Jonathon Worthington: Strangelight Investigator

Case #18: The Mystery of the Purloined Past (Chapter 15)

The world lost all color, and for a moment I could see nothing around me but a dreamscape of nightmarish clouds with leering faces. The coppery tang of blood filled my nostrils and mouth, and my eyes burned with a sulfurous intensity. Unseen hands grabbed at my coat and clothing, and my boot sank into something soft and screaming. Claws scratched across my face and neck, and for a split second I panicked at the thought of being trapped within the in-between world forever. I let out the breath I'd been holding with a roar and pushed the Orgoth power through my bloody tattoos, eliciting inhuman screams from the murky attackers.

I landed in something moist, hard, and living, in complete darkness. I called the blood back into my eyes, and the world etched itself in brilliant red lines and throbbing crimson glare, nearly blinding me.

Magic was rank and near-solid in the air around me, and it took a moment for my enhanced senses to adjust to the living cavern I'd landed in. Once I was able to get my bearings I could see that I was somewhere within the giant abomination's torso. There was no sign of its iron frame anywhere; flesh, red, wet, living, covered every square inch of the interior like macabre webs, hiding the rusting armored hull of the colossal from view as it crossed back and forth on itself. With my sanguine sight I could see the runes carved deep into the flesh pulsing with magic, macabre echoes of the same scarlet tattoos across my body. I barely had room to stand without stooping, and while there were tiny tunnels leading off the main cavity I knew there was little chance I could fit through them. With a growing sense of macabre wonderment I used my sanguinary sight to examine my surroundings.

Titan had gone beyond merely manipulating the dead flesh of his sacrifices this time: he'd actually reanimated the tissue in truth, building a crude circulatory system that carried untold gallons of blood throughout the horrific fleshy innards of the abomination. Through the mystic vision I marveled at the scope of his creation, at the complexity he'd built into the new abomination. Although there were no organs to speak of he'd somehow incorporated small nodules, hundreds of them, only three or four feet across each, that apparently were essentially functioning as some type of rudimentary system that regulated and controlled the activity of the woven flesh and blood. This was no mere undead creation, stitched together in a necromancer's lab as a crime against all mankind.

The mad gobber had actually recreated life.

A haunting echo of Titan's high-pitched laughter bubbled through the cramped cavity I'd landed in, bouncing dully off the walls with no directionality to it. I stared around, but there was no one to be seen. Only fleshy walls, and the strange purulent protuberances.

"Glad to see ... bad to be ... welcome to new ... body ..." a voice echoed in the room.

"Titan!" I called out in challenge, lifting the borrowed pistol and waving it around ineffectually. "Show yourself!"

Insane laugher echoing around the pitch-black cavity was the only answer I received. Suddenly the world tilted, the floor shifting underfoot, and the chamber flexed, compacting dangerously low, before expanding again. Sounds were dulled due to the webwork of flesh surrounding me, but I didn't need to hear or see the outside to know the disruptive motion was that of the abomination scaling the cliff face. I was thrown to the side as the entire cavity tilted with the giant's efforts. A strand of tendon, stronger than steel, nearly decapitated me when I fell into it. I stumbled back, covered in the blood that coated the pulsing webwork, disgusted beyond all words.

Another shudder of the cavity and I found myself tripping over one of the strange nodules. The tumorous growths had none of the resiliency of the flesh they were embedded in, and I accidentally ripped the top off of it with my foot as I went down painfully to my knees. Disgustingly warm fluids that were barely registering to the sanguine sight spilled out of the ruptured pustule, along with a solid piece of material about three feet in diameter. The urge to vomit overtook me as the hard core slid into me. I looked down with horror, the vomit thick and overwhelming in the back of my throat.