Chapter 75 The Seventh Island 4
"Vena...?" Callin found it hard to speak, his voice rasping out more like an animal's snarl than anything else.
Vena climbed to her feet, not taking her wretched, worm-gaze off of him, her every motion sharp, quick. Like a tiny, nervous bird.
"My wolf. Just for me. Come here, come to me, tie us together, set me free." She whispered, taking a step towards him.
Callin was pressed against the far wall of the cell, trying to back up even further, hardly able to believe what he was seeing. He felt a shiver of his power snap down his body, the crackling sound echoing off the concrete walls, accompanied by a wild surge of fiery pain and pleasure.
His power was lashing about inside his mind, higher and higher by the second. It was tearing down his walls and beginning to reach outwards, fiery blue tendrils arcing wildly out amidst the blackness of the void he normally kept his mind safe inside. What had she done to his walls?!
He recognized the pain as the consequence of his power enhancing his bone growth in violent, ravaging bursts, quickly followed by the equally intense surge of his healing power ramping up to levels he had never sensed before. He narrowed his eyes at Vena, seeing her take another abrupt, unnatural step towards him, the colors of the cell and of the flaring aura around Vena beginning to shift and flash. He couldn't figure out if his eyes were being influenced by his power, or if something about the insane, twisted power that had taken over Vena was causing the color shifts.
He found his mind falling deep into the animal rage, driven by the fear of being trapped, that fear beginning to etch into the bars around the beast. He was losing the battle to contain his power, was distracted by its damaging, cutting, crackling lines arcing out from him, and he had to deal with Vena advancing on him. He was trapped in a cell, fighting two battles, one internal, and the other with this insane telepathic girl who seemed to have somehow twisted herself into something unnatural, foul. Something that wanted him in ways he couldn't comprehend.
"Get back! Take another step towards me and I'll...I'll hurt you!" He snarled, unable to form a coherent threat, not even sure what he would do if she did take another step towards him.
Vena lifted one hand, her motion so sharp, so sudden, that Callin twitched in nervous surprise.
"Yesss....come to me. Let me taste youuu...." She whispered, tilting her head at him, the twin, writhing black holes of her eyes seeming to grow more anxious, more excited, by her own words. Then she took another, abrupt, unnatural step towards him.
Callin pushed off the wall, exploding into motion, his foot connecting with Vena's stomach in a lunge-kick. Her small frame bent nearly in half around his foot before she flew back, airborne, across the cell until she crashed into the wall. Callin gaped when her hands and feet flew out, spread-eagled against the concrete, and she stuck to the wall, her feet inches above the floor. Like her body was made of glue, like gravity had no influence on her.
She smiled at his stunned expression, a curving of her delicate lips that combined with the atrocity of her eyes to make his stomach twist in dark unease.
"My beautiful, ferocious wolf. I like you tied up better, sitting still for me to touch, my wolf of hatred, together we'll kill so much, the Triad will be ours." She whispered, one of her arms coming off the wall to point at him.
Callin saw black lines race down her arm, jagged marks made of an oily darkness that seemed to writhe in time with the gnashing holes of her eyes. Then strips of skin all along her arm suddenly peeled up and away from her shoulder, still attached at her wrist, spreading outwards like a fan, waving about in the air like some diseased offspring of scorpions and cobras. Each strip had a coiling, twisting, black aura surrounding it, like they were wearing a cloak of living shadows, somehow so full of wrongness that they radiated hatred and chaos like a blast furnace radiated heat, invisible waves of it spreading outwards in a nightmare arc.
Callin saw the strips rear back, felt his overloaded instincts scream warning at him, and threw up his arms in a cross block even as he ducked down. He wasn't fast enough, the skin strips blurring across the distance between them, wrapping around his wrists and ankles, detaching from Vena's wrist like high speed, airborne snakes. Yanking his arms outwards and slamming him bodily against the wall behind him spread-eagled, the strips around his ankles pinning him to the wall and holding him aloft.
Vena slid down the wall and walked towards him, still moving in halting, darting motions, although she seemed a bit more graceful now, less of a pause between her steps.
"There. Now we can touch, we can bond, we can strip. We can weave, we can tear, we can rip. My wolf. My Connection." She whispered softly, her voice echoing about as if had been spoken by ten girls almost at once.
The skin strips around Callin's wrists and ankles were clamped down tight against him, their touch hot and dry, yet somehow slippery, filling him with revulsion. His power reacted to his rage and revulsion, sending a full body arcing storm of fiery blue power from his head to this toes, snapping bolts that blasted holes into the concrete wherever they struck.
And the moment that burst of power struck the skin strips, Callin screamed. He felt like he was falling into a hole into infinity, a hole that twisted about like the maw of those worms posing as Vena's eyes. He looked across the cell and saw two tiny points of his own, blue power glowing in the center of the open, writhing blackness inside her eyes.
"Yess!!! More!" Vena hissed, jerking her legs in a strange litany of a dance, crossing the space between them in a rush, her hands flying up to clasp his head, forcing him to meet her eyes.
The bolt of panic that surged through Callin was unhampered by logic or control. It was the reaction of the animal. It reached inside him and tore the remains of his walls apart, unleashing his lashing power, giving it direction. The world went red and hot in a flaring explosion behind his eyes and Callin screamed as he felt his bone spurs surge wildly.
He felt the skin strips pinning him to the wall fall limply away, felt his feet hit the floor, and leaned back heavily, staring in shock at Vena. She was dangling limply in the air in front of him, her head sagging down, her arms and legs swaying softly. Held aloft by his shoulder spurs, which had grown forward and up in an arc, entering her chest just below her ribcage and erupting straight up like twin demon horns from her shoulders.
Callin felt a bitter flood of horror-borne ice crash through him when she slowly lifted her head.
"My wolf so pretty. You got away now but I'll find you, I'll hunt you ever, I'll tie you down across all of The Three, forever." She wheezed, then went completely limp, the blackness of her eyes shifting back to Vena's normal eyes at the same instant.
Callin's foot flew up between them, slamming into her chest, propelling her away from him, the spurs embedded in her body slicing their way out as she flew back across the cell, tumbling like a rag doll. He was gasping, shivering, his claws bared and held ready and his power surging wildly up and down his body in bright blue arcs, growing in intensity by the second. Growing wildly, freely, no longer chained by his control and fueled by his horror.
It was like an electric firestorm spiraling ever upwards, twisting about so fast it was forming a long, twisting, sinuous shape in his mind. A shape that swayed about like a thing alive with an unknowable, fierce intelligence. Callin sagged down the wall, flopping onto his butt as he covered his eyes with his hands and dug his own claws into his temples, trying to hold on. Trying to keep himself from being swept away by this uncontrolled, rising chaos inside.
Even as his panic rose by the second, in time with the surges of his ravaging power, he could feel how it had begun to leach outwards and wrap around and in his body. Enhancing his healing power and all of his senses to terrifying levels. His ears, so sensitive that he could hear and track the heartbeats of hundreds of beings above and below him, caught a strange, low, rasping sound. Something so unnatural that it had the ability to take that part of his mind that was paying attention to sounds and focus it in, to the exclusion of all else.
The rasping sound stopped just outside the cell he was in, the silence afterwards bristling with threat. Callin pulled his hands away from his face, snatching his feet under him in a move more like an animal than any human, looking out past the bars on the cell, into the hallway. Looking into madness itself.
The thing that stood in the hall was such a twisted, convoluted mess that Callin simply stared, not comprehending what his eyes were telling him was standing there, just feet away. It was huge, its head almost brushing the ceiling of the hall, filling his field of view with its black bulk. A creature standing on two legs, seeming to be formed entirely from boiling, writhing black bands, except for its arms.
One of its arms wasn't really an arm at all. It looked like a bloody, raw hunk of living meat shaped like a teenage boy, his skin peeled off in alternating strips from his head down to his feet, which were attached at the point on the creature where its shoulders would be. The skin strips coming off the boy were attached there, had peeled down off the boy and were wrapped around the creature's chest. They formed a spider web of pale, bloody strips, standing out against the utter blackness of the things chest.
The other arm was nearly identical, except it was obviously a teenage girl sticking out from the things chest, her slight form showing the natural feminine curves. Her skin strips had also woven across the things chest, tied into horrific, complex knots with the strips from the boy.
Neither of them had heads. Instead, coming up out where their heads would be, were five long, swaying worms. They were an alternating mix between oily blackness and a fierce, cold golden glow, flexing about in the air like fingers at the end of things demented arms.
By far, its most horrible feature was its head. It was a triple blend of the boy, the girl, and the black creature. Molded together, smeared together, woven in chaotic, confused clumps, as if three demented artists had woven the ultimate expression of their inner hell into a single face. And the face of the boy on the left and the face of the girl on the right were moving separately, twisting about in such madness and horror and hatred that it struck Callin like a physical blow, sucking his will and his strength away in one, soul searing instant.
He found himself flat on his back, paralyzed with a fear and horror so deep it consumed him, it held him as immobile as if he were encased in block of steel, crushing his mind. And yet, his senses were still working, still enabling him to hear that foul rasping sound it made as it entered the cell. He could hear the steel bars bending outwards from intense power, the metal groaning in protest, as if it were something that could experience agony and give it voice.
And then Callin found himself looking up at it as it loomed over head. He saw the things hand, formed from those five, sickening worms of black and gold, reaching for him, its other arm reaching for Vena. And he shut his eyes and fell back into his own mind, fleeing reality, hurling himself in reckless, all-consuming panic into the cage inside, heedless of the thing that howled within.
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Hey my awesome fans! I hope you're still enjoying ATOL so far! And I reeealy hope Callin's memory flashes aren't as confusing as they were in the first revision...lol!
Anyway, please shoot me a vote or ten if you like this story! It's more invigorating and motivating than you know!
Thanks!!!