"Close it off; this cave will be their grave." Of the six remaining guards, yes, among fifteen, nine had died. Then they closed the path. The sound of rock shifting in snow pierced through the wind. They had blocked the path, leaving them inside to deal with the centipede monster that waited in the dark.
Mo Fei’s eyes were locked into its hollow gaze. He took a step back. It didn’t attack yet; it stayed quiet like a predator. The bones rattled, each fragment of its spine clattering against another like a bag of marbles being shaken.
The open path covered by it.
"What do we do now...?" The air suffocated Mo Fei’s voice. He hated the fact that his voice cracked.
Elara stared down, her heart thumping. She wanted to run through the Centipede. Grig placed a heavy hand on her shoulder, his own face a mask of grim confusion.
"What now? We escaped guards, but..." His voice was slow, like self-doubting, struggling to accept his fate.
Han’s gaze only lay once on the worm. His finger traced the wall besides them as if he was trying to figure out something.
By now, it should have killed them the second they reached here, yet it was just watching them. Han’s eyes locked onto something. He saw a marking on a wall, a symbol that looked like veins creating a pentagon shape. Han’s hand touched it. The surface of the wall was... weird, smooth like a living organism. It was warm like a body.
"We... We aren’t in the cave." Han pressed his palm, and the surface yielded like a bruised fruit, his eyes wide in dawning fear.
"What do you mean we aren’t in a cave?" Grig barked, his voice too loud in the stifled silence. A few moments passed, and Han’s face was restless, almost as if he was collecting the dots, trying to figure out his facts.
Han spoke again; his palm moved away from the wall. "The stories in the town... about the Master’s secret church. ’The Cathedral of Flesh.’ Do you know?" He gestured at the suture worm, his face leaching of colour. "That is no guard. It’s a performer. This place... The Suture Worm won’t harm us. Which is the least concerning thing for what we had fallen into."
When those words hit their ears. Elara and Grig’s mouths were wide open, their faces showing the wariness. They must have known it.
"What do you mean!? We had fallen into the ’Cathedral of Flesh’. This should have been sealed, not opened."
Okay? But why the fuck was it more hopeless than a giant twelve-foot-tall Centipede, made of bones??
"Today was the date of the ’elders’ execution... Wasn’t it?" Elara’s words rang a bell; Han and Grig both remembered.
"Today is the date for the execution; that’s why it wasn’t sealed...and we jumped into it!"
Then Han continued, "Out of all the things we had to fall into the Cathedral of Flesh."
"What is that?!" Mo Fei urged for answer.
The ground beneath them trembled, shaking them. Before he could get the answer from Han, the ground ripped apart.
His feet stumbled on the edge. All of them moved away.
The hole was made of flesh. The illusion shattered like wet paper tore. The symbols were replaced by ribs. The grey rock melted into a glistening, deep crimson flesh. Veins surfaced like ropes beneath the skin. The ceiling arched into a vault of interlocked bones. The air grew thick with the suffocating smell of raw blood.
Bone Centipede, the Suture Worm, stirred and lifted its head upward, sensing the change. It lifted its anterior segment and unfurled itself like a whip. Its bones clattered like a death rattle, and it aligned itself with the now-pulsing grotesque walls.
"Look," Elara whispered, horror stripping her voice to a thread.
Mo Fei circled in an anti-clockwise manner, his thoughts snapping back to the past. The hollow blood tree! Yes, that was the same kind as a living organism... But it wasn’t ravenous; a living organism didn’t always mean predators.
"If there is only one way to escape, then why are we wasting our time deciding?" Mo Fei clenched his fist, pointing at the exit.
Grig, a man of physical strength, was desperate too. He stared down at his bruised hands, then clenched them.
Grig roared a raw, defiant sound and smashed his shoulder into the quivering wall of flesh... Once. Twice. The wall dented. It absorbed the blow, then pushed him back with a soft, sickening resilience.
"I can’t smash a wall!" Grig roared again, that time quietly.
The floor beneath him softened. A jagged rift opened beneath his boots, smelling like slaughtered human flesh that had decayed.
Elara’s breath hitched slightly when she noticed the exit was starting to turn into living flesh, closing slowly like a human mouth shutting down. Her finger dug deeper into her sleeve like she might tear herself apart. She reached out for the empty air.
"This isn’t real..." She muttered to herself.
"We are in a living ritual!" Mo Fei paused for a second. "Unless... you wish to live as a slave and follow those people." Why did he act like a saint? He just killed a few people. "If one of us doesn’t live, the other wouldn’t die out of despair." Mo Fei took a few steps forward.
Mo Fei turned towards the Suture Worm, but Han’s hand stopped him, tightening on Mo Fei’s shoulder, his voice a mix of gravel and emotional grit.
"This cave, a place that digests disobedience. This chamber is made for execution by the Overseer. He uses it for... refinements. The worm doesn’t kill you." He paused and looked at Mo Fei’s expression; then he continued. "The chamber does. It just guides the process. Which means..." Han said.
A place for execution wasn’t sounding well to begin with, and moreover, a fucking ’which means’. "Which means what?" Mo Fei braced himself for the answer.
"Which means that exit would not lead us out; we reach deeper, or perhaps towards the master himself." "The door will open when the Suture Worm has finished its work." Han paused again; his voice cracked in fear. He lifted his head towards the wall and pointed his finger there. "Look, it has formed. The execution had already begun."
Four hollow rooms came out of the walls. They were made of flesh.
The chamber of execution.
The hopeful light in Mo Fei’s eyes faltered for a moment. They had fallen into an inescapable situation, even if they managed to escape. They’d reach the Overseer. When he’d know Mo Fei’s identity, then he’d be long dead to question it.
Mo Fei glanced at the exit. It got sealed by a puckered seam of tissue. The only remaining features in the execution chamber were the four body-hollows, the Suture Worm, and them.
Mo Fei’s mind raced with terrible options:
Path One: The Quick Death. He could charge at the Worm. Force it to kill him. If he died there, he could escape easily... a one-way ticket to World Five. He would ascend, of course, but he would have to leave them here to be digested by this fleshy hell.
Path Two: The Unthinkable. Stay to fight a living ritual, and try to break that ritual. There were people he barely knew, likely dying anyway. Which one was better, leaving behind them or risking his life?
"If I prioritize my own freedom..." Staying here would mean death, maybe a true death.
Elara’s eyes were wide with animal terror, fixed on the closing walls. Grig’s eyes blazed with furious, helpless strength. Han’s held a weary, tragic acceptance. He’d seen too much to believe in miracles. Mo Fei would accept it too, and a miracle that could save him once wouldn’t be there for a lifetime.
I don’t want to risk my life, damn it.
"We’re not dead yet," Mo Fei said, his voice cutting through the moist, sighing sounds of the chamber. "We have to stay strong." Oh God, how could they stay strong in a living hell in the name of ’Ritual’ or ’Execution’?
Mo Fei tried to take a step forward, but he couldn’t. His boots glued on the sticky juices. He forced himself to take a step, and the ’floor’ began to secrete a viscous, numbing fluid. His shoe touched it, and it burned.
The acid...
Grig took steps back slowly from the substance. Elara panicked, stepping away and holding her cloth like a lifeline.
"There has to be some way to stop the execution ritual." Mo Fei grumbled.
"I don’t know, but if there is. It could be the Suture Worm," Han stated with disappointment towards his own knowledge.
Mo Fei saw the threads again, connecting to its base. He pointed a trembling finger at where its bony fragments met the living wall. He closed his eyes, knowing what could have happened if he kept using those eyes. "There. We can either stop it or worsen it."
Grig stared at the Suture Worm’s tall figure, unfurling like a whip, and then at his hands. "Break it with what? Bones with bones?" Grig gritted his teeth.
"Do whatever we can," Elara whispered, her eyes fixed on the four slowly deepening body-shaped hollow spaces in the wall. "It wants us to be devoured."
The struggle was part of that ritual. Fear it, fear everything.
Mo Fei’s gaze met Han’s. The elderly man gave a grim, almost imperceptible nod. There was no way out. Only through.
He tried using the eyes again, but he felt a sharp pain on the back of his head. He couldn’t see the spirit thread.
"But how?" Elara breathed, nails digging into her arms.
"The ritual has a weak point." Yes, it was the focal point, the needle directing the source of its soul. "I guess something must be behind that blanket." He wasn’t sure
He glanced at Han. "The stories. Did they say how it ends? The execution?"
Han’s brow furrowed slightly upward, raking through memory. "The Suture Worm... When the ritual ends. It screams a first and final reaction. Then bodies are gone. Absorbed."
A scream of victory? "I have a plan..."
Grig looked at Mo Fei in hope. "What?"
"Break its neck."
"I beg your pardon?"
"..."
Grig stared at the monolithic bone creature. "With what? Prayers?"
"With a fight, of course." He said the idea was both insane and a last resort. Yes, obviously only a foolish person would volunteer. "It wants fear, so suppress it." Mo Fei swept his gaze over them.
"Han, we both will try to catch it. Grig, you have got those muscles; breaking it will be your responsibility... Elara." He paused, considering. "Uh, well, you just stay strong."
Their eyes all fixated on Mo Fei with a judging expression, as if he was mad... maybe slightly.
"Why do you think this would work on that thing?" Han asked quietly.
The floor beneath them secreted a clear, viscous fluid. The acid kept rising slowly. The hollows in the wall deepened, ready to receive them.
The Suture Worm’s body began to vibrate, a low hum that made their teeth ache. The ritual was reaching its absolute.
"I’m really hard to digest," The scent of decaying bones flared up further.
"Now!" Mo Fei yelled, leaving no fear but command. "We won’t die!"