The Mantis Corruption - Book Three - 27. Chapter 27 - Gunge, Part Two

The sun was beaming down and a sea breeze was blowing across the valley home of the twisted monsters that used to be human, and the creatures of Gunge stirred en masse.

“Food,” one of them murmured.

“Smell it,” another hissed.

“Look!” screeched a multi-mouthed mutated Messiah, and it pointed with all five of its arms toward the ridge above the ravine.

Limbs flexed, and the beasts began to propel themselves up the hill. Each monster moved in its own unique manner. Too many arms and legs forced several of them to slither, while many others crawled. Only a few managed a semblance of walking.

Up on the ridge, Lahari smirked. “They know we’re here,” she declared. Everything about her was vicious.

Beside her, Gawa’s patterned skin pulsed with her energies.

S’Kay flexed, and her feathers rippled.

Tualu was not with them, but the newer members were.

Ijeron’s reflective skin shone brilliantly in the unhindered sunlight.

The bear-man, Khano, was standing motionless. A low growl rumbled from his throat and blue energy crackled in his eyes.

Yxida and Tisa stood side by side. Yxida looked up at Tisa, who looked back down at her new friend. After the attack on the Lesser Lighthouse, the Biological Shifts brought Tisa to Red Ravens in celebration. She and Yxida had become fast friends. They smiled at each other with wicked grins, before turning their gaze back toward the monsters.

The ridge above the creatures looked like it was lined with warrior gods and goddesses. If the mutated Messiahs still had possessed the capacity to fear, they would have been terrified.

There were two other individuals with the Biological Shifts and Tisa. Olona and Tchama were standing on the land’s rise, and they were poised for battle.

Tchama was smiling like she had not smiled since she lost her arm, and something now replaced it.

Olona did not look like Olona. Her body was much more mechanical than normal. Many small devices were attached all over her.

Tchama balled her hand into a fist, and she looked down at the thing that now took up the space of her former arm. It looked nothing like an arm; it was a weapon. Tchama turned to Olona with a beaming smile.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you’ve done for me,” she exclaimed. “You’ve helped me feel whole again in a way I didn’t expect. I feel like myself again. No,” she paused and corrected, “I feel like so much more than myself!”

Lahari spoke over her. “That’s nice and all, but this really isn’t the time. Each of us is impressed with your new arm.”

“Sorry there’s no way to make you an actual replacement arm,” Olona whispered to Tchama, “but let me know how that battle prosthetic feels against them. You should’ve seen what it took to sharpen the high-density blade,” she added, “and I managed to make the bludgeon so dense that when I was done with it, I couldn’t lift the thing!”

The weapon that was now attached to Tchama’s shoulder matched her other arm in size, and it bent for her at the elbow and wrist like her real arm, but that was the extent of the similarities. It was not shaped like a human arm, and it did not have fingers at the end of it. Instead, a double-edged battle-axe the size of a large dinner plate graced the place where her hand would have been, and it was not the weapon’s only blade.

Olona continued whispering. “The limb’s joints are calibrated to match the strength of your arm, and the materials should be equally as durable. Sorry,” she repeated, “that I can’t just make you a new arm.”

“They’re getting closer,” Lahari stated in a voice that insisted Tchama and Olona stop discussing things.

“I love it!” Tchama said under her breath back to Olona.

Olona could not have looked prouder. “The designs for the minor protrusions all over the outer side of the limb are based on S’Kay’s arm-feathers.” Olona turned to Tisa. “Thanks for introducing me to everyone after your attack on the lighthouse.”

No one was listening else. Tisa, S’Kay, and the others were focused on the enemies.

Tchama took Olona’s hand. “How do I switch the weapon?” she asked.

“Oh, turn the axe widdershins,” Olona instructed, “and it’ll flip outwards.”

Tchama twisted the blade and it folded in half and inserted itself into the limb. A long metal pole with a bulbous knob on its end extended from the fingerless hand. It was fused in place, but with the flexibility of the limb’s wrist joint, Tchama wielded the bludgeon like a wicked club.

“It’s perfect,” Tchama declared. She switched the weapon back to its axe.

Lahari growled, “Enough talking.”

To all their surprise, Tisa suddenly screamed like a banshee. She raced toward the oncoming horde, and she was surrounded by many of her voids in the atmosphere. They launched forward in front of her and manifested monsters of shadow and smoke, like creatures from the deep. Eyeless faces of teeth and tentacles, fleshy limbs with claws and strange probing fingers, eldritch entities reached out in darkness towards the mutated Messiahs.

“Tisa’s leading the charge! On her!” Lahari ordered, and her troop’s battle cry was terrific. They descended.

Olona brought one palm to her opposite forearm, pointed two fingers at the nearest monstrosity, and she unleashed a bolt of white-hot lightning. It burned through the creature, and then the bolt leapt from it and ripped into two more of them.

Tchama used her empowered legs and leapt high into the air above the other warriors’ heads, and she came crashing down on one of the mutated horde. She brought her new mechanic organic battle prosthetic down with the force of an avalanche, and Tchama’s blow hit the nigh-invincible monstrosity and it ruptured like an overripe tomato. The thing’s innards burst out across the hillside, and it shrieked, writhing on the ground with its many arms and legs thrashing. Two tongues lolled out of its weird mouth, and its head rocked back and forth in agony.

Tchama was covered in its blood and slime. Lahari gave her an admiring glance, and Tchama’s face wore an expression of glee.

Tchama reached down, gripped one of the monster’s seizing limbs, and she spun her body around in a graceful rotation. The creature was yanked from the ground by Tchama’s strength, and she released it, hurtling it through the air into one of its twisted kin and knocked it back. A trail of guts stretched between her and the beasts, and the monster rose in a fury.

It pounced toward Tchama, but Tisa’s shadows appeared and enveloped the thing in midair. Its body ruptured and the pieces hit the ground, so many pieces, far too many different body parts for a single human being.

S’Kay fought in an almost bird-like manner, darting from one enemy to another. She leapt over them and nicked their flesh with her brutal feathers. The monsters roared with their strange voices, as the places she touched began to disintegrate and drip to the ground. The creatures watched their body own parts melting.

Gawa’s cosmic electricity radiated out from her. She glowed purple, and the patterns on her skin ripped across her epidermis like unearthly waves. As the monsters approached to attack her, blasts of her energy discharged and sent each enemy flying backwards. Their bodies bore scorched patches that crackled and ate into them, and with curiosity, their fellow creatures watch them dying.

The Biological Shifts and Tisa, with Tchama and Olona, reigned fury down upon their remaining enemies.

The beasts wailed in rage and redoubled their assault on the invaders of Gunge.

A pair of them lumbered toward Lahari, but they were no match for her black hole of power. It ripped into them, and they screamed, as their bodies began to shrink. Lahari grabbed them as they tried to pull away, and she gripped both tight. Other monsters saw her devastation of their kind, and they backed away from the scaly blue-skinned woman with the halo of black spines surrounding her face.

From behind the battle, a thin beam of energy cut through the air. It hit a monster in the forehead, and the thing stopped cold.

Olona laughed aloud from her ranged position. “That got it!” She blew smoke from an opening in the back of her wrist. “Reloading!” she called out as she pushed a button on her forearm. “Aiming.”

The creature she shot collapsed to the ground, and Olona fired a second blast that was also right on target with another monster. Her beam hit it in the shoulder and it squealed like a hog, as one of its many arms fell to the ground.

“That can’t feel good,” Olona laughed.

“I’ll say,” Lahari called up to her, as the two monsters she still held continued to diminish in size. “What is that weapon?”

Olona looked proud. “I call it a luminous beam. I designed it based on Harakin’s power. It’s strong enough to pierce nine inches of Oselian steel plating, you know, the really hard stuff. It can get through nine of them before running out of energy.” She sounded amazed. “I suspect that dead one has a hole burned straight through it.” Olona continued, “But I don’t think I hit anything vital in its friend.”

Blood was pouring from where the thing’s arm used to be.

“Reloading!” Olona sang aloud.

Ijeron’s body split, and he sent his projectiles into the monster Olona had wounded. The thing momentarily froze, then it twisted into an even more bizarre shape, before Ijeron’s pieces exited in many different directions. The monster’s corpse crumpled to the earth.

Lahari released her grip on the two victims she had absorbed, but to her surprise, a man and a woman were looking back at her. Both of them were naked.

“Who the fuck are you?” Lahari asked, and she shoved them away from her.

They fell onto the grass and both looked very confused.

“We’re not…” the woman started to say, “monsters anymore?” but neither of them was given an opportunity to reflect further on their renewed condition.

A disc of Tisa’s shadow appeared in front of Lahari, and from it came an enormous serpentine neck, and the thing’s head was only mouth. It chomped down, biting off the top half of the man and the woman. Their waists and legs quivered where they knelt for a moment, as if yet to realize they were no longer attached to bodies, and they slumped to the earth.

“Huh,” Lahari mused, “my power seemed to revert them back to their human forms.” Then she laughed. “They didn’t stand a chance against you, Tisa!”

Khano was bigger than any of the mutated Messiahs, and he wrestled them with his bear-like strength. He also possessed other physiological advantages over his fleshy enemies, and his claws and teeth eviscerated whichever of the monsters dared to challenge him. Khano’s other ability made him even more brutal. He used the blue beams from his eyes strategically, blasting hideous holes into the Messiahs’ flesh while he fought with them.

Yxida let out a strange battle cry. The short woman raised her hands above her horned head, and one of the monsters stopped dead in its tracks. Its many limbs pulled against its body like a dying insect, and it screamed and fell silent. Yxida began converting its very matter into sand, and it started to pour onto the ground. The creature squirmed, inadvertently shaking more of its body free of the tiny particles. A moment later, there was nothing left of the beast.

Olona fired a final beam of piercing energy that cut into one of the monster’s torsos. “I’m out!” she yelled, and she sounded delighted. “Commencing close-range attack!” she declared, and she rushed down the hill over the many dead Messiahs.

Tisa cried out. “Olona! You’re just a human…” but her words disappeared.

Olona pushed another button, and a glow of energy surrounded her body like a second skin. She ran into the nearest oncoming creature, and it flailed at her, but its limbs hit her protective radiation shield with a horrible sizzle. It wailed in pain as it tried to pull its scorched body away from her.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Olona snapped, and she jumped onto the monster. She grabbed one of its many arms and wrapped hers around its neck.

The creature let out an ear-splitting noise, and it began to convulse, but Olona held it fast. It convulsed beneath her for a moment, then collapsed to the hillside and stopped moving. A few residual twitches rippled through it, and Olona’s shield killed it.

“Wow,” Tisa said.

The battle raged.

Tchama stowed the axe head, and the bludgeon extended. She gripped the base of the club where it attached to the end of the organic mechanic limb, and with a double-handed grip, she swung it at the monsters with devastating results.

Khano body-checked a monster toward Tchama, and her club collided with its head. There was a loud and unnerving pop, and the thing’s neck was broken. It slumped to the hillside, and Tchama roared as she raised her weapon overhead and brought it down. The beast’s blood sprayed up on Tchama, and Khano let out a deep chuckle at her brutality.

Lahari was busy turning another monster back into a mere human, as Yxida and Ijeron slayed the final two remaining beasts. The hillside was covered in gore, as Lahari released another naked man from her grip, and he fell to the slime.

He tried to push himself up, but pair of blue beams pierced straight through his heart. He collapsed and did not move again.

Only the warriors remained.

“Well, that was an overwhelming success,” Olona commented. She put her hand on Gawa’s patterned shoulder, and the Biological Shift woman flinched slightly at the touch. “You really are amazing,” Olona marveled at them, “each one of you!”

Gawa looked surprised, and she stared at Olona with her blank white eyes. “You don’t think it’s, I don’t know, gross to touch me?” Gawa asked.

Olona looked hurt, but not by Gawa’s words. It was as if even the very idea that Gawa, or any of the Biological Shifts, felt untouchable, hurt Olona. “I’m so sorry,” she blurted out, quickly removing her hand from Gawa’s shoulder. “I should not have just reached out and touched you. I apologize.” She then asked, “May I please touch your arm again?”

Gawa looked confused and turned her gaze to the others. “I guess so,” she replied with an uncertain shrug.

Surrounded by the gore of the destroyed monsters, Olona returned her palm to Gawa’s skin. “I don’t think you’re gross at all.”★