They panicked instantly, lurching away in a cacophony of screams. Some fell. Others scrambled clear away from the danger.
The creature had no limbs. Its body was a spherical lump of mass with a large maw lined with razor sharp teeth and three long tendrils, one on each side and one at its back.
"Tch."
Atiya wasted no time and turned to run.
There was only one Yai beast right now, but who could guarantee there weren't more. He needed to assess the situation before making any move on his own.
He grabbed a hand as he ran and pulled.
Shilial looked at him in surprise.
"Isn't this overkill," he said, not slowing down. "You're gonna have to do most of the work here."
"Shilial, was it," she said, studying him as they ran. "Was she your lover?"
Atiya grimaced. Any other time he would have stopped to check if her head was on straight.
"Are we entering a memory loss arc or something. You are my friend's wife. Get a hold of yourself."
Shilial's face did something complicated. She looked at him like she couldn't believe what she was hearing, then said something that made Atiya turn to stare at her mid-sprint.
"I can't believe my other self became a cheater. And I'm cheating with this scrawny ass kid."
"You wanna fucking die, friend."
Whoosh.
Atiya ducked, pulling Shilial down with him in the same motion. A long tendril shot past their heads close enough that he felt the air move.
'Thank you Zelaine. Every single slipper and knife and baseball.'
He got back up and kept running. Then the situation changed in a way he didn't like. It wasn't a tendril this time. The monster itself lurched forward, the entire spherical mass of it accelerating toward them fast.
Fuck.
He ran a quick inventory in his head. No weapon. No skills that would do anything useful here. Nothing.
He shoved Shilial hard to one side and threw himself the other, sliding low across the ground as the creature tore through the gap between them.
A tendril caught the air a centimeter from his throat on the way past. He hit the floor, rolled, and came up already looking for the next problem.
The monster had already moved on, teeth working through whoever happened to be closest. Screaming filled the pit and then stopped.
Atiya turned to Shilial.
She was standing completely still, watching the creature with a calm face. Not frozen.
She just watched as if something mildly interesting was happening at a comfortable distance.
"This is no business to be standing around," he shouted. "Use your Yaicraft."
Shilial said nothing.
'Can it be that she seriously hit her head.'
As soon as Atiya finished that thought, all hell broke loose.
The creature swung its tendrils in his direction. Atiya jumped sideways without thinking and summoned his portals.
Yai remaining: forty three percent.
If I can time this right, I might stand a chance.
His eyes darted desperately across the space, looking for positions to station the portals, but the creature moved again and thrashed his calculations apart before he could settle on anything.
Fine. No time to think.
He stationed one portal as close to the creature as he dared and one near himself and did the only thing left to do.
He jumped through.
He came out the other side and hit the ground hard, but the ground wasn't bare this time. Something solid and uneven was scattered across the floor, digging into his palms and knees. The creature's maw was already closing in fast.
Atiya panicked, grabbed the nearest thing his fingers closed around, something long, and shoved it straight into the maw.
The pit was dark enough that he couldn't make out what it was. He didn't have time to care.
Something grazed his left waist. Then the pain arrived, hot and immediate and deep.
"Urrrrgh!"
He grabbed whatever else was within reach and swung it down hard against the tendril currently buried in his side.
Screech.
The Yai beast lurched backward. Black ichor flooded from its body where the tendril had torn.
Atiya didn't stop. He snatched more of whatever was lying around him and rushed forward, shoving everything he had into the creature's maw in a single desperate push.
"Khkhkh."
The creature wailed.
What the fuck do I do now.
He had the upper hand for the moment, he had weapons, he had his portals, but he was bleeding and the wound in his side was not shallow.
If I had stationed my portals properly I could have ripped its eye out.
The problem was the creature kept moving, and none of his portals were anywhere near it anymore.
Then something grabbed him from behind and bit down hard into his shoulder.
'What.'
Atiya shoved the humanoid away and hit it with whatever he was holding. It stumbled back. More came running from every direction, frenzied and fast.
He caught a glimpse of what was in his hand.
A human spinal bone.
He stared at it for half a second.
Behind him the monster was tearing through the frenzied humanoids with its bleeding maw and thrashing tendrils, indiscriminate, eating everything within reach.
The humanoids didn't seem to care. They kept coming anyway, at the creature, at each other, at him.
Atiya repositioned a portal a short distance away and one close to himself.
A frenzied man came sprinting at him with murder in his eyes.
'Fuck.'
Atiya didn't think. He drove the bone through his portal. It shot out the other end and connected with the man's head.
And the man dropped death.
Atiya stood over him breathing hard.
'Are they human.....Don't waver. Even if they are, I have to live.'
With a human spine he'd tripped over in the dark.
He laughed once. Short, cracked, hollow.
Then the laugh died.
The pit still had plenty more to give to him unfortunately.
Disgust crawled up his throat and couldn't stop trembling.
'Gosh. Please.'
Heavy footsteps echoed from multiple directions, closing fast. The fresh blood had drawn them. A new wave of hollow-eyed figures staggered out of the dark.
Atiya tensed.
He grabbed whatever was closest. Another spine. A cracked skull. A jagged femur. Anything solid enough to do damage.
At the same time he pushed his Yai out and portals bloomed around him, but only two magenta portals to use.
Some at knee height. Some chest high. Some angled near the wall like sniper positions. They pulsed quietly and waited.
Three had already entered his range. Ragged, shackled, eyes sunken to black pits.
The first lurched forward with its mouth open in a soundless snarl.
Atiya hurled the bone through the nearest portal, angling high.
It emerged from the upper portal and punched straight through the open mouth, out the back of the skull in a spray of bone and brain matter.
The others kept coming.
Just then Shilial stepped forward, placing herself between Atiya and the approaching figures.
Every single one of them stopped dead.
Then they turned and changed course entirely, moving away from her without hesitation.
Atiya watched them go, breathing hard, blood still running from his side.
"You said you are a part of me," Shilial said, not to him. To the air. To something he couldn't see. "Then tell me. Is she freed of war."
"What war." Atiya turned to her. "What are you talking about. Who are you."
His suspicion had been growing since she woke up. Now it was something closer to certainty.
The cannibals had already reached the Yai beast. They swarmed it fast and in numbers, overwhelming the spherical creature before it could respond. Within moments they were tearing into it the same way they had torn into the Hingcha.
"Are they scared of you," Atiya said. "Tell me."
Shilial didn't answer right away. She looked at the feeding figures with an expression that stopped him cold.
'Is it compassion.'
"What state have they been reduced to," she said quietly. "It's frightening, isn't it. My self proclaimed friend."
Atiya said nothing.
Why is she looking at them like that. Could it be that they were real humans once. All of them.
"Why are you acting like this," he said after a moment. "Did you seriously take that monster for an easy target and let me handle it alone."
She didn't answer that either.
His eyes drifted back to the Yai beast. The number of living humanoids had dropped considerably. The creature was taking them with it on the way out.
If it was just after flesh there would be no reason to come after me specifically. It must have sensed I was a Yai user and targeted me for that reason.
He repositioned his portals carefully, spacing them in a configuration he could actually work with this time.
Then he ran forward.
Once he had closed enough distance he drove a bone through the portal. It came out the other end and punched directly into the Yai beast's eye. The creature was moving wildly but Atiya had watched it long enough to read the pattern.
He repositioned fast and sent the second bone through.
The second eye went dark too.
'Offense is the best form of defense.'
Atiya dashed forward and drove the bone deep into the base where the first tendril met the body, putting his whole weight behind it.
Gurrrrgh.
The creature shuddered. Atiya didn't give it time to recover. He grabbed the tendril with both hands, locked his grip, and began wrenching it sideways while he worked the bone deeper with his knee, kicking it in hard with the flat of his foot, over and over.
Gurrrrgh.
"Just give me your limbs."
The creature lurched, trying to pull away, its spherical body rolling and twisting. But Atiya held on, boots scraping against the ground as it dragged him, refusing to let go.
The resistance wasn't what he expected. He had braced for something that would tear his arms from their sockets.
Instead it gave.
The tendril ripped free with a wet tearing sound. Black ichor flooded down both his arms and soaked into his sleeves, hot and thick.
He stood there holding the severed limb, chest heaving, and looked at it.
'It's a lot weaker than I thought.'
But the creature still had two other tendrils and Atiya had no intention of going after all of them.
He had a different plan. The creature wasn't going to like it.
He moved fast, using the severed tendril as a rope and looping it around the creature's maw, pulling tight and knotting it as best he could. The creature thrashed and strained against it but couldn't tear through. Its own limb was holding its mouth shut.
"Just like I thought," Atiya said, breathing hard. "Your tentacles are tougher than anything else on you."
He wrapped the remaining length of tendril around his hands like makeshift gloves and grabbed the edges of the bound maw, planting his feet and pulling in opposite directions. The creature bucked and rolled, the other two tendrils flailing, but the surrounding humanoids were already swarming those, grabbing and biting with mindless hunger, keeping them occupied.
Shilial watched from where she stood, something sparkling in her eyes that hadn't been there before.
"It feels like you have done this many times," she said. "Yet I find myself impressed."
Atiya didn't answer. He was screaming through his teeth, every muscle burning, pulling until something gave. Then something gave. The creature split apart at the midsection with a sound like soaked wood tearing, black ichor erupting in every direction.
He stood over the two halves, gasping.
"Congratulations," Shilial said. "You have overcome the first hurdle."
Atiya bent forward with his hands on his knees, catching his breath. Then out of curiosity he peered into the creature's open maw.
Huff. Huff. Huff.
Not much inside except the flesh it had just eaten. He was about to straighten up when something caught his eye and every instinct he had fired at once.
He threw himself backward.
"Shit."
Something launched itself out of the maw, shooting upward like it had been waiting for exactly this moment. It caught the dim light as it rose and began to shift, to stretch, to reshape itself into something new.
Atiya stared at it, chest still heaving.
"I was tricked," he said. "That was just its outer shell."
He watched it continue to morph above him.
"That thing is its real body."