The Unmaker

Lightning lashed through the giant fungi forest, tearing through the colossal mushroom stalks with fiery flashes of light before blinking out of existence—and the three sisters ran for their lives, avoiding the cold shafts of moonlight falling through the canopy as the air began to twist around them.

Terror slowly gave way to exhaustion. All of them were bleeding, breathing sharp, heavy breaths. As the endless volley of lightning bolts lashed closer and closer to their heels, Fera tasted heat, brimstone, and sulphur on her skin. Nights in the fungi forests were always dark and full of terrors, but tonight, it was a hunt the likes of which had never been brought upon her kind in a decade—the three of them, the last of their kind, had been lured into a trap of a forest under false promises of food and shelter, and for Fera’s reward? She, the oldest sister, had run her younger sisters into a death sentence.

Where is he?

Where’s he coming at us from?

Vaulting over boulders, ducking under fallen logs, they ran through pitch-black darkness as Fera glanced behind them, trying to locate the shadow. He had to be camouflaged, though. She’d heard he had such a mutation, but it hardly seemed necessary for him to hide himself when he was overwhelmingly powerful compared to them. Was he enjoying the hunt, then? Was he cackling by himself as he sent bolt after bolt of lightning at them, lighting up the forest for brief moments just to hurt their over-sensitive eyes?

It was impossible trying to locate him. Even with all eight of her eyes, Fera could tell that he wasn’t going to show himself so easily. A nauseating riot of colours warped and distorted the air in the fungi forest, weakening her vision, making it hard to endure her own senses. Just keeping her eyes open as she ran made her want to puke, but she couldn’t look away—not for her sisters’ sake, and not for herself.

But… this wasn’t going to work.

Somebody had to stay behind, and she was the oldest sister.

Even with fear in her throat, she didn’t falter. She picked her younger sisters up, ignored their snarling at her to let them go, and quickly spun webs around them to tie them up in silk cocoons. Her sisters were strong, naturally, but not as strong as her—she wrapped them up before they even realised what she was trying to do.

“Fera!” the youngest shouted, fangs snapping down at her cocoon as she tried biting her way out. “It’ll be troublesome if you were the one who died here! Leave me! I’m the youngest, anyways! You and Apocia need to run!”

“She’s right, Fera!” the new eldest snapped, growling up at Fera as she tried to squirm out of her cocoon with brute force. “Even if the two of us must die here, at the very least, you must live! You’re the strongest! Of all of us, you stand the best chance at beating them for good–”

“I don’t,” Fera said, spitting webs over both their mouths to shut them up. Then she spit two more threads from her mouth, making them stick to the cocoons before she began spinning them around like bolas; she’d like to throw her sisters out of the forest entirely, but close to the edge would be good enough as well. “The two of you combined can defeat anyone, even me. Don’t undersell yourselves. Go north and live to eat another day—that was what mother told us when she flung all three of us away from him, wasn’t it?”

Her sisters screamed at her, but their gags muffled their voices. She laughed softly. There was no time to spare; she spun, pivoted, and then chucked both of them into the sky with an overhead sling. They disappeared so quickly through the canopy that she allowed herself to sigh a breath of relief. At the speed they’d been going at, they were surely going to make it out of the fungi forest with only a few broken limbs on impact. Nothing at all life threatening.

Their bloodline was secured, and now, it was finally her turn to stand her ground.

Years and decades of resentment poured out her skin, pinkish-purplish ooze dripping from her legs and infesting the soil around her. She let her blood boil. She turned around to face the shadow that’d been hounding her family for the better part of the past three decades, and, right on cue, the endless volley of lightning bolts stopped coming—her murderous glare was directionless, targetless. She stood alone in a clearing where a single shaft of moonlight fell upon her like a spotlight, while the darkness beyond the clearing was… oppressive, to say the least. There was no sound. There was no movement. It was as though she’d been pulled into a different world the moment she turned around, having made her resolve, and–

An unholy wail erupted from the left, making her whirl and bare her fangs.

Another wail exploded from the right, tearing her attention to both sides.

The soil beneath her squirmed. That strange, nauseating riot of colours started swirling again, distorting space, making her take a step back out of fright—and the boy with the flower cape matched her with a single step forward, entering the clearing with a cold blue mist shrouding his pale skin.

He held no weapon.

This wasn’t the ‘real’ him, after all.

“... But to think a clone of the Worm God himself would deign to hunt us down nevertheless is an honour we are undeserving of,” she said mockingly, bowing with four arms curled behind her back, four arms curled in front of her waist. “Where is your real body? Still above that tower of yours? Am I being trained on by your railgun as we speak?”

The Worm God’s eyes were closed as he tilted his head up at the moon, deep in thought.

“The railgun would be wasted on a bug like you,” he said plainly, and it wasn’t his lips that parted; the distortions in the air that was his physical ‘voice’ slammed into her eardrums, making her flinch and take another step back as he looked straight at her, tilting his head again. “Lesser Great Mutant, fifth sister of the Seven Spider Spinners, you are ‘Fera’ of the Bola Brood. You and your bola spiders gave some of my warriors a bit of trouble in the northeastern front three years ago. What will you do about the three Hasharana you devoured and left to dry in the snow?”

Fera licked her lips and grinned, eight eyes blinking in sync. “I’d wanted to feed them to my younger sisters, but I’d been starving for the better part of the year. Couldn’t help myself. Can’t help you now, either—I could regurgitate a few bones for you if it's the keepsake you want?”

“Unnecessary. I’m sure they’d rather their bones stay an indigestible thorn in your stomach,” he replied instantly, shrugging nonchalantly. “And? Where’d you throw Thracia and Apocia off to? I hope you understand the fact that none of you will survive to see the fireworks of a new year. Year One Hundred will be the year the Seven Spider Spinners are exterminated, and with your passing, the birth of a new era. We will hunt Thracia and Apocia down, so you might as well save me the hassle.”

She snorted as snow began falling gently around the clearing. It was the middle of summer, but the Worm God was an anomaly amongst anomalies; if he really wanted to, he could probably flip this entire forest upside-down and regrow a new one, unblemished with their footsteps, within mere minutes. It very well didn’t matter what she said. The Worm God hadn't aged a day since they last met three decades ago, and he still resembled the fourteen-year-old boy he was when he'd first made himself known to the Swarm. Only one monster would make it out of this forest alive tonight, and it most likely wasn’t going to be her.

Even still…

“Are you sure you can even spare a clone for the two of them?” she said, sighing as she sat down cross-legged, plopping her head in her hands. “They’ll separate. Scatter. Of the eleven of you, ten are always indisposed, so you’re the only clone who can move as you please. Which of the two will you go after even if I told you? Which settlement will you abandon in order to protect the other?”

The Worm God angled his head to look at her, and she had to clench her jaw, resisting the urge to pounce at his face. He wasn’t that far away—a mere twenty metres from where she sat—but he was a boy steeped in blood and surrounded by an invisible killing pressure. She was sure she wouldn’t even get a chance to stand, so the best and only thing she could do now was buy time for her sisters to run as far away as possible.

But then he called her bluff with a sigh, and he turned around to exit the clearing slowly.

“... Why would I even have to hunt down the weakest of the Seven Spider Spinners myself?” he said, shaking his head as he twirled a circle in the air with his pinky. “The two of them aren’t like you and your older sisters. They’re barely F-rank Lesser Great Mutants as they are. They are certainly not ‘weak’, but as far as my Arcana Hasharana go, my warriors will prevail—they will hunt your sisters down in my stead.”

And, with his back turned towards her, she attempted a futile pounce at his head—trying to cross twenty metres in the blink of an eye—but her legs couldn’t even move.

She was frozen where she sat; the wormhole above her head, connected to a void of space, was humming and singing and pushing her down with an invisible weight.

Her chitin cracked. Her limbs snapped joint by joint. Her eyes popped first, and then her eardrums blew out, her blood vibrating and bubbling inside her arteries. She felt none of the pain, but all of the vitriol.

As the invisible weight crushed her flat against the ground, she managed to lift her head and snarl at the Worm God.

“Our queen… is regaining her strength,” she rasped, biting and growling on her every word. “You cannot defend Brightburrow alone. Men are relics on the stage of fate, and fate has made our queen the strongest. She will not falter again. You may have staved off the inevitable for three decades, but soon, our Great Unmaker will return and tear down your walls–”

“If fate wanted your queen to be the strongest, it wouldn’t have made me,” the Worm God said idly, his cape of a hundred diamond flowers clinking as he trudged away. “Farewell, Fera. All seven of you will be reunited soon enough.”

Fera cursed the boy with her dying breaths as the humming in her ears grew louder and louder, turning into a howling torrent, and then–

A block of ice fell through the wormhole over her head, crushing her flat against the ground.