I recommend reading the first episode before reading this one. You’ll find it Here
Whatever it was, it was big. It stood around ten feet tall, not including the horns sticking from its forehead, but it was also broad. The shoulders were almost as wide as Dusty’s reach and they were heavily, grotesquely muscled. The veins stood out on muscles and skin like it was an over-enthusiastic body-builder and had been pumping iron for a fortnight straight with no break. Dusty saw the green tinge on its skin and shuddered.
“Oh good, a cacodemon,” Dusty said and Hunter looked at her to make sure that she was being sarcastic – she was. She set her shoulders and stepped forward to meet it.
“Be careful of its claws,” Hunter advised her.
Dusty turned back to him and gave him a withering stare; she couldn’t believe he thought he needed to point out that fact. “Really? Its claws you say?” She shook her head and held the sword with both hands. It was singing again and despite the danger she faced, she smiled.
The cacodemon was at least more an honest beast rather than the insidious goblins which fought en masse and used their venomous teeth to great effect. This demon had no hidden surprises; what you saw was what you got. If it landed a direct hit on a body, the body would be damaged, and if it landed such a blow on Dusty, she would likely be dead. She had to be fleet of foot and quick of eye to beat this monster.
She ran forward, low and fast, her sword in both hands, pointing down. Then she ducked under a massive sweep of an arm and swung the sword up and over her head to slice into the soft belly flesh of the monster as she ran past.
When she was behind the beast, she turned on her heels and swiped again at her opponent, but lower this time; she caught the tendons at the back of one leg and she heard a horrible howl of pain. The demon staggered as its leg was unable to support its weight. Dusty thought that it would be able to turn in a half-hopping motion to face her again but it seemed that the cacodemon had never played hopscotch as a child and had no concept of hopping. It lumbered and staggered forward towards Hunter’s cage.
Dusty had just realised that it was in no state to attack her again until it had managed to turn around, but then she realised that it couldn’t keep its balance and if it fell onto the cage, the cage might not be sturdy enough to protect Hunter. She leapt forward to follow the demon and she sliced through the tendons at the back of the other leg, then watched as it stumbled to its knees and fell face-first to the ground. It slid a little way forward with its momentum but its chin hit the ground first – it would seem that it hadn’t the instincts to throw its arms forward to break its fall either, and seemed to have been knocked unconscious.
Dusty was wary. She held her sword in both hands again and pointed the tip at the demon as she skirted around its massive bulk to stand by Hunter’s cage.
“I don’t think this demon is very bright,” she said to him, keeping her eyes on her vanquished foe.
“Not many are, but this one couldn’t even stop itself falling, I don’t know many demons that have such slow reactions,” Hunter said.
Dusty thought for a moment. “Neither do I. There’s something odd about this. It feels like a test of some sort.”
When she’d voiced that opinion, a peal of insane laughter reverberated around them. It reminded Dusty of maniacal movie bad guys cackling at the fate of their victims. The sound came from everywhere at once and that made Dusty think that the room they were in was a small part of something much bigger, and they were being observed.
“I’m not sure I like being someone’s entertainment,” she said, and lifted her sword to the bars. When it touched them, they gave off a shower of sparks similar to the intensity of a Roman Candle firework. Hunter leapt back from the shower of scalding sparks but Dusty continued trying to hack through the prison. When she stopped, she inspected the bars, but there was only the smallest of scratches on the surface. It would take too long to saw through.
Dusty knew that she couldn’t afford to waste too much time in futile attempts at releasing Hunter but she knew that if the monsters that were being sent to do battle with her became better at fighting, then she’d need Hunter’s skills in order to survive.
She turned back to the cacodemon to check that it was still unconscious and she was disgusted to see that it had died and begun to decompose before their eyes. Its body was a swarming morass of what seemed to be maggots, writhing in numerous sores and pustules and growing even as they watched. The demon’s carcass reduced quickly as it was consumed by the wriggling, voracious maggots and very soon the only thing that was left of the demon was its skeleton. Every soft tissue had been devoured. Dusty didn’t want those horrible crawling things near her; they could do a lot of damage.
She also didn’t want them near Hunter and there was nothing to prevent them wriggling their way across the rock to get to him.
“Stamp on them!” Hunter said in a voice that was straining at the edges to become a scream. He didn’t like the idea of the mega-maggots getting to him in the indefensible cage either.
“I’m not stamping on them,” Dusty said. “They’re likely to eat my foot!” She had a point but she also had an idea. She bent down to look at the bottom of the cage. It rested on the rock and she tried to lift the cage but it was far too heavy – she had thought it would be. Then she took her sword again and instead of trying to saw through the bars, she attacked the ground with the tip. After an experimental dig at the rock, she saw that it made headway so she again began to dig.
Hunter didn’t know which to watch. The mega-maggots were getting closer and they were also growing bigger. They were a sickly green-grey colour and he could see the ridges along their fat, swollen bodies. Their heads were black and with every passing moment, they grew and swelled, slick and pulsating. Surely they would split at some point? That thought had just entered his head when it was followed up by another, far more disturbing thought. What would come out of the things when their bodies did split? Maggots metamorphosed into flies, so what would these creatures turn into? Hunter shuddered and looked back to Dusty to see what progress she was making.
“Please hurry, the things are getting bigger and I think they might turn into something worse than marauding maggots.”
“Yes, I’m hurrying. It’s not so bad actually, the ground isn’t really rock, it’s sort of organic I think. Once I broke the surface, it got easier. Look!” Dusty stood up and stepped back involuntarily. The maggots were coming straight for her. She realised that she was the target so she stepped away from Hunter and led the squirming mass away from the slash she’d made in the ground on the inner perimeter of the bars. Hunter would be able to dig a hole big enough for him to scramble out of the cage now.
She led the maggots away, walking slowly so that they didn’t become more interested in Hunter because he was closer. She took great care not to trip as she reversed but she also kept her eyes on what Hunter was doing. He was scooping out the ground under the bars. It seemed quite an easy task but his face told a tale of disgust. His nose was wrinkled and his expression was unmistakable. Dusty would have been amused under different circumstances. He pulled out double handfuls of what looked like rotted flesh and he threw the mess as far away from him as he could, to bend again to scoop out yet another load.
Dusty thought that she would have to double back and cut through the floor on the other side of the bars to enable him to clamber through. As she led the maggots to the farthest corner of their prison, she ran back toward the cage. She didn’t need to cut any more of the ground because as he had eroded underneath the surface, what they had thought of as the solid ground had collapsed in on itself and enabled Hunter to clamber free with ease.
Dusty heard an exclamation of amazement and she looked up to the shimmering ceiling. Then she frowned. “This really is a test, isn’t it?” she muttered to herself. She grabbed Hunter’s arm and pulled him away from the maggoty things that had doubled back faster than they had been led away. They were increasing in size as they went and they could see opaque yellow eyes on the black heads. Dusty grimaced at the sight of them.
They reached one of the boundary walls and stopped. Dusty frowned again as she thought about their predicament for a moment. This was the wall that Hunter had broken through earlier.
She lifted her sword and placed the sharp tip carefully against the wall’s shimmering surface. It was almost as though she had touched it to the surface of a pool; ripples expanded outward from the tip in beautiful clear ripples.
She was fascinated and her imagination took another leap forward in comparison. The iridescence actually looked as though it really was the surface of a pool but that it had perhaps sound waves running through it to make the shimmering effect. She could imagine that that really was the cause and as she thought that, she pressed her sword deeper in. It scythed through the surface but unlike the properties of water, the surface was again, more like elastic fabric. She pulled the sword across rather than down and the fabric parted. At the top of the slit, the fabric hung as it did before Dusty cut it but below, it fell away as though it was water. She had created an opening and they both looked through. They could see Hunter’s house and they were fascinated.
“Come on, let’s go home,” Hunter said and tried to pull Dusty with him.
“You mean you actually want those mega-maggots in our world? What if they change into uber-flies? What if they change into something worse?” Dusty pulled back from the wall and was grateful that it didn’t close up again.
Images from Pixabay