Chapter 5: 5/V – It’s (Not) What it Looks Like

Something dropped out of the portal in the middle of the temple.

 

Whatever it was, it was most definitely not anything remotely human at all.

 

Alissa felt like someone was massaging her scalp, but with all the violence they could muster. Her head pounded and she felt dizzy just looking at the… thing the portal vomited out.

 

She had no real idea how she should describe it.

 

The… thing was like a glistening, slimy, pulsating mass of flesh, albeit one with far too many eyes of many different kinds all over its undulating grotesque form, from eyes that looked almost normal and human like to ones with slit irises like cats to rectangular ones to insect-like compound eyes, all scattered throughout its ever-shifting form.

 

Then there were the mouths.

 

Alissa thought it was bad enough for the thing to have eye all over the place, but they the many slits on its shape that widened and opened into toothy mouths, maws, and whatever else you’d call an oral cavity opened up and treated her to a sight she wished she had never seen, of all sort of dentations from a shark’s rows of pointed dagger-like teeth, to something almost human but not quite, to the grinding dentures of bovines, all represented in place.

 

Of course amongst them were also more nightmare-inducing sights like the circular rows of curved fangs that lined the circular maw of lamprey, mandibles that’d look more at home on the face of insects with equally horrid mouthpieces hidden behind, and the likes.

 

Then there was the screech. The shrill, utterly inhuman screeching noise that the thing uttered. Alissa felt as if the noise tried to burrow through her eardrums, and the pounding on her head intensified when she heard of the noise. She was not the only one who felt that way either, apparently. A quick glance around showed her that over half of the temple guards had fallen to the floor or to their knees, their hands clutching their heads or ears and their faces twisted in a rictus of agony.

 

Even her friends were not exempt. Ethan looked like he was struggling, with his teeth gritted and his eyes closed, his meaty hands covering his ears even as his body writhed and cavorted as if he was in severe pain all over. Joshua had folded himself into a fetal position and tucked his head between his knees as he mumbled unintelligibly under the onslaught.

 

Only Cerilla seemed unaffected, even if the shrine maiden-like woman also frowned at the sight. The few temple guards that still kept their bearings also approached the gruesome thing with their shields and spears held in place, grimaces on their faces as they fought the effect - some sort of mental assault maybe? - which seemed to intensify as they approached the cavorting, undulating mass.

 

Alissa was uncertain whether she should be helping - or well, doing anything - in this sort of situation, but fortunately, Cerilla seemed to have caught on to her dilemma and prevented her from going forward with an outstretched hand that blocked her path. All the while, she gave commands to the still-functioning members of the temple guards with gestures, as the thing’s screeching was loud enough that it would have probably rendered any word she said inaudible under the noise it created.

 

They both watched from the side as the temple guards, around a dozen of them that managed to withstand the effect from the noise and the maddening pressure Alissa was feeling, closed in on the creature, whatever it was. Two of them fell to their knees in the approach as they proved less resilient to the rest, but the others kept moving, a step at a time, their large oval shields held high to cover most of their bodies and their spears held at the ready.

 

The creature, thing, whatever it was lashed at them as meaty tentacle-like appendages grew from its undulating shape and struck at the temple guards that surrounded it. Most of the strikes met only with the leather-draped surface of the large shields and were blocked or deflected away, but one unfortunate guard, who had lowered her shield to block an appendage going for her ankle, was too late in raising it back up.

 

A second pulsating, meaty appendage struck her right on the face, the end of the tentacle splitting open to reveal a toothy maw filled with dagger-like fangs that instantly latched on the woman’s face from the sides even as she struggled. The woman pierced the tentacle with her spear in her desperate struggles, but it had not seemed to affect the thing much, and her struggles grew weaker even after another two guards nearby came to her aid, and eventually ended with an all-too-fleshy sounding crunching noise from within the maw.

 

Alissa almost vomited on the spot when she saw the woman’s headless body crumple to the ground, the upper part of her head bitten off, leaving only her lower jaw still attached to her neck by bits of flesh and muscle. Then she took a second look - to her dismay - and outright vomited right where she stood as she could take it no more.

 

In the meantime, while Alissa was preoccupied with emptying her guts out on the marble floor of the temple, the rest of the temple guards had approached close enough despite the continued lashings of the creature’s tentacle-like appendages to stab it with their spears. Their efforts only seemed to make the creature angry, but they persevered and kept trying.

 

Eventually, their efforts finally bore fruit, as the creature slowed, its purplish blood oozing out from many stab wounds. Its movements and struggles grew sluggish as the screeching died out, and the emboldened temple guards - what remained of them, at least, as the creature had taken out another two in the process - moved even closer and stabbed deeper with their spears, until finally, a blessed moment later, the thing grew still.

 

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It was only then that Alissa regained enough control of herself to move away from the puddle of her own vomit and look around. Ethan and Joshua seemed to be recovering, if slowly, now that the screeching had ended. So were some of the temple guards that were taken out of commission by it, the first to recover being the two that fell midway in their approach to the creature.

 

And yet, some of the fallen temple guards had not stirred. One woman lay still, with blood leaping out from every orifice on her head, while another man had clawed out his own eyes and ears off, and now tossed and turned in agony where he lay. The rest seemed to recover slowly much like Ethan and Joshua, but they were all slow to rise.

 

Cerilla was by the side of another temple guard, one who had a large chunk of his shoulder bitten off by the thing, which left the man’s arm dangling helplessly. The woman laid her hands over the wound, and muttered something under her breath that Alissa couldn’t hear, before a white glow emanated from her hands and the gaping wound on the man’s shoulder slowly knitted itself back together.

 

It took the woman a few minutes to deal with that wound, after which she went around to the other guards. Alissa saw how she shook her head after a quick check on the guard who bled from all her orifices, and sent the screaming one to be taken away on a stretcher by a couple others. The woman then shook her head sadly once more when she came to the other guard taken out by the creature near the end of its lashings.

 

The man’s eyes looked blankly towards the ceiling, as his neck had been snapped by a whip-like lashing from one of the creature’s tentacles, breaking it until his head rested directly on his shoulder. There was no saving the man, and he had passed one some while ago, it seemed.

 

It was then that another sight nobody expected took place, as the creature’s body - still guarded by a few of the temple guards out of precaution - suddenly began to fade, as if it dissolved into thin air. Alissa looked at the scene with some bafflement, while Cerilla ran over in alarm, but before she got there, the creature’s cadaver had completely vanished into thin air, as if it was never there.

 

Only the purple blotches of blood and the corpses it left behind provided evidence of its existence and passing.

 

“Was… Was that the norm here?” asked Alissa in a doubtful tone, though the way Cerilla reacted had told her that it was unlikely to be the case.

 

“I… cannot say, Chosen One,” said the woman with some creeping doubt in her own voice. “It had been said and written in the records that at times, summonings might cause a denizen of the void between worlds to crawl in, attracted by the pathway between worlds that opened when the ritual was done. They came in many shapes and kinds, so while the… creature we saw just now had never been recorded, it might well be one.”

 

“Did any of you receive a notification upon killing it?” Cerilla then asked towards the temple guards that had brought the creature down with some hope in her eyes.

 

“I did, Exalted one,” replied one of the temple guards. The rest of the surviving seven who fought the creature then repeated the confirmation they had all received the kill notification after they defeated whatever the thing was. “But it was… garbled. I could not tell what the creature was, as if the world refused to identify it at all.”

 

“The same here,” replied another, until the rest had confirmed that none of them received any legible notification on the name or type of creature they had killed. In fact, when the guards compared the notifications they received, they noticed that no two garbled messages were the same, as each one seemed to receive a different notice.

 

“Hmm… this isn’t working out. Did any of you level off the creature?” asked the priestess in the hopes that someone might have topped out from the beast. Classes available to a person were affected by the feats they had done in the process of attaining the needed level, so her hope was that there might be something to shed a light on the matter from there.

 

“I have, Exalted one, though I am still four levels away from my next class,” said one female guard. One of her male compatriots then echoed her words, though in his case he was eleven levels away. None of the other guards had the fortune to have leveled from the fight, especially the higher leveled ones closer to their next class, so either way the query would have to wait since there was no clue to be had.

 

“All right, I guess we will have to report a void beast incursion that had likely derailed the summoning of the fourth chosen one in the process,” said Cerilla with a long-suffering sigh, her hand placed on her forehead as she wondered why she had to be the one in charge of such a headache. Had she not been devout enough to her gods that they sent such a trial her way?

 

That the summoning process had come to an end was obvious, as the portal had flickered and vanished shortly after the creature exited from it. There was no sign anywhere of the fourth summoned hero, and given the circumstances, it was only natural to presume them lost in the void as the creature had latched on and disturbed the pathway between worlds.

 

It would not be the first time for a summoning mishap to cause a hero party to be short a member, but all such cases in history had been scandals, and none of them ended particularly well for the member of the clergy who happened to be in charge of supervising the process. As such, Cerilla could only sigh and lament her misfortune as she turned back towards the three summoned heroes and forced the tiredness off her features as she put on a smiling face to face them with.

 

“I beg your pardon for such a mishap, Chosen Ones. If you please, let us guide you to the Council, which will clarify whatever questions you have in mind,” she said as she gave a low bow to the three.

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