Nosedive’s departure then left Winterwing and Emily alone, crouched behind their wall, watching for a silhouette approaching in the dark.

“We’re not going to be able to stop that thing,”  Emily said.

“No,” Winterwing agreed. “I guess we distract it until someone figures out what to do with it, or it leaves like the last time.”

“I’m not sure it’s going to be leaving,” Emily took a glance up at the darkening sky, and the red stars beyond that. He followed her gaze upward for a split second, before going back to scanning the dark. Were there more of them now, up there?  

“You did say this was going to get me killed,” she murmured.

“Yeah, well, you can impress me and prove me wrong,” he said. “If we can juggle its attention between the two of us, that’s better than trying to take it head on.”

The creature, when it finally came into the light, was much like the others of its kind. It could have even been the same one, he had no way to tell. The bright light of the vortex did not seem to dissuade it, and reflected off the oily sheen of its body as it approached. They waited, for what was in reality only a few seconds, but felt like a rising eternity. There was a few million years between them and the little flighted fowl that left the primordial mire, yet deeply encoded in instinct was the generational memory of being prey, and the desperate need to flee from something so clearly preparing to eat them. This instinct may have been a little more helpful had they still been able to fly.

The monster leaped, globs of oily flesh falling off it as it did, and it landed right where they had been, a screaming snarl on its lips, and claws digging in to the rubble they had been using as cover. They broke in opposite directions, and its multitude of eyes surveyed them both, before deciding Winterwing was the better target.

Emily raised the blaster she had been given. She hesitated, for a moment, perhaps concerned that she might miss and hit him instead.

She took too long to commit. From the stark shadows of the ruined building, Canard emerged behind her, and grasped the wrist of her firing arm. Winterwing had enough time to register this and stumble and turn, concerned and torn between objectives, and that was enough for the beast to close the distance between them.

Winterwing was thrown to the ground before he even got a shot off, the viscous beast slashing at him with a jerking fluidity. Red bloomed from a wound on his chest that he only felt after it happened. Above him, along the column of light, he could see the deep black of endless void, with pinpricks of red stars, watching and moving above them all.

His vision was obscured by a face of too many eyes and teeth, screaming down at him with the  triumph of a thing preparing to bite his head clean off.

He fired directly into what he thought was the creature’s chest. He didn’t have any expectation it was going to do much. He had been there when Tanya had fired straight through a head to no effect, but he had nothing else.

The puck didn’t go through the creature, as her beam weapon had, rather it appeared to lodge within the black mass of it. The beast paused for a moment, confused, perhaps feeling a tiny measure of pain, before turning it’s attention back to striking at him. It was hard, over the roar of the vertical light, but Winterwing thought he could hear a hum that started low and then ran higher and higher in pitch and volume.

The creature exploded from the point of impact in its chest cavity, smearing pieces of itself everywhere, the bulk of it landing directly on top of him. He lay there frozen for a moment, confused.

He heard Nosedive shout from somewhere outside his peripheral vision: “It’s set to explosive!”

“It what?!” Winterwing shouted back from his prone position on the ground, trying to wipe oily black mass from his face.

Nosedive didn’t have time to elaborate, his attention taken again by fire. Winterwing’s moment of victory was cut short as well, as he realized that the jellied limbs were quivering, and had begun moving, setting to the task of pulling themselves back together.  

The creature reformed as Winterwing rose to his feet, the residue splattered across his front gone, though his shirt was still bright red. Destroying the creature had been temporary, but it had stalled his demise. He could keep it occupied.

The beast pulled together, stumbling as the black gelatin of its legs reformed under it and tried to balance again. The globs smoothed, the ancient red eyes reopened, and it took the moment to issue an angry scream, before it made another clumsy run at him.

It was easy enough to land another puck in its chest and let it burst to pieces again. Its neck and head were sheared clean off this time, smearing on a crumbling wall, and part of its torso flew in the other direction, while the main mass of its body tripped, skidding along the ground in a melting heap before it came to rest.

For a brief moment, it seemed as though this time it was going to lay still. Then, the bits quivered away from their resting place, pulling together into the pile, burbling and whining as it did. He wanted more than anything for it to stay down, but he did feel a little more confident as he watched it struggle. This was going to be survivable. Maybe.

As it reformed, it stared at him, its hundred unblinking eyes focused on nothing else. It took longer this time, its mass combining and then sloughing away to combine again. Perhaps it was beginning to grow tired.

He heard another scream that did not come from it, but somewhere in the dark colonnade behind it.

His hesitation had cost him precious time. He launched another puck into the first creature,  falling back for more distance. He looked over his shoulder, to be sure. It blew apart again, this time more uniformly, its constituent pieces flying in every direction. Its partner emerged from the darkness behind it, and did not pause to consider the mess. It bounded over the black morass without a care, and gave chase as the first began to reform.

This was a complication, but all he could think to do was modify the previous plan. He fired at the new creature as well. It dodged the first shot. The puck traveled beyond it, smashing instead into a mass of the coalescing goo behind it, and blasting it apart again, sending sizzling muck scattering across the ground.

The next shot landed square in the second creature’s shoulder, and sure enough, it blew apart too.

Winterwing’s muscles ached, and he could feel his lungs straining. He had not needed to run so hard in a very, very long time. As he gulped at the air, he watched the inky stain of pieces work their way inwards to their two respective owners. He did not know how he was supposed to kill something that didn’t follow the basic rules of biology. The creatures seemed to be the same oily muck on every level, there were no organs in the mess strewn about before him. Tanya had landed a shot straight through the head, and even that had not stopped it, suggesting an absolute lack of a brain to damage altogether. It was all just strange ooze with a common goal, and no obvious system that dictated to the rest of it what that goal was. 

He resolved to not let them reform. It was going to run him out of ammunition faster, to manage the pieces rather than two wholes, but it was going to let him rest, and it was going to keep them from calling more. He launched more explosive pucks into any mass that looked larger than his own torso and scattered them again.

It was in the middle of this strange carnage, methodically circling around the smears and managing the roiling masses, he realized that the pieces of the two creatures were getting confused. A chunk that had come from the second radius of debris had chosen to merge with closer pieces of the first, rather than travel back to its original owner.

Winterwing finally got an idea.

It took every ounce of willpower, to stand and wait. His body was screaming at him to move. The only sound he could truly hear was the vortex at his back; the ever rushing cascade of noise pushing out everything else. He did not look to see how Emily and Nosedive were doing. He needed to be sure, and it would do them no good if he were torn to pieces because he was distracted.

The bits came together and formed two giant, lumpy, clotted masses of black tar, that quivered and sloshed. The chunks formed and smoothed, with talons that slipped into place, teeth that smiled too wide, and a hundred ancient, angry, red eyes reopening to focus on him. They prepared to run him down together. They were coiling, like springs under tension.

His aim was not great, but he managed an approximation of what he wanted. He got a puck in the left shoulder of one, and the right of the chest of the other. There was that brief second where nothing happened as the pucks ran through their timers, where neither noticed and were still focused on him. And then both blew apart from their point of impact, this time the force of the blast pressing the two ruined bodies together as the stray parts flew away.

The pile twitched again, it’s pieces starting to move. He unloaded into it, scattering them more, and waited.

Pieces of both were mixed across the walls, the floor, and he no longer could tell what had belonged where. Apparently, neither could the beasts, as the clotted masses came together this time, they formed one pile, rather than two. 

The mass rolled several times as it came together, writhing and bubbling, sometimes even bursting to expel an extra clot, and then reabsorbing it back into its entirety. The thing that it made was round and squat, compared to the lithe forms of the prior creatures. It had too many legs, too many teeth, too many talons, and the eyes that eventually opened were scattered, some misshapen and sightless, staring at nothing. It settled on two different heads, on necks of different length and girth, and set what eyes could see on him. It was a far worse creature, more wrong.

It took a step towards him, and for a sinking moment, Winterwing thought that perhaps this new thing was going to be the end of him after all.

It took another step, and toppled over. There was sound of surprise, as it lay on its side, seven different limbs splayed out and wiggling in the air. The two heads began snapping at each other. The mass rolled around on the ground, attacking and ripping at itself, reforming and ripping again.

Winterwing sighed in relief, finally took notice of the blood and torn flesh of his chest, felt immediately dizzy, and sat down with his head between his knees.