Chapter 74 – But I’m Out of My Head
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CW: Body Horror

 

Delving into the second room of the clock tower, we find it to be a much taller space. Upside down metal steps and guard rails twist and tur about the walls, splitting off and reconvening further in, which will be nice considering how cramped this all feels already. Less nice is the greater count of mechanical bodies strewn about the room, some collapsed onto the platforms, others hanging off the rails, dangling upwards. Worst of all are the ones that appear frozen both fully and partially in the icy walls, looking as though–

Bzzz.

Huh? Oh, my phone buzzed…I reach down to pull it out, when–

“Ptht– Pweh– Wait, wha…?”

My paws shoot up to swat at the sudden irritation in front of my face, blinking and regaining my composure to see what it is that’s flicking about my face. It’s…a vine? Glancing upwards, I follow the vine to its source, finding a ring of vines tangled about the hole we’d just walked through to enter this room…but…where did this come from?

“Liz, look.”

The rat’s heels clack extra loud as she stops in place, spinning on said heel and looking up at me from lower down the stairs, squinting and smirking.

“Toots, you’s knows I’s only got eyes for y…”

But then she squints some more, rubbing her eyes with her little rat claws and cocking her head.

“Whadda hell are those.”

“Plants, idiot,” I answer, holding a leafy tendril in my paw and inspecting it, feeling something rattle in my pocket as I grasp at the vine a bit more firmly. Reaching in, I pull out some kind of seed that hadn’t been there before, and glancing back down at Liz, it looks like she finds the exact same seed on her person as well.

“Did you…?”

“Babe, if I wanted to give you seed, I wouldn’ta done it like–”

I stare daggers at the stupid rat, who pockets her seed and holds her claws up defensively.

“Focus, you horny rodent. Neither the plants or the seeds fit this place at all. Radiant Realms tend to have pretty consistent theming, so…?”

 

“Sheesh…Here I thought the Stellar Stowaway took some time getting used to…do all Radiants have homes this odd?”

 

A voice in the back of my mind shoots to the forefront of my thoughts, a faint, echoey voice, like deja vu, a memory trying to put itself back together.

“Stellar Stowaway…? Wait…”

Climbing back up the stairs, I get a closer look at the vines and a similar feeling as the voice rattles in my head, quietly, but ever present…

“These vines…shouldn’t be this long, should they…?”

“They shouldn’t be there at all, Cat Kitten. We’re wastin’ time, we’s gots a job ta do…”

The look that overtakes Liz’s face leads me to believe she’s getting hit with the same sense of deja vu I just did, but she shakes it off and motions for me to follow.

“We’ll figure it out as we go. Ain’t gots enough context yet ta put dis puzzle together.”

Frustrating as it is, I sigh and bear it, traipsing back down the stairs before noticing the gears outside the icy walls seizing up, the entire tower shuddering with a heavy jolt. A horrid moaning echoes from the depths of the fog we descend towards, like the bending and grinding of metal drawn out painfully long, before stopping. With the stinging ring of silence filling my ears, I just barely notice one of the automatons jutting out of the frozen wall winding its arms back with a sickening clicking, poised to strike at Liz.

“Move, bitch!” I shout, dashing in and shoving the rat out of the way, only to be caught in the mechanism’s grasp, shaking both from the uneven chugging of machinery inside of it and the bitter cold nipping at its rusted body inside and out. It’s not a very strong grip, not for me anyways, so a swift yank of my arm should…

“Wh…what the…?!”

All of the sudden, the arm in its grasp stiffens, and I begin to lose feeling all throughout it up, from my shoulder to the tips of my paws. My breath grows cold, and I struggle to fight against this impending feeling of dread.

“L-Liz, a little help–!!”

She was already on top of it though, her bat coming crashing down upon the scrap creature and smashing it to bits in a single blow…and yet, the chill in my bones is unending. All I can do is fall back against the railing of the tower and watch as my arm…remembers something.

“Oh Goddess, oh Goddess oh Goddess oh fuck–!!”

The rat finds herself busy fending off all the mechanisms crawling up the downwards tower and out of its walls, getting her rats to play whack-a-mole with the latter as she mows down the former. Meanwhile, I watch in horror, my arm growing cold from the inside out, hissing as my bones turn to steel and my blood to steam, all before the exterior is taken with it, flaking away. Soon all that’s left is scrap bound together by memory of what once was alone, only for even that to fall apart the moment after, gears and bits of metal clattering against the ground, leaving me with one less arm and more than a paw full of pain.

“Fuck– Fuck– Fuck–!! What the fuck is going on?!”

Liz glances back at me, and seeing the utter terror etched into my face, furrows her brow and snarls, seeming to get more serious as she calls in a rat pit crew, groups of them scampering off to crawl in and around the deadly machines, pulling them apart and scattering as the mechanical bodies crumble.

“Alright, Cat, time ta move!”

 

With the arm I still have, I reach up and grab Liz’s claw, hauling myself up and scampering behind her, happy to have her grip as my fearful trembling threatens to bring me to the ground again. With the rat’s help, we power through the crowd and enter the fog descending to the top of the tower. At the very least, the distress dulls the fucked up sense of direction zipping around us through the fog until we’re out the other end, finding a pale void of mist stretching beyond the horizon, scrap metal raining like a torrent from the top and falling through the bottom. And in the distance, a single robot stands before a large copper gate, much more complete than the others, and rather…familiar in shape? It doesn’t approach us, or move at all, as though it were frozen in time, which at least gives me a moment to recuperate after…that…

I fall to my butt and look at my right arm…or where it used to be. There’s not even a wound, just a patch of fur where a limb once was. I try to rub my face but only find one paw coming up, a raspy breath falling from my lips in the other’s place. I recall Fox asking Niamh about Ascended folk regrowing limbs, but a tail is nowhere near the same as an arm, and even if it were, something feels...different. The arm isn’t just lost, rather, constantly remembering being lost, a perpetual emptiness ripe to drive me mad.

“Wh…what happened…?!”

Liz stands steps away, almost poised like a guard, which seems incredibly unlike her, but…is appreciated. A lot.

“I ain’t got a clue, Cat Kitten,” she says, tail swishing in irritation before spinning and catching her bat in the air, taking silent steps closer to the automaton ahead.

“But you’s ain’t in any shape to be fightin’ now. So keep ya ass seated while I bust a bot.”

I want to protest, but the shock of feeling and seeing my arm collapse into pieces of metal before my eyes still wracks my mind. Begrudgingly, I nod, which unfortunately makes the rat smirk.

“Good girl.”

“Fuck off…”

Her laugh echoes dully through the void of fog, going silent once she’s steps away from the unmoving machine, drawing her rifle and pausing as the robot takes aim with a gun of its own, the two locked in a standoff, bat in the rat’s hand, blade in the bot’s.

“...DRAW.”

Instead of shooting, however, Liz swings her bat forward, batting the bot’s bullet away while a line of cowboy hatted rats rise from the fog and shower the machine with lead. Each shot bounces off its hull, but leave noticeable dents as they ricochet off, the biggest of all from the slugs Liz slugs back at them, the robot eventually realizing the futility and dropping its gun to fall into the mist below, replacing it with a thick rubber wire of sorts. It lashes the rubber rope like a whip, entangling Liz’s bat and tugging it out of her claws, reeling and sending it clattering against the ground unlike the way all the metal seems to fall. With the power it has left to muster through the hail of ratty bullets, it charges forward with its blade, keen on striking the rat down where she stands, but she stands quite tall for such a short woman.

“Y’ain’t gotsa clue how we Ascended work, eh~?”

The second before its strike, Liz resummons her bat and flippantly swings it upwards, knocking the robot’s featureless head clean off, pausing its movements completely before shuddering and falling apart, disappearing into the white void below. The rat stands there for a second, clearly lost in thought with the way she’s frowning, making her way back to me while glancing back to where the robot once was.

“...Didja notice that too?”

She offers me a claw once more, helping me up as I recount the short duel I’d just witnessed. Something did seem familiar about it, not just in its shape, but its weapons, especially the whip…

“It’s that deja vu sense again, right?”

“It ain’t just that…” Liz muses, turning back to me and leaning on her bat. “Janus is some kinda betrayer of da Goddess, yeah? They should know how Ascended folk function at least then, but this thing ain’t know diddly squat…”

 

…Wait.

Stellar Stowaway.

Vines.

Not knowing about Radiants or Ascended…

The blade, the gun, the whip…

“...Agh!!”

The both of us clutch our heads in our hands, a splitting pain shooting through our heads as a name surfaces up from the deepest recess of our memories at painful speeds.

“Vivian…!”

It all comes back. We didn’t come here just the two of us!

“Where da hell is that broad…?!”

Past the wincing pain, I stare beyond Liz at where the robot was moments ago, and shudder.

“...Here’s hoping that was just a recreation of her. It doesn’t make any sense, I remember her putting down the vines when they were much shorter, I remember coming down here with her, I remember…being here with her…”

…Shit. The dread of realization dawns upon us, staring back at one another with wide, horrified eyes.

“We’s been here before. This Janus is a kinda time fucker…we’re in a mother fuckin’ time loop!”

“And…judging by the length of those vines…we’ve been here for a long while…”

Fucking hell. How do we stop a time loop as we are? Do we just need to beat Janus fast enough? Shit. Fuck.

“What the hell…”

Liz squints at me as I mutter, then over at the gate in the distance, some kind of reluctant thought brewing in her mind.

“I ain’t about ta be confined by some shitty time gimmick,” she murmurs under her breath, pulling out her phone and making an order. “Get inside her head and stay there.”

I tilt my head at the odd command, and my confusion only grows as she steps closer to me and grabs me by the chin and pulls my lips against hers?! My eyes go wide in shock and my cheeks redden for multiple reasons that are scampering and squeaking about my head before shoving her off and looking at her with complete bewilderment.

“What the fuck was that?!”

Of course, of course, of course, she just snickers and shrugs, turning on her heel and making her way towards the gate.

“Keepin’ ya mind on track, y’see? Don’t think too hard ‘bout the weird time fuckery, just focus on me~”

I…what?

“What the fuck is wrong with you, rat?!”

“HAH!! Where do we’s start~? C’mon, Cat Kitten. I’s got choice words for this Janus fucker.”

Ugh. Whatever…I follow behind the fucking rat and frown at the gate, placing my remaining paw at the edge between both doors, only for Liz to whistle, bringing her claws up to the opposite edge while a swarm of rats join her. Right…stupid as she is, I can at least lean on her if I need to. We each pull at either door and pry it open, charging in towards the void swallowed room, seeing a large hourglass with still water sitting in its bottom half, a small figurine of ice floating within. Images and memories play on repeat across the void, and in one I can even see the memory of my arm being lost in a different, more violent way. Eugh…

“Late. So. So. Late,” a monotonous singsong voice robotically chimes from the center of the room. “You were making such good time before–”

 

BANG BANG BANG BANG!!

Liz wastes no time, blasting away at the hourglass whose glass cracks and shatters before moving in reverse motion, restoring itself with a sigh, the rat not letting up for a second, skillfully flicking open the odd revolving chamber and letting a row of mice reload it for her. Joining in, I summon my spear, mentally preparing myself to fight with one arm as I charge in with Liz’s long ranged support, a trail of mice scurrying behind my every step with blades and axes slung across their backs.

No tact. Nor grace. As expected of beasts and vermin.

Pause.

I’m able to hurl in one attack, using the weight of the spear itself to focus on slashing instead of stabbing, almost using it like an ax as I slam it down onto the hourglass, fire pluming where the blade strikes and knocking the manifesting time keeper. Just as I’m about to go for another attack, however, the rats following me tug at my clothes, positioning me upright and stiff as a flash of white takes over my vision for less than a second, afterwhich, Liz is suddenly in front of me dueling with a fully formed Janus. Frost nips at her whiskers and claws, but she fights as brutally as she always does, backed up by rats riding rockets and missiles to fend off Janus’ icicles.

Pause.

That’s when I notice the gears forming above Liz’s head and below her feet, spinning and charging, but the rats climbing over me pull me away from her, instead pointing to and hurling themselves at Janus. A dull white beam encases the rat in time, leaving me to fight in her place, fighting somewhat sloppily, but somehow just as effectively. Honestly, using the spear in this unorthodox manner feels just right to me, I just need to refine the technique, filling in the gaps with kicks vaulted forward by my spear, each attack punctuated by a violent rat in its wake.

Play.

A strange squeak in the back of my head pulls my attention to an unfrozen Liz, ducking out of the way as she follows up my assault with a flying kick and a toss of her bat, smashing Janus’ glass and sending them hurtling back, their anger ever more apparent.

“What a rancorous vigor. A shame you are too late to put this power to use.”

Moving in to continue our attack, I find myself cut short by a pillar of ice rising before me, the same as Janus’ legs, instead allowing Liz to keep up her attacks while the timekeeper’s water whirls and rises, seeming to freeze over their upper half, leaving naught but a haunting grin of black teeth staring back at us. Janus takes the brunt of another blow of bat swings from the rat, stalwart where they stand, or, float, in this case, reaching past the attacks with their icicles and grabbing Liz’s face.

“...No…no…!”

Panic sets in as familiarity dawns upon me once more. It’s happening again, the last memory of Vivian replaying in my mind as I burn up and move to attack Janus, but she simply moves Liz in the way of where my attack would land. This fucker…!

“Worry not. Pathetic creature. Your rat will now be reunited. With the vermin she gifted me with. So long ago.”

A fury blazes within the rat’s eyes, however, grinning right back at the timekeeper.

“Of course ya miss the most important one, cunt.”

Stop.

 

Click.

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