Tales of a Shifter (P5) The White Mountain

Chapter 81 - Chaos

Chapter 81 - Chaos

Body strained past the point of exhaustion Ezekiel summoned pure need to give him the strength to make the wild dash deep into the Ghouls Nest.

As they ran Ezekiel saw horrors beyond imagining. The Rat Clan lived in burrows that seemed utterly created from feces, saliva, and rotted meat of the dead. The earth was soaked in urine and...mounds of earth were burrowed and tunneled into as if giant worms of the nether world had borrowed into the grounds, for hundreds of feet in every direction. Bleak ephemeral lights, pale and unwanted glared down from the heaves, scant light clawing from behind mold drenched lights fixed in the ceiling countless feet overhead. The air was hot and soaked with death.

As Ezekiels ran he spotted a large Ghoul, its skin bleached black like obsidian, its legs had been gnawed off, and its jaw cracked open....its giant chest looked hollowed and chewed....and in the cavity milky white eyes glared out. Babies. The schlep of flesh and organs being ripped and pulled apart filled the space. Vomit threated to burst from Ezekiels throat as he watched one of the small bodies regurgitate a sloppy dollop of black spittle then sink its fangs into the liquids and rotting flesh with desperate hunger.

Ezekiel turned his eyes away just in time, because it seemed like the Ghouls were suddenly becoming agitated. Suddenly aware of their presence.

"Attack!" Ann shouted.

To Ezekiels surprise the moment they got into the room, Ann lashed out with savage fury. The air sizzled with the smell of burning metals, and as Ezekiel blinked, the Sister shot out three black balls of churning power. The Mana cut across her body, and struck a pair of Ghouls directly in their path. The beasts screeched. One fell to the ground thrashing and clawing at its severed legs, as the Mana tore into flesh like butter. The other Ghoul, took the blow to its head, brain matter and skin flayed off into the air like it had been impacted with a shot gun.

Ezekiel took a quick second to lock onto a Ghoul that was dozing a few feet deeper. With little preamble the Guardian clutched the dirk back hand and drove his fist down across the beasts corded throat and belly. Blood gurgled forth and run like a curtain, as guts piled out into the earth. The Ghoul screamed and launched for him, but Ezekiel was already pressing forwards, keeping close to Ann's backside as they cut a bloody path deep into the room. Together they must have attacked and bleed nearly eight Ghouls, but it was barely a drop in the ocean.

Running headlong in a bid to reach the center of the room, Ezekiel was too preoccupied to notice that the Ghouls in the room were swarming. Dozen, then hundreds began to appear, crawling from the earth like a horde of giggling fire ants.

Climbing and chittering all over, like giant half locusts half horse nightmares. Some of the multitudes were vomiting copious amounts of black Bile and slathering it across their bodies like lotion, or spitting it down into the tunnels in the earth.

Waste and vomit and earth stirred by the deadly claws and snouts of the beasts like paste, seemed to have been used to fashion the crude burrows that dotted the space like clay homes.

"Ann?" Ezekiel hissed as the Alchmists suddenly stopped, and put her hands over her head as if in prayer. She closed her eyes, and the air around her thrummed and the Mana glimmering like black flames on her arms flickered then swelled.

At that moment giant Ghoul, one larger than any that Ezekiel had seen before suddenly reared up, standing at nearly nine feet of muscle and fangs it bellowed and screeched. Ezekiel lunged to the side as a smaller Ghoul lunged at him from the back, and its fangs snapped at his head. Ann cursed as a white Ghoul snatched at her robes and started to drag her to the side. Ezekiel roared in defiance at the beast, and cut its hand from its body with a deft slash of his blade.