Chapter 19: Caducus
The pod had apparently grown and evolved since Lara had last seen it in the Biodome. It resembled an insect, the size of a full-grown Tyrannosaur. Its body pulsated with venom, and thick, dark green plates of skin covered its sides like armour. A cornucopia of horns and claws protruded from its back. Its long, mace-like tail swayed around idly. Boaz' tainted face and hands jutted out from the stomach, her corpse embedded in the creature like a mosquito in resin. The monster's tremendous weight was supported by eight hairy, spider-like legs.
Muller screeched in horror and spun around, but before he could run away from his gruesome fate, the monstrosity burst onto the arena and grabbed the man in its octopus-like mouth. It effortlessly lifted him from the floor and pierced his corpulent stomach with its beetle jaws. Muller's scream was cut short as blood sprayed across the arena and left a crimson streak on the sand.
But Boaz was not satisfied yet. It tossed Muller's limp body away and started rushing towards the remaining prey in the arena, spider legs clicking rapidly against the floor.
Kurtis turned to Lara, holding his intertwined hands out. "Come on, I'll give you a boost."
Lara stepped onto his hands and instantly felt a rush of telekinetic energy pushing her upwards. It was like jumping on a springboard. She flew from the arena, whizzed through the air and landed on the platform under the dome ceiling. Eckhardt and Gunderson had just left through a gate at the end of the walkway. Lara turned around and looked at the Lux Veritatis warrior in the arena below. "Kurtis, quick!"
"Here, take these two!" Kurtis threw his Periapt shards up to her.
Lara caught the chrystalline weapons. "These are your speciality, Kurtis."
Kurtis glanced at the approaching Boaz mutant. "Don't worry about ugly here. You're wasting time!"
Lara tightened her grip on the Periapt shards, gave Kurtis one last anxious glance and sprinted out through the gate, after Eckhardt.
"I can take care of her," Kurtis said, pulling out his Boran X and turning to face Boaz.
The oversize insect lunged at him, but he jumped back while firing twice at Boaz' real head underneath the grotesque mouth. The monstrosity roared and stopped in the middle of the arena, starting to rock back and forth. Four venom sacks on its back burst open and began to squirt blobs of hot, bright green slime.
Kurtis jumped sideways and barely dodged the bizarre mucilage. The moment he landed at a safe distance from the venom-spewing monstrosity, he took aim and shot two of the sacks. The Boaz mutant raised its forelegs and reared like a panicky horse, roaring in wrath. Its legs pounded back down on the arena, making the sandy floor tremble.
It rushed towards Kurtis with renewed vigour, but he once more shot at Boaz' deathly pale face and leapt back as the creature lunged forward. Boaz roared and opened its squid-like mouth wide, vomiting a thick, green torrent at Kurtis. The spray of toxic slime knocked into Kurtis' chest with the force of water from a firehose. The man flew back a few metres, landing on the goo-splattered floor.
"Bitch!" Kurtis could already feel the acid burning at his clothes. He scrambled to his feet and brushed the large blobs off his t-shirt. Hot smoke rose from the fabric, but his skin was safe.
Boaz pounded towards him once more. Kurtis rushed sideways, as the two remaining sacks on the creature's back opened and spewed their goo. The man took quick aim and fired five bullets at the mutant's side. The first three missed their targets, but the last two bullets pierced the sacks.
Boaz uttered one last furious roar and reared again before collapsing on the sandy ground. Its legs lashed out at the empty air, as the monstrosity rolled across the arena. Kurtis sprinted out of the way, half a second before he would have been crushed under the oversize beetle's back. He watched as it finally rolled to a halt and lay still at the arena wall. The spider legs jutted up motionless in the air. The bright green, pathetic excuse for blood oozed from the wounded sacks.
Kurtis' hands smarted, his clothes were drenched in slime, his head throbbed and bruises covered his back. "That … wasn't … so … hard," he sarcastically mused, gasping for breath, and turned to walk away.
He froze as a sticky, tearing noise came from the carcass behind him.
"You must be shitting me …"
Kurtis whirled around in time to see the remains of Boaz' original body emerge from the stomach of the oversize insect. Grey skin clung to her sceleton, slowly peeling off the bones like old paint on an even older surface. Her lab jacket had been reduced to filthy shreds, and her face was more like that of a fly than that of a human being. Her eyes were large, oval pools of pitchblack malice, and her mouth was a narrow crack under a travesty of a nose. The wings of an oversize dragonfly fluttered out from her back. Two smooth, three-feet-long claws hung from her deformed hands. She screeched and whizzed up into the air.
"Oh, gimme a break!" Kurtis raised his pistol once more. "Goddamn bug face …"
The grotesque dragonfly swooped down and lashed her long claws out at him, while hissing with a voice devoid of all sanity: "Die in pain! Poison and paaaiiin!"
Kurtis leapt back, frantically pulling the trigger. Boran X ammo and razorsharp claws slashed through the air with equal vigour.
One of the bullets finally plunged into Boaz' left shoulder. The dislocation rendered her arm useless. Boaz screamed and swung her right claw at the warrior, but before the ivory-like blade could connect with the man's throat, Kurtis pulled the trigger again and sent a bullet flying through Boaz' stomach. Tainted bowels splattered down to the ground, followed by the creature's limp body.
Her last scream echoed through the hall and trailed off.
Silence.
Kurtis kept his pistol trained on Boaz' head for a few seconds. Observing no signs of life, he holstered the gun and walked away. Behind him, his enemy lay motionless, defeated …
… playing dead.
It all happened in a few seconds. Kurtis heard the creature screech with triumphant malice as it leapt to its feet. He felt a white-hot pain erupt in his stomach. He saw blood splatter across the floor in front of him. Red, human blood. His own blood. He looked down and saw Boaz' claw protruding from his abdomen. He heard an agonized groan escape from his mouth, along with the warm drops of blood trickling from the corner of his lips.
"Sssssuffer, yesss, ssssuffeeeer …"
"Lamina!"
The Chirugai blade whizzed up and through Boaz' frail neck, decapitating her. The insect-like head flew through the air and rolled across the sandy ground. Boaz' headless body fell back, her claw roughly sliding out of Kurtis' stomach. With a dry thud, she landed on the ground, finally dead.
Kurtis' Chirugai returned with the precision of a boomerang, and he instinctively caught it in his right hand. He held his left hand to his stomach in a feeble attempt to stop the scarlet stream, which relentlessly poured from the wound. Screams rose through his throat, but nothing more than weak groans and blood emerged from his mouth. He slumped to his knees.
"What's in the cave, father?"
"Your destiny."
Kurtis collapsed in the middle of the arena and lay on his side, shivering. The Chirugai fell from his limp fingers. The sand felt warm under his icy, pale cheek. His eyelids descended over his already blurred vision, and nothing but darkness remained.
"Lux Veritatis mecum."
A/N: Profuse apologies to all you Kurtis fans, but I'm following the game's storyline here. Oh, and the title of this chapter is Latin for "falling" or "fallen".
