Chương 37: 32. The Crypt

"There is a Black Madonna in the crypt of Saint-Victor that is seven hundred years old. There is also something in the crypt that is made of seven people who went in last week. Both of these things are in the same room. Tomorrow we're going into that room." - The Ether Atlas: Field Notes of Steven Parr, Marseille The Crypt"The last time I walked this route," the scout with the crossbow said, "four of my friends were alive." His name was Julien and he'd been a postman before the sky changed.

The route to Saint-Victor used to be his Tuesday delivery. The other scout, Marc, a fisherman's son with a sharpened boat pole and the careful eyes of someone who'd learned to read water for weather, hadn't said anything since they'd left the harbour.

"How far?" Donna asked from the front of the group.

"Ten minutes. The approach is clear until the last two hundred metres. Then the creatures start."

"Start what?" Steve asked.

"Appearing. All day, all night. Like they're drawn to it." Julien checked his crossbow's string tension without looking down. Muscle memory.

"We don't know why. They don't leave."

"Steve," Donna called back.

"What is the abbey like? What am I walking into?"

"Fifth-century fortress-church, built over a fourth-century tomb, built over a Hellenistic necropolis. Walls are about two metres thick at the base. One main entrance. Possibly secondary access through the south cloister, but Rémy's scouts used the front."

"Single entry." They could hear the displeasure in her voice.

"Arthur, if things go wrong inside, we're retreating through the same chokepoint we entered."

"I know."

"Just making sure you know." Marc spoke in quiet French, directed at Julien. Steve caught it.

"What did he say?" Arthur asked.

"His cousin was one of the eight." Nobody spoke for thirty metres. Archie's geometry drifted beside Arthur, dim and silent. Twelve hours now. The entire harbour fight, the compound meeting, the night, the dawn. Arthur had stopped expecting a response. At some point in the small hours, lying on the warehouse floor, he'd made a kind of peace with it. Archie might come back. Archie might not. The crypt was still there either way. He came back between one step and the next.

Without warning the dim lattice snapped to full luminescence in a single pulse. New geometries rotated through the structure, light sharper and more complex than anything from London. A circuit breaker engaging after twelve hours of dark.

"Sector authorisation recalibration complete." The voice was the same. The space it occupied was larger.

"Operational parameters updated. Regional guidance mode active." Arthur jumped.

"Archie. You've been offline since the transit. Twelve hours." He was surprised at how happy his voice sounded.

"The transition between operational sectors requires architectural recalibration. Processing duration was within expected parameters." Archie paused and then continued unprompted "The structure ahead registers Ether density consistent with an active Major Node. Significantly above the surrounding baseline. I would advise heightened caution on approach." Steve was smiling as well.

"Good to see you back. And did you just give us tactical advice?" Donna smirked from the front of the group.

"Don't encourage him." Julien was staring around with wide eyes.

"Vous parlez à qui, là?"

"I keep forgetting how disconcerting this could be for others," Steve said.

"Julien, it's alright, don't worry about it."

"Steve, tell him Arthur talks to his notifications sometimes," Donna added, smiling.

"What? No! Steve, don't do that," Arthur protested. But Steve was already translating. Julien looked at Arthur and said in a sympathetic voice, "You're talking to the air."

"Welcome to our life," Donna said, chuckling.

The boar came from the collapsed wall at the abbey's southern approach. It was bigger than the harbour creatures. This one had lived in the node's shadow, Sanctum-level Ether soaking into it for days. The chitin was thicker and thicker. Its legs pumping with furious force. Julien fired, the bolt hit chitin and skidded sideways with a sound like a stone skipping ice.

"Merde." Arthur stepped in and raised his shield. The charge hit the Bullguard and his boots slid four centimetres on the stone, something that hadn't happened at the harbour. He braced harder and the creature's tusks scraped across the shield face hunting for an edge to hook. Donna flanked from the left. Her first strike bit shallow, the chitin absorbing what should have been a killing blow. The boar wrenched its head toward her, tusks sweeping low to gouge. Donna leapt back while Arthur moved in again.

He rammed the shield boss into the thing's snout and hooked his hammer head over the nearest tusk, wrenching the skull back toward him. The neck opened up on Donna's side and she didn't waste it. She adjusted, her left shoulder hitching on the backswing, and the blade punched through on the second hit. The creature dropped. ETHER ABSORBED: 34 INTEGRATION: 137/778"These are tougher," Donna said, examining a fresh chip in her axe's edge. The harbour boar hadn't chipped the blade.

"Proximity to the node," Steve said.

"Higher density, bigger creatures, harder armour. It'll only get worse inside."

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. The abbey doors were wedged back. Eight people had wanted to be able to run; only one had.

"This is where we stop," Julien said in a steady voice, trying to mask his unsteady hands.

"Rémy's orders. We hold the entrance. If you're not back by midday, we report to the harbourmaster." Marc looked at the open doors. Said something quiet. Steve translated, "He said, 'Tell them I'm sorry I wasn't here.' He means the scouts. His cousin." Arthur met Marc's eyes and nodded. Marc nodded back. A contract between two men who carried the names of people they couldn't save. The crypt stairs spiralled down into cold and silence.

The third landing had a dropped torch and a single boot with its laces still tied. Arthur stared at the boot. Laces tied meant it had been pulled off a foot that was still wearing it. Donna saw it too and adjusted her grip. The crypt opened below. Sarcophagi in alcoves carved from living rock and now illuminated by the green glow of chem-sticks. At the far end they could see the Black Madonna. Dark wood, dark face, seven centuries of devotion.

And as the party moved into the chamber, something moved behind the sarcophagi.

It pulled itself from the shadows like a nightmare surfacing from sleep. It was slow at first, another of the dozen shadows in the chamber and then it straightened. The nightmare manifesting fully. Human bodies and old bones were fused into a single mass by Ether that had rewritten their biology without regard for where one person ended and another began. Limbs connected to torsos they didn't belong to. Hands arranged along its flanks like the oars of a galley, reaching and pulling.

Heads at angles no spine supported. And faces - partially recognisable, the features rearranged, a jaw fused to a brow fused to a mouth that opened sideways. Archie rotated next to the party.

"Human-derived Ether construct. Biological fusion event leading to involuntary fusion of biomass. Guardian-class entity but not a Guardian. Threat assessment: significant." Not a guardian? Involuntary recombination. Arthur looked at Steve. The colour had left his face. The guardian reached. A wave of limbs extending from the central mass, covering the crypt floor in grasping hands from every angle simultaneously. A flood, and for a moment the party was left gaping at what was happening in front of them.

"Tight! Behind the shield!" Arthur raised the Bullguard and planted. Six hands hit the shield at once, the pressure distributed across the entire surface. Arthur braced and the hands didn't stop. They flowed around the edges, reaching for the gaps. Fingers scraped his forearm guard and more hands came from below, groping for his ankles. This thing didn't fight like a predator. It fought like a tide. Arthur triggered structural Reinforcement and locked, the ground cracking beneath him.

He held the centre but the hands kept coming and he couldn't move, couldn't reposition, couldn't do anything except be a wall while the flood found the gaps around him. Donna went right and triggered Reflex Acceleration, two seconds of terrible clarity. She read the mass and found the seams. The joints where bodies met imperfectly, where tissue fused without proper integration. Her axe found the first seam and something that resembled half a leg separated. The abomination screamed with three mouths.

Donna watched in horror as the entity adapted. The seam she'd struck sealed, rearranging itself. Tissue flowed across the wound, and the hands on that side retracted to cover the vulnerable joint. The thing was learning. It had felt where the blade found weakness, and it was protecting itself.

"It's closing the gaps," Donna said. Her voice was level but her breathing wasn't.

"I can't hit the same point twice." Steve drove the Reacher into the guardian's left flank. The sensory feedback told him everything he could have done without knowing - human tissue, warm, dense, recognisably muscle wrapped around a core of crystallised Ether. He twisted the blade. A hand shot from the mass and closed around the Reacher's shaft. Then a second. A third. Three hands gripped the polearm and started pulling - pulling Steve - toward the fused mass. His feet left the stone.

He hit a sarcophagus and the impact knocked the air from his lungs. The Reacher was being drawn into the guardian's body and Steve was still holding it, his hands locked in the involuntary death grip of a body that had decided in panic that the weapon was the only thing between it and death.

"Steve! Let go!" Donna screamed. He couldn't. Steve was staring wide-eyed at the writhing construct of flesh and bone. Arthur had no choice. He dropped Reinforcement, turned and swung the lump hammer into the three hands gripping the shaft. Bone, chitin and fused tissue cracking under steel. The hands released the pole and Steve fell backwards, gasping. But Arthur had opened himself and the creature used the opening. Without the shield in the line, it surged forward. Its full mass moving at once.

Arthur tried to get the Bullguard up but the angle was wrong. The mass hit his left side. Hands gripped his stab vest and pulled. Without Structural Reinforcement his feet went out from under him. He crashed onto his back and the guardian's weight pressed down. Arthur realised with horror that the abomination wasn't attacking. It was engulfing him. Hands pulling at his armour, his limbs, trying to draw him into itself. Trying to make him a part of the horror.

Arthur felt human fingers close around his wrist and begin to pull his arm into the mass. The pressure was enormous. The cold of the fused tissue pressed against his skin and it was the worst thing he'd ever felt. Pure wrongness, the sensation of touching something that had once been alive and was now something else entirely. His arms were already covered with writhing flesh. Unable to swing his hammer, he started doing the only thing he could. He gripped the flesh and started to pull it apart.

If this thing wanted to consume him, he would tear it from within and crawl back out. The party was not standing around. Donna barked an order.

"Steve, start cutting, forget about joints, just cut." Then Donna's axe was in the mix. Her second Reflex Acceleration triggered and she came in with three strikes, each one finding a different seam. Steve was moving the billhook about like a scythe. The monster howled. It was spread across the floor, trying to consume and defend simultaneously and it couldn't protect every point at once and now it was beset from two sides and from within. Donna kept hacking, her Reflex Acceleration gone, both bursts used up.

This was raw speed, and fury, and a woman watching her friend disappear under a wall of human wreckage. Arthur had managed to rip his right arm away while Donna and Steve were cutting. And as he made a fist of his left inside the body of the monster his hands gripped something round. The core. He could feel the core pulsing, the ether keeping the flesh and bones fused. One of the limbs was on his throat now, inching up. Arthur screamed and pulled. The core came away and he fell back.

Without the core fuelling the fuse the amalgamation came apart. The bodies separated and dropped onto the stone like a structure losing its supports in sequence. Seven people became seven people again in the silence after the heartbeat stopped. Arthur lay panting on the ground till Donna came and offered her hand. He took it and stood. His ribs ached where the weight had compressed against his chest. His left wrist was bruised, the skin already darkening. He was alive but the margin had been very small.

THREAT NEUTRALIZED ETHER ABSORBED: 138 INTEGRATION: 275/778 Steve was against the wall. White-faced and breathing shallow. The Reacher was across his knees, his hands still locked around the shaft. Arthur looked at the core in his hand. It was slightly larger than the last Guardian but unlike other cores this had red veins running over its surface. He put it in his pack. Archie's geometry contracted briefly.

"Human-derived Ether signature. Residual biological patterning. I have insufficient comparative data on cores of this origin." Steve didn't say anything. He was looking at the seven bodies on the crypt floor and writing something in his guidebook with hands that wouldn't stay steady. Marc had followed them down. He must have left Julien at the entrance when the fighting started, orders or no orders. He was kneeling beside one of the separated bodies, holding the dead man's hand. His cousin.

"Merci," he whispered, and Donna put a hand on his shoulder. Arthur took a deep breath and looked around. He desperately wanted to be back above ground and they were still not done with the chamber.

"Let's take thirty and then we need to figure out what' Touch the anchor where the shadows fall back' is all about," he said, taking out dried fish from his pack.