Taol's Compendium of Nent

Chapter 4: Clade Ruins - Part 2 (Flos)

And just like that, a fair bit of the darkness cleared, enough so that we could see what was ahead of us, but not enough for the whole room to be lit – in response, we were met with such a horrific, nightmarish sight that shouldn’t, by any means, exist…

It was this…monstrous creature that had been created purely out of raw, semi-digested flesh, almost as if countless once-living beings, both human and beast alike, had been stitched and sewn together to create this amalgamation. What was even worse was that this thing was filled with countless amounts of holes that was dotted all over its body, and it wasn’t even small, either – they were massive, with digestive fluids oozing out from them.

Its face, if you could even call it a face, was a creation of countless faces fused together to create this misshapen hunk of flesh that was made of eyes, mouths and noses to create a giant pair of eyes, mouth and nose. The faces’ eyes were green, though it was probably because the digestive liquid had permeated their eyes and remained there almost indefinitely…

This colossal, slug-like thing also had legs too, but they were never used – instead, it moved like a snail, a giant slab of flesh at its base while the legs just poked out from the sides of that flesh pile, occasionally twitching every now and then to signify that whatever made up this creature was still alive, and left in never-ending anguish…

It had hands, too – tens of hundreds of them. Probably even the thousands, too. Its nails were huge, dripping with this black liquid which I could assume to be dirt that has become basically poisonous after it was left to languish without much hygiene and care. Its mouth was this misshapen, enormous septic maw that had countless, giant, blackened teeth that has seen much decay. It was a literal k******e of disease and disgust that had made up this creature, which was bound to be the embodiment of horror itself.

This thing was unnatural, beyond unnatural, which made me wonder how it could possibly exist – and this only made me wonder…perhaps this was why this area has become a ruin, a shadow of this past. This thing has consumed them all…and it has become what it is now. And we were about to become its next targets…

Not on our watch.

With the sheer size of this creature being taken into account, we knew that this was going to be a very difficult task – to slay this creature and put it to rest would have to take some time. That being said, we had to seek out some kind of weakness which we could exploit against this creature. It may be huge, but it was definitely slow…we had to made this thing topple.

Tirza quickly got to work as she stormed into battle, with her tossing her grappling hook at the monster, only to be met with a swift offense from the monster as it puked a blast of stomach acid at the dark elf – almost instinctively, I immediately rushed in front of her and held my hands out towards the acid, and thinking to myself…this was it.

After months of journeying, it was about to end so abruptly…and I didn’t even leave Flos, either. It was a harsh reality, sure, but I felt like this was where the end of the line was.

However, it would seem that fate had other plans.

I soon found myself staring at a shield-like construct that had deflected the acid away from us and down to the ground, which began actively eating into the stone floor. As soon as I realized I had conjured the construct, the shield disappeared into thin air.

When Tirza bore witness to this, her eyes widened with surprise before an idea came to her head as she demanded me to try and create a hook to snag the monster by one of the sides of its torso while she dealt with the other side, hoping to pull it down so that it would struggle to get back up – knowing that it was best to take her counsel, I nodded in agreement and swiftly stormed into action, trying my hardest to avoid whatever attacks the fiendish creature tried to throw at us. When I managed to reach the side of the beast, I was suddenly struck in the chest by the monster in an ambush.

Surely this had to be the end…but turns out I was, thankfully, mistaken once again.

While I was gravely injured, as the acid began to rapidly eat into my uniform and right into my skin, it would seem that some kind of black goo began to quickly coagulate over my injury, which allowed for the stomach acid to be forced out of my body and onto the beast, which might have caused it to go wild in a mad frenzy as the voices screamed in a wild, vicious symphony of insanity.

Without much time to waste, I quickly formed a grappling hook construct before hurling it towards the side of the creature’s face – thanks to my efforts in distracting the monster, Tirza was able to get her part of the job done mostly unscathed.

We both managed to meet our marks, with our hooks managing to latch onto the monster’s eyes, which only worsened its anger even more as it began rampaging about while its gaping holes on its body began rapid-firing massive blasts of stomach acid in order to wipe us out amidst its rage. Without much wait, we tried to pull down the beast with all our might, but the damn creature just wouldn’t budge…it was just too huge for the two of us to pull down on our own. That was when a near-insane idea popped up in my head.

Before I could even say anything to my companion, I immediately gripped the grappling hook that had caught one of the monster’s eyes and began to violently yank it repeatedly – sure, we can’t bring this monster down to the ground, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. She would be watching me with surprise on her face as she saw what I was doing amidst the madness, and upon realizing just what I was planning, she too would do the same for the monster’s other eye, knowing that our combined efforts may be very important for this fight.

It took some effort, but the both of us made one last, energy-fueled yank to our ropes, and just like that, we were able to straight up gouge the monster’s eyes out, which caused its eyeballs to violently rip straight out from their sockets as they dropped down to the ground, creating a massive pool of blood in the process – the beast, now filled with a great deal of pain and insanity, had officially lost all semblance of self-thought as it entered into a state of eternal berserk in a desperate attempt to kill us off.

The both of us would quickly get our hooks off its now-disposed eyeballs as we quickly moved ourselves in front of the monster, who was now firing acid all over the walls – it was from here where I decided this would be a good opportunity to defeat this creature once and for all. Upon noticing the acid crudely eating into the stone walls, I knew that they were becoming intensely fragile. I asked Tirza to stand behind me, and from here, I would take a deep breath as a pair of hooks formed in my hands as I flung them into the walls.

With them stuck together, I attempted to pull down parts of the wall that the acid had eaten into so that I could trigger a massive cave-in in an attempt to force the monster down – and just like that, I was able to send a flurry of stone blocks tumbling down, which was enough to anchor the fiend down to the ground as it was partially buried by a bed of stone.

The light from outside the ruin flooded the now semi-destroyed room, drowning the whole area in radiance once more while the monster recoiled from the light, screaming in pure hatred while it wriggled in place, attempting to break itself free.

In a last attempt to finish us off, the monster would puke out a blast of stomach acid right at us, and in a swift response to counter it, I immediately raised the shield construct once again as the projectile was deflected…straight into one of the monster’s eye sockets.

And just like that, it began eating straight into its head as it let out a guttural yell…and before we knew it, the monster was finally defeated, its digested head slowly dribbling down into the floor along with some grey matter.

Silence had finally been restored, and perhaps we have granted these anguished souls inner peace now that this ruin had been purged of its horrors…

However, once the fight was over, I had grown immensely weary all of a sudden as my heart was slowed to a crawl while my pulse greatly dropped – and before I could even say anything, I would weakly look over at my companion as I collapsed onto the blood pool…