Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

Quirinus scooped Artorius into his arms and lunged towards the rods. The boy barely had time for a surprised yelp before they were through to the other side. Ravana tried to follow, but her boots had sunk into the floor and she found herself trapped. Jizo plucked herself free from the soft ground and lurched unsteadily towards her.

“What’s the matter?” sneered Jizo. “Trapped like a fly in a spider’s web?”

“Stay away from me!” Ravana yelled.

The cocoon’s walkway tongue snapped back, the oval squeezed shut and the bobbing heads of the greys were lost from sight. Jizo lunged to grab one of the spindly legs and stumbled upon the quivering ground. Within the rods, the floor was liquefying and puffing spurts of gas like tiny volcanoes. The pool continued to churn, only now its dark contents were being dragged around by the rods into the beginnings of a whirlpool.

Athene watched Ravana’s panic-stricken struggles with glee. In a blink of an eye, the watcher metamorphosed into an owl-shaped blur and fluttered to the top of the cocoon, where she once again took human form, looking more like a deranged goddess than ever. The rods spun ever faster, filling the air with a loud eerie humming. Ravana realised Athene had finally revealed herself to all. Every stare of amazement in the chamber was turned her way.

“You win today!” cried Athene. “But the game is not over!”

“Where the hell did she come from?” cried Quirinus, beyond the whirling rods.

“It doesn’t matter!” Ravana snapped. “I’m stuck! Get me out of here!”

Kedesh immediately leapt back through the rods and came to her side. Ravana felt an arm pulling at her waist, then she was free and being dragged past the whirring columns. As she picked herself up from the floor at Artorius’ and Quirinus’ feet, she saw her father had retrieved the agents’ stolen guns and had them trained upon a cowering Lilith and Dagan.

“Ravana!” Quirinus exclaimed. “Are you okay?”

“Just about,” she said, wincing. She had fallen on her weak arm. “Kedesh, thank you.”

“I owed you one,” Kedesh replied. “That was a particularly sticky wicket.”

An anguished scream drew their attention back to the spinning rods. Jizo stood within, her arm and forehead covered in blood from where she tried to follow but misjudged the leap. The clones resumed their chants and paced within the circular blue glow. Above, the ethereal spectre of the watcher loomed large through the gaps of the whizzing rods.

“You have no idea what you have unleashed!” Athene cried. “Your masters awake!”

Something strange was happening to the chamber floor within the circle. The ground sank into a funnel, drawing the cocoon into the centre. Jizo and the clones scrabbled for a foothold at the edge, perilously close to the speeding rods. Artorius clutched Ravana’s hand and with his other gave a wave of wounded digits.

“Goodbye Stripy,” he said sadly. There were tears in his eyes. “Goodbye Nana.”

Ravana gasped. The funnel suddenly opened upon the mind-twisting spectacle of a negative universe. Tiny dark stars lay strewn across blindingly-white space in a reality-warping vision of infinity. The circle had become a doorway, a sublime classical portico into a grand corridor of inverse space-time, incomparable to the fleeting ragged wormhole of an ED drive. The chamber basked in the light of alien suns, at the centre of which sat the greys’ mysterious chariot, its spindly legs gripping the mouth of the funnel like the runners of a sleigh. It was alien engineering beyond comprehension and truly beautiful to behold.

“My word,” whispered Kedesh. “It’s full of stars! Err… black ones.”

“An extra-dimensional egg,” Quirinus murmured. “Now I’ve seen everything.”

The spinning rods became a tornado-like frenzy. The cryogenic capsule toppled and with the dead spider was promptly sucked into oblivion. The cocoon remained a few more moments, then dropped silently through the inverse starry whirlpool and into the void.

“Nana and Stripy!” shrieked Artorius. “Where have they gone?”

“Home,” said Ravana. She looked at Nana’s strange gift, which despite everything was still in her hand. “I hope they know where they’re going.”

The light within the portal began to fade. The rods continued to whirl, beyond which the faint outlines of Jizo and the two clones were still visible, perched precariously at the edge of the vortex. Lilith and Dagan solemnly drew near Ravana, Quirinus, Kedesh and Artorius, all temporarily united by shock. Fearful murmurs came from the others huddled in the archway behind them. Ravana’s headache pounded as fiercely as ever.

“I saw a woman,” Dagan whispered. “Sitting on top of that thing!”

“Brothers Dhanus and Simha,” said Lilith. “Can we get them out of there?”

“What about your fellow nurse?” sneered Kedesh. “She caused all this.”

“Stuff Jizo,” Lilith retorted. “Mad drunken psycho.”

“Stuff them all,” growled Quirinus. “I’ve had enough craziness for one day.”

“Look!” Ravana cried, pointing. “There’s something coming back up!”

A dark shape rose from the glowing vortex. At first Ravana thought it was the return of the cocoon, then a shiver ran down her spine as a huge black bulk hauled itself from the funnel on long hairy legs. Behind it followed another, then another. Anguish surged through her implant, sending her reeling before she even heard the cyberclones’ shrieks. She opened her mouth to scream, but Jizo got there first with a wild banshee wail.

“Weavers!” hissed Kedesh.

“What the hell…?” murmured Quirinus.

“Ashtapadas,” moaned Ravana, holding her head. “Why did it have to be spiders?”

The monster arachnids clambered from the portal to the edge of the spinning rods. Jizo leapt frantically from one set of snapping jaws to another, tried to jump through a gap in the moving rods and was thrown to the floor. The cyberclone monks raised their hands and shrieked again. Ravana winced under their barrage of concentrated pulses of anger, which felt like they were trying to ward off the invaders by thought alone. The chamber quickly filled with the chattering of mandibles, punctuated by sharp cracks as creatures fell against the whirling rods and were catapulted back across the vortex in a tangle of legs.

Ravana stared mesmerised at the ever-increasing tumbling mass of spiders. Her fear turned to horror at the sight of Jizo under attack. The nurse’s screams of terror mingled with the defiant screeches of Simha and Dhanus, then with one last searing spike of anguish the pain in Ravana’s head was gone. A glimpse of Jizo and the cyberclones prone upon the floor, overrun by snapping jaws and trampling limbs, gave way to the grotesque spectacle of a pair of spiders scrabbling over them to wrap their twitching bodies in silk.

The scene of thrashing legs and pulsating bodies gradually became clearer through the blue-tinged blur of the rods. The funnel of the alien portal was closing, the whirring circle slowing to a halt. Ravana felt a cold shudder of dread.

“The rods,” she said in alarm. “They’re stopping!”

“I don’t like this,” sobbed Artorius.

“Giant spiders,” growled Quirinus. “Any chance they’re friendly?”

An arachnid suddenly burst from the writhing mass, ricocheted off a moving rod and to their horror flew through into the chamber beyond. The spider untangled its legs and with scything jaws made straight for the frozen and stupefied Dagan. Quirinus whirled towards the approaching creature, raised the guns in his hands and let loose a volley of shots. The spider’s head exploded, splattering blood to the floor.