Lycaon

"Wise says the building we are in is the ethereal," said Belle. "It grew legs!"

"So it would seem," said Lycaon.

Bracing himself and Belle against the motion of the structure, Lycaon peered out of office windows. They were cracked badly by the building's own motion, but were being held together by the strange integrity webbing with which the building was knitting itself together. Far below, he could see a stone leg supporting the structure in which he now stood. Stone and rubble legs were common appendages for a golem-type ethereal, so while the use of an office building was a novel seed for the creature, Lycaon realized he was inside a relatively mundane foe: a stone golem. But extreme size did then to make things more impressive, all the same.

"Lady Belle, does Lord Wise note an external headcore on the beast?"

Belle conferred with her communicator and shook her head. "He says they can't see one."

"Mmm," said Lycaon thoughtfully, peering down at giant foot down there. The ethereal didn't seem disposed to quick movement at the moment, but that could change.

The stone leg lifted and Lycaon's world tilted. He braced himself and Belle lost her balance and fell backwards slightly into his chest. As the golem's step completed, the building shuddered back the other direction, and Lycaon's arm curled around to prevent Belle from falling into the window. The relative exoticness of the ethereal aside, Lycaon decided that being inside an ethereal of any size was not conducive to long-term bodily health.

Lycaon's ears could still hear the strange crackling noise of the webbing spreading through the building. He took this as a sign that the golem was still constructing itself, and that could mean the eventual filling-in of all the hallways and hollow rooms in which people used to traverse normal, not-alive buildings. At some point soon, this ethereal would be solid rock- or bone webbing.. Or whatever it was.

Regardless, Belle needed to get out of here; but being out of here would then put her in immediate danger of a building-sized stone golem ethereal. A generally unsafe thing to be around. But that concern was next. For now: the first objective was Belle's evacuation.

The wall nearby suddenly exploded outward as Ben's girder slammed into it. The building's fresh webbing was far too thin and brittle to yet withstand the bear thiren's strength.

"How about we get out of here?!" said Ben.

Ben braced himself on a firm portion of the shattered wall while just outside was empty air and a long, long drop to the cityscape below. Lycaon edged over with Belle, holding her close to keep her from stumbling about with the building's movements. He looked down out of the gap that Ben had made. Even the rooftops of nearby buildings seem way too far down for an unassisted landing.

"How do you plan to land?!" said Belle.

Ben smiled and shook his girder. "Retrorocket!"

Lycaon looked at the stone-encased rocket engine with mild concern. "You propose to take all of us, Lord Ben?"

"Just Miss Belle!" said Ben with obvious regret. "You're as big as I am, Lycaon. It would be too, much. But free of passengers yourself, I imagine you can handle your own landing with those legs of yours, right?"

Lycaon thought that with good timing and and perfect placement, he could manage a landing onto a rooftop with Belle in his arms. But it was a serious risk. If he failed, she could be injured or worse. If Ben Bigger's plan offered better odds at a safe descent for Belle, Lycaon was willing to entrust Belle to him.

Lycaon considered the girder: A steady burn from the girder's rocket engine would certainly offer a more stable landing thanks to its upright configuration. It even had two rows of handle bars. Meanwhile, Lycaon's own rocket jets were not well placed on his body for such a manuever. His own rocket jets faced outward and were on his lower legs, which was about as far from his own center of gravity that they could get. And with Belle held in his arms, his center of gravity would be very high.

"Lord Ben. You've done this before?" said Lycaon.

"Lots of times," said Ben with a serious look but a small grin. "Koleda used to love jumping with me."

"I can go down with Ben," said Belle a bit nervously. "If that makes it easier on everyone. That's fine with me. Let's just get out of here."

Lycaon was deeply reluctant to entrust his principal to another individual, and some deeper part of him subconsciously didn't like the idea of handing Belle over to another male thiren; but logically, it made the most sense for her safe descent. Belle's safety was paramount, and if Ben Bigger offered her the safest path off the shambling stone golem, then so be it.

"As you wish, Lady Belle. Do hold on tightly."

Belle held tight to Lycaon's extending arm as the building tilted with another lumbering step. Ben reached out his own arm and Belle transferred out of Lycaon's support and into Ben's. Behind Ben's large form, the hole he had blasted open in the wall was beginning to web over, tendrils of material flowing outward from all sides of the opening. Lycaon pointed at it with his extended arm.

"Best make haste, Lord Ben. Your window of opportunity is closing."

Belle suddenly looked more anxious than before. "Lycaon, you're coming too, right?"

If he must delegate his foremost concern, Belle's immediate safety, then Lycaon was determined to handle the second: this hollow and her objective within it. Large ethereals had been observed to escape their hollows occasionally, such as that flying beast the H.I.A. constantly battled near Hollow Zero. Belle's ultimate safety could be best assured by ending this ethereal here and now before it could fully construct itself- and Lycaon thought he knew how to do it.

"Eventually, Lady Belle. I will try to destroy the ethereal."

Both Ben and Belle frowned in unison.

"Hey, Lycaon, we don't know what this thing is exactly," said Ben. "You're just assuming."

"What! Lycaon! No! Let's just get out of here!" said Belle

"I will return to you both presently," said Lycaon, not interested in their objections. "I believe I am in a unique position to end this threat now, and a delay will only increase the danger of all involved. Lord Ben, jump with care. Lady Belle, do hold on very tight."

It was not for the dramatic that Lycaon then immediately turned and ran back down the hallway- he wanted to depart before Belle had the idea to order him onto a different path of action.

"Lycaon!" yelled Belle. "Hey!"

But he was out of sight and moving down the hallway at speed. The webbing over everything was thickening, surely increasing the golem's structural integrity. Eventually, the building's interior would probably be full of the stuff and the ethereal would be full golem instead of a somewhat rickety office building with some fancy new legs.

Ben Bigger's people on the outside reported they could not see an external headcore, so that meant the ethereal's core must be internal. A somewhat rare configuration, but possible. It could be anywhere in the structure, but Lycaon had a suspicion about Belle's server tower and that strange noise it had made just before the ethereals attacked them.

Before that sound: no ethereals and inert office equipment.

After that sound: a horde of corrupted office equipment.

He could be wrong, but it wouldn't hurt to check the server room before he moved on to the rest of the golem's interior. When Lycaon arrived back at the scene of the battle, he found the hole in the wall that Ben made was already webbed over; but Lycaon's running jump kick shattered it back open easily enough. The door to the server room inside was a bit more thickly covered in bone-like webbing, but again, Lycaon push kick blasted through it- and immediately Lycaon knew his idle suspicions were on the money.

Where the server tower had once stood, there was a hollow space in the floor and all the webbing seemed to be flowing up and out of it. Lycaon stepped over and tugged at the thickening material, wanting to see what was buried under the floor here. The webbing didn't budge, so he began kicking at it. With a few heavy blows, he crunched his way through thick layers of brittle webbing and his foot bounced off something much more dense and hard. It gleamed with chromatic light.

Lycaon grinned grimly. Here it was. The core of the ethereal. Just as he'd suspected. And with Belle safely away with Ben, one kick and he could bring this entire golem down, right now. But that would bring the entire building down with it, and Lycaon was pretty much square in the middle. There was no way he could get out of here before the building collapsed back to the earth and smashed him like a trapped bug. What could he do?

As he stood pondering, the headcore emitted more webbing, trying to wrap itself back up. There was not much time to get this job done…. Lycaon thought of only one idea, and it was far from ideal. It required a sacrifice he would rather not make…

But if it was for Lady Belle…. And there really was no other choice that he could see….

So be it.


Belle

"Lycaon!" yelled Belle. "Hey!"

But Lycaon could really move when he wanted to, and for the first time in Belle knowing him, he wanted to move and she didn't happen to be in his arms. Her protesting hand only gasped for empty space. Lycaon was already gone.

Belle blinked. Why was it suddenly strange to have him gone now when just yesterday at this time of day it had been mighty strange to have him there at all? What was she even feeling? Worry for his safety? Anxiety for his return? Anger at him for abandoning her to Ben Bigger?

That wasn't fair. She'd worked with Ben before. Come to think of it, she'd spent more time with Ben and the Belobog crew. Significantly more time than she'd so far spent with Lycaon. They were friends. Lycaon still should just be an acquaintance! Right?

Then what was this feeling? Why did she feel slightly sick to have him gone? It had only been just over twenty four hours since she met Lycaon. So… What was this?

Dammit! She should have ordered Lycaon to stay with her! Why hadn't she thought of that?

"Miss Belle," said Ben, certainly unaware of her conflicted emotions. "If you could put your feet on this lower bar there, and hold the upper bar here…"

Belle numbly followed Ben's instructions, climbing onto the handles of his weapon like it was a sort of pogo stick.

"Back when Koleda wanted to do this for fun, I had a harness for her," Ben was saying. "I don't have that with me, so- just make sure you hold on real tight, Miss Belle. When the engine kicks in, it might be pretty sudden."

"I understand," said Belle as Ben slid his weapon towards the slowly closing hole in the side of the building. Belle looked down over a hundred feet to the broken street below and quite suddenly forgot Lycaon for the moment. She felt her heart shoot into her throat and goosebumps shivered out over her entire body. Whoa! That! That was really down there!

"Ready?" said Ben, taking a firm grip of the girder's bars to either side of Belle's body.

"Um-" said Belle, her knuckles bright white.

Ben jumped. Belle screamed. She couldn't help it.

Ben, Belle, and the girder fell like… well.. Like a big rock. It felt like a lifetime passed in three short seconds: the wind in Belle's eyes, the hiss of the air as they picked up speed, the lumbering movement of the office-building-ethereal's leg stepping away from them, and the dark pavement below rushing up to meet them.

"Hold fast!" said Ben and his clawed thumb jammed on the ignition button for the rocket.

The girder roared to life. The deceleration was drastic enough to clap Belle's teeth together as her screaming mouth snapped shut. A hand slipped, but inward, so the bar caught painfully in her armpit. The whining engine shut off. They fell freely again for a half second and crunched into the pavement, another jarring impact to Belle's armpit. But they were down and still. And alive!

Ben grunted. "Sorry, been a while. I'm a bit rusty."

Belle disentangled herself from the girder and turned around to arc her head back and stare up at the titan she'd just jumped out of. The blockish form of the three-story office had grown four oddly humanoid legs from dull gray rock and rubble. Nubs of what might soon become arms were forming off on the side of the building, a dull white color like that strange webbing material that was growing over everything inside it. It certainly didn't look like an ethereal yet, but Belle could clearly see the potential.

And Lycaon thought he could bring that down? Had he misjudged just how big the thing was? Belle hadn't really appreciated what Wise had said until this very moment: like the giant monster movies, indeed.

From behind her, Belle heard the rumble of approaching machinery. She turned to see several giant construction machines walking down the street in her direction. Until this moment, Belle had considered Belobog's massive machines to be really big- but relative to the ethereal titan that was crushing its way across the commercial block behind her, these devices looked like toys.

"Hey! Ben! You made it!" called a happy male voice. "And Miss Belle, too! Where's the wolf? Whitefox?"

Anton was standing on the front hood of the quadrupedal trench digger, his legs spread across the machine's giant grinding saw which was angled upwards in a vaguely phallic position. Grace sat on the edge of the excavator with Wise's bangboo wrapped tightly in her arms and faced inward against her breasts, its little arms waving about in mute protest; And Koleda was on the pile driver. All three machines together were more than a match for any conventionally stationary structure in the hollow, but against the ethereal?

Ben waved at them. "He wanted a crack at the core before he gets himself off."

"Oh, he's smart," said Grac, tightening her hug on Eous (the little arms wavering more urgently). "It's not fully formed yet."

"He's nuts, you mean," said Koleda, staring up at the lumbering giant. "And we are, too, if we're still sitting around when that thing builds its head and sees us."

"Let's take out its ankles!" said Anton with a dramatic point of his arm.

Koleda looked at him balefully. "And then what?! It's got four legs. And we can't get to its interior core before it reassembles its legs."

"Then we hit the legs again!" said Anton with a clenched fist.

"Anton, that's risky for my babies," said Grace reproachfully. "What if they get stepped on!"

"We'd be out a couple hundred million dennies, is what," said Koleda, her arms crossed as she gazed up at the lumbering titan.

"Right!" agreed Ben.

Anton looked somewhat dejected. "Is money really everything in the construction business?"

"Yes!" said Ben and Koleda.

Belle felt tiny. She was a short-ish young woman who owned half a video store and could proxy with a bangboo. She was dwarfed by Koleda's company, her employees, and her giant machines- and then further dwarfed by the titanic ethereal lumbering over there with her new bodyguard inside it (who was also taller than her, come to think of it. By a lot.)

But she had a loud voice. "Hey! What about Lycaon!?"

"Who?" said Anton.

"The wolf thiren," said Ben. "Belle's bodyguard."

"You mean Whitefox?"

Koleda frowned down at Belle in consideration, then looked back up at the ethereal. "Sorry, Belle. He made his choice. That thing is out of our league. We need to call the H.I.A cause' that ethereal's big enough to maybe break out of this hollow."

Belle felt frustrated and angry, but she couldn't really argue with Koleda's decision. It wasn't fair to expect her to risk her people's lives and her own livelihood in this situation. But dammit! Lycaon could die if-

A distant booming noise drew everyone's gaze upward towards the titan. There was a tiny smoking hole in the side of the office building, and suddenly the weird blue-purple sky of the hollow splintered like shattering glass and faded to the blue of normal reality. The titan fell, almost immediately losing its vaguely humanoid shape, and it thundered to the ground with all the grace of a collapsing skyscraper disintegrating to dust upon contact with the earth.

Lycaon!, thought Belle. Did he make it out?!

She strained to see some clue of someone leaping from the falling debris, but within seconds, the billowing dust cloud from the crushing masonry blew over them all like a desert sandstorm.