The Nextworld Invasion and the Death of Magic - 25. Chapter 25 - Organs

“Green sun and pink sky,” Tigath whispered, looking up and repeating what Dorjin had told them back on Earth.

“Yeah, it’s strange-looking,” Othri replied, “makes my eyes feel weird.”

The two Urcai men were in a forest. It looked a lot like the forests they knew on Earth, except that the light was different.

“Dorjin said the path that’ll lead us to the Temple should be due east.” Tigath pointed, and the men began to hike through the trees. “I hope Nuji and Lestralin will be okay.”

“They’ve got their own stuff to deal with,” Othri replied.

The pair observed the forest around them as they made their way. The bark of the trees was still brown, but in the light of the green sun, the trunks looked almost mauve. Birds and insects were creating noises similar to what their counterparts did on Earth. Things scurried in the underbrush, and something far off through the trees let out a screech.

A broken branch with a jagged end snagged the sleeve of Othri’s shirt, and it ripped a hole in the fabric. “Why didn’t Dorjin open a doorway closer to the Temple?” he complained.

“You know why,” Tigath replied. “She was worried about us getting caught. Being a little way out gives us stealth on our…” He stopped speaking, and his purple eyes flashed with alarm.

An awful smell hit both the men, and they scrunched up their green noses at the foul stink. Dorjin had told them the Temple sat on the edge of one of the vile organic waste fields.

“We must be close to the path,” Othri choked out.

Tigath coughed. “Dorjin said it would smell bad, but I don’t think I was prepared for this.”

“It’s worse than I expected,” Othri agreed.

They each wrapped scarves around their faces, but it made no difference, and as they proceeded into the invisible cloud of putrid air, both of them made observations.

“I don’t hear any more birds,” Tigath managed to say.

“But there are more bugs,” Othri added, slapping some tiny thing that was biting his arm.

They had not come upon the path yet, but they knew they had to be getting close. The trees did not seem affected by the horrible air, and the ground was thick with ivy and brambles. The plants and insects were thriving in the region close to the Temple, but most other animals seemed to be avoiding it.

“Do you think we’ll have any trouble figuring out which building is the actual Temple?” Tigath asked.

“Dorjin said it was the biggest building,” Othri replied. “I suspect we’ll be able to tell.” He pressed his hand over the scarf on his mouth and nose. “It smells horrible out here!”

Tigath dry-heaved behind his face covering.

The men found the cause of the smell before they found the path.

“Stop!” Othri shouted, grabbing Tigath’s arm.

“What?! What is it?”

Othri pointed to where Tigath had been about to step. “There’s part of a dead animal.”

“Poor thing, what do you suppose it was? I wonder how it…” Tigath stopped speaking again. “What is that thing?” he hissed.

Othri was staring at the dead flesh with a look of disgust and horror.

There was a small leg lying on top of a fleshy skull. The pile of rotting meat and exposed bone looked wrong to the men. The leg had a patch of matted brown fur, and there was webbing between the toes of its foot. Beneath the leg, the head appeared to be further along in the process of decay, and it was not clear what kind of animal it had belonged to. There was what looked like a lower jaw that had been dislocated from the skull, and it had a pair of jutting tusks like a warthog, but the skull did not seem to have an extended snout that would have accommodated the jaw. One orbital socket was visible, and it was empty.

Othri began to say, “One dead animal couldn’t make the whole forest stink this…” but he was cut off by reality.

It was as if Tigath and Othri’s eyes and minds needed a moment to process what they were seeing. The corpses of countless dead animals littered the forest floor. They were all around the two men. Ahead of them, the bodies were more concentrated.

“Where’s the path?” Othri growled.

“It’s a mercy that there aren’t that many bugs,” Tigath added.

There were more insects, but nowhere near as many as the countless dead animals should have warranted. Rotting flesh was everywhere.

“Watch where you step,” Othri warned.

“Let’s keep going.”

The air was not getting any easier to breathe, and the twisted remains of the animals were no easier to identify. Some mounds of flesh had feathers or a wing sticking out of them. Others looked like they possessed cephalopod tentacles. The stench was eye-watering.

Tigath pointed ahead, but he opted not to open his mouth again. Through a break in the trees, the odd light from the green sun was a little brighter. They slowed as they approached, and the path was revealed before them. It stretched in two directions, but the men knew to follow it north.

Even though they needed to continue to be careful not to step on any rotten flesh, the pair remained in the trees off to one side, rather than taking the trail itself. In less than a mile, they spotted a trio of Human guards positioned at a fork in the path that led into the eastern woods, and Tigath and Othri hid. Tigath nodded toward the deeper forest, and the two of them disappeared among the trees.

They continued to follow the trail’s direction, while remaining hidden and avoiding the dead animals underfoot as much as possible. There were more and more piles of rotting flesh, and according to Dorjin, this meant they were drawing nearer. Another mile farther, and they had arrived.

There could be no doubt about which building was the Temple; it was labeled with an enormous sign.

THE TEMPLE

EXPERIMENTATION AND ORGANIC FUSIONWORKS

Tigath grabbed Othri’s hand and squeezed it.

Two smaller buildings flanked the Temple, and aside from the difference in size, the three were identical. They were simple grey cubes with no windows or decorations of any kind. The pair of buildings on the two sides of the Temple did not have front doors, but the Temple did, and it was under guard.

Four more Human soldiers stood at attention with their horrible weapons strapped to their backs.

Othri held up his palm for Tigath to wait, and Tigath took Othri’s hand, squeezing his man’s fingers.

“Be careful.”

Othri kissed Tigath’s cheek, and he slipped away through the trees. He peeked over his shoulder and saw Tigath kneel to the forest floor in hiding.

Good, Othri thought, I need to focus.

Before leaving the Mermonster, Dorjin gave the men an entry passcode that unlocked a maintenance door on the back of the smaller building to the east side of the Temple. She had also informed them that there would be no guards at the back entrance because the interior of the side structures had no access to the actual Temple itself. They were secondary control rooms for the machinery below the three buildings, but Tigath and Othri needed to get into the primary part of the Temple.

While Tigath stayed in the trees, Othri crept around the side of the building. He continued to be cautious about where he put his feet among the indistinguishable dead creatures that littered the forest floor. Trees grew right up to the Temple, and Othri was still hidden as he approached the back door. He pulled the strip of parchment with the code Dorjin had written on it from his pocket, and he punched the numbers into the keypad. The door clicked, and he tentatively pulled it open. He peered in, saw it was empty, and he entered.

The room was not empty, but there were no Humans in it. There was also no stink in the air, and Othri was relieved as he took a few deep, cleansing breaths. He was standing at the edge of a large bank of electronics and an even bigger control panel with multiple display screens. None of that was what he was there for, and he focused on the wall. It was grey and blank, but as he approached it, he paused. His mind seemed to be trying to process something.

Othri turned back to the control panel and realized the entire set of electronics and screens was moving slightly, almost as if whatever they were set into was breathing, but Othri had a job to do, and he refocused.

He stepped up to the wall, stuck his hand into his pocket, and pulled out a wooden disk the size of a large coin. Othri had a tiny flask with water, and he dripped a few drops onto one side of the wood. He pressed it against the wall, and it clicked.

Othri thought to himself the name wall-destroyer was silly as he spun around and raced to the door. He bolted out of it and hid among the trees.

Wall-destroyers were very common tools used in the growth of the living structures built on Earth. Wall-destroyers were alive; they were magicked plants, and the one Othri left attached to the inner wall did its work.

Microscopic tendrils began to reach into any minuscule crevice or imperfection of the wall that stood between the control room and the Temple, and the solid materials were subjected to the awesome power of nature. The tiny tendrils grew like plant roots in soil, but much faster, expanding and ripping through to the main building of the Temple.

Othri could hear chunks of stone and mortar crashing to the floor, and he waited, trying not to cough while in the putrid air again.

Voices began shouting in the room that had been empty a moment earlier, and the exterior door on the back of the building was swung open. A guardsman stepped out with his weapon drawn. Othri wanted it; he wanted to use one of the Humans’ terrible weapons against them. He picked up a rock from the forest floor and threw it. The stone sailed through the air, and its aim was true.

“What the hell?” the guard squawked as it pelted him in the side of his neck. He brought a hand to his throat and looked appalled to see a little red smear of blood on his fingers. “Who’s out there?!” He pointed his weapon at the trees and took a few steps away from the door.

Just come a little closer, Othri thought to the guard. He could still hear other Humans shouting inside.

Despite the disgusting air, Othri took a slow deep breath. The training he and Tigath were skilled in had been developed millennia earlier by their ancestors as a means of warfare. The practice also proved to be a healthful and invigorating style of exercise. Othri was about to use his training in ways he had never needed to before.

The soldier took another step, but he was not paying attention to where he was going, and his foot slid on the greasy flesh of some poor dead creature. He lost his balance, and Othri attacked. In a single move, he had the soldier’s arm over his shoulder. Othri stood up and pulled down, bending the man’s limb backward at the elbow and causing him to drop his weapon and scream in agony. Othri thrust out with his other hand like a wrecking ball to the man’s neck, turning his scream into a gurgle, and the soldier collapsed.

Othri rose with the Human’s weapon in his hands, and it unleashed a blue flash that ended the guard’s life. A massive hole was simply gone from the center of his torso.

The weapon in Othri’s hand was labeled, and he whispered its name aloud. “Voider.” Its end was glowing with a faint blue light.

He stepped back and hid among the trees again as two more guards exited through the maintenance door, and with two precisely aimed blue flashes, Othri ended the men. More voices were still yelling from inside the building, but Othri was patient.

Four soldiers exited and saw their dead companions.

“What the hell is this?” one of them asked. He knelt by the two corpses close to the door and added, “Could it have been a weapons malfunction?”

“Commander!” another guard shouted. He was standing over the man with a hole in his chest. “The sergeant was killed by a voider too, but look at his broken arm; a voider didn’t do that.”

The three other soldiers approached the first of the men Othri had killed, and they found themselves under attack.

One perfectly aimed blue flash took off a guard’s head, and Othri was suddenly upon the others. A spin kick to the back of one man’s knees knocked him backward to the forest floor, and his voider went flying out of his hands. Like the strike of a serpent, Othri launched at another soldier, who tried to take out the green-skinned assailant with a blue flash of his own, but Othri dodged the weapon’s blast and lashed out with his free hand again, punching the guard in the groin with enough force that he buckled and crumpled to the ground. Othri fired his voider at the man who had been called commander, and the blue blast grazed his torso. It removed his skin and abdominal muscles, and his guts sloughed out into his hands as he crashed to the forest floor.

The soldier who Othri kicked in the knees was rising, and a look of alarm came to his face, right before Othri’s voider removed his head. The final soldier was simultaneously clutching his pummeled crotch, while trying to aim a voider of his own at Othri’s legs, but one well-placed kick sent the weapon spinning from the guard’s grip.

The man scowled at Othri, who hesitated.

“Got something to say?” he asked.

The guardsman snarled. “How did a filthy orc break through the barrier into Nextworld?”

Othri did not reply, and a final flash of blue finished the last guard.