Death Grip  •  Act 2

“Elweyn said the apocrypha could be where the distortion is strongest. We should check it out,” Spark said. She ignited her hands to provide more light, then drifted into the tunnel. Vahaadi kept at her side, peering around.

Despite Spark’s lights, the uncanny darkness hung in the alley like a mist. Their localized headaches dulled, then expanded to an all-encompassing numbness as they pressed deeper. Scuttling sounds just beyond the edges of their perception sent chills down their backs.

“Gliars, you think?” Spark whispered, drawing to a stop.

“Could be…ugh.” Vahaadi swatted in front of his face to clear the air of the dust motes settling onto his hair and carpet. “What…oh. Spark, up there…”

He directed her attention up to the ceiling of the tunnel. Something glinted back at them in the light.

“Ohhhh my gosh…” Spark groaned in horror. “It’s just a head.”

Latched by the mandibles, a decapitated opterran head stared blankly back at Spark and Vahaadi. A long, pale stalk hung from the back of its cranium, ending in fruiting bulbs.

Vahaadi looked with greater dismay at the dust that coated him and Spark.

“We can’t fly around like this, we’re going to spread it,” he said. His forehead crest gleamed under his cowl and he set to work, running smoky djinni magic over his person to try and pull the spores away.

“I’m calling Vesper. This is creepy,” Spark said, reaching for the spidery communicator clutching her wrist. She jabbed at a dial. The communicator chirped in what Spark could only assume was an established connection.

“Hellooo,” said a rich, lazy voice.

Vahaadi froze in his attempt to clear the spores. “Sabo,” he said.

“Oh! Oops! Sorry. Uh, hi!”

“Ah, you must be the new girl,” said Sabo, sounding pleased as a cat. “Pleasure’s all mine. How can Mr. Sabo be of service, little lady?”

“Well, actually, I was trying to get a hold of Vesper, but…Vahaadi and I found something…really weird. There’s a ‘terrie head—I mean, an opterran head—just hanging from the ceiling. The body’s been…ripped off,” she said, fighting down a gag.

“That right?” Sabo drawled. Vahaadi could hear him move his cigarette between his teeth and take a huff. “Well, best case scenario, a scavenger tried to take it down and couldn’t break the grip. Worst case scenario, a tyrannoterran tried to take it down and couldn’t break the grip.”

“What’s a tyrannoterran?” Spark squeaked.

“Oh, you’ll know it when you see it,” Sabo laughed throatily. “Good luck, kiddo. And tell that djinni of yours ‘hi’ for me…”

The communicator chirped, and the connection went dead.

“Uh. Sabo says ‘hi?’” Spark told Vahaadi, bewildered.

“Grand. Good lot of help that does us. Come, let’s get away from this thing. I need to get this dust off you.”

He took her wrist and pulled her out from under the decapitated opterran head. Smoke coiled around his hands, and he began to caress them just around Spark’s form, not quite touching her. With his magic, he focused on picking through the elements of her body, her clothing, her hair, reaching just for the strange spores and drawing them away from her.

“If you don’t stop wiggling, this bath is going to become a lot more personal than either of us would prefer,” he warned her when she fidgeted under his non-touch.

“I was just wondering, do you think tyrannoterrans are another kind of ‘terrie?”

“Ugh, I hope not. I’ve had as much of ‘terries as I can bear,” Vahaadi shuddered, trailing his magic now into her ponytail. He gave up trying to avoid touching, letting his fingers slide through her impossibly long tresses as he continued to absorb the spores.

“What’s your deal with ‘terries, anyway? Is it because they’re part machine?” she asked, thinking of the way he recoiled whenever he heard the dishwasher or saw a car pass. “I keep telling you, machines don’t bite.”

“It’s not just that they’re maw-sheens, it’s that they’re insects, on top of that. The two worst things—”

“You’re afraid of bugs!?” Spark laughed. “Gosh, and I thought you were so tough.”

“I am not AFRAID, they’re just, ugh, they’re just unnatural. Too many eyes. Too many legs. Spines all over, venom, blood-sucking horrors—”

Spark just giggled while he complained, amused that the magical djinni with shark teeth and glowing eyes that could fork his tongue at will would call insects “unnatural.” She thought to say as much, but a low, raspy sound caught her attention. She clapped her hand to Vahaadi’s mouth.

“Sh!”

He released a muffled grunt, but obediently fell silent. They listened.

“Please…somebody…” whispered a strained voice.

Vahaadi lowered Spark’s hand away from his face, looking over his shoulder toward the sound.

“Who’s there?”

“Scavenger Drorg…praise Fortis. Please. Help me.”

Vahaadi stowed his magic carpet in a flash of smoke, dropping himself to the floor of the alley. He prowled deeper along the wall, breathing carefully through parted lips to run air over his forked tongue. Unfamiliar metallic odors swarmed his senses, but through them all he tasted a delicately alkaline scent.

Blood.

“There you are…” he said, ducking to peer through a stack of discarded crates. He could just make out the jagged shape of an andalier man reclining like a broken doll among the detritus.

Spark crowded beside Vahaadi, holding up her glowing hands to cast light back into the crevice. Drorg screamed as the light seared his eyes.

“Easy, Spark, burn it lower,” Vahaadi chided.

But as her lights dimmed, Drorg looked no less panicked at the sight of two otherworldly beings. He pressed himself against the wall.

“It’s OK, it’s OK! We’re here to help! We just…whoa. You don’t look good,” Spark said, ogling Drorg’s injuries. Oozing gashes crisscrossed his body, and dark bruises in his face had sealed his right eye shut. One of his legs ended abruptly in gore just below the knee.

He began to hyperventilate.

“Wh-what…what are you?”

“Shh, It’s OK…I’m Spark. I’m a huma—well, a super-human, I guess. Like a human, but better. And this is Vahaadi. He’s a djinni. Like a fairy godmother, but better.”

Vahaadi tsked and edged Spark aside. “It’s really not important right now. What happened to you?”

“I, I, uh…I was called to collect the opterran body, but these creatures…they attacked me…I thought I was gonna die. Bette fought them off, but we’re…hurt…”

“Did the creatures look like rats?” Spark asked tensely.

“Ah…I, I don’t know? What’s a r-rat?”

“Uh. Like a mouse, but better? Or, worse? Kinda depends who you ask. Worse. Let’s go with worse. Like a mouse but worse.”

Drorg stammered helplessly.

“I take it they don’t have rodents in this canon,” Vahaadi muttered to Spark. To Drorg, he said, “We need to get you out of here. Come, let me help you—LORD IFRIT!”

He had just begun to creep through the opening in the crates on his hands and knees when an opterran appeared suddenly from the darkness, shrieking like a rusted metal gate. Vahaadi swore and jerked back as the opterran’s mandibles snapped onto his arm. He wrenched his limb free and morphed to smoke, skirting behind Spark in a slew of curse words.

“Bette, no!” Drorg gasped. His opterran companion hissed and spat at Vahaadi, hunkering defensively over her master.

“Holy fritz! Vahaadi, are you OK?!”

“Wretched, hideous, VERMIN, vile cankers of Fell, you and your kin ought to boil in the deepest, lowliest, forsaken—!”  Vahaadi seethed at Bette, cradling his mangled arm. “GRRR! I cannot ABIDE these opterrans! Rotten, vicious monsters—”

“I’m sure she’s just scared!” Spark said, rubbing Vahaadi’s back as if to ease his pain and insult while Drorg tried to placate Bette.

“I’m s-so sorry. She’s trying to l-look out for me.” Drorg said. He looked even more panicked and delirious than before. “You two—y-you should get out of here. It’s n-not safe.”

“Didn’t you just ask us to help? Look, bud, we’re not leaving without you. Tell Bette we’re gonna get you to both to safety,” Spark said, inching carefully closer. Bette hissed and whirred.

“There’s a tyrannoterran near here…and you—you don’t even have carapaces…”

Spark paused. There was that word again.

“What is a tyrannoterran?”

Vahaadi’s grumbled tirade had died suddenly as he stared down the alley.

“Ah, I have a theory,” he said in a tight voice. He pointed.

Spark backed out of the gap in the crates to look, just as she felt a wave of head-sickness swelling through the general ache.

At the far end of the alley, a large mass of darkness shifted in a most disconcerting manner. An unholy number of limbs jutted from its form at bizarre angles.

And whatever it was, it had seen them.

It was clear then why Drorg and Bette had squirreled themselves in a cave of alley debris. Spark and Vahaadi both gasped as the monstrosity skittered toward them. Spark hurled a firebomb and missed, but the explosion briefly illuminated the beast, revealing a nightmarish insectoid nearly two stories tall, with far too many body parts to be natural.

Vahaadi conjured his carpet and he and Spark hurtled out of the alley. The tyrannoterran crashed after them with a metallic shriek.  A barbed proboscis shot out, narrowly missing Spark but forcing her to veer sharply and collide with the side of a building.

“Spark!” Vahaadi shouted.

“I’m OK!” Spark said. She pushed off the side of the building like an Olympic swimmer to avoid another jab, while Vahaadi lunged at the creature from behind with his scimitar. One of its many heads fell away with the cut, but the creature didn’t appear fazed. Distortion rippled from it, blasting Spark and Vahaadi with splitting headaches that staggered them both, dropping them to the street. Spark managed a three-point landing, but Vahaadi fell from his rug and landed hard on his back. The tyrannoterran rounded on him.

Vahaadi hissed in pain, blinking stars out of his vision. The tyrannoterran’s proboscis jabbed out at him, and he yelped and rolled to the side. The metallic proboscis hit the ground, shooting up sparks with the impact.

Vahaadi jumped to his feet, snatching up and stowing his magic carpet before darting under one of the beast’s legs to get away from its mouth.

“Spark, what do we do?”

“I, I don’t know! Kill it? Why’s it so distorted?” Spark said, chucking a firebomb at it. The blow landed, and scorched fragments scattered the ground. The tyrannoterran wasn’t hindered even a moment. “Do you think this is a stranger?! No, wait—”

Spark’s eyes darted over the thing. It certainly resembled the general appearance of everything she’d seen so far in this canon. The colors, the shapes…the only thing that was off was the sheer number of parts. But as she zipped out of the way of the creature’s lancing proboscis, the visual clarified forcibly, like an optical illusion’s sudden shift. Spark’s mind filled with memories of photos from the insect guides she’d loved as a child.

“Vahaadi! It’s just a great big assassin bug!” Spark gasped.

“A what?!” Vahaadi said, diving and rolling out of the tyrannoterran’s strike.

“They collect dead bugs and use them as armor! That’s what Sabo meant…this thing has been pulling down the distorted opterrans and making Kevlar out of them!”

Indeed, now that she knew what she was looking for, Spark could see that about half the “body-shield” opterrans clustered on the monster’s back were missing their heads. Others had broken mandibles, indicating where the tyrannoterran had torn them from their roosts.

“We’ve gotta aim lower! Only the biggest one on the bottom is alive! The rest are just shells!”

Armed with this information, Vahaadi’s vision of the beast also clarified. Revulsion provoked a full-body ripple down his spine. Muttering his disgust under his breath, he swung his scimitar into one of the tyrannoterran’s spindly legs. Its metal armor repelled the blade from sinking deeply, but this attack drew a screech of pain and anger. The misshapen insectoid swiveled rapidly on him, so quickly that a jutting opterran husk on its back slapped Spark out of the air. She careened into a nearby scaffold. Vahaadi’s attention jolted as her trajectory yanked his collar. He managed to stay on his feet, but it was all the distraction the tyrannoterran needed.

Spark groaned and glanced up from her awkward nook in the scaffolding just in time to see the tyrannoterran’s proboscis lance right through Vahaadi’s chest.

“Vahaadi!” Spark screamed.

Whatever air Vahaadi had held escaped in a guttural gasp as his lungs were fairly ripped from his body. He sagged lifelessly on the metal barb. Unaccustomed to running right through such a soft and fleshy victim, the tyrannoterran shrieked and tossed its head, flinging the impaled djinni from its skewer. Vahaadi collided with a wall and crumpled to the street.

Spark rocketed from the scaffolding, unleashing an inferno into the tyrannoterran. Stolen bodies were blasted in every direction, and the tyrannoterran screeched and scuttled over a building. Spark pelted it with smaller bombs as it fled, but as it began to leave her view, she waffled in midair. To give chase, or to go to Vahaadi? She bit her lip and released a whine of distress before pivoting and dashing back to her sidekick, allowing the tyrannoterran to escape.

She trembled all over as she landed beside Vahaadi.

Or, what remained of him.

“Vahaadi?” she whimpered thinly.

He pushed himself onto his hands, shaking from the effort. Gurgling blood retched from his chest and mouth as he grasped for breath. Spark could hardly bear to watch, but she couldn’t force her eyes away. She could see tears of agony cascading down his face. His glassy gaze wandered toward the hole in his body.

“Vahaadi, it’s…it’s OK…” Spark said as her own tears nearly blinded her. She had never told such a brazen lie, but she was beyond logic. She might as well have been the one impaled for how she struggled to breathe.

Vahaadi gripped his vest, choking.

“I…ju…” he gagged. He hacked up another gout of blood. When his voice emerged again, it was a low, furious growl.

“I. Just. Mended. This.”

Spark blinked. “Wha-what?”

Vahaadi sat back on his calves, glaring down at his chest and exposing the open wound to Spark’s view. Except, it wasn’t so open now. As Spark stared, the torn and bloody flesh weaved itself tighter until the hole closed. The blood that slathered the street was subliming to vapor, wafting around and into the wound. Even the blood coating Vahaadi’s mouth turned to smoke and slithered to add its mass to the regenerating tissue. Within moments, the chasm had been replaced by Vahaadi’s unmarked golden skin with its dusting of dark hair. He looked as good as new—

Except for his clothes.

“Three days it took me to repair the scuffs from getting dragged down the canyon in Westerwild Gorge, and now there’s a hole the size of my head through it!” Vahaadi snarled.

“You’re OK. You’re OK!” Spark said in wild relief.

He frowned at her. “I’m immortal, Spark.”

With a quivering hand, she reached up and rubbed her thumb along his cheek, wiping away the tear tracks. He submitted to her touch, but his expression dimmed. “You can still feel pain,” Spark said softly.

“Yes. I can,” said Vahaadi. “More than you can imagine.”

He cleared his throat and summoned his dashing bravado. “Still, a small price to pay to be able to conjure a wonder like this, hm?” he said, plucking at the shoulder of her superhero costume.

“You’re the best,” Spark said, lunging at him with a big hug. She pressed a playful but sincere smooch on his cheek. “MWAH!”

Vahaadi tensed in her grip, blinking rapidly. He was not certain he liked these aggressive displays of affection, but he wasn’t so certain that he didn’t, either. At least she hadn’t knocked him off his feet this time. He managed a delayed “auughh” in protest, before gently easing her off him.

Spark sighed as she sat back. “I let that tyrannoterran get away. And it’s covered with spores! It’s just going to keep spreading the distortion,” she said, trailing her gaze toward the direction that the creature had fled.

Vahaadi pushed himself to his feet. “Well, I appreciate that you didn’t drag my broken carcass through the streets while you chased it.”

Spark blanched at the mental image. She hadn’t even thought of that. “Yeesh! Cross my heart, I’d never drag you on purpose,” she promised him. She tossed her hair back as she stood. “So, what do we do? Keep looking for the apocrypha, or chase that thing down?”

“Perhaps Commander Seckna’s forces can deal with the tyrannoterran? We need to focus on the apocrypha. That’s what we’re here for.”

He beckoned to Spark, and led her back toward Drorg’s bunker of crates. The crates had shifted slightly when the tyrannoterran trampled over them, but the fortress was otherwise intact.

“Drorg?” Vahaadi said, stooping to peer into the crevice.

“You survived,” Drorg said languidly.

“Do you think you can hold on a little longer?”

Drorg drew a rattling breath. “Y-yes. A little longer. But, please…water…”

“Oh! I’ve got water, and food too!” Spark said. She extinguished her powers and dug a sport bottle out of her backpack. She took a quick swig before handing it to Vahaadi, along with a Chuckle bar. Vahaadi knelt, conjured a roll of linen bandages from his aetherealm, and slid the offerings through the gap back to Drorg. Bette hissed and tried to snap at the objects, but Drorg held her.

“Take care. We’ll send for help right away,” Vahaadi said.

Krissy reached for Seckna’s dial on the communicator. At the beep, she prepared to launch into the epic tale of the tyrannoterran, only to choke on her own words as the sounds of strife erupted from the device. She could hear Seckna shouting orders, screams of pain, blasters firing, and…music.

Violin music.