Inertia: Beneath the starlit veil [Progression Fantasy]

Cyrus Solaris

Gula’s massive hand clamped around my throat, cutting off my air as anger twisted his face.

“I should have known better than to trust a hatchling. The young ones are always the most volatile,” Gula said, squeezing my throat tighter before plunging his hand through my abdomen.

I screamed as bile surged into my mouth.

Large pincers burst from his forearms, stabbing deep into my sides.

“Like a hot knife through butter,” he chuckled.

“Your generation has the silliest phrases.”

As he pulled his hand from my stomach, I watched a long, blood-covered rope fall to the floor.

“I’ve heard these make the best noodles,” Gula said, lifting the intestine off the floor and bringing it to his mouth.

He’s truly mad.

I coughed up blood.

Then Gula took a bite.

I released a hoarse scream as he continued to eat more and more of it.

“Mom, hurry!” I yelled, trying my best to squirm out of his grasp.

Then the bright light from the ritual began to condense.

It began to take a humanoid form.

“Let go of my son, Gula!” My mother’s voice rang out, her body still bathed in red light.

“Or else what?”

“I’ll wipe you from existence,” she said, her form hovering closer to us.

Gula laughed.

“Gula, this is your last chance!”

Gula continued to crush my windpipe. I could feel the bones in my neck start to crumble.

“GULA!” I shrieked.

Can she actually defeat him?

Memories of the past flooded my mind as the lack of oxygen began to cloud my thoughts.

My mom, desperately trying to defend me against Theron.

Her voice. Her fear. Her desperation.

She couldn’t hold her own back then. She failed to protect me and died in front of me, leaving me alone to bear the consequences.

No, I can't let those negative thoughts win. I’ll make sure we prevail, and we will make it out of this rift.

Then a flaming blur shot across the room and crashed into Gula, knocking me loose from his grip.

I wheezed, desperately trying to regain as much oxygen as possible.

The scale activated and began to mend my neck. I crawled to a wall and rested my back on the stone.

There, in front of me, lay nearly a dozen feet of my intestines, with chunks bitten out of them.

I hesitated, unsure whether I should pull my intestines back into my body.

But when I looked down, I saw the hole was slowly closing.

I tore away the damaged portion.

I pushed myself up through the pain. My attention shifted to the battle between my mom and Gula.

The clashes were thunderous, shaking the entire pyramid.

At a glance, my mom looked like she had the upper hand on Gula, her flaming form elegantly evading his strikes and countering his sloppy moves.

The display I saw from my mom surprised me. It looked like she was reborn as someone else.

Someone whose power should be respected.

It made me wonder where this ability had been during the massacre. But for once, I didn’t care. I felt proud watching her fight.

Maybe, in the future, I could finally depend on my mother.

I checked my wound. It was about halfway healed, enough for me to help my mother finish the battle.

I hurled my moon into the back of Gula’s legs, throwing him off balance.

I dashed forward, leaped onto his back, and grabbed the mandibles protruding from his mouth.

“You have some nerve trying to eat me, you overgrown cricket!” I said, pulling his pincers out of his mouth.

As Gula struggled with me, my mom struck him several times, her fists blazing with radiant light.

We were going to win.

Then I sensed something sinister spark to life. A black aura began to engulf the workshop. Gula’s strength surged, his mandibles clamping down and slicing through my fingers.

Large pincers burst from his forearms, stabbing deep into my sides.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

I crumbled to the floor. My mom was thrown through the ceiling.

Gula turned and faced me.

“I relish moments like these. When my prey believes it is stronger than it truly is.”

He slammed his foot into my chest, launching me into the stone wall.

I dragged myself to my feet, breathing hard.

Gula slowly approached, each step cracking the stone beneath his feet. A wide grin stretched across his face as he licked his lips, his eyes fixed hungrily on me.

I tried to move, but my limbs wouldn't obey.

“It finally kicked in,” Gula said, licking the long pincer on his forearm.

“The paralyzing agent worked its way to your nervous system.”

Damn it.

He took one more step toward me.

A flaming blaze crashed down on him, splitting the floor beneath us and destroying the pyramid's foundation.

The structure slowly began to fold in on itself, but my body still couldn’t move. Luckily, the ground beneath me was still intact.

My heart raced as I stared at the large gaping hole.

I had barely escaped Lugat. Gula was on another level.

I sat there for several long moments. My toes had started to wiggle, and just as I began regaining movement in my ankle, a faint orange light appeared from the bottom of the hole.

Then my mom floated upward, her form no longer engulfed in brilliant flames.

They just flickered now.

Thank the High Pantheon for blessing the ritual and bringing my mother back to me.

She had gashes on her arms, legs, and forehead. Her left eye was swollen shut, but she still had her warm smile.

“You did it, you really did it!”

“He was tougher than I thought,” she said as she floated over to me and gave me a long embrace.

“But how are you, Cyrus? How badly are you hurt?” My mother asked, pulling away to examine me.

“Nothing that I won’t be able to recover from. I'm just gonna need about ten minutes or so. How did you defeat him?” I asked, looking past her, into the giant hole.

“I burned his core from the inside.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You can do that?”

“Yes, I couldn’t do it earlier; I was still getting acclimated to the body.”

She really is amazing.

“How come you never showed me any of this stuff when I was younger? Why didn’t you teach me more about your family? I feel like there is so much that I missed out on because of it.”

“Cyrus, sweetie... I'm sorry. I was so focused on other things."

“Did Dad know of your abilities?"

My mother paused.

“No, not the full extent of them.”

“Why did you keep that from him, and everyone else?”

“Cyrus, it's complicated,” she said.

Something about her response felt off. I couldn’t quite place what it was.

“Cyrus, what’s the matter?” my mom asked, her face filled with worry.

Then it clicked.

“You’re not my mom, are you?”

“Cyrus, why would you say that? Of course I am.”

“No, you aren’t.”

Her expression tightened.

“My mom never calls me Cyrus.”

She stared at me.

“She calls me Anquaris.”

Silence.

For a moment, she simply stared.

Then her face twitched.

Her mouth stretched into a grin far too wide for any human face.

“Oops.”

“Looks like you caught me.”

The illusion peeled away.

The woman standing before me warped, her body twisting as blackened flesh crawled across her skin.

Her eyes sank into empty holes, and something pale and insect-like wriggled from between her skin.

I froze.

Then I heard footsteps behind me.

I turned.

I saw familiar faces: Lugat and the cloaked figure who started this test.

They paused. Then the hooded figure revealed his face, which began to melt and twist.

Both of their eyes were empty abysses.

Insects crawled from the figure’s empty eye sockets and spilled from beneath its skin. Its body shook and twisted until the woman’s form gave way to a man with pale green skin, pitch-black eyes, and a mixture of my mother’s features.

“Gula?”

“In the flesh, hatchling.”

“What did you do with my mom?” I yelled out, cosmic energy surging from me.

“Oh, her?” Gula said, his voice coming from the body that had once worn my mother’s face as it floated toward me.

I still couldn't move most of my body.

It leaned over my shoulder and whispered into my ear.

“She was never your mother, hatchling. She was an Echo.”

My stomach dropped.

“Everything you told her, I heard. Every secret. Every weakness. Every little hope you clung to.”

“So when you thought you were speaking to your mother…”

The grotesque body smiled.

“You were speaking to me.”

“Liar!”

“The Cannibal is one name they gave me.”

He spread his arms as the Echoes gathered around him.

“But there is another.”

He bowed.

“King of the Echoes.”

As he bowed, hordes of echoes burst into the workshop.

Some flowed into him, while others repeatedly screamed one word in unison.

KING!

KING!

KING!

“This can’t be true! No, you killed her, you took her from me!”

I snapped.

Rage took over, and I drank from the well of madness again.

Black aura embraced me.

“I'LL KILL YOU!”

The pyramid shook, and the foundation began to crumble.

I broke out of the paralysis and charged at the twisted body.

“Don’t believe me?” he said, grabbing me by the neck and yanking me out of the air.

“Then go dig up her remains,” Gula said, throwing me into the hole he just flew out of.

I commanded my moon to catch me, but Gula was there in a blink, his fist cocked back, black aura emanating from his body. His punch shot forward like a piston, slamming into my head.

Light flashed across my vision.

Everything blurred.

“It appears to have done its job. The scale has finally tipped.”

Those were the final words I heard from Gula as the rest of the pyramid collapsed, burying me alive.