Chương 238: Act 3, Chapter 87: Good news, bad news… situation

Day in the story: 29th January (Thursday), around 2 a. m—1 hour into the time trial Elle Erikson With most of our group already in the bunker, I felt like the instant responsibility of dealing with the threat at hand fell onto my shoulders. Liana stood close by me, but she seemed momentarily frozen by the sudden appearance of the biological swastikas with finger-covered faces at each arm's end. When they rolled toward us in that unnatural manner, I reacted on instinct.

A quick focus onto my own spellbook, and the first of the arms that shot in the direction of Lia's face met the paper shield I'd just summoned in front of her. I painted over it to look like the platforms created by the leg enhancement Victor had made in the prosthesis—the colors suggested they were see-through, with vague outlines of shimmering ends at the edges.

So when it appeared and accepted my Identity Authority to become just that, it stopped in the air, fixed in its position and completely translucent, due to the power of animation. The face of the creature, crowned by fingers on each side, hit the shield I'd just created, breaking its nose in a bloody expulsion, while I launched toward Liana, taking her away just before another of the monsters landed on the ground, ready to strike. This one met the extended and opened Ella in her shield form.

When the paper shield dissipated, completely erased from existence after copying the properties of the one created by the prosthesis device in Alex's leg, our team had already taken notice of the commotion. Piotr bolted toward the one that tried to grab either me or Lia—and we both did our best to gain distance. He was near us in just a second and pummeled the monster in its midsection. This time, however, his hit was much more focused and less devastating. There was no follow-up thunder of sound, no shockwave.

The creature must have felt it nonetheless, as it turned and slid through the ground, creating a rift in its wake. I was dodging the continuous attacks of the other one at the same time, as different appendages tried to go around my impromptu shield and catch me or Lia, who stayed behind. Finally, two of those multiple-jointed arms grabbed the edges of my umbrella and tried pulling it away. Milo was there in time to smash that creature away too, sending it rolling across the ground.

It was right then that a bigger version of those monsters' arms appeared behind the treeline, extending high before smashing onto the ground, destroying all the trees and shaking the earth.

"Kurwa!" Piotr shouted. When another arm tore its way up from underground, the earth itself seemed to recoil. Boulders, slabs of broken concrete, uprooted trees, and whole curtains of soil cascaded from its pale, corpse-colored flesh. The limb was monstrously huge—corded with thick ropes of muscle beneath skin matted in sparse blonde hair—and the wind blowing from that direction brought in the smell of sweat and iron. By the time another elbow breached the surface, the rest of the guys had already reached us.

"Are you fine?" Laurent's voice cut through the thunder of grenade blasts—the dreamed Allied forces were breaching the bunkers to our sides and those that followed us, parted and followed the beach force from our high vantage position. He was already snapping photos of the creatures Piotr had driven back, the flashes from the cameras mounted to his arms bursting one after another in quick succession, while his fingers worked on the display.

"Yes," Lia answered through gritted teeth. Shadowlight seeped from her body in slow streams, and countless tiny lights answered from the grass ahead, blinking awake like stars scattered beneath and far in front of our feet. I nodded as well.

"We have kind of a bad news, good news situation here," Patricia said as she joined us.

"The soulmark that was underground is no longer there," she added while those lights rose into the air and moved quickly toward the monsters that were just trying to get us.

"And the good news?" Kito asked, as his body covered in the same kind of shadowlight his sister used. Golden and green, like honey and leaves.

"That was the good and the bad news at the same time." Paulding pointed toward the larger creature.

"It is our soulmark?" Piotr asked. When Patricia answered with a firm nod, his face split into a manic grin.

"That is fucking great news! Saves us a whole lot of time, and it's right here in the open!" he shouted, turning back toward our opponents. The larger monster had fully risen by then. The ground buckled beneath its weight. Entire chunks of forest slid off its body as it straightened, shedding dirt and shattered stone like a waking titan crawling out of its own grave. Unlike the smaller creatures, this thing wore no military uniform.

Instead, slabs of rust-dark armor had been fused directly into its flesh—vast bunker-like plates riveted into pale meat, as though someone had dismantled an old wartime battleship and hammered its remains into the monster's body. Jagged artillery turrets protruded from its shoulders and spine, rotating with shrill metallic groans toward us one after another. Between the armor plating, swollen veins pulsed beneath translucent skin stretched too tightly over something impossibly huge.

It was clear that the bad news were heading our way. Then the smaller nazi creatures started dropping from its back. They peeled themselves free from folds in its flesh and crashed into the remains of the woods below—dozens of pale mockeries tumbling down through shattered branches and burning leaves like parasites abandoning a carcass.

"Can we even challenge something that massive?" Kito asked and then when that light he produced finally settled, his body began to change. At first his torso broadened with a wet series of cracks, stretching longer as muscles rippled violently beneath his skin. Another pair of legs burst from his sides near the waist, forcing his body lower before all four limbs twisted backward with insectile precision. Bones snapped and reformed audibly while dark chitin spread over his flesh in jagged plates.

His shoulders split wider too. Arms elongated next, thinning unnaturally before his forearms sharpened into curved mantis-like scythes, edges gleaming with a metallic sheen. His spine arched hard enough that I thought it would break, and from it erupted two folded wings wrapped in armored shells thick enough to resemble knightly pauldrons. Layer after layer of emerald-black carapace crawled over him, locking together with clicking sounds until barely any human skin remained visible.

A serrated crest rose around his head, encasing it like the crown of some predatory insect king while still leaving his face visible within the protective frame. His eyes reflected light strangely now—multifaceted, glimmering with predatory focus. When he finally straightened to his full height, towering over us on four bladed legs, he no longer looked human at all.

"I will deal with smaller ones, Milo—""I will do it," Piotr said, striking his bat against the paved ground in steady, rhythmic intervals. In the meantime, the monsters trying to grab us shrank in bursts of light as Laurent strained against them. Sweat rolled down from his hairline, his face twisted in effort while reality itself bent under his photograph editing skills.

And as the creatures diminished, the ants—or whatever horrors Lia had unleashed—swarmed over them in ravenous black tides, stripping flesh from bone with terrifying efficiency.

"I've seen you produce a shield for Lia, Elle. Can you do it again to protect us from the shells this thing is going to send at us?"

"I think so. Depends on the power behind them," I replied. Kito was already far ahead of us, tearing through the smaller Nazi monsters like an enormous praying mantis he'd become. His bladed limbs rose and fell in silver arcs, slicing bodies apart with wet crunches and sprays of steaming blood. The insects Lia sent with him crawled into wounds, eye sockets, mouths—any opening they could find—finishing off anything left twitching. Together, the siblings reduced the living swastikas into butchered heaps.

"Good. Take the smaller ones," Peter ordered, lifting the bat into a stance ready to strike. Shadowlight poured over the weapon in thick waves now, coating the steel in vibrating crimson tide. The first barrage followed immediately after, lighting up the sky in oranges and yellows. In its glow, we caught the silhouette of the hovering man-o-war horror we had seen earlier. Fortunately for us, the creature pivoted its monstrous body toward the Eiffel Tower and continued flying in that direction.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. The colossal cannons mounted across the giant's armored frame erupted one after another with deafening concussive booms. Massive artillery shells screamed toward us, tearing through the air so fast the sky itself seemed to split around them. Trails of smoke and burning sparks followed in their wake like the claws of falling meteors. I reacted instantly. First, I summoned a group of art-crafters.

The tiny spider-like minions spilled into existence around me, accepted my command without hesitation, and skittered through the grass toward the forest ahead. I hoped they'd reach the giant and begin painting over its flesh the moment an opening appeared. Then I focused on the incoming bombardment. Laurent was already resizing shells midair, forcing them to become smaller through sheer effort of will and even twisting a few back against the current of the barrage.

Veins bulged at his temples as flashes from his cameras strobed like battlefield lightning. My first shield shimmered into existence as I leapt upward to intercept one of the rounds. I left another behind me. Then another beneath that. Three translucent barriers hung motionless in the air, glowing at the edges, yet see-through, and as though gravity itself no longer applied to them. I'll need more, I sent toward Anansi so she could direct replication of the paper shield. [Already on it.] Luckily for us, once an artistic creation had been reproduced true to the spirit of the original, its anchor could be reused instantly—either for identical manifestations of already created pieces or for new works carrying the same underlying truth. The shell struck and the explosion erased the first shield instantly in a blinding bloom of fire and pressure. Then one of the colossal rounds reached us. Piotr handled it exactly like he promised.

With a single clean swing, his bat connected against the artillery shell with impossible force. Shadowlight exploded from the impact in concentric ripples, and the shell reversed direction intact, screaming back toward the colossus at even greater speed. The sonic boom from the strike was deafening. Then another followed. And another after that. Each impact cracked across the battlefield like the wrath of some ancient storm god, until the air itself trembled continuously from the thunder of Piotr's counterattacks.

It became quickly obvious those detonations were not going to stop anytime soon, so I dismissed the Authority from my rabbit ears and focused entirely on mobility—jumping and reapplying shields wherever they were needed while the world around us drowned in artillery fire and screaming metal. Even the shadow-spawned Allied forces set-up their mortars and started firing on the Nazi giant. When their rounds and the returned shells struck the colossus, its slow advance stalled to a standstill.

The gigantic body swayed backward beneath the bombardment, whole sections of its armored bulk rupturing into clouds of dust, smoke, and molten scrap. It moved like a walking fortress—every movement of its massive arms slow like that of a sloth looking for another branch. There was no agility in it, nor any grace. And as more and more of the rotating gun turrets were blasted into twisted heaps of smoking metal, an idea struck me the moment I was freed from shield duty.

I dropped onto all fours in a catlike crouch and turned toward Laurent.

"Take a picture of me." He and the girls all raised their eyebrows.

"And edit me onto one of the returning shells."

"You want to ride one of them?" Patricia shouted.

"That's insane!"

"I love it!" Piotr yelled while batting another artillery shell back toward the creature towering over the battlefield.

"Do it!"

"I can't do that. It's suicide."

"You mean you won't, not that you can't," I snapped back.

"I know you can!"

"Would you question me or Kito if we asked?" Piotr barked.

"Do what the lady says!"

"Fine!" He took a quick photo, fingers already dancing across the screen of his mounted display. A heartbeat later Laurent's Authority brushed against my soul, asking permission for the edit to become real. I accepted in an instant. In the blink of an eye I appeared clinging to the side of a screaming artillery shell hurtling back toward the monster at impossible speed, spider-like limbs of my suit anchoring me to the metal as the world became nothing but wind, thunder, and violence.

The approach lasted only seconds. The giant burned beneath the damage already inflicted upon it. Entire bunker-like protrusions that housed the cannons had been peeled open by explosions, exposing raw pale flesh beneath slabs of iron plating. Craters the size of houses ruptured across its body with every impact. When I got close enough, I leapt. Momentum carried me forward through the smoky air while the rotors on my palms slowed my descent just enough to keep me from splattering across the creature's flesh.

The shell I abandoned struck a second later somewhere below me with enough force to shake the entire monster and steer me off-course. And then something red tore across the battlefield beneath me. A crimson comet ripped through the grassy plain, carving a trench in the earth before launching upward in an eruption of dirt and white shadowlight. The air cracked in its wake like the sky itself had split open. Piotr slammed into the monster before I even landed.

The impact alone detonated flesh and steel outward in every direction. Before the debris had time to fall, he was already moving—his bat swinging in a savage upward arc toward one of the colossal arms planted ahead to support the creature's advance. Thunder exploded through the fleshy battlefield. The strike sheared skin from muscle. The next obliterated the muscle beneath. Blood erupted in torrents, spraying across the shattered armor plating as Piotr kept swinging with brutal, rhythmic violence.

The bones underneath had been reinforced with iron and steel, yet one by one they still cracked apart beneath the barrage. Entire sections of the arm collapsed into splintered fragments and pulverized dust, but Milo finally slowed down—whether due to the damage inflicted or his own exhaustion—that was yet to be determined.

And finally, as he slammed on the brakes, I landed and immediately broke into a run along the creature's opposite arm near the elbow joint, the flesh beneath my feet convulsing with every step I took. My art-crafters were already somewhere below me, but within my aura. Dozens of them skittered across the giant's body, finishing vast murals painted directly onto its pale flesh. Rivers of sickly green paint spiraled into enormous fields of corrosive acid rendered in violent strokes and flowing lines.

The moment they finished, I gave the murals Authority and those paintings—hidden from the eyes of my team—became real. Acidic devastation erupted across the monster's body in screaming waves that dissolved flesh, armor, and everything unfortunate enough to be nearby. My minions vanished instantly within the unholy flood, consumed by the very creation they had birthed. The arm struck by my magic buckled under its own weight as the monster lost control over it.

The one destroyed by Milo broke apart entirely, splitting in two with a wet metallic crack. The severed half crashed into the woods below, flattening trees beneath a rain of blood, steel, and shattered bone. I summoned a dozen explosive paper spiders sent them toward three remaining cannons nearby and sprinted toward the crater where Milo had landed. The giant's flesh quivered beneath my feet with every distant artillery impact.

I slapped both palms against the creature's skin and activated the silk-producing glands I had painted onto them. Thick strands erupted instantly, anchoring themselves onto the monster's skin as I threw myself backward into the air. For a moment gravity took me, but the steel-hard spider silk held my weight effortlessly as I swung downward in a clean arc and landed beside Milo near the smoking crater.

"Whoa," he muttered, one hand pressed against his chest while the other leaned heavily onto the bat supporting his entire body weight. The moment I touched ground, I flicked my fingers. Above us the explosive spiders detonated one after another across the creature's body. Fire and ruptured flesh blossomed in violent chains of explosions, the shockwave reverberating through the colossal frame beneath our feet hard enough to nearly throw Milo off balance again. He leaned harder onto the bat.

"Are you the out-of-wedlock child of Spider-Woman and Batman or something?"

"Maybe," I replied, glancing upward just in time to see the rest of the team approaching on the back of Kito's transformed body.

"You, on the other hand, hit hard enough to make every superhero protagonist in history feel insecure." He barked out a tired laugh.

"We probably need to find this thing's heart or some shit." As he spoke, the monster dragged itself toward the shoreline with its remaining three arms. Every movement shook the earth beneath us. The grotesque faces hidden within the fingered maws at the ends of those limbs devoured everything they touched—trees, stone, even wreckage disappearing into rows of grinding teeth as they pulled the colossal body forward.

They mirrored perfectly the way Nazism and its armed forces moved to swallow everything in their path with monstrous appetite. Around us the Allied bombardment continued relentlessly. Streams of artillery and magical fire hammered into the creature's back, tearing fresh wounds through armor and flesh alike.

"Kito's gonna be spent after this," Milo continued between breaths.

"He can't maintain a transformation this massive for long. It strains his Soul's Psyche, like nothing else."

"You don't look much better yourself." That earned me a wide grin despite the exhaustion written all over his face.

"Psyche is what you call the part responsible for producing Authority? Like a muscle of the soul?" I asked, seeking clarification. It was the first time I'd heard the term.

"I'm built for short bursts of extremely unhealthy violence," he admitted.

"Very explosive. Very powerful. Not exactly sustainable. Right now I'm about as useful as those shadowspawn we left dying on the beach. And yes, the Psyche is the physical part of the soul, while the Anima is the mental one." He finally dropped onto his ass with a groan.

"Ja pierdolę... My body hurts."

"I'll deal with the heart," I replied, already thinking ahead. A black-hole painting to expose the veins, somewhere where he would not see me, spider bombs sent through the bloodstream. Maybe enough destruction from within would finish the job.

"No need," he said, waving a hand weakly.

"Its weapons are done for. Kito will be here any second. Him and Lia will cook up some kind of nightmare superbug to poison the thing from the inside." He inhaled deeply, staring toward the distant horizon.

"And after we rip the soulmark out of this pile of shit," he continued, "we still have a long walk ahead of us. Some of the soldiers that this Splinter created are already running that direction too." I followed his gaze beyond the burning forests where another tower loomed against the sky. Multiple squads of armed people moved in that direction.

"Do you think that's good or bad?" Milo laughed tiredly, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.

"Probably both," he said.

"It's always fucking both."