The Shatterplate War Chapter 20 (Patreon)

As they dashed from just over the line deeper into the inverted pyramid, the creature’s back bowed and its arms curled in. It kept its head tracking Halloway with the many joints on its neck, twisting its point of view around even as it curled in on itself. Then, with a  deep grunt, it threw its arms wide and straightened its back and its neck. Its neck was almost high enough to touch the metal spike hanging above it when it straightened entirely out, but that was the second thing Kay noticed. The first thing he noticed was the spikes that punched out of the body of the monster, the sharp points piercing through its flesh as each of the numerous bulges Kay had noticed earlier erupted outward, revealing sharp points the same color as the chitinous material covering the thing’s fingers.

Each of the monster’s six hands reached down and grabbed a spike. Some of the hands ripped at them, leaving massive gaping holes in its own flesh as it tore the seven-foot-long spears out of its body; the others pulled slowly, making nauseating squelching noises as it pulled. The spears were warped, twisted things, some with barbed ends, others blunted heads and some just regular spears of chitin. Kay vomited in his mouth a little as the monster held one of the barbed spears up to one of its mouths and it ate its own rancid flesh off then end. Its wounds, dripping a thick, noxious green liquid, began to slowly heal like a drain being emptied, a swirl of flesh that closed up, then bulged out again as more spikes began to form beneath the skin.

“What the fuck!?” Tyuah screamed from slightly behind him.

“Keep running!” Kay snapped as he neared the first lever.

The monster tracked Halloway as he ran out of Kay’s line of sight, the creature between them. From its position at the bottom of the pyramid, it was still tall enough that its shoulders were more than a dozen feet above Kay’s head. One of the things arms cocked back almost lazily, and then with a rush of movement, its five jointed arm flicked forward section by section, and it threw the spear at Halloway, sending it flying in a circle as it tossed it sideways. 

Kay watched the weapon go spinning off opposite from him and heard it slam into the ground with a strange ringing noise. It bounced back up into the air from the impact and dropped to the ground, ringing and bouncing.

“Still up!” Halloway shouted.

Right before Kay could get to his lever, he heard the ground start to shake slightly, and then he heard the sound of massive turning gears. With a rumble, part of the pyramid, one of the middle sections, rose up, shifting all of the sections beneath it upwards as well. The monster grew closer to the giant metal spike heralding its death above it, but it also got a better vantage point to attack the group from. Its head whipped around on its terrible neck as it let out another moan and its eyes flashed as it turned its gaze on Lauren.

“Shit!” Kay heard her scream as she scrambled to the side.

Two of the things arms flung forward as it threw two more spears. One flew in a normal trajectory, its point forward to impale its target, while the other flipped end over end.

Lauren threw herself forward and underneath both attacks in a desperate dive and clawed at the ground, trying to get up as the creature wound up again.

Kay dove forward and yanked the nearby lever down. The ground rumbled again as the lowest level pushed up, making the monster loom above them even higher.

“Move!” Tyuah shouted, and Kay sprinted to the side, already boosting himself with Blood Boost. He heard three more ringing impacts from right behind him as the monster threw its last three weapons at him. Kay glanced down the slope of the pyramid at the next lever, which was much closer to the creature. With a strangled curse, he slid down the incline.

The monster arms reached around its body and started to pull spikes out again. This time it ripped all of them free, reloading in mere seconds. Kay narrowed his eyes as the creature kept its eyes locked on him, and all six of its arms reared back to throw, with Kay only a third of the way down the teen foot slope.

Kay heard the twang of a bowstring, and an arrow pierced the monster’s cheek like a tiny splinter. One of its mouths formed a sneer, and it reached up to scratch at the “injury” with one of its spears, leaving foot-long gashes in its own skin that quickly healed. It seemed to lose most of its interest in Kay as it scratched the itch, and it only threw one spear at him, which he dodged by throwing himself away from the slope and landing at the bottom in a roll.

“Hitting it doesn’t seem to hurt it!” He heard Halloway shout from the level above, “But it does distract it, so keep it from mulching any of us if you can.”

They continued on, Halloway and Lauren soon sliding down to the same level as Kay and Tyuah moments later, and Halloway going down one more as they kept the monster in the same pattern. By repeatedly hitting it with ranged attacks, bow shots from the three expedition members, and various attacks made out of blood from Kay, they managed to keep it from using its full force on any one member of their party. Its eyes seemed to glaze over a little as it started up at the ceiling, not directly looking at anyone as it ripped or pulled spears from its body, threw them in various ways, then repeated the same actions. The terrible smell of rotten fish soon encompassed the room thanks to the nasty emissions coming from its wounds that dripped to the ground around the thing.

As Lauren rolled forward and pulled the lever next to her, making another level rise up towards the ceiling, the monster groped around its body, finding no more spears poking out from its skin. It snapped out of the haze that had consumed its mind as it glanced around its torso. With a disgusted sounding snarl, it started to curl back around itself again, and with a pained grunt, another wave of spears erupted from inside of it. It turned a snarl on Lauren as it rearmed, and multiple arms started to get ready to throw. Two different arrows landed in its body, one each from Halloway and Tyuah, but it ignored them.

Kay desperately threw a heavy sphere at one of the hands it cocked back and caused it to smack itself on one of its other arms. Two of the spears didn’t get thrown, and the rest ricocheted off the ground as Lauren rolled sideways down the slope to the next level.

The monster growled, nasty orange foam dripping from its mouths as it stretched its neck higher. It circled around the spike and stared down at them from the highest point it could reach, trying to look at both Lauren and Kay simultaneously. A barrage of throws started, and an almost musical series of rings echoed through the arena as Kay and Lauren ducked, dived, and dodged their imminent death by a giant disgusting creepy monster.

Halloway managed to make use of the monster, ignoring him, and he pulled two more levers, both of them on the third-highest level of the inverted pyramid. With Kay serving as bait, Tyuah managed to pull the lever on their level as well, bringing it to a total of six levers pulled out of the eight they needed to get to. The first six had been spread out across the three highest levels, two on each, but the last two were in tricky places. One was in the ground of one of the middle sections instead of one of the walls, and the last one was sitting directly underneath the monster itself, where its flesh was fused into the rock.

“Try and work your way to the next lever!” Kay shouted as he sprinted away from Lauren, who’d he’d started to get too close to.

“We have to climb up to get to the last one at this point!” She shouted back at him. “The slopes are sheer!”

“Leave that to me!” Kay quickly pulled blood around him and formed another tick set of armor, this one with spikes over his fingers and toes. He slammed his hands and feet into the wall and started to pull himself upward.

As Kay climbed up and got closer to the creature, it started to mix melee attacks into its pattern, slamming claw attacks down at him and trying to run him through with its spears. Kay stepped back and watched as a barbed point slammed into the stone floor, vibrating and ringing in the thing’s hand from the impact. He threw himself at the next, and last, slope as he dragged himself up it toward the lever at the monster’s base.

Its full attention was on Kay now, and he literally dove forward to grab at the lever as a series of attacks slammed into where he had just pulled himself over the edge. He grasped the lever and yanked it as hard as he could before using the false muscles in his armor to throw himself forward like a torpedo.

One of the six simultaneous attacks from the monster managed to hit him as he tried to escape, and he was slammed to the ground by the point of a spear in his shoulder. It pierced through the front of his armor and out the back of it again as it went through him entirely. He screamed in pain again as the monster ripped its weapon free, tearing pieces of Kay with it.

He watched as it grinned evilly and licked bits of his flesh and blood from its spear. 

“Bad move!” Kay snarled as he flexed his will. His inability to control blood inside other creatures was the last thing from his mind as he mentally grabbed hold of the bits of himself in the creature’s mouths and made them grow into spikes. Tiny glints of red appeared through the skin around its mouths, and it roared in pain, its head rocking back as it shook it back and forth. It ripped at its faces with three of its arms, ripping the blood Kay controlled out of it.

Kay managed to give himself an emergency seal with blood to keep himself alive as he dragged himself away with his good arm, tumbling down the slope in a graceless pile as he tried to get farther away from the creature. He landed at the bottom and tried to flip himself over to keep crawling away when a shadow loomed over him. He looked up and saw the monster glaring at him, spears poised to destroy him utterly.

Interestingly enough, the different levels that moved after each lever were pulled all moved at different speeds. The level in the middle that was moving thanks to Kay pulling the lever right next to the monster’s body took the longest, with almost thirty seconds passing between the lever being pulled and it reaching its highest point.

That moment, thirty seconds later, happened to be right as the monster loomed over Kay, preparing to kill him with six spear attacks. With a final shudder, the ground locked into place, putting the body of the monster less than a foot underneath the spike. 

The thing paused and slowly turned to look at the spike right above it. It moved slowly like it couldn’t believe what was happening, and it spun its neck around in different shapes as it circled the spike like it was wrapping it up. Finally, it glacially turned its gaze back on Kay. The monster roared in rage, the force of the noise slamming Kay into the ground again, and it raised all six arms to stab down on him.

“Fuck you!” Someone screamed, and Kay saw an arrow fly out of his field of vision to slam into one of the thing’s eyes. Its head rocked back, seeming to actually be in time for the first time as it let out a high-pitched scream that sounded like a baby being tortured.

Kay watched as Tyuah, the one who’d fired, stumbled and fell as she was attacked by that horrible scream. The monster turned and looked at her with its five remaining eyes glowing with rage. It opened all three mouths wide, and a red glow began to fill each of them.

“Move, Tyuah!” Lauren shouted from somewhere, and Tyuah pulled herself to her feet to run.

Kay dragged himself along the ground with one arm towards the next incline down, trying to get some distance, so he was less of a liability. He watched as Tyuah started to run, with the monster still tracking her with its head as the red glow began to grow brighter and brighter.

Then Tyuah slipped, her lack of practice with her new prosthetic dooming her at the last moment. A beam of energy erupted from the monster’s three mouths, blending together to make a red beam that shot directly at her, radiating heat and death.

Kay reached out with one thought in his head and detonated the fake leg he’d made for her like a bomb.

The leg exploded and threw her forward head over ass through the air, away from the attack.

But not far enough away, as the heat ray disintegrated her arm at the shoulder as she was flung through the air. She landed in a motionless lump on the ground a few feet away, bleeding from her re-injured leg and the remains of her right arm smoking as ash drifted off of her.

The creature reared back, a triumphant grin on its face as it started charging another blast.

“Now, we don’t need any more of that,” Halloway called out and pulled the last lever.

The final level to rise did so the fastest. It rocketed upwards in a mere second, and the creature was thrown into the giant spike, impaling it through as it wailed in pain and anguish. Fetid goo was flung across the room as the monster struggled with the spike inside of it, ripping and tearing its own body apart as it tried to work itself free. Its final scream turned into a gurgle as its head rose into the air to the highest extension of its neck. Its three faces scraped the ceiling where the spike was attached before its head fell, slamming into the bottom of the now completed pyramid, rising up into the air.

Kay distantly felt someone flipping him over and his mouth being forced open as a healing potion was poured down his throat. Then he passed out.

Some unknown time later, he woke up the stones underneath him and above him a different color than the pure white inside the Dungeon.

“Hold still!” Someone snapped at him as he struggled to sit up. “You’re in no state to move right now!”

“What’s going on? Where’s-”

A firm hand pushed his head back down into the bedroll he was lying in, and a voice he vaguely recognized as Lauren’s whispered in his ear. “You’re outside the Dungeon, with the other wounded. We’re waiting on one more group to make it through.”

“How many did we lose?” He gasped out.

“One dead, nine wounded, including you and Tyuah.”

Kay jolted.

“Yeah, she made it. She’s basically tied for our worst wounded, but she’s alive.” He heard Lauren sigh, “It looks like the Dungeon gets harder when you have a party. Most of the groups had rooms that were a lot harder than anything we ran into until the last one, at least.” He heard her open her mouth to speak again, then she paused. “None of this matters right now, actually. Go back to sleep. I’ll catch you up when we start moving again.”