Finally, back in the good old United Kingdom, I spent the 3 days in Dublin, spending time with my extended family for Christmas. But I'm back now, writing this on the plane home.
Hope you guys had a wonderful Christmas, and if you don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a wonderful day anyway.
"Just lean on me," Ryan instructed.
"No," Jody protested. "I don't need your help."
"But you will soon," Ryan warned. "We are calling an ambulance for you the second we get up there, whether you like it or not. Radiation sickness is nasty, and the faster you get it treated, the better."
Jody sighed. "Fine."
The frog hopped forward in a haste to get a move on, and they obediently followed it.
The journey was quite long, even longer than the tunnels they had walked down when they had first fallen down there, and true to Ryan's word, Jody soon found herself struggling to keep walking. It was a good thing that none of them had eaten or drunk a thing for many hours - she was sure she would've thrown up otherwise.
"Save your strength," Ryan whispered to her, offering an arm.
She didn't bother protesting. At this point, she cared little for her image - she only cared about getting out of this gloomy place and to a hospital where they would stop her from dying.
"What have we come to?" Bailey asked rhetorically. "We're stuck in an underground train station that is also radioactive, running away from some weird guards and a bunch of overgrown mutant spiders who want to harvest our souls so they can use them to bring back some ... what did they call them again, Ryan?"
"'Beings of the Burning Underworld,'" Ryan quoted. "Demons of Hell, essentially."
"Right," Bailey said. "They want to use our souls to summon the demons of Hell, and our bodies will be used to make more spiders."
"Thanks for that Bailey, we hadn't noticed," Ryan said sarcastically.
"Just saying," Bailey said. "I wonder if the others up there have left without us yet?"
"They wouldn't," Ryan said. "Well, they must've called the police for us. Come to think of it, maybe we should make and emergency call. Emergency lines work without service."
"Yeah, and what are we gonna tell the operator?" Bailey asked. "'Help us, we fell down a pit in the forest that appeared out of nowhere and now we're running from scary guards and their overgrown pet spiders who want to steal our souls'? Yeah, like they'll believe that."
The frog croaked, and they realised it had stopped moving and was utterly still on the train track, save for its pulsing throat.
"What's going on?" Jody asked, who had been half-asleep for most of the journey.
"We've stopped, apparently," Bailey explained.
The frog padded forward slowly, placing its feet very carefully on the stones and pieces of track. It bent forward and placed its snout nearer the ground, like it was trying to sniff something out.
Clack-clack.
The frog tensed, as did the children.
"Not them again," Bailey groaned.
"Shut up," Ryan hissed.
Clack, then a moment of silence, followed by a series of idle-sounding grunts. The arachniwraiths were communicating.
"We must be almost there," Bailey realised.
"Yeah, but be careful," Ryan warned. "Remember, their horns can cut us up, and do not look at their bulbs. They can corrupt your brain."
"How'd you get past them last time?" Jody asked suddenly.
"They're blind," Ryan explained. "They couldn't see me, only smell me."
"That means they can also smell the frog," Bailey realised. "Remember in the library back there?"
"Yeah, but they'll also smell us," Ryan said. "We should probably stay a little bit behind, so they smell the frog before they smell us."
"We should be out soon," Jody said, smiling weakly.
"Alright, frog, go out on ahead," Ryan said to it.
To their surprise, the frog stayed frozen for a couple of seconds, before hopping up into the air, turning around as it did so. It landed facing the children with a defiant and somewhat pleading expression. It was as if the little creature seemed anxious of going on ahead without them, like it was relying on them as much as they were relying on it.
Bailey sighed. "Fine, we'll come with you."
They trekked on, and the dim light grew brighter, which in turn caused them to avert their eyes from it. The light was far from blinding, but they heeded Ryan's warning about not looking directly at the arachniwraiths' bulbs, lest their brains be corrupted. The irony of the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel was not lost on them, and while they were glad to get out of there, the risks were not lost on them.
Clack-clack-clack-clack.
The children paused, but the frog kept hopping along. In the brighter light, they could see that it wasn't army green, but black on the top and a startling electric blue on the bottom. They had been following a poison arrow frog all along.
At long last, the arachniwraiths came into view - and they made the ones they had already come across look like pet tarantulas.
While the ones they had seen were 5 feet tall, these ones were at least 6 and a half feet in height, with their horns being worn thin, making them appear sharp as knives. Every single one of them had a bulb the size of a football, and while they were not particularly brighter than the bulbs of the typical arachniwraiths, these ones had a harsh neon tinge to them, so much so that even not looking directly at them made one's eyes sting. Their limbs were far sturdier and chunkier, almost like logs. They had the overall impression of seasoned war veterans who had seen and fought every threat imaginable with ease, and they were prepared to take down anything in their way as easily as swatting a fly.
"I'm scared," Jody whispered, who by now was so weak that Ryan was practically carrying her more than anything.
Ryan gave her a gentle squeeze. "We'll get through this. We're almost out, and we can get you to hospital, and we'll be back with the others in not very long."
"Alright." She swallowed down some bile burning in her throat. "Frog, go out on ahead."
The frog turned briefly on the spot, as if scanning the area, before ...
BLAM!
Next thing, the poor animal was lying dead on the floor, in a growing pool of thick, dark red blood.
The children were stricken - had their frog just been shot?!
Before they had time to fully process this, however, there came the old clack-clack-clack of the monsters' feet on the track - though the menacing 'wraiths in front of them weren't moving.
That could only mean one thing.
The trio turned around, coming face to face with the regular arachniwraiths closing in on them. With the mutant arachnids present both in front and behind them - and without their animal charm to help them get past them - they braced themselves for what was to come.
But the trappers didn't knock them out and carry them away, like the very first one had done with Ryan several hours before. Instead, the one at the front and on the far left flicked out its hairy leg - to push a lever embedded in the wall of the tunnel.
"What the-" was all Bailey could get out before the floor slipped out from underneath them.
"Excellent," gloated a husky, grating voice. "It's been an excruciating amount of time since we've been able to get our hands on fresh life."
This, along with an insistent throbbing in his wrist, woke Bailey up, and he realised that he was strapped by the wrists to a hard stone slab, padded only with a course sheet. The bindings provided an explanation as to the pain in his injured wrist, which had been slung in his jacket for most of their little adventure.
His eyes focused on the spot directly above him. The light was dim, but he could make out the outline of a square trapdoor - the second hole that he and his friends had fallen down in the last 48 hours. They had fallen straight into another trap.
His tied wrists meant he couldn't sit up or get away, but he craned his neck around the room to see if he could spot his friends. Eventually, he located them just a few feet away, both still unconscious, with Jody looking like she was on her deathbed as radiation sickness took its brutal toll.
Come to think of it, technically they were all on their deathbeds. They had no way of escaping or getting out here now - they were bound very firmly to their rocky soon-to-be graves by the cuffs, they had no way of reaching the trap door, and they wouldn't be able to get past the most powerful arachniwraiths at the top without their animal charm.
Bailey remembered that Ryan's realisation that they would meet with a terrible fate down there had spawned a severe reaction, but it wasn't until that point where he understood how the boy had felt at that time - a sense of pure, undiluted terror at the prospect of their untimely demise at the hands of these occult, ethereal beings.
At that moment, Ryan himself awoke sharply. "Whass-goin'-on?!"
"Silence!" yelled the guard. The dog at his side barked aggressively at him, as if to drive the point home, causing Ryan to flinch.
"What are we gonna do?!" Bailey squeaked, looking over at his smart friend.
"Don't look at me," Ryan muttered fearfully. "I'm not a freaking superhero."
"We have to do something though," Bailey said, squirming in his cuffs.
Ryan but his lip, before turning his head to his other side where Jody was lying. "Jodes, wake up."
She didn't even stir.
Ryan gritted his teeth, and turned back to Bailey. "Jody's out for the count, we're on our own."
"Good," interrupted the guard that was keeping an eye on them. "We'll be putting it out of its misery when we get round to harvesting its soul."
"It matters little," announced the guard at the front, his arachniwraith 'minion' at his side. "We only need these three more souls in order to accomplish our long-held goal, my friends." He gave them all an evil grin, showing a set of rotten teeth.
Hanging on the wall of the chamber was a dingy leather sheath, from which the hilt of a rather large knife was seen poking out. The head guard walked over and reached a hand out towards it, but instead of taking it by the handle, the knife seemingly slid itself out from the sheath and was held aloft by an unseen force. They sussed out that the spectre, who was currently looking at the knife as thought he had found the Holy Grail, had to be telekinetically controlling it.
"Finally," he said, practically drooling with excitement, "it is time. Exact the spell."
One of the other guards began chanting the incantation in an what sounded like an otherworldly language, and the knife began to glow.
"Yes," the guard gloated, when the spell was done and the knife gleaming. "Now ..."
Keeping the knife in the air, a panel at the back of the room opened up, to reveal what appeared to be a complex, tangled network of metallic strands that were encasing a large, walnut-shaped core. The same polonium-coloured light was streaming out from between the gaps, rippling like water. If one strained their ears, one could hear the faintest voices from behind the network, like cries for help ...
"I'm not giving up," Bailey heard Ryan mutter, struggling against the cuffs with renewed vigour. "There has to be some - way - out -"
He was cut off as he felt the cuff on his left wrist give a little, so he kept pushing until it came loose and his hand was free.
"What in the-" the watchful guard started, before Ryan wrenched his other hand free as well. "Why aren't the cuffs holding them?!"
"They need to be loosened at this point!" another retorted. "The soul won't leave the body otherwise!"
Ignoring them, Ryan jumped up off the table-like slab, ran over to the guard, grabbed the levitating knife in mid-air, and rammed it into the core.
The arachniwraiths screeched and started clacking their way over to him. Ryan yanked the knife out and slashed it downwards, severing the wires.
The arachniwraiths collapsed mid-run, their legs buckling and breaking ...
The guard spirits bellowed as they started dissipating from the feet up ...
"NO!" yelled the head guard, as Ryan stabbed the core once again.
The shafts of light grew bigger and brighter. The wires were warping before their very eyes ...
A white cloud of vapour sped out from behind the core like a comet. It was followed, by another, and then another, and what had to be at least fifty more. The unfortunate souls that had been previously harvested by the guards were finally set free, and we clearly wasting no time in getting away from their radioactive prison.
However, while admiring the results of his own handiwork, Ryan let his guard down.
This allowed the head guard to wrench the knife from his grip using his powers. Just as Ryan flicked his head to the side to see him, with his bottom half now completely gone, the guard rammed the knife deep into Ryan's sternum.
It didn't hurt. Not at first.
"RYAN!" Bailey screamed, pulling himself out of his own cuffs, which were now as feeble as string due to the destroyed necromantic source.
The last guards disappeared with a shout, and the arachniwraiths lay still, their bulbs flickering weakly.
"What's happened?"
Bailey turned his head to see that all the action had apparently woken Jody up, though by now she was too sick to even get herself off of her slab.
"I'll show you," Bailey said, running over to her so he could help her off the table, in spite of his injured wrist.
"Where's Ryan?" she asked, as Bailey eased her legs to the floor.
Bailey swallowed, before guiding her over to the spot where their dying friend lay, the knife embedded deep into his chest.
"Ryan!" she shrieked, her eyes popping as she knelt down beside him. "Oh my God, Ryan!" She reached for the hilt, but Bailey grabbed her arm.
"Don't take it out!" he ordered. "He'll bleed to death if you do!"
Ryan's arm was groping unconsciously for something to grab onto, the pain now in full force. It wasn't hurting quite as much as he'd feared - it just felt like another Angina attack. Jody slipped her clammy hand into his, and he gripped it like a vice.
"It's okay," he grunted, forcing his pained eyes open to look his friends in the eye. "My heart never worked properly anyway."
"How can you make jokes at a time like this?!" Bailey yelled. "You're the one that needs an ambulance, never mind Jody!"
"Doesn't matter," Ryan whispered. "I'll be dead before their get here anyway."
"No Ryan!" Jody screamed, tears pricking her stinging eyes. "You-you can't die, you've been the strongest out of all of us, and we still need to get out of here!"
"You still can," Ryan said. "You guys can go escape, get to hospital, go back home, tell everyone about what happened here ... just, without me."
"We won't abandon you," Bailey insisted, feeling a lump form in his throat. "Not after all you've done for us."
They stayed there for what felt like hours upon hours, but in reality was only about five minutes. All the while, they looked one another in the eyes, sharing feelings and silent conversations as they spent their last precious few moments as a trio.
"Guys?"
They looked over at Ryan. His skin appeared slightly translucent and shiny with sweat. His eyes were glazed over and unfocused, his chest shuddering with uneven breaths. He didn't have long left.
"Yeah?" Bailey whispered.
"I'm scared."
Jody could've completely crumbled to dust at that small phrase. Throughout the whole of this whole ordeal, Ryan had tried so hard to keep going, do what was right, keep them as much out of harm's way as possible. He'd been the one to go on ahead to search the tunnels when they'd first gotten down there. He'd volunteered to distract the arachniwraiths when they had been set after them. All those bumps in the road, and now at the end of it, he finally said it.
"You're gonna be alright," Jody replied, squeezing his hand. "You'll get through this." It was the mantra that all of them had repeated throughout the whole thing, and she hoped it would provide him with a glimmer of light in his darkest moment.
Mustering up his last few joules of energy, Ryan turned his head slightly to look his two friends in the eyes, and through the sweat on his face, two clear streaks appeared on his cheeks, and he said one last sentence.
The words had hardly any voice behind them, and could only be heard in the still, cold darkness of the macabre chamber, but they both knew they would remember them for the rest of their lives.
"For God's sake ... please stay till I am sleeping ..."
Jody stayed. She stayed as Ryan's breath hitched, and his hand tensed in hers, like he was trying to cling on to something Earthly even as he was passing away from it. She stayed as he let out one last dying breath, the last bit of gas leaving his lungs with a sound like a sigh. She stayed as Bailey, in a rare act of solemnity, carefully extracted the knife from Ryan's chest, closed his eyelids over his glassy stare and folded his arms over his chest, covering up the grotesque knife wound.
If she ignored the fact that his face was unnaturally pale, and the lack of rise and fall of his chest, she could pretend he was sleeping.
It was only when Bailey stood up with the knife in hand, making to leave, that she spoke. "We-we can't leave him here."
"We're not going to," Bailey replied, stepping over the carcass of an arachniwraith and making his way towards the partially hacked system core.
"No, Bailey!" she yelled, realising what was going to happen. "It'll destroy the whole thing!"
"That's the idea."
"But what if we're taken along with it?"
This made Bailey pause. "What do you mean?"
"As in, we don't know what might happen when the inner workings are destroyed completely. It could end up killing us," Jody said.
Bailey sighed. "We need that book."
"We need Ryan," Jody added, glancing mournfully at her friend's cooling cadaver lying on the floor next to her.
"Yeah," Bailey agreed. "What would he have done?"
Jody shrugged. "I guess ... he would've wanted to stop something like this ever happening again, to anyone."
Bailey nodded, giving her a knowing look, before gesturing to the system centre.
"Go for it," she permitted. "I trust you."
Bailey nodded, and with one slash of the knife still stained with his friend's blood, he destroyed the system centre.
They didn't know what they were expecting when the heart of the system was destroyed. An explosion, an earthquake, a hurricane - none of those. In fact, for a single second that lasted an eternity, it felt as though they had sailed into the eye of the storm.
*ruffles feathers* I am evil, aren't I? Yeah, I know I've already killed Ryan once, but like in And I Feel Them Drown My Name, the vision in my head was so clear and I had it for so long that I just couldn't shelve it. Don't worry, I've got another book in the works that'll be published in the New Year, and he'll stay alive and (mostly) well in that.
I took some medical liberties here too. In reality, if you were stabbed in the heart, you would lose consciousness in around 15 seconds, be brain-dead in about 5 minutes and completely dead in 8 minutes. But in a story about arachnidan monsters living with evil spirits in a radioactive underground train station, I think you can suspend your disbelief a bit.
I originally planned to have this chapter and the next in one, but it was getting too long and taking too long to write.
