Dizzy reached the doors of the Cathedral in twenty long strides, crossing the reflective, obsidian flooring in a quick burst of speed. The doors were locked from the outside. She grabbed the ornate wooden handles and rattled them on their iron hinges.
“Frak!” she exclaimed.
Not gonna even look behind me, Dizzy thought. The wet, slopping and and slapping noises, and the slimy, tearing sounds of the throbbing monster’s rapid growth pulsated and echoed throughout the chamber all around them, but especially behind them. Astrid reached the doors two seconds behind Dizzy and tried them as well.
“No worries,” she said. “I’ve got this.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Her body began to glow, suffused with a bright white light beneath the skin. Then, she became the glow, her atoms and molecules giving into it entirely, and her body collapsed into an incandescent flare of white flame, which then passed through the wooden doors and, presumably, out the other side. A few seconds later, and the locks tumbled, and the doors opened. Astrid was on the other side. “Howdy!” she said.
“You,” said Dizzy, as the sloshing, throbbing, ripping, and crackling noises grew in volume and the shadow behind her grew and grew, “are one hell of a useful app.”
“I try,” said Astrid with a shrug. “Now come on, let’s move!”
Dizzy didn’t need to be told twice. But she chanced a backward glance — just one — and then regretted it. The creature had indeed grown in size. It now took up the entire interior space of the Cathedral. It was now eight meters tall, at least, and about nine feet wide, or thereabouts. Its musculature suggested a somewhat simian origin, or something like one, but the rest of its physiology suggested it had some cephalopod in it, as well as some insect — and some flying rodent, too. Its general mishmash of evolutionary ingredients suggested that its species had long ago left behind natural selection and had grafted onto themselves whatever features they desired from other species. It had claws protruding from its enormous two-pronged feet, which dug into the obsidian floor. Its back arched forward in a curve, sharp spines protruding from either shoulder-blade and erupting into a flowering collar of hardened bone, from out of the center of which the head erupted like the bulb of an eggplant inflated and ready to burst. Its reflective, horizontally-oriented, teardrop-shaped eyes stretched out to either side of its rounded, metallic-looking skull, the base of which bloomed out to either side, its mouth a voracious maw of teeth and dangling, squid-like tentacles . . . of which it had about ten more erupting from out of its backside that writhed in their air behind it, flowing out of it like a cape or a cloak made of trembling, undulating fleshy tendrils. To either side of those, nature — or whatever forces had fashioned it — had placed enormous bat-like wings that wrapped around it and would be gods-knew-how-big when fully unfurled, the huge thoracic bone in front making its chest look misshapen and disgorged. And it was still growing, its head now banging against the rafters, disloding the circling, wheeling, squealing and chittering bats there, its shoulders widening even as Dizzy’s gobsmacked eyes took in its gargantuan mass and its utter alienness.
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“This is what he wanted to . . . put inside me . . . ?” she whispered.
“C’mon!” urged Astrid, grabbing her by the arm. “Before it gets to full size!”
“Right, coming,” said Dizzy, and she with some difficulty, tore her eyes away from the monstrosity, and along with Astrid, started running away from the Cathedral, through the desert sands on the other side of the door.
