Act 3, Chapter 111: The strategist

Day in the story: 1st February (Sunday), past 6:00 a.m.—approximately 10 hours and 21 minutes remain until the record time is lost

Elle Erikson

“Elle!” Liana shouted, hanging from the hastily spun silk line. Various tongues lunged at her from every direction, shoving and tugging as they fought to wrap themselves around her. I had been luckier. Ella was buried deep in one of the thicker fleshy appendages, and although it twisted violently in an effort to wrench the umbrella free, it kept me firmly anchored. “Tell Liora to get the boys to our location!” she added, grabbing the line between us. She rotated until her boots found the slick surface, then immediately started climbing toward me. At the same time, she commanded her bees, bathing the area around us in shifting green and gold. The tiny insects drifted through the darkness like living lanterns.

With every leap she made, several dozen red ants spilled from the folds beneath her skin onto the living slope below. Their tiny bodies flashed briefly in the magical light before they disappeared into the writhing flesh, scattering in every direction.

I decided to follow her lead. With my spellbook hovering open at my waist, I reached into my Domain and called forth swarm after swarm of paper creations. Birds took to the air to search for Bastien and Patricia, while my spiders raced across the slick flesh around us. Wherever they passed, silken strands stretched between the tongues, binding them together into a growing nest meant to slow our fall, restrain the creature's grasping appendages, and create something resembling stable ground.

“I sent ants to look for Pat and Tien!” she shouted.

“I did the same with the birds!”

I caught her hand as she reached me and pulled her the last few meters, swinging her over my shoulder onto one of the tongues my spiders had already wrapped in layers of silk.

At the same time, Liora had already reached Kito in the air and was guiding him toward us.

As my spiders continued weaving, I turned my attention to Milo. He was battering the mass of tentacle-like tongues erupting from the abyssal hole below. My birds circled above him, feeding me glimpses of the battle and of the pit itself, where enormous concentric rows of saw-like teeth waited beneath the darkness. They never stopped moving. Flesh, severed tongues, and shattered debris disappeared between them as the monstrous maw flexed and convulsed, grinding everything that fell within reach while fresh tongues lashed upward from its depths to replace those Piotr destroyed.

Fortunately, neither Bastien nor Patricia had fallen into that pit of doom. That meant they had either managed to stop themselves or were trapped somewhere inside the endless layers of living flesh covering the slopes.

“Patricia! Bastien!” I shouted but nothing answered.

Piotr sprinted along one of the broader tongues near the center, meeting a cluster of grasping appendages head-on. One sweeping strike from his bat tore them clean from their common stem, sending them tumbling into the waiting teeth below. But the victory lasted only a heartbeat. Fresh tongues burst from the bleeding stump almost immediately, splitting apart and multiplying until there were more than before.

He slammed his bat into the living ground.

A luminous dome expanded around him, forcing the surrounding tongues backward and flattening those beneath its edge. Piotr leaned on the planted bat, drawing a heavy breath as the writhing mass hesitated outside the barrier. Using those precious seconds, he scanned the cavern until he finally spotted me and Liana farther up the slope among the swarm of golden bees suspended in the air—just before the creature surged forward again, burying the glowing dome beneath an avalanche of pink flesh.

Liora let Kito grab hold of his tail, then strained against the violent current of air rushing toward the monstrous mouth below. The lóng's light cut through the darkness as he pulled the struggling mage with him, the two of them slowly overcoming the relentless suction and making their way toward me, Liana, and the ever-expanding nest my spiders continued to weave. Her bees struggled against the current, but managed to get back into place in rare occasions that it stopped, and those that were lost to that unfortunate suction were quickly replaced by new ones coming from under her own skin.

I pulled myself onto the webbing, only seconds away from planting my feet on something far more stable and far less slimy than the living slope below. Liana reached down, caught my forearm, and hauled me the last bit of the way.

“Kito, even with Liora's help, won't make it.” She pointed toward her brother. “The ingestion winds are too strong. I can feel them pulling even from here.”

“Can you command him like you do your insects?” I asked, my eyes drifting toward the center just as another tremendous swing tore through the writhing mass, sending severed tongues spinning through the air. Piotr dismissed his Base and, wrapped in a streak of red and white shadowlight, launched himself toward us in a tremendous leap.

“I've never tried,” she admitted.

“Well, fix that.”

I pressed my palm against the woven platform, anchoring a fresh strand of silk to it, then sprinted for the edge and threw myself into open air. A silvery thread unspooled from my hand as I fell. Seconds later I reached Milo, caught the back of his hoodie, and arrested his descent so abruptly that my hastily spun lifeline snapped taut beneath the strain.

“Climb!” I shouted, fastening the free end of the silk to the exposed ground nearby.

I could have teleported us both onto the platform. It would have been easy. But I wasn't ready for the world—through the Bohema’s watchmen assigned to observe us—to learn that I could do that as well. Instead, I followed after the big guy as he seized the silk and began hauling himself upward toward safety.

“What did you mean!?” Liana shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth.

“He's part insect!” I called back.

Holding onto the silk with one hand and Ella with the other, I swung the umbrella into the tongues surging toward us. Piotr met them with his bat, every strike of his carrying enough force to clear far more space than mine ever could.

“Give him an idea how to overcome this!”

“That's your plan!?” she yelled back, though even as she spoke she grew quiet, her expression sharpening as she retreated into thought, searching for a solution.

While she considered it and I continued climbing, I shifted my focus to the birds still struggling overhead. The same relentless current dragging Kito toward the maw was catching them as well. Through their eyes I searched every corner of the cavern one last time, but the darkness and the sheer scale of the place swallowed any hope of finding Bastien or Patricia. One after another, I released the Authority sustaining them and watched them lose their shape, becoming nothing more than folded sheets of paper. The wind seized the lifeless creations immediately, carrying them into the waiting maw, where they vanished between the grinding rings of teeth.

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“Fucking mess,” Piotr muttered.

Turning toward me, he smashed aside another cluster of approaching tongues before they could reach my silk. I planted a foot on his shoulder, vaulted over his head, and landed atop the platform my spiders had woven. They had done remarkable work. Thick layers of webbing pinned much of the creature's living musculature to the slope below, but the entire structure still trembled beneath our weight. Along its edges, spiders fought a constant battle against fresh tongues whipping upward, tearing at the silk as quickly as it was spun.

Piotr landed beside me a heartbeat later and immediately drove his bat into the platform, sending another pulse of his Domain’s power that forced the surrounding flesh to recoil and kept it at bay.

Meanwhile, Kito, briefly illuminated by a surge of Liana's shadowlight, began releasing several of his dragonflies. Even before they had fully left the folds beneath his skin, he forced their evolution. Some sprouted additional pairs of wings, others developed broader, more powerful ones, their bodies reshaping in mid-flight. Drawing upon those newly created traits, Kito embodied them himself. Three more pairs of translucent insect wings erupted from his back, beating in perfect rhythm with the first. Combined with the subtle adjustments Liana directed him to make, they finally allowed him to cut through the violent currents and steadily close the distance to our platform.

Liana lowered herself into a cross-legged position, shutting out the chaos around us as she focused entirely on the countless insects spread throughout the battlefield.

“I had to let the birds go, but my spiders are still looking,” I said, scanning the battlefield.

“My ants are still searching too,” she replied, her attention fixed on her brother's slow approach. “Can you throw your explosive cards toward the middle?”

“Maybe... if I turn them into steel first. But it's a stretch. I don't think most of them would make it all the way to the maw.”

“Okay... okay.” She fell silent, her eyes wandering across the battlefield until they settled on Milo's bat.

“Get up, Piotr. You two are going to work together.”

“How?”

“She throws a card. You hit it.”

“I can do that,” he nodded. “But then we won't have a shield.”

“We wait for my brother to arrive. Then we start pounding that thing.”

“There is still the problem that every tongue I destroy grows back.”

“Hopefully not if the explosions leave enough fire behind.” She rested a hand against the web supporting us, absentmindedly feeling the vibrations running through it. “Once Kito gets here, we'll try evolving a toxin strong enough to kill this thing from the inside.”

“What about Patty and Bastien?” Milo asked, clearly unaware we'd already discussed that. That last assault must have drained him more than I thought.

“We're looking for them.” As I answered, I let my awareness drift into the spiders crawling beneath the living mass. I felt every step through their tiny legs, every strand of silk they spun, every vibration passing through the flesh beneath them. Looking through their eyes, however, accomplished nothing. Beyond the reach of Insects engulfed in shadowlight and Lio's light, everything dissolved into absolute darkness.

“Send Liora too,” Liana said. “Kito's almost here. Let's not waste any more time.”

Lio had already become shadowlight, promptly informed by Anansi of our plans. His body slipped effortlessly through the grasping tongues before diving into the living mass like a hawk dropping onto its prey. With all four limbs tucked close to his body, he undulated through the narrow passages beneath the surface, weaving between folds of flesh like a swimming serpent or passing through their mass whenever that was impossible. Wherever he passed, his natural light flooded hidden crevices beneath the tongues, and through the eyes of my spiders I caught scattered glimpses of his frantic search.

“Got Patricia!” Liana suddenly shouted. She sprang to her feet, closed her eyes for only a moment, then turned toward a point farther down the slope. At her command, her ant-like insects burst from the living flesh there, and a bloom of golden and green shadowlight spread around them.

“She's alive!” Liana called over the deafening roar that filled the cavern, so much like standing beneath the spinning blades of a helicopter. “She's calm, but she's trapped and can't free herself!”

“I'll get her,” Kito offered as he landed on the platform. The six pairs of wings dissolved almost immediately, their relentless buzzing finally falling silent. Sweat ran over his skin, and his breathing came in deep, uneven breaths.

“No, brother.” Liana shook her head. “You stay here. The moment Piotr drops his shield, this thing will try to overrun the platform, and we need you to stop it.” Milo's eyebrows shot up at the sound of his name. A grin spread across his face. He looked more than ready to stop defending and start swinging again.

“At the same time,” Liana continued, “we'll prepare insects capable of rescuing Patricia—”

“And Laurent,” I interrupted. “Liora found him down there.” I pointed toward my lóng as he burst from the sea of pink tongues not far from where Patricia was trapped, though much closer to the pit. “He's restrained by the flesh. One tongue is wrapped around his throat, but he's still breathing. He managed to wedge his hand between his neck and the thing choking him.”

“And Bastien,” Liana finished.

At that very moment, Kito dismissed his wings in a brief flare of shadowlight and released a handful of orchid mantises onto the web. Thanks to my own will, woven into the silk, its adhesive properties only affected creatures on the opposite side. The insects landed without sticking and immediately scattered across the platform just as freely as we could.

Kito reached into their possible futures. Among countless evolutionary paths, he found one he liked. The transformation began at once and the mantises swelled to the size of house cats, their bodies thickening beneath glossy chitin as long, serrated forelegs unfolded into vicious scythe-like blades. At the same time, Kito embodied the same traits himself, his forearms reshaping into matching weapons. More mantises poured from the folds beneath his skin, each immediately forced down the same evolutionary path before joining the others.

Following Liana's commands, the swarm poured from our platform, carving its way through the living terrain. They hacked, sliced, pinned and gnawed at the grasping tongues, opening narrow paths toward our trapped companions.

“Get to work, Kito.” Milo finally rose to his feet. He pulled the bat free from the web beneath him, and with that single motion the protective dome dissolved. In the same heartbeat, the giant that was Kito Chuma reached the edge of the platform, his bladed forearms flashing as he cut down every tongue that dared climb onto the silk. “Elle, darling. Your turn.” He flashed me a grin so broad it seemed almost out of place in the middle of this nightmare. If one didn’t know him, that is.

I pulled a handful of explosive cards from my deck and stepped farther onto the platform while Milo settled into a batter's stance. His shoulders rose and fell with slow, measured breaths. The bat rested high over one shoulder, perfectly still and waiting.

I flicked the first card toward him.

Before releasing it, I turned it to steel with my Authority. The added weight made its flight far steadier, and the instant it entered Milo's reach, his entire body moved as one. His bat, glowing brilliant white beneath layers of shadowlight streaked with red arcs of lightning, connected with a deafening crack.

For the briefest instant, my card became enveloped in the same luminous field his Bases created. Then as it was vanishing out of my aura I gave it explosive identity, watching it cross the cavern in the blink of an eye.

The detonation rocked the entire cavern. Torn fragments of flesh erupted outward, briefly exposing the enormous central column rising from the maw all the way to the ceiling. Countless tongues wrapped around it like living vines, spreading across the overhead flesh in every direction.

I sent another card. Then another. Then another still. Each one became another artillery shell in Milo's hands.

Every explosion ripped away huge sections of the central stem, splitting it apart and leaving burning wounds behind. But no sooner had the flames taken hold than fresh tongues burst from the damaged tissue. Smaller at first, they rapidly thickened, intertwining to replace everything we had destroyed.

Worse still, each wave of regrowth spread farther across the ceiling, the living column broadening as though our assault was teaching it how to grow.