Chapter 4
The tower rippled again, the carpeted worm-like flesh fur of the building seem to stop moving.
The eye above seals itself shut, and with it the looming presence in the back of her mind—the dark, formless thing that had been watching—slips away into nothingness.
And then, ripple again. The worm-like flesh fur now swaying once more, the building's eyes nothing but a slit from where it was.
Her eyes in disbelief, chest rising and falling sharply, taking a fast deep breath.
She waits for it to return, nothing ever leaves her for good.
Waiting for its gaze,
Waiting for its weight.
But it doesn't come.
The tower is empty of them.
And in the suffocating silence, something else fills her—pain.
Her broken finger throbs. Her back aches with bruises. Her throat scratching with dryness, each breath like swallowing sawdust, each cough scraping her lungs. Her stomach aches with that hollow gnawing, that all too familiar emptiness.
She starts walking, as if moving might somehow lessen her suffering.
Her hand presses against her belly. Her voice trembles, weak and small:
"I… I don't want this. Not anymore… no more."
Her words echo thin against the cavern walls. Nothing answers. Only her own voice, desperate and fragile.
Still, her feet carry her downward. The path narrows like a throat, swallowing her step by step into a canyon. The walls pulse faintly, veins glowing dim beneath those stone-flesh.
Every so often, a shudder ripples through them, as though recoiling from her nearness.
She doesn't notice. Her eyes are on the ground, tracing the trail of something different to her usual hell, battle broken arrows, singed patches of flesh, charred bone. Then—more.
A body.
It slumped against the canyon wall, humanoid but massive. Its limbs are mangled beyond recognition, muscles torn open, organs spilling with its single eye rolled back in its skull, lifeless and white.
Her stomach clenches in revulsion. She turns her face away.
"…How did something this big.."
"Disgusting!"
She moves away from it, holding her mouth with the back of her right hand.
But then—movement.
She turns her head bad, eyes locked on a moving shadow. Her movement stops in anticipation.
From behind the corpse, another emerges. Smaller than the first, yet still towering over her—two heads taller than her, its thick and broad.
It moves with rage, fists clenched, its single eye glowing with fury.
Her breath hitches. She stumbles back.
The thing charges—
Fast.
Its hand closes around her waist and flings her across the canyon. She hits the wall hard, air forced from her lungs. Her body screams but she can't.
Her mind in disarray, her life in the hands of others again.
"I can't.."
"Too strong.."
Desperate, she claws at the dirt, struggling to rise, but the shadow of its massive hand loom again.
It grabs hold of her a second time, slamming her to the ground. The world blurs, her vision swimming away — The throb of pain growing louder, sharper and it feels unbearable.
Its foot lifts above her head.
She shuts her eyes. Heart pounding, mind fractured, the vivid vision of her first memory coming back.
"No. Please. Not again. I don't want this. PLEASE—anything else but this—" she sobs, her face hit by debris falling from the celing.
A howl tears the air.
The creature's feet drops down — missing her by a hair. The shaking of the ground beneath her is all she feels.
The creature jerks, roaring in pain. Vines—maroon, tinted in purple liquid — wet and gleaming with the creature's blood. They shoot from the level's ceiling, stabbing through its shoulders. It stumbles forward, again, missing her by inches—its foot slamming into the fleshy dirt beside her face.
Her body lies still, but her eyes open slowly, delirious.
A crimson glint burns in them again.
She doesn't question why the vines help her. She doesn't care.
She wants it dead.
She wants to feed.
More tendrils slither from above, twisting into a lance. They pierce through its chest, shredding bone and tendons until something soft gives way. Its howl cuts short, choked.
The vines rip one of it's organs free.
The heart. Half the size of her head. Purple blood drips from its veins that were still attached to its lobes, still beating, steaming faintly in the canyon air.
The lance now with a depression in the middle, holding the heart. It snaps close, cutting it into quarters.
Her pupils shrink. Her stomach roars. Her throat burns.
She lunges, snatching the pieces from the vine's grasp, tearing into them with her teeth before they stop bleeding. Warm blood spurts down her chin. She moans through her chewing, ripping quarter after quarter.
She doesn't pause. She doesn't breathe. She drinks. Gulp after gulp, swallowing its blood until her chest almost gives way from it.
"More… give me more…" The words slur between bites, frantic. Her face is a mask of gore, jaw working until her teeth scrape bone.
Her broken finger straightens, bones swimming in her skin. The ache in her ribs dulls. But the hunger only deepens.
She falls onto the corpse. Hands clawing. Teeth gnashing. She bites into the torso, chewing through skin, tendons and raw veins. Every time blood gushes, she bends low, lips pressed to the wound, sucking it down.
Again and again and again.
The canyon shakes. Veins bulge and retreat. Holes in the walls clench tight. Fingers of stone curl back. Eyes embedded in the walls dart away, refusing to look.
The place is afraid.
Once she had been something else—something gentler, something that nurtured. Now she is gnawing, tearing, planting her roots in rot.
'Watering flowers with poison.'
Her jaw locks. But she doesn't care, she rips into another limb, chewing until her jaw dislocates, all to feel her teeth squeak against cartilage. She heals, but not too fast.— Still unable to chew, her tongue drags across blood-slicked skin, desperate not to waste a drop.
Her frenzy worsens, she was getting stronger, her healing faster — she bites her own tongue, chips her teeth against bone, biting off skin and flesh from her own hands just to press more of the creature's flesh into her mouth.
And the more she eats, the more she heals—ruthlessly consuming the creature.
The ground quivers beneath her knees, as though trying to push her away. The whole canyon recoils.
She doesn't notice.
Or maybe she doesn't even care.
At last, exhaustion pulls her down. She collapses onto the half-eaten body, face pressed into gore. Strips of meat still hang from her lips, blood soaking her chin. Her eyes flutter closed, delirious, her jaw still working as though chewing in sleep.
The vines slither back upward, silent. No pulse in the walls. No drip of slime. No twitch of stone-fingers. The canyon plays dead, shuddering in fear.
Above, a single black petal drifts down, landing upon her blood-drenched back.