Chương 184: Act 3, Chapter 38: Blindsight

Day in the story: 15th January (Thursday), night-time Gertrude Monkey [We have very little Authority over seeing,] Anansi's soul voice reached me. [But we could fight it on an identity level.] She added, and I felt two sp-eye-ders move from their lowered position at the base of my collar bones onto my forehead. Six more nested themselves around my neck and, all at the same time, accepted my Authority to become my own eyes. I still see fucking shit, I told her, as I was grabbed by a very cold and hard hand.

"Gertrude?" Penrose's voice reached me among the shouting of all the other men. He pulled me into almost a crawl.

"Yes," I answered him. [Foreign Authority works by creating a barrier between the visual feed from the eyes and the brain.] Abandon this brain, then. Reroute the additional eyes to one of the external brains. [Already on it.]"Teleport us out of here," he said.

"I am not going without Thomas and Ramirez if I can help it," I spoke back when my vision returned.

"I'm not blind anymore." I took in the view all around me. If I counted properly, in those first few seconds of the attack we lost around ten people. Two were totally unaccounted for, but one leg and an arm lay in front of the watchdog that munched on something, crushing the car on the street it had landed on.

Its wings were slowly folding back behind their metallic-looking covers as it moved farther toward the mercenaries, who were all frantically and chaotically trying to run away in different directions—stumbling into each other, falling down, and crawling. Some of them were sprawled on the street, dead, hit by cars whose drivers had been stripped of vision as well. To my side was Penrose, whose entire skin was silver and glistening like metal as he crouched beside me.

Farther ahead was Thomas, who was fighting blindly with two of the mercenaries for some reason. I could not see Ramirez in all that mess at all.

"If you can save us and them, go for it. If not, you know what you have to do," Penrose repeated his orders.

"I will try killing that thing," I told him as I reached for my death-ray submachine gun, filling it with Authority to become the laser weapon and taking aim at the monster in front of us. I wanted to do this without Noxy if possible, as his shot would announce our presence to half the city.

"Guide me," Penrose said suddenly, standing and reaching for that stack of money he held for Pablo. That guy, on the other hand, had crawled to a wall and dropped into a fetal position, unmoving.

"Where is this thing?"

"Later," I told him. I steadied myself, looked lined up the sights, and took a shot—releasing a hot beam of concentrated light at the watchdog that had just finished its previous meal and was extending its mouth-tentacles toward another victim. The beam of light hit it straight in the open flower it had for a head.

"So there it is," Penrose said as he raised the hand with a banknote in it, and suddenly the note literally launched from it like a missile, elongating in the air into some form of a spearheaded projectile and piercing the creature's side. I watched, hoping that the damage we'd done was enough, and as the watchdog dropped onto the ground with its side legs and head smoking, I was certain we succeeded—even among the wailing and frantic shouts of the mercenaries, who saw nothing but heard way too much.

But of course it wasn't meant to be. Something opened beneath the monster and two appendages shot out of it at quick speed, grabbing CCTV cameras out of the buildings and a traffic post, and dragging them back into its own body. And as the head started regenerating rapidly, it began opening its wings again.

"Did it die?" Phillip asked, keeping his hand on one of my arms.

"Briefly," I answered and tookaim. A lance of extremely warm light crossed the air, cutting the front leg. Then another note shot from Penrose hit it somewhere on the back, cutting through the wing. I did not wait this time and started shooting as soon as the weapon cooled down enough to do so. I made Swiss cheese out of its general head area and front limbs, dropping it to the ground, when another flash of Authority from the wings left me without the ability to see.

"I am blind again," I declared.

"Is it properly dead this time? I've felt you fire quite a handful of times."

"I don't think so. We'd probably be able to see if it was. Let me check what I can do." [We can reroute again. Your brain is barred, so is the Second one. Creative is available.] Anansi declared, and I let her know that it's what I needed. A second later I saw the world in all its ugly colors around me. Somehow Thomas found Ramirez in this mess, despite being unable to see, and they came closer to me as most of Penrose's men scattered as far away as they could, crawling on the ground.

Unfortunately for us, the creature reached for other cameras in the area, and they were already retreating back to its stomach.

"So the problem is that it regenerates eating whatever is able to see in the area," I told them watching it decapitate one of the men closest to it, taking his head in the same manner it used cameras.

"It can blind me over and over, and I will soon run out of brains to use to reestablish my sight." Stolen novel; please report.

"I have no idea what you've just said," Ramirez said to me.

"Can you get us out of here?"

"I probably can, but I think that as long as it is alive you will be permanently blind. Your decision. And it better be quick—its legs are twitching again." I told them, reaching for a batch of cards in my bag and throwing them one by one in quick succession. The first explosion brought the creature down again, damaging its legs. The unfortunate men closest to it were thrown back against the walls of the buildings and broken cars, rendering them unconscious at best.

"What's happening?" Thomas asked.

"I tried to blow it up, but a chopper is on its way here as well," I told them, looking up at an incoming military helicopter bound in our direction.

"Fuck!" I shouted, threw a card infused with just steeliness as far back as possible, and teleported all four of us there, as the real missile launched from the machine hit the creature square on its back.

"Gert, you overdid this!" Thomas mumbled as he hit the wall when the shockwave hit us. I was sitting next to him, scratching my head. Ramirez was out, while Penrose remained unscathed. He was even still standing.

"Wasn't me this time. Chopper launched at it," I said, watching the smoldering body of the beast. The heli came closer and started making additional holes in the monster for a few seconds, thrashing its body, right before a flash lit the sky from behind the buildings to our right, and the lights on the copter went dark. It soon veered off course and started falling down.

"We need you to describe what's going on! Don't just sit there!" Penrose shouted at me.

"We are so deep in the ass right now, we might as well say hello to the tongue, guys," I told them, watching a big fucking beholder move through the air high above and far away from us, catching the falling heli with its long tentacles.

"There is a bigger motherfucker up in the sky that just crushed our flying saviors. It's far, but I'd say not far away from my comfort. And also, from what I know, the thing we fight has been killed before by mages, but the one in the sky is almost impossible to take down by mortals."

"I say fuck it," Thomas interjected into my monologue.

"I prefer being blind than eaten. Get us out."

"No. I will not go away like this," Penrose said.

"We need to kill the hellhound or whatever it's called."

"Watchdog," I corrected him.

"Yes. What's its status?"

"Looks half dead," I told them, watching a smoldering crater on its back and only one twitching leg. But unfortunately, its protected abdomen was opening up and nine tentacles were coming out in search of proper 'seeing' food. It was indiscriminate in what it caught, bringing in cameras, phones, heads, or even whole bodies or single torn-off eyes back into its own system.

"But it's healing again, grabbing whatever is close to regenerate." Its carapace was reappearing piece by small piece until the steel-like skin covered it again, and the flower head was once again opening to put its eyes onto us. Mesmerized by the power of the creature, I noticed way too late that it opened its wings again. Blackness overtook me once more, because of my own stupidity. I am out of fucking brains, Anansi. I will let you use mine, Alexandra sent in a thought to me. Too risky, yours is more important.

Give me Elle's. I will try to finish it. I need to get close and destroy the abdomen so it can't regenerate. Do it, she told me, and soon my vision reestablished itself again, as poor Elle sat down on a bench and dropped onto it, removing the proper brain that directed her body. Be quick about it. She still has access to the stem, but I don't know how long one can properly work without proper brain. I assume to have around two minutes, then. I grabbed Penrose by the arm.

"I need your help. We are getting closer, underneath this thing. As soon as I tell you, throw whatever you can upward to damage it."

"Let's go," he said, and I started running with him in tow, dragged by one of my arms. I let the machine gun drop on the strap to my side while I grabbed the first pistol that got into my hand. It was the holy one, filled with drill bullets. I covered it with my Shadowlight, and every bullet inside it as well. I trained with it before at the Domain, but it wasn't as easy as it seemed for ranged things.

The bullets spun as they twisted out of the muzzle, the Shadowlight that engulfed the pistol trailing behind them as a barely noticeable blue and brown spiral that was shed completely about half-way to the target. They hit the creature, of course, dealing mild but not insignificant damage. The monster shrieked as it noticed our approach. It was pretty much whole again when my little drills went in, creating little fountains of blood.

It enraged the thing, making it charge into our direction with a quick jump that let it drop onto the remnants of some van, with a shadow's body inside. It opened its flower head, hissing and spitting some kind of bile in front of itself, as those razor wires it had in there shot toward us, trying to catch me. I yanked my arm with all the force I could muster, dropping Penrose onto the ground and jumping away at the same time, to dodge the attack.

He slid on his chest forward and quickly turned around, laying with his back against the concrete.

"Now!" I shouted. Penrose surprised me then. I knew that his power allowed him to be creative and somewhat destructive. But I underestimated that—by a lot. He quickly unfolded a roll of notes, letting them fly from his hand in every direction around him, and for a brief fragment of a second it looked like leaves being scattered in the wind—just for the next one to launch like a hundred spears upward, skewering the monster through the abdomen with streaks of violent light.

The Watchdog's body thrashed as the force entered and exited its body in different intervals and places. And then, when the reverse money rain stopped, its tired body stopped with it—for just the length of a breath—before it came crashing down onto Penrose lying beneath it. He gasped as it hit him. I took my laser and aimed at the head, shooting once more to pierce right through it with an angry lance of light. It left a gaping hole right through the body.

It was still alive though—many cameras and eyes on its body moving and looking for something to eat, as one solitary tentacle crept from under its almost broken body to reach for something to the side. I aimed at it, trying to make a shot, when a broken piece of carapace slid off its abdomen to the ground. It unfolded its wings, blinding me with a flash of Shadowlight again.

"Fuck!" I shouted, right before a violent move took my legs from under me, dropping me onto my back and sliding me on the ground toward the creature. I took another blind shot at it, hoping to hit it, but it was for nothing. I felt my borrowed brain leave me and come back to support Ella again, whose body woke up with her gasping for air. She was blind, courtesy of me, but alive. Don't worry about her. I have another idea, Alexandra sent through to my own brain.

I frantically looked for Noxy in my bag, finding him due to his odd shape. I threw him to the side, giving him the ability to move and shoot the creature on his own with all the cunning of the night. Alexa, in the meantime, grabbed one of her eye cards. If it can't see, it might not be able to regenerate. We were all connected—her, Ella, and me—and despite the distance between us, we were one. As such we shared the aura, even though each one of us was also the center of our own spheres of it.

She came up with the idea, my clever progenitor.

"Become its only eye," I said aloud, just out of spite, when I could have just thought it. The Shadowlight, calling my will through my Authority, hit the monster and overwhelmed it due to the void power of my soulmark of Trueform, establishing a new Identity for it. I was a proxy between the Watchdog and the card in Alexandra's hand. As soon as the eye on the card became the only working one of the creature, it scanned Alexa, moving frantically. She didn't wait though.

Dropping the card onto the black surface of the floor-lake, she ran the Ghostflame's blade right through it, blinding the monster.