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“Thanks for the free food, Neph. Hope you didn’t mind me staying the night,” Lady Galatea said when she emerged from the fatty folds of her giant half-brother’s corpse, which still loomed over the ruined, ashen landscape.Her mouth was stained with rotten meat, and her stomach was more than full of the worms and grubs that had hatched within his cold and lifeless body. She had hesitated on the grubs at first, but she needed the protein if she was going to continue her hunt.
“See ya later, alligator,” she said, patting Neph’s side with a clawed hand. “I’ll tell you all about my adventures next time, okay?”
The corpse made no response.
“Gosh!” Lady Galatea exclaimed, her mouth formed into a perfect ‘O’ shape. “I’m sounding like Sylvester now, aren’t I? Oh well…”
She turned to leave him to his rest when her head snapped towards a deep and low groan, one which was loud enough to echo through the landscape.
“One of King Adam’s warbeasts,” Lady Galatea figured. “A suitable target for today’s hunt. Don’t you think, Neph?”
She cupped her hands and mimicked the groan as loudly as she could. The response came a few seconds later, causing the manic grin on her face to grow with intensity.
“A warbeast in rut!” She chirped at Neph. “Now, this one is going to be interesting.”
She spring-boarded off of Neph’s body to land in a thick pile of ash, taking off in the direction of the warbeast. It took less than a few minutes of sprinting at full speed to make it to the far edge of the peninsula where the royal warbeast lay.
And what a beauty she was. Her experience as a child had only been with the warbeasts which could be produced in the Crown States’ academies. Most warbeasts topped out at around fifty feet tall, and their durability and combat prowess—even compared with a low-ranked noble like the Baron—left much to be desired.
The Isle’s Academies, on the other paw, produced warbeasts that could chew through Radham’s warbeasts like tissue paper, especially when they were created within the Royal Court in Cair Lundem. This work of art was approximately seventy feet long, a many-segmented torso, and dozens of pairs of short legs, which she used to propel herself through the landscape like a centipede.
“Hey, big girl!” She cried piercingly to get the warbeast’s attention, saliva already dribbling down the right side of her mouth. “You wanna dance?”
The warbeast reared her head towards—or, more accurately, the three-lobed top of its body from which sprouted antennae as wide as tree trunks. One of its many protrusible jaws, filled with rows upon rows of sharpened human teeth, fell forward, and it let forth a ‘SCRAAAH!’
The noblewoman licked her lips hungrily.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Galatea said, before launching herself at the centipede-beast. She tore into one of its legs, nails clinking off the hardened skin before eventually finding purchase.
One of the jaws suddenly emerged from the armored body to snap at the wrist holding the leg.
“Nuh-uh. No smooching on the first date.”
She grabbed the jaw with the other hand and yanked, pulling it clean out of the warbeast’s torso. Acid gushed from the wound, enough to drown and predigest any normal creature in an instant—
But Lady Galatea was not a normal creature by any stretch of the imagination. The liquid did little to loosen her grasp on the creature’s leg, and even as it tried to desperately shake her off, she was able to hold on tight. In one fluid motion, the noblewoman used the handhold that she had pulled herself up and onto the warbeast’s segmented torso.
To her delight, it was filled with more of those delightful protrusible jaws, gnashing and biting at anything which dared to come near.
“You wouldn’t mind if I gota little handsy, would you?”
Lady Galatea didn’t wait for an answer. One by one, she started pulling the jaws free from the warbeast’s flesh. Great volcanic bursts of acidic liquid rained all around her, filling the air with a fine black mist.
“Is that all you can do, love?” Lady Galatea asked, curious. The liquid had finally begun to corrode her hair and nibbled at the edge of her scalp—but none of it was dangerous at all to a being of her strength.
The warbeast continued to writhe and wriggle underneath her feet. She sighed.
“What a disappointment," Lady Galatea whined, stomping on the beast’s back with her boot. “I was certain this hunt would be a good one too. Way too easy.”
Too easy indeed. Something was wrong, like a bitter aftertaste in a normally sugar-sweet snack. She eyed the creature’s head wearily, where the antennae still thrashed randomly this way and that, and approached with her claws out.
She hacked one of the antennae off its head.
Nothing.
She pulled herself down at one of its honeycomb eyes, hundreds of black pupil-dots dancing within the white sclera.
“What are you hiding, girl?”
Lady Galatea didn’t have to wait to find out. Panic filled her gut as she realized her mistake all too quickly. The dots inside were not pupils at all, but hidden teeth. The eye unfolded to reveal the jaws, which jumped out and seized her by the chest, pulling her inside.
Lady Galatea attempted to kick her way out of the eye, but that same acidic liquid surrounded her and filled the chambers of her lungs. She didn’t need the lungs to breathe, necessarily—she could do it through her skin. But the liquid had begun to erode the pores as well, leaving her helpless and trapped inside.
“Well, well, well. Look who it is!” She heard a familiar voice say. It was muted by the vitreous gel, but she already had her suspicions.
Dun-can! She mouthed, slowly turning to look at the scientist who had been piloting the warbeast from the inside.
“Hel-en-a!” Duncan mouthed back mockingly. “You’ve been quite the naughty Lady, haven’t you? Hunting King Adam’s warbeasts! Without Lord Simon’s permission, no less. I’m sure that Lord Simon will have a thing or two to say about that once you’re back in Radham for the next dance.”
Not going back, she mouthed at him, feeling faint and shell-shocked at being tricked by Simon yet again. Her body needed movement like Lilian needed her science textbooks—without it, she would slowly lose her mind and sanity.
“Not an option, my good Lady!” Duncan said. “I’m bringing you back to Tynewater, and then on to Radham with an escort. Lord Simon’s orders, I’m afraid.”
Don’t care, Lady Galatea replied. Not going back.
“But Lord Asher is ever so worried about you,” the scientist replied, snappily. “He’s so desperate he hasn’t even been walking around in the nude. I may have even seen him wearing trousers the other day! Your brother misses you, Lady Helena.”
Lying! She screamed soundlessly within the vitreous chamber of the warbeast’s eye. She banged on the sclera-wall as hard as she could, but it didn’t budge in the slightest.
“I’m afraid it isn’t,” Duncan said. “Regardless, you and your brother will have much to talk about at our next dance. In the meantime, though, I have someone you might like to see…”
Something shifted out of the corner of her eye and she saw the flash of a black lab coat through the clear wall.
Ibbot.
Her pet loped over on all fours to Duncan, holding an oversized syringe about the size of a human arm between his teeth. He spat it out on the ground in front of the younger man, eagerly stamping his foot and woof!-ing.
“Good boy?” Duncan said, shivering as he picked up the spit-covered syringe. “You see, Ibbot here helped me develop something that will make the travel pass by much more smoothly.
He flashed a smile. “You wouldn’t want to be awake for this. Would you, my Lady?”
She shook her head furiously, but she knew it was useless. Both of them knew that she would break out of his trap eventually, and if she did—there was little chance that Duncan would make it out alive. It was the only sensible option, but it was also a chemical leash for her.
And Lady Galatea hated leashes.
As the syringe flooded the vitreous gel of the eye, Helen slowed her breathing down as much as she could—reserving her energy for one last push. Duncan’s eyes went wide as she hurled herself upwards, towards the thinnest part of the chambers’ walls, and heard a crack!
“Do you know how expensive this damn beast was to acquire!” Duncan called out, but she wasn’t listening. She hurled herself again at the chamber walls, and it cracked again.
Duncan pulled out a gun from his desk and had a hand on the eject button.
“Don’t get closer, Helena,” Duncan said. “Out of whatever love you still have towards me as a fellow Lamb, please don’t.”
But Galatea wasn’t listening, mad with blood lust. She hurled herself at the chamber’s wall for a final time, and felt her heart flutter in her chest when it popped!
She tumbled to the floor, and felt something new fall onto her.
Emmett. The giant boy had been hiding behind the desk, and now had his entire weight on her. She jabbed one of her claws into his chest, but it did little to stop him from pinning her to the ground.
A girl-shaped spider entered her peripheral vision.
“Lady Margaret should be closing in on Tynewater now,” Lara said, quietly. “We should hurry this up before…”
“Yeah,” Duncan sighed. “Emmett, can you be a dear and get her mouth, please.”
“He promised,” Lady Galatea coughed out. “Never to do this again.”
The spider girl shifted uncomfortably. “Lord Simon is many things. A promise-keeper isn’t one of them.“
With a large mitten hand, Emmett wrenched her lips open, so hard that her jaw almost felt like it would pop out of her skull. All she could do as the syringe was inserted inside was thrash and wriggle like a centipede, before dreaming that she had become nothing more than a statue to be admired—white, marble, perfect.