“Considering we are all going to die in three minutes, you’re all insanely fucking calm!” Talok screeched as the dreadful truth began to sink in. They were trapped inside a moon-sized fortress made of flesh, millions of kilometres away from their friends and family, sitting on a ticking bomb that was due to explode with no means of escape.
Levik shivered slightly and wrapped his arms around Talok in a vague attempt to calm him down. “Well, I’m just panicking on the inside, I don’t know about the rest of you.”
Elkay wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to say a lot of things but didn’t want to hurt the feelings of his very brief new friends. “I suppose… I suppose I already believed myself to be dead. I very much assumed that the Allbirther would have killed me long before you all found me.”
“What are you trying to say?” Levik asked.
The Rethan shrugged. “I do not know. There is not really much else to say except for thank you.”
“Thank you? What for?” Ct’Era grunted. She had been sitting on the ground, covering her ears with her massive claws and rocking back and forth. She seemed not at all bothered about dying, but the noise of the blaring sirens was causing her genuine pain. “We did not save you. You die here. I care not. I will not see my tribe again. No matter what happens.”
“It does not matter that I was not saved. You all gave me precious comfort and relief in my last moments,” Elkay explained. “I could have died cold and alone, killed by the monsters in this facility. I can at least take solace in the fact that I will not die alone.”
“Yeah yeah…” Talok didn’t care. “Whatever. You’re all old. I’m young. I wanted to see the universe. And now I’m here. Levik, I hate you.”
“That’s completely fair…” Levik sighed. “Do you guys… hear humming?”
Everyone stopped what they were doing. Levik was right, there was a weird humming sound, hidden underneath the sound of explosions in the distance.
“Yeah, I hear that too…” Talok muttered.
Suddenly, the room filled with light, while the sound of flesh being cut with a hot knife echoed in everyone’s ears. Above them, the ceiling had opened up, revealing clear blue sky about 200m above them. A massive, clawed limb reached down into the hole, giving the group a way out.
“Godly intervention…” Ct’Era gasped. “I did not think…”
“Don’t think, grab on and climb!” Levik shouted as he grabbed Talok and leaped for the limb, clinging onto one of the huge claws. Ct’Era and Elkay both followed as the clawed limb began to lift up, away from the facility.
The claw belonged to a massive sea-beast, one capable of flight. It quickly occurred to the four of them that they had been saved by the Panelix.
Epani lifted herself up into the sky, far away from the fortress of flesh, which had begun to burn and emit towers of suffocating smoke. She landed on the top of a large hill, dropping off her passengers.
“Wow…” Talok was speechless. Both from fear and amazement. “You… saved us…”
“You did as I asked. It would be wrong to let you die.”
While they were now rather far way from the fortress, the explosions could still be heard. But weirdly, so could a cacophony of other sounds. Not the sounds of burning and destruction, but the sound of screaming and growling. That of a tortured beast.
“So what now?” Levik asked. “Do you… need me to do anything else?”
Epani flapped one of her fins. As she did so, Levik’s ship appeared out of thin air.
“No. I need you all to leave.”
“Why?”
In the distance, something began to claw its way out of the smouldering remains of Yisini’s fortress. The screams and growls intensified, echoing across the landscape. Dark clouds began to gather, as lightning flickered across the sky.
“Because the Thantophor’s fury has been ignited…” Epani hissed as she took off into the distance. “And no mortal can stand against his power…”