Chương 32: Way Out

"Ouch."

"Not again," Lania complained, crossing her arms.

"What do you expect?" I groaned, clutching my ribs.

"I had to dope the absolute shit out of myself to defeat him." The adrenaline was completely gone, and the brutal repercussions of chaining Tundra's Water, Fulgur's Blood, and Second Wind were crashing down on me all at once. Every nerve in my body felt like it was on fire, and my muscles twitched with phantom electricity. It was fucking painful.

"Not my fault you're so weak," she muttered, though there was no real malice in her voice.

"Sorry for being so weak," I shot back, tauntingly gesturing toward the headless, sludge-covered corpse of Aram with my eyes.

"I'll try to punch harder next time."

"Arrgh… fine. Let's just get out of here." She sighed and stepped closer, offering me her small shoulder for support. As a firm believer in taking full advantage of rare moments of kindness, I completely let go of my posture and slumped down, shifting all my dead weight onto her. Without missing a single beat, Lania simply stepped aside. With nothing holding me up, I fell flat on my face, eating the cold, cracked stone floor.

"Walk on your own," she pouted, stepping over my groaning body. She hopped away toward the center of the ruined chapel, running straight to Strange Toy.

"How are you, buddy?" she asked her creation, gently patting its scorched wooden body.

"Sorry you had to go through that." She leaned in, pressing her forehead affectionately against its chest and murmuring something I couldn't catch. The three heads perked up instantly. Their mismatched, painted eyes rotated wildly, scanning the wreckage of the room before finally settling on Lania. All three wooden jaws opened together.

"DON'T BE. NOT LANIA'S FAULT," they boomed in eerie synchronization. One of its arms rose into the air, slowly came down, and began to gently pat Lania on the back. She didn't cry. The tears in her eyes had already run dry from her earlier breakdown, leaving only a quiet, exhausted relief. I pushed myself off the floor and walked toward them.

"Hey, big guy, you good?" All three pairs of eyes instantly snapped to me, locking onto my face.

"WHO THIS? ENEMY?" Before I could even blink, four massive arms rose into the air, all armed with jagged, rusty blades. They spun up with a terrifying, high-pitched wheezing sound.

"Whoa, whoa!" I stumbled backward, tripping over a piece of rubble. What the hell? Has it already forgotten me?

"Lania, stop him!" I glanced at her in a panic. She had her hands clamped over her mouth, visibly vibrating as she fought to hold back a giggle.

"HAHAHA," Strange Toy burst out, the three heads laughing in a mechanical, booming unison. Great. Now her giant toy is teasing me too. Lania couldn't hold it in anymore. She burst out laughing, the sound ringing bright and clear through the wrecked chapel. She looked so much prettier when she was laughing. I silently swore to myself that I never wanted to see her cry like she had earlier ever again. I stood there, dusting off my jeans, waiting for her to finish. And waited. And waited.

She just wouldn't stop laughing.

"You can stop now," I grumbled.

"It wasn't that funny."

"You sprang back like a scared cat! That was really funny," she wheezed, wiping a tear from her eye. She didn't stop until we suddenly got company. The heavy double doors of the chapel burst open, and the two sentinels from earlier—Bael and Corv—came sprinting in. They froze, letting out a horrified scream when they saw the headless, mutated remains of Aram's body. Then, their heads snapped toward us, and they screamed in pure rage.

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"I will handle it," Lania said, her face instantly dropping into a cold, dangerous glare. I reached out and grabbed her wrist, stopping her.

"No. You don't need to have any more blood on your hands. Let's just run." Lania looked at me, then looked at the heavily armored sentinels charging down the aisle. She sighed.

"Moly, pick us up." Two of Strange Toy's massive arms swooped down. The jagged blades seamlessly retracted into the wood, and the blunt wooden hands grabbed Lania and me by the back of our collars, unceremoniously dropping us onto its broad, flat back.

"Full speed ahead." Strange Toy rose high onto its spindly, multi-jointed legs. Sharp, circular blades shot out from the bottom of its feet. As they hit the stone floor, they began to spin furiously, throwing a massive shower of orange sparks into the air. We shot forward like a rocket. Instead of running, Strange Toy used the spinning blades as motorized wheels, speeding directly toward the charging sentinels.

Seeing a massive, three-headed monstrosity revving its buzzsaws and hurtling straight at them, the sentinels lost their nerve. They dove in opposite directions, scrambling out of the way and opening a clear path for us. We zoomed straight through the chapel doors, leaving the sentinels screaming furiously in the dust behind us. Once we hit the main corridors, Strange Toy was terrifyingly fast. Using its blades as roller-skates, it covered massive distances in seconds.

Red alarm lights still flashed everywhere, and the facility was in absolute chaos. We encountered several roaming sludge monsters, but we didn't even slow down.

"Hold tight!" Lania yelled over the screeching of metal on tile. Her toy bent slightly then launched us high into the air. We vaulted directly over a pack of bewildered sludge hounds, landed smoothly on the other side, and instantly sped up once again.

"I hope you actually know the way!" Lania shouted over the rushing wind.

"I came prepared!" I yelled back, pulling a crumpled piece of paper from my makeshift fanny pack. I desperately tried to read Milo's crudely drawn map as it flapped in the wind.

"Go straight, straight, straight, right, left, right, straight, left, left, left!"

"Do you honestly think my tiny brain can process all of that?! One at a time!"

"Take a right!" Strange Toy didn't even brake. It extended one of its free arms, embedded a thick blade straight into the right-hand wall. Using the anchor point to swing its massive momentum, it drifted around the sharp corner without losing a single ounce of speed, tearing a deep trench through the concrete wall in the process. We zoomed through hallway after hallway, jumping over barricades of fallen shelves and overturned desks.

When a corridor was blocked by debris, Strange Toy simply drove straight up the wall, transitioning to the ceiling for a few terrifying seconds before dropping back to the floor. We didn't stop. The entire facility was torn apart. I just prayed that Filki and the other kids had managed to escape safely. I got my answer soon enough when we encountered them three-quarters of the way through the maze. Strange Toy's foot-blades instantly retracted.

Pointy wooden stakes slammed down into the ground, acting as emergency brakes. The toy skidded across the floor, tearing up the tiles and kicking up a massive cloud of rubble, coming to an abrupt halt just a few feet away from the group. Every single kid shrieked, scrambling backward in sheer terror and hiding behind Renn and Sil, who had their arms raised defensively. As the dust settled, Filki stepped forward, leaning heavily on her cane but smiling warmly.

"You made it back."

"Was there ever a doubt?" I replied. Strange Toy gently lowered me and Lania to the ground.

"Mrs. Filki! You are with us!" Lania ran forward. Noticeably, her definition of 'us' did not include the other children standing right there. She completely ignored them, not recognizing their existence.

"I am, child," Filki answered, dropping her cane for a moment to wrap Lania in a tight, protective hug. Lania didn't protest; she just buried her face in the old woman's clothes. Renn looked at the massive, terrifying Strange Toy, then at Lania. Fighting the fear he still harbored, he stepped forward from the protective line of kids.

"Lania," he called out softly. Lania perked her head out of Filki's embrace. She didn't glare, but her expression was devoid of any emotions.

"I—I am glad to see you here," Renn stammered, twisting the hem of his shirt.

"And also… I am sorry." Lania stared at him in silence for a long moment.

"Okay," was all she finally said. She turned her head and went right back to hugging Filki. It wasn't a grand forgiveness, but it was a start. The first step had been taken. Now, a little at a time, they could figure it out.

"Alright, let's get the hell out of here," I said, looking at the group. I received a collective, eager nod from everyone. I half-expected Lania to offer the exhausted kids a ride on Strange Toy's back. At start they looked at it with fear that soon grew into curiosity. But she didn't. She continued to completely ignore their existence, choosing only to chat quietly with Filki and me as we walked, while Strange Toy lumbered dutifully behind us like a loyal, heavily-armed dog. Soon enough, we reached the end.

The wall that Lania had previously collapsed.

"How are we getting past this?" Renn asked, looking up at the impassable pile of rubble.

"Jiji, smash through it," Lania commanded without missing a beat. Strange Toy took a heavy step forward, raising a massive, reinforced arm, preparing to obliterate the blockage into dust.

"Wait, stop!" I shouted. Strange Toy's arm halted mid-swing, the momentum kicking up a breeze that ruffled my hair.

"What?" Lania asked, frowning.

"There's someone on the other side." Since the fight with Aram, I had been keeping Shadowstride active passively on a very low output. I wasn't using it to teleport, but rather to sense the shadows around me, acting like a makeshift radar for hidden enemies. When I extended that sense through the cracks in the rubble, I felt a shadow stretching across the floor on the other side. Someone was lying on the ground, entirely motionless.