The Meats

There was a flash of memory, where I remembered Clara's demise, and I threw up my magic shield just before the shambling horde began disgorging and launching the spikes from their bodies towards me as projectiles. There were dozens of spears flying towards me at pneumatic speeds, and I took steps back, casting the basic shield spell as many times and as quickly as I could. I survived the first second by a mix of luck and intercepting the spikes with my shield. That wasn't enough. I didn't have the time to cast the lengthier invisible barrier spell, as more spikes launched towards me. The spike gremlins were intelligent enough that those in the front that had used the spike throwing ability retreated back. Presumably they wanted to take the time to recharge the cooldown as they regenerated the spikes inside their bodies.

I would be overwhelmed fighting defensively, and from this distance most of the spikes hit nowhere near me. I decided to trust my new enhanced agility (enhanced to only slightly below average, but it'd have to do) to dodge the attacks, while I used magic to attack. My conjuration of ice was still the quickest attack spell I had, and so I threw it out as best as I could while dodging incoming projectiles. Still I managed to avoid injury, and the icicles did mostly kill the human-sized spike gremlins in one or two strikes, but there were too many of them, and their accuracy was improving a lot as they got closer. I had hoped to save the staff charge that I had recovered by healing in a dark corner of a classroom, but there wasn't really a choice- I had no good tactics that didn't involve hiding behind a wall, and the only wall I could throw up quickly, without being distracted enough to be skewered by the spikes was the one single charge I had in my staff.

I made a straight wall, but to fill the width of the hallway I had to make it only a little taller than waist-high. I dropped behind it, and flipped my spellbook to the Monarch's grease-fire spell. I made sure to get the incantation right, even as I didn't need to focus on my visualization, because my spellbook did that for me. I cast only the grease portion of the spell three times above the heads of the main body of the horde, then I cast the full spell. As per the description, two portals appeared where I visualized them- in this case, just above the heads of the tightest grouping of the horde, grease just an inch above the fire- and the hallway burst into a orange yellow flame. I quickly cast the fire resistance spell, even before the burning oil fell on to the gremlins. They screeched in terror and pain, for the first time showing any emotion remotely resembling the human. And the ones ahead of the burning oil broke out of their firing advance and charged at me in a panic.

I remembered a bunch of youtube videos, where you could see the effects of throwing water on a grease-fire, and when I tossed a few icicle blocks into the flame, the steam exploded in a fireball, doing even more damage to the majority of the horde, but not really dealing with the seven or eight gremlins charging at me. They were less than twenty feet away from me, running at me in a break-neck dash. I had seconds, and not a lot of them. And so I turned and ran. I felt the effect of my Coward ability right away, outrunning all the monsters easily. I think I could even make out the flying spikes better, as our relative speeds became closer. I had to zig and zag to dodge them though, I hadn't become the Flash or anything like that.

And I only needed to run a few dozen feet. I skidded to a stop and turned around staff and tome raised, just in time to see the dead-sprinting spike gremlins hit the invisible barrier almost all at the same time, and I just about managed to take them out one by one with my icicle spell.

"Spike that, motherfuckers," I said. It came out in a voice shaking with adrenaline. I was glad that there was nobody around to hear it.

The air was thick with smoke, the smell of burning fat and meat, and the dying screams of monsters, even as their skin was crackling and bones bursting. I guess I was finally hitting my mage strengths. I was supposed to be good at dealing with large numbers of relatively weak enemies. The fact that these 'relatively weak enemies' had been nightmare horrors that I could do nothing but run from a little more than a day ago just put my growth into perspective.

Or maybe we could have fought it back then. Brad was dead almost instantly, and then Clara got shot in the back, but these seemed to die as easily as men. Aside, perhaps, the slight additional protection of the bone of the spikes coming out of them. What if, instead of leaving her to die, I had turned around and stabbed the creature in the eye with my broom-handle? What if I had at least fucking tried?

Fuck that, I would be dead. I thought of going up against those monsters without my magical abilities. Even one of them would be a nightmare. Even with my staff and the supernaturally-granted staff fighting abilities I wouldn't dare try fighting them in all but the most dire of straits. And I'd had a lot of conditioning to overcome my fear of violence since then.

I began exploring the meat-tunnels. So, there wasn't actually any real meat on the walls and the floors, but it felt like there should have been. The light seemed to be more and more tinged with a thick red color and the air seemed to never lose a greasy, wet, raw meat smell and air to it. As I walked, I had to take care to not slip on the somewhat greased floors, that always seemed almost, but not quite, definitely covered in animal fat.

I thought I should be at least a few classrooms away from the cafeteria still, but I had a hard time imagining anything good going on in there. I looked around as I walked, and it was as if grease was smeared on my eyeballs. There was a lack of focus and clarity in my view, until I noticed a bright red, pulsating tendril coming out of the mist up ahead. I could go directly to the cafeteria, but I had time, and I had learned to not ignore obvious signs from the Tower.

I walked up to it. It hadn't been a minute since I'd dispatched the first horde of monsters, and I was certain it wouldn't be the last. The tendril was strange, it was all at once organic, reminiscent of a blood vessel or a trachea, or one of those dog treats that were dessicated organs of one sort or another, but it was also glowing with a luminescence comparable to neon lights. And it was stretching out past the mists, looping up and around the ceiling. I followed it until it turned and lead into a classroom. When I looked inside, that classroom looked like the whole hallway felt- organic, fleshy and horrific in its resemblance to animal gore. There were many of these red tendrils flowing out from the door of the classroom, and the floor appeared to be made of flesh, and there was a bulbous organ pulsating at its center.

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So, I didn't want to go inside. Obviously. But as much as it repelled me, I also found myself drawn to it. Something had clearly happened in this section of the Tower, and I guessed that a part of the answer about what that was was inside this body horror classroom. Maybe I was growing overconfident, but I took a step inside.

When I stood on the floor of the classroom it flinched away. I jumped back. The floors here were indeed covered in flesh, and it reacted to my coming. I held my breath, put my foot back on to the floor and I put my weight on it. I heard a groaning from inside the walls. Shit, fuck this horrorshow bullshit. I took a breath, and it was still burning flesh and grease, but I calmed myself. The Enlightenment attribute allowed me to somewhat detach myself from the situation, and I went inside the room, even as it shivered and groaned against me.

The blackboard, nearly grown over by living meat said 32:00:02. I had somewhat limited time to get to the monster while it was still cursed, but enough for me to walk there with time to spare. One way or the other I didn't see the fight going on for longer than ten minutes, which would already be a marathon battle unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. Whenever I detached my mind and tried to lessen the horror of where I was standing, my mind wandered to basically anywhere but here, so I had to bring myself back and focus at least a little.

The flesh here was both covered with skin and open muscle, but there wasn't much blood, leaving the room looking more like a butchered animal carcass used for interior decorating than the bloody insides of a dead creature. Or perhaps the outsides of a living thing. This flesh was covering the classroom, somewhat reminiscent of a padded asylum room, if instead of white cloth pads it was skin and flesh. The desks and chairs were sometimes visible, like compound fractures in the meat.

I approached the pulsing organ in the center of the room. It was on the floor, roughly the size of an exercise ball and, the skin and membrane taut against the floor much like one as well. It was the dark red of most organs and it pulsed like a heart, though each beat was singular, not at all rhythmic and sounded more fluid. It wasn't at all clear what I should be doing here, though Chum's early suggestion that each classroom could be 'cleared' and that would give me a reward had held up so far.

I looked around the room carefully, taking special note of pieces of flesh that weren't fused to the rest of it quite right, or looked like creatures. I jumped several times, as I thought I saw shapes of faces, human bodies, or animal skulls, but each time as I kept looking and poked them with my stick, they seemed to react much like the rest of the room. Then I touched the pulsing ball in the center. I poked it with the bottom of my staff first. It didn't melt it with acid or burst into a spray of digestive fluids instantly, but the groaning from the walls grew louder.

So I touched it with my hand and it was body temperature, perhaps a bit hot. Well, fuck. As far as I could figure, with the tools available to me, I could only do one of two things- leave, or pop this zit. I really didn't want to break it, but what else was there? I hoped that there was a chance that instead of bursting open, I might be able to drain the fluid inside on the floor if I made one sharp incision, instead of busting it open with the butt of my staff, and so I unsheathed my knife.

The moans from all around me grew louder, and all of the flesh in the room shivered. Alright, so maybe I was going to take a little bit more time to figure it all out. Point one- I didn't have a very good reason to pop it. I thought something good might happen if I cleared this room, but I wasn't sure of either the reward or the risk. Point two- I was literally surrounded by nightmares. From what I knew of the Tower, this probably meant that the accompanying challenges would be equally nightmarish. Point three- Chum had said not to fight anything that wasn't immediately hostile to us and was trying to communicate. And this sort of fit, didn't it? Whatever I was inside, it was aware of me, and when I had threatened it it had, what? Plead for its life? I couldn't be sure, but it was at least aware, if not sapient. So I took some time going over all of my options and I opened my Journal.

Chat

Hey, Zack, did you say you had a spellcaster with healing abilities? -Alex

Bjorn! Bjorn! Bjorn! -Zach

Zack's drunk again. -Hannah

TITLE. -Zakk

Yeah, he has to drink to be any good in a fight. Kind of fucked up. -Hannah

Bjorn is here with me. -Artemis

Get ready. I will open a sort of a window and you will be able to see where I am. TW: Gore. -Alex

We've all seen more of that than we'd like to. We'll be fine, do it. -Artemis

I cast the pseudo-portal spell and saw Artemis with a heavyset man in his mid-late forties, and as soon as they saw me Artemis paled and Bjorn started pointing and making gagging gestures. They both talked at me, but I couldn't hear them and took out my journal.

I did warn you. I was going to try stabbing this, but I decided that it would be much too stupid. Does Bjorn have any idea if he could do anything with his healing magic? -Alex

Artemis spoke to Bjorn, calming him down. After a while of standing around shaking his head, he did get a curious look in his eye. Then he came closer to the pseudoportal and looked closely at the buboe. Then he spoke to Artemis.

Bjorn's asking if he can cast a spell through the portal. -Artemis

Nothing higher than rank 2, and only if he can heal himself. Make sure he knows it's going to really suck. Casting through the portal eats all of your mana and then takes more energy from your body. -Alex

I saw Artemis explaining all of this to Bjorn. He paced back and forth a few more times, then nodded, nodded again and slapped himself on the cheeks. He walked up to the portal and began casting the spell. Gold and green light intermingled and flowed forth from his fingers. He smiled until the spell hit the window, at which point he threw up blood in his mouth and started coughing. I grimaced in sympathy, started writing.

Sorry, I did warn you. -Alex

At which point there was a flesh-tearing and snapping noise behind me, fluid splashing on the floor of the room and a creaking, confused voice reverberating once from behind me where the organ had been and once from the walls of the room said:

"Where is Father?"

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