PreCursive

  I sprinted as hard as I could through the halls of the waking dead, dodging and weaving through their skeletal forms as they ignored me. Dozens and dozens of them seemed to be rising from their graves every second to lunge past me as I fled as quickly as I could, in my unempowered state. I didn’t dare use Might of the Wyrdwood, considering the ghostly thorns of that Skill might just shred the Unawakened, frightened child held in my arms. Nor could I transform into my full-scaled form. That would probably just terrify Aveline more than she already was.

  I could see one emerald eye from said child staring up at me from under the hood of my cloak, filled with a childish arm. Aveline herself seemed to be struck silent in her terror, stiff and shaking in my arms. I had one hand held tightly down on her head, to spare her from the grisly sights all around us, but that wasn't enough

  It didn’t spare her the worst of the sounds.

  Behind us, I could hear the sobbing screeches and cries of the Maw as it struggled through the hundreds of dead Netherim throwing themselves at it, trying desperately to slow the creature down.

  “RUUUUUUUUUUUN!” It cried over and over, the screams never far behind us despite the efforts of the undead. For all of its apparent pleas for us to flee from it, that still didn’t stop the monster from pursuing us. As if from a great distance, I felt my core wonder about that. But the greater part of me was too occupied with running the hell away to give it any serious thought.

  Aveline finally found her voice, despite her great terror. “Mr. Hart…w-what… what’s…”

  “Shhh,” I panted out between breaths, sparing a quick strained smile down at her. “Don’t look Aveline. Don’t…don’t look. I’ve…got…you…”

  In response, the child buried her face in my shoulder. I could feel her trembling pick up in my arms.

  Suddenly, I saw something ahead of us, something that gave me such a lurch of hope that I felt my heartbeat quicken. A door in the distance. A sliding double door, I believe, rge enough to fit a semi-truck through. The surface was as corroded and pitted as the rest of the steel interior of the bunker, but just the sight of it was enough to embolden me.

  It represented freedom.

  I grit my teeth, lowered my head, and pushed myself harder. All the while, Akhoroth plowed through hundreds of dry, brittle skeletons in his apparent reluctant hunt for the living. The cracking and breaking of dry, brittle bones joined into the cacophony of horror that echoed all around us, filling the veritable ossuary.

  In what felt like moments, I skidded to a halt in front of our savation. With wild eyes, I inspected it, searching desperately for a way to get it open. There were no handholds on it, no obvious handles to grasp and swing wide the gates of hope. The only way I could tell it was a door at all was because of the indentations and seams set into it.

  Nothing, though. I didn’t know how to get through this.

  As my heart sank, for a single, wild, panicked moment, I considered trying to astralize the entire thing in the way I had to the secret door into Caer Drarrow st year. I couldn’t, though. Not because I thought it was beyond me, but because that would definitely knock me out.

  And then Aveline would be torn apart by the Maw I could hear rushing ever closer, every second I dawdled here.

  I was nearly about to take the risk when I felt something unexpected. A presence had appeared at my back, it’s lifeless feeling betraying the undeath of it’s existence.

  To my surprise, a bony hand abruptly shoved itself into the supply pouch I kept at the small of my back. It quickly rifled through the contents and withdrew something, retreating in order to appear to my right. In the dim, strobing red light of the hall, I could see that this wasn’t one of the dry, brittle skeletons that were awakening from their pods.

  They were instead desiccated and wearing the tattered remains of a b coat.

  I recognize them.

  “You…” I breathed, watching as the long-dead remains of Aveline’s mother reached out with one thin hand to rip off one of the panels to the right of the wall with undead might. She just ignored my stammering. Inside the revealed hole, I could see what appeared to be a small, thin slot, with a blinking red LED set above it. The deceased Dr. Montbnc raised her other hand to reveal what she’d stolen from my pouch.

  The very same ID card she had given to me, there in the b I’d found her daughter. She quickly inserted it into the apparent reader and stared at it intensely.

  I did the same, once I understood what was happening.

  To my relief, the reader apparently still worked.

  The red LED shifted to green, and within the walls to the sides of the door, I heard long neglected machinery groan to life. The massive doors in front of us creaked and began to open, shuddering all the while. I tensed and untensed my muscles as I bounced in pce, waiting impatiently for them to slide open, aware all the while that the Maw was closing in on us. There was only so long the weakened Netherim could dey the creature.

  The mechanisms opening the door failed before it could open fully, but not before presenting a path forward.

  There was a slim gap in between them now, only barely rge enough for me to slip through with Aveline in my arms. I spared a quick gnce at the animated remains of Cecily Montbnc, only to see her staring back at me, one hand still holding the ID in the reader. Despite her desiccated state, I could read impatience in every skeletal line of her body. Especially in the glowing red orbs that had filled her empty eye sockets. She waved me on insistently toward the gap with her free hand.

  I nodded sharply and started shimmying my way through the breach in the doors. To my surprise, I found that these doors were actually fairly thick. Despite the corrosion on the surface of them, it hadn’t penetrated all the way through the nearly fifteen inches of solid steel interior. I slowly maneuvered through them, Aveline clutched tightly to my chest all the while.

  Abruptly, I stumbled into open air, finding myself in what looked to be a long, darkened corridor, the only light to be found coming from my still active light Skill as it raced through the gap after me. Groaning sounded out from behind and I turned to watch as the doors slowly started to inch close. In the space that still existed, a long, bony arm abruptly thrust through the gap. Above the desiccated arm, I could just barely make out a faint red glow from a single ethereal eye, set into a bony socket.

  Clenched in the fist was the same ID card used to open the door.

  I let out a shuddering sigh and once again took the card. Through the crack, the jaw of the long-dead woman shifted slightly.

  It…almost looked like it was trying to smile.

  “Mama?” I heard a childish voice breathe from my shoulder. To my dismay, I realized I’d loosened the grip I had on Aveline once I’d entered the corridor. She had raised her head to follow my gaze, only to find the remains of Dr. Cecily Montbnc staring back at her.

  Somehow, someway, despite the condition of her Mother’s animated corpse…

  Aveline recognized her instantly. She reached out from my grasp and lightly touched the tip of her index finger to the desiccated one still sticking through the door.

  Abruptly, I saw a massive, iron scaled form loom out of the darkness behind Cecily. In an instant, I saw the monstrous skull of the Maw as it crashed towards the door, bloody tears carving a river down its tortured cheeks.

  And then the doors smmed shut, severing the arm of Aveline’s mother at the elbow. They shuddered moments ter from a massive impact, but even through the thick steel I could still faintly hear the crunch of bone as something was smashed between the bulk of the exit and Akhoroth.

  With a st, resounding thud, the arm dropped away from Aveline’s fingertip to fall onto the floor below.

  Aveline screamed.

  “MAMA!”

  The piercing cry of an agonized little girl resounded up and down the corroded corridors of the bunker, echoing back at us as if to mock her pain.

  Mamamamamama…

  Aveline started struggling against the grip I had on her, reaching desperately for the door the undead form of her mother had been on the other side of only moments ago. “Let me go!” She cried. “Mama’s in there! She needs my help!”

  I shuddered slightly but tightened my grip on her and turned away from the door if only to spare her the sight of her Mother’s severed arm. Aveline only struggled against me for a moment more before she gave up and buried her face back into my shoulder, sobbing once again. I didn’t bme her. I just returned the embrace as tightly as I dared, hoping my presence could ease the sharp pain of her grief. If only in the smallest of ways.

  I well knew what it was like to lose a Mother.

  No words could really ease that wound. Only time, and only so much.

  I don’t know how long we stood there in that darkened, empty corridor. However, eventually, we were knocked out of our embrace by a sound that sent a chill racing down my spine anew.

  A voice. A familiar one, at that.

  The call of the Maw, somehow seeping its way through the thick steel of the door. It was faint, but I couldn’t mistake it for anything else.

  “Ruuuun,” It hissed, just feet away from us and separated only by a long corroded door. “Thiiiis will not hoooold meeee…”

  As if to underscore that point, an abrupt smash impacted the other side of the door, followed by a screeching sound. The noise was akin to nails scraping their way across a chalkboard. Both Aveline and I jumped from it, warily watching the door. The surface…seemed intact, but I had no easy way to tell.

  I eyed it warily as if it would cave in at any moment. “Then stop chasing us!” I called out.

  “Cannoooot!” The Maw cried on the other side. “Cannoooot! Don’t waaaant tooooo! But muuuuust. It hungers. Ruuuuun….noooow...,” Abrupt thrashing sounds echoed from the other side of the door, as if the creature was filing around in pain and smashing up against the exit. “I’m soooorry! I’m soooory! NO MOOOOORE!”

  More scrabbling, and then the smashing against the door resumed. A small dent appeared in the surface of it, growing increasingly rger with every subsequent impact.

  I tensed and abruptly spun on my heels. My eyes darted left and right as I rapidly considered the passage we were in. It stretched out in both directions, left and right, but there were no discerning markings about which way led where. The darkness out here was nearly impenetrable it was so deep. The walls were totally bnk as well, but I had to make a decision.

  Screw it. Right it is.

  I barely noticed as the terrified Aveline huddled closer to my chest as I broke out into another run that way, this time down a much more darkened corridor than the massive hall had been.

  I don’t think the chase was over. Eventually, the Maw, whatever the hell it was, would break through that door. It was…probably faster than me, judging by how the hundreds and thousands of undead in it's path had barely been able to slow it down. Stronger, too.

  But that was fine. I’d built myself off of the corpses of those who were faster and stronger than me.

  You might even say it was becoming a specialty.

  I just had to find the right pce to confront it. Somepce where Aveline wouldn’t be in danger during the fight. I wouldn’t be able to kill this thing if I had a little girl in my arms. I kept my eyes open on the sprint, but I saw nothing. This hall was oddly featureless, but I could tell at least one thing.

  I was going down.

  It wasn’t the spiral I had encountered in the st bunker, but the slope of the hall meant I could feel it as I descended deeper. Maybe five minutes into my dash, I heard a loud screeching noise coming from behind us, and I knew the door had failed. The Maw was coming for us, now.

  As if to confirm that, I heard the distant wailing cry of a beast far in the distance.

  I tried not to pay any attention to it, as I felt Aveline start shaking again in fear. I just grit my teeth, lowered my head, and charged on.

  C’mon, c’mon. There had to be fucking something down here! If I had to, I would just fight the Maw in the middle of the corridor, but that was too dangerous! Who knew what would happen to Aveline during the fight, especially in such tight environs!

  Suddenly, in the distance, I saw something. A faint light was shining through the darkness of the passage in front of me. It wasn’t the disturbing red of the hall from earlier, but rather a sterile, cool white. Visible in front of it was a humanoid form, leaning out from a depression in the wall and waving frantically at us. “This way!” I heard a voice call, though the echo of the seemingly endless passage meant I couldn’t tell who or what was speaking. I couldn’t even tell if it was one of my missing companions.

  It didn’t matter.

  I pushed myself harder until I had reached the figure and dove through the doorway that had appeared on my left with them. I spun in order to fall on my back, and watched just in time as a sliding door smmed shut behind us. It felt like it was only seconds ter that I heard a massive form gallop past the door on dozens of feet.

  The Maw had been closer behind us than I'd realized.

  I shuddered and sat up to see where I was, and more importantly, who had just saved me and Aveline. But when I turned to look at them…

  I didn’t know who this was.