Page 53 of Speak No Evil
If you know all that, then what are you going to do about it? They didn’t just kidnap me; they made an incursion on Blackwood, pulling it out of our protective cloak and putting all our residents in danger. The Lords of Blackwood will not abide such actions. And neither will I.
Nor I,Emilia agrees, and the sound of a gas burner clicking on reaches me through her mind.
Fucking weird.
If I focus, I can hear everything in the room she’s in. The drip of the faucet and the creaking floorboards beneath her. Even the hiss of the gas coming through the stove eye to ignite the flame.
Dishes clatter to the ground, and that I hear with my ears, not through Emilia.
I rush to the kitchen to find her leaning over the stove, green and sweaty.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” she says with her mouth while her mind speaks to mine.You did, you absolute menace. You were so deep in my consciousness, you almost possessed me completely. And you say you’re not a demon.
I help her off the stove, so she’s leaning against the counter, panting and dabbing a tea towel on her neck.
“Are you OK?”I’m so sorry. This is all really new to me.
“I think so. I just need a minute.”Can you get me out of here?
“Sure. Take your time. Do you want some water?”Absolutely. Just tell me when.
“No, I think I’m OK. Just a little dizzy spell. Nothing to worry about.”Right fucking now.
I grab the witch’s hand and portal the fuck out of there without a second thought.
We walk out the other side in my bedroom at the basilica. I hold tight to Emilia, knowing how brutal the trip is for newbies.
She wriggles out of my grasp, bends over, and throws up on the carpet.
While I’m occupied staring at the giant, scaled-and-tentacled thing lying at the foot of my bed.
“Lucifer’s pet flerken! What the fuck is that?”
Emilia scoots behind me and continues ejecting her stomach contents. “You don’t know?” she says between heaving. “Why did you bring us here if you don’t know what lives here!?”
The thing pulses rhythmically, almost like it’s breathing, before sucking in a great snore and startling itself awake.
“Stinky! Glad you’re back.”
“Chonk!? What the hell happened to you?”
I don’t know where it’s—he’s—speaking from. I see no mouth. No eyes. Not even a face. Just writhing orangish scaled tentacles.
Gross.
He stands on four tentacles, reaching out to me with two, while the last two stick straight out, bent at a hard right angle to join the center of his … him.
Almost like he’s standing with his hands on his hips.
“I’m guessing the same thing that happened to you,” he says simply.
Emilia steps out from behind me, heaving stopped and curiosity getting the best of her. “And what would that be, exactly?”
Chonk shrugs his tentacle shoulders. “Who cares? Come on! Let’s go find a lord. I bet they’ll know what I am.”
And my dead sister’s cat-turned-tentacle-monster hops off my bed and slithers out of the room. I magic away the Emilia vomit, and follow him out.