Exuvia
I spend a day in preparation, gathering supplies, conducting research, chasing down rumors. A homeless woman who vanished; an urban explorer who never returned. Not much to go on, but I have a starting point. I need little else. When night falls, I descend underground.
Originally stone mines, the catacombs extend beneath the city in every direction, the final resting place for countless millions of bodies. By day, tourists flock to some of the upper levels, viewing sculptures and frescoes proclaiming the kingdom of death.
In my search, I leave these well-travelled paths far behind and push on into the lightless depths beneath. Night vision goggles need light to amplify, and carrying my own light would advertise my presence. So, as always, I adapt.
I see tunnels used by resistance fighters and mass graves for victims of the guillotine. A famous composer given a pauper's funeral rests down here somewhere, but he's lost a few pounds in the past centuries and I don't know that I could recognize him.
I have yet to catch a glimpse of the thing, but I have decided the creature must possess intelligence. It could stick to the upper levels, snag stray tourists, and do very well for itself. But that would attract attention. So it hides deep inside, takes only occasional victims. Even covers its tracks. That revelation speeds my search considerably. I seek out the conspicuous absence of clues. A pathway devoid of dust in which the creature might have left tracks.
Hints come to me only sporadically, and the residents – so to speak – maintain their silence, watching my progress with empty eyes. They have their uses, though – a stray femur or a row of skulls with one member askew provides enough to keep me moving forward. Sometimes I proceed on intuition alone, the indefinable tug that tells me to go left instead of right.
I enjoy this process more than I care to admit.
I squeeze through a narrow passageway into a large room, vast enough that I recognize it as an early quarry. I hear a trickle of water from somewhere; an aqueduct overhead, perhaps. Something changes in the quality of the air, and I know I've found it.
Peramorphosis
I freeze, give my brain a moment to catch up to what my senses have deduced. I smell death. Not just bone, death. A rotting corpse, here, in a part of the catacombs that hasn't seen a fresh body in at least a thousand years.
The size of the room, the cavernous depth of it, makes it treacherous. A loose stone or incautious step could mean disaster, so I take my time heading for the lower levels. On a terrace beneath me, I come across a pile of corpses in varying states of decomposition. Between the smell and the potential for ambush, I can't spend too long studying them.
The thing has discarded them wholesale. Still clothed, some wearing their jewelry. All the flesh remains on the bone, so it doesn't want them for meat. Some of the older remains have desiccated enough to give me a clue as to cause of death: trepanation. I focus in on one skull in particular. The skin at the temple seems almost peeled away, the bone, too.
I leave the corpses and continue into the lair, moving down to the center of the quarry. The thing has set up its hideout deliberately, and through the gloom I can see bones arranged in vertiginous spirals for no purpose I can fathom, like ossified crop circles.
As I draw closer to the center of the spirals, I see movement from the corner of my eye, sinuous and somehow oozing. I have impressions as it rushes me, viscous flesh, rending claws, writhing tentacles in lieu of a face.
In close quarters like this, Save the Queen would prove a liability. I reach to my side, for the elegantly curved sword Raubahn gave me years ago. He said I needed a blade to carve my path. Not my weapon of choice, but with a charm all its own.
White eyes without pupils meet mine and I feel as though an artillery shell has gone off in my skull. The magic tastes of wormwood and copper. Pain radiates outwards like lightning and my fingertips start to go numb. I push back against it, fighting against the paralysis spreading through my nervous system. The agony brings a smile to my face. It's a cute trick.
I want it.
