Chapter 19 – The Heart of the Waterhouse
The Waterhouse loomed beyond the vine-choked fence, silent and suffocating. Seth had only glimpsed it from afar, noting the way greenery had devoured the perimeter, but he had missed the crucial detail. The vines weren't creeping inward. They were spilling outward. As though their origin lay within.
The old pumping station stood like a corpse of brick and corrugated metal, its frame rusted, its pipes corroded and bent into grotesque shapes. What once had been a simple utility building—unremarkable, practical—now seemed more like a wound in the earth, festering and alive. The air itself was heavy here, thick with a dampness that carried a strange sweetness, like overripe fruit on the edge of rot.
Inside, the ruin was worse. One part of the building wall had long since collapsed, sunlight pouring in through the gap. Shafts of light carved across the floor, revealing long, shifting shadows.
Five shapes moved in the glow.
Two wolves, their hides bristling with unnatural spines. A tusked boar, muscles knotted beneath its hide. A lizard whose ridges glittered faintly as though tipped with glass. A snake half-coiled in a pipe, its scales whispering against the rusted metal.
Deeper in the darkness, three more figures lingered—an enormous spider, its legs sharp as spears; an insect with serrated mandibles that clicked softly; and a bird with molting feathers and ember-red eyes.
They were not remarkable in size. Some were smaller than beasts Seth had slain on his bloody paths through town. But their presence pressed like a physical weight against the chest. These were not ordinary beasts. Their auras were suffocating, heavy with something primal, something that marked them apart. As monstrosities.
The silence broke when every head lifted at once.
Something was coming.
From the gloom padded a fox-like beast, its movements unhurried, assured. Its aura rolled out just as oppressive as the others. In its jaws dangled a wolf pup, alive but trembling, blood dripping from the scruff where the fox's teeth had punctured.
The fox dropped it onto the cracked floor. The pup collapsed in a heap, shivering violently, paralyzed not only by pain but by the crushing pressure of eight predators watching.
Afterall it was merely a level one.
The fox gave a low growl and nudged it forward.
Step by reluctant step, the creature stumbled toward a half crumbled wall, toward the next chamber.
And there, the truth of the Waterhouse was revealed.
The chamber beyond was a graveyard of machines. Pipes and valves lay rusted, tools scattered like bones. But all of it was secondary to the abomination at the center.
The vines had converged here. They wove across the ground, the walls, the ceiling, forming a pulsing carpet of green. At the center, they knotted together into a great sphere, its insides faintly glowing. It throbbed every few moments, a sluggish but undeniable rhythm. Like a heartbeat.
From its crown sprouted five distinct vines, unlike the rest. They writhed and swayed in the air as though tasting it, each ending in a hooked, stinger-like head.
The wolf pup whimpered as it stepped onto the vine-carpet. Terror lanced through every nerve in its body. It knew what waited ahead, its instinct warned it of the. But the fox's push left it no choice but to stumble onward.
One vine stilled. Then, with a twitch, it snapped forward.
The hooked tip pierced the pup's chest. Its scream split the silence for an instant, before the sound choked off as the vine began to pulse.
It throbbed like a throat swallowing water. The pup shriveled before their eyes—flesh collapsing, fur dulling, eyes glazing. Life drained out in seconds, leaving nothing but an empty husk.
The vine jerked sideways and flung the hollow corpse aside. It landed in the middle of a heap of brittle remains—other victims, other level one creatures that had vanished into silence. The heap had grown enough to be called a mountain.
The heart pulsed again. A hairline fracture spreading across. Whatever was being nurtured within was not going to be long now.
And the eight monstrosities said nothing, only watching as though they were sentinels guarding the thing that fed at the center of it all. Their eyes betraying a faint trace of... greed?