I can't get up.
My knees are glued to the floor. I barely have breath. It feels like I'm choking.
There are slashes on my arms and along my neck from where the Somata coiled me in its tongue.
There's so much pain. It's paralyzing.
But I can't stay here.
I have to move.
I try to rise, but my body trembles and begins to fall forward. My head crashes against the fleshy corridor floor.
I need to get up.
Get up.
Get up!
The taste of copper floods my tongue, my breath hitches. I try again, pushing up with one elbow. My back spasms, and I collapse again, gasping uselessly as I see white edging my vision.
It hurts.
Everything hurts.
Then I hear it: the Domain of Flesh. This living thing I've been crawling through howls with guttural rage—a noise of a thousand throats collectively screaming in union: the walls spasm, veins bulging like angry serpents beneath the skin. Red ichor on the walls runs backward. The howls don't stop. It builds, it rises from the walls, the ceiling, the floor beneath me, vibrating through my bones. It's as if the Domain is mourning. The light in the corridor turns crimson, pulsing like a dying heart.
Every breath in my lungs is molten glass.
I can't move. My body refuses.
John and Morgan are still trapped.
The thought stabs through the haze. I can see them. They're bound in that fleshy cavern, held by the Matriarch.
I try to push myself up again. My arms buckle, and my head slams the floor. The impact explodes behind my eyes in white.
I scream. The sound is tiny and pathetic compared to the howls surrounding me.
I roll to my side, breathing heavily.
The Domain feels my weakness. It pulses, quickly, rumbling with a skiered laughter.
"You killed one of her children," the entire corridor erupts. "You think she'll let you leave?"
I lie there with my body battered and hurt, barely more than a heartbeat from unconsciousness. The knife is still in my hand, but I don't even have the strength to lift it.
Even if I can barely hold it, even if my arms feel numb, it's there. The light is shimmering faintly, dimmer than before, but there's something odd about that light, as if it's waiting for me.
I grip the knife tighter, feeling my heartbeat stuttering in my chest. The shimmer begins to grow, erasing the previous dim.
There's a sudden heat in my chest, something warm flaring in my ribs, branding the inside of my soul.
It's a flame.
Ikaris's flame.
It stirs within me, I feel its heat extending to every part of my body, flaring beneath my skin. The fire is slow and steady as it coils through my lungs and heat, pulsing with every broken breath I take.
Stand...
Stand Cole...
Stand...
I hear the voice, Ikaris's voice, and I rise.
It isn't graceful nor clean. I stagger up like a corpse lurching to its feet. Blood trails down my chin, and the knife shakes in my hand.
I am standing.
My boots scrape against the pulsing floor as I take one step.
Then another.
They hurt, but I keep moving. I limp forward, down the breathing corridor, the flame pushing against the pain, letting me walk where I should be stunned.
John and Morgan are still trapped, but I know they're alive. I see them living, only held by that Matriarch.
"She's waiting for you," the Domain whispers, its voice smaller now. "The Matriarch is going to tear you apart, and we'll feast."
I ignore its voice. It's only speaking to distract me, trying to fill me with its venomous words like it did with my mother.
It will not work.
My hand clutches against the wall. Despite the small flame within me trying to keep me up, my body wants to collapse and rest. My body isn't used to that kind of pain, to being choked, to being smashed, to being cut, and held in the air.
But I push myself anyway.
Each step is an insult to gravity, every breath a rebellion against pain. My vision dances on the edge of red static, but I keep moving.
The corridor coils and tightens, ribs curving like the gullet of a beast attempting to swallow me whole.
I feel John and Morgan's presence before I see them, still bound in pylons of flesh, trapped in that hellish cathedral.
The chamber yawns open in front of me, my boots splashing through the slick, warm water as I stumble into the space, eyes locking onto them.
John and Morgan are strung up like offerings. But they're alive.
The two have smiles on their faces, and their eyes are in a different hue. They're speaking to themselves, diving into some cruel dream the Matriarch put them in.
"John," I croak, "Morgan."
They didn't answer, unable to hear thanks to the Matriarch.
I will cut them out.
I stagger forward. I don't see the Matriarch. I know she's here, watching and waiting, coiling in the deep part of this room, being patient so she can sink her teeth into me.
I collapse to my knees beside Mogan, the flesh webbing over his body, pulsating in an unnatural rhythm. I bring the knife, glowing with the light, to the flesh and—
A tendril yanks my arm, hauling me into the center of the chamber, slamming my body into the floor, folding on impact.
My ribs creak, something in my shoulder wrenches, and pain explodes like shrapnel throughout my spine.
"Oh, child, you've returned," I hear the Matriarch speak to me in a tone like that of a mother. "And you're hurt. That's what you get for being a naughty boy. You should have listened to Mother."
"You're not my mother," I spat through my gritting teeth.
I stare up at her and see the face she's wearing. Why is it so familiar? Do I know that face? I don't know who they are, and yet the face is invoking something nostalgic.
My gaze locks with the Matriarch, my eyes harden against her soft expression, faking some twisted form of affection.
Those eyes, no matter how hard you look into them, are empty. They're black. I stare into them, but instead of a soul, I only see myself. Or some version of myself. I can't tell, it's so blurry.
The Matriarch strolls toward me as the tendrials and the cavern begin to wrap me in flesh.
She gets close, bringing her face inches from mine. "Don't you remember me?"
What is the face she's wearing?! Why do I know it?
"Who are you?" I manage to say, trying to pull myself from the flesh overlapping me.
And her expression changes into something of uncertainty. "You don't know this face?" She asks.
"...No," I reply. And the Matriarch scoffs, then she chuckles. The chuckles turn into uncontrollable laughter.
"Really, Seer? You don't recognize this face?" Why is she laughing? What does she know that I don't know? What is that face?
"Tell me, Cole Sear, why can't you recognize you're mother's face?"