Chapter 288: The Starving Halls, Pillar of Famine
"I was out of options, Princess," Sebastian wheezed, leaning heavily against the brass wall as he dragged himself out of the water. He slumped onto the dry stone floor, his chest heaving. "It was either bite the giant, or let him pop my head like a grape. I went with the high-protein diet."
He wiped his mouth with the back of his torn leather glove. His lips were stained crimson. He felt like he had been run over by a freight train, backed up over, and then set on fire. The reality anchor was an absolute bitch. Being a mortal human after months of acting as a literal god was a terrifying, exhausting demotion.
"Are you okay?" Valerie asked, dropping to her knees beside him. She reached out, her hands gently checking the tight gauze wrapped around his right thigh.
"I’m fantastic," Sebastian grunted, wincing as a sharp spike of pain shot through his fractured left arm. "Just a casual Tuesday. My ribs feel like shattered glass, my arm is useless, and I taste motor oil. But hey, we fired the first manager."
*BZZZT.*
A faint, flickering gray system prompt rendered weakly in the air between them.
`[Hardware Level Diagnostics: Pillar 1 Offline. Processing Load Shifted to Remaining Pillars.]`
"Three to go," Valerie said, her blue eyes hardening. "If they handle War, what do the other three process?"
"I don’t know, and I don’t care," Sebastian sighed, forcing himself to stand. His right leg screamed in protest, but the industrial superglue held the deep gash shut. "I just know they’re standing between us and the Architects’ throne room. Let’s keep moving before management decides to call in more of those clockwork tin-cans."
He picked up a jagged, heavy piece of brass shrapnel that had blown off the dead Sentinel earlier. It was roughly the size of a machete, with a razor-sharp edge. It wasn’t the massive Earth Sword, but right now, a heavy piece of sharp metal was the best he could do.
They left the flooded chamber behind, pushing deeper into the sprawling, brutalist mega-structure of the Motherboard.
The roaring, deafening noise of the massive iron gears slowly began to fade, replaced by a deep, unsettling silence. The air in the corridor changed. The stifling, suffocating heat vanished. It was replaced by a biting, aggressive chill that cut straight through Sebastian’s torn leather coat.
"Is it just me, or did someone leave the fridge open?" Sebastian shivered, his breath pluming in front of his face like white smoke.
"It’s freezing," Valerie agreed, wrapping her arms tightly around her chest.
Frost began to crawl up the tarnished brass pillars lining the hallway. The dark stone floor became slick with a thin layer of black ice. The flickering yellow utility bulbs above them dimmed, casting long, eerie shadows across the corridor.
They reached the end of the hall and stepped through a set of heavy, rusted iron doors.
They entered a room that looked like a colossal, industrial meat locker. Heavy iron chains dangled from the high ceiling, swinging lazily in the freezing draft. Massive, rusted meat hooks hung from the chains. Some of them were empty. Some of them held massive, unidentifiable chunks of frozen, gray meat that leaked thick, frozen black fluid onto the floor.
"Okay, this is officially a horror movie," Sebastian muttered, his grip tightening on his makeshift brass machete. "I really hate this level design."
In the center of the freezing room, crouching over a pile of frozen meat, was a figure.
*CRUNCH. SNAP. SQUELCH.*
The sound of wet, tearing flesh and crunching bone echoed loudly in the quiet, icy chamber. The figure was aggressively devouring whatever was on the floor.
"System," Sebastian whispered, his teeth chattering slightly.
*BZZZT.*
`[Hardware Override: The Second Pillar.]`
`[Processing Load: Famine and Scarcity.]`
The figure stopped eating.
It slowly stood up.
It wasn’t a hulking, muscle-bound brute like the Pillar of War. This giant was incredibly, terrifyingly thin. It stood twelve feet tall, but it looked like a walking skeleton. Its pale, gray skin was stretched so tightly over its bones that Sebastian could see the intricate, grinding brass gears bolted directly into its ribcage. It had incredibly long, multi-jointed arms that ended in massive, razor-sharp bone scythes instead of hands.
It didn’t have eyes. Its face was entirely smooth, save for a massive, vertical slit mouth that ran from its chin all the way up to its forehead, lined with hundreds of needle-like iron teeth.
"That," Valerie whispered, her voice shaking with genuine revulsion, "is the ugliest thing I have ever seen."
"I think my sleep paralysis demon just filed for copyright infringement," Sebastian agreed.
The Pillar of Famine let out a horrific, high-pitched screech that sounded like tearing sheet metal. It didn’t run. It scrambled. It dropped onto all fours, its bone-scythe hands clattering rapidly against the icy stone floor as it charged them like a massive, starving spider.
"Move!" Sebastian roared.
He violently shoved Valerie to the side just as the giant leapt through the air.
*SWISH!*
One of the massive bone scythes tore through the empty space where Sebastian’s head had just been. The sheer speed of the creature was terrifying. Without his thirty-percent physical sync, it would have taken his head clean off.
Sebastian hit the icy floor and rolled, feeling his broken ribs grind painfully together. "Fuck!"
He popped up to his knees and swung his heavy brass machete upward, aiming for the creature’s exposed, spindly ribs.
*CLANG!*
The brass blade hit the giant’s bone. The impact vibrated violently up Sebastian’s arm. The bone didn’t break. It was hyper-dense, reinforced with the same brutalist engineering as the rest of the facility.
The Pillar of Famine shrieked, swinging its other scythe arm down in a vicious, vertical chop.
Sebastian threw himself backward. The bone scythe slammed into the stone floor, burying itself six inches deep into the rock and kicking up a shower of black ice.
"Hey, ugly!" Valerie yelled.
*WHAM!*
Valerie stepped out from behind a hanging chain and swung her rusted iron pipe like a golf club. She struck the giant squarely in the back of its right knee. The pipe bent slightly under the force of the impact, but it threw the emaciated monster off balance.
The giant screeched, wildly thrashing its long, spindly arms. It caught Valerie with a glancing backhand.
"Ah!" Valerie cried out as she was thrown backward, sliding across the slick ice and crashing into a pile of frozen meat.
"Don’t touch her!" Sebastian snarled.
He didn’t try to chop at the impenetrable bone again. He grabbed one of the heavy iron chains dangling from the ceiling. He wrapped the thick metal links around his good right arm and sprinted forward.
The giant ripped its scythe out of the floor and lunged at Sebastian, its vertical mouth opening wide to bite him in half.
Sebastian didn’t dodge. He slid on his knees across the black ice, sliding perfectly under the monster’s flailing arms. As he passed beneath the giant’s legs, he whipped the heavy iron chain around the creature’s right ankle.
He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the screaming pain in his stitched thigh. He grabbed the other end of the chain, pulled it tight, and ran behind one of the massive brass support pillars.
"Let’s see how much you weigh!" Sebastian yelled.
He used the brass pillar as leverage. He planted his heavy combat boots against the metal and yanked the chain backward with every single ounce of his biological steel strength.
*CRACK!*
The Pillar of Famine was impossibly fast, but its center of gravity was terrible. The sudden, violent pull on its ankle yanked its leg completely out from under it.
The twelve-foot giant crashed face-first onto the icy stone floor with a deafening *THUD*.
Sebastian didn’t give it a second to recover. He dropped the chain, sprinting out from behind the pillar. He leaped into the air and brought his heavy brass machete down with a brutal, two-handed, overhead strike.
He didn’t aim for the bone. He aimed for the exposed, spinning brass gears bolted into the back of the giant’s neck.
*CRUNCH! SQUELCH!*
The jagged brass blade punched directly into the mechanical nervous system. Black motor oil and freezing, slushy gray blood erupted from the wound, splashing across Sebastian’s torn leather coat.
The giant let out a final, gurgling screech, its long, spindly limbs thrashing wildly against the ice for a few seconds before going completely, entirely limp.
*BZZZT.*
`[Pillar 2 Offline. Processing Load Shifted.]`
Sebastian stood over the dead, skeletal giant. He pulled his makeshift machete out of its neck with a wet *shhhk*. He was shivering violently, his breath coming in ragged, white plumes.
"Two down," Sebastian wheezed, wiping a smear of freezing gray blood off his face.
Valerie limped over to him, clutching her side. She looked at the dead monster, then looked at Sebastian. "Are you okay? You’re freezing."
"I’m fine," Sebastian lied, his teeth chattering audibly. "I just really, really want a hot cup of coffee.