Ekron

Red Cocoon - 3

While Anubis was conducting his revenge mission, Gog prepared a transaction with an entity with which he had not trade before. He took a worm and cut its head with his nails, then drew a portal with its blood on a wall of the big middle hall, as wide and tall as he could. He knelt before it and said some verses in Qatrian. Whit the aid of the spider-skulls, he had gathered all the worms of Lidya in that hall, only one worm managed to hide in the dark corridors and remained unseen until later. The portal opened and a twenty feet long centipede, with a hundred and eight legs came through it. Her face was humanoid, and she had deer horns on her head. A pair of mechanical arms on her chest gave her an anthropoid resemblance. She had green eyes and had put black makeup around them to make them look bigger. She was beautifully horrifying.

She looked at Gog kneeling before her and said in Qatrian with a voice like ringing bells, "Rise. Is that your oblation? Those worms?"

"Yes mistress, is just a sample of what I can provide you if you assist me."

"Cymra told me that you were incompetent and worthless, but that your oblations were delicious. This doesn't seem to be the case, what's special about those worms?"

"They are still alive, mistress, you can consume their souls directly from their bodies."

Llacme approached a worm, that hissed in fear and tried to escape but was kept in place by the skulls. Llacme opened her mouth and an almost imperceptible white fog passed from the worm's eyes to her jaws. The worm's body got black and rotted in seconds while the white fog got thinner until it ran out.

Llacme savored with her bifid blue tongue and said, "Is true, the taste is completely different, it feels almost indecorous or sacrilegious. I accept your tribute."

Gog made a sign, and the skulls directed the worm pack to the portal. A dozen of skulls passed through it accompanying the pack to the other side and kept them in line. Llacme then noticed Alex, sat on the floor by a wall, and nothing about the girl made sense to her.

Llacme approached, looked at her with curiosity and asked, "She doesn't have a soul, but she breathes. Her brain is like an uncomplete piece of machinery. And that necklace is, feeding on her... What is she?"

"Don't worry about her, do you have my payment?"

Llacme looked back at the portal and made an acute sound, like a whistle. Through the portal came a small Osmógreh, only six feet high, with a metallic helmet embedded in its head.

"That is barely a larva, I need a full-grown Osmógreh."

"This is what your oblation is worth, take it or leave it."

In that moment, the soul of Anubis entered Lidya through that same hole in the ground made by Gog. It flew through the corridors and found the big hall, then possessed Alex's body again and her left eye glowed red through the reigning gloom. Llacme felt the irruption and her gaze focused on Alex with growing unrest for several seconds. Then she looked at Gog.

"Is this planet blue and the third from your star?" asked Llacme.

"It is."

"Does it have a white moon?"

"It does."

Sensing a menace from Llacme, an entity that she hadn't seen before, Alex took a cable from her clothes. In a fast movement Llacme crossed the distance between her and Gog, and grabbed his neck with her right mechanical hand, raising him until his feet did not touch the ground.

"It was you! You blinded Vadállat!" then Llacme looked at Alex and added, "You lied to me all this time! You filthy dog!"

Alex plugged the cable in a black connector located where her left ear should have been. Gog touched Llacme's mechanical arm that was grabbing his neck with one of his clawed hands and a black electric arc passed through it to reach Llacme's body, who released him in shock. Gog's feet stepped on the ground again and Llacme attacked him with her stinger tail. The hit severed Gog's body in a half at waist height, his pieces fell to the floor twenty feet away but his hooded cloak fell closer to Llacme.

Alex, still sat on the floor, connected the other end of the cable to a socket on the wall. Cables from that wall, the roof, and the floor, came out and aimed to Llacme. The centipede was already swinging her tail towards Alex when she got pierced by a dozen wires and electrocuted. Llacme's sting was stopped barely three feet from Alex's face. Electricity kept flowing for some seconds until the centipede stopped fighting against the wires and passed out. The cables kept her hanging in the air like a marionette.

The two halves of Gog's body, started to approach each other on the floor, as black oily worms coming from each part intertwined and connected the sorcerer's flesh. In seconds, his body was patched leaving only a thin scar in his skin. He stood up without his cloak, showing his real form. He had legs like the rear ones of a Qatrian goat. His arms had a black exoskeleton and his hands had long needles as nails. His eyes were black crystals with metallic spikes in their centers, as pupils. Four curved horns crowned his head. The rest of his exterior appearance was human. He took his cloak from the floor and put it on, covering his anatomy again.

"I don't think she will trade with us again, just give her back."

Alex obeyed; she lifted Llacme's body with the cables, and threw her into the portal, that closed behind her. Gog approached the Osmógreh and examined its condition.

"We can generate something useful from this, maybe several useful specimens."

They took the Osmógreh, the remaining skulls and the insect jars to a specially armored room in a corner of the structure, attached to one of the city pillars, and locked themselves inside. Alex connected herself to the control network of the city again, and a disorderly mesh of cables and naked wires covered the entrance of that room from the outside.

When the bombs started to fall on Lidya, a solitary eel was the only creature wandering its corridors.

END OF "RED COCOON"