Chapter 49: The Metamorphosis

  “That’s all,” Ace concluded his recount for the third time. “All that’s left are his eyes.”

  The four of them occupied what remained of Faust’s makeshift operating theatre, each keeping their distance from the others. Felix was crouching over the scene—a large bloodstain with two eyeballs resting in the centre. Ace stood beside Dante’s wheelchair, the two of them forming their own silent unit. Jude had withdrawn into the darkness at the far end of the room, alone. Kazuya and Leonhart were made to stay behind. It was for the best that they were kept from something they had no part in witnessing.

  Ace waited for Dante to tug on his sleeve, his cue to repeat the whole sequence of events from start to end. But it did not arrive. Dante’s eyes were glazed over, staring blankly into space. He was no different from a cardboard cutout of himself—stiff, silent and flat.

  “Both accounts corroborate.” Felix rose to his feet. “It wouldn’t be difficult to insert myself into it. I arrived on time, destroyed his core and burnt his corpse. The eyes? Collateral damage. No traces of his Essence left behind them.”

  “Really? Those were his eyes.” Jude stepped into the light, her arms uncrossed. “They will know that whatever Cursed Essence that man possessed was,” she paused, pressing the blade of one hand against the palm of the other, “absorbed.”

  “Wording matters,” Felix rebuked sharply, turning around to face Jude. “No traces could easily be phrased as ‘Inadequate amounts to form a functional core’.” His fingers curled into air quotes. “I could say that I forgot to hold back while trying to form the whatever-point-seal. All you guys have to do is to follow my story. I’ll burn Faust’s eyes when the investigation and proceedings have run their course. Problem solved.”

  “Well,” Jude sighed, puffing out her cheeks. “Lucky that you are an Elder, I guess. Doing Elder-ly things.” She drew out the last syllable with exaggerated reverence.

  “This way, no one has to have their memories altered,” Felix concluded. “Are you satisfied with this outcome, Dante?”

  Dante did not even lift his head to meet Felix’s eyes. His hands found the handrims of his wheelchair, and he spun away in one smooth motion. The wheels turned with barely a whisper against the floor as he excused himself, tucking himself into the shadows.

  He’s quite good at using a wheelchair, Ace thought. The last time he attempted to use one, he somehow fell out of his seat.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Felix turned back to the pool of blood. He used the toe of his boot to nudge an eyeball that lay close. It rolled slightly; the pupil was still dilated in death.

  A surge ran down Ace’s spine as he stared at Faust’s eyeball. He shuddered, remembering everything that led them here. His hands clenched into fists, nails biting into his palms. But not once did he tear his eyes away from it. He ought to gloat.

  “It’ll be troublesome to get forensics here,” Felix muttered to no one in particular. “Maybe I can find a box…”

  A box is too nice; perhaps a bedpan would be better, Ace thought. A used one.

  The pupil constricted.

  Ace would have chalked it up to a trick of the light, but the eyeball began to swell. Its surface rippled and bulged as though worms were writhing just beneath the membrane, stretching it translucent.

  The sclera split with a sickening wet splat.

  A tiny pale hand with thin skeletal fingers burst through the gelatinous mass.

  “MERLY!”

  Ace seized Dante's wheelchair, drawing out a grunt of surprise. His Essence erupted around them as the Merlion burst from beneath their feet—all fangs and fury. Jude vaulted on its back while it charged through the wall, pelting them with concrete and metal.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Felix stood his ground. His fingers interlocked, thumbs forming a perfect circle. One smooth motion brought them to his face, the circle pressed against his eye as he locked onto the abomination before him.

  “Crimson Moon of Dalnim!”

  A blinding explosion ripped through the compound, obliterating everything in its path. The ball of white light collapsed in on itself, leaving behind a burning ball of red flames that resembled a blood moon.

  But somehow, the flames began to fold.

  They collapsed in on themselves in impossible geometries, an origami of fire turning inside out until the red light consumed itself. What remained were only angular shadows, fragments of darkness carved from where the fire had been.

  Felix’s eyes widened until the whites showed all around.

  “The flames—” Ace’s throat tightened.

  “They ate themselves,” Jude finished his sentence, her face pale.

  A woman emerged from the darkness. She was tall, willowy and featureless—skin the colour of sullen skies pulled taut across where eyes, nose and mouth were supposed to be. Her hands rose, fingers spreading apart. Each palm had a glistening amber eyeball, but where the iris should have been whole, a mouth cut across the coloured surface. The lips parted in a twisted smile, tiny teeth gleaming in the sclera.

  The woman was met with another barrage of flames and the jaws of the Merlion.

  Threads of Cursed Essence burst from the woman’s feet, tearing everything apart effortlessly. “Why is everyone so dull?” The woman spoke with a voice that sounded like a music box playing backwards.

  The woman flexed her fingers.

  Ace’s knees buckled as an invisible crushing weight slammed down on him from above. He hit the ground hard, face-first, unable to draw a full breath. Beside him, Jude collapsed with a strangled cry, her arms giving out. Dante’s wheelchair creaked before shattering, his body slamming onto its parts. Felix was on his knees at first, but was driven forward until his forehead cracked against the floor.

  Against all odds, Felix let out a breathless sound that started as a wheeze but became hysterical. “You came back as a woman!” He gritted his teeth. First, his shoulders lifted. Then his back straightened, vertebrae by vertebrae. His legs trembled violently as he pushed himself upward, knees shaking. “Faust!”

  The grins widened. The eyes swivelled independently, both focusing on Felix. The woman flexed her fingers, and the weight bore down on them. “Where was this strength just now,” she purred, “while you were trying so desperately to rip out the Regalia?”

  “Reserved—” Felix gasped, lurching forward half a step despite the crushing pressure, “—for ripping out—” another heavy step, “—your eyes—” his voice rose to a roar like his flames, “—and incinerating them, Mrs Faust!”

  “Oh, but I am not Faust.” Black threads unravelled the flames like rotted silk. “He had no such talent as I now demonstrate.” The woman held her hands out to Felix, palms upturned, like a mother calling her child home. “We are the sisters three, the sisters grey.” A hand shifted to cover her bosom. “The Eye Stealer. Here. The others—where?”

  Felix's rage-fueled defiance held for one more heartbeat before the manic energy drained from his face. The Eye Stealer’s grey flesh undulated like a ship tossed in rocky seas. Her thin frame contorted and bulged, split open vertically to reveal rows upon rows of spiralling teeth that plunged into an abyssal throat. Her limbs elongated, joints snapping backwards. The eyeballs in her palms burst like overripe fruit, and from the wounds sprouted writhing tendrils, each tipped with smaller eyeballs and snapping mouths.

  Where the Eye Stealer had stood loomed something vast and hungry—a creature of living apertures and consuming voids, one that Ace had only read about in the Athenaeum’s archives.

  Charybdis.

  Ace stole a look over his shoulder.

  There were two more behind them, right where they had left Leonhart and Kazuya.

  Wet tentacles shot out like striking vipers. They wrapped around all of them at once: coiling around their torsos and pinning their arms down by their sides. But while the tentacles merely held the three of them, the ones wrapped around Felix ripped into him. Blood poured down the appendages in thick rivulets, pooling on the ground below.

  Ace struggled against his bonds, horror flooding through him as he watched Felix being shredded. Next to him, Dante's face was twisted in anguish, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly. His eyes, which usually regarded Felix as though he were a slug, were wide and glistening, affixed on the bleeding figure suspended in Charybdis's grip.

  “Poor Flame Purist. Poor, broken Felix Lee, who took in that little girl—what was her name? Ah yes, Leonhart Euler.” The Eye Stealer’s, now Charybdis's, voices sang in hideous harmony, its maw pulsing with each syllable. “Come, child! The reality that devoured Proteus when he ripped her parents from existence—show me its face! Show me the path the flames have burned into your soul! Or would you have her swallowed by my merciful abyss?”

  A scream reached everyone’s ears.

  Leonhart’s.