Act 3, Chapter 120: The searching tongue

Day in the story: 1st February (Sunday), past 15:30 p.m.—approximately 51 minutes remain until the record time is lost

Elle Erikson

Holding his baseball bat, Piotr ran a hand along its still-smooth surface. Electric shadowlight followed his fingers as they moved over the weapon, leaving behind a ghostly trail of that strange light.

All of us watched in anticipation of how he would begin his attack, but despite the usual haste so characteristic of him, this time Piotr seemed to be giving himself more time to think about how to create a passage for us. His meditation lasted for several heartbeats in the silence we had created, after which his jaw tightened and his gaze sharpened, shifting from the bat to the ceiling above us. Clenching both hands around the handle, he raised it upward, set one leg forward, and leaned his body and the weapon back.

Everyone else had long since moved away from him—including me. None of us wanted to risk getting caught in the shockwave caused by that man’s swing.

Focused on the attack, he lowered his chin and straightened the baseball bat, causing the shadowlight that had been surrounding it with white radiance, cut through by electric crimson discharges, to flow off the weapon and settle over his body as well. Then, swinging with everything he had, he struck the pulsing muscular tissue above him.

The moment contact came, the tongues bent and caved inward, only to completely vanish at the point of impact in that same second—as though stretched out in time—and tear apart in the immediate area.

The column of pure physical force he unleashed tore a hole through the structure and the mass built upon it, instantly letting light from the chamber suspended above us pour into the vertical shaft where we stood.

A blast of compressed air followed the strike, focused into a single point, and although each of us had been prepared for Piotr’s attack, only Liora due to his disregard for laws of physics and Kito, thanks to his mass witnessed it with relative grace. The latter was pulled forward with dignity by the sudden change in air pressure and fell forward onto his hands, dropping to his knees when the shockwave came racing after what Piotr had done.

The rest of us were carried by that spectacular blow—one that almost mirrored the force of nature itself—like marionettes cut from their strings. Dragged by the sudden force of that wave, I was flung forward onto my stomach, hit the web my spiders had created, and tumbled several meters ahead.

The same thing happened to Liana and Laurent, who, because of how close he was to Piotr, slammed straight into his legs, making the man who had opened a way for us stagger. Patricia lay nearby, trying to preserve some dignity by propping herself up on her hands.

“Time to stop resting, folks,” Piotr said, addressing us as he looked at each of us in turn, letting his gaze linger on each person for only a moment. Resolve and determination were written across his face.

“Milo, I don’t know if you’re aware—” Kito Chuma replied as he slowly pushed himself upright on the webbing, which responded to even his slightest movement with vibrations. I found myself wondering whether I was the only one who could feel them, thanks to the spiders resting their legs against the webs as they hid closer to the walls, observing the world for me through that extraordinary sensitivity to sound. The thought occurred to me because, to an untrained ear and body, the web seemed perfectly taut and practically motionless. “—But your strike knocked us all down.”

“I’ve always had that kind of knock-’em-off-their-feet effect on women, but hearing it from you, brother, is a real compliment.” Piotr stretched his smile into an imitation of a roguish grin, but the way his eyebrows drew inward over the muscular ridge of his brow left no room for doubt—the man was ready for whatever waited above us.

A moment later, he bent both legs beneath himself and, still carried by the force granted to him through contact with his weapon, launched himself upward through the tunnel he had blasted through the ceiling.

“If you could,” Patricia said to Kito, who was transforming his massive arms into chitin-armored appendages resembling something you might find on a grasshopper or a beetle. Bristling with tiny spikes, they looked like mix between a biology and hydraulic lifts.

Interestingly, this time, within the golden-green glow of shadowlight characteristic of both siblings, only his forearms, biceps, and the joints around his shoulders underwent the transformation, while his hands and wrists remained completely human.

Interlacing his fingers to form a small platform, he stood at the bottom of the passage his teammate had created and gave Patricia a single nod. Then he dropped into a wide squat, lowering the cupped hands far enough for Patricia to step onto it without difficulty.

Once she planted a foot there and grabbed onto the man’s shoulders, Kito braced himself and, with strength enhanced by his magic, hurled her upward where Piotr caught her by the forearms and pulled her up.

Meanwhile, as Kito prepared to offer the same assistance to his sister, I simply jumped onto his shoulders, pushed off from them, and used the adhesive power offered by my suit to climb the rest of the way and pull myself onto the surface.

Liora flew after me, passing straight through the solid floor as though it weren’t there at all, and together we began looking around the area we had found ourselves in.

There was no doubt that this was the top floor of the Eiffel Tower, although contrary to the aesthetic we had encountered so far, it wasn’t covered in tongues. Instead, it was lined with something resembling a transparent membrane filled with a blue-white liquid.

The liquid itself wasn’t completely transparent and obscured our view of the version of Paris outside, the one preserved in this splinter’s memory. Even though Milo had made a sizable hole and I have expected the fluid inside the membrane to start pouring out like water from a cracked aquarium, the resulting stream flowed in a remarkably controlled and sluggish manner, more like gelatin or pudding. The membrane around the breach also sealed itself again quickly.

“Do you see that, human?” Liora flew closer to me, hovered in the air, and turned his face toward a strange dark shape floating in the distance beyond the membrane. He knew perfectly well that the movement of his head, where the eye he had created was located—an eye granted by Identity the ability to transmit images to me—would be enough to show me what he wanted me to look at.

“Strange, that’s for sure,” I replied just as Piotr grabbed Liana and pulled her up. Urged on by the new command I had given them, my spiders climbed the walls of tongues, dragging webs behind them along the tunnel Milo had created, just in case.

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“Aside from those enormous hands with interlaced fingers hanging above us and those black shapes floating in the liquid, there’s nothing else here. But nothing attacked us immediately, either.” Patricia spoke as she approached me, tapping a finger against her chin while adjusting with her other hand the strap slung over her shoulder, which held some of the medical supplies she carried. “Maybe this will finally be some kind of noncombat challenge the Splinter created for us.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Piotr said as he grabbed Laurent and pulled him up.

The moment Bastien planted both feet on the floor made from that strange but rigid membrane, a ripple traveled through the fluid trapped inside it, and the entire chamber shuddered, gently throwing us off balance.

Kito had just enough time to leap up and join us before the hands hanging above began, one after another, slowly separating the fingers that had until now remained clasped together.

“Get ready!” Liana shouted when she saw it.

“For what, for fuck’s sake?” Piotr shot back, grabbing the bat he had previously tucked behind his shirt and gripping it tightly in both hands.

Meanwhile, Kito released his mantises onto the gently rippling biological floor and began evolving them toward some as-yet-undetermined purpose, searching for something he could consider a general enhancement.

At the same time, I released an entire swarm of paper wasps, ready to sting, and sent them throughout different parts of the chamber to patrol the area, searching for and reacting to threats. Liana had a similar idea, and her green-and-gold glowing bees rose into the air in far greater numbers.

Laurent, meanwhile, took photographs of our surroundings, turning again and again as he prepared for unknown threats, illuminating the already bright chamber even further with the flashes of his camera.

One by one, the fingers above us bent away from each other, sending the sound of bones cracking after being held in one position for too long through the air. Each movement seemed disconnected from the others, as though the fingers did not belong to a single organism but moved independently of one another.

A moment later, however, it became clear that what the hands had been concealing was yet another massive, coiled tongue.

The saliva covering it stretched between the opening fingers like horrible, slimy garlands. Pulled downward by gravity, they soon began extending toward the floor, glistening in the light with moisture.

The tongue beneath all of it began unfolding section by section like an accordion until its pointed, forked tip touched the membranous floor dozens of feet below. Then it began moving across the surface, flicking and hissing like a snake’s tongue.

The membrane reacted immediately, and I felt its consistency change at once. Where only moments before it had been rigid enough to walk across without difficulty, it now became flexible and pudding-like, sticking to the soles of our boots—or to Kito’s and Liana’s bare feet—the same way the dripping saliva did.

Liana lifted one foot in disgust at that exact moment, stretching the membrane along with the movement. It tore apart, yet still behaved like a thick, gluey substance clinging stubbornly to her skin.

“What do we do?” Piotr asked Liana, looking to her as our tactician.

“Hard to say. It isn’t attacking yet, but something has definitely changed to our disadvantage,” she replied.

“It’s examining us,” Patricia said, spreading both arms out to her sides and closing her eyes. Individual threads of silver shadowlight clung to her and circled around her outstretched limbs, as though the light itself allowed her to discern our opponent’s intentions. “Soulmarks of Understanding, and a Soulmark of Copying.”

“Copying? That doesn’t sound good,” Kito said. Satisfied with one of the changes he had made to his mantises, he began altering his own body. Chitinous plates emerged along his back, but instead of being long and uniform like those covering the insects’ wings, they were segmented and bristled with strange protrusions ending in rounded tips. Electrical discharges began occasionally arcing between them.

“Piotr, can you deal with that tongue in the middle? What do you think, sister?”

“I think we’re unfortunately not getting out of this without a fight. We’re practically at the top already, so whatever you destroy should be fine, as long as it isn’t the structure we’re standing on,” Liana replied.

At the same time, she took control of the mantises her brother had used for his transformation and sent them toward the nearby tongue probing the ground.

“Your wish is my command, princess!” Piotr shouted as he prepared to jump, bending his knees and gripping the baseball bat in his right hand.

Just before he could launch himself, however, the membrane beneath his feet shuddered. One of the black shapes swimming through the strange slime moved directly beneath him, and black tongues coated in glistening muck burst from the surface. They seized him, wrapping around his calves, waist, back, and all the way up to his shoulders, pinning him to the ground.

Kito and I reacted instantly. I used the cards held between my fingers, giving them the identity of the steel claws and slashed at the tendrils restraining him, severing one of them, while Milo grabbed the one trying to reach his throat and squeezed it in his free right hand. Kito seized several others with both hands and pulled them apart. We struggled like this for a heartbeat.

“What the hell is this?” Liana shouted in surprise.

“I feel… weaker…” Piotr muttered under his breath as the color drained from his face, leaving him paler with every passing second. Few of the many tongues slithering over his body were desperately trying to find their way into his mouth. I carefully slashed a few of them, while Kito tried his best to pull exactly those away.

“Sorry, man,” I said, springing away from him while sending my minions in his direction as they crawled out of the opening through which we had all entered. I hoped they’d be enough to help stop the assault he endured.

I sprinted several steps away, seeing through my other eyes how both women watched my strange reaction, slowly turning their heads to follow my movements. Together with Liora, I reached Laurent, who, like Milo, had been caught by the black tendrils. Something I noticed contrary to the others, because directions didn’t matter much for my vision anymore.

Unfortunately, unlike the larger man, Bastien had immediately been dragged down closer to the floor. On his knees, he struggled against the tongues trying to force their way into his mouth.

The moment I reached him, I began hacking and slicing through the tongues while my lóng tore into them with its teeth and claws.

Patricia reacted to my abandoning Piotr by rushing toward him to help free him, while Liana sprinted in my direction.

I summoned Ghostflame from the Domain and, turning it in my hand so the blade pointed downward, threw it toward the approaching woman in a controlled manner.

Liana reacted instantly, catching the knife and slashing through the tongues wrapped around her former fiancé with agile control over the blade. A few strikes later, a large portion of those black tongues had been cut off right at the base, allowing Laurent to rise into a half-crouch and begin straightening his legs, as though he were pushing a weight as he tried to stand fully upright.

Bastien, however, was not among the most muscular members of the group—to put it mildly, he was at the very bottom of that list—so even aided by the Authority of his soul, he was the weakest of us all and struggling badly.

One of those slimy tendrils took advantage of that. Despite all of us attacking it relentlessly, it somehow managed to slip through, escaping the notice of me, Liora, and Liana, and the moment Laurent took a breath, it forced its way into his mouth.

The instant I noticed him beginning to choke, I quickly cut it with my card-claws, slightly slicing Laurent’s cheek in the process and drawing blood. But the moment I did, all the other tendrils reaching for him withered and died in some strange way.

Seeing that, I left Laurent braced in place and gasping for air and turned back toward Piotr. By then, he was already being freed from the dying tongue-tendrils both by himself—his color and his shadowlight armor having returned—and by Patricia and Kito, who were tearing them to shreds and throwing the pieces onto the pulsing ground.

Two things, however, did not escape my notice. Two additional black shapes were racing toward us from the enormous hands spread above us, moving through the walls like Unreflected, and near the tongue probing the ground, the membrane bulged and two tall, narrow cones rose from that spot, pulsing with a strange, cold light.

The serpent-like tongue hanging down from above kept licking them over and over, leaving behind a layer of thick, glistening saliva that seemed to make those protrusions thicker, making them fuller and fuller each time, as though the tongue were weaving a cocoon of spit material around whatever the membrane had bulged out of itself.