Chapter 10: Interlude One The Twins

              “Move Faster! They’re coming!” Taylor shouted at the mass of people in front of her.

              “They’re moving as fast as they can, shouting at them will just make them panic.” Jamylle

              “They should be panicking…”

              Taylor, a short woman, fair skin and long brown hair accented with a thick French braid down the middle, turned and glared at her companion. Jamylle stood strong at that glare she had long ago grown used to. She was just a hair taller than Taylor, with caramel skin and an equally terrifying glare. Anyone else would have looked down and apologized for whatever transgressions they had made, but these two were each as stubborn as the rock around them.

              After a few moments, Jamylle capitulated. It was not due to any form of subservience, but to the issue at hand, Suffering broke through their defenses.

              “Fine… just keep them moving.” Jamylle said raising her hands.

              “Ugh! Sorry… I just…”

              “I know… you hate people.” Jamylle interrupted.

              “I just hate people!” Taylor replied.

              The two of them turned when they heard a loud crash. They were in a bunker miles underground, whose only way of entry was a portal hidden and inaccessible by most people. When they had taken in these refugees, they were all put to sleep long before transporting them to the location of the portal. Somehow, they were discovered and neither of them knew how, but none of that mattered anymore.

              Most of the world did not know of the battle that raged below the crust, they remained ignorant of its importance, and after years of planning and gathering, the rebel leaders known simply as The Twins, knew that they had been defeated.

              The rocky corridor’s side was blown in and demonic creatures came pouring out. All looked as if they were amalgamations of earthly creatures. Two headed dogs barreled towards them, humans with heads of rhinos roared and followed behind the dogs. Three-foot slugs with sharp white spikes fell towards them as If gravity pulled them along the hall and not down.

              “Fire!” Jamylle ordered.

              They were escorted by what remains of their guard, so few remained. The ones in front expertly knelt, while the second row fired their magical rifles from above their shoulders. Bullets enchanted to be clump of fire or arcane energy, shot through the slug’s bodies and into the dogs. The first of the demon dogs fell under the barrage, but the slugs fell unimpeded.

              Smelling the blood, more dogs and rhino men fell on their own kind, feasting on the wounded and dying, but the slugs continued to fall until they smashed into the last of their men. Jamylle cried out as the first of them were consumed completely by the creatures while the ones behind were torn apart as their spikes shot out as projectiles.

              Jamylle made a move towards them, and Taylor held her back.

              “Let go!” Jamylle yelled out tearing her hand away.

              “NO! You go. I’ll keep them back for as long as I can.” Taylor told her.

              Jamylle turned to look into the eyes of her friend, they were glossy and knowing.

              “I hate people remember?” Taylor said through a forced laugh.

              “But…”

              “You need to go now.” Taylor said puller her back.

              “Taylor!” Jamylle yelled but didn’t stop her friend.

              The small woman who hated people, stood between the horde of Sufering’s minions and the rest of the resistance, her resistance. She did hate people, but that didn’t change the fact that she loved them too. She long ago learned that people were cruel and selfish, but the person was kind and only trying to get through life, but life grew much harder for those who survived the initial invasion. There was so little left, and those who survived didn’t know the truth. Well, that was for Jamylle to figure out. Knowing what the future brought for her was both terrifying and relieving, for she was tired of running, she was tired of pretty much everything. She would protect her friend and the others as long as she could, but when the final embrace took her, she would welcome it.

              The slugs, they were great for breaking the line, but as soon as they tasted the blood, they would be hard pressed to stop their feasting. Six of them made sucking noises as they devoured the men sword to protect her, they had made an oath, and so had Taylor.

              She stuck out her hand summoning a long staff made from interweaving vines. The staff was alive with slithering movement and flowering budding and dying. Her eyes glowed with anger shining though the green mist now emanating from her.

              “The taint must be cleansed!” She roared through the hallway.

              At a moment, everything paused. There was no movement, no sounds of sucking or screaming. Then Taylor let out a scream that tore through the corridor and shredding all the slugs apart into atoms, then stopped there. Their bodies, basically just sacks of blood and flesh, splattered in gobbets across the walls and the bodies on the ground.  The feasting was forgotten, and everything turned their attention back towards her. Everything exploded into action again, the dogs were piling over each other as the rhino men barreled through them completely.

              She lifted her hands and roots as thick as a car came tearing through the reinforced walls and created a wall between the ten men of her guard and the horde. Immediately, she heard them smashing into the wall made from life, her life. Taylor winced under each attack, but she held strong.

              She knelt to the side of one of her men. He was just a boy, sixteen maybe. He had long brown hair with a French braid down the back just like hers. Cold dead eyes staired up as if accusing her of something. Taylor rested her hand on his chest and muttered an incantation which sent flowing green mist from her eyes and into his body.

              “Through the green gives life.”

              The boy’s chest began to heave, and he shot up with a heavy gasp. He stared at her then down at him missing legs and left arm, and he began to scream.

              “Hush boy.”

              She placed her hand on his chest once more. His screaming halted and his eyes rolled back, but only for a moment. Looking euphoric, he smiled, then focused back on her.

              “What is your name?”

              “A… A… Andrew…” he replied.

              “Andrew? That is your middle name? You don’t like your given name?” She asked with a smile.

              She then winced again as the barrage on her wall picked up with more intensity.

              “My lady!” He shouted and reached for her.

              She smiled, he still wished to protect her, even with a single arm. If she had an army of men like her, what they would have been able to accomplish.

              “I am alright. I need you to listen to me.” She told him.

              “Of course.”

              “You know of what is happening, what is really happening. I will hide you, and in four days, you will be free.” She explained.

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              “I don’t understand.”

              Taylor handed the boy her staff, and he took it with his only hand. He was confused and worried seeing her wince again and the barrier behind them beginning to give.

              When Andrew took the staff Taylor said something in a language only her kind could speak. When she finished the words of power, the living staff of vines and plants, broke down and snaked up Andrew’s arm.

              “Stay strong, this will hurt.” She warned him.

              The vines crawled to each missing limb and proceeded to stab into his still bleeding flesh. Andrew screamed out, voice cracking and tears spilling out. The vines grew up and formed into arms, legs, fingers, and toes. They were proportionally correct to the boy’s size, and would grow as he grew, but they remained the many thick and thin strands of vines. Flowers grew sporadically around his knew limbs just like it had on her staff.

              Taylor smiled at the boy now unconscious. She hoped that he would remain unconscious and didn’t have to witness what had to come next. With her power severely drained, she called up the roots from the failing wall. The wall fell apart, but in a flash, they grasped the boy and pulled him into the walls, where he disappeared.

              She did not have time to think as the creatures attacked. Their intensity for breaking through her barrier, many more of the creatures were torn apart by their comrades from behind. Taylor shook her head as she reflexivity lifted her left hand, where her staff would have been. That nearly cost her as a rhino man jumped.

              Taylor caught the creature by its neck, despite its two feet and incredible muscular frame it had on her, she lifted her thumb and snapped its neck. She then threw the body into the now hundreds of monsters pouring down on her. This gave her the room allowing her arms to grow out and form into hundreds of flesh-colored vines. She ran into the mob creating a blood bath as each vine whipped around faster than the eyes could see, stabbing into necks, eyes and back alike.

              She jumped, kicking a dog’s head clean off and sending it barreling into others, and landing on another crushing it entirely with a loud crunch. Taylor went to whip out her vines but felt resistance. She turned to see two of the rhino men roaring as they held back a few of her vines that had penetrated their chests. Taylor grunted as she pulled and send them careening over her head and smashing down on more in front of her.

              For a moment, she felt invincible, perhaps she could save them all. Then she screamed as a maw clamped down on her shoulder. She grabbed the head and crushed it in her bare hand, but a second came in and took her leg, then a rhino man’s horn took her in the left shoulder. Taylor fell to her knees.

              “I tried my friend.”

              Everything went black.

 

 

              Jamylle heard her friends scream, and the incredible power that came pulsing from the hallway behind her.

              “Was that?” Jamylle thought to herself.

              She felt the echo from resurrection magic, but she must have been mistaken, there was no way they could have survived, and she wouldn’t have wasted her power on something like that… unless…

              “Keep moving!”

              Jamylle was pushing on the emotions of the crying crowd in front of her. These were the family members of their fledgling rebellion, and she needed them to move faster. Knowing that most of their husbands and wives and even some of their children have been brutally murdered from Suffering, did not help them move faster, it had done the opposite. Many of them would just fall to their knees and wish to be left behind, and with the noise growing closer behind them, Jamylle had no choice but to leave them behind. As she passed a few of the ones who gave up, she would cast a quick spell to put them asleep. It was the last mercy she could give them after looking into their still living yet dead eyes.

              She pushed on their emotions, she tried to tamper their fear, and push on their drive to escape. They had a safe room at the far end of this hall, that held an alter that Taylor had constructed herself. It would open to a random location on the surface. It was built that way for a reason; the security was more important than the chances of landing in a hostile or inhospitable location. This was the last resort, and if they could escape, at least they would be together.

              The running crown was tripping over themselves as they entered the immense room. There was about three hundred of them remaining and poured down in what looked like an amphitheater. The room stretched three hundred feet across in a perfect circle and a few hundred feet up. They were in an ancient and closed off volcanic tube in which Taylor had to continuously divert the pressured that built below their feet. With the attack, then siege, then their push in which penetrated their defenses, Taylor made the decision to not divert the pressures, and leave one last surprise for their attackers.

              Jamylle turned and saw slugs falling towards her.

              “No…”

              She choaked down a sob knowing the fate of her friend but resolve took over.

              Jamylle grabbed one of the last men still in fighting condition, he was very old, but still moved as if he were thirty years younger. He held his gun up with a quick and crisp salute. He nodded and moved to stand between her and the falling slugs.

              “No.” she pulled the older man back.

              She pulled out a small blue stone. It was circular with a storm of light spinning around inside its rocky confines.

              “Take this to the alter, just place it in the center. I will hold them off, it will take a few minutes before the portal take you.”

              The mans eyes opened so wide, his crows’ feet disappeared.

              “No ma’am.” He said sternly. “I am beside you until the end.”

              Jamylle shook her head and didn’t have time to argue.

              “Remember, I do this for you.” She told him.

              “What?”

              The man question as Jamylle quickly spun her fingers in a somatic incantation that placed the man under her direct control. A second mind opened in her own mind, one of her and one of her puppet. Jamylle had dangerous magic under her control, but she had never used it to complete take over someone, until now.

              She walked the man down and to the center of the alter. He placed the stone, and immediately the stony pillar glowed blue. The building in array of magic pulsated with blue light and the whole room began to frow and the portal began to open.

              Jamylle turned towards the hallway and just before the slugs hit, her body changed. She grew two then three times her size then even larger. Hair grew along her body along with massive fangs. She lurched over as her hands turned to paws and arms into thick legs. She screamed as a pair of legs tore themselves outside her waste. Dress torn into shreds, Jamylle landed on all six legs of a dreaded Silax Cat.

              The creatures were devils across many lands for their incredible size and veracious appetite and hostile view towards anything that lived. What made them so dangerous was their complete immunity to any form of magic cast of them. No mind magic would affect one, and if someone casted a form of magical projectile, it would hit their skin dark fur then completely dissipate.

              The slugs slapped against her Silax form, and they fell apart into gobbets of blood that soaked into her fur. She growled a grinned inwardly, then charged the demons. More slugs fell on her but continued to just fall apart, but she would not be so lucky with the dogs or rhino men. They were demonic creations from Sufferings realm, and not magically conjured beasts like the slugs, but she would still enjoy tearing them apart.

              She barreled into them directly, but as she was nearly the size of the entire hallway, all she needed to hold the line until the other could escape, and that was what she did. Jamylle stood strong under the relentless attacks. Dogs jumped and tore her flesh, rhino men bounded into her, sending their long horned deep into her chest.

              Her vision was going dark with each passing second. She looked back, they were still standing there. She turned and bit the head off a rhino man. She looked back, they were still there. She turned and slammed her body against the wall, crushing three dogs trying to scurry around her. She turned back, they reached for her. Dogs clamped down on her legs, and Jamylle crumbed. The dogs swarmed over her, and she saw three slugs summoned above her and sent falling towards the innocent people she was meant to defend.

              Jamylle flailed her body back and forth, trying to send them off her, but they clung onto like ticks. More and more were able to slip by her as even more jumped onto her body. Jamylle turned back to look into the eyes of the people she failed. They were crying, and a few even ran for her. She tried to shout for them to turn back and run, but the little breath that escaped her lungs were just bloody whisps.

              The few in front that ran for her were crushed by the falling slugs. She could hear them screaming, but Jamylle refused to look away. As the blackness creeped further and further in, there was a bright blue flash, and everyone was gone, save the few who ran forward. Little would they know that their sacrifice prevented the slugs and even the dogs from being teleported with them.

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