Chapter 464

The damp, cold air of the North Korean sewer stung Hana's nostrils. She pulled her threadbare scarf tighter around her face. The cheap fabric offered little comfort against the chill that seemed to seep from the concrete itself. This was not her first venture into the underbelly of the city.

But tonight, an unnerving silence had settled, heavier than usual. Usually, there was the drip, drip, drip of water echoing through the tunnels, or the scuttling sounds of rats. Tonight, there was an unnerving stillness.

Hana, a former engineer now forced to scavenge, needed to retrieve scrap metal for the meager wages it brought. Her family relied on it, even if her conscience ached at the danger involved. Tonight, a new rumor had spread, of a hidden, deeper section of the sewers, untouched and full of metal.

She tried to disregard the tales that followed; whispers of a large creature that stalked its depths, it must be a lie she thought, that she just be hopeful it is a lie. She pressed on, her worn boots echoing on the slick walkway. The air grew heavier, thick with the odor of decay, yet overlaid with something… else.

Something that made her stomach churn, like spoiled meat, but that couldn't be it, as there was more to it. The tunnels seemed to narrow, the concrete walls closing in around her. A faint, unnatural light seemed to come from the depths ahead.

With each step, the air grew more oppressive, each turn felt like more and more of a trap. She started to have doubts, doubts that could lead to death here. A low guttural sound came from the dark passage ahead, the sound itself made her muscles tense, a primal warning.

She raised the kerosene lamp, its weak light danced with fear, casting elongated, distorted images on the wall. Was that something there in that reflection, did that shadow move? Or is it my imagination playing tricks on me.

She forced herself onward; the desperate need for metal pushed aside her sense of danger. She reached an opening into a large chamber, a cavernous space unlike the tunnels. In the middle was a pool of murky, stagnant water reflecting the pale glow coming from a source above.

It looked as if a skylight was placed into this dank, wretched chamber, something wrong about that, very wrong. Her breath caught in her throat as she noticed movement in the water, something was submerged in it, something big. Then, from beneath the surface a massive, pale form emerged slowly.

It was skeletal and yet bloated, its skin looked loose and wet. Multiple eyes stared at her from where its head should have been, all moving, as if it was several eyes put onto one creature. An awful smell that defied definition hit her, forcing a gag.

This is that smell, she realized with fear. The rumors, they are not rumors but facts, true facts, what is that monster? It emitted a low, rumbling growl, each pulse of sound vibrating through the concrete floor beneath her boots. Its mouth gaped open to a cavity, revealing rows of teeth that looked both sharp and decayed, a ghastly contrast.

Bile rose in her throat, she stumbled back, desperate to escape, she never should have ventured here, here with that monster. She wished to go home, home with her family who are expecting their mother, their wife.

Her foot caught on a loose rock, and she went down on the hard, dirty concrete floor. Her head made contact with the concrete, an odd echo followed as she tried to recover. It was then she saw the creature starting its move towards her. With what must be incredible power, it surged from the water, creating a loud splash. The ground itself seemed to tremble with the monsters speed.

Hana scrambled back, scrabbling at the walls. It moved far too fast for something of that size. "No, no please" She gasped, her voice failing to convey her true panic. The creature tilted its multi-eyed head.

Its multiple orbs, the numerous, awful eyes that are fixated on her, all locked onto her as it drew closer. Hana was paralyzed, fear holding her like cold, unbreakable chains.

With a horrific speed, it lurched forward. Hana closed her eyes awaiting the fatal bite but felt the creature grasp her ankle instead. She opened her eyes in shock. Its skin was cold, slimy, like some type of serpent.

She was pulled against the ground as it moved, dragged towards the dark depths of the water that it has come from. She dug her nails into the unforgiving concrete, a desperate attempt to stay out of the water and escape it's clutches. Her fingers started to bleed, tearing under the force she put onto them.

It felt as if the flesh was being ripped apart, as the creature moved quicker and quicker and towards its domain. She had failed, that she failed her family and her children. Was it worth the metal, was it even real, had it just been the rumours of a fool that had led her to her death?

Why am I thinking so late, as it began to pull her into the water with no hope. The water was colder than she imagined. This is what death must be like. The horrible stench, mixed with the sewer water, filled her lungs. This is not where I should be, she cried in her mind, to be in here.

The monster drug her down, into the murk and the mud of the sewer. She tried to kick, scream, anything to get out, anything at all but she is weaker than the creature and unable to compete. She was a mouse now to a snake. She should have just been a mouse, it's a cruel, sad irony of her position here and now.

It began dragging her through the sludge towards an opening in the bottom of the pool, where another dark tunnel beckoned, another layer below. A place unknown, as this sewer system had no documents of a deeper section. Her air supply felt low now, her screams only resulted in the dirty, wretched liquid to enter her mouth and nose. She gagged.

Just before she entered the passage her head resurfaced into the surface for just a split second as it started to move to the passage. The dim light was still on, the pale skylight that shined down onto this scene. A place of death.

This was going to be her end, the final moments. There was no struggle as she had come to accept her fate. Acceptance can be an amazing thing in some situations she had come to realize, in this scenario, acceptance meant death, final and inevitable. She took what was possibly her last breath. She coughed as the monster now took her under again.

She was pulled deeper into the inky blackness. The water became even more putrid here, it felt oily on her skin. As they went further in, strange glowing bioluminescent fungi began to light up the passage ways. Odd structures made out of what looked like bone were stuck into the walls, with hollowed-out areas acting as small dens and caves. Hana thought it must be from it's victims.

They began moving slower now. It seemed as if it's home had been reached. The light provided a morbid spectacle of the creature's lair. This was more than she thought she bargained for when rumors began going around. This is beyond horror, beyond death, something she didn't expect in such a wretched country.

The monster stopped in the center of an oval cavern, almost exactly the size as a swimming pool, with more of those bizarre, bone structures covering every wall. Hana felt like she was being lowered. Her lungs begged for air but as they hit the bottom, it wasn't hard concrete.

The ground itself was a bed of some sort of substance, with what felt like soft, long hair surrounding the bone dens on the ground. Hana gasped a mixture of water and whatever this slime she is in. She thought of her children one final time as she knew the end was near.

The creature dropped her. Hana's vision blurred with panic and water. She tried to crawl away, her limbs heavy. The air, or rather, whatever gaseous mix filled the space, was strangely suffocating and made it difficult to focus.

She looked up to see the monster looming above, it felt huge to her now in her current state, it almost blocked out the light coming from the bioluminescence. Its awful mouth began to open wide. But instead of biting or devouring, it did something… different.

From within its wide gullet, tendrils unfurled. The tendrils that now seemed like tubes made of organic material reached towards her, attaching themselves to her skin, piercing through it in places that were exposed and some through her worn clothes. A scream ripped through her lungs, raw and animalistic but it made little noise under the slime and the water filling her throat.

These tubes pulsed, they grew hot with energy that was spreading inside of her, and then through her veins as the creature began extracting from her. Hana felt every sensation, each horrible connection that she could not break or stop. The energy seemed to suck at her life force, that very essence of her soul was being drained, leaving her an empty husk. She felt every molecule being stripped.

She didn't pass out. Her body began to contort, her skin losing its natural tone to something paler, an awful whitish gray. She was transforming. The pain was unending, absolute and terrible.

Every nerve in her body felt like it was set ablaze as the tubes started to pump her body into the organic bone walls. She could feel bone structure in her skin begin to turn and melt into that of the organic substance of this awful lair as she was molded into the walls. It felt like some twisted clay that this monster was using.

Her vision started to narrow as the process ended. She looked at her once-hands and noticed them not as hands, but hardened tubes connected to a growing, bone-like structure with her hair, melded into this hell.

She finally understood, this is what that beast did to its other victims. It absorbed their biomass and created a living environment out of them, out of their bones and bodies. A morbid garden, made out of living tissue and life. An end of absolute depravity.

And now she, Hana, would be another branch, another wall, forever embedded in the creature's twisted nest, as just a permanent part of this ghastly subterranean ecosystem, still conscious and forever conscious of her eternal and miserable end.