Despite my best attempts at fighting it, I’m pulled right after the suddenly falling hero.

  Straining and snarling with a strength I didn’t know I had for the bare second it takes for his already plummeting weight to drag me towards the pit. Uselessly digging my heels in against the slick floor with a stubbornness fuelled as much by the terror of the fall itself as where it leads. A scream of mangled words and half-baked plans bursting free as my feet slip into empty air.

  It’s the curtain pole that saves me. Us.

  My scream of mindless terror morphing into the hissing, and unfortunately now familiar, pain of my arm being wrenched suddenly free of its shoulder socket. Almost biting through my tongue as slam my teeth shut and taste the blood that starts to fill my mouth. My full weight, and Ictus’ as well, suddenly held up only by the death grip I have on the metal pole that has just broken the zip on my new jacket to land horizontally across the pit above us.

  We hang together for a moment as I continue to bite down on the new and screaming pain of my shoulder bone not being lined up with the socket. A pain only made worse by how I’m forcing my hand to maintain its sweaty and white-knuckled grip on a pole that is just a little too thin to be comfortable. Not that any part of this can be called comfortable. The added pain and dragging weight of the hero beneath me nothing at all compared to the gibbering fear that is making me shake like a leaf before a storm. The very thought of how I’m dangling over a hundred metres of empty air leaving me able to think of nothing else besides how to get away.

  And, as soon as I’ve caught my breath, I try to do just that.

  Clawing and pulling one handed at the bar in my attempts to get up. Fighting against the weakness in my dislocated arm and the weight still holding onto the other as I try to do a one handed pull up. My legs not quite able to reach the holes side as I kick them up to try and get a grip on the jagged edges. The floor only being around a foot thick and so just a little too far away for me to reach given the holes width and my own poor grip. Far worse, it’s not quite thick enough to stop me from seeing how there’s no sign of a wall anywhere nearby. The sound of my initial scream and struggles not echoing but simply fading away as if I were shouting into the void itself.

  A noise from below cutting through my screams and reminding me of the hero still holding onto my arm as he says something I pay no attention. My attempt to reach the side of the hole forgotten as I start aiming kicks at his chest and then fighting, and screaming, harder after it feels like he stabs me twice in the legs. Too terrified of the drop below me to look down and check. To tear my eyes away from the oh so small hole providing the only light into the muffling darkness all around us.

  If it was just my own weight, even with the bar being unsecured and my arm weakened, I could do it. Ictus though, makes it impossible. His far greater weight dragging me down to the point that not even meta-strength alone is enough to for me to bear it. Only the hysterical edge of fear giving me the endurance to push my body past its limits and keep holding on.

  Then, the bar bends.

  The wrenching scream of cheap metal covers my own cry as the pole buckles around my hand. Bending into a wide V that grates slowly against the sides of the concrete hole above us as I feel myself slipping down into the cold dark beyond the reach of the monitoring room’s light. My scream becoming a stream of bile as the smell finally overpowers my lungs and I instinctively look down to avoid choking. Wide eyes growing wider on seeing that my legs really are disappearing into what looks like nothing so much as a solid line of black. Ictus already swallowed up to the shoulders but otherwise looking entirely unbothered, even with the sick splattering against his shoulder, as he stares up at me with the re-breather once more held in his mouth.

  Or rather, just past me.

  Again, I jerk to a sudden stop. The pain not nearly as bad as the first time thanks to the slower speed that we’d been falling at. Yet, it is made all the worse by how the initial burst of adrenaline has just begun to fade. My fingers having been right at the edge of slipping before I felt a set of metal hands closing tightly around my wrist. The fight, if not fear, going out of me all at once as I finally notice how my legs are being held together by a copied set of my own arms. The earlier sharp pain in my calf and thigh not from the hero stabbing me as I’d assumed but from where he’s used the grip he has on my wrist to grow new limbs right out of my flesh.

  ‘I can feel them.’

  I don’t bother to hold back the shiver that goes through me at the sensation of the limbs which are not mine. The way I can feel them as if they were no different to my own arms, from the burning stench on their skin to the rough feel of my ruined jeans and the pounding of my blood through the vein that runs between forefinger and thumb. I cannot control them.

  I almost throw up again at the way they twist tighter around my no longer kicking legs. Stomach going to retch before realising that my body has already given up and so not bothering either. Nothing is stopping me from kicking or smacking out at the hands now wrapped tight around me from both above and below. Nothing but the cold numbness of exhaustion from a night that has been far too long already and the knowledge that the only way out of Ictus’ grip is to let myself fall.

  I try anyway. Willing my tight gripped wrist to shake him off and for my legs to do the same as I feel the arms of his costume join my own newly added limbs. Mentally screaming at the hand clinging white-knuckled to the bar to let go. To not just release my grip but to throw myself from it and lash out at the metal hands, now being joined by others, that are carefully strengthening the pole.

  I can’t. Dangling above an empty drop into what might as well be an endless darkness, the only thing I manage is a whimper as I again hear the grate of metal on stone from above. Head whipping back around at the thought that we might be falling after all. Shock and horror replaced with surprise when I instead see a sprouting bed of stone hands growing from the hole’s sides.

  The arms working together to support one another or else link with a series of metal fingers growing from the pole itself. Locked together as they begin slowly dragging us back up and into a light I only now realise I’d given up on ever seeing again. The relief is near overwhelming and I feel tears come to my eyes as a choked sob flushes out the last of the urge to fight from my system.

  Then comes disgust. And rage.

  At Saurian’s crew for getting themselves, and me, into this failed situation. At Ictus and his horrid Power which makes skin that is not truly mine crawl with a horror I wish it couldn’t feel. At dad for pushing me to this. At mum for disappearing. At Pinball and at Valiant and at Icy and at Rosch and at so many, many more but, most of all, at myself. I let go of the bar.

  Snarling instead of screaming this time, I throw myself from the pole. Using whatever leverage I still have to smash my dislocated arm into the hands holding onto me. Throwing my weight backwards with a rush of vindictive glee as I feel us slipping further back down the hole. Jumping on the chance the little damage I’ve done to the metal limbs has caused to start slipping my hand up my sleeve. Legs kicking as best they can as I look down at the hero to see a toothy grin reflected back at me off his visor. My lips parting further as I hawk up a phlegmy mass of blood and bile in preparation to spit it into his eyes. Hopefully, it’ll mix with what little of the paint is still there and block the view he needs to grow more arms.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  What I’ll do after that I have no idea and never get to find out.

  The moment I part my teeth to spit at him I find them suddenly being poked by the taste of soft skin and the sharp bite of nails that burst from the roof of my mouth. My throat going right back to retching as I accidentally swallow the spit wad after the hero grows a set of my own fingers inside my mouth. The shock of it having me flinch from my attempt to slip out of my jacket and so giving the arms above us the chance to get a better grip on my wrist.

  “I try not to use my Power like this, been asking Central to help me prune it into something else for ages now, but you crossed a fucking line kid. There’re rul-” Ictus’ low and angry words, heard clearly even though muffled by the rebreather and even hoarser than before, come to a sudden stop. The fingers that have been fighting to grip my tongue just as suddenly becoming a foul-tasting mixture of slurry and mush.

  My immediate urge to spit out the disgusting mouthful, straight into the hero’s visor of course, stopped by a fresh hand that painfully bursts from my collarbone to grip tight over my lips. The new arm pushing my head back to stop me from looking down as I scream with muffled rage into the feel of my own fingers. Pitting my meta-strength against itself as I try to force my mouth open wide enough to bite at the hand. Or else let the slurry dribble out from between my lips and add some slickness to its grip.

  I don’t get far in the attempt before the arms above me are suddenly spinning us around. The hand over my mouth jerking my head violently to the side. Forcing me to stare down into a part of the seemingly endless dark that was behind me just a moment ago. Thoughts still reeling at the sudden spin, I blink some sense back into my night vision just in time for my eyes to pick out the impression of movement beyond the edge of the light. A shape which has caused the stone arms above us to stop their lifting and made Ictus go totally still where he’s wrapped himself almost entirely around my legs and waist. A shape which is definitely not alone.

  ‘Oh, oh right. I should’ve been mad at that too.’

  Looming out of the dark just a dozen or so metres away from us, and not that far below, is a collection of at least five tentacles identical to the one responsible for my broken rib. The monster seeming cautious for now as it brings each of the vast limbs towards us at a ponderous pace. Flicking one forward before pulling it away again in a circular motion that makes me uncertain where it’s source might be. Not that I could do anything with that information anyway.

  I swallow without thinking when the next tentacle comes a little closer again. The taste and feel of the meat slurry flowing down my throat making me choke and gag despite Ictus’ tight grip and my own fear. At once, the tentacles pull back. The sudden movement of the vast things creating a draft of displaced air that pulls us after them like bugs who’ve just barely dodged the swatter. The pull so great it breaks the grip of many of Ictus’ stone hands and drags the bent pole right to the very edge of the hole. The stench that I’ve almost managed to ignore the past few seconds suddenly becoming a biting gale that punches into my back and rushes along my skin with burning force. Only the hand still clinging tight to my mouth stopping me from screaming at the feeling of brief weightlessness that it causes. A feeling which is so easy to mistake as falling.

  One that passes blessedly quickly as I watch the tentacles settling themselves at the very edge of my strained vision. My breath coming short and sharp as the last of the putrid gale finishes whipping around us and I at last remember how far away Saurian had said the water was. What I’m looking at, what I can see, must only be the very tip of something truly massive.

  ‘One hundred metres. One hundred metres of muscle-filled tentacle, at least…’

  Why the monster hadn’t just used its sheer size to smash completely through the hole now above us when it tried to grab me earlier isn’t something I spend more than a moment considering. My curiosity and rage both wiped away by the numbness of knowing that I have lost. A numbness that doesn’t shift even as the stone arms start pulling us up again. Slow and gradual at first then faster and faster again as our lack of response causes the gargantuan monster to begin to overcome its caution.

  The handful of tentacles hovering at the edge of my vision for a few seconds longer before one flicks past us at a slow but rapidly building pace. The buffeting gust of its passing not nearly as bad as when all five had pulled away but still strong enough that Ictus’ arms have to focus on just holding tight to the pole and my wrist rather than lifting us any higher. Not even the jingling scrape of the bar as we slide back down almost to the hole’s edge being enough to get through the blanket of exhausted shock that has fallen over me. I didn’t need any demonstrations past the first to know that Ictus’ arms won’t be fast enough. Nor to know that there’s nothing I can do here either.

  With my Power, with me, I’m just not strong enough.

  “Hey, kid. Do you know what makes someone a hero?”

  Moving as if in a dream, I slowly look away from the four tentacles that are circling closer at growing speed. The monster having confirmed that we’re not an immediate threat and so getting ready to scrape us off the ceiling of its home. Ictus’s voice a welcome excuse to look away from what’s coming. A relief in comparison to just powerlessly watching as it gets closer and, likely acting on some last bit of lingering caution, surrounds us from all sides.

  ‘It’s like we’re grapes in its palm. Ready to be squished.’

  The stray thought comes as if from outside myself as I glance down to where Ictus is staring back up at me, or perhaps just past. One hand holding his rebreather while another has slipped under his helmet. Whether pushing his ear-piece back in after it’s slipped out again or just settling the helmet in place I don’t know. My attention taken instead by the slight upward twitch of his lips as he clearly struggles not to laugh. That, his own lack of care for how we’re both about to die, finally gets through some of the numb coldness clinging to me. My eyes shifting to his weakened grip with a frown as I lick my lips and consider how, if not for his added weight, I could definitely climb out of here in time.

  “Ha! That’s alright, you’ll figure it out.”

  He definitely looks at me this time. Smiling wide and bloody as he slots the rebreather back into his mouth and then clicks the bottom half of his helmet over top of it. The two pieces sliding together with a puff of displaced air that I barely hear over the rapidly approaching stormfront that is the waving tentacles. The two of us rocking back and forth like a less musical windchime now that the limbs have begun their final approach.

  What must be the last of the monster’s caution having it send the same limb that first swiped past us come in again on a trajectory I guess will be almost close enough to touch. Somewhere deep in my gut, I know their will not be another pass.

  The thought puts some fire back in my chest as I suck down a lungful of foul and burning air, gritting my feet painfully tight as I lean my weight into the next swing to gain a little more momentum and control. Trying to judge the exact line the tentacle will follow so I can make my one and only attempt at having a chance to survive this. It’s not until I’m at its apex, a grin back on my face as I feel sure that I’ve correctly judged the speed, that I realise it’s not just my own weight that’s been added. My eyes widening in shock as I feel Ictus finally let go of my wrist and, in the same instant, rapidly unpeel himself from where he’s half wrapped around my legs.

  The hero rapidly clambering down until he’s only maintaining contact with me through a hand wrapped around my ankle. His weight becoming a pendulum which he uses to swing out even further than I’d expected him to go. The three arms copied from my own body turning to mush just an instant later when he lets go of my ankle as well.

  Before my shocked gaze, he flies out in a silent arc through the empty dark around us. The light from above rapidly casting him into shadow and then reducing him to just another shifting shape at the edge of my vision. A shape which slams directly into the side of the tentacle as it goes to pass me.

  The monster tries to flinch away once it becomes clear Ictus is aiming for it but it’s not able to fight its own momentum fast enough. The hero crashing into the gel layer covering the limb with a wet smack that I want to believe is just in my head. The many hands of his costume stabbing forward to plunge through the slime and prevent him from just immediately bouncing off. The initial force of his landing being enough to let him avoid that at least but not quite enough to prevent him from beginning to slide down the tentacles side. The limb flinching over where he’s landed as it passes close enough to the light for me to watch as several dozen fingers all curl and dig in search of a better grip.

  I don’t get time to see what happens next before realising that I’m now rising from the hole at a far greater pace than before. Head snapping up with a look of total surprise as the stone hands begin to drag the curtain pole up to the top of the pit. The metal fingers still joined together to stop the cheap metal from bending any further. While the few full hands that Ictus grew from it have remained tightly clenched around my wrist. It takes me another moment of blinking shock before I sweep away any wonderings of why Ictus is still trying to pull me out and just focus on taking advantage of it.

  Biting down a scream, I use my dislocated arm to pull myself up and over the top of the bar that his arms are holding secure. The hands holding me to it loosening their grip, and even moving to support me, as I pull my legs up to touch the side of the pit. Resting for only a moment to catch my breath and glance around at the floor of the monitoring room now at eye level. A small twitch of my lips peeking through the fading shock on seeing that Schiz is still where the hero left her.

  ‘Perhaps I’m not so fucked after all.’

  momentum of the scene before. Hopefully, I got the right balance. Also, here is my for how the monster moves (if not at all how it looks) and the sense of scale involved if anyone wants a clearer image.

  Snippet Thread before it makes its way here. head over there if you want a sneak peek at (and voice in) any future stories I might write as well as to see the things I just write for fun.

  thanks for reading!