For a moment I thought it was all over – how could a creature of flesh ever beat solid metal? But then I noticed the severed parts of the monster were being reabsorbed by the flowing mass, and meanwhile metal chipped and dented, cracked and leaked steam where maces and spears of bone slammed again and again against its armoured form. Hooks and claws worried at the cracks, trying to pry them open. I had a horrible feeling that one titan was not going to be enough. Lust waded through the mass of churning flesh, sword cutting vast chasms into the Magash Mora’s body, but it all flowed back, as futile as fighting the sea.
“What do we do now?” Breda said, looking at Martain, then Eva, and finally me. As if I had any more brilliant ideas.
Eva wheezed, struggling to speak. She gave up and instead pointed a trembling finger first at me, and then to her head. I shuddered, but did what she wanted: I opened my Gift wide. The miasma of blood sorcery in the air made me gag, feeling like plunging head-first into a plague-pit of rotting corpses. I struggled to tread water above the sea of fragmented screaming thought. Somehow I managed to rise above it to latch onto Eva.
A torrent of magic was roaring through her broken body, more than she could possibly handle for long. She was hanging on by a thread, but then she didn’t expect to survive. With her mastery of body-magic she’d managed to dull her pain, the signals from her dying body throttled down to mere agony.
She let me right into her tortured mind. She trusted me, and that was not something I often encountered. I endured her pain and did my best to wall it away from her consciousness, but her will and Gift were strong and my hasty tampering wouldn’t last. Her ruined face wasn’t capable of conveying much emotion but I felt the cooling balm of relief wash over her, then a throb of gratitude.
Drops of burning liquid splashed nearby, setting tenements smouldering as another wave of flame engulfed the Magash Mora. It flinched back, retreating until the flames ebbed, only to surge forward once again, swinging a bone battering ram into the titan’s side.
A whole section of the titan’s torso caved in with a squeal of tearing metal. It staggered, leaking steam and spraying thick black fluid from the wounds as blow after blow slammed into it. Metal plates were wrenched apart as the Magash Mora wormed into its guts. Lightning flashed from inside and thick greasy smoke poured out. The war engine shuddered.
A spike of bone tore through that inhumanly beautiful face and lodged inside. The titan stumbled and nearly fell, limbs now afflicted with a palsied shake. Lust was dying.
I voiced Eva’s fractured thoughts for her: “She says we must wait for an opening and then charge in and cut out its heart.”
The titan righted itself and waded into the flesh for one final strike, shearing though the mountain of flesh and the stone beneath. I felt a surge of animal fear as the huge blade cut near to what had to be the heart of the beast. Gifted minds pulsed with momentary agony before fading as a meatslide of severed flesh the size of a small town buried the shady gambling dens of the Scabs. I felt Lynas’ Gift anew, a beacon shining amongst a cluster of Gifted minds, and I knew exactly where that part of him was.
“There!” I said, pointing to the gaping chasm of red and pink left by the titan’s last attack. “The heart is in there.”
We broke into a crazed sprint, vaulting up onto the debris of the meatslide, Eva slower behind us. The sanctors ran ahead, splashing though puddles of creamy fat, and wherever they went Gifts that had been absorbed into the mass shut down and died. The thing’s body began to fall apart in the sanctors’ wake; mouths and eyes ceased moving, limbs flopped like their strings had been cut. Nodes of brain-meat exploded, coating our legs with a wet pink splatter. Without magic surging through their Gifts to strengthen the flesh around them the sheer weight of its own body was crushing them to pulp.
I fed my muscles on magic, feeling a mad exhilaration burst out of that self-destructive part of me. Hysterical laugher bubbled from my mouth. The carpet of meat was spongy and slick with juices, the air hot from body heat and stinking of blood, sweat, and bile. Wind whistled in and out of severed tubes all through the thing’s flesh.
The titan struggled to break free, but the Magash Mora was relentless. A shard of metal the size of a horse slammed down a few paces away, spattering us with blood and strings of jelly.
The vast wound in the beast’s side began to close up as tentacles quested out to reabsorb and reattach the section we were running over. If that happened the thing would swallow us and strip the meat from our bones. A pink worm, thick and sweaty as a fat man, squirmed towards the sanctors and promptly had a seizure. I felt a Gift die. The worm crashed down. The Magash Mora responded to their threat by withdrawing the bulk of its Gifted minds deeper into the main body.
“Veer left,” I shouted, tracking the source of my pain. We reached the end of the severed flesh-cliff and paused. The ground pulsed underfoot as it began to re-attach, to live again. I felt the suction on my Gift slowly return and cursed my old boots’ worn soles. We had to hurry. The sanctors could shut down Gifted minds if they were close enough, but they could do bugger-all else.
Fire spewed from the holes in Lust’s ruined face. Flesh sizzled and hissed but still wrenched at Lust’s left arm. In a squeal of metal it tore free.
The titan’s horn blasted one last time, then exploded. Lust’s head spun off into the sky, trailing black smoke. The body screeched and fell. Lightning flashed and crackled from its wounds.
– Blinding light and deafening boom –
– Searing heat –
– A wall of air slamming into me –
I was face down in something warm, wet, and throbbing that was suckling magic from me. I struggled to my feet. I’d been lucky to land on a part only barely attached to the main body. It took a few moments for the lurid spots of light to fade and deafness to wane. I blinked away blood and tears to behold a scene of utter devastation.
The ground where Lust had stood and fought was now a smoking crater. Twisted fragments of the war engine had gouged lines of destruction clear across the city. Huge chunks of the Magash Mora were missing and a cavernous hole gaped in its belly where thousands of dangling tubes spewed fluids and organs plopped and slid down steaming foothills of offal. It quivered and wailed in confusion, throbbing with agony so intense that my eyes watered. I gripped Dissever tight and leant heavily on its rage.
The ground pitched and yawed beneath me, but on seeing Martain and Breda staggering ahead I lumbered after them into the cavern. It was far too late to back out. If there was a chance to save Setharis then it had to be now.
For the first time in decades I prayed properly to my patron god, the only one who might give a damn, the outsider like myself: “Nathair, Thief of Life, I don’t know if you can hear me but on the off-chance you can, some help would be much appreciated. Charra needs healed, and me… I need a fucking miracle.” He didn’t answer.
The walls thudded with heartbeats. The babble of uncountable thousands of thought fragments washed over me, lapping away at my sandcastle of reason. They were less than human, just mindless remnants put to abhorrent use, but every so often I felt a flash of knowing horror and despair.
Some part of the abomination sensed me and roused from agonized spasms, eyes and limbs sprouting from its insides. Pustules grew and burst, birthing clawed limbs that quested towards me. There was no possibility of the sanctors making it to the heart in time if they were spotted, so I had to draw all the attention.