Chapter Seventy Two - 072Bloody, crimson Mana surged all around them as Lhel breathed it out like steam. Sickly and rotten, it made Felix gag even from a dozen feet away. It clouded his senses for just a moment, and when he could see her again, Lhel's face had...cracked, splitting along her cheeks as two extra rows of teeth populated in her mouth, with more coming in behind them. Her hands lengthened into spindly claws, their tips darkening to a rusty, blood red.
"I thought you were Nymean. You're...what are you?" Felix and Pit backed away, putting another twenty feet between them and the creature that was once Lhel.
"I am perfection! I am a terror beyond time, primordial and everlasting." She laughed, and even with the teeth it was as sweet a sound as he'd ever heard. His Bastion resisted however, shrugging it off a little easier than a few minutes ago. "Frankly I am disappointed, Felix! That you would believe one as wondrous as I could possibly be a weak, pathetic Nymean."
Pit squawked in terror. Between one blink and the next, the creature was inches away from Felix, and he could see that the blue-green in her irises had expanded to fill the entirety of her eyeball.
"I am far more than anything this fallen world has seen in ten thousand years. The Nym were nothing, a delicious light snack at best followed by two thousand years of indigestion. I am all that is left of Lhel, for I have consumed her, Body, Mind, and Spirit." She reared back, mouth agape and howling into the sky. "I am the Unending Maw, Last of the Three, Survivor of Ruin!"
"Consumed...?" Felix felt his stomach clench, his aching gut burning all the more with her proximity. Despite her shifting appearance, a part of him still yearned for her, somehow.
"Oh yes, dear one. And she was so very delectable. As were her colleagues she had attempted to save by submitting to me," a burbling laugh danced from her ruinous throat, still so close that Felix could see the barbed thorns lining her glottis rattle. "Such a fool."
"You ate them?"
"Mhmm, all that I could find. Practically did the Ruin's work for them." Another throaty, rattling laugh, another piercing buzz in his guts. It felt like a ball of razor blades spinning within, ripping him up from the inside. Felix felt something wet drip drown his ear, and he reached up to find it was blood.
She was killing him without lifting a finger.
Felix backed up again, pulling Pit along with him, but he knew there was no where to go; the only exit was the dark hallway ending in a locked vault door. He looked up, toward the sunlight.
The windows....
They were easily two hundred feet up, and last he checked, he couldn't fly.
"I smell your fear, your despairing calculations. They are the same as all my prey, wide-eyed fawns too terrified to pose much challenge. You smell....delightful, dearest Felix, all the more so since you became a Nym. But I do not want to kill you, my dear." She spread her arms wide, her limbs slightly too long, the claws of her fingers too dark and corroded. "I am a monster in truth, but I come in good faith."
Her mouth pouted, teeth hidden for the moment. "I did not lie to you, Felix. The Geist were at first my allies...for it was they who dug deep enough to uncover my tumultuous skein of flesh beneath the endless earth. I was trapped there, hibernating after the War, sleeping so long that I had all but forgotten myself. Lhel and Ssev woke my Mind, and I will always be grateful for that." Her pout turned hideous once more, teeth sprouting further along her jaw. "They also betrayed me, them and all the traitorous Races who fought needlessly against my wakening.
"They needed only to submit. That is all I asked. Submit and be devoured.
"For I was so very hungry."
While speaking, Lhel had become a horror, her pale skin cracked and scaled, colored like dark rust. Her limbs lengthened, stretching to twice their size as her torso sagged and pulled, contorting into a parody of a humanoid spine. Muscle piled upon muscle as her once slender frame thickened and filled in, until her body resembled the agile grace of a panther mixed with the heavy, plated chest of a rhino. It was her mouth, however, that had the direst change: widened and elongated, her jaw hung open, ten feet wide and filled with six rows of sharp teeth. Those teeth grew bigger as the transformation continued, until several curved out and upward like great tusks, and others went down like vicious fangs.
A monster...
Analyze...
Analyze Failed.
The stone flooring creaked beneath its sudden immense weight, for the creature was now twenty feet tall at the shoulder and twice that in length. A long, serpentine tail whipped behind the creature, it's length capped with more tooth-like spikes that descended from its back. A frill of ivory tusks sprouted from its head and neck, as if its mouth split all the way around its skull.
Felix stumbled further back, heart humming it beat so fast, and his mind raced.
Grimmar smiled, standing tall and looking proud to the far left of Felix, his gruesome teeth a faint echo of the Maw's own. He raised his voice. "Mother! How could any be so foolish as to fight you? Even the ancient, pathetic Nym and their calamitous traditions were not so blind as to ignore that."
"You question me!?" The Maw let out a screaming roar, the sound overlaid with a thousand voices of all timbres shrieking in unison. Grimmar folded like a house of cards, his legs going limp as blood poured from his eyes, ears, and nose.
"For-forgiveness, hon-honored Mother," he gurgled.
Shaking it's toothy mane, it continued to speak, its voice once more Lhel's. "The Nym were fools, through and through, but not without their wiles. Lhel, researcher that she was, claimed curiosity and submitted to my clear superiority. But it was a trick! A dirty, underhanded trick by a dirty, underhanded Race! She attempted to wrest control from me! Me! I am unending, untiring, eternal and everlasting. It was a game Lhel was sure to lose...and she knew it!"
The Maw whipped its tail to the side, narrowly avoiding Grimmar but crashing into one of the pillars somehow. The pillar shattered, parts of it pulverized instantly while the rest tumbled down noisily. Grimmar paled and gurgled again.
Felix gaped. The Maw was over a hundred feet away from where the pillar had stood. The aftershock of its lashing tail was enough to shatter stone.
Everything about this is bad. Felix looked down at Pit, who had his wings spread, feathers fluffed, and tail bushier than ever, as if he could fool a primordial hell beast. He could feel the terror the tenku was experiencing; it was an echo to his own.
The hunger pains redoubled, pushing a wheezing gasp from Felix's lungs. How do I stop this?
The Maw kept speaking furiously, heedless of Felix's agony. "The crafty Nym stalled me long enough for the cavalry to arrive. The Herald, you see, had come to call."
The Herald? Felix hadn't heard that name before. In the corner of his eye, Felix could see even Grimmar tilt his bloody head questioningly at the title.
"You question the title, Grimmar? Good!" The Maw laughed as the giant flinched. "Lost and Ruined, a fitting fate for those who would challenge me!
"Bold as you please, she strode from her skyhold and into Shelim, her blasted armies following behind. But I defeated them all, oh yes, yes I did! Consumed them, blood and bone! Muscle and sinew and guts and fats! Such delicacies had been denied me too long as I slept in the dark earth, and I dined with relish! Oh the glory! Oh the MANA!"
Another screaming roar echoed out into the chamber, its sound too loud for even that huge space. It reverberated from the walls, bouncing back and forth like white noise, a terrible static that set Felix's teeth on edge and incited his hungry core once more. Felix screamed, but the sound was lost in the cacophony of the Maw's ecstatic rage.
"Glorious battle turned to glorious feasting, but I was opposed! The Night-cursed Herald withstood my attacks, her Skill besting my power in the short term, but I knew--I knew!--that it was only a matter of time. I am the Unending Maw, and I am relentless and inescapable. I am the hungry gullet at the end of all things!" The Maw paced, its lashing tail scoring the flooring with each swing. "Yet while the Herald and I fought, vile trickery was afoot. Ssev, the repugnant beast, had devised a trap. When the Herald had me distracted, they caught me in it! Lashing me to this wretched Anchor and sealing me in this prison."
Like a physical embodiment of its rage, crimson Mana vapor poured off of the Maw's back, wafting up and to Felix's right. He could taste it, just as he had with the blood beasts, rotten and corrupted and coppery, blood gone bad. Then Felix saw the vapor get pulled faster and faster, the vapor stretching thin and spinning around the room as if circling a drain. Within two seconds it was swallowed by the Essence Anchor, and the golden scripts flared.
It's a power sink, Felix suddenly realized. It eats the power of the Maw, somehow keeping it trapped here. How?
"Ah, but we have gotten off track," the Maw murmured in its soft feminine voice. "You have not submitted, nor agreed of your own volition to be my Champion." A grotesque, simpering smile creased the Maw's face, and it turned to view a kneeling Grimmar. The giant was no longer bleeding, but his dark blue blood had pooled around him like spilled paint. "Make him submit, Grimmar."
The giant was on his feet instantly, all fear banished and a wild, savage glee overtook his face.
"Your will is my pleasure, honored Mother."
Felix started, looking from the Maw to Grimmar who had started to advance on him, drawing his huge ten foot long greatsword. "What happened to acting in good faith!"
The Maw laughed and Felix winced. "I am not trying to kill you, Felix! In fact, I truly hope you survive!"
Grimmar started to run, his face growing darker and uglier at the Maw's words. His huge gait ate up the distance, the giant's body twisting as he brandished his immense greatsword. The blade swung out horizontally, but with the tip dipped at an angle, a strike clearly designed for smaller foes.
More instinct than plan, Felix blasted down with Reign of Vellus, launching himself thirty feet straight up into the air. He wasn't close enough to the walls to do that trick again, so instead he tried to activate Relentless Charge. He'd never used it mid-air before, but the Skill engaged, and the world blurred so fast Felix barely had time to lift his hands up.
Corrosive Strike!
Felix aimed a left-handed punch at Grimmar's remaining eye, but the giant had a warrior's reactions and tucked his chin, causing Felix's fist to impact the crown of his skull. Acid burst in all directions as the blow landed, but the thickness of the giant's skull blunted much of the force. Even still, Grimmar's head rocked back, the Risi's balance disrupted by the sheer mass behind the attack. Felix's new weight was a surprise for both of them, and as the giant's head tipped backward the Nym toppled up and over his skull. Two steps Grimmar stumbled back, time enough for a falling Felix to latch onto the back of the Risi's fur collar and summon his new spell.
Wrack and Ruin!
Grimmar threw himself to the ground and rolled. The fist sized orb blasted forth with a roar, ripping a dissolving trench in the giant's right pauldron but otherwise missing. Felix released his grip and pushed off, barely avoiding getting steamrolled by the massive warrior.