From the damp, frigid dungeons of the Castle to the towering Hall of the Sacred Path at its peak, the road had been paved with blood, shell casings, and the remains of countless monsters.
Ever since Ashley had torn herself free of Saddler's mind control, the entire defense system of Salazar Castle seemed to have tipped into madness. Every step of the way, red-robed zealots with their shields and more of Salazar's Right Hand-type creatures had kept pouring at them in waves, throwing themselves forward with no regard for losses.
When they finally blew through the last heavy iron door and stepped into the Hall of the Sacred Path at the top of the Castle, every one of them had their nerves stretched to the breaking point.
"This smell... it's like falling into a sewage tank," Luis said, face pale, hand over his nose.
What had once been a golden, gilded dome was now hung with a flesh cocoon the size of a house. Countless thick, dark-red blood vessels drooped from it like vines, burrowing deep into the load-bearing columns and the cracks between stone slabs all around. A low, steady thump, thump pulsed through it, slow as a heartbeat.
At the altar at the far end of the hall, Ramon Salazar stood with his arms thrown wide, staring up at the cocoon, his pale, deformed face lit with sickly zeal.
"Welcome to the cradle of the Holy Lord, foolish heretics." Salazar turned around, his voice shrill to the point of cracking. "You dared interrupt the great resonance and foul my castle. Now, appease the Holy Lord's wrath with your own flesh and blood!"
"Save it!" Leon raised his riot shotgun. "Open fire!"
Sherry's and Becky's electromagnetic rifles spat flame instantly. But Salazar made no move to dodge. He laughed wildly and fell backward, dropping straight into the chasm behind the altar.
Krrrrrrr!
The entire hall shook violently. The massive flesh cocoon on the ceiling burst open with a roar and plunged into the chasm, showering down a rain of acidic slime.
A moment later, a horror of blood and flesh, like some hybrid of a deep-sea alien and a man-eating flower, came shrieking up out of the pit. Tendrils thicker than century-old tree trunks lashed around it, and barbed, segmented limbs dug into the stone walls of the hall. Most unnerving of all, Salazar's withered upper body extended from the creature's gaping maw, like a grotesque, human-faced tongue.
"Kill you all!" Saddler's true form screamed.
"Scatter!"
Leon threw himself flat in a hard combat roll. There was a loud hiss, and a jet of concentrated acid shaved past his clothes like a high-pressure hose. The stone floor was instantly corroded into a gouge over three meters long, smoking acrid white fumes.
"The mobility and firepower on this thing are ridiculous!" Luis shielded Ashley and pulled her back behind a stone pillar in the corner, bits of rock trickling down on them.
Ratatatatat!
Sherry and Becky stood back-to-back, their electromagnetic armor-piercing rounds chasing the beast as it skittered across the walls. Blue tracers wove a net through the dim hall. Bloody craters blew open across the creature's tentacles, green ichor spraying everywhere.
"Roaarr!"
The beast recoiled in pain. Hanging from the dome, its body swung violently, and two thick tentacles came whipping down like enormous steel lashes, cracking the air with sonic booms, straight for the two sisters.
"Move!"
Sherry and Becky dove in opposite directions. The tentacles slammed down on the spot they had just been standing, pulverizing the half-meter-thick stone slabs. Before they could get back on their feet, the beast's massive body had dropped off the ceiling, crashing down on Sherry like a collapsing mountain.
Bang!
Leon's riot shotgun roared. At point-blank range, the large-gauge buckshot slammed into the side of the creature's face and forced its downward lunge off course. The huge body skimmed past Sherry and toppled a statue beside her.
"Thanks, Uncle Leon!" Sherry kipped up off the floor, rifle already swinging up, and hammered rounds into the creature's joints.
But the monster was not only freakishly agile, here in its home ground saturated with Plagas matter, its regeneration was terrifyingly fast. The side of its face that had just been blown apart was already filling in, flesh buds writhing like mad.
"It's no good. Conventional firepower can't outpace its healing! Its true form is that 'tongue'!" Becky shouted, sidestepping another splash of acid. "We have to hit the real body!"
"He's hiding inside the beast's mouth. Unless he opens up to spit acid, there's no way to land a shot!" Leon ground out between breaths, sliding under a sweeping tentacle, his lungs starting to burn.
The relentless covering fire finally exhausted what little patience Salazar had left.
The beast stopped dead on the ceiling, its massive head lowering, its thick tentacles sealing off every route of escape. The abyss-like maw yawned open, and at the back of its throat a dark-brown acid was pooling, ready to wash everything below it away.
And with that, Salazar's true form, the "tongue," was laid bare in open air with nothing to shield it.
"Now! Hit him!" Leon's eyes were bloodshot as he raised his weapon.
But the violent shudder before the creature's spit-up made Ashley, crouched behind her pillar, lose her footing. With a yelp, she tumbled out from cover and sprawled down in the middle of the hall, right in the absolute dead zone of the acid spray.
"Ashley!" Leon's heart seized.
The inverted beast had its gaping maw wide open, and Salazar's pale, withered old face glared down at her from above.
"Holy vessel... return to my side!"
"Don't eat me!"
Sheer terror blanked Ashley's mind. Pure survival instinct made her grab the heavy Golden Egg Ryan had shoved into her pocket. She squeezed her eyes shut, and with every ounce of strength she had, she hurled it straight at the gaping mouth in the air. More precisely, straight at the face of Salazar, dangling from the center of that mouth like a tongue.
The Golden Egg cut a dazzling streak of gold through the air.
Splat. Gulp.
Without deviating an inch, the hefty Golden Egg flew directly into Salazar's mouth, wide open in his mad laughter, and slid down his throat. His mutated body reflexively swallowed.
The air seemed to freeze. A full second passed.
"Ugh... cough, cough! Khhh... aaaghhhh!"
Leon, mid-charge, froze. Sherry's and Becky's barrels stalled in mid-air.
The beast hanging from the ceiling abruptly let out a scream a hundred times more wretched than anything before. Salazar's shriveled human torso began to convulse uncontrollably. He clawed at his own throat with both hands, his already pale face turning a strangled shade of purple-red.
Right before their eyes, countless disgusting red welts and massive swellings erupted across his skin, the tentacles, even the inside of the beast's mouth.
"What... what is this?! My throat... I can't breathe! Khhh, khhh!"
Salazar was clawing at his own neck like a lunatic, not even feeling his sharp nails breaking through the skin. In just a few seconds, a fatal, acute allergic reaction had triggered severe laryngeal edema, cutting off his airway entirely.
The once-invincible horror of a creature looked as though someone had pulled its plug. Its thick tentacles slackened and slipped off the walls.
Crash!
With a heavy boom, the massive thing plummeted from the ceiling and slammed down on the stone floor of the hall. The huge mass of flesh twitched violently a few times, then rapidly collapsed in on itself, shriveling. With a wet pffft, it dissolved into a puddle of stinking dead meat and moved no more.
Dead silence filled the hall.
Luis, still tucked behind cover, watched the whole thing, and his horrified expression slowly shifted into pure disbelief. He slapped his thigh and shouted like he was looking at a total idiot.
"Dear God... this isn't any kind of genetic collapse! This is full-blown anaphylactic shock! This ultimate B.O.W. that called itself a god, the son of a bitch had a lethal egg allergy!"
Ashley was still frozen in her throwing pose, utterly dumbstruck. "He... he died from an allergy?"
Leon stared at the swollen, misshapen corpse, then looked up at the now empty ceiling, took a long breath, and spoke with a voice full of deep doubt about his entire career as an agent. "Is that how you're supposed to use the Golden Egg Ryan gave you? That's really the end of him?"
"Uncle Ryan is terrifying." Sherry swallowed and quietly slung her electromagnetic rifle behind her back.
"Let's move." Becky kicked aside a piece of debris by her foot and summed it up without expression. "Proven fact: where physics doesn't work, Uncle Ryan teaches them medical common sense."
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