Book 4: Chapter 45: The Dwarven God |
Whether or not it was morning when they woke up, was impossible to tell. They were greeted by the twilight of the cavern which looked much like the twilight they’d initially fallen asleep in. Michael had been up for some time, praying and training his barriers as quietly as he could. The echoes of the caverns meant that his regular training would’ve awoken everyone. They opted for a small fire to cool a simple breakfast of ham and potatoes. Once they were done eating, they packed everything up and followed Dundan as he led them along the main path.
They didn’t have to walk for long before they began to feel rumbling. It was subtle at first, like a train going by a mile away, but it built more and more as they moved. Dundan began to breathe a bit more heavily, and his robes were soon drenched in sweat, the ores that criss-crossed his body glistening with it in the darkness.
“Are you okay?” asked Michael.
The Whisperer nodded. “I am starting to feel a taste of the agony the god feels. I cannot ignore it this close.”
“Do you need to take a break?”
He shook his head. “No. The sooner we reach him, the sooner his agony or mine will be ended.”
Michael frowned at the implication, but nodded anyway not wanting to force the man to talk.
The rumbling grew stronger and stronger. At first it was tolerable, but eventually it felt as if they were on a ship in a storm, being tossed up and over as the ground beneath them shook. Every once in a while they would hear the roar of agony that had woken them up the previous night and it would shake them to their very souls while their bodies were tossed around. The experience was unpleasant, but Michael found himself concerned about just how much suffering the dwarven god was experiencing.
When things seemed to be reaching the apex of what they could handle, their forward momentum nearly arrested by cries and quakes, and the whisperer barely keeping himself standing, they reached an enormous cavern. Much like the others they’d passed through it was filled with glowstones, and natural formations, but unlike those they also saw the thick patches of fungus that the god was leaving everywhere as well as darker clumps of rock covered in mushrooms, newly exposed veins of ore, and huge tracts of flattened stalagmites. It was the largest of any of the caverns they’d seen so far. In the distance, wreathed in shadow, they could see a massive figure writhing amongst the rock, its body a massive tangle of intersecting loops that looked like they could crush mountains.
Michael walked over him, careful with his steps, and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“I will help you to bear the pain.” He didn’t wait for permission, and slowly took on the pain the dwarf was feeling. He fell to his knees next to him almost immediately and began breathing heavily.
“Dad!” yelled Gabriel running to him.
Michael held up a hand as he wheezed. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“Well you sound great,” said Ollie, floating over to him to avoid having to deal with the rumbling. “Share some of it with me.”
“Me too,” chimed in Pyotr, using his scarf to balance himself as he got closer.
“Me too, but only because of the peer pressure,” said Marcus, managing to close in as well.”
Michael did as they asked, spreading out the pain among them, and just like him they fell to their knees, jaws clenched and sweat beading on their brows.
“That’s almost half of what Dundan is experiencing,” Michael managed to say through clenched teeth.
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“What the fuck!?” replied Ollie.
The rumbling in the distance began to settle and the massive looming shapes in the distance began to slow.
“Me too, Dad,” said Gabriel, placing his hand on his shoulder.
Michael pretended not to hear him, focusing on managing and distributing the pain.
Gabriel frowned and knelt next to him.
“Come on, Dad. Let me hold the flashlight at least.”
Michael smiled at that a bit and nodded, shifting some of the pain to Gabriel as well. He scowled when it hit him, and clenched his jaw, but didn’t fall to his knees like the others had. “I can handle more, don’t go easy.”
“I’m not,” replied Michael sadly. Gabriel hadn’t developed that level of pain tolerance from anything joyful. He gave him a larger portion of the load, and this time he didn’t ask for more.
The Whisperer’s voice grew more sure as they took on more of the pain from him, and the god in the distance began to slow more and more until it stopped. There was stillness for a few moments, and then the dark shadows in the distance began to get closer. Michael had assumed the creature was massive, but as the shadow that was approaching grew larger and larger he realized that he had grossly underestimated its scale. It was as if a building was writhing its way toward him.
As it was getting closer, Michael was able to make it out in more detail. It faced them with a mouth that opened in four separate places revealing massive teeth of diamond that writhed and rotated like drills. Its skin was pale white, but not smooth, rough like the edges of broken marble. Across its body were hundreds of small lesions leaking pale silver fluid.
It was a worm, Michael had no other way to describe it, but it was at a scale and level of magnificence far beyond anything on Earth. He could also sense its presence. A powerful mental force that seemed to be scanning them, seeing them, even as it attempted to stay calm, as it endured indescribable agony that Michael and the others were only feeling the merest fraction of. Michael couldn’t sense any divinity to it, not the way it could anything touched by its own gods, but there was something godly about it. Something he couldn’t comprehend the way he was, but he knew it was there.
Somehow the god managed to approach them smoothly, the rumbling and shaking ceasing as it moved deliberately toward them. It kept coming close to them until it was almost on top of them and then it stopped, just a few yards in front of them.
The whisperer took a deep breath.
“I have conveyed to the god our purpose here.”
Michael gently released the pain he himself was holding, letting it spread to the others evenly as he stood and moved toward the god. He could tell just based on the sheer scale of the creature that he’d need his full focus to heal it.
“Gods give me strength,” he muttered under his breath as he reached the creature, gently placing a hand on one of the flaps that opened into its drill-like mouth. The skin was warm and oddly pleasant to the touch.
He took a deep breath and his hand began to glow gold as the warmth of Sara’s hand in his own mingled with that of the god’s skin. He knew he couldn’t just pour healing energy into the god until it was done, so instead he first focused on sensing exactly what was wrong with it. For a few moments he lost himself in fascination as he noticed all of the irregularities and strangeness of the creature, but he returned his focus to the task at hand and placed all of his attention on what was harming it. He found ncisions first, small, but painful cuts. The first thing that he noticed was that the cuts weren’t from the outside in, but rather from the inside out. The outside would’ve been far too difficult to slice into. He followed those wounds, finding a criss-crossing of tunnels all throughout its body. They intersected and crossed one another, with a few opening into larger chambers. It was like looking at the inside of an anthill.
The wound tunnels worked their way deeper and deeper, cutting into organs and structures that had no earthly equivalent that Michael could identify. He kept spreading his healing energy, starting with a few of the more painful cuts. That’s when he found the source of them.
Insects, hundreds of them the size of dogs. Like ants they had massive mandibles for digging, and they seemed to have been tunnelling through the god for a long time. Their bodies were covered in sharp spines that dripped venom.
Michael started to pour more healing energy into the god, sealing more and more wound tunnels and ignoring anything superficial. He placed his other hand onto the god’s flesh and began to channel smite into his healing. He built it up slowly even as he wove his healing energy all throughout the gods body. There was so much of it. So much damage that he could never have imagined its scale. Within moments he was shaking as he stood, sweat pouring freely from him and his vision darkening on every side. It was like healing an entire army at once, over, and over again.
The creatures within the god began to notice something was wrong as the tunnels they’d built began to close. Michael took that moment to release the cleansing smite he’d been building all throughout the god’s body. Holy flame exploded throughout them, leaving the god unharmed, but burning all of the ants to a crisp. Those he was not able to reach began to swarm for the exit wounds. Michael stopped transferring the pain from Dundan to the others entirely, he needed his focus and they needed theirs.
“Get ready!” he yelled as he continued pouring in healing energy. “The god’s problem is about to become ours!”