A scraping noise of metal against metal came from the entrance. Breath of the Void's tendrils showed him the image of the monstrosity that emitted the pressure.
The thing stood at least ten feet tall. Its massive bulging frame barely squeezed through the entrance doorway. Its body was a grotesque display of exposed muscle tissue. It bore no skin. Just raw, bloody flesh with pulsating veins that moved and writhed throughout the surface.
The monster's torso housed a bright glowing red heart visible through its muscles and bones. Its bones themselves looked nothing like bones. Instead, they had a dark chrome metallic look that caught the dim lighting of the warehouse.
Where two arms should have been, two stumps jutted out. At the end of those stumps, needles were attached or grafted made of the same dark chrome metal as its bones. Its legs bent backwards like a dog's or a deer's, made for jumps rather than walking.
And then Gale's gaze went to its face… a human face, frozen in an expression of shock. Hollowed out eye sockets, clearly scraped of their contents. Its teeth crusted with blood and something brown that had dried long ago, its mouth wide open in a never ending contortion of a scream.
Tendrils spread out further in the warehouse. A quick sweep revealed the others' positions where they had scrambled to.
Lily and Rachel had climbed to the 3rd level platform of shelving in the next aisle. Lily's eyes were squeezed shut, wrinkling her face as she pressed both hands over her mouth to silence her breath. Rachel wasn't doing any better. Her fist was clenched, white knuckled, and her breathing was ragged and shallow.
Kyle and Clide hid on the upper floors of the 5th aisle. Both of them held their breaths as they peeked around the corner of the crates they had put their backs against. No tension could be seen in their expressions, just a cold look that looks like they've done this hundreds of times.
Ollie had climbed the highest out of all of them. He was in the same aisle as Lily and Rachel. One hand clamped over his mouth, also having the same expression as Kyle and Clyde.
Gale cursed inwardly. He hadn't thought of going to an upper level position. He was stuck on ground level with only a couple of crates for cover. He'd be the first one if the thing came his way.
The monster tilted its head down, examining something on the floor. Their footprints tracked through the warehouse from the blood of the fleshy growths outside. Everyone except Rachel had left a trail. The monster sniffed audibly, tracking the prints, but the marks faded as the team scattered around the warehouse to loot.
It slowly moved forward, tilting its head peeking into the first aisle it passed. Its head jerkily moved to check between the empty spaces it passed by. As if to mock anything that was in the warehouse, it clanged its needles at each pillar of the shelving it passed, causing all of them to wince at every echo.
Gale saw the monster pause at a single crate right beside it. For a split second, it didn't move. The next, its needles already drove through the crate beside it—too fast to see with the naked eye. Clear liquid dripped from the punctured container. It looked like the liquid from the power cell he found earlier. When it pulled out its needle, the fluid freely flowed onto the floor.
It continued, not bothering anymore with the first aisle. It slowly lumbered deeper into the warehouse, moving to the second aisle getting closer to Gale. The thing suddenly snapped its head inward into the aisles.
It stood motionless for several seconds.
Then, from its position, its needle arm extended far driving into a large crate. Nothing inside. It retracted the needle and continued its slow steps, passing through several large crates of the same size.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Gale clutched his chest. His heart beat too fast getting louder by the second, fearing that it would blow his position away.
Two more aisles and it would reach his position. Distort and Phase Touch were options, making himself physically untouchable and nigh invisible. He's probably safe… but what about the others? If it found any of them, there was nothing anyone could do other than to shut up and hope it leaves.
The monster continued, stepping silently closer to Gale. Now at the entrance of the third aisle, its head poked out around the corner before its massive body entered the view. It turned into the aisle; the aisle where Ollie, Lily, and Rachel hid.
Its contorted screaming face looked into the row, seemingly checking if something was on the ground. More tracks, or some dirt. Even Breath of the Void didn't register any.
In a sudden jolt of movement, it leapt upward, landing on the platform just below Rachel and Lily without making a sound. The metal barely creaked or groaned under its weight.
Tendrils crept forward, checking on the two. As expected, both their hearts thumped loudly.
As it moved deeper into the aisle, the first stab came suddenly. Then the second. The third and fourth came at the same time. It had stabbed all the crates it passed by, each one large enough to contain a human body.
Gale's tendrils again looked back to Rachel and Lily, monster just below them. His abilities kept him safe, but what about the others? If it found any of them, they'd be sitting ducks, no time to react. A distraction was needed. Draw it away to a meaningless chase until it gave up, assuming it would give up at all.
The monster's needle-arm punched through another crate. Nothing. It pulled the needle free, slowly, the metal screeched as the needle scraped against it.
It started moving out and into the main hall, seemingly bored from finding nothing. The next aisle was his aisle. Few more minutes before it found Gale. It dragged its metal needle arms, scraping on the floor and letting them hit the column poles of the aisles.
He couldn't stay here. The monster would find him in seconds once it reached his row.
Gale slipped from behind the crate, staying low to the ground and keeping his steps completely silent. He kept his breathing shallow as he squeezed through the crates to reach the next aisle.
His tendrils detected Rachel's eyes that had spotted him as he moved across. Even Kyle and Clyde, perched high above, winced at his decision.
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The monster rounded the corner just as Gale found a new hiding spot in the third aisle, a narrow gap between two larger crates at ground level. He wedged himself in, hunching his shoulders to make his body as small as possible. The space was tight, and hopefully the monster knew that so it would pass by instead of checking the area.
The massive monster finished searching the fourth aisle where Gale had been hiding moments before. It jumped onto the third level of the fourth aisle and drove its needles through more of the crates, piercing the metal easily.
Its head snapped down suddenly, facing the exact spot Gale had originally hid in. It dropped to the floor in complete silence despite its bulk.
The needle-arm shot out, piercing the crate next to where Gale had been hiding. It withdrew, dripping with the clear fluid from inside. The monster's face turned slowly as it surveyed the area. Its nostrils flared, audibly sniffing the surroundings.
The monster moved into the space between aisles, preparing to enter Gale's current hiding spot. He needed to move again.
Just as the monster stepped into the other end of the fourth aisle, Gale slipped out from between the crates and moved in the opposite direction. He headed back to his original aisle, the fourth aisle. The timing was perfect. As the monster fully entered the other end of the aisle into the third, he stepped back into the fourth aisle.
Finding another tight space on the ground floor, he squeezed into another tight space below a shelf and between two large crates. Climbing the shelves wasn't an option. He wasn't confident that he could silently step on to the second floor without making the shelves groan or creak.
From his new position, his tendrils tracked the monster's movement. In the third aisle, it stabbed the crates it had missed on its first pass. By the end of the third aisle, it had moved on, skipping the fourth aisle and onto the fifth.
It leapt upward to the third floor. That was where Rachel and Lily hid in, and it would soon meet them as it headed their direction stabbing all the crates it passed by.
Rachel might stand a chance, but Lily was injured, practically defenseless and wouldn't be able to escape by herself. Rachel wouldn't run, definitely not without Lily.
He had seconds to act.
Nutrition brick materialized on Gale's palm. The dense gray brown foil covered rectangle was heavy enough to make some noise. He measured the distance, calculated the angle, and threw it hard against the other side of the fourth aisle from where the monster was.
The brick hit the floor, sounding like a gunshot in the silence of the warehouse.
The monster moved faster than Gale thought possible. Before the nutrition brick could hit the floor for a second bounce, the monster had already crossed the distance. Its needle arm stabbed through the brick, pinning it to the floor.
Fuck. There was no way to fight this thing. One moment, by the third floor, and in one blink, it had crossed the distance that his eyes couldn't even keep up. Corrupted or whatever, maybe even a Pestilent, it outclassed any of them. It gave off a pressure that the Divine Beast at Hotel Frankley couldn't match.
The only good news that came out of this was that its attention had shifted away from Rachel and Lily. The bad news was that it was now headed towards his position, head swivelling as it searched for the source from where the object was thrown.
From his hiding spot, Gale watched it come closer. The red, pulsing heart inside its metallic ribcage glowed brighter, almost like it was excited by the prospect of finding prey.
The monster moved slowly as if savouring the moment. Its needles hit against the metal poles, louder than before. Each crate it passed through that had already been stabbed received the same treatment as the brick, a stab that was faster than the blink of an eye.
Gale pressed himself deeper into his hiding spot, the edge of the metal crate digging into his back.
The monster didn't leave anything to chance. Each crate stabbed at least twice. Closer now. Five crates away.
Four.
Three.
Two crates away.
The monster paused before stabbing the next crate. Its head turned slowly towards Gale's hiding spot, nostrils flaring as it took in a deep deep breath.
Distort activated first, removing Gale from visual view as light bent away from him. Phase Touch encased his whole self, rendering him immaterial. Distort had covered the shimmer of Phase Touch.
The monster stopped directly at his hiding spot. It leaned down, bringing that frozen human face to eye level to his face. He saw it all with even more detail.
The face came closer. Too close. Empty sockets stared directly into Gale's eyes. In the dim light of the warehouse, he saw the veins beneath the exposed muscle of its face writhing independently, like worms under the surface, pushing and pulsing against the facial structure. Its mouth gaped open, revealing no tongue. Instead, set deep in the back of its throat was the same speaker grill he'd seen in the flesh warriors. Clean metal edges where flesh had been surgically removed to make room for the mechanical addition.
The stench hit him like a physical force. Decay and sulfur mixed with a sharp chemical burn that seared his nostrils. Gale fought the urge to gag as the smell coated the back of his throat.
The needle struck.
One moment the monster was staring at him, the next its arm blurred forward. The needle passed through Gale's head harmlessly in his phased state. It pulled back, and again it struck, faster.
Again.
And again.
Five times it stabbed through different parts of Gale's phased body. His head, chest, stomach, and neck, as if it knew where he was.
Gale didn't move. Didn't breathe. Didn't blink. The monster's face remained inches from his, those empty sockets somehow tracking his exact position despite his invisibility.
Tendrils showed him the movement from above on the third level. Rachel had shifted from her spot on the third level. Her hand halfway extended, but Lily had grabbed her wrist before she could do anything.
The monster's needle-arm pulled back for another strike, then paused. It cocked its head to one side, like a dog hearing a distant sound. Interest in Gale's hiding spot faded as quickly as it had appeared. The monster straightened, taking one last deep breath through its nostrils.
It let out a long breath. In one sudden motion, it drove its foot into the crate beside Gale, completely uncovering his whole position. The crate flew across the warehouse, embedding itself halfway through the metal wall and creating a dent that bulged out from the warehouse.
The monster turned, leaving Gale's hiding spot without another glance. It moved back down the aisle, retracing its path to the warehouse entrance. As it exited, it ducked under the doorframe, finally exiting the warehouse.
No one moved. No one made a sound.
Minutes passed. Gale maintained his Phase Touch on himself as he watched the doorway with his tendrils. The monster was still there, just outside the door. The pressure from its presence still bore down on everyone.
It was waiting. Who would slip? If anyone made a mistake or caused a sudden sound, it would move.
Thirty minutes passed in complete stillness. Every creak of the metal warehouse made Gale tense, expecting the monster to burst back inside. Kyle and Clyde hadn't moved a muscle from their position on the fifth level. Rachel and Lily remained frozen in place. Ollie's face appeared over the edge of the sixth level briefly, then disappeared again.
The waiting continued.
Suddenly, something crashed onto the exterior of the wall. It was the size and shape of the monster's foot, creating a perfect impression that bulged into the warehouse.
Ten more minutes crawled by. The pressure lifted suddenly, and the suffocating presence slowly faded away as the monster moved away.
Still, they waited. No one trusted the monster's absence. Another thirty minutes passed in dead silence, everyone holding their positions. Even with his tendrils, Gale couldn't detect the monster's presence anymore, but that meant nothing given the 100 meter limit he was experiencing.
Finally, Ollie made the first move. A subtle blue outline surrounded his body as he floated down from the sixth level. He touched down without a sound, eyes scanning the entrance.
The others descended more conventionally. Kyle and Clyde climbed down the shelving. Rachel helped Lily navigate the climb one-handed, supporting her weight as they made their way to the ground.
They gathered around Ollie, who had positioned himself near the centre of the warehouse, well away from the entrance.
Rachel's eyes darted to the spot where Gale hid, reaching his position silently.
Gale released his Phase Touch and Distort, materializing into view as he crawled out from under the shelf. His legs shook uncontrollably, hand catching Rachel's outstretched hand as he tried his best to steady himself and stop the shaking.