Amaranthine

Hat Man charged through his congregation, and Cait braced herself for a fight. Whatever pseudo-Alteration the Tentacultists had received that made them all budget Breastmen, this guy had clearly gotten both barrels of it. His tentacles stretched further, propelled him faster, and were swollen and thick with whatever passed for muscle in eldritch horrors. Cait would still put her money on B-Money of course, but that’d be a hell of a lot less of a sure thing than she liked to gamble on.

So when Hat Man strode past her like the worst version of Doc Ock, ignoring the limb he lost to one of B-Man’s flailing tentacles, she felt a slight burst of relief. Then she remembered she was trying to kill this guy, cursed, and blasted after him. Her going had slowed considerably however. It quickly became clear that maybe Golf Shorts had been one of the more accomplished mages in the atrium, but some degree of magical competency was common among the Coven of the Fall. Hardly surprising, given the name, but also highly inconvenient.

At Hat Man’s command to ‘delay’ rather than ‘sacrifice’ the tide of humanity had turned as one, falling over one another to pelt Cait with cantrips. She was getting hit with frost rays, acid splashes, blasts of earth, everything in the level 1 Wizards spellbook. Like in the Tabletop RPG that served as Cait’s only real reference for magic, none of these spells did shit individually.

However, Cait wasn’t receiving them individually. She was receiving them in the hundreds. No amount of fire bursts or acid splashes were going to have an effect on her. But they did have an effect on B-Man, forcing him to curl up behind Cait for cover. The rocks and frost rays were what concerned Cait. She might have more inertia than the average human, but a constant and very physical barrage made it tough to gain momentum, especially when you had to fight against your joints icing over.

Still, she strode forward, in fits and starts, rage building as Hat Man drew closer to the cages, and Cait fell further behind. Gwyn, too, had been forced into a defensive posture, unable to spare any bots for offense. All her focus on keeping up her buzzing shield against the onslaught. Cait roared her defiance, getting nothing but bitter acid to the throat for her trouble. Then she felt a tug.

Not a physical tug. A tug on the part of her Kennedy connected to. Not a link. It was like every part of her inner world was being pulled outwards at once. It didn’t hurt, though Cait suspected it might have been agony for a normal person, and for a moment, it didn’t actually do anything.

‘You have to let me,’ whispered Willow’s voice into both ears at once, nonexistent breath still tickling against the crowns. Cait grinned, relaxing…. Something inside of herself.

“Wondered what you’d been up to, magic- hrk!” For the first time in months, Cait felt a pain. Not a lot, although it certainly felt like it, given the surprise. To be honest, it wasn’t even entirely unpleasant. Pain had been a good companion to her over the years, and this little brush reminded her it existed. It was… this wasn’t quite right, not really, but it was a little like she’d slightly overexerted every single muscle in her body. The shock caused her to lose her footing and stumble, looking down to regain her balance.

There, she saw her thigh, a sheen of brilliant, ghostly gold covering it. It was barely above the skin, a reflection of her body, just slightly out of phase. A ray of frost slammed into her, and did nothing, dissipating into mist across the barrier.

That is my soul, Cait thought, unable to keep herself from staring at the shimmering barrier for a moment. Just like B-man described it, brilliant gold. Willow somehow expanded my fucking soul.

She, once more, pushed the evidence for such a worldview-shattering thing’s existence to the back of her mind. She’d been doing that a lot lately. At some point she’d have to take the time to process all the many different ways her perception of reality had been upended. For now, though, she just needed to stop that fucking Tentacultist and make him understand that only one tentacle monster got to wear a fun hat.

With the more mundane cultists no longer able to slow her, although certainly not dissuaded in their efforts, they served only to mark her path in shades of red as she quickly gained on Hat Man. Despite her superior speed, it was immediately clear it wouldn’t be enough. As she watched, the cultist leader hefted the largest cage, filled with a good 20 captive humans, and scurried up the grand staircase to the Maw-like door at it’s apex.

Cait reached the foot of those stairs just as he reached those doors, grandiosely throwing them wide and marching through, sacrifices in tow. Most of them were too broken or scared to even keep screaming, but not all.

“Oh no you fuckin’ don’t,” Cait snarled, backed up by an affirmative hiss from B-Man. She threw herself up the stairs, assisted by helpful tentacles, bursting through the doors before they’d even shut.

The digestive motif continued after the Maw doors. Hat Man looked like he was sliding down an enormous throat as he scurried down the rough hewn passage beyond, waves in the stone adding to what Cait hoped was just an illusion. The undulating circular cut gave him even more surface area to push off of, and he was picking up speed.

C’mon, C’mon!, Cait urged, willing herself to go faster, wishing, not for the first time, that her speed and physicality didn’t have hard limits. She couldn’t improve. She didn’t get stronger. Her tech didn’t get more powerful. Without her friends, she was unchanging.

Fortunately, however, she had the best of those friends on her back. With B-Man’s help, she gained on Hat Man, gained inches with each step as she was pushed and pulled along by his massive strength, and was nearly within striking distance of Hat Man when he reached the next sphincter-like door. It actually squelched as it opened, the cultist’s face manic as he peered behind him, lips split in an impossibly wide ecstatic grin around his inner maw.

He steadied himself around the rim of the door, and swung the cage around, tossing it inside at speed.

“No!” Cait yelled, throwing herself through Hat Man, bursting into the next room in a shower of black and red gore, reaching a hand out for a cage she wouldn’t be able to touch and couldn’t stop if she could.

The room the cage had been thrown into was, appropriately, carved as an earthen stomach, walls rising in smooth arches around her. A wide obelisk in the middle was stained with blood and ornamented with a chorus of surprised Tentacultists, in the midst of a sinister chant as they lowered the last man out of an empty cage into a sucking maw at its center. He screamed as he disappeared within, a noise that cut off with sickening suddenness.

Hat Man’s throw had been true, and the full cage arced towards that maw, which opened and gnashed hungrily, like it knew it was about to get a true mouthful.

As if heroes would let that happen. Cait might not be able to reach the cage, but BREAST MAN could. Thick tentacles whipped out, wrapping around bars and arresting its descent midair. The groans of pain from inside suggested that arresting hadn’t been gentle, but whatever their injuries, they would be preferable to what awaited them beyond that maw. They would survive.

All but one.

Cait didn’t know if the man was just thin, or if he’d simply been immensely unlucky, falling against a bent section of bars at just the right angle. Whatever the reason, he slipped through, continuing his arc unabated. The maw gaped wide, hissing in glee as hideous clones of B-Man’s own red tongue shot up to grab him, and pull him inside.

The room rumbled, the very walls seeming to pulse in sated pleasure, and its occupants froze. Above the maw, a raw, red, tear in reality made a ripping noise as it sundered the veil. For a moment, it was thin. But only for a moment. Then hundreds of thick, purple, familiar tentacles grasped its edges, tearing this rent in the flesh of the universe itself wide.

The dozens of monsters that fell through, sinuous, sinister, and myriad, only brought one thing to Cait’s mind, at first.

“Man, the hat really makes your whole look buddy.”