Act 3, Chapter 121: The tongues repeating the words of hatred

Day in the story: 1st February (Sunday), past 15:45 p.m.—approximately 36 minutes remain until the record time is lost

Elle Erikson

“Those tendrils went down his throat, and right after that they started dying!” Kito shouted as he moved quickly with Milo’s arm slung over his shoulder.

“I felt copying-related magic activate when that happened,” Patricia added, running behind them and looking around. The moment she spotted the remaining shadows swimming beneath the surface of the membrane, she locked her gaze onto them without slowing down. “We’re probably about to deal with copies of both Milo and Laurent.”

“They’ll probably come out of those two cocoons in the middle,” Lia concluded as she helped Bastien back to his feet. “Elle, can you—”

She started addressing me, but I anticipated her request. Through one of my eyes, I saw her pointing toward the cocoons being prodded and licked like horroresque ice cream cones by the tongue hanging from above, and I began throwing my explosive cards at them.

For a moment, I watched colorful shadowlight leave prismatic trails of rainbow light in the air as the steel cards flew beyond the reach of my Aura, catching the Identity of explosives right at its edge. One after another, they embedded themselves in the fleshy growths.

“—do exactly what you’re doing,” Liana finished as the first explosion shook the chamber around us.

Instantly, the enormous tongue controlling whatever was happening here shot upward, coiling in on itself, and one by one the huge bony fingers closed around it, sealing it inside their protective shell.

“Skurwysyn!” Piotr shouted and launched himself into the air after his companions released him, spinning the bat and catching it in both hands so he could swing and strike both hands with the force of a baseball player enhanced by the very essence of his sport.

Abandoning whatever degree of control he had over the force of his blow, he hit the horrifying construct with such power that the resulting shockwave slammed through the entire chamber, catching all of us in its wake once again and throwing us to the ground.

Light from outside instantly flooded the space as the tissue enveloping the Eiffel Tower, torn apart by the force of the strike, revealed a sky filled with gray rain clouds and flickering with lightning. Only now, with the breach open, could we hear the thunder of those discharges, sounding like echoes of Piotr’s blow as he landed on the opposite side of the chamber, completing the arc of his jump amidst the crimson rain that followed him.

The left hand that had been shielding the tongue had been so badly shattered by his attack that it was practically disintegrated. As a result, fragments of bone, muscle, and skin, accompanied by a spray of blood, were carried along by the shockwave, some of them flying outside the tower and others scattering across the membrane covering the floor on that side.

At the same time, the smoke surrounding the explosions I had caused began slowly clearing, unfortunately revealing the biological constructs still standing. They were partially destroyed and smoking from the flames engulfing them, resembling the buds of fleshy flowers.

I tried to turn quickly. “Watch out!” I shouted toward Liana and Patricia, but the women had only briefly lost sight of the black shapes racing beneath the surface, and now both of them were fighting against the black tongues.

Kito, being closer to Patricia Paulding, rushed toward her and did everything he could to tear away the tongues groping at her, while Pan cleverly kept both hands clamped over her mouth, preventing the horrible things from forcing their way inside.

Liora was with Liana, but after realizing how futile his efforts were—every tendril he bit through or tore away with his claws was immediately replaced by another—he came up with a different idea. He dove toward the surface they were emerging from and, with all the strength and momentum of a wild animal, began tearing his way through the membrane.

“Batman Protocol!” Kito shouted to everyone around us, but I didn’t recognize the plan. As far as I could remember, they had never discussed it in my presence during our preparations.

“What?” I shouted back, watching Piotr at the other end of the chamber catch his breath while leaning on his bat and spreading his own personal version of a defensive base around himself.

“We have a plan for neutralizing each of us, known to everyone except the person that particular plan concerns. Just in case,” Kito said as he joined me beside Patricia and, like me, tried to repeat Liora’s feat by attacking the tongues right where they emerged from the membrane. My dragon had managed it remarkably well and freed Liana not long after she was caught. “We included you too, but we didn’t let you in on the rest of the plans. Sorry.”

“I understand,” I replied, slicing through a cluster of black tongues right beside Kito’s bladed mantis arm. Meanwhile, my wasps and Liana’s bees began attacking the tongue hanging from the ceiling, biting and driving their stingers into it as often as possible.

Ignoring us, Piotr, having caught his breath, tensed the muscles in his thighs again and prepared for another jump and attack. At the same time, the breach he had torn in the membrane began sealing itself. First, thin tendrils reached across the gap, searching for a connection like newly forming neurons. Once they found one, they pulled one section of tissue toward the other until all daylight was once again cut off from the chamber we occupied and the monstrous skin had fully regenerated.

That was when I realized the original opening Piotr had made had remained open only because, shortly after he created it, I had sent my spiders to cover its walls with their webs.

One of the cocoons in the center of the chamber bloomed, sending fleshy petals outward, and from its center sprang a completely naked version of Piotr, covered in black slime, with everything he had been wearing recreated as biological parts of the new creature. His clothes were now part of his skin, and his baseball bat was an extension of the hand holding it.

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Awakened from the nightmare that was its birth in this place and under these circumstances, the copy was instantly covered in red-and-white shadowlight and launched itself toward Piotr with the same force he had displayed earlier, stopping him before he could jump.

When the protein-made bat collided with the one held by the real Piotr, a concentrated ring-shaped shockwave tore through the chamber, shooting directly upward, downward, and sideways from the point of impact. It split the entire room in half as the tissue in its path was completely severed and began spraying the pudding-like substance from within.

“Fuck. I have to go,” Kito said, rushing toward the two fighting men.

They looked like two sides of a mirror fighting each other, matching every strike with perfect coordination and anticipating each other’s next move. The force of the initial blow had diminished, but every subsequent strike—more concentrated now—was no less deadly to whoever happened to be on the receiving end.

I had just severed the last of the tongues trying to swallow Patricia, and the tendrils restraining her went limp, completely withering away.

“Kito’s job is to get to Piotr and either disarm him or remove the hand holding the weapon, while Laurent tries to immobilize him or send the weapon somewhere else by editing it, and Liana keeps distracting him with repeated insect attacks,” Patricia explained, quickly outlining the plan they had in case Milo ever went rogue against them. “But Milo, despite all his strength, isn’t the biggest problem. If Laurent’s copy can use his abilities—and judging by what’s happening over there”—she pointed toward the two Piotrs, spitting bloody saliva onto the membrane beneath her—“then we have a much more serious problem. Laurent was always the one we feared most. If he puts us in a photograph—”

I cut her off with a raised hand and a nod.

“I understand,” I said, realizing just how serious the situation was.

Bastien could simply make us cease to exist whenever he wanted, provided he won the clash of Authorities against us. And if the creatures created by the monster in the tower were being supported by that monster’s Authority, they could probably overcome the resistance of any one of us with ease.

“What’s the plan for him?” I asked Liana as we ran over to her, Liora, and Laurent, who was taking photographs of the two fighting Piotrs, doing everything he could to shrink the bat that formed as a biological part of the copy—and losing the contest of wills every single time.

“We blind him so he can’t work properly,” she began, sending commands to the mantises Kito had modified earlier at the same time and forcing them to discharge electricity near the second cocoon, which was just beginning to open.

The small insects, gathered in a sizable group around the strange construct, created a chain of localized electrical discharges that leaped from one to another toward the fleshy flower, producing a loud crackle of static and setting the meat on fire wherever it was struck. Unfortunately, the mantises didn’t survive it, catching fire from the flames they themselves had created.

“First temporarily, using whatever we have on hand, meaning the swarm of fireflies modified by my brother that I carry inside myself mainly for this exact occasion, along with the embodiment Kito can take from them. Once that works, we blind him permanently by removing his eyes.”

“Seriously?” I asked, watching as her body suddenly bent to one side in a strange position and then shuddered, opening one of the skin pockets beneath her breast. Fireflies immediately flew out and, guided by her commands, headed toward Kito as he ran toward the two Milos.

The shockwave caused by Piotr’s clone blocking an attack swept through the chamber at that exact moment, throwing us to the ground once again.

“I expected a plan like that,” Laurent said, still trying to help in the fight with Piotr. “I think it’s the best solution.”

“So do we,” Patricia replied.

She pulled some kind of modified pistol from her satchel, its surface lined with crystals through which shadowlight was clearly circulating. Walking toward the two Piotrs, she took aim and fired three shots in quick succession, forcing the fighting clone down onto one knee and giving the real Milo an opening to attack its temporarily exposed head.

Unfortunately, the creature reacted quickly. Slamming the baseball bat down toward the ground, it created a small personal base that deflected Piotr’s strike and knocked the bat from his hand in the process.

Knowing both plans now, I immediately launched myself like a slingshot toward the flying weapon, running and leaping past the second cocoon as it opened. Something resembling Laurent was emerging from it like an insect undergoing metamorphosis.

The difference was that his equipment had become part of his biological body, making him look grotesque, like some cross between a man, an eagle—thanks to his prominent nose—and an armored turtle or armadillo.

Liora was on him the instant the partially burning flower opened. Shadowlight gleamed from the lower, dematerialized part of his body while his front half attacked the copy’s eyes, trying either to bite into his face or claw them out completely.

Unfortunately, he didn’t succeed right away. Laurent raised his armored arms and defended himself against the relentless dragon.

While running, I threw several light cards in his direction as well, forcing them to cast concentrated beams of light straight into the copied Laurent’s face.

“Something’s wrong!” the real Bastien shouted at the same moment, dropping to his knees. “I feel in my Anima that I’m in some kind of conflict with these creatures, like they want something from me!”

Piotr caught the wrist of his clone as it prepared to pick up the bat from the ground and attack him while he was defenseless and protected only by a shadowlight coating. He began twisting the arm, trying to overpower the creature in front of him.

At the same time, Patricia dropped into a kneeling position, braced her weapon, and kept firing shot after shot, alternating between the creature and Laurent’s clone, who was locked in close combat with Liora. Meanwhile, Kito, still running, managed to amplify the light produced by the fireflies Liana had sent, and she immediately directed them to disrupt the second Laurent’s vision.

When I reached Piotr’s discarded bat and grabbed it, lifting it from the bubbling membrane, several things happened at once.

First, in the glare of the blinding light—which I could see all too clearly through the eye Liora lent me—I saw him finally manage to bite into the creature’s face, tearing away a sizable chunk of it while at the same time clawing out its second eye with his rear limbs, which he had materialized specifically for that purpose.

Kito reached the two Piotrs grappling with each other and dropped onto them, positioning himself so that the light radiating from his body blinded the fake Piotr while intensified electrical attacks traveled from the protrusions along his altered back, down his chitin-covered arms, and into his opponent, stunning him. The succession of blows caught Milo’s clone so completely off guard that it began stumbling backward, clutching each newly struck spot in turn with his bat-free hand.

At the same time, the real Milo released the hand he had been holding and allowed himself a brief moment to recover, breathing heavily with his right arm hanging at his side and his left one pressed against his chest.

“Piotr!” I shouted, drawing his attention before throwing the baseball bat toward him in a wide arc. “We still have a few minutes! Take out that tongue up there!”

At the same time, Kito struck again, kicking the creature away from Piotr. Unfortunately, one other thing happened amid all of this that none of us had anticipated.

The real Bastien let out a horrible, air-splitting scream that froze all of us where we stood and forced anyone who needed to turn their head to see him to do so. He was clutching his blood-soaked face, which looked as though something had nearly bitten it in half.

“I can’t see! I can’t see anything!” He kept on shouting, prompting Liora to drop his fight, moving away from the clone.