Bathos

"No. I called the cops and signaled Bridge. They're sending officers. Bridge will be one of them. And the Bathos is already outside, waiting."

"Bathos?" Lucy asked.

"It's out there."

At the end of the stretch of flooring that overlooked the stairwell and part of the lobby and provided access to the apartments on the northern side of the building was a window. Avery hurried there, followed by Lucy. Melissa crowded in behind them, looking.

It was such a problem that Melissa was here, hearing all of this, but getting the Composite Kid to cooperate was so much more important.

There was a car out there, on the opposite side of the street. It was black, sleek, and had a minimum of trim.

Was that the car that had sped by them earlier? Had it spotted them somehow?

Or tracked them by the traces of the Carmine Blood?

"It's a shapeshifter?" Lucy asked.

"An Abyss Beast. A bottom feeder in primordial chaos. Yes, it's a shapeshifter, and it's worse things."

*

The black car pulled out of its spot.

"It's moving," Lucy said.

Driving down the road.

It turned a corner, disappearing out of sight.

And a matter of a second or two later, a black dog started sprinting directly for the front door. An officer waited for it. Watch on his wrist.

"Go," Avery said. "Run."

"It reshapes its environment, so don't let it get close. It'll close off your escape routes," the Composite Kid said. "Want me to stay? I can delay them."

Avery hesitated, then shook her head.

They still needed friends.

"Come. You'll be safer, you can tell us more," Avery said. "Come, Melissa."

"I can't run."

"Try!" Lucy hissed.

Something hit the door outside. It was the plexiglass one, and Avery remembered how it had rattled in the same way. She looked back, looked forward-

Parts of the railing were broken, cracked, and wobbly. Broken posts stabbed up like short spears, waiting for someone to fall on them.

And the door to Reagan's apartment was gone, replaced with damaged wall with peeling paint.

It hit the front door, and the impact reverberated through the building. Blood splashed like someone had been hit with an axe, streaking paint, which faded from its bright yellow, and more of the apartment doors were wiped from existence, extending two apartments ahead of them.

Verona would have studied a bit of this stuff.

They didn't have Verona.

"Should I call John?" Avery asked.

Lucy paused, then nodded.

"I'll go ahead. He'll be right here, with any luck."

Lucy nodded. "Wishing you'd taken my advice, Melissa?"

"Yeah."

Help was on its way. They weren't alone.

But trouble was on its way sooner.

*

"Lucy!" Avery shouted.

She was on the stairs above, with John.

The Abyss beast was in the small parking lot below, railing and torn stairs forming a jagged, rusty black line between her and it. The parking lot rippled and cracked, cracked parts bristling to point jagged ends of rocks and bits of pavement up in her direction.

All feeling in her midsection disappeared in one lurching sensation as she tipped over, falling.

This is going to annihilate Ronnie.

My mom.

Booker.

John shouted something, and Lucy barely heard it.

Her thumb hooked on her necklace, stuck through the ring, and tore it from her neck. She almost used the chain itself, but hesitated, instead reaching for the torn railing.

A black spear grew in her hands, made out of railing. She'd fall, inevitable, but she'd stab it on the way down. She gave it barbs, spikes, and told herself she'd have to hold onto it, so it wouldn't revert back to being a regular railing.

Arms wrapped around her as she fell, spear in hand, cloth brushing her face.

The ground hit her faster than she'd thought it would. Her sling-bound arm was thrust into something softer than pavement, and she rolled.

Avery had caught her, carried her elsewhere. And now Lucy's hand was numb because the pain in her elbow was so intense. Her knees drew toward her chest and her leg kicked.

She forced her eyes open, just in time to see the fire escape fall, torn up, welded-together bits separating, stairs stabbing out like fan blades, many sticking out in different directions from the twisted rigging of the stair. It crashed onto and around the Abyssal thing, which was about twenty feet away. John was nearer to the top of the stairs, and fell about as hard as a human could fall from the nearly-third-story.

The Composite Kid stood in the doorway, screen door damaged and hanging loose, a doorway with no stairs or anything extending between it and the ground. Melissa was nowhere to be seen.

Avery coughed, groaning.

She'd softened Lucy's fall with her own body. And that cloth- Avery had wrapped them in the cloak while using the black rope. The cloak fluttered in the air, drifting.

The parking lot hadn't been this big when she'd been looking down at it. There felt like there was more twisted, rusty metal wreathing the area around the beast than there had been staircase. It was the same distortion effect that had lengthened the hallway.

To her Sight, it was all bloody, deep red-black staining everything.

*

The beast turned.

Lucy, wearing the weapon ring, still holding the chain with the dog tags and house keys close to her fist, turned her chain into a weapon. A length of stainless steel with a bristling spur of key-shaped blades and plates at the end.

"Punted her on my way to you."

"What?" Lucy asked, giving her head a quarter-turn to look at Avery, who was still out of breath.

"Mel."

Lucy laughed, caught off guard, a wild sound that surprised herself, adrenaline escaping. She stood, moving over so she could stand between Avery and the beast. Her elbow throbbed.

It was as big as a car, and vague enough in form she couldn't even tell for sure what direction it was facing. Four twisted legs, and a black body studded by bits of wood, teeth, and slats from the fire escape.

"Are you okay!?" a voice called out.

The bloodstained ground Lucy could see with the Sight began to recede. The beast turned -she realized it had been facing her dead on- and it charged into the building. The back door buckled and bent around it, almost making room.

Lucy gathered up the chain, glancing back at Avery, then over to the fence, where people from next door were looking over. A fifty-something guy and a woman maybe ten years older than Booker.

There was only the fallen fire escape, the cop, Lucy, John, and Avery back here now.

"I'll recover," John said. "The officer might need an ambulance."

*

Lucy started jogging toward the building. Avery followed, as did John.

"Let me lead," John said, as he reached their side.

Lucy moved out of the way. Between the ambient effect of the beast on the building and the recent scare, still unsure how she'd escaped hitting the ground headfirst, she felt a kind of vertigo with the sideways movement. Like she was on the falling fire escape now, and this was a sequence of images and events that were flashing behind her eyes in a split second.

Avery touched her shoulder.

"Hm?" she made a small sound, looking at Avery. She saw John moving ahead and grunted, "Right."

They ventured into the hallway, John first, Avery and Lucy side by side. The flooring was broken, the paint so peeled it barely looked like paint anymore. Fluids seemed to be building up between paint and wall where there was enough paint, threatening to spray or spill, and exposed plaster and wood were badly stained.

Lucy could hear voices upstairs.

"Your friends abandoned you."

"Not my friends. I'm pretty sure one of them kicked me."

"I think you need to start talking. Who they are, what they're doing-"

"They're classmates and I don't know. They don't tell me shit."

"Then you're not very useful to me, are you? Want to take a walk outside?"

"There's no fire escape anymore."

"A little slow on the uptake, kid?"

Lucy heard metal bang, then creak. A small frightened sound.

"Easy, Bridge. She's a currency we can spend."

That last bit was the Composite Kid.

"She's upstairs," Lucy whispered. "Bridge has her."

John nodded, motioned, and then picked up speed, leaning to one side as he peered up and around the end of the hallway, where it opened up to the lobby, trying to look more upstairs.

Lucy heard noise in one of the apartments, heavy.

"Right!" she shouted, grabbing for Avery to pull her back.

John reversed his lean, moving the other way around, and drew his knife.

The Abyssal beast came through one of the doors, just to John's right. It slammed into him, jaw snapping closed as he slammed his knife into the underside. Mouth forced closed, teeth knitting together beneath wild bloodshot eyes that swam on the surface of its face like bubbles in boiling water, it ended up headbutting him in the head instead of biting his face off. It barreled into him and slammed him into and through a wall.

The side rooms off to the right of this hallway were apparently a big laundry room. With the crash through and their arrival, the beast's stain flooded into the room, taking it from already broken down and messed up, like the peeling paint and cracked floor, and making it far, far worse.

The floor was dipping as the beast clawed, smashed, and tore, with John beneath it. Being devoured, fighting? Lucy couldn't tell. She just saw the cracks in the tile widening, spreading, and the stain welling there.

"John!" Avery shouted.

Lucy reached into her pocket, now that she had the time to go digging, and found the papers slipped in there. She paused, looking for her opportunity and timing, and saw John grope for his gun at his hip.

He seemed to change his mind, bringing his foot up to his hand, and drawing another knife from beneath his pants leg.

Lucy made her move. The beast was moist and gritty, and her first attempt at touching paper to it made the paper stick. It ignited. The beast snarled, turning her way, its face boiling with the muzzle of a snarling dog and a grimacing person, and other things she couldn't mentally place. As it twisted her way, John adjusted his grip, dragging the knife from the underside of the jaw to its neck, down to its shoulder. He plunged the second knife in and used his grip on the impaling blades to haul himself out from under it.

She backed away, letting the beast's hind leg burn, while Avery also dug in her bag.

The beast rammed John into a washing machine.

Melissa's still upstairs.

Couldn't leave John. Things were… weird, since Alexander was shot, but she couldn't leave John.

Passing a pen to her hand in the sling, she quickly made the necessary marks on multiple papers, then stepped through the hole in the wall to the tile. It cracked beneath her feet.

Lucy backed away as the beast wheeled and John was flung free. The knives remained embedded in its neck and shoulder, weeping blood. The floor was so stained to her Sight that the droplets seemed to disappear in the midst of the dark crimson.

It creates this heavy, condensed little area of horribleness and the blood around the city seems to settle in that depression, feeding it, feeding the beast.

It charged John while he was on the ground, and he managed to roll out of the way just in time. More cracks spread.

Can I override it?

Lucy put the spell cards in her mouth, then drew on her hand. The Faerie's duelist sign. Setting up an arena.

Make this my turf?

The arena began to spread out around her. She took in a deep breath, and the air flowed easily from mouth to lung to vein.

The beast ignored it, continuing its brawl with John bearing its full attention. It charged through a table and hit another wall.

The cracks tore through Lucy's swelling arena. She winced as the mark on her hand came off.

No arena.

To think it had probably been way more intense before it had made its nest and laid its young.

She took a hesitant step forward into the room, looking for an opportunity. She wanted to get in, apply the spell cards, and get out.

Her arm being bound up in a sling was making this so much harder.

Her sneaker came down on tile and blood boiled up.

"Careful," Avery said. She was digging in her bag, but watching what was going on at the same time. "It's like cracked ice in the Ruins. I think if you go through-"

The beast set a foot down and cracks spread. Blood welled beneath it.

"-You go to where the Bathos comes from."

The beast seemed to recognize the label, and it turned to face them. Lucy stood in the hole in the wall, spell cards primed and warm in her hand.

I've fought Guilherme, and he's faster.

I'd even say he's meaner.

It took off toward her, and the cracks around the room all widened as it took off. She almost second guessed her plan, then decided to stick to it. She went into the room, letting the chain whip out and ensnare its mouth, the blades and tag-plates smacking it around the face.

She hauled herself forward, closer to it, abandoned the chain before the beast could snap it and lose her house keys or dog tag, returning it to normal, and used the weapon ring on the sling on her right arm instead. The sling became a net, the net caught the knife on the beast's side, and she was able to swing herself out, only lightly touching the tile.

It turned, its sights fully on her, cloth net stretching along its side to her hand. She pulled slightly, reminding herself of the tension of the material, so she could haul on it again and move unexpectedly. She just had to keep her distance, buy time-

Time Melissa didn't have. Melissa was upstairs, she reminded herself.

She wanted to tell Avery to go to Melissa but she wasn't sure Avery would be okay up there with Bridge.

John came running, and with the one knife he still held, he stabbed at the beast, fending it off as it snapped through the net at him, tugging at Lucy.

She turned the net back to a sling, slipping it over her arm, used the distraction, and went behind it. She applied the papers like she was fanning out cards, the beast's hide and the moisture of it catching on the paper. Sliding the stack of five spell cards against its side served to stick all five cards on.

It kicked back at her, bowling her over, and then reared up, clawing at John. As it came down, more cracks spread.

Lucy felt herself drop about a foot as the floor partially collapsed. That vertigo feeling swelled.

And Avery was airborne. Leaping over the beast, ball in hand.

"Homecoming pitch!"

She threw the ball straight down, and it hit the floor and it had its own ripple.

It didn't wipe away everything, but it did take away a good share of the staining and dulled the darkness of the cracks. Some now only appeared to be shadows, or shallow cracks beneath the thin moisture of the blood-red staining.

A deer-masked Avery hit the ground with both feet, stumbled as she twisted to keep the beast in sight, and her back bumped into the wall.

Lucy drew on her hand and slapped it against the floor.

Arena, second try.

The effect rippled out faster this time. A little world of her own design, where she could breathe, where it was comfortably cool compared to the summer heat, leaves in the air.

The entire room changed colors, to her color scheme. Bold reds and pinks and blacks.

The beast, cards smouldering at its hind leg, backed away from the three of them, head ducking low.

It's definitely not the leader. Just an animal that found its way here, who cooperates with the three invaders.

"We have to help Melissa," Avery said.

"Can you deal with this on your own, John?" Lucy asked.

"I don't know," he said.

"Give me a gun," Lucy told John, reaching into her pocket.

"It would draw attention."

"I know."

He nodded, but he didn't move. He was moving, pacing slowly, while the beast tried to keep all three of them in its sight. He ducked low, and it stood taller. Its expression was vague, candle-wax melted on the side where light shone in through the foggy broken window, and it looked like three different snarling animals in the side that light didn't reach.

John placed his gun on the floor and slid it across the floor. With cracks mostly gone, it slid easily to Lucy. She stopped it with care, and the beast turned toward her, following the motion.

She backed off, taking the gun, and the beast paced toward her.

John came after it, attacking the spot that was wounded by the papers, and it pulled away, lunging toward Lucy, instead of addressing him.

Avery pitched another ball.

Missed.

But it hit the wall and it cracked into the wall Lucy's arena had painted. Lucy's palm stung as if the ball had hit it. The effect rippled out as the arena collapsed, and that, at least, caught the beast's attention, making it turn to look.

John's continued attack made it keep turning, trying to throw John off.

Lucy struggled, gun in her armpit while she fumbled with sling on, tearing paper, then scribbling out a rune. She felt and reminded herself of the earring at her ear as she worked out the rune, then pressed it to the gun.

Stay silent, she whispered to the rune.

There was no sound.

She slid the gun back to John.

He barely paused in the fighting as he swiped it up, paused as he glanced at it, then aimed and pulled the trigger.

The gun flashed, but there was no sound. He emptied the gun into the beast at point blank range.

He turned, looked at the two of them, and said something. Lucy couldn't hear it.

But she could guess. She sprinted from the room as the beast smacked John. Or John let himself get smacked. He reloaded the gun and kept shooting as they ran from the room. As Lucy's arena fell away, the beast's effect crept out.

*

"What happened?" Matthew asked.

"Verona helped us get Bridge. The watch parasite. Lis is watching it, Verona's off helping out in other ways, and we thought we'd circle back," Lucy said. "Where are you guys at? Jabber?"

"John's fighting the beast. We've organized goblins and sent them in, along with Jabber, yeah," Matthew said. "Nibble went in just now. Chloe had to stay back because even this light is too much for her."

Lucy looked up. The sun was starting to set, and that colored the sky.

She nodded.

Some people walked down the sidewalk, but as they got close to the building, they stopped where they were, heads lolling back, bodies jerking as they laughed.

Jabber's cries could be heard from the rooftop.

"This is a nasty Other, here," Matthew said. "I'm ready to use the Doom. It would help if you two were prepared to hold it back, because it'll go for Edith once it's done, and it's very familiar with the way to our place."

"The Bathos is Abyssal, apparently," Avery said.

"Yeah, so I was told. Abyssal things tend to be tough and mean, in a different way than goblins," Matthew said. "Are you up to help? Backing me up, so I can release the Doom? You wouldn't have to get directly involved."

"We kind of already did. We went after it earlier, scrapped," Lucy said.

"Really. Good, I'm glad you're safe, then. Last I heard, John's battered but holding it off."

*

"Come on," Matthew said. "Be on your guard."

They nodded. As they'd done with John, they let Matthew take the lead.

It was bad, inside. The cracks were widespread and ran from the laundry area at the rear half of the downstairs level to the lobby and up to the second floor. Stairs were in shambles and walls were ripped open.

The smell wasn't what Lucy would have expected. Like freshly turned, deep, moist soil. It filled her nostrils.

There were traces of goblin smells in there too. Farts and things.

A bang shook the building and the cracks spread further.

"Does this all go back to normal?" Lucy asked.

"Mostly," Matthew said. "It'll scar like any wound does."

"Like what our teacher said about Abyssal healing," Avery noted. "But for buildings."

Lucy nodded.

Another bang.

Their progress was slow because the floor was damaged. It felt like any chunk of floor with cracks all around it could simply drop away beneath their feet as they stepped on it.

A goblin screamed.

They entered the back hallway, and they reached the hole in the wall, wider than it had been before, framed in cracks.

And there was no laundry room. Only chasm.

"Did the ice break?" Avery asked.

"Ice?" Matthew asked.

"Metaphorical, kinda. I saw something similar in the wintery Ruins."

"I think it broke," Lucy said. "Question is… how much?"

The beast roared, and it shook the entire building. Paint flecks fell and bits of plaster crumbled or puffed out in plumes as it ground against itself.

They made their way into the part of the room they could access, hugging the wall, and they looked down.

Nibble was there, sitting on a jutting beam that stuck out of the side of the chasm. And the goblins were all present, clinging to walls and perches, jostling one another.

John, too, was present, near the beast, which was bound in barbed wire and gobbets of snot. Beaten, sore, still with fight in it, still snarling, but with no strength remaining. Cherrypop was on its head, playing whack-a-mole with a condom, smacking and snapping the limp condom against eyes as they boiled up to the surface, split part into smaller eyes, and disappeared into the beast's face once again.

"You beat it?" Matthew asked.

John nodded.

*

"We are! Did you guys handle things okay, yesterday? The people I'd normally ask were busy. Matthew wanted to look after Edith and John was recovering, Maricica doesn't like to give straight answers and Rook didn't participate."

- Shaking Hands 9.12 and 9.z