then plummeted downward with sickening speed.

  Mark felt a few bounce off his magic shield, but it held while the rest impaled dozens of the squishy, floating eyes.

  As soon as the last needle fell, Vale began swinging with her weighty shotgun again, bashing anything that got close. Ahnix teleported over to add her claws to the mix, and because the enemies were all under Vale’s compulsion to attack her, the cat-girl was able to swing her blue-trailed claws with impunity.

  With a perfectly aimed single sewing needle, Roo skewered the last one like a toothpick through an olive.

  The battle was over, and Mark summoned a heal and a purification orb on Vale, just to be safe. After she was restored to full health, they resumed their quick pace toward the mountainous creature’s horrible mouth. Drool splashed out like a gooey waterfall between the huge gaps in its crooked teeth. Mark had to estimate that each tooth was the size of a three-story building. The teeth were all pure white as if they were newly formed, but sat loosely in red, shriveled gums.

  The creature angled its head upward and let out a horrible wail again, its deep sorrowful voice echoing off the walls.

  Mark saw Roo take her hands off her ears as the creature stopped. She turned her black eyes on Mark.

  “Do you think this thing is trying to become that little girl, Monica?”

  Mark felt revulsion flash from Ahnix and Vale at the thought. The giant naga turned her eyes down to Roo.

  “If it is, we need to stop it. Either way, we need to find a way in there, and I don’t like how it thrashes.”

  “Come to me,” Ahnix said. “When it lays down again, I’ll bring us in as far as I can see.”

  Mark shuddered at the prospect of going into this thing, but he agreed with Vale and was resolved to bring a swift end to this game.

  The humongous mass of flesh laid its misshapen face back onto the ground, and Ahnix took the opportunity.

  After a clothes-flapping whoosh, they were inside the creature’s dark, damp gullet. The first thing Mark noticed was that the ground was covered in a ridged bone pathway, like a flattened spinal cord and was instantly glad they didn’t have to crawl through this thing’s wet intestines. Everything but the floor was a slimy, bloody mess of bloated red flesh. Ahead of them was a dim cave of undulating insides- behind them, Mark could see square shadows of enormous teeth against the light outside. A foul wind blew past them from the sprawling creature’s labored breathing.

  Roo wrinkled her nose but didn’t say anything- they all knew that it stunk.

  Ahnix rechecked her map and pointed a little to the left of the dark, damp, fleshy cave.

  “Stay tight,” Vale said, weaving herself forward along the bone path. Mark, Ahnix, and Roo all pressed in close to the heavily armored naga as the light began to fade.

  In response to the growing darkness, Roo opened one of her soft, fabric palms and summoned a medium-sized flame. She held it up over her head, and to Mark, it looked as if her arm had turned into a torch.

  The fleshy walls around them glistened as they pulsed in the firelight, dripping with mucus and blood. As they went deeper, the size of the tunnel grew smaller and split into many branching paths. Ahnix pointed right every time.

  As they rounded a curve in the bloody wall, Mark felt all his girls tense up when they saw the path forward was covered in blueish waving tentacles. Some waved their bulbous tips around lazily, while others moved violently like whips.

  Mark started to think of ways past this using an enhanced shield, but Roo’s impulsiveness beat him to the punch. She stepped ahead of the group, held out a hand and launched a spinning, razor-sharp disk down the path. The blade was about three feet across and severed every fleshy tentacle it touched.

  In response to the savage attack, the remaining fleshy appendages all pulled themselves into the bloated walls and disappeared. From all around them came a deep, painful wail. The noise sounded at once far away and all-encompassing.

  Roo turned back to face the others, her black eyes shining from the flame she held over her head.

  “What are we waiting for?”

  Vale nodded sharply and then pressed forward into the monster’s body.

  After a few more twists and turns surrounded by dripping flesh, they came to a larger open area. On the far side was what looked like a door made of pure white rib bones, but the floor was mucus-covered intestines. Mark thought that they must be close to the creature’s massive heart because the reverberating bass of a monotonous thump-thump droned all around them.

  Vale moved forward to test the disgusting ground and found that it was more stable than it looked. They all entered the chamber, and Ahnix’s tail started to flip as her bare, black foot pads squished into the bloated innards.

  “I’ll kick the door down,” Ahnix said as she stepped closer, but movement under the floor caused her to jump back.

  Behind them, the fleshy tunnel they had come from squeezed down to a tight, puckered hole, and all around them, beating bloody hearts pushed themselves out from slits in the slimy floor.

  They were as big as Vale and looked as if they were all ripped from someone’s chest. The sound their terrible, synchronized throbbing made filled Mark’s mind with an irrational dread and terror. The light from Roo’s flame cast flickering shadows around the room as the oozing, powerfully pulsing muscles slowly closed on Mark and his girls.

  They were all shaken from their hypnotic trance by Vale’s concussive shotgun blast ripping a massive hole in one of the beating hearts. Freed from her stun, Roo yelled, “Horrible Hooks!” and genuinely horrible hooks tore into another one, bring it down.

  Ahnix teleported behind a third and yelled, “Doom Kick!” splitting the disgusting organ in half, then Retracting to stand by Mark.

  There were only two left now, and Mark could hear the wailing of the massive creature around them as they destroyed parts of its body. Giving themselves some room, Mark and his girls moved to an edge of the chamber, and Mark ruptured another heart as they ran with a blast from his magic crossbow.

  The one beating heart that remained floated forward at its steady pace, and Mark assumed the plan was to keep away until someone’s cooldown was up. Vale, however, had other plans and zipped forward with an Improved Shield Bash, slamming her heavy slab of diamond-coated metal into the throbbing chunk of muscle. The attack caused the heart to skip a beat before it regained its hypnotic rhythm, but Vale wasn’t done. Clutching her Judge 559 in one mailed fist, she tapped into her boiling rage and began to club the disembodied cardiac muscle into a bloody pulp.

  Silently she smashed her weapon into the torn, lifeless muscle laying in a heap on the ground, and Mark had to send her a message to let it go.

  Once his calming mental energy traveled to her mind, Vale straightened, took a shuddering breat
h and pointed at the door made of bone.

  “Kick it down,” she said again, breathing heavily.

  The cat-girl teleported over to the door and quickly reduced it to splinters with a powerful shadow-imbued roundhouse.

  “We keep moving forward,” the giant naga said as she led them out of the open chamber and into another fleshy tunnel.

  They trudged deeper into the bowels of the gargantuan creature, and after a few more twisting intestinal tunnels, they came to a wide open, dimly lit chamber. Darkness dominated, and Mark could barely perceive the far wall. The only thing he could really make out was a faintly glowing white orb hovering in the air. As soon as all of them moved into the chamber, the tunnel behind squeezed shut like a clenching anus.

  The ambient light grew brighter as what appeared to be a huge, glowing eye pulled back its eyelid and looked down at the four of them. The iris was a sickly yellow color, and in the growing light, Mark could see an enormous wall of bone, bloated skin, and wiggling, fleshy tentacles ahead of them.

  Roo immediately launched a searing needle straight up to the eye as Mark, Ahnix, and Vale braced for combat. Just before the red-hot length of sharpened metal reached the enormous eyeball, another set of bone eyelids slammed closed over the bloodshot orb, deflecting the attack.

  With a steaming hiss, her searing needle embedded itself into the wet flesh-covered floor.

  Before anyone could react, a long pink tentacle shot out from the wall and wrapped itself around Roo’s waist and lifted her into the air.

  “Wait, no!” the velvet girl yelled, and Mark followed the disgusting fleshy appendage back to the wall with his eye and fired his crossbow into the base. The explosion destroyed a few of the tentacles and the one holding Roo immediately dropped her. Mark sprinted across the slippery, mucus-covered ground and was able to catch the relatively light fabric construct in his arms.

  “I got this!” Ahnix called and teleported up to the eye. There she yelled, “Doom Kick!” and performed a mid-air backflip. The wall-monster’s thick bone eyelid slid closed again just before the attack. This time, a loud wail could be heard in the distance as she split the bone, causing some of it to wedge into the soft eyeball behind it.