Children of The Underground

Chapter 13: The Gordian Knot

Nobody in the group could see the monster, the black, crawling thing, with its carapace like obsidian, made of hardened, living shadows. But they felt its presence quite clearly. The creature's heavy, raspy breathing whistled through the darkness like a draft through the cellar. And just as they felt its impossible blackness, they also felt its coldness. Colder than the stone floor of a cave on a winter's night. A coldness that ate heat. A darkness that ate light. It was no wonder that the group first saw it as death.

But just as they turned towards the thudding sound, Drazhek took out an autotorch from his dwindling supply and lit it up.

"Vera, take out the Cherenkovo!" He screamed.  The torch's head sprayed sparks but even just recently lit, the flames grew dim and sooty. There wasn't any time to argue.

Vera took of her rucksack and retrieved the Cherenkovo device, tucked away forgotten inside her rucksack. To her suprise, the Cherenkovo device was glowing, a bright, electric blue from from some strand of magical energy between the vajra crystal and the tip of the orichalc dagger.

Misha, Lena, and Boris stared at the Cherenkovo device, glowing brightly in the shadow creatures presence. The device's light shined through their mask's lenses, illuminating their wide, shocked eyes. And as comprehension dawned upon them, they turned towards the shadow creature, eyes narrowed with grim determination

The creature, whatever it was, somehow absorbed the light and heat produced by fire, enough to extinguish lanterns and auto torches. But vajra crystals glowed when near a strong enough magic field. Combined with the magic-conducting orichalc dagger, and the powerful magic field the creature gave off, the Cherenkovo device became one hell of a lantern.

But that raised another problem: if this creature ate the heat and light from fire, then gunpowder might not work. Firearms might not fire.
Unless...

"Wolf," said Drazhek. The calm, assertive tone of Drazhek's voice made Boris turn sharply towards him. "Send this bastard to hell."

"Tak tochno," he replied. Military jargon meaning "yes, sir", that felt oddly appropriate to their circumstances. His thumper was a pneumatic weapon. He could pound away at the monster as much as he wanted. But the question still remained: did it bleed?

There was only one way to find out. Boris opened the breach of the thumper, and loaded a concussion grenade. The blast from these rounds were loud enough to risk a serious cave-in, but that didn't matter now. Boris The Wolf, would not let his wife and former apprentice be devoured by some monster.

He would not let them die, like they let Nadia The Striga die.

He bellowed and shot a round. The creature groaned and stumbled backwards a little from the subsequent explosion. The monster's murky hindquarters melted into the rest of the darkness outside the glow of the Cherenkovo's witchlight, but Boris guessed it was about as big as a house. It's head, some silhouette between a vulture and a snapping turtle, was bowed to it's chest. It's arms, folded and segmented like a praying mantis's covered that had.

"Whoreson didn't like that!" Boris shouted. "But the only problem is you can't tell if the piece of shit is wounded!"

"Hit it with one of the canister shot rounds!" Vera advised. "That'll turn this abomination into chopped liver!"

"At this range?" Boris retorted. "Then we'll be chopped liver too!"

"Argh. Kurva mat!" Misha roared. She slung her blunderbuss against her back and instead pulled out her sword. "You wanna make chopped liver? Okay, let's make chopped liver!"

With a savage, wrathful howl, Misha charged at the creature. It turned towards her and raised its forearms like a prizefighter's fists.

Misha feinted towards the left, but as the creature tried to block the blow, she pirouetted to the right, and slashed horizontally. To the cheers of Misha's comrades, a spurt of some inky black goop materialized in the air.