Chapter 266-7: The Chittering Swarm (Patreon)

Nick looked over his shoulder to scan the horizon, filled with a dark foreboding. To where a sliver of neon ruby was peeking past the rim of the crater containing the bog. It was at least three times the size of the regular moon, as if the satellite’s orbit had shifted to swing closer to the planet’s surface.

He supposed that it could be another moon altogether or that some manner of magic might be magnifying its image. His understanding of the laws of physics had been rendered obsolete the moment that the System had entered his life.

Either way, the sight filled him with an instinctual dread. An apprehension beyond that roused by the awakening of the swarm. A sense of otherness, of consummate wrongness, that he had never known before. He had a sense that whatever was happening, the cause was up there, and what was happening down on Drezen was merely a symptom. A magical malady on a global scale.

But Nick had no time to ponder the significance of the blood moon or the chittering swarm right now. No time to do anything other than sprint madly for his life, heading for the doorway beckoning to him another hundred feet ahead.

Moving faster than he ever had before, for just a moment longer, he thought that he was going to make it. That he would gain the safety of the walls before the moonlight struck him, rousing the swarm in its wake. But that was not what fate had in store.

Because that was the moment when the bloodlight broke over the hilltop and Nick’s true ordeal began. The instant that the sanguine moonlight touched bare soil the chittering began. A gnawing, gnashing, shrieking cacophony. A predatory dirge, growing louder by the heartbeat as the creatures burrowed up through the ground at breakneck speed.

He could feel the ground rumbling below his boots, size up wailing like a banshee that danger was no longer on the way. It had arrived. A threat on a scale that left Nick with absolutely no chance of surviving if he was caught out in the open when the swarm emerged.

Eighty feet to go… sixty. His legs throbbed and his lungs burned within his chest. By now, he was running on the dregs of his stamina and only sheer determination let him keep placing one battered foot in front of the other.

Forty feet. When he glanced at the ground, he could see the earth sinking in several places, as whatever was coming breached the last few feet of topsoil between themselves and the surface. He had to get inside before that happened, then hide and pray it couldn’t find him.

At thirty feet to go, he realized that he had a problem. He had been hoping that the door was ajar, but the entrance to the building was shut tight. Nick suspected that if it had remained closed for so long, the door must be thick, was likely barred, and potentially barricaded as well.

Even if it was locked but not barred, running straight into the door at maximum speed seemed like a bad idea. Surrounded by the imminently arriving swarm, he couldn’t afford to slow down either.

Nick’s instincts were certain that he was dead if the chittering horrors caught him. It was as simple as that.

Twenty-five feet. The urge to panic rose within his gut, a churning mass of bile and apprehension. The knowledge that his next action would likely determine if he survived the night or was eaten alive.

Instead of giving into his fear, he entered a state of total concentration. A cold, clear reason born out of need that he had experienced several times before. A state that he had begun to think of as arctic clarity.

At twenty feet until impact, he began looking for another point of entrance. The obvious choice was the great stained-glass window, reflecting the gore-smeared light of the rising moon. Simply crashing through the thick panes of glass was an option of last resort. Nick would do it if he had no other choice, but the noise would likely draw fatal attention from the chittering swarm, defeating the purpose of hiding within the walls.

Those are all separate panels held in place by metal rods and brackets. Breaking through one shouldn’t bring down the rest. But there might be a better option. What are the odds that not a single piece of glass has broken over the years that this place has been abandoned?

With fifteen feet to go, the stone wall was looming large. In the periphery of his vision, he could see dirt flying out of the ground and soaring into the air. Whatever was coming was breaching the soil, and it was doing it now. Nick observed these facts and then cast them aside. Every scrap of his concentration was devoted to scanning the individual panels, surveying the first half of the window in the blink of an eye.

Just as Nick was deciding that he would have to break through the middle after all, he found what he was looking for. A square panel of glass that had been knocked out of its brackets, leaving only shattered remnants hanging from the corners.

The cleared space was a few inches wider than his shoulders and pack, barely enough space to squeeze through. Complicating his entrance, the opening was a good ten feet off the ground and at a tricky angle to boot.

But Nick didn’t hesitate. He knew that this was his last chance of living to see the sunrise. That it was time to go all in and pray that his hand would win.

Betting his future on the growth he had undergone since the System had arrived, he leaned on every point of strength and dexterity he had accumulated. As his boot passed the ten-foot mark, he poured his final dregs of stamina into his legs, took aim, and then leapt for everything he was worth.

Faster than thought, Nick sprang, soaring through the air hands first, like a diver at the start of a plunge. His life hanging in the balance, bathed in the fell light of the blood moon, Nick pulled his shoulders closer together, making his body as compact as he could.

Ahead, the great glass wall was approaching at blinding speed. Behind, a pair of eldritch horrors were emerging from the deep earth, eager to begin their hunt.

Five feet until impact. Nick’s prayers rose to meet the crisp night air, certain that the next sensation he would experience would be his body smashing through the vast plates of glass.

Although he wanted nothing more than to watch his destiny approach, the wind resistance caused him to blink. Fighting down the urge to yell, Nick felt a line of pain erupt along the tip of one thumb.

He opened his eyes just before the world turned black. He flew through the gap with millimeters to spare and soared into the building, falling toward whatever was waiting for him on the far side.

He only had a heartbeat to take it all in. But in that state of frozen focus, he was able to process what he was seeing much faster than he normally could. At his best guess, this building was some manner of church after all. There was an altar standing on a raised dais on the far end of the enclosure. Rows of decaying pews lined the center, slowly being eaten away by bugs and mildew.

But none of that mattered now. All that mattered was landing without breaking his neck or making a racket. Judging his trajectory, Nick tried to determine where he was going to land, and what he needed to do in the final second before he hit the ground.

While the interior of the building was littered with rotting furniture, the floor below his body was relatively clear, the ground revealed by the light of the blood moon before it was obscured by his shadow.

Half a heartbeat later, his state of intense concentration dissipated. Fortunately, Nick didn’t need it for what came next. He already knew what he needed to do. Judging the distance and angle of approach as best he could, he tucked in one shoulder while covering his head with his hands to protect his skull.

A bare second later, Nick hit the ground hard, landing between a row of pews instead of crashing into their bulk. His preparations allowed him to roll with his momentum, lessening the shock to his flesh and bones… until he collided with a pillar fifteen feet of tumbling head-over-heels later.

There was an incredible impact. He felt a surge of pain, but not nearly as much as he had expected considering the circumstances. Better still, he had managed to break his impetus on stone instead of wood, muffling the sound of the impact.

Nick was stunned and badly bruised. He had knocked the wind out of himself, but thanks to his impressive dexterity and heavy investment into toughness, nothing seemed to be ruptured or broken. He lay there, breathing as quietly as he could, palpating his injuries while recovering from the fall.

After turning his head and sticking his hand into a spreading beam of moonlight, Nick learned that the pain in his thumb was from a fragment of glass catching his flesh as he fell through. It seemed that his gamble had paid off in the end, now it was time to find out if it would be enough to save him.

The dislodged shard fell to the floor a heartbeat later with a faint, musical tinkle.