Chapter Forty-One: The Grotesque Angel
“Barely missed an artery,” Valerie said. She was trying her best to pretend that the injury I had just sustained wasn't going to kill me. “You'll need to take it easy. Looks like you're not going to be a part of this fight. I can patch you up, but you're going to need stitches after this. A whole lot of stitches.”
Her voice shook a couple of times during that speech. Her trope required her to pretend that my prognosis was good. That, combined with covering up the injuries, allowed me to continue. It’s the same thing that happened with my leg outside.
She used up the rest of the bandage material just trying to hide my enormous gashes from view.
Arthur watched on with a gun raised ready to fight anything that broke through the door and followed us, but the door held. Eventually, we stopped hearing bangs against it. The Grotesques on the other side must have found something else to distract themselves with.
Maybe it was Donald.
“You should be able to stand but don't run. Don't want to get your blood pressure up. I really don't want to do this because you just had one but what the hell,” Valerie said handing me another one of her pretend pain relievers.
I swallowed it whole.
As before, it worked. It took the edge of my pain away.
Off-Screen.
“You don't have long,” Valerie said. “Even at my best, I can't hold off a fatal wound for more than a scene or two.”
Arthur sprang into action. He reached down and grabbed me by the arm and pulled me up onto my feet.
“We need you to identify this creature On-Screen and then you can die,” he said.
The way he said it was like he thought I actually wanted to die, but he wasn't going to let me until my shift was over.
Standing there, broken leg, broken collarbone. I think I was even disemboweled and bleeding out. And yet none of that was true because the audience was told it hadn't happened. I felt like I needed to throw up. This was unnatural.
“Let’s go,” I said.
The catacombs were massive. The chamber that we walked into when we went down the stairs was at least the same size as the church above. Tunnels branched off in multiple directions. It wasn't clear which way we needed to go.
The place was dark and damp.
Arthur had brought a flashlight in his duffel. He aimed it around the room.
The place was littered with molds for casting statues. Donald had used them to build new Grotesques. He must have been at this for weeks. Hundreds of bags of concrete lay empty and strewn about.
Around them, hundreds upon hundreds of shattered Grotesques were stacked up in the corners of the room. Donald must have just smashed them with a hammer any time they came out stupid and violent instead of smart and cunning.
On-Screen.
“So, this is where he made them?” I asked. My character was the only one that hadn't been down here.
“Ground Zero of the apocalypse,” Arthur responded.
We walked around the room getting a sense of things, allowing the camera to get shots of us taking everything in.
With every step I took, I knew I was on borrowed time. We needed to get to the final battle soon. Luckily the needle on the plot cycle seemed to be on our side. It was coming fast.
“Stay here, be careful, wait for us to come back,” Arthur said. He pulled another flashlight from his duffel and held it out toward me.
I shook my head. “Give it to Valerie. She needs it more.”
We made eye contact and I think he understood.
I was safer in the dark. I was safer when I couldn't see what was trying to get me.
Valerie and Arthur went off to separate tunnels stating that they would go for 5 minutes and then turn around. That way they could systematically check every tunnel. If one of them didn't come back, the other would go searching.
I would just kind of stand there and try not to die until I had told one of them which Grotesque was the Leader.
Fortunately, whenever we got attacked in the church, I had been able to buff both Valerie and Arthur because of my prediction that the creatures underneath the white sheets would come to life. It wasn't much but a little Grit and Savvy could go a long way in their hands.
When they left, I stayed On-Screen. That had to be the most ominous thing possible. I kept expecting to go Off-Screen as the camera watched them explore.
It didn’t happen.
I had leaned myself against the wall. Given what I thought was about to happen I started to walk around and examine the room more in the dim lighting that seeped in under the door upstairs.
As my eyes adjusted, I saw them. They came creeping out of one of the tunnels one at a time. I hadn't used Oblivious Bystander in near darkness like this.
As I walked around, six or seven Grotesques of various sizes and shapes started to disperse around the room. I needed to stay oblivious to all of them. I spread out my hands to help me guide myself. I blinked my eyes in an exaggerated way to show exactly how blind I was. I even tried to incorporate a little of the “I'm in so much pain I can't tell what's going on” thing that I did with Ranger Danger.
The Grotesques moved around, crossing my path, following me. They were silent for the most part, only making the faintest trace of noise.
I started to breathe loudly, I gave myself a cough, anything to explain why I couldn't hear the scratches on the ground around me. Coughing felt excruciating even with Valerie’s magic pain pill.
Still, I powered through.
I only had to wait five minutes. If I knew movies, and I did know movies, the tunnel that these creatures had just come out of would be the one we needed to go down. I needed to relay that information to Arthur.
As I walked along, I was heading straight for a table that Donald had been working at. There was a row of busted Grotesques on that table. At the far end of that row, one of the small live Grotesques had crawled into place next to the broken ones.
Dammit. Carousel wanted that scene.
Everything was lined up. Part of the price of using Oblivious Bystander was that I had to make it entertaining. It was strange using a mostly comedic trope so near the climax of an action movie like this, but here we were. I had almost thought that Carousel wouldn’t give me a chance to use it at all.
I walked along the desk, my hand feeling among the broken Grotesques. I made my way slowly. As I went along, I could almost feel the camera following me, the tension rising in the audience as they think I’m about to touch one of the living Grotesques.
There were seven broken Grotesques ending in an eighth that was alive. I made my way past the first, the second, all the way on to the fifth, and sixth.
Just as I got to the end of the table and was almost to the live Grotesque, I stopped. I had heard a noise coming from the tunnel that Arthur had entered. I could see a faint flash of light.
I looked behind myself. “Arthur?”
When I turned back, the creature wasn't there anymore.
How would my character react to this? It was the set-up for their Where’s the Goat trope. Could I be oblivious to it or did I need to react to be realistic?
As was my way, I ignored it.
I could hear Arthur and Valerie coming back into the main room.
I turned to greet them, knowing full well that the creature was somewhere behind me.
Bang!
Arthur had drawn his gun and shot something behind me. I turned to look. It was the Grotesque that had been trying to jump-scare me. The point goes to the Oblivious Bystander.
“Didn't I tell you to be careful?” Arthur said.
“I could have taken him,” I responded.
Arthur rolled his eyes; he shone the flashlight around the room just in time to watch the gargoyles that had entered slink back into the tunnel they had come from.
Arthur had the same idea I did.
“Let’s go get them,” he said.
As we followed them along the tunnel, the temporary part of Valerie’s temporary healing job was starting to rear its ugly head. Not only were my bandages literally starting to come off, but I could feel the pain start to return.
We couldn't exactly run, we needed to be cautious. Even still every time my right foot hit the ground I wondered if my leg was going to snap.
As we moved forward, Arthur handed me the duffel. It wasn't ideal but he needed to be ready to fight and I wasn't going to be able to do that.
“When we need fire,” he said, “Light one of the Molotovs and hand it to us.”
The duffel was heavy. We had managed to make 15 or so of the firebombs. I only hoped that it would be enough.
Eventually, the tunnel broke out into another large room, even bigger than the first one.
Riley, you came back. I didn’t take you for brave.
The Leader was back in my mind. Whispering in the Dark.
“He's talking to me,” I said.
“I assume he's not surrendering,” Arthur said.
“No luck there.”
You're too late. My children have spread to the far shores. My brothers will rise. For millennia we have tried and now we succeed. Lay down your arms and you will be spared. I promise.
He must have thought I was really gullible. He had somehow forgotten to spare Donald for all of his efforts. Perhaps he just didn't have control over his more violent offspring.
I didn't know where the voice was coming from at first but then I heard the swish of air above us. I saw the starlight. The room’s roof was raw stone like you might see in a cavern. There was a small opening at the top. Just a pinprick really. The Grotesques that could fly were up there scraping at the hole trying to form an exit.
I looked around the room as my eyes adjusted to the starlight.
Down a set of steps from where we were standing, there were dozens and dozens of stone statues. These ones were larger than the ones we had seen. They all had wings.
One of the Grotesques was going along the lines and awakening the statues with his awkward terrifying kiss. The statue would come to life with a crack of stone as its features deformed and became more demonic. It would take flight and join those up above.
I looked for the Leader. Eventually, I saw him. He was flying in the air, a part of the swarm above us. It wasn't the exact same gargoyle that I had seen earlier. That one had been more animalistic.
The statue that he inhabited now was far more humanoid. In fact, I think it had once been an angel.
“He's the one with the feathered wings,” I said. The rest had bat-like wings. The one who had Head of the Snake as a trope didn't.
Arthur came over to me and unzipped his duffel. He retrieved from it the flare gun that he had brought along with three extra cartridges.
The Molotov cocktails wouldn't do us much good unless we could get these things on the ground fighting us.
He held out his hand. I grabbed one of the Molotov cocktails and lit it. He threw it out onto the floor on the level beneath us. He hit the Grotesque that had been waking the statues.
After it was on fire, Valerie was able to get a few clean shots off and break off a large portion of its head. She was also able to kill the statue that had just woken up which had also gotten covered in fire.
With that, the fight was on.
Not for me. Blood had started to rise up in my throat. I spit it out on the ground. Valerie's healing trope was about spent. I dropped to the ground, more because sitting down was too difficult than because I couldn't stand.
The seams were starting to come apart fast. I leaned up against a wall near the entrance.
Arthur shot a flare at one of the flying gargoyles. As soon as it hit one of the creature’s wings turned to stone and it fell to the ground with a crash. It stopped moving so I assumed that was a kill shot.
With that, a couple of the flying Grotesques came down to swipe at them.
“Molotov,” Arthur said. When I wasn't there to hand it to him, he looked back and saw what kind of shape I was in. He ran over and grabbed his bag and dragged it away from me so that he would have access to it. In the process, several of the bottles of alcohol rolled out onto the ground.
I had to stay alive. As long as I was alive the Grotesques would attack me, giving Valerie and Arthur the chance to finish this.
Arthur lit a Molotov and doused one of the flying Grotesques as it approached him from the air. It suffered a similar fate as the one before, losing the ability to fly and careening into a stone wall before shattering.
Pointless. All pointless.
The voice of the Leader echoed in my head. He might be right. The gargoyles up at the top we're carving their way through to the outside world. Once they escaped, that was it. We lost.
Arthur took another shot with the flare. This time he missed, only turning one of the gargoyle's arms to stone. Not enough.
Just under a dozen creatures remained unless one of them wanted to go down and start waking up the statues beneath.
Those that weren't clawing their way through the opening were swarming around like wasps in a huge circle. It wasn't that there were a ton of them, but they were moving so quickly that it was hard to tell which one was the Leader even though he looked different.
You cannot resist me. I can see your heart's desire. You do not want to be here.
No shit.
Arthur fired off one more round from the flare gun. This one hit one of the Grotesques near the Leader. It went down.
“One flare left,” Arthur said. He handed the flare gun to Valerie. “Better make it count.”
Then, after having attempted to evade for so long, the circling Grotesque changed tactics. They started to attack.
One after another, they divebombed Arthur and Valerie, preventing Valerie from getting a critical hit against the Leader because of her Better Make It Count trope.
Arthur did his best to hit them with a Molotov and break them when they got close. It was made difficult because after burning one, he had to get ready for the next before he could take the first one out.
All the while, the Leader hid behind his brethren.
The Leader of the Grotesques was a terrifying creature. I didn't know if there normally was a Leader for this storyline or if this creature had been crafted specifically because Arthur had brought his Cut the Head off the Snake trope.
What I could say was that this creature did have one defining weakness, even at night when it was living flesh and virtually unstoppable.
It hated being ignored. It had been speaking to me off and on all fight. I had mostly not been paying attention. Part of that was because I was dying. The other part was because enemy monologues do start to all sound alike.
Ever since it began whispering to me, I could feel an urgency pick up in its voice. The longer I went without responding the more frustrated the voice became. At first, it was like he was trying to be friends with me but now I could feel his rage.
Humans believe that they are superior. They build altars for gods. But whose image do they adorn them with? Mine. Could there be any greater evidence of what you truly fear?
Come now, join me, serve me and I will spare you.
A monster with a God complex. I thought only humans could have one of those.
I will not be ignored. Pledge your service to me or face my wrath.
Riley, take your weapon and kill your comrades and you will live. You were always better off alone. Would you even be in this hellish place if you hadn't been dragged here by those who claimed to care for you?
The joke was on him. I wasn't even sure that I could kill Arthur and Valerie with my gun. I didn't know how the stat matchup worked with friendly fire.
I assumed that the audience could hear him tempting me so I had to play it up as if it might be working.
I kept a hand on my gun and held it out, not all the way toward Arthur but I needed to show that I was struggling with the decision. In a way I was. I could feel the temptation to succumb, to betray those around me. It was just so distant behind the pain.
I dropped the gun and let it rest on the ground.
Even as Arthur and Valerie were shooting them in the sky, I could see the Leader continuously trying to look at me. I was the target, after all.
I think I had a way to end this. I was at my end. I had to act.
“I will not help you!” I screamed defiantly. Blood choked me as I spoke but I screamed through it.
That did it.
The Grotesque Leader stopped flitting around in the air with his brethren and made a beeline for me. He pounced on me, landing on my leg and crushing my knee. He drove one claw into my stomach, undoing whatever positive effect Valerie’s healing had done, releasing my wounds from their bandages and putting me further on my path toward death.
If I was going to die, I would die executing one last plan. Roxie had died to buff my Savvy, after all. Seemed a shame to waste it.
I reached out toward the Molotov cocktails that had fallen out of the duffle and grabbed one of the bottles. I grabbed onto one of the creature’s horns and then drove the bottle over his head, smashing the glass and pouring flammable liquor over his torso and flooding down onto me.
After that, I was done. I had nothing left in my body to fight with.
Pop!
I heard a noise to my right, like a firework.
In the corner of my eye, I saw a bright orange fireball.
My entire body erupted in pain. I hadn't thought that I could be any more injured but this agony was something new. I wasn't numb to it.
I was on fire.
But so was the Grotesque.
Bang! Bang!
Gunfire continued to ring out, this time much closer to me. I couldn't tell if they managed to kill the Grotesque. I was too preoccupied with my own hellish existence.
You fool! You worthless--!
The Grotesque was speaking to me but I couldn't hear most of what it was saying. It sounded like it was in pain too.
All I could think about was hoping that my pain would end.
After what felt like an eternity, it finally did.
Bang.
The pain stopped. All went dark.
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