PAW Patrol: Incubus

Chapter 26- Incubus

There had to be more time; Chase sprinted through the Gates of Heaven and landed upon the squelching, sickening flesh of the Omnihive. It was all back, the heat, the red sky, the thousands of eyes all on him, but there was no point in dwelling on anything anymore. Turning toward the Aorta Tunnels, he braced himself to run. He stopped; forcefully digging his paws into the meaty ground with a ferocious grip. His movement had ceased, halted at the command of a foreign entity wrapping around his mind. It all came at once, the white-hot searing agony of tearing flesh, squirming tentacles leeching down his legs and coiling over the bone.

"Eng- no," Chase said, violently gasping as if his breath was being stolen away. "Not... not now! Not- ... eeaaaaahhhhh!!!" Like swarming fire the ferox messiah screeched from within his body, linking their veins and tendons and making a brutal grab to hijack his brain. Violently it fought, straining every last muscle in Chase's body until they vibrated like fearsome wasps. "No!! Not yet-" Chase almost collapsed upon himself, burning under the immeasurable agony tearing his body apart from within. "I- I can make it!!

His front leg lifted on its own, reaching to the red sky, and Chase knew it was not himself looking through his eyes. Blood fell from his ears and eyelids, electric pain shooting bullets through his skeleton straight for his shoulder blades. "Aaaahhhh!!!" He screamed as they ripped out of him with revered passion, four tentacles of sliming gore erupting from his back, embracing the red sunlight with their wriggling dance.

All bodily function fell to chaos; with sickening tears his skin ripped along his legs and sides, spurting blood and chunks of flesh. His own frame could no longer contain the massive creature liberating itself into the world, and Chase felt every last one of his nerves tearing in half. The shepherd fell on his stomach convulsing, unable to move from the overwhelming seizures. Stinking froth regurgitated from his mouth, and Chase fell still in the fields of the Omnihive, left only to his fading vision and the triumphant laughter of Mother Genesis.

Then the pain soothed, washed away with foggy soap and water, and Chase opened his weary eyes to the world. He recognized this place, the sorrowful songs whistled by the spirits in the air, endless wandering in the hopeless infinity. This was his mind, or at least he figured, the endless fog that possessed every direction obscured the various weary souls shivering in the cold.

Except one. A single shepherd sat a few feet away, sitting with her head hung to the floor. A terrible aura of depression surrounded her, as if she were gazing upon her life falling apart piece by piece.

"What..." Chase pushed himself up, wincing at the pain's memory fresh in his mind. "Am I... am I dead?" He looked down at himself, seeing that his body had supposedly returned to normal; gone were the gruesome tears and gashes that diseased his skin.

"Not yet," Audrey said, sighing to herself. "But it's taking you as we speak."

"Wh- then why am I here, we're wasting time!"

"I didn't bring you here!" she whipped around, snarling with flattened ears. "Your body couldn't take the transformation... and you fainted. You could have mere minutes left and they're being spent here..."

The soldier worriedly looked around at the foggy chasm that was his inner subconscious, "then how do I get out of here? How do I wake myself up?"

"I'm not sure you can, I wouldn't know anyway," Audrey shook her head, drained of all resolve and motivation. "I guess we just got really unlucky... there isn't more that can be done now."

"Of course there is!" Chase said with a narrowed expression. "We can't just let Genesis win!"

Audrey lunged at his face, barking with seething frustration. "She already has! She won when you got infected, she won with every last body I-" she stopped herself, swapping her words around on the fly, "that Feroxmalis snuffed out! She won when I transformed, she won when Rubble was compromised, and she's done nothing but confirm her victory with you stepping into the Omnihive!"