The Vile Realm by Hillman Jon

Author:Hillman, Jon [Hillman, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

THE RAT IN THE MAZE

A curtain of flesh tore open before the runners. A living door. Marigold, already ahead in the race, flung himself over the threshold. Deeper inside Xotolo, ready for the next attack. Animal instinct ruled his head. Aveline and Kostya stumbled behind spouting curses at the uneasy footing in this dimension of viscera.

“Fuck me,” Marigold panted.

The opened screen revealed an expansive chamber, a cavern of ribbed flesh and bone. Hideous light dribbled from red orbs, cast wavering shadows over a shifting carpet of muscle and sinew. Towering walls soared into a vaulted ceiling of pulsing meat. Pillars of flesh and gristle writhed quietly. The belly of the beast. Marigold let his head drop. As he scraped a chunk of offal from his boot, the skin below the soles tore. A vaguely chequered floor buried beneath this… membrane, was the only evidence that this place was ever anything other than Xotolo. A wide staircase owned the centre stage, curving outwards in a wholly unwelcoming embrace. Balustrades of white bone soared from bottom to top, slick with the sheen of wet blood. An upstairs and a downstairs. Very bloody civilised.

“Fuck me,” Marigold repeated.

He couldn’t see beyond the top step, but the level down around them contained two apertures covered with a sheath of pink. Two that the barbarian could identify as exits, anyway. Skins like that wouldn’t take much tearing. With a slurp, the sheet behind them all slipped shut, sealing them into this hellish lobby. The air in here heated the lungs and dampened the face. The temple, once planned by a human of Traverne and erected by a Tall Man, was all but gone. There was nothing more than hell here now.

“Where to? It’s coming! It’s right fucking on us!” Aveline panted, hands on knees as her chest heaved lungfuls of hot, rancid air.

“And you’ll be its first shitting meal if you don’t get up,” Marigold said. The flight from the entrance had been a sprint. Just running in this place was tiring enough, even without a guaranteed fight to follow. But Marigold wasn’t about to let it all end in this shitting room. He thrust out a hand of bent fingers to Aveline. She clenched them and pulled herself up. “We’re not done yet,” he said.

“What are we doing?” Kostya asked.

“We’re not hanging around here, that’s for fucking sure,” Marigold said. “There’s three of him and three of us. One on one, or, if you all fuck off and get out of sight, all of the cunts on me.”

“We need your blood, fool. You can’t get yourself killed. It’s not a hero’s death if you doom everyone else that’s fucking relying on you!” Exhaustion hadn’t extinguished Aveline’s bite.

“Who said anything about dying? I’m not about to let Gob kill me . A cockboil’ll give you some pain, but it isn’t going to kill you. Gob’s a cockboil. All three of him. And I know that he – or the thing that’s in him – wants me just as much as you bloody do.

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