Ikaris releases the door and steps away from it. He tightens his grip on his blade.
The fog now covers our feet. Howls and beastly noises come from all around. Everything is shaking. Something is banging on the walls.
Then everything goes silent.
"Ikaris?"
"Shut up. Listen."
I hold my breath.
The fog hisses like steam through the cracks in the wood. My ears strain, catching nothing but the house's creaking breaths.
I start to hear something. It's quiet, but not entirely. It's slow, echoing across the floorboards, like a scratch.
The sound follows a pattern, one scrape every handful of seconds.
The scratching stops, and the air stiffens, as if holding its breath along with me.
Ikaris stands between me and the door. His flames coil across his back like wings of ash. He grips the sword tighter, the chain around his wrist strains as his fire slithers higher, wrapping his forearm.
I inch backward, but the floor groans beneath my heel.
I see a shadow move. My head turns, looking toward the window, and a small mass stops the moonlight from entering.
It taps on the shutter.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The sound of a dozen tiny hands slapping on wet flesh. I can see the silhouette of the hands. They're small. Too small to be a regular person, as if they were young children.
One of the silhouettes crawls away from the mass, still in the shape of a hand. It stands on what I assume is the wrist and starts waving. In the midst of that waving comes a baby's laughter.
The wall explodes.
A massive limb, an arm, rips through the wood like paper, sending splinters flying. Fog pours into the room in thick waves.
The arm is nothing but pounds of flesh mashed together. The smell of rust and death invades my senses. But above the wrist area, the fingers and palms were nothing but tiny children's hands, blood still leaking from the wrists.
The arm rests on the floor.
Ikaris leaps over the lump of flesh, pushing backward, putting himself between me and the titanic arm. His fire surges like a serpent breaking free of its coil. Ikaris's sword erupts into white fire.
The flames whip upward, searing through the fog, illuminating the fleshy limb sprawled across the floor like a bloated carcass. The stench hits harder, like cloying rot, old blood, and something beneath that, something wrong.
The baby's hands twitch.
They begin to peel themselves free like petals off a rotted flower, the little hands unstick from the main limb with wet, tearing noises, each plopping to the ground with a tiny smack.
One.
Four.
Eight.
Fourteen.
I lost count after twenty.
The small hands, those spiders made of flesh, scuttle across the floor by their fingertips.
One of them lunges, and Ikaris moves. His blade arcs across the room in white light, incinerating the hand midair. It bursts into black smoke and ash.
Ikaris slams his blade into the floor. White flame ripples outward in a circle, carving a glowing sigil into the floorboards. The fire spins outward into a ring of blades. Every hand that touches it bursts like the one before it.
"Make sure I don't get ahead of you. You will run. Do not stop until it is daybreak." Ikaris says.
I don't understand what he means. For the next moment, I watch the hands of children go aflame. How many were actual children? How many were false demons, attempting to trick us?
Ikaris lifts his blade, the fire rising with him. He twirls the sword in a circle above his head before smashing it on the ground.
The moment the blade strikes the floor, the floorboard detonates.
A deafening crack splits through the wood beneath us. A web of glowing lines spreads from the sigil, splitting outward like lightning under us. They burn hot, white fire, tracing and circles I can't even comprehend.
It all trembles. Then it collapses.
I scream as the world gives way.
Floor, bedroom, wall.
Floor, bedroom, wall.
Floor, bedroom, wall.
We smash through one floor after another. Dust and splinters erupt around us, screams echo throughout the inn. I hear men and women yell and cry.
Ikaris grabs me mid-plunge, his chain-wrapped hand snapping out, yanking me tight against his side. I feel nothing but heat, searing and cold at the same time.
His feet hit the ground running, white flames exploding from his soles, launching down a dark, crumbling hallway.
Around us, the Somata pour in.
The fog becomes liquid, writhing across the walls, floors, and ceiling. From it, they emerge—dozens of them.
Their forms are fractured nightmares; they surface from the depths of hell. One has a face stitched together from the faces of four screaming youths; another walks on its own ribcage, its vertebrae clicking like insect legs.
One shrieks, another leaps.
Ikaris spins mid-run, his blade slicing upward, shooting a wall of fire, consuming the Somata before they land. They disintegrate in midair, becoming smoke and bones; then into nothing.
We turn a corner, seeing a woman running across the hallway ahead, clutching a baby. She doesn't see what we see. The fog behind her wraps and erupts. Somata drags themselves from the shadows, their arms chained, its mouth a lamprey spiral of teeth. It lurches, sinking into the woman's shoulder.
Ikaris raises his hand, snapping his fingers. A beam of white fire pierces the hallway, threading between the woman and her baby, striking the monster's chest. It combusts, flaring like a flash of light. She wails, feeling some invisible force pushing her. The baby cries as the two hit the floor.
Ikaris puts me down. I take a look at his face. His sweat is running down his head, and his breathing is harsh. I see these jagged lines of silver crawling up from his wrists.
He grabs me by the shoulder, pushing me forward. "Keep running," he says.
I bolt.
We tear through hallways, each one darker than the last. The pain in my ribs begins to seethe. I grit my teeth. My lungs feel like they're on fire. I want to stop and take a breath, but those things are everywhere.
A small light glows from my chest, a tiny flame, the one Ikaris gave me. The pain begins to dull. It's keeping my wounds from aggravating me.
The roof rips open, and a childlike creature latches to the ceiling, limbs stretching like wax, reaching down with a laughing head. It opens its mouth and lets loose a choir of piercing screams. I drop, covering my ear as tightly as I can, but the sound is stabbing my head.
I feel the vibrations reverberating throughout my skull. I won't stop. Not even Ikaris's flame could stop the excruciating ache in my eardrums.
Ikaris is affected; he holds both ears shut as well. I can tell he's had enough of this.
He raises his blade, and within a blink, the hallway is split in half.
Fire erupts outward in a crucifix shape, forming a radiant cross through the ceiling and floor. The creatures and the other monster coming down this hallway vanish in a plume of smoke.
Ikaris drops to his knees, leaning on his sword. He takes a deep breath and glances at me, telling me to continue.
I hear a man's scream behind. I turn and see small bat-like beings riding the man's back. He's falling his arms around, feeling their tongue piercing his neck like a syringe. His soul is being yanked out.
Ikaris pushes forward, "We can't stop. Forget him."
We continue running, reaching the lobby, or what used to be a lobby.
Furniture lies in ruins, corpses are pinned to walls, souls are being consumed in front of us, and fog so thick it's like walking through a drowned cathedral.
I hear Ikaris's heavy breathing. He must've killed at least fifty of those damned things.
There's at least another dozen, maybe even twenty Somata. Maybe more.
Ikaris doesn't stop walking.
He steps forward, blade burning white, fire dancing along his limbs. His sword hangs, the thing disappearing away.
The chains on his wrist loosen. He takes a deep breath and begins speaking.
"No matter how many crawl through the dark," he growls, "No matter what faces you wear..."
The fog shifts.
The Somata begin to move.
His chain snaps.
"You'll never take my spirit alive."
He moves, and everything burns.
A wave of fire explodes outward, and a shockwave is so bright that I close my eyes. I feel the heat with pain, see veins of white dance across the room. The floor burns with sigils, the walls scream. The creatures recoil, but it's too late for them.
In seconds, the entire lobby is ash. Ikaris stands in the center, the chains rebinding, flames spiraling around him like halos.
He takes a deep breath, shooting some spit. "We gotta go, there'll be more," Ikaris points at me, continuing, "They will keep coming, until one of them consumes your soul."
Then, we left the inn.
What was left of it.