That Which Writhes

"Dammit," Jonathan swore, for not the first time that night. "I keep thinking I'm stepping somewhere... wrong."

 

"I hear ya," Charlotte nodded, climbing up the sideways building that jutted into the stormy sky. She offered a hand and helped her companion up after her. Thankfully she had made quick work of the Spear Guards who had been on the wall (floor? whatever) with Gale Force, a homing wind spell. Trying to avoid the long, thin blades while attempting the climb would only make it more of a struggle. And then there were the rings of fire...

 

Either gravity was wrong, or the two hunters were. Charlotte didn't like that she couldn't tell who was right.

 

"I can't tell if this place has rules to it or not," she muttered, absentmindedly. "I mean, the general shape is spherical, but we aren't acting like we're on a sphere. But everything else is. But I guess that's surrealism for you."

 

"...Do you think there's something in the center of it?" Jonathan replied, which startled her a bit, as she was mostly talking to herself. "We've been going in circles for what seems like hours."

 

"Maybe...? The center of gravity, perhaps."

 

"The sooner we get outta here, the better. Those clowns give me the heebie jeebies."

 

Charlotte snorted. "I guess some things never change. I remember that rodeo, when you were ten. You cried and cried, and your pa-"

 

He shot her a glare, very much a please-don't-talk-about-this sort of glare.

 

"Sorry," the witch corrected herself. It was hard to avoid bringing up the matter of Jonathan's father. How many childhood memories had the two friends shared? Charlotte found some comfort in remembering, whereas Jonathan tried to avoid thinking about his father as much as possible. Even after Wind (no, Eric- Charlotte had no idea how she hadn't recognized the ghost all this time) had revealed the true nature of John's death, it had not made easy his heart.

 

Maybe that memory would always be complicated.

 

Eventually, after some struggle, they found themselves at the top of the circus tent, and there was a tunnel leading downwards into the depths of the Nation of Fools.

 

"Either that's our way to the center or I'll eat my boots," Jonathan said, decidedly, though Charlotte's stomach lurched at the distant snicker-snack slicing of swinging axeblades. She had had quite enough of those.

 

"Come on, you've just gotta hoist yourself down. There's plenty of places to sit and wait for an opening," Jonathan said, peering down. "It's not just a straight fall."

 

"Who designed this place?!" Charlotte muttered in exasperation.

 

"Surrealist vampires," Jonathan rolled his eyes.

 

Charlotte hated it here, and she suspected Jonathan did as well. Not that there were many places to like, be they in the castle or the portrait-realms, but this one was especially unpleasant.

 

Neither of them said it aloud, but they both thought it: it looked like the aftermath of a bomb. They knew what this looked like, and so would their fathers, had they been there.

 

Perhaps the title of this portrait was relevant to the meaning, the witch pondered. But she was silent as she descended the corridor of swinging blades.

 

The center was a large, open room comprised of splintered wood and rubble and brick, like an encasing shell, each part separate but floating besides each other to make a larger whole. Like a membrane of destruction, the center of gravity.

 

And at the center of gravity lay a tiny golden gear, the perfect size to open up the clockwork door in the Tower of Death.

 

"Oh. Nice," Charlotte pointed out.

 

But getting the cog would, clearly, not be as easy as it should be, Charlotte thought, now that they were trapped in that center chamber. And then there were the logistics of taking a gear that only existed within a portrait into the real world- was the castle real? Were the twisting halls of Chaos merely an illusion too? She put the thought out of her mind, though. All the armors and weapons and yummy cakes they had found prior had no issues transitioning between realms, so maybe it wasn’t worth trying to puzzle out.

 

She liked to ponder the logistics of it all, though, not like Jonathan. He was a boy who didn’t care how he got from Point A to Point B, as long as he got there fast and didn't have to think too hard about it. He was an idiot at times, but she had only respect for her dear childhood friend.

 

“Hey, I got it,” Jonathan said, waving the gear around in the air with a grin. “Now to exit and-”

 

No, it wouldn’t be that easy.

 

“Look, the doors above us are locked,” Charlotte pointed out.

 

“Damn, are we trapped here?” He looked out upon the suspended scene of destruction where the two companions were perched on floating driftwood that had arranged itself into some semblance of a square-shaped room. "Maybe this was a bad idea."

 

“No, I think it’s like in the other portraits. We were locked in with similar doors when the Dullahan attacked us, and Astarte... Besides, it’s not like we can just leave. Destroying the vital monster within is the key to destroying the magical power it has bound,” Charlotte recited.

 

“...But I don’t see one,” Jonathan frowned. His assessment was quickly proven wrong, though, as something- someone?- crawled up onto a platform besides them with a wordless groan.

 

It was a featureless, alabaster white corpse, with limbs a bit too long and no face with which to meet their puzzled, horrified eyes. Somehow, without a mouth, it was laughing and babbling.

 

“...Jonathan?” Charlotte tugged on the sleeve of his longcoat. His own eyes were wide as he watched the corpse shamble towards them. A quick strike from his shortsword left blood spewing from the corpse’s chest in a spout, like it was high-pressurized. The thing collapsed in front of them, still lifeless but somehow moreso.

 

“That can’t be it.” He frowned.

 

“I don’t think that was... Look. The doors,” Charlotte pointed upwards. "Still locked."

 

“You look!” Jonathan pulled her to look into the vast expanse of chaotic sky that shone through the floating rubble. There was something round, hovering in the distance. Round... and big. And it was laughing, like the all-too-human corpse that had heralded its arrival. Like a massive hive, thousands of mocking, agonized voices howled and laughed.

 

It approached through the empty expanse of white fog that cleared around it. It was getting closer, having detected its next prey, and the feeble walls of their little cage came crashing down to welcome it inside. Charlotte had half a mind to just jump out and make an escape, but somehow falling into the void seemed terribly lethal even in a place without normal gravity, suspended in time. She wouldn’t risk it. Besides, this was the monster- the source and convergence on the magical seal of this portrait. Battling it was part of the job description.

 

As much as she would hate it.

 

She read about these things, in one of her many monster-manuals, perhaps when she had been a bit too young, considering the nightmares that followed. Always a bookish girl, she had snuck the grimoires into her bed back home to read while it was dark with her first traces of light magic to illuminate.

 

The monster itself looked comical. Just a ball of corpses. No, it was being compelled to join that was the real terror that kept her up at night back then. It was something like cordyceps. She had read about that, too.

 

The two friends wasted no time leaping into action despite their disgust. Her Tome of Arms, a tamed book-monster that inhabited cursed libraries, was just as effective at unleashing blades from its pages as any of Jonathan’s more typical weapons. But the flood of corpses seemed nearly endless.

 

“Help me out here! Is it bodies all the way down, or is there a core?” Jonathan asked, frantically. "You're the expert here!"

 

Charlotte shook herself from her sudden shellshock. “It’s a parasite at the center. The bodies are like... You know how hermit crabs find random other shells to house themselves rather than building ones themselves? It’s like that. It poisons the mind of victims like a sickness, until they’re compelled to join the horde. They’re like a shield. The bodies fall off when it’s done feeding on them, and it looks for more. The parasite is the real thing. It’s called a granfalloon.”

 

“What a whimsical name,” Jonathan rolled his eyes, stabbing over and over again as more bodies were shed from the seemingly endless encasement. “For such a gross thing.”

 

“Save it for later,” she retorted. She thought to use Gale Force again, as it had been serving her well since the first portrait. She skipped across the floor of the room, trying to focus simultaneously on keeping her distance and not tripping and falling.

 

She chanted the incantation under her breath, and the emerald swallows burst forth from her tome's pages and tore through the layers of nameless bodies. Jonathan had switched from his sword to a standard steel whip, probably for the extra range.

 

It was hard to keep focus on casting when her mana was eunning low and the damn thing kept screaming. In the cacophony, she covered her ears.

 

"You okay, Charl?" Jonathan paused to ask her as more and more corpses shed from the massive parasite. They were crawling, grabbing at him. He struck with his fists, wrapped in the chain of his whip, and one by one the surrounding bodies burst into blood and flailed to the ground.

 

"Hold on, I'm just-"

 

The screaming, once formless, was taking shape.

 

JOIN. JOIN. JOIN. THE FINAL ACT. AT THE WONDERFUL BIG TOP. JOIN.

 

"Agh!" She screamed, blocking her ears.

 

"What is it?!"

 

"You can't hear it?"

 

"Hear what?"

 

CHARLOTTE. JOIN. WE LIKE YOU.

 

The ringing in her ears was becoming deafening and it was like everything was growing dim around her. Her hands dropped to her side again.

 

WALK FORWARD. CHARLOTTE. JOIN.

 

It was like a voice that spoke only in her head, only for her. She stepped forward.

 

JOIN. THE CIRCUS.

 

The ringing abruptly went silent as Jonathan grabbed her forearm.

 

"Get out of her head, you insect!" he growled, and yet another strike of the chain whip made the final layer of bodies shed from the tentacled thing inside, slumping over in death once more.

 

Charlotte shook her head, still disoriented from that old nightmare. Would she have become featureless and full of ceaseless pain like those shambling bodies? She didn't have time to think further as the tentacles of the granfalloon opened up in flower-buds that whirled and spat seemingly endless spouts of acid.

 

"Without its shell, it's pretty much defenseless," Charlotte said, once the barrage had paused.

 

"You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?"

 

"We'll finish it with a Dual Crush," she replied, decidedly, her brow furrowed. She leapt to Jonathan's side and clasped his hand.

 

"Volcano!" they yelled in unison, and it was as if Vesuvius was birthed from their linked hands. The granfalloon squealed in pain, the raw red flesh burnt and sizzling.

 

It wasn't all that complicated after that. It writhed, and perished. The parasite, exterminated.

 

And at the center of the sea of bodies they stood, weary but victorious. Death surrounded them on all sides. Charlotte took the pulsating orb that signified the magical core of the painting, and crushed it in her hands.

 

"It's... It's over," Jonathan laughed nervously, though his eyes darted over the sea of collapsed bodies as though watching for if any of them had moved.

 

"Without the granfalloon they're harmless," Charlotte replied, trying to wring the large bloodstains from her skirt. "Look, the doors are open."

 

"Let's get out of here," Jonathan said with a weary sigh.

 

When they left the portrait, they both slumped over on the wall where the portrait hung, exhausted. The moon outside hovered in the same spot it had been when they entered. It was as if no time passed while they travelled the portraiture.

 

"That was awful. I'm so dizzy."

 

"You're telling me... I hated that thing. I hated that whole place."

 

"Me too," Charlotte admitted. But who wouldn't? "That voice in my head was the scariest thing I've ever experienced. But a proper lady shouldn't be scared, should she?"

 

"Who wouldn't be?" He echoed her own thoughts. "That's not childish, it nearly killed you."

 

"Right," she nodded.

 

"Hey, Charl, I was scared too. And upset. It sucked. The worst."

 

He paused, pain roiling in his eyes like a stormy sea.

 

"I guess what I'm saying is... It looked like war. All the pictures in the paper and all the horrors my pa described from the trenches. All the death, the bodies. Mindlessly marching into violence to serve a corrupt core that leads. It's war. You think Brauner painted the portrait because of that...? His daughters, and all... That was during the Great War, or so Eric said." Jonathan elaborated, finally. "Destruction captured in a frame."

 

The war to end all wars, that didn't end anything at all.

 

"Gee whilickers, that's pretty insightful by your standards," Charlotte’s edge returned to her voice. "I didn't take you for an art critic."

 

"I'm trying to comfort you, you dolt-"

 

"Jonathan."

 

Silence.

 

"You know, that day at the rodeo back then? I had a fun time, and you did too, before the clown showed up. We shared a funnel cake and tried the Ferris wheel."

 

"...I'll be honest, I can barely remember that now," he replied.

 

"Your dad bought you extra cotton candy when he saw you were upset and brought you home early in his Oldsmobile. I don't know what I'm getting at. Just wistful, I guess. I miss him. He cared about you, you know?"

 

"He cared a lot. Maybe too much. Got him killed in the end," he grumbled.

 

"I guess that's just what being a hunter is like."

 

"I guess so. We should go open that door, huh?"

 

"Drink a potion, first," Charlotte rummaged through her bag. "You look worse for wear."

 

"You too, Charl."

 

They clinked the glass blue bottles together in a makeshift toast.

 

The night went on.