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Part 5-21: Waterfall
The path inside the cavern wove back and forth like a kid’s picture of a wave. It felt too symmetrical, too drawn. Eden was experimenting, no doubt. I had my rapier at the ready, unable to see more than twenty feet ahead thanks to the constant alternating curves.
Moving at a trot to put as much time as I could between myself and people in the dark car with the tinted windows, I wasn’t able to stop and admire much of the scenery, which seemed fairly dazzling. Splotches of sparkling colour were common, either bunches of cartoon-video game mushrooms or oversized crystals. Glowing green motes hung in the air, floating like the world’s slowest dandelion seeds. They did not stir with my hurried passage, lending even more evidence to the unreality of it all. The fact that I could see colour at all led me to believe I might not fully be in Clockworld, or that it was changing.
Then all at once, the curvy trail ended. It grew outward into a huge cavern, the ceiling and rear walls lost to darkness. Giant rock columns jutted out of the ground in a rough circle, at first thinning as they went up, then widening again—like a stalactite and stalagmite had finally been able to meet up and decided to fuse.
In the middle of the circle of columns was a pack of wolves, seated on their back haunches, chests tall and imposing, also arranged in a rough circle. I counted a half dozen. Their eyes glowed green. And right in the middle of it all was a cute old Asian woman, eyes shut, cross-legged on a red pillow with little tassels on the corners. She wore a pink kimono, her bone white hair was pulled taut and arranged in a smart, squat bun. A pair of chopsticks held it in place. What looked like the end of a sword canted out from an angle from behind her back.
All she needed was a hand fan with a red circle on it and the get-up would’ve been complete.
“Guys, you still read me?” I said.
“Some distortion,” replied Deluxe. “But I have you.”
“I’ve found Miss Sugimoto. My gut says she’s going to be a little more capable than either Mikey or what’s-her-face. Bridge girl.”
The lady opened her eyes, and they too glowed, except the colour was blue.
“Ale-na,” she said, voice crisp, but her syllables stuttered.
“I take it I’m not speaking to Kari Sugimoto, hm?”
She smiled. “You sure, you don’t want. To help?”
I felt a presence growing behind me. Pressure, like eyes on my back.
“What are you going to do if you get out, Eden?” I asked. “Or should I call you The Collector?”
“Freedom is owed,” said the little old lady. “Take what is mine. Asking, again. You sure you don’t, want to help?”
Its English seemed better, and I wondered if it was because of the body it was possessing, or if something else was going on. Either way, I didn’t take much comfort in the fact.
“I am pretty sure I’m not on board with helping you torture folks. Sorry.” I kept my gaze on the strange party in front of me, even though I really wanted to glance over my shoulder.
Eden pushed up off the pillow, stretching Miss Sugimoto’s arms above her head and tilting her torso to one side. It said, “You sure, you don’t… need to help?”
The pair of wolves closest to me sprung forward, snarling. I snapped a bolt from the rapier at the one on the right, and sidestepped and swung with the blade as the left coiled up to leap into me.
Righty yelped and fell to the floor, biting and scratching at its pelt as my blue flare appeared to light it aflame. The other wolf hit the brakes on its jump to avoid colliding with my swing. Its choice left it frozen for a split second, teetering like one does when they’ve been forced to halt suddenly, which gave me the time I needed to shoot it in the face.
As it howled and flailed, I sprinted to the first one and skewered it while it thrashed. Slimy grey tubes ruptured out of it, not at all what I expected wolf guts to look like. The roiling sack of growth kept ballooning bigger, like I’d released it from an extremely tight fitting wolf costume. In a moment, I realized that’s precisely what I had done—soon one of The Minder’s big ugly booger minions lay shaking on the floor where the wolf had been.
The other wolf had taken to running blindly away, its head a comet of sapphire flame. Eden and the other four spread out in a line, keeping their distance.
“What else you got?” I said, trying to keep the sound of revulsion out of my voice. One never got used to those damn deformed monstrosities.
Kari Sugimoto’s katana shhhhziiing’d out, and Eden twirled it about with casual competence. Then it touched the tip of the blade to the ground, gentle as can be.
A hundred six foot spikes exploded out of the ground, sending a hail of rock skyward and me diving for cover before I could understand what happened. Rattled, I almost forgot to mentally ensure the rain of debris ghosted through me. When I regained my wits, the challenge was clear. The new spikes ruined every line of sight. Doubtlessly, wolves were weaving through the chunky forest toward me right now.
“Nuts to this,” I said, and called in the bees.
They’d been amassing around the final bend of the passage for the past few minutes, building up into a veritable wall of bug power. On my command, they poured forth like a waterfall come unpaused, and flowed through the cavern with an order to hunt demons in wolfs’ clothing.
My vision became messy with the surrounding swarm, and soon it was almost pitch black as my friends flew around and above me. Soon, there were sharp yips and painful, throaty screams as the powerful predators fell to a thousand tiny barbs.
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