Subgalaxia: Ch 25

A sliding unease rattled Fane from his dreams.  He held his love close to him, tucked under warm blankets.  Ishan was breathing softly. Fane listened for a tell-tale sign in the darkness.  Silence. There had been no logical reason for his waking. He could not recall a nightmare.  His heart rate was not up. There was a nagging feeling of familiarity, though. One that brought back the metallic smell of the armoury in the basement of the palace.  He drew in a breath and waited.

It had been three days since the coming-of-age ceremony.  In that time, he had made preparations with a machinist to mill a pair of wedding rings.  He had left many of the finer details to Ishan for a wedding at sunset they planned to conduct the night before the launch of the Subgalaxia.  

He had gone out multiple times to ransack vacant houses in the St. Petersburg area in hopes of stocking a defensive armoury.  Small-scale weapons would not do much against the Grey Monster, but they were going to make their stand. He had been surprisingly successful in his ventures.  Though finding the skeletal remains of those who had died from what he came to realize as a biowarfare attack was unsettling. Several of the machinists, local to the area, filled him in later about what had transpired.  Many of those who had survived left the city shortly after. Looters could only carry so much, and many vacant houses sat undisturbed, perfect for scavenging.

They were supposed to have another three days before the creature arrived.  Something nagged, though. The slippery feel of slime oozed across his skin and set alarm bells blaring in his mind.  “Hey, Muse?” Fane whispered in the quiet. He pressed Ishan until the man woke.  

“Fane?” Ishan rubbed at bleary eyes.

“Get dressed and head down to the vault.  Grab everyone you can along the way.” Fane climbed out of bed and packed out his regular arsenal.  This was the first time in days that Ishan could remember Fane this type of sombre. He had reverted back to the quiet stoic.  Ishan grabbed up his over clothes and was dressed and heading out the door by the time Fane opened it for him.

“You sure it’s the monster?” Ishan whispered in the dark of the hall.

“No.  It might be all in my head,” Fane confided.

“Come back safe,” Ishan pulled Fane to him, hugging him fiercely.

“I love you.” Fane kissed him before they went their separate ways.  He slipped down the corridor and the stairs, his boots silent on the concrete.  A restless ache blistered across his scars. He made his way to the stash he had made to load out more to his kit.

A rumble underfoot set the rafters to creaking.  He looked up to watch shifting dust motes fall from I-beams.  “It’s here,” he whispered to himself. He slung a semi-automatic over his shoulder and grabbed up a bowie knife.  Thirty pounds of weaponry was a warm blanket wrapped around him, reassuring in its weight.

“You sure about this?” Bern asked at the door frame.

“Keep your grandson safe, lest you want me haunting you to an early grave.” Fane patted Bern on his shoulder as he made his way past.

“You come back alive.  You make my grandson cry, I will curse your burial,” Bern returned.

“Terms,” Fane called back down the hall as he eased out the door of the warehouse.  Another resounding thud shook the siding, sending the building shuddering like a rock in a tin can.  The air was a vibrating fume of blue rot. The stench of sulfur lay heavy on the ground. It swirled about his feet in swathes.  The horizon burned a sickly green, blurring a bloody dawn. He knew he was awake, but his reality tread too close to his dreams. Tentacles wiggled like maggots above the treeline to disturb the stinking fog.  A screech of death made him shiver.

“You shouldn’t be up here, Ishan,” Sun Hee protested.  Ishan stood in front of a small window in the warehouse and watched Fane walk out toward the trees.

“He’s going to get himself killed,” Ishan hissed under his breath.

“No, he’s going to face his demons.” Bern watched the scene solemnly.

“Why are the glendwellers not helping him,” Ishan accused, turning to Dietrik.

“He made us swear an oath to keep you safe.  We will not break a promise with a Shaman,” Heinrich supplied.  “We should be down in the vault, not up here,” he reiterated.

“Take me from this window, and I will show you hell,” Ishan cautioned.  He was bluffing, and they all knew it. They left him to his devices, all crowding around the tiny window.  They watched in awed silence as the Shaman brought down a curse on the land.

“What?  Do I have the song of the siren?  Sailors drowned from their calls,” Fane growled at the shadowy inferno hiding behind the tree line.  An answering bellow forced the trees to sway and crack. With practiced ease, he released the snap of the sheath at his back and pulled the knife as he ran for the undergrowth.  He palmed the Glock at his hip and used his knife hand to balance as he sighted on the massive target coming into focus.

An insidious fireball of an eye glowered down at him from within the canopy.  A compact hatchback would have easily floated within the pupil. The starburst iris restricted its focus to Fane’s darting form.  He had to fight the itch of worms wiggling beneath his skin as he caught the creature’s attention.

An icy cape exuded from the redhead as he ran, forcing the haze of sulfur to crystalize underfoot in yellow blooms.  “Please come back to me,” Ishan whispered. Fane lept as a tentacle crashed through the trees, sending leaves and mud flying into the air.  Electricity cracked in the clearing, and a flash instantaneously lit the air in a burst of blue flames. The shockwave hit the side of the building, forcing those around the window to take a protective step back.  A whip-thin length of grey-green flesh few out of the dense orange to thump against the window, leaving a dripping blackish purple ooze sliding down the double pane. A blood-curdling scream resonated through the building.

“Kill my people and give me nightmares!  I’ll shred you and take you apart piece by piece, you fucking calamari roll!” Fane seethed under his breath as he dashed and pirouetted under thrashing limbs.  He pulled up and out, slashing open tentacles. A wet heat brushed across his back, and the sting followed closely after. “Really?” He called out to the creature.  “You’ve done worse!” The acid of his void was nothing to the thin cut that had sheared his shotgun off his back. The maw of the creature opened wide, and a massive red orb of energy pulsed at the back of its throat.

“I wouldn’t try it if I were you, darling,” Fane smiled as he ran up the length of one of the creature’s larger appendages.  He dragged his dagger up the length and allowed ice and electricity to burn it from the inside out. The creature gulped back its tirade and shifted, trying to move its mass away from the sudden pain.

He jumped from the limb before a mass of tentacles was able to capture him.  He landed nimbly in a tree and sighted on one of the creature’s eyes. A soft breath steadied his aim, and he pulled.  Nothing. The bullet fell away from a shimmering field of gold.

“Oye, Yoda, didn’t anyone tell ya to stay away from the ‘roids?” Fane jumped back down into the fray.  He cleared the front conglomeration of flailing limbs to land just left of its massive teeth. The creature tried once more to open its maw and let loose its destruction.  A flash of silver beckoned in the night before being swallowed by the creature. “How does the saying go, you ugly grey alien? May the force be with you?” Fane smiled maniacally, a pin stuck between his teeth.  He flipped back and dropped between limbs as a fireball lit a shockwave in the clearing.

“The warehouse will come down on us.” Dietrik reached for Ishan.

“Fane won’t be able to get us out of the vault if it does come down on us,” Ishan snapped, his attention never wavered from his husband.  The flames had singed the blue fog, clearing the air. Leaves and broken branches smouldered in the underbrush, underlighting the horror of the grey monster.  A nauseating skull the size of a mansion pushed through the brush as a nest of tentacles wrestled over its back. Veins and muscles throbbed under the burn patches.

“You promised.  He neglected to make me swear.” Nat padded up to the group in barely more than a pair of hospital pants.

“Bloody hell, no. I almost lost you last time,” Yeller had turned ashen seeing his boyfriend in the flesh.  Fresh scars ran along Nat’s stomach and back. Ishan was stunned to see a pair of large healed scars in his shoulders like he had been hung up by meat hooks.  When he turned for a moment, Ishan was given a view of an extensive series of powermarks that ran across his back in henna brown. The difference between the pale white Nat in the void and the man in the real world was that his hair was a strawberry blonde, and he was covered in a dusting of freckles across the tops of his shoulders and arms and the bridge of his nose.

“They said glendwellers healed fast,” Sophia muttered, glaring at the scars.

Nat smiled with a glint in his eye.  “I won’t go breaking your handy-work, Sophia.”  He turned to Yeller and caught up his hand, “He did a lot for us, Yeller.  I’m making sure to bring him home.”

“You bring yourself back intact and whole this time,” Yeller demanded as he pulled Nat to him and kissed him harshly.  “Keep Tereza safe,” Cashia whispered. Nat hugged him back fiercely and escaped the building. Yeller stood next to Ishan in the centre of the window, now a place of honour as the others crowded around.

“I had watched Sven in Fane’s void.  He’s fast,” Ishan murmured.

“It’s not Sven that’s fighting this,” Cashia replied.

“You would allow Nat to go out into this?” Ishan blinked.

“He can do something that Fane hasn’t figured out yet.  He is a thought-stealer through and through. He can force our transformations.” Dietrik smile could have melted flesh.

“What’s he gonna do, take the monster’s dirty secrets and air them to the press?” Ishan’s heart was in his throat.

“They take the soul and anything they want in it.  Thought stealers can take over a being’s body. Rend tendons, break bones, cause insanity,” Cashia whispered.

“I pushed him after a particularly bad spell and stepped on his toes when it came to Yeller and Cashia.  He forced my shift and…shared a lot of what happened to him that sent him into that spiral. I ended up with bruises from head to toe for a day just by him touching my forehead.  The white streak is his doing,” Dietrick admitted. “He could have broken my ribs. I felt it deep in my bones that he wanted to, but he didn’t. Now I share his nightmares.”

“He still should have.  Would’a taught you to keep your foot out of your mouth,” Yeller hissed to himself under his breath.  “He pulled Cashia’s human form into the real world just because he was curious if he could.”

“That’s dark.” Ishan watched as Fane shouted at Nat.  Nat waived Fane’s worry away and approached the writhing nest of tentacles.  “God, I don’t know who’s scarier, my husband or your boyfriend. At least mine’s armed to the teeth,” Ishan muttered.

“The hell you doing out here, Nat!”  Fane spotted the freckled strawberry blonde walking into the field.

“I’ll stay out of your way, just thought I’d help!”  Nat smiled up at Fane’s bounding antics.

“Don’t go giving your boyfriend any reason for him to pound my face in!” Fane called back as he pushed a burst of ice into a limb.  The spot froze solid beneath him instantaneously. He slammed a spare blade into the spot, shearing the limb in half.

A pit dropped into Fane’s stomach when one of the thin tentacles shot out at Nat at high speed.  The man brushed it away before it could make contact. The creature withdrew from the touch, leaving a semicircle of cleared grass around him.

“What’d you do!” Fane called down.

“Rebounded its power back into it!” Nat called up as he stalked his way toward an unruly limb.

“That’s why mine’s scarier,” Yeller whispered back.

Nat reached a hand out and grasped onto one of the appendages and held tight, fighting with it in an overpowered game of tug-of-war.  Fane lept down from his position up in a hoard of limbs to cover Nat’s exposed body. Ishan grasped onto Yeller’s hand in fear. The limbs slashed in fury at the blockade, drawing blood across Fane’s back and legs.  The tentacle went rigid as the two talked quickly. Fane nodded and slashed at a flailing tentacle, slicing it clear of them. Nat pointed up toward the head and then pointed off to the side of the skull.

Fane stepped away from Nat and asked him one more question.  Nat deflected, yelling for Fane to go. Fane pressed a blade into Nat’s hand and turned.  The bodyguard pulled his way up the vast creature, making for the head as Nat had directed. 

“What are they doing?” Corbin asked pensively.

“Something a nuclear bomb could not,” Benj ground his teeth.  

Nat fell back from the creature to the safety of the building, ready to bolt for the door.  Yeller popped his head out. “The hell are you two doing?” he demanded, reaching out to pull Nat in.

“I have to stay out here in case Fane needs directions,” Nat yelled back over the din of the shrieking creature.

“What did you do?” Yeller asked.

“Found the damn thing’s weak spot.  It has ear holes like birds, just stupid times bigger.  I sent Fane up to one. Thing has a force field it throws up with fuel based projectiles.  Shooting it is futile. I don’t have the strength to take the thing down like I did with Michael’s wings, but I at least rattled its nerves enough to find something it didn’t like,” Nat smiled, his teeth gleaming malevolently.

“Right.  Get your butt in here if it gets worse.”

“It can completely level this tin can, Yeller.  It won’t matter where I am if it baulks from its fixation with Fane.  Only reason it hasn’t pushed farther than the woods. Fane’s what it’s after, and as long as he’s on it, the creature won’t move forward,” Nat cautioned.

“If we’re both dying at the same time, I’d rather die holding you, if I had the option, mo gra,” Yeller closed the door behind him.

Ishan fidgeted as he watched Fane dodge and dash across the beast’s limbs.  He practically floated across massive gaps of empty air. His knives flashed as he let them fly from his fingers, pinning some of the appendages to trees, rending others to ribbons.  Electricity coursed across his body, leaving him a vibrating white-blue. Everywhere his flesh touched, ice caused grey-green skin to mottle black and blister. “Why isn’t he shooting the bastard?” Ishan spat.

“Nat says it has a force field.  He’s probably saving the bullets for the brain in that ugly skull.  It’ll take more than one from those peashooters to affect that thing,” Yeller guessed as he returned to the window.  He related what the plan was from Nat to the rest of the group. Soon the machinists had emerged from the vault to crowd around the glendwellers to vie for a spot by which to watch the action.  Nat commanded from the ground, deflecting limbs that came near him with a warning touch. He acted as the guardian of the building while Fane scaled the massive height of the creature, constantly climbing upward.  The thing was panicking, swatting and bashing at Fane, the mosquito in its midst.

Purple-black blood ran wherever Fane was able to slash, tormenting the thing.  The sulfuric fog ignited in sparks across its skin every time it oozed forth from its orifices.  Electricity crackled across Fane’s skin, burning off the noxious fumes at every turn.

The prince was not aware that he held his breath as the man cleared the last hurdle and pushed forward to the side of the beast’s skull.  He stood next to it and was not more than an ant to it. Ishan guessed that he stood at least eleven stories up at that point, and yet the monster’s skull rose higher still.  Skin and muscle sloughed around the shattered teeth where the grenade had made it’s impact. Massive feral eyes kept track of Fane’s persistence. The crying shrieks that vibrated the rafters told them all that Fane had irritated it on his way up.  

Fane waived down to Nat who ran from the building at the signal.  “No!” Yeller pushed himself up against the window to watch with horror as Nat dashed to the monster.  The world outside the window dimmed as if a massive cloud suddenly blocked out the sun, throwing the scene into pitched red and grey shadows.  Fane disappeared in the sudden chaos.

“Where’d he go?” Ishan demanded, searching the ground and the writhing limbs.  He feared the creature had finally captured Fane.

“Used the cover of the shadows to disorient the thing and made for the ear, I hope,” Dietrik guessed.  A rattling crash sent uprooted trees and broken foliage flying into the air as a screech louder than before shattered windows starting at the far end of the warehouse.  Yeller pulled Hana under him as the other glendwellers grabbed their mate’s protectively. Bern wrapped around Ishan and took him to the ground to protect him in time for the window they stood in front of to burst.  The air pressure changed suddenly. Their ears popped, some ruptured at the distinct difference. Wind and mud and bark shot through the building like shrapnel in a hurricane.

They listened to the warbling scream of the creature as they all huddled together under the window.  “That better be that thing’s death rattle,” Zola hissed, her voice lost in the wind.

Minutes dragged by.  The building threatened destruction.  Chaos abounded. Ishan heart pounded hard enough that he could feel it pulsing in his wrists.  The putrid smell of sulfur, burnt and fresh, seeped into the cavernous warehouse. An unsettling stillness washed over them.  The wind and shrapnel cut out. “Is it over?” Sun Hee asked timidly.

“Oye, Yeller, come get your boyfriend!” they all startled at the sound of Fane’s voice shouting in the silence.  Yeller quickly unwrapped himself from Hana and popped his head up to the broken window to see what had happened. Fane supported Nat under one shoulder.  A bleeding gash ran across the younger man’s eyebrow. Yeller and Ishan pushed out of the crowd and fought with the warped door. The glendwellers, machinists, Ishan, and the scientists emerged into the horror of the woods behind the warehouse.

The rank stench of the creature was atrocious.  Its bowels had evacuated upon its death, leaving an oily sludge pooling beneath mountains of tentacles.  The monstrous skull and its remaining flesh lay atop the nest at an odd angle. Its massive eyes had gone glassy and unfocused.

Ishan and Yeller ran to Fane, who stood in a circle of the dead thing’s appendages.  “Is he okay?” Yeller called. “Are you okay?” Ishan pressed as they clambered over shark-skin rough hide.

“I’m all right.  Just light-headed.  It’s been a while since I was up and in human form for more than a couple minutes here and there,” Nat smiled reassuringly.  Yeller hefted him into his arms. “Princess hold much?” Nat teased.

“I put you over fireman style, and your internal sutures might burst.  You look healed, but I’m not trusting it for several more months,” Yeller kissed Nat’s temple and turned back to the warehouse.  “You did great, mo gra.”

Ishan approached Fane, who was bent over, puffing for air.  He was covered in a thin film of greenish-yellow muck and grey matter.  Red blood swirled in the gunk. “You got ‘im!” Ishan praised.

“I need a shower,” he smiled wearily as he led the way back over the tentacles, Ishan in tow.

“Is it really dead?” Ishan asked, looking back up at the gruesome sight above him.  The noxious sulfur was dissipating as the sun burned off the haze.

“It better be.  I went through all the ammo I had and all my knives to hack it apart from the inside out.  That was more disgusting in the real world than in my dreams,” he opened the door for Ishan.  A crowd of onlookers greeted Fane as he stepped into the warehouse. Cheers erupted, startling him.  He looked about bashfully. After several minutes of handshakes and congratulations, Sophia was able to drag him away to the medical ward to help get him clean, disinfected, and stitched up while the rest of the crowd filtered out of the building to get their fill of the grey monster and begin the arduous process of removing it’s carcass before it started decomposing.

Chapel Orahamm (C) 2022-2023. All Rights Reserved.

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