Chapter 33: Marrow Leeches!!
The first leech came out of the wall like a piece of wet rope learning hunger. It was no longer than Kael’s forearm, pale gray under the grime, with a ring of black teeth where its face should have been. It slid from a crack near the floor, tasted the air with three thin feelers, and turned toward Sella’s torn knee.
The first warning came from Vaela’s blade, not her mouth.
Her crescent blade dropped.
CHIK!
The leech split in half.
Both halves kept moving.
"That is rude," Orrek said.
The wall answered him.
SKITTER!
Cracks opened along both sides of the rest pocket. Not large cracks. Not dramatic. Little seams. Old seams. Places where maintenance workers had once hammered plates into stone and called it repaired. Pale bodies squeezed through them in wet knots.
One leech became six.
Six became twenty.
Twenty became a crawling hunger line along the floor.
The survivors screamed.
Kael moved before the panic reached full shape.
"Clusters!"
His voice cracked through the pocket.
Renn shoved Miro and the fever girl behind Sair. Sella dragged her torn knee under herself and raised a broken metal strap like a knife. Brak swung a pipe with both hands and almost fell from the effort. Vaela moved to the rear wall, ribs forgotten for one savage breath. Her blade flashed low.
CHIK!
Leech bodies dropped in pieces, twitching, curling, still trying to crawl.
"Heads!" she snapped. "Crush the mouths! Cutting is not enough!"
Orrek laughed once, ugly and loud.
"Finally. A conversation I understand."
He brought the chain down on a cluster near his boot.
THUD!
Black mouths burst against stone. Pale bodies popped into red gray slime.
More poured out.
The dry chute had smelled their blood and decided they were food. Not the leeches alone. The chute itself seemed to feed them. Moisture ran down the walls in shining tracks that guided the little predators toward open wounds. Kael saw it now with Threat Perception Instinct sharpening too late and just enough.
The wall cracks were not random.
The leeches came from lower seams first, then higher seams near shoulders, then ceiling pores above the weakest bodies. The wildland did not think like a man. It did not need to. It followed blood, heat, pressure, and exhaustion.
A leech dropped from above onto Brak’s neck.
He screamed.
Its mouth clamped down.
CRUNCH!
The sound was too small for how much blood came out. Brak slammed backward into the wall. Another leech shot from a seam and bit his forearm. A third wrapped around his pipe hand. Renn lunged with his broken fingers and grabbed the neck leech.
"No!"
It bit his palm.
Renn screamed through his teeth and tore anyway.
RIP!
The leech came free with skin in its mouth.
Kael crossed the pocket in two strides.
Velocity Movement Authority was still a new name in his head, but his body understood before his mind did. He did not run in a straight line. He shifted through bodies, shoulders turning, feet finding dry stone between blood slick patches.
A cluster rose under his left foot.
He stomped.
SPLAT!
Teeth and slime burst across the floor.
Another leech sprang at his marked hand.
He caught it in his palm.
Its teeth drilled into already split flesh.
Pain flashed hot as the Root dragged the pain into order.
Kael drove the command inward, forcing the shards into Regenerative Dominion and Threat Perception Instinct.
ALLOCATE!
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[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
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≫ KINETIC FRICTION DETECTED: Marrow Leech Blood Scent Swarm Pressure
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +2
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≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +2 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Regenerative Dominion -> 8
- Threat Perception Instinct -> 7
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▲ UNALLOCATED EXISTENTIAL SHARDS: 5
[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Five Shard Reserve Maintained.
====================================================================
No delay.
No hoarding.
The new points burned into function as the leech chewed his palm.
Kael closed his fist.
CRUSH!
The leech exploded between his fingers.
Regenerative Dominion did not heal him clean. It forced his blood to thicken faster around the punctures, sealing enough to keep the smell from becoming a signal flare. Threat Perception Instinct widened the fight. Not sight. Pattern.
Blood scent lanes.
Moisture trails.
Ceiling pores.
Weakest cluster.
The leeches were not attacking randomly.
They were splitting the survivors from the outside inward.
"Renn! Pull the wounded away from wet stone!"
Renn was pale, bleeding from his palm, but he obeyed. "Away from walls! Middle! Middle!"
"There is no middle!" Miro yelled.
"Then invent one!"
Orrek shoved two workers inward with his uninjured shoulder and swept his chain in a low arc.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
Leeches burst in a line.
One launched for his ruined shoulder.
Orrek headbutted it midair.
CRACK!
It hit the floor folded around itself.
Vaela saw three ceiling pores open above Sella.
She threw her crescent blade upward.
CLANG!
The blade struck stone, ricocheted, and cut through two falling leeches. The third landed on Sella’s thigh and began burrowing toward the torn knee.
Sella did not scream.
She grabbed it with both hands and held it in place.
"Now!"
Vaela drove her boot down.
SPLAT!
Sella’s thigh shook under the impact, but the leech became pulp.
"You kicked my leg," Sella hissed.
"I improved it."
"It hurts worse."
"Then you can feel improvement."
Kael could not spare breath for the exchange.
The chute was changing.
The leeches had stopped pouring from every seam. They were gathering around three larger cracks near the forward passage. Protecting something. Or being called by something. A wet bulge pushed through the largest crack.
The bulge was the brood knot, not another leech.
A swollen mass of pale bodies fused together around a pulsing red core, the size of a man’s torso, dragging itself with dozens of mouth rings. Its core beat in time with the moisture in the walls. The dry chute had a heart for this hunger. The brood knot opened six mouths at once.
HISSSS!
The sound made the fever girl collapse to her knees. Miro tried to lift her and slipped in blood.
The brood knot surged toward them.
Kael stepped into its path.
Vaela shouted, "Do not let it touch your wounds!"
"I had planned a hug."
"Bad plan!"
The brood knot struck low.
Kael anchored his right foot.
Gravity Vector Impact sank through the floor. Core Mass Density hardened his stance. The thing hit his shin with enough force to crack lesser bone.
BANG!
His leg held.
Barely.
Leech mouths climbed his calf and thigh. Teeth sank into muscle. Blood welled, then thickened under the new regenerative push. Kael grabbed the brood knot by the fused upper mass. It was slick. Stronger than it looked. The body tried to split around his hands and crawl up both arms.
He drove his knee into the red core.
THUD!
The core flattened, then swelled back.
Not enough.
The knot tried to wrap him.
A mouth ring snapped at his throat.
He caught it with his teeth.
For one awful heartbeat, Kael and the brood knot bit each other.
The survivors stared.
Orrek’s eyes widened.
"That is disgusting and excellent!"
Kael ripped his head sideways.
RIP!
The mouth ring tore free.
He spat it onto the floor, grabbed the exposed core with both hands, and slammed the whole brood knot into the wall.
BOOM!
The wall cracked.
The knot screamed through every mouth.
He slammed it again.
BOOM!
More leeches poured from its underside and crawled up his wrists.
Vaela moved.
She cut through the moisture trails beside the crack, not the leeches themselves. Her blade severed the slick lines feeding the swarm’s direction. The leeches nearest her scattered, confused for a breath.
"It follows the wall blood!" she shouted.
Renn caught the pattern.
"Dry cloth! Ash! Anything dry!"
Sair tore a strip from her own sleeve and rubbed it through dust, then slapped it across a wet seam. Miro copied her. Brak, still bleeding at the neck, pressed pit salt into a moisture line and screamed when it touched his own wound.
The leeches recoiled from the salt.
The brood knot tried to retreat.
Kael did not let it.
He lifted it over his head.
Every wound in his arms opened again. Blood ran down to his elbows. The brood knot thrashed, mouths snapping, body splitting and reforming.
Kael brought it down on his rising knee.
CRACK!
The red core split.
He drove his elbow into the split before it closed.
CRUNCH!
The core burst.
A wave of dark red fluid splashed across his chest, the wall, and the floor.
SPLASH!
The leeches froze.
Not dead.
Leaderless.
Orrek took that personally.
He brought the chain down with a roar.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
Vaela swept the rear. Sella smashed mouth rings with her metal strap. Renn kicked one away from the fever girl’s ankle and nearly fell on his face. In less than a minute, the rest pocket became a carpet of twitching pale bodies and black mouths.
Then silence.
Wet, shaking silence. Kael stood over the ruptured brood knot, chest heaving. His palm leaked blood. His calf was punctured in six places. His thigh burned. His throat had a shallow tooth line where the mouth ring had nearly found meat. But the bleeding slowed faster than before.
Not gone.
Controlled.
Renn stared at the crushed core.
"That was not a normal tunnel pest."
Vaela wiped her blade on a dead leech body. "No. That was a feeding node. This chute has nests."
Orrek leaned on his chain, breathing hard.
"So the road behind wants us caught, the Warden above wants us betrayed, and the wall ahead wants us eaten."
Kael looked toward the forward passage.
The moisture trails were already retreating into cracks.
The dry chute was learning.
"It is teaching us how it takes," he said.
Vaela gave him a look. "You say that like you intend to thank it."
Kael stepped over the brood knot.
"Now we know the land has teeth."
Behind them, a thin pressure token embedded in the wall blinked once, recording the dead swarm, the saved workers, and Kael’s changed movement.
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Far away, Malrec received another quiet piece of truth. The marked fugitive had not only survived men.
The wild things were failing too.