AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I was distracted from her song by the sensation of movement beneath my feet, from both ahead and behind. I swept her off my back and webbed her and the bag to the wall immediately, as the first burrowing creature popped its head up from the ground.
I decapitated it without thinking. It was some sort of half-worm, half-snake creature, but I couldn’t see the rest of its body, which had fallen back inside its hole. I felt another one about to rise up, however. I danced sideways and handled it as well. Their heads were almost as strong as the stone walls on either side, as they must have had to be to get through the cave’s dirt floor, but their necks were soft at least—and then I felt a rumble beneath all eight of my feet, at the same time, akin to the sensation of a plane taking off.
“Oh no,” I said, bowing protectively in front of where I’d stashed Sloane. The creatures I’d harmed earlier hadn’t been coming for me—they’d been running fromthat—what I was sure was an Orack, a memorable creature my mother had told me of, that spent its life tunneling through Threadstone, eating anything it came across, and breaching when it thought it might find a fresh meal.
If it thought it was going to let it eat Sloane, it was gravely mistaken.
The dirt beneath my feet began to sift and I danced, staring down, trying to figure out where its mouth was going to erupt from—I knew the only way to kill an Orack was from the inside out—as Sloane started screaming in fear behind me.
I saw a ten-foot-wide ring of teeth part the ground on my right-hand side. I jumped up, made myself as small as I could, and pounced for its center.
Four of my legs were occupied in keeping its mouth open, while the rest of me dealt as many damaging blows as I could to its softer interior. I gouged hunks out of its leathery throat with my foot-claws and threw them aside, before lunging in for more. The acrid scent of its breath competed with the rising hot stench of its blood as I damaged it, but that still didn’t stop it from trying to eat me. We were locked in a battle to the death, and the thing was quite a bit larger than I was—it was going to take forever to die.
Then, I spotted opportunity. I webbed out for one of the prior burrower’s decapitated heads and hauled it near, shoving it into the meat of the hinge where the Orack’s mouth opened. Once it was clear the Orack couldn’t close its jaws with the stone-like head wedged there, I let myself drop further inside its throat, to be closer to more important organs.
Killing something from the inside out was mucky, repulsive work, and I couldn’t have claimed to have done it before, nor would I be interested in ever doing it again. I prided myself on my cleanliness, mostly because to touchsomething for me was also to potentially taste it, and I wondered how long it would be until I felt less disgusting—but eventually I was through.
The thing surrounding me stopped twitching, and I no longer got a sense of its life, even though many of the wounds I’d made were still oozing dark green blood.
I clambered out of the Orack’s mouth and found Sloane still screaming.
“I am all right, my love,” I told her, wondering if she were screaming on my behalf. Her shrieks echoed up and down the narrow cavern we were in, and her throat sounded raw. “It is okay.” I tried to soothe her. “I am all right,” I swore, and then experienced a different fear. “Areyouall right?”
Had something else hurt her, while I was distracted, and I’d left her trapped? I freed her from the wall to inspect her at once, but she seemed fine, except for the parts where the Orack’s spattered blood had streaked her face and bled through my webs to stain her clothing. The entire wall I’d fastened her to had been stained with the creature’s dark green blood spray.
I set her down carefully and made the circle gesture in front of her repeatedly, but she just kept screaming and shaking—and that was when I realized she wasn’t registering me.
My poor lovely matewashurt—but it was some place I could neither fix nor see.
Inside her skull-shell.
I picked her back up at once and clicked at her, making asound as solid and steady as the beating of my own heart, and then I did something that I knew she would not like very much—I passed her down to my lower body and trussed her up as tight as I might have if she were prey.
The tenor and volume of her screams didn’t change for a good long while, until she was halfway wrapped, and then she switched to sobbing inconsolably. I wound my silk webs around her, like they were holding her for me, until she was entirely trapped, curled up in the little ball she seemed to prefer to sleep in, pressed in on all directions, with only her head free.
And when I was done with that I passed her forward again so that I could hold her in my arms. Her pain had bottomed out into shallow moans, and I kept clicking at her as I used my tongue to lick the Orack’s blood off of her face. I would make her new, clean, clothes again when she was ready.
Hours seemed to pass as I cradled her, carrying her through the tunnels, my body wrapped around hers protectively like another layer of shielding. I waited intensely for her to make even the slightest movement, to prove that she was going to be all right.
It didn’t matter when she did.
I would take care of her until then, no matter what.
And eventually I realized from the calm rhythm of her breath that she had worn herself out and she was sleeping. I stopped clicking, and hoped that whatever she was dreaming of would ease her troubled mind.
Eighteen
SLOANE
I was doing okay—asokay as someone could be, once they’d been glued to a wall for their own safekeeping—while Niannen fought whatever the fuck thatthingwas until he’d jumped inside its throat.
My terror was absolutely justified, and then, as he broke vital things inside it, it started spraying ichor and—and—I was backthereon stage, hearing shots, and watching people clutch their chests as their blood poured out.
I’d sung, and people had died; it was as simple as that.
And then I’d sung here, and now my spider-dude was in danger and once again I couldn’t doanythingbut scream.
It’d started off as a warning, then segued into an embodiment of all my fear, then slid into being a metaphor for my anger and my helplessness and the problem that I wouldneverbe able to rewind time and get them back and it wasn’t fair but life wasn’t fair because fuck you, right?
