Darkness is creeping from the edges of my vision as I jerk upwards, dangling like a doll and gurgling blood from my mouth and the three places Cromach's talons are piercing me. I don't have much strength left, nor any desire to resist anymore, so my last attempt at movement is looking up into the green eyes I've grown to know and love.
I hear some shouting muffled by blood rushing through my ears, but I don't pay attention. Every breath is a fight for air, and I simply leave my mouth to hang open as a steady thin stream of red leaves it along with my desire to remain in this world.
Cromach looks down past me hanging from his talons. I wonder what caught his attention...
A microscopic moment later, his head involuntarily twitches up. Over and over and over.
With an annoyed screech, Cromach swings his foreleg, I feel sick from the rapid movement, and then the dull sensation of my back hitting the ground follows. I barely register it, though, completely drowned by my insides being ripped apart from me sliding off of the sharp talons, and of course by more blood suddenly everywhere.
Croaking, I somehow summon enough strength to roll over, clearing my mouth which allows me to breathe the tiniest bit.
I can't see anything. Why? My eyes feel as if they're bathing in something. I must have hit my head against the ground when Cromach flung me away.
I'm thinking strangely clearly. It must be all the adrenaline.
Stopping any attempts at moving my eyelids, I let my tracing spell cast some light on the situation. At least that's one good thing about not having a helmet anymore.
The ‘thing’ which distracted Cromach was Nicolai. The distraction was, or indeed still is, him standing on his hind legs with a Black Ops assault rifle aimed directly at Cromach’s chin shooting at extreme speed what’s less a hail of bullets and more a solid pole of lead.
The sad part is that to Cromach the firepower able to cleave through a battalion of armored soldiers is still merely a distraction. The corrupted griffon’s head is jerking upwards, but the bullets are losing all power as soon as they impact against the black body and flop away.
The black and white world lights up again as one of the smarter agents discharges an energy beam which burns Cromach’s chest, followed up by a soft clink of a released energy cell. It only serves to make Cromach mad.
He drops on all fours as soon as Nicolai has to back off to reload, swiping his foreleg at the Black Ops boss who isn’t fast enough and has the rifle he’s using to block knocked out of his grasp. Good, at least he wasn’t sliced in half. Gotta appreciate the small things in life, however temporary they might be.
Another energy beam, this one setting Cromach’s wing he uses to shield himself on fire. It dies out instantly, but serves as a good distraction for two agents circling from the side with something flat that might be a stretcher towards me. In the meantime, someone tosses another rifle to Nicolai, a clearly loaded one because he resumes unleashing hell at Cromach.
This is all just to gain some time to get me out. Corrupted must be waking up with each second and gathering around. Blast after energy blast hit Cromach, filling the air with the stench of scorched fur, feathers, and flesh, succeeding only in making the Corrupted more and more irritated.
Suddenly the air grows colder and fills with the sharp scent of ozone.
I wish I could move. I wish I could prevent what’s coming. I wish I could call out a warning. In my shape, I can barely keep breathing though. Cromach gathers his divine power on instinct, filling my colourless world with blue sparks of lightning coursing through his body.
The sky splits apart.
Bright azure pillar of light strikes Nicolai, followed by a shockwave of static electricity so strong it shuts off my magic and my brain.
My tracing spell restarts quickly, and when the moment of overload ends with my body absorbing the semi-divine energy, I realize I got off lightly. Several agents are lying around in pieces along with the exploded debris of their beam rifles. Where Nicolai stood is a small crater and a charred body with straps of Black Ops uniform cooked onto it. The survivors are running around and shooting at Cromach who is still sparkling with electricity and looking for a new victim.
He notices the two agents finally getting to me with indeed a stretcher and turns to us.
“Oh shit!” I hear an agent curse and realize the survivors have their visors drawn up. The shockwave must have fried their sensitive equipment, “SOMEONE GET HIM AWAY FROM US!”
The familiar breaking of small objects accompanies acid charges being thrown at Cromach. He growls and focuses on the offenders fanning around and tossing more corrosives.
*Whooommmmm!*
Half of Cromach’s head splatters across the ground. He looks a little surprised by the fact, right before small tentacles dart out of his neck, reforming the missing tissue.
*Whommmmmm!*
Flora’s next shot rips off the wing Cromach uses to deflect the deadly projectile, staggering him and making him take several steps backwards.
*Whoooooommmm!*
The third impact knocks him backwards on the ground.
“Move, move! If that thing isn’t broken by now, Flora sure ain’t firing it again any time soon. Someone check on Nico- oh Emperor’s bloody talons! Is that damn thing immortal?”
Cromach is standing back up, his head now completely reformed, and burn marks being a thing of the past. Fortunately, the moment of shock where no one is firing anything is enough for everyone to realize that Cromach is looking into the distance where we came from.
Lightning arcs from him towards the end of the road leading deeper into the city, making him disappear and reform there. One more ‘jump’ later, he’s gone.
“Is he going after Flora?”
“He must be! She knows what’s going on better than we do since all our stuff is fried.”
“Hunter spotted!”
“Scare it off with acid!” the agents with the stretcher arrive, rolling me around carefully, “How is this guy still alive? Stasis unit?”
“The one we had ready for the target is fried. The spare one survived the blast inside the shielded case.”
“Bring it here, we’ll stabilize him until we get to the Blackbird.”
“Fowley, Nicolai is still alive!”
“THE HELL?! Use the stasis unit on him then, pronto!”
Can’t… exactly… blame... their priorities.
Another two griffons stop by Nicolai’s crater and look around, confused.
“He refused. He says we’re to use it on that guy. That’s an order.”
“He can talk? What a beast! Alright, order’s an order. Move your asses here with the unit, we’ll grab the boss.”
“Hunter escaped! Multiple movements in the darkness, though.”
“Any working lights?”
“Chemical only.”
“Damn it, keep those away from the wounded! Alright, the flares will have to do then. Grab whoever can move, offer last rites to those who can’t. If they want to try their luck and Corrupted mercy here, leave them with their supplies. We are retreating, NOW!”
Two agents fasten several discs to the metal poles of the stretcher, and I feel magic at work. It flows over me gently, like a cool gel, slowing down my breathing and making it easier to deal with all the blood…
...however, that’s about it.
Huh, magic?
“We have a problem, he’s still breathing,” reports the agent checking my vitals.
“...m...gi...c...”
“He said something… magic? Yes, the stasis units are partly magical, basically crystals fixed with a stasis spell charged by griffon power source. Why?”
He leans directly to my muzzle.
“...nt… w...rk… n… me...”
He clears the blood from my mouth.
“Fowley, he said it won’t work on him.”
The griffon currently in charge rushes over, poking me in various places. I barely register the talons quickly jabbing me.
“He is partially rigid, so it’s working to some degree. We’ll work with what we got. Pick him up, you two, and let’s roll. I’ve got Nicolai as stabilized as I think someone not yet dead by some miracle can be.”
Two stretchers and five agents. Cromach single divine attack wiped out nearly two thirds of our squad, and we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Flora distracting him.
I wonder if she managed to escape.
Huh?
I must have dozed off for a moment, because the next uncomfortable thing I feel is being carried vertically down some sort of ladder. My tracing spell reveals a tunnel.
The sewers again. We must have taken some closest manhole down without regard for safety or viable course. It’s probably a good thing we took a different entrance. This way we might avoid the weird tunnels, although if we’re looking for the exit closest to the Blackbird we’ll pass by anyway.
My spell fades. No matter what I do, I can’t use it anymore.
I don’t think I’m bleeding anymore, but on the other hoof, I can’t feel much of anything. Good thing I won’t have to be the one explaining what happened to Nicolai to Cassius. Come to think of it, since I’m still alive, I must have retained something alicorn-y in me despite my unicorn-ness, unicornhood, wingless-being-y-thing-majig.
Sweet, sweet bloodloss.
“Contact! Small, pony- oh what the fucking hell!?”
“Damn it, cut the tentacles off! Help him! Don’t shoot, you’ll hit the wounded. Acid, ac- mmpphmb!”
Some more struggling, and then silence. Well, strained and muffled grunts of griffons as if they were trying to untangle themselves from some particularly strong web.
The feeling of motion right above me makes me open my eyes.
“Brlblrlblrbl!”
A gaping mouth full of tiny tentacles greets me.
No, literally.
No metaphor for getting eaten or anything.
It’s a literal ear-to-ear grin on a shiny black muzzle right under a pair of completely black eyes with yellow irises.
A pony.
A Corruptor.
I must be dead already. There’s no way. Yet, it’s all clear now. Why didn’t I realize it before?
“S… t… e…?”
“...hissssssss… blrlblrlblrl!”
Three tongues dart out of the wriggling mouth, licking my nose.
Suitie. Last time I left her in these sewers and she made them hers. She saved us from the Corrupted when we arrived, and now… what now?
Suitie soundlessly flows around me, licking the three holes clearly speared through. When she sees it’s not helping, she puts her hoof over the largest one, and drips inside.
“...n...o...” I manage to croak.
“Hisssssss!” she tilts her head.
“...o…th...r… he.... lp...”
She looks around like a panicking animal, not knowing what to do. On the other hoof, right now, I do know. I know exactly what needs to happen.
Thank you, Nicolai, for the gesture with the stasis unit.
With all the remaining strength and unexpected amount of new pain, I manage to inch my foreleg towards the other stretcher lying on the ground.
“...help… him...”
My eyes roll back as I start gasping for breath in slow motion, feeling the blood choking me again. All the stasis unit is doing now is allowing me to feel every stretched second of pain in minute detail.
“...grrg...”
That’s not Suitie this time, it’s me.
“NNNNNNNNNNNGH!” I hear agents scream into the tentacles covering their mouths when Suitie takes her place above burned Nicolai somehow still shallowly breathing, and shoves a growth of tentacles from her mouth into his throat. She melts over the suddenly thrashing griffon, covering every feather and hair in her black biomass, seeping into every hole, and fusing with Nicolai like she did with me.
“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” the Black Ops boss suddenly bolts upright, gasping for breath and clawing against his neck. He hacks and coughs out the black goo, but all he can do is stand up on all fours, and-
“Blaaargh!”
-release his new three black tongues from his throat.
His sclera turn to Corrupted black, and his pupils gain the beastly yellow hue dimly glowing in the light of the fading flares.
“Grrrrhg...” he gurgles something, “Hissssss!”
“S… t… e...” I whisper, or at least I think I do. Oh good, I do, because Suitie/Nicolai walks over, drooling over me, “H.. lp… h… m...”
Nicolai blinks, falls on his haunches, and clutches his head.
“The hell?!” he groans, clearly choking on his new tongues.
“Re… mber… w...o… yo… re...”
He freezes. No matter how good his earholes are, he wouldn’t be able to understand me.
Suitie must have, though, like before. I know how the split minds in his head must feel, the new senses, the new body. What I hope for, is that he doesn’t need to fight for control like I did.
Several seconds later, although it might be shorter since I’m half-stasis’d, Nicolai stands up sharply, looks at his raised foreleg and says:
“You… understand me, creature, right?”
He waits, as if listening to an inaudible or inner voice.
“Release everyone, please.”
The tentacles growing from the concrete floor dissipate and the whole tunnel turns darker.
Wait, no. I’m just dying, the tunnel is okay. Good job, tunnel.
Lost Cromach, myself, Flora, other agents. ‘Saved’ Nicolai.
All in all, this could have gone better.
On the other tentacle, it could have gone a lot worse.
“Fowley, grab your surgical supplies!”
“Are you okay, Nic-”
“NOW!”
“Yes, sir!”
“Sterilize whatever you can! Thank Emperor this sewer is dry at least. The stasis unit is giving us minutes, and right now I need you to perform miracles.”
“We have no blood, sir, and only basic anesthesia.”
“Miracles, Fowley, that's an order!”
“Miracles it is, sir!”
And then I feel the scalpel cutting into my barrel.
Funny, I didn’t think I could scream anymore.
***
[Blazing's Entry]
Sometimes if you give your everything and try your best, you will still fail. That is not weakness, that is life.
But I didn't. I cried, I whined, I gave up, I tried again, and it all took too long. I don't know if what I was trying to achieve was impossible from the start, I just know that I didn't give it my best, and I failed.
[End Entry]