Starlight Blaze

Destruction IV: Don't cry

Frozen in place. A dear in the headlights. Breath batted. A deafening howl. Mind breaking. Stomach cold with dread like no other. Maya saw red. Its eyes....An eerie, pitch red void that emitted a light of its own. Maya had to Crain her head almost 180 degrees to see past the pitch black ram's large, carnivorous teeth, to meet its gaze. A nightmarish maw and a hide of spindles. Its movements were too fluid. So seamless that it was uncanny. Otherworldly. It wasn't a regular ram. It couldn't have been. It was the size of a three story house. Its tongue was blood red and was at least four feet long, reeking of toxins. Maya's eyes searched through the debris for Jagruti and Abhimanyu. They had been throw to opposite sides of the room, but, thankfully had landed behind the ram and it did not seem to notice them.

Maya let her mouth fall agape, but she felt like she could not breathe. It was as if an invisible line was blocking oxygen from entering her lungs. Sweat erupted from every pore on her body and she trembled like a leaf in the wind. It took every bit of courage in her to not fall to the ground. She was way, way over her head. 

At that moment, her eyes Abhimanyu's . He saw it in her eyes. Terror. Pure terror. Yet, determination. The trap had to work. It had to. It just had to.

Abhimanyu gave her the smallest nod possible and grabbed Jagruti by the arm. She looked at him, her face bone white, she knew what he was doing. She locked eyes with Maya and opened her eyes to scream out to her but Abhimanyu covered her mouth with his hand. Bitting and kicking, he dragged Jagruti out the room and ran up the fire escape. 

Maya took a deep breath and pushed Jagruti's phone, which was still tied to her tie, across the hall. It skidded to a halt a few feet away from the trap. The ram took notice at once.With shaking hands, Maya tapped the "call" button and Jagruti's phone blared to life, singing Megh D's hit album "Midnight Sun".

The ram's roared cracked the ceiling open and cracks shattered the marble floor. The monster charged for the phone and Maya tugged at her tie as hard as she could. Jagruti's phone fell into the trap. The ram followed, but only its maw and half its abdomen could fit into the trap, and that was more than enough.  The carbon fiber tunnel contracted and held the ram fast. The demon tried to wriggle forward but the trap was already stuck to its abdomen. It wouldn't get through forward or backward. It was stuck. When Maya had saw the ram, she had been afraid that it's barbed hide, cutting edge tongue and teeth could puncture the trap, but the monster's tongue, jaw and legs were pressed  so tightly against the ram's maw that it could barely move. Thankfully, the carbon fiber was strong enough to resist its hide.

The ram roared and Maya hunched under her mountain of debris as more rained down on them. The ceiling was completely demolished now and there was a gigantic crater in the floor. But the plan had worked. It had worked! Maya had done it! She felt like she wanted to cry out of joy. Maya closed her eyes, leaning back and exhaled. When she opened her eyes, she felt something warm in her hand. She looked down. It was the marble. The marble. The one she had woken up with in her hand this morning. How was it here? She'd left it on her desk. But now, it looked different. It was shapped...Like a star.

After a few minutes, Maya got to her feet and walked up to the trapped demon. She flashed it her most smug lopsided smile 'Stuck, eh?'

Roar. The braided cylinder began to trash as the ram rolled and wiggled. Maya moved out of they way, relaxing for the first time in hours. Maya should have left it at that, go up the fire escape and meat up with Jagruti and Abhimanyu on the roof. Signal for help. But now, her fear had turned to anger and resentment.

'Oh save it,' Maya rolled her eyes 'This piece of excellence is called the Chinese Finger trap. Me and Jag won matching ones at a village fair when we went to Badlapur last year. How stupid do you have to be to fall for a trap as simple as this? Not too smart, eh? What? No more roaring? No more shaking the building? Is somebody-'

Maya screamed. Something sharp tugged at her side, caught in flesh and fabric, stringing her along for the ride as she flew through the lobby. Her grip on the star marble bone white. The ram had contracted its abdomen and blindly picked with its hind leg, and it had hit her square in the gut, shooting a spiderweb of pain through her body so intense that her vision went blank. Maya  slammed into something hard with incredible force, and she was torn free with a scream. 

It felt like hours, days, an entire century before her vision came back into focus. Her mind still reeling. The ram's roars splitting the floor into two. Maya felt her stomach grow warm and damp. But she felt no pain. That meant she was so badly injured that her body couldn't even register it. And yet, she was still clutching the star in her palm tight.  She felt its edges bite into her skin, reminding her it was still there. Still warm. Still bright. Still a small sun. Still...like a little heartbeat. Maya chocked back tears. The world was spinning again nd her chest was tight.

"Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry. Pick yourself up. Don't cry."

Maya grunted her teeth and sat up straight, not daring to look at the wound she was holding tight. She came face to face with those blood red eyes once again. The trap was still holding on to its abdomen, not allowing it to move, but its maw was free, drooling with dark saliva and massive rows of teeth. She saw herself in the creature for a split moment, reflected in the void of its eyes, and she was nothing but food. The ram's maw lurched forward, fangs flashing, saliva flying.  Maya's chest seized. 

"Face it! Don't look away! You are not going to die! Not like this! Not without a fight!"

Maya's free hand grabbed at a heavy piece of mettle and drove it between the monster's jaws. The force of its roar knocked her back onto the ground. Black dots filled her vision as she watched its razor sharp fangs sink into the mettle with ease, into the only thing separating Maya form certain death. Had that been her arm, she knew it would have been bitten clean off.  She heard the heart-wrenching noise of splintered mettle. It was going to break. It was going to break and then there would be nothing to stop those jaws from closing around her throat. How had this happened? Her plan had been perfect! It was...because of her hubris. Had she not taunted the ram, she could have joined Abhimanyu and Jagruti. This was all her fault.

Just then, she felt that warmth. That glow. That heartbeat. The star was stuck between her palm and the piece of mettle. Blood rushed and screamed in Maya's ears like a cacophonous roar. She had reached the crescendo and there was no choice left but to lose yourself in it. Maya relinquished her grip on one end of the mettle bar and with her free hand, drove the star into the beast's eye, the darkness around the eye scattering onto her arm in black slime. The creature lurched back, ripping the mettle bar from her hands where it was still stuck on its fangs and wrenched its eye free from the star. No...More like, the star wrenched itself free from the beast's eye. it was glowing-no- shimmering so brightly that it enveloped the entire building in a burst of flames. In an inferno. The air was thick with the acrid scent of burning debris and the fiery orange and crimson hues enveloped Maya's vision into an inferno. The flames did not consume her; they were an extension of her very being.