[V]Chapter 100: Cannibals

"Blast it all!"

Varyna wiggled her hands, but the ropes held her wrists tight. 

She was cursing herself-and the stupid volunteer minimal weapon regulations-for being unable to fight off a couple of sick people and escape. Mr. Adventurer/Chef/Idiot—his name was Lus—was no help either. Without even pulling out the laser cutter she'd seen him use earlier, he'd tripped on a rock and gotten caught too. And now, they found themselves immobilized sitting side by side in some old castle, surrounded by Humans, Nemarians, and Kremels that all looked like half-rotted corpses.

Varyna resisted the urge to gag. If the scene wasn't bad enough, the smell of the disease coupled with the decomposing remains of their previous 'meals' was nauseating.

"What do we do now?" she hissed to Lus.

He shrugged. "Try not to get eaten?"

"Right," Varyna snorted, glancing at the roaring fire the nefitisians were continually adding more wood to.

She looked around a little more before another realization struck her.

"Hey Runner. Lus. Have you noticed that there isn't a single Shamayim here?

"Yeah.. so?" Lus gave her an exasperated look. "Is that really important right now?"

"Well, I thought Humans were the only ones who could carry the immunity gene," she explained. There was no reason to explain. Clearly, this dumb Runner couldn't keep up with any logical reasoning. And he seemed to think she was the one lacking in logic by bringing up the Shamayim in the first place. But ever since Mr. Abioeosuu and the orientation, she kept getting a weird feeling, and she needed to talk it out.

"The Shamayim probably never leave their holy, amazing, exclusive planet long enough to catch something as common as a plague," Lus retorted. "Again, why is that important right now?"

"Because it means something!" Varyna was getting frustrated. "It could be a clue to this whole disease and we could use it to help ourselves escape or something!"

"Yeah ok. So what does it mean and how can we use it to escape?" Lus raised an eyebrow.

Suddenly Varyna remembered something else. She wasn't the logical one. She wasn't the 'plan guy'. She needed someone like Quoppi or Hxlt for that. And unfortunately, Lus didn't seem to be the 'plan guy' either.

"Well.. Quoppi would have thought of something.." she mumbled. 

The Runner ignored her and leaned his head back against the crumbling brick wall behind them. 

In the quiet, with nothing but the incoherent mutters of half-deranged plague victims and the crackling fire, Varyna tried her best to come up with a plan. Their captors hadn't searched their bodies and taken anything, so if Lus had his cutter-thing still on his person, they might be able to use that. Maybe a distraction could be useful as well. But most importantly, they had to find a way to actually exit the castle and return to the crawler. And all the doors they'd taken getting here were probably heavily guarded.

"Haaaaa. Ok let's think." Varyna laid her head back against the wall as well. It had more give than she expected, and bits of ancient masonry fluttered to the ground. 

So maybe brute force was an option for getting out of the castle walls.

And if not that…

Varyna felt around the bricks for some sharp edge. Maybe she could work to fray the ropes. But every promising spot just crumbled under pressure.

Having given up hope on wearing away the rope, Varyna went back to her first plan, and maneuvered her bound hands the best she could to dig away at the wall. By some pure stroke of luck, she hit a particularly weak spot, and an entire section of brick gave way, leaving a perfect hole. Well, not really perfect. It would definitely be a tight squeeze—even tighter with her arms tied down.

"Hey. We can scoot out this way," she hissed to Lus. He had glanced over at the sound of crumbling brick, but luckily, none of the nefitisians had noticed. The Runner nodded, and Varyna began scooching herself forward in order to lie down and wriggle through the hole. If someone on the other side had noticed the sudden hole, they probably would have said something by now, right?

Just as she was getting into position, the plague victims all began forming up together and their weird whispering noises intensified. Suns, that must be some kind of pre-dinner ritual, Varyna thought. She had to move even faster because soon the attention would be back on them.

She didn't get to see much of the ritual before she began squirming backward. There had been some pedestal in the middle of all the nefitisians with some piece of trash on it. But, hey, as long as it kept them distracted, Varyna didn't really care what they wanted to worship. 

Her blind estimation of the hole size proved to be off—painfully so. Sharp edges scratched at her clothes and skin as she tried to force herself through. Since her head went through first, she could see that this side of the wall was unoccupied, but she felt exposed with the rest of her body trapped where she couldn't see.

All she could do was trust the Runner to alert her to any movement from the nefitisians and wriggle more quickly. After a brief struggle, she managed to get her shoulders through,the rest of her body was easy.

Now, drenched in sweat, she paused for a minute on the other side, waiting for the Runner to start working his way through. But he didn't. She couldn't even hear him moving.

"Hey. Runner. Let's go," she whispered, trying to peek through the hole. She could see Lus still sitting, almost like he was frozen. Had something happened? She stuck a leg through and nudged him, hoping it would rouse him. He did glance over his shoulder at her, but then turned away again.

Varyna groaned. "You stupid Ru-"

Suddenly, Lus jumped up, the ropes on his hands falling away (apparently he had his cutter still and had used it to free himself without even offering to help Varyna) and ran straight ahead.

Varyna was frozen for a few seconds, complete disbelief washing over her. There's no way this guy just left her? And why did he run straight for the nefitisians? Did he want to fight now instead of running?

"What an idiot," she huffed, kicking the wall. "I guess I'll have to just leave him to die."

Well, that was what she kept telling herself as she ran along the section of castle she had found herself in. At one point she found a loose scrap of metal that was strong enough to slice through the ropes around her wrists. It was long with serious weapon potential, so she picked it up to take with her.

But before long, she found herself running back toward the castle's center.

"Stupid Runner. Stupid demon-stealling Runner," she cursed. She couldn't leave without him. Not because she had formed some kind of weird comradery with him, but because he was the only person who knew where Leviathan was. And she had to get Leviathan.

The doorway that led back to the castle's center was guarded by a Kremel and a Nemarian. Both had been sick for a long time apparently. It wasn't even clear what color the Nemarian's scales had once been. All that was there now was pale white skin and rotting flesh.

The Kremel had lost a good portion of their face to the rot, making them more or less blind on the right side. If Varyna could slash its good eye, it'd be more or less neutralized. And Nemarians weren't great fighters anyway. She paused, hiding out of sight around the corner, listening intently. The nefitisians on the inside were yelling, but it didn't sound like chaos. Which meant Lus was already gone or had been caught again.

"Am I really going to risk my life for some criminal? Who might have gotten away already anyway?" she asked herself, clutching the metal scrap so hard her palms started to bleed.

She took one more deep breath, shook her head for how reckless she was being, and then charged at the guards.

Predictably, the Kremel moved first to block her while the Nemarian shouted for back up. Varyna had her target set from the start, however, and slashed the Kremel's eye right away before moving to the Nemarian. He flailed his arms trying to grab her, and she landed a solid kick to one of his legs. So solid that her foot sank into his blackened flesh and threw her off balance. She swung the scrap metal as she stumbled backward, and it made contact with the Nemarian's neck. Curiously enough, blood didn't start gushing out as it should have, but nonetheless, the creature fell to the ground.

With the entry clear, she turned to face the scene inside. More plague victims were already running toward her. There was still a crowd by the fire too, and Lus was tied to a wooden post right next to the flames. 

Varyna gauged the situation. She could easily dispose of the three coming her way, and then if she ran around the other side of the fire, she could get Lus and hopefully circle back to this very door. 

She grinned, swinging her makeshift weapon. "Alright. Let's do this!"

The three approachers went down easily. She had to fight one more Human who moved surprisingly quickly on her way around the fire, but she reached Lus with two full seconds to get him free. He was already starting to redden on the parts of his skin that had been exposed to the fire. Hopefully he wasn't actually burned yet.

The scrap metal, unfortunately, took both seconds to get through the ropes, but the Runner hopped down and pulled out his cutter.

"Thanks," he shouted.

"Maybe tell me about your plan to get yourself cooked beforehand," Varyna snorted. She began the path back to the door, but quickly noticed that Lus wasn't following. "What's wrong? Not burnt enough yet?" All he had to do was follow her, but twice now he had made things difficult by not doing so, and she was getting frustrated.

"I have to grab that!" Lus answered as he ran toward the pedestal.

"Right! Why didn't I think of that?!" Varyna quipped, but still followed behind him, helping him cut down plague victims. "We could delay our escape and make them way more pissed off than we need to! Genius!"

She couldn't fathom what was going through Lus's head, so she had no choice but to keep fighting. But the metal was digging farther into her skin, and a big Kremel with a crazed look on his rotted face and a giant.. sword? was lumbering toward them.

"They have a weapon! We have to move!" Varyna shouted. Despite how many nefitisians she cut down, there seemed to be an endless swarm. She hadn't planned for this, and she was running out of steam fast.

"I got it!"

Varyna turned toward Lus's voice, but something glinted out of the corner of her eye. She whipped her head back just in time to see the Kremel swing its weapon, ignoring the people that still remained between them. She tried to jump back, but the edge of the blade managed to catch her abdomen as it embedded itself in three nefitisians in front of her. 

Clutching her stomach, she leapt backward, right into Lus.

"You ok?" he asked, already propelling both of them toward the doorway. In their haste to swarm the escaped captives, the nefitisians had left the doorway unguarded. The hard part was behind them if they could just make it out.

Varyna pushed her legs to run, even as her vision became fuzzy and her head started reeling. She couldn't collapse here. There was no way that stick-armed Runner could carry her (if he'd even be willing to).

They made it through the door; they just had to make it out of the castle now.

Make it out.

Make it…