The Mantis Corruption - Book Three - 12. Chapter 12 - Ronging, Part Three

“Rally, you lot!” cried the commander of the Tuilii la Ru city guard. She led the charge. “Let’s go!”

Five other officers from the king’s guard were with her. They were all unarmed, but massive shields were strapped to each of their backs. They moved as quickly as they could with the cumbersome objects weighing them down.

“At the next cross street, you three turn and head up,” she ordered half the squad. “We will approach from two angles.”

They split, and the squads both reached the edge of the city. Their target was ambling out into the trackless grasslands as they approached.

Ronging was oblivious to the rest of the world, delirious from the photonova gland he consumed, when three of the officers attacked him. The measly humans’ assault was as pathetic as gnats, and Ronging swatted at them with his multiple arms in an absentminded way. They shoved at him with thick plates of metal, both protecting themselves, and also perturbing Ronging; he hardly cared. Then they backed off from him.

He was still elated from the photonova gland, and in an instant, Ronging completely forgot about the annoying humans who were no longer shoving him.

Then two more irritating insects were buzzing behind him. The pair of soldiers pushed against Ronging’s mutated body with their massive plate shields, and the other three reappeared and redoubled their effort.

Ronging growled from his multiple mouths, but suddenly, he was slammed by a force that he was not expecting. His bizarre body fell awkwardly, limbs flailing, and he sprawled to the ground. Pain throbbed throughout his body. His four eyes flashed with rage, and he pushed himself up, as the woman leading the attack crashed into him a second time. She kept her huge shield against him and forced Ronging in a different direction.

The commander of the Tuilii la Ru city guard once went through a brutal and secret ritual that made her powerful, and she used her increased strength to help the people of her community. She now used it to move the monstrosity toward a skinny pole with a little yellow flag.

Ronging roared and flailed at her, but she slapped his hand away with ease and kept pushing.

With a final mighty heave, the commander stopped short and sent Ronging toppling backward. He landed on a trapdoor that released, and he tumbled down into a deep circular pit, landing in mud. He pushed himself to standing. The mud came to his ankles and the sides of his prison were straight and slippery.

“And you can just rot down there,” the commander said from above. She spat into the hole.

Ronging cried out in fury, but darkness enveloped him as the officers replaced the false floor above his head. They changed the flag from yellow to red and left Ronging in the pit.

He nursed the injuries that the commander gave him, as the hours began to slip away, and he took to exploring his tiny damp prison. He endlessly circled the chamber wall, clawing into the wet soil but unable to gain purchase of any kind.

Hours became days, and all was night in the darkness.

Ronging rarely heard anything from above, and nothing indicated to him how much time passed. With his addiction recently satiated, the only craving that he felt was to be out of the wet darkness.

Days dragged into weeks, and a month slipped by with Ronging spending all of it creeping along the wet walls. Neither hunger nor exhaustion plagued him, and one month became two. Round and round he trudged through the mud, ever clawing at the walls with his multiple hands. Months slowly scraped by in mind-numbing repetition, and they eventually became a year. Still, Ronging searched for a means of escape.

In the same way that hunger and exhaustion and even breathing were no longer part of Ronging’s existence, vengeance did not plague his twisted spirit. There were only two main thoughts that filled any mutated Messiah’s mind. One was the addiction when it arose, and the other arrived after their monstrous desire was sated. Each inhabitant of Gunge felt an inborn pull to the others of their kind. Ronging simply wanted to go home.

Time continued its steady flow with him slogging through the mud in a perpetual circle, and the months beyond that first year kept piling up with him in the darkness. Nothing ever changed. Nothing ever happened. Ronging never found anything new.

Even when change to the monotony eventually did arrive, it was a change that was not much different from his year and a half imprisonment. As his fingers gripped the wall for purchase, like the uncountable times before, they were suddenly wetter.

Ronging could not determine the source of the additional moisture, but for the first time, the walls seemed to be seeping. It also slowly began to rise above his ankles. Air was not a requirement for the mutated Messiah, and he did not fear the pit filling with water.

A horrible crack sounded overhead, as the trap door ruptured, and Ronging saw the sun for the first time since being trapped. Along with the light came a crashing muddy waterfall that rained down on his empowered form. Ronging was unharmed by the barrage, and it allowed his multiple feet purchase.

Slowly, as the floor of the pit began to rise, so did the monster within.

Ronging eventually stepped onto the land above the pit again, and he saw the cause of his liberation✪