The Mantis Continuum - Book Four - 18. Chapter 18 - Lonklam & the Other

Lonklam left the mutilated corpse of the Shift boy in the forest at the edge of Hazel Cove, and Ronging followed him into the wilderness. With Lonklam’s craving satiated and Ronging’s not to rise again for some time, the two began to follow their secondary urge, the draw to be with others of their kind. The pull had always coaxed them back to Gunge, but it now made them travel north.

They remained in the forested tracts of land and avoided the few other human habitations that lay between Hazel Cove and Teshon City. Lonklam and Ronging could feel another monster, but it was not hiding in the populated areas, and at the dilapidated sight of the old ruins that the locals called Ilin, Lonklam and Ronging’s senses told them they were near one of their own kind. For a brief moment, there was no sign of the other to whom they were drawn, but then the two were attacked.

A hideous mutant that had once been a woman flailed out with her many limbs. She crashed into Lonklam and Ronging and sent them sprawling across the terrace of the old ruins. She sprang onto them and was stronger than both, and she managed to hold them down.

“What are you!?” she raged, focusing her weird eyes on Lonklam.

“We are others like you,” he replied.

“No one… is like me,” she retorted. She scrutinized him and added, “No one is… like you.” She climbed off them.

Lonklam looked from her to Ronging, who rose and stood but paid no attention to the other two.

“Indeed,” Lonklam replied to the female monster, “I am Lonklam.”

“Riam… is my… name. Riam,” she repeated. Every word out of her bizarre mouth seemed like a struggle, but somehow, Riam had managed to keep more of her humanity than any other monster besides Lonklam.

“How have you not become like the others?” Lonklam asked, glancing back at Ronging. He picked at the metal crown that was embedded in the flesh of his head. “An organic mechanic built this for me,” he explained. “It has helped my mind deteriorate more slowly than the others, but how have you maintained yourself despite your many changes?” His eyes moved over her.

The thing that used to be a woman was made up of more body parts than Lonklam had ever seen on one of his fellow monsters. Somewhere underneath it all was the original human form that Riam was born with, but she was far more mutated than any of the creatures of Gunge.

Her right shoulder supported not one, but four separate arms, and beneath them, an entire leg protruded out from her ribs and hung heavy. The multiple limbs forced Riam to stand with a pronounced lean. Another leg had grown from the back of her neck, and it hung down along her spine. Still a third unnatural leg stuck out of the left side of her stomach, and two full arms extended from her right hip.

Riam’s left shoulder was even more bizarre than her right one. A partial face had grown into it, complete with a fully-formed mouth and half of a nose. The single nostril sniffed at the air and the mouth snapped, clacking its teeth together with a constant unnerving sound from her shoulder.

Three extra fingers poked out from the wrist of her left hand, and another thumb had grown beside Riam’s pinky, mirroring her natural thumb. Another cluster of six fingers wiggled at the air together from the side of her neck, and one of her original thighs was covered in a small collection of toes in various sizes. The leg was also graced by a row of teeth. They protruded from her skin in a straight line and ran from her inner knee up to her crotch. Several undersized and malformed limbs protruded from her torso as bizarre chunks of undeveloped flesh.

Riam had also grown multiple extra breasts during her transformations, one right on top of her normal left breast, and another very large one that bulged from the right side of her stomach opposite the stomach-leg. There were still two other breasts that had grown on her back, one up by her shoulder blade and the other at the center of her low back with the foot of her neck-leg always resting on the breast. Beneath her left buttock was a final additional weird lumpy breast that had four separate nipples.

Despite all of her bodily mutations, Riam’s face was worst of all. One of her eyes bulged with an extra eyeball within the orbital socket. Her secondary eye was fused to the eye she was born with, and her side by side irises created the shape of an infinity symbol. Nothing about the bones of her skull had changed, and her weird double-eye did not fit in her head; she could not fully close her eyelid and constantly dripped tears. A separate trio of glassy eyes blinked in her neck near the finger cluster, but the three were cloudy and could not focus. There was still another eye that peered out from a bald patch of hair on her scalp.

Not only did Riam have an entire extra mouth on one shoulder, but there was another half-formed mouth that grew from her second natural eye. The lower eyelid was a partial lip, and several teeth pressed against the orb of her eyeball, squeezing it into a strange shape. The half-mouth extended to her temple where a tongue remained perpetually lolled out, dangling by her ear, which had grown thick black whiskery hairs. Her opposite ear hung floppy like a dog’s.

From the tip of Riam’s nose extended a single finger that sometimes pointed straight forward at Lonklam, and it sometimes curled up toward her forehead. Another finger grew along her jaw, but it was partially fused with the side of her face, and it barely moved; only its fingertip could wiggle by her chin.

Riam’s normal mouth had at some point developed multiple rows of teeth on both the top and bottom, like the layered teeth of a shark, and she could no longer close her mouth completely. The teeth stuck out at strange angles and made it very difficult for her to speak.

“I was a… Demifae before I… became a Messiah,” she explained.

“And at some point you ate another mantis gland,” Lonklam finished for her, thinking he understood how Riam became the way she was.

“17,” she corrected in a hissing voice.

Lonklam was taken aback. The child he slaughtered in Hazel Cove for its photonova gland was only his sixth victim, and none of the monsters of Gunge had even reached as many as 10 before they were all slaughtered.

“I need…” Riam declared to Lonklam, and she hesitated before she added, “more… and always.”✪