12:01 - 29 December – Demon’s Lair Beneath the Ruined City
The woman nods to Falcon with a steely resolve and sneaks along the cavern wall toward her people. She moves without hesitation, ignoring the slumbering beast as if it didn’t exist. She is either extraordinarily courageous or completely mad.
Shepard, oblivious to his team’s tactical conversation, closes on the demon, his mind clouded with rage until, seemingly in a blink, he’s next to the foul monster. The sulphuric stench burns his nostrils and rakes his lungs even worse than the ash falling in the world above. The grub-like beast towers over the man; each inhaling breath expands its body, scraping against the ceiling. He can’t see the end of the demon as its body extends down the cavern. The creature’s unworldliness and ugliness overwhelm him with rage, and he raises a dagger overhead.
Marconi and Falcon realize they are alone at the tunnel entrance. They pick out the woman along the wall, moving silently, and Shepard, a speck next to the whale-sized larva beast. They might have laughed at the ridiculousness of the sight if it wasn’t terrifying. They watch in shock as Shepard raises a weird-looking dagger.
Rex, at a defensive position at the tunnel’s edge, examines the lifeform at the cavern’s center.
<-- Lifeform Identification: Unknown. Threat Status: Unknown. -- >
Rex identifies Shepard raising his dagger to attack the demon.
< -- Correction. Unknown Lifeform Threat Status: Enemy Combatant. -- >
< -- Alert: Team member Shepard Status Update: Imminent Danger. -- >
A silent beam of focused light bursts from Rex’s head lasers and sears across the demon’s flabby side.
The beast jerks awake in pain, uncoils, and turns to the cavern’s entrance. A fat, gigantic, baby-like face extrudes from the tip of the worm that faces the tunnel. Window-sized milky eyes roll out from the back of its skull, and each pupil searches wildly for a source of the attack. Its fat, putrid lips part, and its jaw drops open into an unnaturally wide grin as big as barn doors. Hundreds of rows of shark-like teeth glisten in milky goo saliva as the back of the fleshy throat expands into a pink bowel-like tunnel. A baby-like wail erupts from the creature in a percussive wall of noise that bounces off the cavern’s walls. Each milky-white pupil snaps to focus on Falcon.
Marconi realizes the beast must use some form of echo location to identify its surroundings.
Shepard plunges his dagger into the demon’s side, slicing through the thick hide and tears a spewing wound that covers him in a viscous substance. The demon flinches but stays focused on the figure at the tunnel entrance.
Hundreds of gigantic baby-like arms unfold from every side of the pudgy demon’s body—each finger of every baby hand clatters with a foot-long blackened claw. In bizarre unison, the hundreds of arms lift the creature like a massive whale-sized centipede, and it rushes to the tunnel entrance with fantastic speed.
Marconi casts a spell that lifts him from the ground. Falcon stares in dumb-founded horror as the gigantic baby face of terror rushes directly at him.
Rex fires another round of laser beams at the oncoming demon, burning lines of scorched flesh along its body.
In a haze of rage, Shepard plunges his dagger again into the fat beast as it lunges past him.
In just a second, the massive demon reaches the team at the entrance, dislocates its jaw into an impossibly wide trap, and pounces at all three figures. Marconi and Falcon leap away from the gruesome death hole, barely escaping as the jaws clamp shut around the combat dog, swallowing the hound.
With a swift jerk, the demon larva pivots towards the remaining team members in a whip-lash motion, attacking them with hundreds of clawed hands. Shepard attempts to parry, but the gigantic baby hand slams against his magic shield. With cybernetic reflexes and years of combat experience, Falcon bounds away to safety, dodging aside. Still new to flying, Marconi takes a boulder-sized baby fist as a full-body blow that crashes against his shield.
Flashes of light blink from inside the larva’s body, and the centipede’s arms claw at the team, determined to eviscerate the fools hurting it. Shepard attempts to deflect the slashing claws with his dagger, but there are too many, and they slash against his shield. Marconi knows his shield will absorb the hit and focuses on firing his energy rifle along the beast’s back. Falcon, like a prized fighter, nimbly dodges around the claws. Shepard, enraged, fires his energy pistol, but the beast twists its bulk away at the last moment. The creature’s sudden movement ruins Marconi’s second energy blast and a long gouge burns across the cavern wall.
Falcon notices the creature is distracted and fires his rifle repeatedly into the demon’s pudgy flesh, slicing open wide chunks of pussing wounds. The demon might not be of this world, but Falcon knows how to hurt things.
As the demon wails in pain, several dim light flashes blink from within the larva’s belly.
