Her eyes train on me, but they’re not white anymore. They’re black pits, endless voids, capable of sucking in the light around her. Her head jerks, the motion too quick, too unnatural. The cracks in her skin widen, and something—a shape—begins to bulge beneath her flesh, shifting like something is crawling underneath the surface.
Her limbs elongate, the bones snapping and twisting in grotesque angles. Her skin stretches and morphs into something monstrous—pale and slick like an eel. She looms over us, her body towering high above, her form now a hulking, grotesque shape.
The creature’s mouth opens wide—impossibly wide—and her jagged teeth resemble shards of glass. Her hands, no longer frail, stretch towards us with claws that are long, sharp, and drippingwith some sort of dark substance. Every time it puddles on the ground, it hisses and sputters.
Fuck.
A cold smile unfurls on my lips.
This bitch wants a fight? Then a fight she’ll get.
Zaid, his wraith form flickering, is the first to react.
He raises his hands, and shadowy tendrils shoot from his palms, curling around the air like smoke and grabbing at the creature’s form.
The monster roars and twists, her body contorting in ways that shouldn’t be possible. The tendrils snap like twigs.
She throws her head back and screams, and that sound—god, that fucking sound—digs into my skull, making it feel like my thoughts are being dragged from me.
I don’t wait for her to get her bearings as a deep, primal rage rises inside of me.
I grab my dagger and slice at my palm, allowing my blood to well. Then, I shoot projectile after projectile at her, though I’m not sure what good that’s doing. She barely seems to react.
Krystian’s bowstring hums as he fires a shot, his arrow flying through the air with expert precision. It hits the oracle-monster in the shoulder with a sickening thud, though the creature barely even flinches. Her eyes—those hollow, void-black pits—focus on him, and with a flick of her wrist, she sends him flying across the room like a rag doll.
He crashes into the wall, but before his bow can shatter on impact, it disappears and then materializes in his hands once more.
“Not today, Satan. Not today,” he mutters under his breath, grabbing another flesh-eating arrow from his quiver and nocking it into place.
He pulls the string back, his eyes narrowed in determination.
Already, I can see the first one is doing its work. The skin surrounding the puncture wound is sizzling and hissing as the poison eats away at the oracle’s flesh.
“Wait!” Zaid yells abruptly, moving to stand in front of Krystian and stopping him from letting his arrow loose.
“What the fuck, Zaid?” Everett roars, his eyes glinting with the appearance of his beast—a beast he won’t let free, unless there’s no other alternative.
“We can’t kill it!” Zaid insists.
“Why the fuck not?” Everett demands.
In answer, Zaid flicks his gaze towards Thea, who stands slightly behind us, holding a borrowed dagger in her hand. Zaid’s, if I had to guess.
It occurs to me then what Zaid’s saying.
If we kill the oracle—a beast who is alive—then Thea might…
She might leave us.
The minotaur was crafted out of machinery, but this beast… This beast has flesh and a heart and blood.
“Don’t be an idiot!” Thea screams as the oracle staggers and roars, swiping a clawed hand at us. But her movements are sluggish, the poison eating away at her skin. “I didn’t disappear when we killed the hellhounds, did I?”
“The hellhounds were already dead when you turned corporeal!” Krystian points out, lowering his bow. “And who’s to say that the one you killed isn’t what caused your dagger to…merge with your flesh?”
His gaze dips to the waistband of her jeans, where, underneath all of her clothes, is the reminder of her looming deadline.
“If we don't kill it, it’ll kill us!” Thea insists.
