Chapter 8
Living All at Once
Law's almost loose enough to slip completely out of his binds. The knife isn't far, he can reach it in one second once he slips out, and then, it'll be over. The Huncher may have magic, but it's material magic, she can't just wave her hand and do whatever. She's aging fast, frail and crumbling. One quick stab is all it will take…
Mae is springing through the forest as she leads the band and Germ deeper and deeper into the dark, the shapes on her peripherals slowly giving way until they spot the cabin up ahead. They know this must be the place, the detection vials they were given are getting brighter, hotter, almost burning. They're so close, but the moon is high above, and they have no clue if Law's even still alive-
The Huncher grins to herself as she continues to stir the pot. It smells awful, but the potion within is actually just what she needs to nourish a new body and extend it's lifespan. The process of the transfer will hurt like hell, it always does, and she still hasn't gotten used to it, but it's a necessary pain for the gift of eternal life. Just a few more moments, and that insufferable rodent will be free and take the dagger. This body will die, and her new one will be young, spry, and much more familiar.
Germ sticks to the middle of the pack as they rush towards the cabin, digging into his bag and pulling out ingredients doing the last of the process for his spell on the way there. He grinds and bottles the spices and flower, juices the peach over it, uses the twine to wrap the jade, then corks the bottle with it and shakes the mixture violently. They have one chance at this, and mere seconds to pull it off.
Law breaks free of his binds and throws the chair at The Huncher, breaking it over her back and providing a wider opening to get the old dagger off the wall. She's barely turning around as he rushes in to stab her, halfway across the small room in a mere second.
Mea boots the door down and startles Law into diving aside and away from it, halting his approach.
"NO!" The Huncher rushes at Law, intended to leap on the blade so long as he keeps holding it.
But Germ steps in and throws the bottle to the ground. It shatters and unleashes a rapidly expanding cloud of shimmering smoke, shrouding the entire room and robbing them of physical consciousness near instantly.
.
.
The astral plane, to Mae, has always looked like glowing, warped representations of familiar areas she'd been thinking about when she fell asleep. It was familiar, but eerie. With her love of horror, it was also a bit comforting, especially during her visits to the Deep Hollow Hollerers.
This time couldn't be any more different.
They awake in a dark, deep place that instantly feels familiar. Mae stumbles backwards and away from the hole she knows is there, already hearing some of the whispers.
The oppressive darkness is interrupted by light filtering in through cracks in the stone as the world above begins to rumble and quake. Bea grabs her hand, the sudden company helping her steel her nerves against whatever the hell is coming for them.
Law is the first to speak. "Where the FUCK are we?!"
Germ sighs. "We're in the astral plane. I brought us here to stop the ritual, because if you'd stabbed her, she would have possessed you."
"WHAT?!"
"Yeah, kinda fucked. Everyone was wrong from the start, the real Huncher was the sister that got killed possessing the one everyone thought was the murderer, but they did it in forced self-defense."
As the cracks widen and stretch to surround them, Law starts to hyperventilate. "O-Oh god oh god oh FUCK-"
The world is enveloped in a raspy, echoing cackle. "You think dragging me here is going to save you? I can possess you from here too, you know. All I need to do…."
The mountain above them is ripped from it's foundations, and the band, filmographer, and demigod are exposed to the shimmering sky of the astral plane- blotted out by an enormous, hulking figure. The head of the original rat Huncher sits front and center of the horrendous mound, with the left eye patched on from a nearly identical face- their twin. The body behind them is a horrific hunchbacked abomination of stitched parts from countless overthrown souls, providing enormous arms and a hulking form standing a good two hundred feet tall. This astral form of The Huncher has torn the mountain from the ground and tossed it, leaving the broken parts floating above in the shimmering sky.
"Is crush the little shit's soul and take their empty vessel for myself!"
The band huddles together and trembles, but Germ stands his ground in front of them. "Guys, keep it together. The Astral Plane is powered and shaped by memories. Use them to defend yourself. Hold out long enough for her body to die out there."
Angus takes a deep breath to calm himself, but nods as suddenly, the ground beneath them cracks and the elevator out of the mine rises up beneath them. The team rapidly ascends, and The Huncher winds up to swing at them.
"Guys, gravity is different here too, and there's no fall damage! Scatter!"
Everyone jumps in different directions just as The Huncher teleports closer and off to the opposite side of the elevator. She swings her titanic arm through the elevator and reduces it to scrap, just as everyone leaps off it. The rush of wind from her strike scatters them further, everyone landing on different sides of the mountain.
Angus rolls to his feet as he lands in Possum Jump Park, looking back to find himself at the cliff he and Mae once sat together at. He turns and breaks into a sprint as The Huncher reaches for him. He can hear trees groaning and cracking with the boom of thunder as her enormous digits snap them like toothpicks on her way to crush him.
Thankfully, she didn't account for one thing.
Angus' soul doesn't have asthma.
He sprints, ducks, and weaves with ease compared to his physical body, vowing now to find a way back here after this mess just enjoy the freedom of good health.
As The Huncher's hand catches up, he leaps off a cliff to his right and slides down the side. Once he's halfway down, he leaps off and sails across to the lot below. Bea's car manifests into a parking spot, and he hops in and drives off as The Huncher changes targets.
Bea hides in the old Fort Lucenne Mall's Urevolution store, fighting to keep silent, avoid the horrors outside, and fight her instincts to track down Law and Mae. Trying to find them would only put them in more danger right now.
Those thoughts do nothing to save her from it though, as the mall's roof is ripped off in one swipe, and she peeks up to find The Huncher hunched over her with a fist reared back.
Bea breaks into a sprint and rushes out of the store just as it's obliterated, and the air pressure of the punch throws her over the railing and into the lower floors. She turns and runs towards the food court, but peeks back to see The Huncher's fingers reaching into her level, and starting to shift and writhe as they stretch her way like something out of a supernatural version of Akira.
Thankfully, the shapeshifting is slow, and she's searching every store one by one, giving Mae time to get all the way to food court, and find where her memories are starting to mesh and warp this place. The old boiler she despises so much is built into the base of the fountain, a joining of some of her most precious memories with Mae.
She rushes to the boiler and starts hitting all it's most volatile points, just before the fingers catch up to her. Taking advantage of reduced gravity, she leaps over the encroaching digits and climbs her way up to the controls. With a quick few switches and levers, she unloads searing, boiling water on the offending fingers. "Hey Huncher! This is God speaking. It's time to fuck off!"
The Huncher roars out in pain an indignance, but with drawing her warped arm destroys the majority of the remaining mall, including the surrounding walls that support the catwalk she's standing on. As she falls, she leaps into a nearby store that seems intact, then ducks and huddles there as she waits for the collapse to end.
Selma, oddly enough, finds herself in her old rehab hospital. She sighs as she walks slowly through the halls, recalling the hardest months of her life. She can even see the faint ghosts of some of the worse things that happened here, junkies fighting in the halls as their withdrawal became too much to bear, some people seizing in their beds. She only sees them for a moment, but the memories are clear.
Hearing The Huncher's approach, she ducks into the deepest halls and finds solitary confinement, shutting herself in where The Huncher won't be able to see her. The Huncher's many eyes across her patchwork body peer into the windows, and her taunting voice echoes through the halls. "Come out, come out, little rodent. You're only delaying the inevitable… and if you give yourself to me, I can promise your friends and family will be spared."
Selma rolls her eyes, sitting against the padded foam wall and listening as the Huncher finishes her search and moves on.
Gregg ducks into the basement of the old Food Donkey, watching the specters of rats scurrying about. At first, he feels safe here. It's dark, but the ethereal glow and his own low-light vision helps a lot. But most of all, there's no way The Huncher can see him here-
All of the rats turn to stare at him at once, eyes aglow with a cursed light. A moment later, they speak in unison. "I see you, little canid. Scurrying in the dark…"
Gregg yelps and books it for the stairs, as the rats give chase. The constant scratching of their claws on concrete and tile burrows into his ears. As he approaches the top of the stairs, a second swarm of rats starts to approach from the top.
In second, he's surrounded, and he'll be overtaken any moment.
That is, until he draws on the memory of what followed this place, and with a scream, he lashes out and throws the specter of the animatronic he stole down the stairs, scattering the rats below. Turning up to face the ones descending, he then conjures the museum's elevator around himself and rapidly rises to the roof. Upon getting there and stumbling out, he looks to the sky to find The Huncher's attention already drawn elsewhere, and the roof thankfully free of rats.
Germ managed to stick close to Mae and Law, but sadly, there seems to be little he can do here. His astral form is a bit different, having a third eye and enough feathers on his arms to almost be able to fly. He's adorned in not the tattered jeans and jacket he had before, but a very old yet pristine robe with a sigil of a massive feral pelican on his back.
Sadly, Mae and Law haven't had time to discuss that, as The Huncher seemed to be on them almost instantly. For a moment, she appeared to flicker and twitch as though she were in fast-forward as she searched other areas. Now, Mae's leading them through a dense, messy part of the woods as the amalgam of tortured souls stomps after them.
A first, she's unsure what part of the woods she's in. At one moment, they pass over the train tracks and pass by Law's old house. Shortly after, the Hartleys' home flickers into view nearby. Soon enough, it becomes clear her memories are running together in her panic, and the astral plane is just as much a stitched mess of lost pieces as their hunter is.
As panic takes hold and the world shifts once more in front of them, Mae yelps and falls into the same dark, graffiti-ridden pit she first found when she returned from college. The mess of broken logs and shopping carts awaits below, and they splash into the shallow water at the bottom. Mae quickly pushes herself up, but turns to find Law stuck on all-fours in the mud, with Germ fighting to pull him out.
"L-Law! Hold still, we'll get you out!"
"Oh, I think you'll find the runt isn't going anywhere." The mud thickens and rises in tendrils, trapping them all as it slowly takes the shape of The Huncher's hulking hand and raises them to meet her twisted, murderous eyes. "It's about time we finish this and I get what I've been oh so patiently waiting for."
Germ huffs and starts to glow, pushing back against her grip as the stitches holding the soul fragments together start to burn and break away. "No. You're not getting her. It's time you finally die here!"
The fragments freed from the stitches start to fade and drift away, revealing a sickening, bubbling black sludge beneath, the essence of The Huncher's own tainted soul given form. She screams out in pain and hate as these eternal wounds upon her self-mutilated soul are exposed. "YOU LITTLE SHIT! FINE, THE KID GETS TO WATCH YOU DIE FIRST!"
She turns towards the floating mountain chucks them all to mines beneath it, scattering the three of them and weighing them down with a deluge of that black sludge. Germ hits a wall and nearly blacks out, glued to it as his head reels from the impact. Law lands among all the old machinery just outside the entrance, breaking his leg against an excavator.
Mae succumbs to the worst fate of the three. A chill of pure horror and resignation runs through her as the light above shrinks down to a pinprick in the heavens, descending deep into the pit she once swore would be her grave.
Everything goes dark, and for a few moments, even her own thoughts are silent, and she could swear oblivion- or worse yet, the goat- had taken her.
…
…
…
The silence persists for what feels like eternity. Is this what death is like? Just oblivion, where even your own thoughts are distant and quiet?
...
...
...
The overwhelming darkness ends abruptly as a pair of massive, familiar eyes shine in the dark ahead of her. The darkness slowly retreats as it takes the shape of the all too familiar god fragment, the enormous cat now staring down upon the minuscule mortal one.
Little creature has returned to whence they once had feared most. Little creature is lost and waning, in search of another.
Mae huffs and uprights herself as she floats in the abyss, finding her footing on a floor she cannot see. "Yeah, thanks for stating the obvious asshole!" She digs her claws into her scalp as she starts to pace. "Law's about to have his soul ripped apart by that BITCH, and I'm trapped down here in this hell hole!"
Little creature believes she is trapped. But little creature is already free if she wishes to be. Monstrous existence, cast aside, for truth.
Mea screams into the void in frustration and turns to yell in the god fragment's face. "WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!"
"It means you're not bound by your body here."
Mea freezes as that voice rings in her ears. It… can't be, he's… no. She's seen ghosts here before. But why now? Why did it take him so long?
She slowly turns, with tears already flowing, to stare at Casey Hartley as he walks out from behind their patron god fragment.
He looks like hasn't aged a day since she left Possum Springs for college, and his smile is as gentle and contagious as ever.
She runs across the void as fast as she can muster and leaps into his arms, pulling the taller cat into the tightest hug she can manage. They fall into a heap in the void as she rests her head on his chest, soft sobs echoing through the darkness. "W-Where the hell have you been, you fucking jerk?"
Casey chuckles and sighs as he pets her head, slowly sitting up beside her. "With the Ghost Star so messed up, I got kinda lost for a while, even after the goat started to starve down there and got weak enough for us to escape. But this big guy helped me find my way to you." He grins. "I heard you up there, ya know. And I heard you tell the goat off on your way out. You really went and grew up without me, huh?"
She sniffles and very hesitantly lets go to look him in the eyes. "I-I had to… I…. I-I may not have fully wanted it, a-a lot of times, but… life goes on. A-And I had a promise to you to keep."
"And look where you are now. You've done it, Mae."
She shakes her head and peeks up towards the barely visibly pinprick of light above. "It'll all be for nothing if I can't get up there and save Law."
"Then why don't you?" He smirks.
She lowers her head with a slacked jaw and indignant disbelief carved into every muscle of her face. "How the fuck am I supposed to manage that?! There's no walls here or anything else to try climbing, and even then, it's too damn high!"
The enormous cat lowers it's head to speak once more.
Little creature's monstrous existence is cast aside, for now. It's limits are naught. The Monstrous One has shackled itself with the delusions of quantity.
"WHAT the FUCK does that even mean?!"
Casey laughs as he helps Mae to her feet. "You're not limited by your body anymore, Mae. Not here. You think she's a big bad problem up there? All those pieces of so many souls, but how much of that monster is actually herself? Do ya think she even knows anymore?" He mockingly laughs up towards the hole. "She gave up everything about herself to survive forever, instead of choosing to die somewhere with meaning. But you, and the whole band?" He turns to her with the widest grin yet. "You're all so alive, and that's something she's never had. She stopped growing millenia ago, and forgot who she was. But you have everything you've ever been, everything you are, and everything can be! And all of it, every piece of you, exists here and now!" He takes hold of her shoulders. "Are you gonna let some brutish nobody beat you when you told a god to go fuck himself and came out more alive than ever?"
After a few moments, Mae develops a wide, almost feral grin as the glint in her nightmare eyes becomes more like a dream. "No… Hell no! I'm gonna go up there and beat her ass!"
"Now that's the Mae I remember." He pulls her into one last overpowering hug. "Go up there and live out our promise for me Mae. You're not dying here. None of you are."
Mea nods and tightens her arms around him as she feels her fur start standing on end. "Anywhere Else, right?"
"Anywhere Else."
Up on the surface, Bea sprints towards the crater of the mines beneath the mountain, tears streaming down her face and flying behind her as she stumbles and scrambles towards the hole. The Huncher is reaching for Law, all the way on the other side of the mountain. Mae is gone, she can't find the others, and she's about to lose everything.
"No, no, no no no no no, Mae! Get up! I-I can't lose you, not now please!"
Law squirms and cringes as every movement send searing pain shooting up his leg. He can feel his astral form healing, but something about The Huncher's magic is enforcing some of the rules of the physical world here. The closer to her he is, the worse that effect gets, so his healing is halted completely when she grips him tight and encases him in that black ichor. As he's slowly raised towards her face, she develops a sickeningly wide grin. "Any last words, brat?"
Law grits his teeth, but then snorts and spits the biggest loogie he can manage in her eye- the older ones, from what little is left of her own soul. "Go to hell."
She growls and shakes it off, snarling through fangs. "Your body is going to stave that off for a while longer, and soon enough, nothing will remain that can send me there."
At that moment, a deep, rumbling, but soothing bass note echoes from deep within the pit. Soon after, it's joined by a few more, slowly picking up pace into a familiar riff and rhythm they all knew by heart.
"What the hell is going on down there?"
Bea's eyes widen and her tears start to dry. A toothy smile overtakes her as she stands upright peeks down, envisioning her keytar as it shimmers into place.
From across the mountain, she hears an all too familiar drum beat start playing as Selma conjures her set. It's soon joined by Gregg and Angus' guitars, and they all fall into their instinctive roles as the song that got them here echoes through the skies of the astral plane.
Mae begins to rise from the pit, bathed in ethereal light. She plays her bass as a flickering stream of shapes and pixels trails from her feet, gently thrusting her into the air. Random shapes form around her, recreating blocky versions of images from her sketchbook. A second and third pair of arms emerges from her back, one now wielding her dented tin bat. As she opens her eyes, the left sports her old null sign from her old wardrobe, the right is her current anarchy smile, and a third opens in the middle that flickers through a myriad of colors, the infinite possibilities of her future.
The Huncher scowls. "I don't know what the hell you're doing or what you are now, but I am the true Forest God! I am endless and all-powerful! This child is mine to take, and you will bow to my power!"
Mae snorts and rolls her eyes. "Yeah, I don't fucking think so. Think fast, bitch!" The shapes under Mae's feet solidify into platforms, a series of them spawning around her as she leaps between them and gains height on the hulking abomination. Once up high, she conjures Germ's trampoline from her happy memories and springs from it at high speed, descending towards The Huncher's face.
The Huncher attempts to reach up and grab her with her free arm, but she's too slow controlling that much foreign mass. Mae gets close, and widens her eyes, all three of them flashing and unsettling the entire world within her vision. The Huncher is temporarily reduced to shapes and fights to reconstitute and control herself, and that gives Mae plenty of time to get in close and strike. She starts to rapidly roll mid-air, bringing her bat and her bass down on The Huncher's head in quick succession. The impacts echo through the void, and daze her into loosening her grip on Law.
Just as Mae rushes and grabs law, pulling him away as she descends to set him down, Gregg rises up behind her with his guitar and crossbow, sporting his own extra arms and third eye. For just a moment, the flickering image of Casey can be seen behind him, alongside the canid demigod. With a pull of a trigger and strum of a chord, the ethereal bolt fired into the back of her head reverberates and explodes with the shriek of a power chord. A myriad of soul fragments along her hunched back break free and flitter away.
While they remain stunned from that and holding their head, Bea leaps up towards her shoulder with a feral grin to match her girlfriend's. Casey, her mother, and the gator god back her in spirit. Now wielding an ankh staff, she twirls it in one hand and shifts the headpiece into an enormous wrench, which grows as she approaches and suddenly wraps around The Huncher's right shoulder. With a swing and a twist, the entire arm and every soul fragment collected there is severed. As the arm hits the ground, the pieces start to separate and drift away into the void as the black sludge beneath spills free.
The Huncher screams out in rage as she grabs her stump shoulder, but the volley of blows continues. Bea's car leaps off a cliff and Angus despawns it mid-air, slamming two of his fists together as Casey and the ursine god flicker behind him. He rears back to swing a punch, and love of mechanics and technology produces an enormous mechanical arm. One thrust plows into The Huncher's face and leaves her back bursting outwards, soul fragments and sludge scattering to the winds.
Having gotten to ground, shaken off the sludge, and calmed himself, Law raises his head to glare with three eyes. He suddenly rises back into the air, backed by his long-gone mother and the rodent god. His arms become writhing tentacles straight out of an eldritch horror film, lashing out and pulling more pieces from her. One of his remaining normal arms brandishes a knife, and with a thrust too fast to track, it stabs into her original eye.
Screaming out in pain and rage, The Huncher remains blinded to the last band member's attack. Just when she thinks it can't get any worse, Selma grins as she feels her beloved Jackie cheering her on from the physical plane, and granting her communion with one last interloper. As six arms drum out the most overwhelming solo she'll ever play, the earth begins to quake. With an echoing bleat, The Black Goat rises rapidly from the pit and rams The Huncher in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her instantly. Though the other gods lack the power to strike against her, The Black Goat has all the strength it will ever need.
Including enough that, when bolstered by these kids, one last miracle may now happen.
Germ flies up above them all and claps as the avian god, the true form of his ancestor, spawns behind him. A shining green aura overtakes the astral plane, and the other god fragments raise their heads to gaze upon it. The band goes wild, playing their hearts and souls out as Law backs up to the edge of the crater and forms a rectangle with his fingers, a camera lens forming and hovering before him.
The Huncher is suddenly boxed in, unable to leave the camera's field of view, and left to look up in horror as the god fragments crash together in the green light cast by the godchild.
The Forest God descends from the heavens one last time, an echoing roar and screech of everything in the animal kingdom crying out for vengeance. It's enormous wings carry it down at unfathomable speed. Claws and hooves and razor beak are poised to rend souls apart. No evil shall remain in this place, in their returned splendor, if only for a moment.
The astral plane is consumed in a great green and golden light as The Huncher's final hoarse, raspy screams tears through the void. The light spreads to consume them all, but the band of misfit souls can only watch with a smile as they feel peace wash over them.
They wake in a slightly smoky cabin, rising one by one to find little has changed since they blacked out. For major differences, the knife is mounted back on the wall, and James kneels over The Huncher's latest corpse, inspecting it with the faintest notes of dismay and disgust. Also, Jackie's here, helping Selma up. Bea already has Law in her arms, and she's not letting go any time soon.
"Uuugh…." Mae groans as she sits up. "Hey James. Was that real?"
"Would it matter whether or not it was?" He barely peeks up. "If it meant something, I'd say it was real enough."
"Uh, no, don't use my words against me. I need answers, big guy."
He chuckles and shakes his head. "Yes, for the most part. We couldn't really become one again, not after growing apart for so long… but, my siblings are talking to the goat now and trying to figure out what to do with them. As for The Huncher, well…" He huffs. "Good riddance. I don't think there's anything even I could have done to heal her. Just the many souls she harmed. And that job's gonna take a while."
Angus sits up fully and gently pulls Gregg in to cuddle. "So that's it, then? The Huncher and the Black Goat, both just… dealt with?"
He hums and nods. "Yeah, I'd say so. It's strange… we used to be a god, so grand, so powerful, but truly neutral. Unable and unwilling to interfere. But mortals, oh, it's amazing the things you can do when you set your minds to it. You can change the world in ways we never could, even if we did have free reign to use our power as we wish. You know what The Huncher did with it, but now, look what you've done. And you kids are just getting started." He chuckles. "And I haven't enjoyed the company of mortals outside my family this much in far too long." He slowly stands, and with a wave, The Huncher's body disappears. "But, you kids should get home. It's pretty damn late, and I've got a mess to clean up here. So, how about I shorten your walk a bit?"
With a snap of his fingers, everyone finds themselves standing at the edge of the forest, just a short few blocks away from their apartments. They're back on their tired feet, with the full moon shining down on them.
They look to one another in silence for a few moments, and find there's no words left to be said about the whole ordeal. Just silence to fill on the way home.
"… If I weren't so damn tired after all that, I'd say we need pizza on the way home."
"Gregg, what pizza joint is even fucking open at this hour?"
"Ok, yeah, I'll give ya that, but what about some tacos from that 24 hour fast food joint around the corner?"
"… Shit, I could really go for that right now."
"Should we, uh, call my dad first?"
"We'll pick it up to go and ask if he wants anything."
Jackie huffs. "Are you guys really this desensitized to this shit?"
"Oh, no, we're internally freaking the fuck out, but we just don't have the energy to do much about it."
"Oh, cool. Let's get some empanadas and get the fuck home to sleep."
"Why does a taco joint have empanadas? They're Spanish!"
"Fuck if I know, but I want some."