Smouldering ash lined the ground, soaking into the slimy floor, as the crazed Rethan tore through monster after monster, ripping limbs from their bodies, tearing flesh out with his teeth, slamming their bodies with his armoured tail, throwing himself into the scattering horde. The Corruptiids were large beasts, larger than the Rethavok hell-bent on destroying every single one of them, but it didn’t matter. A combination of god-blessed regenerating abilities and adrenaline-fuelled rage were forcing Retvuk to do everything within his power to save the fluffy kitty that the Corruptiids had captured and were planning to kill and eat.
Well, that was what Retvik assumed. He couldn’t really think right now. The only words going through his head were “PROTECT THE FLUFFY KITTY, KILL THE MONSTERS”. He was completely unaware that the Corruptiids here were trying to find a way to reproduce. Within this universe, the Corruptiids were rendered sterile, and they were looking for hosts to corrupt and turn into themselves. To be fair, the Corruptiids were just as dumb and stupid as the enraged Rethan currently was, and, despite having a numbers advantage, they were losing this fight, and badly.
Things were made worse when one of the Corruptiids decided to spit out a cloud of darkness that filled the room. Although Retvik was running on pure adrenaline now, he still retained enough intelligence to not just make some space for himself, but to also create several motes of light so he could see and continue fighting. However, Retvik was no longer alone. The carnage had snapped Kayel back to consciousness, and the cloud of darkness had allowed him to shadowjump to safety. His first action was to free Nyssi and Ilga, but he left Tenuk where he was. Tenuk’s current form was that of a large, blue cat, and Kayel knew that if he messed with the fluffy kitty, Retvik might consider him a threat as well.
“How many of these bastards are there?” Nyssi whispered as she dragged Ilga as far away from the fight as possible. While Retvik was probably aware enough to know that Nyssi and Kayel were his friends, he didn’t know the sleek, blue Lanex that well, and they didn’t want Retvik to accidentally lash out at her.
“More importantly, where’s all our stuff?” Kayel snarled, rubbing his head. He’d recovered from having been thrown against a wall, but his head and side still hurt somewhat.
“Too many, and in the pool of slime in the middle of the room…” Ilga answered, scanning the environment. “They are all coming from the far corner of the cave, over there. There’s something in there, a space that makes no sense, that gravitationally shouldn’t be possible.”
Nyssi glanced at Kayel, then frowned. She realized that Ilga was right. She could see all their gear, wrapped up in a sac, bobbing up and down. All of it together was too much for Kayel to carry, but Nyssi was concerned that the Corruptiids would attack her if she tried to grab everything, and she didn’t know if Kayel was capable of stopping Retvik if he considered attacking Ilga.
“We’ll be fine.”
Another frown. Nyssi pushed Kayel almost on top of Ilga, then raced over to the pool of black goo. The sac was just out of reach, but Nyssi found she could nudge it closer with her tail. She paused however as a Corruptiid came a little bit too close. Thankfully, Retvik had seen it before Nyssi had, and he almost mindlessly punched it so hard that his fist went through its skull. Retvik was definitely bleeding, but, if anything, that seemed to have given him an even greater advantage as his blood was landing on anything that touched him and would burn the Corruptiids’ skin. Several other Corruptiids had slowly realized that Tenuk, in his blue cat form, was doing something to manipulate Retvik, but their attempts to hurt Tenuk just made everything far, far worse.
Nyssi just about managed to get out of the way as Retvik howled in anguish, screamed something about fluffy kitties and proceeded to start biting and tearing lumps out of the poor fools that had dared try to harm the little Spast. As she made her way back to Kayel and Ilga though, she noticed the Corruptiids weren’t slowing down. They just kept on coming.
“So, uh, you were saying about some sort of gravitational thing?” Nyssi asked as she handed everyone back their gear. It was all covered in goo, but it was better than nothing. As she was about to hand Ilga her spears and speargun though, Kayel snatched them away from her and proceeded to lick pretty much all of Ilga’s belongings. Ilga didn’t question any of this. She was more focused on where the Corruptiids were coming from.
“We need to destroy this place…” Ilga muttered. “There is… a hole here…”
“A what?”
“A hole…”
Ilga climbed to her feet, then pressed herself against the wall, slowly working her way across the room. The Corruptiids were now completely focused on trying to stop the rampaging Rethan but didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. A lot of them seemed to be giving up though and were trying to retreat, and Ilga wanted to see where they were going. As Ilga rounded the corner though, she nearly screeched in surprise.
There was nothing there, aside from a thin, slimy film, that the Corruptiids were passing through. Beyond that though, there was… emptiness. Perpetual void.
Something pushed past Ilga. A fleeing Corruptiid. It nearly forced her through the film, but Kayel managed to grab Ilga’s hand.
“Alright, what the fuck is that?” Kayel exclaimed.
“A hole… I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… you said these monsters come from outside the universe? Well this is clearly how they are getting in!” Ilga trailed off, then moved back, away from the hole, dragging Kayel with her. “I thought we were just dealing with a handful of these monsters… This is beyond us, we need to get out of here, get back to civilization and get the Howling Gales in to fix this…”
“The who?”
“The… uh, proper authorities… The Howling Gales are the main Lanexian spacial authority. They are the ones that can deal with universal boundary problems. We need to go!”
“And how the fuck do we do that?” Nyssi hissed. “Tenuk’s still in that stupid sac thing and Retvik’s stuck in his Defensive Stance! Kayel can’t just shadowjump us all out!”
“Yeah I can. We’re literally in a dark cave full of shadows. We just need to knock Retvik out so he doesn’t accidentally hurt us.”
“Again, how the fuck do we do that?”
Before anyone could answer, something roared. Nyssi, Kayel and Ilga were blocking the exit for the last and largest of the Corruptiids. At least, the one that was also still alive. This turned out to be a grave mistake though, as Retvik swiftly realized that this particular Corruptiid was a particularly large threat. It almost instantly began to fizzle away as Retvik ripped off one of its wings then pulled it away from his friends and tore its throat out with his teeth.
A small meow though distracted Retvik before he could completely kill the Corruptiid. The monster was pretty much dead anyway, but the distraction was good, because the look in Retvik’s eyes suggested that he didn’t know who anyone was and was likely to attack anything that moved. In the carnage, a bright blue, very furry and quite large cat had clawed his way to freedom, and was now standing in front of Retvik.
“Hey, Retvik, it’s me, the fluffy kitty. You can stand down now.”
Everything else in the room was dead. The air stank of melting flesh and slime. The slowly disintegrating corpses of at least ten Corruptiids of various sizes littered the cave. Retvik was clearly confused and still fuelled by rage. His heartbeat was painfully erratic, his breathing heavy. He stomped towards the cat, claws held out, jaw open wide, tail swishing back and forth with great force.
“They’re dead. You saved us. You can pet me now.”
Retvik snarled. He only just seemed to understand what Tenuk was saying to him. He came to a halt in front of the cat, then lowered himself down for a better look. But there was clearly still a lot of anger in there. Still, Retvik reached forward, so he could touch the fluffy kitty.
Tenuk meowed, then sighed to himself. He rubbed against Retvik’s claws, then suddenly jumped up and ran up Retvik’s arm, climbing onto his shoulder. Tenuk then puffed up his chest and expanded in size, until he was about 4m across. Retvik swiftly collapsed under the weight of the now colossal cat. He struggled briefly, before passing out, having briefly run out of the oxygen and nitrogen he needed to breathe.
“Well… that is, excuse my language, beyond fucked up…” Ilga stuttered as she, Nyssi and Kayel inspected the scene before them, and Tenuk turned back into his normal, Spast self. “I’m sorry I dragged you all into this. I thought we were dealing with two monsters, like you did on Kolasi. Not an entire nest of these bastards, complete with some sort of paradoxical hole to the edge of the universe…”
“You weren’t to know…” Kayel sighed as he edged closer to Retvik, then checked to make sure he was breathing again. Even though Retvik was unconscious now, his body was still twitching and his tail was thrashing around a little too much. “Ilga, you have all of this stuff… written down or something, right?”
Ilga nodded. “Partial video recordings and photos from my lens, plus GPS location. Once we’re to the surface, I’ll call the local Vrekan and Lanex authorities. Can we get Retvik out of here or do I need to call emergency services too for an airlift?”
Kayel glanced around the cave, then tutted. “We should be alright. I should be able to shadowjump us to the cave entrance. Probably should have done that as soon as we were attacked, but, well… sorry…”
Tenuk placed his hand on Kayel’s shoulder. “It’s fine. No one important died, we killed a ton of monsters, you can get us out of here, we’re all good. No need to apologize.”
Kayel clearly didn’t share Tenuk’s enthusiasm. “Yeah, well… We’d better get going. I don’t want us to have to knock Retvik out again… Everyone grab your stuff then hold hands. I’m getting us out of here…”