There was darkness.
And silence.
Then, slowly, there came sound.
The heavy sound of breathing. With every breath, the light grew more and more firm. Ruddy red, it painted the rises and valleys of a poorly brushed set of gums, ruddy red and inflamed meat. Bone spurs jutted from where teeth would be, curving inwards like talons, while the walls themselves were ribbed and flexed with slow, steady motion. The breathing grew deeper, steadier, as the red light finished painting out the exits - sphincter shapes, esophagus passageways, and the gleaming white of the eyes. All the eyes.
But what drew Minerva's attention most was the dead man. He wasn't the Ars Magicka official who had been dragged away, begging for death. He was dressed in an unfamiliar suit and tunic with a disturbingly jaunty cap set atop his desiccated, withered brow. Dark pits that had been eyes looked right at her. He was suspended from the wall by meat - bubbling growths that wrapped around grayish wrists, bone spurs digging into his once nice clothing, boots left dangling off the fleshy ground.
Minerva lowered her submachine gun, then turned to Kat. "So," she said, quietly. "At least...whoever this is has turned on the-"
Kat screamed, sprang backwards, and snapped her MP-18 up. Minerva jerked her head around and snapped her own submachine gun to cover the dead man. Because the dead man had lifted his head and was looking at the small shimmering shield of magic.
"Ah," the man said, his voice distinctly Midland accented. "You...are some very unfortunate people...."
Minerva lowered her gun as Harry stepped over to stand by the shimmering wall. He placed his palm against the shield, craning his head as he peered out at the seemingly dead man. "Who are you?" he asked.
"Secret, that," the man said, chuckling. "The Ministry would have my head if they knew...I was spilling secrets to Magisters. Of course, you all look like you're not quite...on time." He cocked his head. "Those guns. Those are German? MP-38s?"
Kat frowned. "38s?"
"Definitely early," the man whispered, then sagged his head to the side. "Welcome. You're in the belly of a very nasty beast."
"What is it?" Minerva asked. "And how do we get out?"
"To answer the pertinent question first: You don't," the Ministry Man said, chuckling quietly. "First. It hurts you. Then it goes on hurting you. And then you learn the horrible, horrible truth." His black-pit eyes glittered. "Do you want to know the truth, Magister?"
Minerva gulped.
"It keeps on hurting you," the Ministry Man said, his voice growing edged, tight, as if his vocal cords were being dragged along razor blades. "Heh. Hah! They said it goes on forever. But it really does go on. And on and on and on." His eyes closed and he leaned his head back, laughing to himself - the laughter of someone who had no choice but to laugh. Minerva turned around to face the others.
Melissa was frowning. "Wherever we are...whatever we're in...I don't particularly want to learn what it is," she said.
"So, you have no idea?" Minerva asked.
"Not a clue," Melissa said, her cat's tail twitching with agitation.
The Ministry Man laughed. "Hah! Magisters at a loss. I...auh! Auh!" He started to scream. Minerva swung around and saw that the bone-spur was shifting inside of his chest. She lowered the weapon, frowning.
"Okay," she said. "We break this down into steps. Step one? We...we..." She snapped her fingers. "Gina!" She turned back around as the man's screams faded into whimpers and sobs. She knelt down and smiled at Gina, who was looking at her gamely, despite her face gone ashen and her eyes sunken, full of pain. The grayness that had spread from the glancing curse-hit that had slashed her forearm was now all over her arm, up to where her sleeve covered her.
"Oh Gina," Minerva whispered.
"Don't you mind me, love!" Gina said. "I'm right chipper."
Minerva gently drew Gina's hand away from her arm. "Let me-"
The arm, which Gina had been clinging too, snapped off at the shoulder and hit the floor like a porcelain doll. It shattered into gray dust. Gina clenched her teeth, her eyes closing. "S'fine! It's fine!" She exclaimed, while Kat immediately rolled the sleeve up, revealing the gray dusty stump was, fortunately, not bleeding. Melissa got to work, pressing her wand to the wound and snarling healing spells so fierce and fast that her wandtip glowed. Gina sagged against Minerva, her voice somewhat loopy.
"Oh that's better," she said. "Mmm, i'll just get a new one."
Her eyes closed and she lapsed into unconsciousness.
"Will she be okay?" Minerva asked, looking at Melissa, who drew her smoking wand from Gina's shoulder.
"She'll never have an arm again. But she'll live."
"Rather unfortunate, that!" The Ministry Man shouted at them, his voice raving, desperate. "Rather! Unfortunate, I would say!"
Minerva stood. Her face was set. "All right," she said, then turned to face the cowering Ars Magicka officers who had made it into the shell. They were both pressed into the corner as far from the rest of them as they could manage. She swung her MP-18 around, aiming it roughly in their direction. "Where the hell are we?"
"I-I don't know!" one of them exclaimed. "This is further in the astral than we've ever traveled - we don't even recognize the structure here."
"We just wished to cast the damn Nacht!" the other said, glaring at her. "To stop the Bolshies before-"
"Shut up," Minerva snapped, turning away from them in disgust. "Well, if we're all in the dark, then any idea I have is as good as any other, eh?" She nodded. "First objective? We get
him
..." She pointed at the Ministry Man. "Off the damn wall and into this shell."
"Are you sure?" Kat asked, grabbing her arm. "Whatever we're in may not have even noticed we're here yet. But if we start yanking its toys away..."
"I won't sit around while a man's tortured right next to me," Minerva whispered back to her. "Besides...you want to try and formulate a plan while he's screaming?"
"She has a point," Harry said, his voice tight. He hadn't taken his eyes off the man, who had stopped screaming - but his body trembled from head to toes with barely repressed agonies. Minerva and Kat stepped to Harry's sides as Harry played with the carabiner clasp that kept his MP-18 attached to its leather shoulder strap. "We work fast. Minerva drops the door, Kat blasts the flesh off him, and I pull him in with a
Carrien
spell."
They all nodded. Minerva took her wand, readying herself.
The door opened.
The fetid stink of rotting flesh, the warm breath of air, rushing past Minerva. The sudden sense of awareness became overwhelming - unstoppable. She wanted to slam the door shut, to leave the man to his fate. The urge was overpowering. Minerva forced it down, and watched as Harry and Kat's wands flicked and their words overlapped. A bolt of greenish light shot from Kat's wand and scored along the man's wrists. The walls convulsed, and a distant, almost subliminal rumble came through her feet as he fell forward, tumbling into the shield, bringing with him the scent of rot, of decay, of quiet flesh. His hat remained outside the dome as the shield snapped back up, cutting off that horrid, horrid smell and that awful foetid heat.
The man lay on his back, wheezing, and up close he looked all the worse. His skin was ravaged with desiccation, like a man kept from water and unable to drink far past the point where he should have died. His thin, bony arms reached upwards, and he grabbed onto MInerva's collar with an iron hard grip. "Thank you," he whispered, his breath carrying the scent of rot. "But you're going to want to shoot yourself. Now. Before it's too late."
"No one's shooting anyone today," Minerva said, squeezing his hand gently. "Don't worry, Ministry Man. We'll get you out of here."
She lifted her head up, looking at Harry and Melissa, who were both kneeling beside her. Kat had taken her SMG and was aiming it at the shield wall, frowning intently as she did so.
"Harry," she said. "Melissa. If we're far in the astral, enough to be in this bugger's belly." She jerked her thumb at the fleshy wall around her. "Then that means we need to start by finding our way out. How do we do that?"
