Amaranthine

Chapter 51.5

To look at Breastman, you wouldn’t think ‘Oh, yeah, that thing still has some humanity inside if it’, at least not at first glance. Upon looking at the hatless clones that came pouring out of a tear in reality, you might reconsider.

Sure, Breastman had a constant, sinuous movement about him. But it had a cautious, nervous quality about it. If you watched long enough you’d realize he was very aware of his own strength, placing the movement of each tentacle deliberately. The exceptions to that, of course, were the sensory calming ticks, stroking himself along the brim of his hat, or rubbing the tips of two tentacles together when he was anxious.

The monsters had none of these. From the moment they entered existence, they flailed wildly, madly, hungrily. To some extent, they seemed almost as much a danger to each other as the heroes, tentacles impacting each other with the same massive force Breastman could bring to bear.

Unfortunately, looking closer, that wasn’t the case. Those impacts were always somehow dampened, twisting around each other like pool noodles, or, Cait could swear, simply merging disgustingly with one another, like wet play-doh before separating again.

From the wails of adulation the Tentacultists gave out, it was clear this was exactly what they’d wanted. Even their screams of pain had an ecstatic edge, as they were torn apart and consumed by the seething purple mass that poured in from outside the universe.

“SEE THE BEAUTY OF THE END!” Hat Man shrieked, shockingly still alive. His gristly torso hung from the sphincter entrance, pointing at the monsters tearing his congregation’s high clergy apart with one quivering tentacle, like it was a work of classical art. “ALL BECOMES AS ONE WITHIN THE ANIMAPHAGE!”

He launched himself, throwing what was left of him towardes the hostile mass. His groans of pleasure quickly gave way to very real screams, as he was pierced and torn by a dozen tentacles before he even reached the ever growing pile.

That weird, pointless self-sacrifice was apparently what it took to kick the heroes back into action.

Cait hefted Tamara, unleashing a torrent of gunfire into the mass of tentacles. It was satisfyingly effective, but concerningly diminutive.

Like B-Man had disintegrated under a hail of Warhawk’s gunfire in the training dreamscape, these things didn’t hold up any better. Cait filed that away. They hadn’t tested it, but she was pretty sure that these bullets wouldn’t even dent their tentacle monster after Winnipeg. Still, while her initial burst killed a few, they were consumed by the swarm, and replaced by the tear so quickly she might not even have bothered.

All the Tentacultists were dead now, not a trace remaining save for a few errant spatters of blood on monsters and the floor, both soon lapped up by the sickly red tongues of other beasts.

“We probably shouldn’t dive in there, right?” she asked.

-FUCK NO!-

“Then we gotta move, priority one is getting these civilians back to reality,”

-ROGER ROGER-, Breastman answered, and Cait immediately felt herself yanked backwards, cage trailing behind them as he pulled them back through the sphincter-door.

“Get that cage ahead of me,” Cait yelled, as it became clear the monsters that had been feasting on the Tentacultists were very aware of them, and not keen on letting them flee. Cait did point defense as best she could, letting Breastman pull them along as she rained lead down on whatever monster was brave enough to take the lead.

It was enough, for now. Breastman was stronger than these things, and thus, faster. They gained ground away from the monsters through the esophageal tunnel, and burst back out through the tunnel of maw with Cait’s gun firing as though it was trying to add thrust to the pair.

“What the fuck!?” Gwyn called. Qi getting loose had taken up enough of the cultist’s attention that she’d switched back to offense, and, while there were still hundreds left, it was maybe 50/50 on who was alive and dead out of the people that had inhabited the atrium when they’d entered.

“Cage! Earth! Now!” Cait roared, order punctuated nicely by the first, most eager monsters spilling out of the maw leading to the stomach chamber.

“What the fuck!?” Gwyn repeated, although to her credit, she was already extending buzzing clouds, each of which levitated a cage, floating them towards the entrance.

“Good girl, I know that looks like one of your wet dreams, but stay focused,” Cait said. “Qi! Get up here! Pour some fire on these things, we need a goddamn inferno!”

With a roar of assent, the dragon, truly hulking now, crashed up through the ranks of ineffectual cultists. Cait saw her eyes go wide as they took in the myriad mockeries of their friend, but also saw the fire rise within them.

Her throat actually swelled, a lambent glow seeping out through the lines of her scales, before hell erupted from her mouth.

Like all unclean things before the flame, the monsters shrieked as they burned, shriveled, and died. For a moment, the tide was stemmed.

Breastman grabbed the rest of the cages, but that left him only 3 tentacles with which to pull himself along, slowing their flight considerably. Qi kept her torrent of flame up for longer than any of them expected, but her stores of breath weren’t infinite. The coursing river slowed to a trickle, then stopped, as Qi stood there, panting.

The esophageal tunnel was packed floor to ceiling with monsters now, and Cait imagined a solid mass of them all the way back to the rip in reality, snarling, screaming, squirming to get out. It wasn’t pleasant. She continued firing pitifully, more out of defiance than any expectation of effect.

A hiss of pain from behind her told her that those efforts could be better spent elsewhere. In complete defiance of any kind of survival instinct, the appearance of the eldritch horde had only stirred the remaining cultists to higher furor, and they had turned on Breastman, ripping at his tentacles with hands, knives, and teeth. Exhortations to ‘Join the Chorus of the Consumed!’ or ‘Fall into Paradise with us!’ erupted from them in jubilant glee, only occasionally cut off as Cait put a bullet through the skull of whoever was currently spewing cult bullshit.

Out of the corner of her eye, Cait saw Gwyn returning, sans cages, and take two more from Breastman, dropping a couple nano-bombs in her wake. Qi strode past, hefting a cage on her shoulder and making for the exit. One mystery was solved for Cait, as she spied Willow, hanging off of Qi’s back by one of her shoulder spines, visibly exhausted but still slinging cantrips behind them as they ran.

With three more tentacles freed up, B-Man’s own speed increased considerably, pulling them towards the massive doors of the Cathedral. Over her shoulder, Cait kept nervous track of the encroaching purple tide, and got a little sick satisfaction at seeing it slow when it reached the mob of cultists harrying them. Their shouts of exultation cut off into screams of pain, manic grins turning to stark terror as they too were torn apart and consumed.

The duo burst through the door, finding Gwyn waiting for them, motioning them towards the portal. She fumbled in a coat pocket, drawing out a metallic cylinder and glaring at it. They kept moving, but Cait watched as Gwyn entered a long combination, and the cylinder popped open. She poured a thin box into her hand, glared an instant more, then seemed to solve some sort of puzzle, before once again pouring its contents out into her hand.

She held a tiny glass vial, and her glare looked almost more like utter disgust than anger.

“Willow!” Gwyn yelled, “This is some kind of multiverse bullshit right? We aren’t on earth?”

“Not on earth, no!” Willow confirmed, poking her head up from Qi’s shoulder where they waited near the portal.

“And you can close that portal?” Gwyn asked.

“Given time!” Willow answered, voice increasingly concerned.

“Sobeck forgive me,” Gwyn muttered, and flicked the vial towards the purple horde as it burst through the Cathedral doors. “RUN!”

Cait and Breastman hadn’t stopped running, and were nearly through the portal before Gwyn even finished shouting. The others were quick on their heels, and Cait looked back through the unreal glass of the portal to see an apocalypse fought with an apocalypse.

The vial had shattered against the skin of one monster, quickly dissolving it into a silver slime. That silver slime had spread almost instantly to everything it touched, stone, monster, or cultist. Whatever it touched became more of that slime, a chain reaction that sped outwards from the initial contact point with an alactity that seemed almost willfully malevolent.

“Willow!” Gwyn choked, “Close it!”

The witch’s hair hung damp, mascara beginning to smear even under whatever glamour kept her perfect. But still, she strained with arcane energies, the already imperfect borders of the portal beginning to shake. One arc scrunched in on itself suddenly, and then it was breaking, folding up impossibly in midair before it was nothing. The tiniest wisp of sliver flowed through a glowing hole so small it might not even have been there, but Gwyn was ready with another of those vials, ensuring this world wouldn’t end the same way she’d just enacted a second ending on another