26 – The ______ of Maggots

“This is why I wanted napalm,” Erika hissed, staying well back from the opening.

The Warrior pulled a card from her pocket, flung it toward the hole leading to what she assumed to be the Mother of Maggots, and snapped her fingers. It grew until its edges hit the walls, blocking off most of the hole. A few small gaps remained along the thinner ends of the playing card, but it would stop people from slipping and falling in.

“I’m not sure I have the firepower to take out that,” she said, peering through the gaps. The Warrior’s winced, face contorting like she reflexively wanted to pull away, but was forcing herself to look. “With more preparation, maybe, but the size of that thing…”

The Stalker stepped up alongside her, peering through with far less revulsion on her face. “Not as big as that thing under the bridge.”

“Yes, but those arms were so distant that it barely felt real. This is… different.” The Warrior gagged and turned away, rummaging through her supply of shells, hoping to find something big enough.

Leslie clapped a hand onto Erika’s back, helping her back to her feet. “You alright?”

Erika nearly gagged, looking down at herself. Her hands came away slick with a tar-thick layer of black sludge, streaked with clotted blood and something that might have been clods of fat. She had been gross before, but rolling in the muck? Chunks of gristle and hair matted her clothes, and as she brushed at her thigh, her fingers sank into something soft and yielding that squelched. She flung it off where it splatted against the wall. “I am, very much, not alright,” she shuddered.

Even just breathing felt vile, more than it had five minutes ago. She had seen the bones lining the corners of the tunnel, but hadn’t been able to tell apart the ground from the goo, not having looked that close.

The view she got now was far too close.

“Is this some kind of feeding trough?” Anna asked, nudging rat bones with the tip of her boot. Bile clung to her front, though she was clearly less bothered than Erika was. “Doesn’t look like all the food made it down.”

Erika gave up trying to flick bits of stuff off her body. It didn’t help. “Gun to my head, I don’t know if I could tell you whether that was a mouth or an asshole,” she said, nodding toward the partially-covered hole.

“Maybe we can poison it?” Daniel offered from the rear of the group. He hadn’t gotten close enough to see, and Erika found herself resenting him a little for that. “Didn’t The Warrior say that some of these bullets are toxic?”

“The thing eats corpse sludge,” Erika snapped, gesturing to herself. Even if it didn’t eat it directly, anything thrown down this tunnel would scrape up a bunch, just like she had.

The thought made her gag again, hoping nothing got in her mouth. She didn’t taste anything but the foul air, but all of a sudden, that taste felt stronger.

“Drain cleaner then. It’s caustic and eats away hair, grease, fat, and anything else people are made of.”

Sofia scoffed, standing close enough to peer through the small gap the card left in the hole. “Maybe if we had a cement mixer full of the stuff. I doubt a bottle or two are going to do much.”

“You might need more than that,” Anna grumbled, kneeling in the muck to see through the gap better. “Who knows how deep that pit goes? And is anyone worried about all the maggots crawling into the holes in the sides of the chamber? Those holes might lead off to Chicago, but if they can get back to the antechamber, they can swarm down this feeding tunnel—we’ll be in real shit.”

A nervous silence passed through the group as everyone slowly looked up, as if expecting a ball of maggots to come rolling down the tunnel at the mere mention of the possibility.

“I’ll head up,” Simone said, checking the ammo in her revolver. “I can give a holler if things look bad… or maybe you’ll hear some death cries as a warning.”

“Not alone you aren’t,” Leslie said, righting himself fully. “I doubt I’m much good with this problem, but I can watch your back.” He shot a look at Daniel, getting an affirming nod in return as the latter moved to his side. Daniel shot Erika a wan shrug, but didn’t argue against his father.

“I’ll go as well,” Rick offered. “Cursed sword or not, I can’t fight that thing, but I can at least chop up some maggots.”

“The rest of us will try to work out what to do with this?” Anna said, gesturing to the pit.

“If something does happen,” The Warrior added, voice distant and distracted as she poked at a black shotgun cartridge with her silver catalyst, “try to be careful running back down here. We might have removed the card, and I think slipping into the hole would be a miserable way to die.”

“Noted,” Leslie grunted as he, Simone, Daniel, and Rick all trudged back up the sloped tunnel.

“Realistically,” Sofia said slowly, looking around, “is there anything we can do? I know when I’m out of my depth, The Warrior already said she had nothing, The Stalker—no offense—doesn’t seem like the type who can handle this scale…”

The Stalker sneered, tapping her gun against her thigh.

“Unless The Castle shoved some really fancy weapons into Anna when they were rebuilding her…” Sofia trailed off at Anna’s glare, but held her ground. “Maybe it’s time to call up The Eclipse, tell them where they can find the source of all the problems, and call it a day?”

“You skipped The Agent,” The Stalker hissed, stepping forward with her fingers tight around her gun’s handle.

Sensing a fight, or at least an argument, Erika broke into the conversation with a light tap against The Stalker’s elbow. “Not the time,” she said, her voice firm and insistent. Especially because, as usual, Sofia wasn’t exactly wrong, she was just overly cautious.

Or, in this situation, maybe she was less cautious than she really should be.

“I know you do a lot of freaky things,” Sofia said to Erika, “but this might be outside even that. And is this even the Mother of Maggots? What if it is just some spawn of hers that’s only going to piss her off if we attack it? There were other passages—we didn’t even investigate them!”

“Mother or not, it is spawning maggots by the thousands,” The Stalker said, tapping her gun against the side of her head before pointing it at the hole. “Did you even look down there? Or are you just spewing nonsense?”

“The Stalker has a point,” Anna said, stepping slightly in front of Sofia. “The Prescient warned us of a maggot apocalypse. If we take this thing out, that’s got to diminish the severity, right? We can look in on the other tunnels after.”

“After what? We have no plan! The idea was to use The Warrior’s bullets in place of napalm, but—”

The Warrior cut in, stepping directly between the two sides of the argument without a care in the world. “Does anyone have a lighter?” For a long moment, everyone just stared, surprised by the intrusion, until The Warrior snapped her fingers. “Hello? Lighter, matches, even a candle if someone is carrying one for some reason.”

“Yeah,” Anna said, reaching into a pocket, but fished up nothing. “I’ve…” She patted a pocket, then another pocket, then sighed. “The Orderly said smoking would damage my new heart.”

Erika closed her eyes, deciding she needed to add lighters to her stockpile. Luckily, gas stations always had those trays of lighters set out next to the cash register. It took a few tries to find one that hadn’t been moved since she last saw them, but she eventually felt her fingers close around the hard plastic of a simple butane lighter. Pulling it from her pocket, she held it out. “Will this—”

“Thank you,” The Warrior said, snatching it from Erika. She held it up, flicking on the flame, and positioned it directly underneath the brass rim of one of the black revolver bullets.

Everyone took a hearty step back, with The Stalker leaving behind a static shade as she teleported halfway up the sloped tunnel.

“Is that safe?” Sofia asked, ducking down. “Won’t the gunpowder go off?”

“I certainly wouldn’t hold it if that could happen, now would I?” Deciding she had used the lighter enough, she tossed it aside, pinching both ends of the bullet. “Ah!” she hissed, sucking on her finger. “Hot!”

“I kind of thought you were one of the smart ones,” Sofia grumbled as The Warrior promptly tried again.

“I’m no Genius. I’m just an expert in my field—enchantments.” She pried off the tip of the bullet, carefully holding the casing while tossing the bullet aside. With a slight tilt of her wrist, she swirled around the contents of the casing. To Erika’s eyes, it looked like someone had liquified a sliver of the night sky. “This will be quite the enchantment,” she added as she pulled out the black shotgun shell.

Carefully, she poured the night sky over the top of the shell, letting it pool in the divot. As soon as the revolver casing was empty, she tossed it over her shoulder. It clinked against the wall, then warbled, eating a small chunk of the stone.

The Warrior wasn’t concerned, whipping out her catalyst to lightly poke the small pool of liquid. It instantly solidified, still looking like a small lens that showed off the night.

“Okay. No time to create a new enchantment, and no materials, but I have combined two and they are not stable together. We’ve got to move fast.”

“We?” Sofia muttered as The Warrior slotted the cartridge back into her shotgun.

Erika hurried forward before The Warrior could shove her gun in the hole’s gap. “Wait! Is it a problem if I fire it?”

“Why?” The Warrior asked with a raised eyebrow, her face shaded by the flickering flare embedded in the wall behind her head.

“I can break things at a distance with a gun. My power plus your enchanted bullet stands a better chance at causing real damage, right?”

Despite her haste, The Warrior took the time to examine Erika, staring at her up and down with a suspicious gleam in her eye. “How are you going to break the creature?”

Erika scoffed, shaking her head. “I mean, no idea. I think my power rips little tiny pinholes to Outside, but I only figured that out a few hours ago and haven’t had time to think about what that means for—”

A black spark jolted down the shotgun’s barrel, making everyone but The Warrior take another hearty step backward. “Let me rephrase: In what manner are you intending to break this creature? I ask because I do not believe in gods, but I do believe in beings of exceptional power. Before we set off, you mentioned that this Mother has existed for at least a few thousand years according to your research, correct?”

“Yes? I told you everything we researched about this thing.”

“Simply cutting apart this…” The Warrior trailed off, flicking her eyes toward the covered hole. “Cutting this flesh may not be enough to end the threat given the creature’s scale. You would need to break it on a far more fundamental level. My weapon will not produce predictable effects, though I doubt it will severely damage the creature.” As if to reinforce her point, another spark crackled down the length of the barrel, pausing at the end before disappearing with a poof. “Depending on how you use your power, it might result in marginally more physical damage, or it might turn out poorly for us.”

Erika went silent, considering The Warrior’s words. She hadn’t thought about it like that, but breaking that creature’s bones—if it had any—or breaking it like a blister in need of popping was exactly what she had been thinking.

Fundamental.

Approaching the gap, Erika quelled her stomach and peered down at the creature. The roiling flesh squirmed, its surface straining to contain the movement of millions of maggots. A gout of green slime seeped from one pus-covered sphincter just before it belched forth a fountain of maggots, flinging them across the surface of the creature. Dozens ended up crushed to a pulp, caught between the squirming flesh and the hard walls, but just as many climbed the walls, scurrying out through tunnels to elsewhere in the ziggurat.

Nausea welled as Erika watched another birth, but it made an idea pop into Erika’s head: motherhood.

Not the creature’s physical biology, not its mountainous size, not the millions of squirming things it kept pushing into the world. Those were the symptoms.

The maggot was too big; they had one shot and Erika had never tried to shatter something the size of a mountain before. Theoretically, she could do it, but repeating something she knew she had done before sounded more reliable.

Its name. Its title. Someone had looked at this vile thing and called it a mother. Erika didn’t know that she could break motherhood any more than she could break a mountain, but she didn’t need to. She severed links all the time using nothing more than forged ID cards.

Erika’s eyes flicked to the crackling shotgun in The Warrior’s hands. Her baseball bat would not cut it; her instinct told her that as well. She didn’t know what the gun would do—neither did The Warrior, by her admission—but it would do stranger things than a metal pole.

“Aren’t we on a time limit?” Anna asked as The Warrior’s gun sparked again.

Erika just held up her hand, begging patience for a moment more.

A gun, no matter the mystic nature, wasn’t enough on its own. She needed something symbolic. False ID cards symbolized an escape from herself, or something like that. “I should sign up for some philosophy classes,” Erika muttered as she peered through the gap again. Although her high school didn’t offer a philosophy course, she did know some basics of art: symbols of motherhood typically involved breasts, vaginas, and wombs.

None of which the Mother of Maggots possessed. It was just a mass of semi-segmented flesh, covered in those sphincters and mouths.

A slobbering of green pus discharged from a sphincter, clearing the way for another fresh birth of maggots.

The metaphorical lightbulb in Erika’s mind flashed on. “Gun,” she said, holding a hand out for The Warrior’s shotgun.

Despite her earlier protests, The Warrior handed it over with nothing more than a raised eyebrow.

“Right. Okay.” Erika breathed, then kneeled down next to the pit. “Move the card out of the way. I’m going to need to lean in a bit. Grab my legs and do not let me fall,” she hissed. “I will haunt all of you.”

The Stalker, Anna, and Sofia—the latter prompted by another sharp spark from the shotgun—knelt down behind Erika, pinning her legs to the greasy ground. The Warrior stepped up alongside Erika and snapped her fingers.

The playing card shrank, reverting to a normal card as it tumbled down into the pit.

Loathe as she was to let go of the ground, Erika gripped the shotgun with both hands as she leaned over the edge.

“Don’t drop my gun,” The Warrior called out as Erika felt another pair of hands clamp down on her thighs.

Erika didn’t answer, watching the sphincters that dotted the flesh. Pus oozed out, followed by a brief pause, then the maggots exploded out like a geyser. Another started bubbling up, slopping great green globs of snot down the side of the monster, before another burst of maggots came forth. Pus, pause, burst. Pus, pause, burst. Pus, pause…

Erika aimed. At the very moment of birth, she pulled the trigger, focusing on breaking the idea of mother.

A galaxy materialized in the middle of the pit, silent and beautiful. Violent swirls of stars ripped into the beast, tore apart maggots, and rent the oubliette’s walls to dust. The ground started quaking, shouts from behind joined in with the squealing cries of maggots, and Erika almost lost her grip on the shotgun, but she continued her focus.

Like a stick of dried spaghetti snapping between her fingers, she felt it: something broke.

She didn’t get to watch; the others pulled her back from the pit, getting her upright and dragging her away. The floor around the hole crumbled, falling away brick by brick.

“Time to run!” The Warrior shouted, uselessly—everyone sprinted ahead of her, Erika included. “Don’t anyone slip. I’m not going back for you!”

“What did we do?” Anna barked, eyes wide as she glimpsed the crumbling floor behind them.

“We?” Sofia muttered, steadying herself before breaking into a run.

Erika, coming up behind her, ushered Anna along. “No time to stand around!” she shouted, making sure each of her boots were firmly in the muck before putting her full weight on them.

With a yelp, Sofia hurried on, cresting the top of the sharpest slope.

The others were just ahead. Rick’s sword was out, his eyes hazy and his talisman aglow, but he didn’t attack the others even as they turned their backs to him to watch Erika and the others sprint through the tunnel.

“What did you do?” Daniel called down the tunnel, stance wide as he tried to steady himself against the trembling ground.

“Just run!” Erika shouted. “Out, out of the ziggurat!”

Daniel didn’t, but Leslie was quicker on the uptake. “Rick,” he barked out even as he hauled Daniel up onto his shoulder.

Rick struggled to force his sword back into its sheath, panting the entire time. The quaking ground dropped him to one knee, but he forced himself back to his feet. Simone aimed her pistol and fired over his shoulder further into the antechamber. Erika couldn’t see what she hit, but the heat and light washed down the tunnel, making her stagger.

The stagger cost her, making her plant her foot in the uneven muck. Her stomach dropped before she realized her boot was sliding backward. Anna’s arm twisted unnaturally to clamp around Erika’s wrist.

“Gotcha,” she said, wrenching Erika forward.

“Were you just waiting for me to fall again?” Erika said as they ran fully into the antechamber.

Flames consumed a full half of the antechamber. The heat roared and stifled, making the air hard to breathe. Lucky for them, it was the half that didn’t block the entrance. Erika ran, flames licking her heels. Leslie had Daniel slung over his shoulders and sill outpaced her. Simone had Rick by the arm, half-dragging him, his sword finally sheathed and his eyes clearing.

Nobody said a word. There was nothing useful to say and no breath to spare for it.

They hit the cavernous ground outside and kept going until Leslie stopped, which was the only reason Erika stopped too. Behind them, the ziggurat didn’t so much collapse as it surrendered—the whole structure folding inward at once, tier by tier, swallowed by the sinkhole opening beneath it. Dust from the collapse still plumed through the air, rushing toward Erika and the others, only for a heavy gust of lemony wind to force it away, leaving the only sound the pounding of Erika’s pulse in her ears.

The Warrior rested the shotgun on her shoulder as she came to a stop several steps from the portal back. Blinking, Erika glanced down, surprised to find the shotgun missing from her grip, but she was too busy panting for breath to question The Warrior.

“Is it dead?” Leslie asked, sliding Daniel off his shoulder.

“I can’t believe that was an actual load-bearing boss,” Daniel whispered, staring back at the pit.

Sofia, already on the other side of the portal, shouted over, “Why not talk here? You know, where the ground is stable?”

“Agreed,” The Stalker growled, though she waited for The Warrior to move before she teleported herself right up to the portal and stepped through.

Erika stayed a moment, watching, trying to pierce through the smoke.

Wafts and curls in the smoke spread apart, giving her the faintest glimpse. She spotted a sphincter in the sinkhole, covered in bricks and dust, but still dilating, still oozing. Pus, pause…

Erika waited, but nothing emerged from the sphincter before the cloud of dust blocked her view once more.