Page 218 of Light Leech

I’m Done With Tentacles

Everything in my vision changed. Warped. Distorted into reality.

A man stood before me, his mouth flayed open to reveal metallic tentacles that glowed with black light.

“Syla!” I screamed with enough force to tear my vocal cords. There was no physical ailment to cripple me, yet the agony of my family being murdered was enough to make me fall. I collapsed to my knees, looking up at the man approaching me. His tentacles were like those that had killed my family. If I had the will for justice, I would reach out to fight him, but their death was my failure. If not Naoma and Devóne, at least Syla. A hunger most vile had taken me away from one of the most beautiful beings in existence. If they had died, so should I. What reason was there to live?

A white tentacle wrapped around the man’s waist. I saw the end of the white line, realizing that it was no tentacle, but a serpent’s head.

I held onto the hope of that white light.

Someone else stepped before me, the serpent connected to her arm. She swung it like a whip and threw the tentacle-faced man into the wall, shattering a screen that advertised an antidepressant.

While the man struggled to move amidst the debris, the other person reached out her hand. Her skin was soft, pale, and the fingers familiar. Two rings on each hand and chromatic nails, they were the same that had held Syla. I looked up to see a much younger Naoma than the one who had been my wife.

“Get up!” she shouted, forcing me when I did not move of my own accord.

“How are–where are our kids?”

She furrowed her brow, a smile battling with confusion and a sense of duty. She opened her mouth to speak, but her eyes shot towards the moving abomination as it stood with a groan.

“Do you miss them?” he asked with a coarse voice, looking at me.

“Ignore him, Pet,” Naoma said, standing defiantly with the white serpent now coiled around her hand.

“Is that what he is? Your pet?” He laughed, brushing dust from his suit with his hands and tentacles. One shot at my wrist as I began to stand, then another at the other.

A pig snorted its laughter. A dark light, one purer than the abomination’s, covered my hands. Claws extended from them like rakes.

“Woof.” I ran at him, cutting off a tentacle with the swipe of my claw but as one fell, another grew. Severing it and the next few was easy, yet I felt the dark light drain from me with each cut. Pure dark light against this other light took its toll, adding to the emotional ache of my murdered family.

Multiple tentacles shot at me, many falling until they overwhelmed me and held my arms tight against my body. The dismal memories of my family flashed across my mind anew as the abomination stared into my eyes. His tentacles spread and I could see his tongue flick, ready to speak, just as Naoma’s white serpent dove into the whole of its mouth.

Cocksure eyes shifted to a frightened stare that lasted for a second. His gaze shot up, just as Naoma’s had. She cried out, not in pain, but in fury as the serpent continued to thread its way down his throat, expanding as it did so.

His eyes widened, his mouth dilated, his abdomen bloated. The serpent erupted out of his stomach, bursting out with an intestinal explosion in sync with the violent pop of his head and neck as the serpent expanded beyond his human capacity.

The serpent retreated and Naoma caught her breath, sweat dripping from her forehead.

I stepped towards her, ready to laugh in relief despite the grotesque display.

An eldrich roar pulled our attention back to the abomination. The human shell was loosely bound together with chunks of gore floating in the black cloud of light that held the body up.

I vomited, seeing the image of Syla’s corpse as a cognitive reflection of the being that lurched towards us. Blood continued to pour from the tears in his body with black seams of light keeping each appendage loosely in place. Black wings of light extended from his back. He flew at us, bloody arms outstretched and tentacles extending.

I could not fail. I had once, for Syla. Now was my chance at redemption.

I jumped to meet it in the air, latching onto it with black light claws that burrowed into its flesh. The tentacles wrapped my head and pressed me against its body, constricting their grip.

Naoma’s serpent bit the tentacles and freed me from its vice. I held onto its body with one claw, using the other to shred the light that bound its wounds. Black light burst with the blood from his lacerations. The serpent worked its way into the open cut and exited the other, shredding light with sparks of violet light. She screamed again, causing her serpent to glow with blinding white. I burned my energy and saw the black light of my claws act as hers.

The abomination screamed and expelled my body from it with a flash of black light.

I hit the wall, looking up in time to see Naoma’s unrelenting serpent devour the abomination’s head.

The light dispelled and the abomination became nothing more than a grizzly husk.

Naoma breathed out, first exhausted, then relieved, then she laughed.