The Nextworld Invasion and the Death of Magic - 29. Chapter 29 - Stopping the Flow

Tigath and Othri opened the hatch in the floor of the room with the cloned Human parts, and another staircase led even deeper into the underground of Nextworld, but Othri paused and took Tigath’s hand.

“Tigath, are you sure you’re okay?”

“No,” Tigath replied with a frown on his green face, “I’m not okay. Our home was destroyed. Vuliburge was destroyed. Who knows how many Earthian cities have been destroyed by the Humans.” He looked behind him at the corpse on the floor. “I never thought I’d have to kill someone… never thought it would come to this.”

“I’m sorry you’ve been made to do things that are outside your nature,” Othri replied softly. “I’ve always loved your gentle spirit, your compassion. I hate that the actions of the Humans forced you to do what you just did.”

Tigath nodded and turned his back on the dead body.

The stairs that led deeper into Nextworld seemed much more ancient than the flight down from the surface. These steps were cut right into the bedrock of the unearthly world, and they led the pair of Urcai men to a hidden passageway that lay far underground. A string of lights stretched to the bottom of the stairs, but they could not continue farther because of what filled the tunnel.

“Oh, come on…” Tigath whispered as he and Othri stepped up to the opening. “That’s not… Is that really a…”

“Dorjin said this was what we’d find,” Othri replied, but he could barely believe his eyes.

Both green-skinned men could hear Dorjin’s words in their minds.

The entrance to the tunnel is the mouth of a mammoth fluke.

Nothing could have prepared the two men for the sight of the monstrosity.

An enormous parasitic flatworm took up the entire space. There was no gap between the thing’s sides and the walls of stone, but Tigath and Othri knew they did not need to creep along the outside of it; they had to enter it. The flesh of the great beast twitched, but its mouth remained open and gaping.

“This is…” Tigath could not put his revulsion into words.

“I know,” Othri replied, and he closed his eyes as he stepped into the gigantic flatworm. The floor of the beast’s mouth was spongy underfoot. Othri turned back with his orange eyes open again, and he reached out for his beloved from the mouth of the monster. “Come on, Tigath. Let’s get this over with.”

“No, no, no,” Tigath repeated to himself as he followed his best friend into the grotesque opening.

The two men stared into the impenetrable blackness. The glow from the string of lights that led back up the stairs only penetrated a short distance into the gloom.

“How are we supposed to find the machine Dorjin told us about?” Tigath asked. “And if we do locate it, how are we supposed to dismantle it in the dark?”

“I don’t know, but if we manage it, we’ll be able to cut off the Humans’ access to their sorcery.”

“Alright,” Tigath groaned, “let’s figure it out.”

The interior of the monster was warm and humid but utterly dark. The men’s eyes ached, as if longing for them to return to the faint glow they were leaving behind.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” Tigath grumbled as he made his way behind Othri. They walked with their hands against the gooey interior wall of the flatworm’s innards.

“It’s getting narrower,” Othri stated, and the pair needed to hunch down a little as they continued. “The generator can’t be much farther,” he added.

As the words were escaping Othri’s lips, Tigath let out a cry of alarm.

Othri spun around in the darkness. “Tigath! Are you okay?!”

Tigath’s voice came from lower than Othri was expecting, down by his knees. “Yes, yes, I’m fine. I just slipped.”

“Where are you?” Othri asked, reaching out in the smothering blackness.

“I’m down here.”

Tigath let out another noise of surprise, as Othri poked him in the cheek. Tigath quickly snatched Othri’s hand before he could pull it away, and Othri helped Tigath to his feet again.

A moment later, Othri asked, “What’s that sound?”

The two men stopped and listened. They could hear a faint humming.

“That must be the generator,” Othri stated. “We’re close.”

In a matter of minutes, they came upon a metal grate with small holes. They blindly ran their fingers over it, trying to discern what they were feeling.

“I think there must be some sort of turbine or something through this,” Othri said.

“What are we supposed to do now?” Tigath asked.

“Maybe we can just smash it.”

“We should have brought a tool from the lab upstairs,” Tigath complained. He continued to feel the sides and top of the machinery as Othri knelt and examined the bottom of it.

Part of what Tigath’s hands ran over was smooth, and a rotating cylindrical pipe extended straight up from the top of it. His fingers followed it above his head, but they were suddenly smashed by a spinning component of the machine, and he cried out in pain.

“Tigath, what happened?!”

“I… hurt… myself…” Tigath managed through his teeth. He was clutching his mangled fingers to his heart.

Othri reached out for him through the darkness. “What do you mean? Are you okay?”

Tigath’s chest was getting tight, and the pain in his hand radiated up his arm. “Can’t… breathe…” he said weakly.

“What do I do?” Othri asked in dismay. “How do I help you?”

Inside Tigath’s mind, he was feeling a complex array of emotions. Besides the pain in his hand, the terrifying surroundings he found himself in, and the crushing darkness, Tigath had reached despair. Hopelessness consumed him; stopping the Humans seemed like an insurmountable task. He was filled with sorrow for the unfathomable loss of life on Earth and the devastation to the planet itself at their wicked hands. Tigath was angry that he had been made to kill someone, even if the person had been an enemy. He was angry that he had been forced to try and stop these villains, angry that the man he loved was also on this mission of violence, and angry about losing the home he had shared with Othri. He was feeling grateful that Alydrael had survived her terrible injury, but he was filled with rage at the Humans for how much they hated the free peoples of Earth. Tigath was even angry at the Humans for making him feel all this anger!

Overwhelmed by it all, Tigath let out a blood-curdling scream right as Othri’s hand found his shoulder.

A sudden and brilliant flash of light briefly illuminated the interior of the beastly flatworm, and Othri shut his eyes against the shocking glare in the pitch darkness, but to his alarm, Tigath went limp. Othri caught him and held him close as the light dimmed to almost nothing. The flash had been accompanied by brutal cold that now permeated the space, and Othri immediately began to shiver.

The brightness was gone, but only adding to his confusion, he could now see.

A tiny glow was emanating from the collar of Tigath’s shirt.

“What’s this?” Othri asked, and his breath was like smoke in the chilled space.

Tigath’s eyes flashed open, and he winced at the pain in his hand.

Othri helped him get his feet under him, and asked, “You okay?”

Tigath nodded. “Wha-what just happened?” he managed. “And why’s it so cold all of a sudden?” His limbs began to tremble in the lowered temperature.

Othri brought a hand to the collar of Tigath’s shirt and gently pulled it down. “What is this light?”

The faint illumination was coming from Tigath himself.

Othri then spoke in a quieter voice than he intended. “Why are you glowing?”

Tigath took his collar with his uninjured hand and pulled it farther down. “I don’t know.”

The light was radiating from within him, and it was bright enough that Othri noticed something about the cold interior of the flatworm. “What happened to the walls?”

In the faint light that was coming from Tigath, the grey flesh looked crystallized.

Othri touched the wall. “It’s frozen!”

Tigath and Othri both turned to the generator. It was still attempting to operate, but it was locked in place by the rigid, icy flesh to which it was magically fused. The machinery began to rattle as it tried to force its parts to work, but they could not move, and components began to fail. Through the metal grate the two men had first found, they saw a large fan, but it was not spinning. Its axle suddenly snapped, and the fan fell to the floor of the machine’s interior. Oily, black sludge started seeping out of the machine’s lower portion, oozing onto the frozen floor of the flatworm’s innards, and there was a loud clunk noise. The torque of the cylindrical part that had been rotating caused the tube to come partially out of its housing unit, and it began to shift off-kilter and lean as it tried to turn.

“Erm… should we back away?” Tigath asked as the magicked machine began to make a muffled pounding, and something banged on its inside.

There was a small boom that made both men jump, and everything fell still and silent.

“I guess we did it,” Othri whispered. He focused back on the light coming from his love. “Tigath, did you somehow do all of this?”

Tigath did not answer, but he turned, and the light turned with him.

Both men were shivering uncontrollably, and Othri went to pull Tigath close to him, but he paused and focused on his injury. “Tigath, your hand.”

Tigath cringed and managed to say, “It doesn’t hurt quite as much right now.” Two of his fingers were bent the wrong way, a third was bleeding from a serious gash, and a hideous bruise was spreading across his green knuckles and the back of his hand.

“Come close to me,” Othri encouraged, and the pair began to retrace their steps out of the frozen flatworm by the light coming from Tigath.

They were shaking violently from the cold when they finally saw the string of lights again that stretched to the bottom of the stairs, but Othri looked at Tigath’s illumination, and it made the lights ahead seem dull and unnatural.

“What’s happening to you?” Othri asked through his chattering teeth.

Tigath did not know how to answer.

Neither of them spoke as they exited the giant beast and began to climb back up to the laboratories above. None of the machines were functioning, and several of the monstrous Human-esque parts had fallen to the floor. The men made it to ground level, and the weird animalistic pieces were in a similar state with their life support no longer functioning.

“We stopped the flow of magic,” Tigath said in a quavering voice.

No other Human soldiers had arrived at the Temple before Tigath and Othri stepped out into the putrid air, and they disappeared among the trees.

Tigath’s hand was throbbing again, and the glow from his chest was gone. He let out a groan, and Othri carefully pulled him into an embrace. “We need to get to the rendezvous so Nuji can treat you,” he urged. “I hope we make it to the ruins before dark. Maybe she and Lestralin are already there.”

Dorjin had let the saboteurs know about the remains of an ancient fort several miles through the forest from the cloning facility, and the old ruins were where the four Earthians were supposed to meet.

Tigath and Othri arrived an hour and a half later, but there was no sign of either Nuji or Lestralin.

“Where are they?” Othri growled in frustration. He glanced at Tigath’s bloody and twisted hand.

Tigath was very weak. “It looks like the ruins stretch farther through the trees,” he managed to say through his gritted teeth. “Maybe they’re here already, but not here.”

“Why don’t you sit,” Othri encouraged, “and I’ll go explore?” He helped Tigath to the ground so he could lean against one of the crumbling stone walls, and Othri rushed off through the trees.

Tigath could hear his beloved’s voice, but his mind was foggy. He closed his eyes and teetered on the brink of unconsciousness.

Othri wove between the trunks, calling out for Nuji and Lestralin as he ran. The boulders of what used to be the fort continued a long way through the dense woods, and Othri was amazed by the extent of the ruins, but he could not find his and Tigath’s Rothian or Noktar companions.

“Where are they?!” Othri repeated to himself. “Come on, Nuji. Tigath needs you!” He looked back in the direction of where he had left his love, and Othri was surprised by what he saw. “What were these ruins?” he asked the forest at large.

Viewing the ancient fort from where he now stood, the vast decrepit structure looked like it had once been a pyramid. Its top was missing, and approaching from the cloning facility had not given the men a clear view of it, but Othri was almost certain of what it had once been.

Forest vegetation had overgrown much of the ruins, and Othri decided to see if he could climb up to their highest point in order to survey the surrounding forest. Spindly trees grew in the cracks between the stone blocks, and they worked as handholds that helped him up the ancient structure. It turned out to be easier to climb than he expected, and he was soon at the top.

The forest stretched out for miles in all directions, and Othri could see a great distance across Nextworld. The cloning facility was in one direction, and in another was where Lestralin and Nuji had been heading. Train tracks led up to and beyond a small town, and the two other Earthians in Nextworld were supposed to be making their way to the ruins from there.

“Nuji, where are you?!”