City-Eater

The silence bore down on Alex like a twenty-pound blanket. Every step he took, no matter how silent it was, felt like its echoes had echoes. He had to alternate from looking around the funhouse-mirror hallway and watching his every move to make sure he didn't stumble over a piece of randomly slanted ground or slip and fall.

His awkward gait slowly brought him to the stairs at the end of the hall. They were fortunately still where he recalled them to be. Sure, the door leading to them was now embedded in the wall and covered with twisting wood growth, but at least it was there. Pieces of it floated in the air, shifting back and forth gently in the air and blocking his way.

Alex grimaced. Even though the door was broken to pieces, there was no way to get past it without touching its remains. He carefully braced a hand against the largest of the fragments and pushed. It resisted him for a moment before slowly shifting back through the air. Alex grabbed another piece and shoved it out of the way before hurriedly stepping through.

The pieces of the door floated back to their places, as if he'd never been there. A shiver ran down Alex's spine as he turned to look down the stairwell. The stairs, like everything else in the building, were a shitshow. Jagged black roots ran throughout the stairwell and jutted out from the walls in random spots. Some of the stairs had been ripped free and hung suspended in the air, held in place only by a few measly roots running through them.

Fortunately, there were still enough of them left to actually use to get down. That was all he could really ask for.

Alex and Glint headed down the stairwell, avoiding the other rooms on the way down to the first floor. He did his best to avoid the roots and Glint did the same. They just looked like wood, but there was no reason to take any chances. Risk was fun when it had a reward. He wasn't trying to get himself killed.

The stairs reached their conclusion. Normally, they should have led out into a wide-open lobby that connected to some of the other dorm buildings in the cluster. Instead, Alex found a massive tree sitting dead center in the middle of the lobby.

It rose straight up through the building, ripping through the floors and sending roots and branches out in every direction. There wasn't a single leaf to be seen upon its surface, but the tree had decided to compensate for that particular failing by covering itself with howling visages of human faces pressed up against its bark as if just mere instants from breaking free.

Alex froze in place, his heart jumping in his chest. He half expected the tree to come alive and start screaming as it ripped the building down around him.

No such thing happened. It just… sat there. Watching.

He remained still for a few more seconds before swallowing and starting off once more. Alex crept out of the stairwell, gladder than ever that he'd avoided touching any of the wood. Beyond the tree, at the far end of the room, he could see the door leading out onto the street. It hung askew as if beckoning him over.

"Don't touch the wood," Alex said a hushed whisper as he started to creep toward the door. He didn't try rushing anything. The tree wasn't moving, but its roots were practically everywhere. Slow and steady movement was his friend.

He crept past a thick branch, crouching to avoid a pair of roots that ran parallel to each other. Every movement sent thrills of adrenaline pumping through his veins. He didn't even know if touching the tree would do anything, but he had absolutely no plan of finding out.

 Step by step, he approached the door. A glance back at Glint showed that the monster was having a considerably easier time than he was. Glint just hopped past the roots without a second glance, moving through them with casual ease.

At least I don't have to worry about him.

Alex finally drew up to the exit. A delighted grin crossed his lips and he finally got his first look outside through the roots obscuring the top of the doorframe.

Dull purple-red light shone down on the street, which was so badly changed that it took Alex several moments to even realize he was in the same city. Enormous crevices ran throughout the street, dark energy glowing from somewhere deep within them.

There was a sharp, acrid smell in the air that Alex couldn't quite place. It was almost electric, but like nothing he'd ever experienced before. He barely even paid it attention — all of his senses were nearly completely overwhelmed as he stared in disbelief.

 Entire buildings had been lifted into the air and were in various stages of what he could only describe as disassembly. One of his favorite restaurants, a dingy wooden building by the name of the Dixie Chicken, hung hundreds of feet in the air. Every plank of wood that had made it up had separated and floated ominously beside one another. It was almost as if an explosion had gone off on the inside of the building, but something had locked it in both space and time just milliseconds afterward.

The other buildings along the street weren't in much better shape. The ones that had actually managed to remain on the ground had been squished and warped like taffy. He barely recognized the glass windows of the physics building across the street from him. It had been elongated and stretched into a massive arch that cast a long shadow over the street.

"Holy shit," Alex breathed despite himself. It looked like his old dorm had gotten lucky. It definitely hadn't been this close to any of these buildings back in the real world, but a short jaunt through space seemed to be a relatively fortunate hand to be dealt given the alternative.

The buildings weren't the only changes. In the near distance, where there had once been only flat land, was a jagged mountain. It rose far into the sky, its sharp peak just below where the clouds should have been. Purple crackled at its top like a miniature lightning storm and rocks swirled up from the mountain, frozen in space as they reached up toward it.

A shadow passed overhead. Alex instinctually craned his neck back. He froze in place as his blood went cold. A huge, apartment-sized plate of chitin had blocked out the sky. Not just one, but dozens. Hundreds of massive legs, each one the size of a towering tree, swirled through the air. It was an enormous centipede.

City-Eater Centipede (???)

///Author's Note///

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