Chapter 124: The Flesh of Maggots
“No!”
At the last possible second, as the monstrous hunger coiled in my soul, my right hand slammed down on my left, forcing the spell away from the living. I cannot kill them. Not the innocent. They had fought beside me in this sewer hell just moments ago. I would not, could not, feed on them.
The motion was a convulsive jerk, redirecting my aim toward the gallery of corpses littering the ground. So many of the slum’s poor souls had been torn apart by the drowners. They were freshly dead, their bodies still brimming with a vital, cooling energy.
“Ah!” The survivors, who had been cautiously creeping toward their fallen comrades, cried out in a fresh wave of terror. They watched, paralyzed, as the bodies of the dead, both drowner and human, began to wither before their eyes. Flesh tightened, skin turned to parchment, and in a matter of seconds, they shriveled into desiccated, skeletal husks.
Faced with a sight so profoundly unnatural, their faces went white with a fear beyond reason. They scrambled back to their hovels, tripping over themselves in their haste, terrified they might be next to collapse into dust.
I drew a great deal of life force from the dead. This time, it was fresh, a crimson mist, not the foul, black ichor of the long-drowned. It flowed into me as a current of profound warmth, a comfort that was nothing like the bone-deep chill from before.
But having tasted it, the impulse returned, a serpent coiling in my gut. The essence of the newly dead was so much sweeter than that of a bloated corpse. How much better, then, would the living taste?
“Parula, are you alright?” Just as I was about to raise my hand again, Jared’s weak voice cut through the dark whispers in my mind, breaking the spell. “Your hand… there’s so much blood! What do we do?!”
His face was still pale, his eyes wide with a helpless fear as he stared at my wrist. The blood would not stop; it had already formed a slick, dark pool beneath me, steaming faintly in the cold air. He had never seen such a wound, and he was at a complete loss.
I knew that Life Drain could only replenish my energy; it could not heal the wound itself. I was bleeding out. As long as the bleeding didn't stop, I would die, no matter how much life force I absorbed. A drowner had torn a great chunk of flesh from my wrist, severing an artery. To stop the bleeding, I would need to tie off the upper arm, or cauterize the wound with fire, searing the vessel shut. Those were the only two options I could think of from my old life.
I couldn’t do it myself. And Jared was still too weak to even stand properly. I was about to try and explain it to him when the drowner corpses behind him suddenly began to move. I flinched, thinking they had risen again. But they weren't standing up. They were… melting? Dissolving into a pool of milky, white liquid. What was happening?
It was late. The battle had raged through the twilight, and now a deep, starless night had fallen. The braziers along the waterway had long since gone out, leaving the world in a profound darkness, lit only by the distant, hellish glow of the factory district. My night blindness had returned, and I couldn't make out what the strange, white fluid was.
As it drew closer, I realized it wasn't a liquid at all. It was a sea of insects. A tide of pale, white maggots. The drowners that had surrounded Jared had been felled by my Plague of Maggots, and I had forgotten them in the chaos.
I hadn't realized the things could multiply. In the silence, they had devoured the corpses, leaving nothing but bone. And now they were coming for me, moving with an unnatural, scuttling speed that was nothing like a maggot’s slow crawl.
“Stay away!” I cried, but my body was weak from blood loss. I couldn't move. I could only watch in horror as the things swarmed over me, some of them even leaping through the air.
They formed a single, squirming, slime-like mass that covered my left hand, and then they began to burrow into the open wound. My stomach turned, a wave of pure, visceral revulsion washing over me. In an instant, the sea of maggots was gone. The darkness was so complete, and the others were so distracted by the remaining drowners, that no one had noticed, save for Jared, who was staring at me, his eyes wide with horror.
“Parula!” he cried, scrambling closer. I quickly rolled up my sleeve. I could feel the maggots dissolving, becoming mana, reforming the strange, writhing brand on my arm. But many of them remained, clustered in the wound itself. The sight of it made me want to vomit. It was as if I, too, were rotting, infested.
But a strange thing happened. As the maggots swarmed over the wound, the searing pain in my wrist began to fade. Had they secreted some anesthetic? Then, something even more miraculous occurred. The maggots seemed to melt, dissolving into a thick, viscous liquid that began to merge with my own flesh. Finally, the maggots vanished completely. And my wound… it was gone. In its place was smooth, unblemished skin. I touched it. It was my own pale, white flesh. I could feel the touch.
Bloody hell! These things… they could heal me? I was saved. Not only had the bleeding stopped, but the wound itself had closed, the flesh knitted back together. The great chunk of my wrist that had been torn away had been completely restored.
But a wave of gooseflesh still prickled my skin. Had the maggots become my flesh? Or had they used the rotted flesh they had just consumed to rebuild my own?
The thought that a part of my body might now be made of maggots, or of corpse-flesh, filled me with a profound, sickening horror. My mind reeled from the sight, and a deep, unnatural cold settled in my bones. My state was a fragile, terrible thing.
Across the waterway, Bartholomew and his men were still fighting, but the tide had turned. The remaining drowners were few. Unarmed, for all their strength, they were no match for a mob of desperate, armed men who knew how to fight, especially when these men had the number advantage.
They had already carved a path to the stairs; some of the more cowardly ones, like Bass, the man who had betrayed us, had already fled.
But most of the ruffians, Bartholomew’s loyalists especially, had been driven into a killing frenzy. They had forgotten their fear, their street-brawling savagery taking over. Bartholomew was the most ferocious of all, his wood-axe cleaving through the undead with a roar, lopping off limbs, splitting heads. His refusal to retreat had given the others courage, a focal point for their desperate rage. Once they understood that these things could be killed, their initial terror had faded.
Since that is the case, I thought, let me help you a little more. I raised my hand and began to drain the last of the mana from the remaining drowners.
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