Metamorphosis

A teaser "scene" from my work-in-progress novel Castle Oblivion. This is, by no means, a final draft, nor does the scene necessarily represent the true ending of the character involved. It is meant to serve to create interest in the novel -- a far-future story of a team of salvage hunters who discover the missing void-fortress of a long dead people who once ruled over humanity with an iron fist. This is the second teaser chapter released, the first, "Castle Oblivion," is also a free read on Vocal.

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The beast slammed Jobelle into the outer wall of a small structure. Her head rang and there was a frightful sound at her neck as the mutant pressed its weight against her. Through the fog, she heard a snap and the breath caught in her throat -- the array. The aquamarine glow of the protective light curtain that filtered the air of this accursed castle flickered before her eyes.

Fear and disbelief momentarily held her breath for her, as if perhaps there was still some chance that she could survive the mutant viral strains if she did. The light returned and she let out a jagged curse from her burning lungs. She was going to kick that damned princess's ass.

The weight of the stygian creature continued to press itself against her upper body, its whispers violating her senses, robbing her of the ability to think. Her consciousness across the span between them as the mutant nibbled at it with its broken tombstone teeth.

Unable to see for the bony palm plastered against her head, Jobelle raised and fired the pulse rifle blind. Both weapon and fiend jerked with almost orgasmic satisfaction. Wet smacks of gore and gurgling ichor followed the sound of pulsating energy. The pressure gone, she willed her mind and body to move. Her head pounded and her vision wavered, but to stop was to die. She struggled to push herself upright, her first steps were a stumbling mess. Was her eardrum ruptured? The Gate to Heaven's Road. Find the path. Get back to the team.

A figure slipped from a rooftop, smooth as moonlight, planting itself in her path. Another short burst, another dying screech.

"Fuck you." A simple statement of fact. She hadn't lived through hell to become nest excrement just yet and certainly not for some interplanetary horror.

She moved along the wall of the structure. Still so elegant, she thought. Not even the cover of twisted organic matter and machinery could hide its beauty. Perhaps it had been a tea house. That would be nice. In her heart of hearts, she had always wanted to learn the art of tea...

The junk merc stepped from the alleyway and a multitude of unblinking eyes, twisted limbs, slinking tentacles and oozing orifices converged from hell's belly -- wraiths in the graveyard of her sins. With pointed aim, she added to the number of body cavities they possessed, but their numbers increased.

Laughing between great gasping gulps of air, she moved steadily forward. Heaven's Road loomed above, a golden beacon leading to wild riches. Each blast of her weapon counted down the number of steps until she reached it. Once there, she'd call the team and pass out; the Reduced-Intelligence Unit could watch over her until they arrived. They would render medical attention and all would be good.

Her collar flickered again. She slammed her fist on the thin, flex-metal collar.

It blinked back.

It darkened.

"No!" through gritted teeth.

The infected air trickled into her lungs, seeping into her blood and circulating through her body with

She firing into the gathering ahead of her.

No no no nononono! She wouldn't die like this. The light flickered on -- There! -- before going out again. Again, she hit it, again, again, again...

"Come on, come on!" The device went mad, desperate to simultaneously light up and die out... and then was no more. Falling away in pieces.

Welcome. Welcome, the mutants cajoled, their oozing thoughts in her mind. Welcome, sister. One of us now.

Rage-red thoughts and pushed them out, firing, firing, firing, ceaseless energy bolts until the gun overheated, hot in her hands.

"You can't have me!" She screamed at them. They whispered back. She threw the rifle at them. They accepted it as a gift. She reached into her pouch, pulling out a pair of event detonators. With feral grin, she encouraged the monsters to advance.

"Big game time."

Soft as wind, they slipped into her personal space; probing tentacles, pricking fingers, diseased phantomechanisms worming into her brain. See us, seeeee ussss, appearing as family, friends, lovers... Flooding her mind with pleasure endorphins.

Two of three full seconds to arm the weapons passed before a debilitating convulsion seized her. She doubled over. "No..." Little more than a tearful plea on her lips. But they heard.

Yesssss...

She fought it. Fought the change.

We welcome you...

"Ngha--" She gagged and dry heaved as an overwhelming nausea bowled her over. Something raced up her throat and jammed itself in her mouth, protruding like a thick tongue of flesh. It quivered and jiggled, gelatinous, pushing further and further until her jaw broke. Jobelle's eyes bugged, the flesh on her face grew tight. She fell to the cracked, warped pavement, a mass of quivering extremities. The grenades fell and rolled away. Gone.

Her skin bubbled in great patches, growing to the size of large fruit -- red and raw as her skin stretched and split in agonizing layers, one by one. Pus and blood erupted out of hardened boils that sprouted like flowering waves. A mass of long, segmented legs exploding from her chest up to the ceiling. Beneath skin, muscles spasmed, cramping in crippling positions. The bones in her body cracked and broke and reknitted themselves as she was lifted on her new legs into the air and bent back in ways the human body was not meant to.

The distinguishing marks of womanhood melted into flesh, twisting within her before reemerging, reimagined, repurposed. Her breasts formed two size-mismatched eyes before bursting across the humped plane of her body to become dozens of randomly scattered eyelets -- each rolling in new-formed socket. Her sex grew to enormous size, fleshy and full, a snapping mouth, hungry. The "tongue" slithered out of the cavity that had once been her mouth, slathering her body in thick fluids that dripped down, forming an amber bubble beneath her. Her eyes, nose and neck disappeared as the flesh pulled toward where her back had once been.

Jobelle's mind was engulfed in white hot fire as her body twisted, exploded, morphed in impossible ways. Death was all-consuming thought.

Then, the pain ceased... and the hunger began.

Insatiable.

The Jobelle-creature gurgle-chittered. She eyed the other mutants and fiends as they eyed her, each looking for an advantage, an edge that would allow them to sate the hunger. They outnumbered her, but she stood a full meter and a half over them on legs as thin and powerful as bundled steel cable.

Two of her attackers communicated in their gerbling language of bubbles and spit.

The Jobelle-creature observed them with a newly-imbued patience and tolerance absent in her former life. One skittered along a border fencing wall, seeking to distract her. She pretended to be threatened, hissing and stomping at it while its brother, joined by two others closed on her from behind. She skewered two of the three soundlessly.

They didn't even realize she had sunk a back leg through their bodies until she raised them up into the air and stuffed one into her toothy vertical orifice.

The second squealed and bubbled in terror as it was picked apart, limb from limb by Jobelle-creature's smacking gob. The mob of once-predators faded with the cautious haste to the crevices of the city from which they had been birthed.

Not fast enough.

Jobelle-creature's legs shot out two, three more times in rapid succession, piercing more prey like kebobs upon her appendages. They writhed and shuddered as she ate them at leisure, tearing off great hunks of their bodies at random. Wet, gut-filled hunks of their dying comrades splattered to the floor and ichor pooled into a shimmering lake reflecting the glorious glimmer of Heaven's Road above.

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WORK ON FULL NOVEL NOW IN PROGRESS.

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