Chapter 204: Pain

The ground under my feet moved.

I’m not talking about the faint tremors that I had been feeling since we got into downtown Rongdu, I’m saying that it moved like it was out to get me.

That was the part my brain didn’t like.

I don’t remember the last time I was worried about fighting. Even in my past life, I had made my peace with death. But now the very idea that the ground, the earth that was the basis of my powers was turning against me?

That was more than I was willing to accept.

I stilled, wishing that maybe I had gone barefoot, that I could feel the ground beneath my thick soled boots better. I tried to control my breathing, wanting to not be taken by surprise.

But I was.

I didn’t know what was happening until the slime-covered earth under my boots shifted like something massive had rolled underneath it and pushed the entire floor up from below.

The puddles of slime and water on the ground rippled outward as the roots hanging overhead swayed in a breeze that only they could feel.

One of the survivors near the wall made a thin sound in the back of her throat and pressed both hands over her mouth like that would make her disappear. But it wouldn’t matter how loud or quiet she was.

That was the important part was that the Devourer was gone. Completely and utterly gone.

A creature that large had vanished under the ground like it had been turned into liquid and poured into the earth, leaving behind a wide, wet split in the floor where its body had dropped through.

Black slime bubbled around the edges of the opening, and the dirt there kept collapsing inward in soft sucking chunks.

I took one step back, needing to pay attention.

The earth bulged to my left.

I jumped before it broke open, and the Devourer’s mouth exploded out of the ground exactly where my leg had been a breath earlier.

Teeth spun through dirt and slime, grinding up stone, broken tile, roots, and anything else caught in the way. The sound of it chewing through the floor was worse than watching it eat the man. At least that had been one person. This sounded like the whole building was being fed into a meat grinder.

"Oh, that’s cheating," I snapped.

The mouth dropped back underground and the chamber went still again like everything was waiting for the next attack.

And I didn’t do waiting well.

I turned slowly, trying to follow the movement through the ground instead of listening to the echoes bouncing off the wet walls.

That was the problem.

The Devourer wasn’t loud in one place. It was loud everywhere. Dirt cracked behind me, slime bubbled near the wall, the roots overhead shivered, and every sound layered over the others until the chamber felt like it was lying to me.

The survivors did not move from their corner. Maybe they thought they were safe. Maybe they didn’t care. But I was officially washing my hands of them.

The tunnel behind them was open. The zombies were gone. The thing that had kept them trapped had disappeared under the floor to chase me, and still not one of them tried to run. They stayed pressed together like rabbits waiting for the fox to choose which one looked easiest to chew.

Fine.

Their problem.

I had my own.

The floor under my right foot dipped.

I threw a vine down into the slime and yanked myself sideways, barely avoiding the circular mouth as it ripped through the ground again. Teeth snapped shut on empty air, grinding so close to my boot that mud and slime splattered up my leg. The Devourer sank back down before I could drive a spike into it.

It was too fucking fast for something that looked like it should need three business days and a forklift to roll over.

My baby vine hissed against my wrist.

"I know," I muttered. "I hate it too."

The next attack came from behind.

I felt the pressure change a split second before the floor burst upward. I twisted, driving both palms down as thick wooden spears punched out from my skin and stabbed into the earth. They caught flesh. I knew they did because the chamber filled with a wet, furious bellow that made several survivors collapse to their knees.

The Devourer thrashed underneath me and for one beautiful second, I thought I had pinned it.

Then the ground dropped under my feet.

The earth beneath my left leg caved inward, and the mouth came up at an angle I didn’t see until the teeth had already closed around my calf.

The excruciating pain that I was feeling completely erased everything.

I couldn’t think, I couldn’t scream, my world became completely centered on pain.

The rings of teeth caught my leg and started pulling.

That was the moment I was able to take a full breath and I finally screamed.

I heard myself do it, sharp and raw and nothing like the voice I normally used. The teeth didn’t bite down cleanly. They scraped. They spun. They peeled skin away from my shin in wet strips while deeper teeth caught muscle and dragged backward.

Something cracked inside my leg with a sound I felt more than heard, and my entire body seized so hard that I almost lost control of the vines holding me upright.

Almost.

The Devourer pulled harder like it was trying to take me under ground with it.

That ugly basement worm was actually trying to drag me into the dirt like I was some half-dead idiot too tired to fight back.

Absolutely fucking not.

The baby vine moved before I told it to.

It launched itself from my wrist, opened its tiny mouth wider than I had ever seen it open before, and bit deep into the slick flesh at the edge of the Devourer’s mouth like it was determined to eat it before it could eat me.