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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/RandomAppalachian468 on 2025-04-09 05:18:46+00:00.

[Part 34]

Snap.

Overhead, the braided steel zipline cable gave as the Oak Walker strode forward, breaking the anchor bolt free of the tower with its broad wooden chest. The rusted metal line ripped a narrow path of destruction as it tore out of the tower room, smashing pedestals and scattering trinkets everywhere. With more wind pouring into the gouged-out tower, the flames leaped higher, feeding on the dry vines with a voracious appetite. The heat reached near-searing levels of intensity, and I dragged myself behind a scorched partition just to evade the flames.

“Jamie!” I coughed, nearly blinded by a billow of charcoal dust, and cringed as a section of the roof almost caved in on top of me. “Chris, where are you? I can’t see!”

Boom.

Underneath me, the tower shook, and I squinted into the night to feel my breath catch in both aching lungs.

Like a great mountain of twisted wood, the Oak Walker lumbered past my hiding spot, not thirty yards outside, each step corresponding with another burst of gunfire from the ground below. Bullets crashed into it from multiple directions, but even the heavy boom-boom-boom of a .50 caliber machine gun didn’t seem to make the beast so much as flinch. A screeching of steel told me one of our vehicles had met its end under the club-like foot of the Oak Walker, and despair rose in my throat. I hadn’t meant for this to happen; my intention was to set up the beacon, lure Vecitorak in close to it, and let the defensive high frequency emitter scramble him like a rotten egg. I’d figured once he died that any chance of resurrecting the Oak Walker would be gone, and I could then use the necklace to free Madison. Not for a moment had I considered the possibility that ‘freeing’ Madison meant killing her, and yet now that I sat in my little corner, I couldn’t help but seethe at my own naivete. She was dead, both body and soul, and it was all my fault.

Oh Maddie, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know . . .

Across the room, I caught a glimpse of Chris hoisting Jamie up so she could pull Tarren free of the vines, while Adam lay in a heap on the floor, his legs bent at odd angles. Tall flames kept us apart, but to my horror, I watched as Vecitorak turned from his perch in the wall to move closer to me.

I waited for his decayed flesh to burst into flame as before, but dark roots wriggled out from his various wounds and smothered the tongues of fire even as he walked through it. Like greasy snakes, the vines slithered over his torso to engulf the mutilated man, forming like armor around him in a manner not dissimilar to the Oak Walker’s organic hide. Out from his hand, Vecitorak wielded the dagger, and it glistened in the firelight as the crimson blood of a thousand lost souls oozed from the grain in a semi-sentient tide. With each step he took, it seemed the dull thud of another titanic stomp from the Oak Walker matched it, along with the eerie cheers of the Puppet horde outside. Behind it all, I caught a surge of hushed static that seemed to dwell within my ears, whispers that rose in my mind, a slow tide of chilling voices that clawed at my frantic thoughts with unwavering malice.

“You can hear it?” His words dripped with smugness, and Vecitorak grinned from behind a half-mask of vines as growth covered the mutilated side of his face. “Perhaps I was wrong about you; the Void’s call is not given to all, so there must be a greater purpose to your miserable life. Join me, Hannah. Join us, and see what power the Master will gift you for your obedience.”

I have to get out of here.

Struggling to rise on both shaky legs, I bolted into the smoke, the nightmarish figure hot on my heels. There wouldn’t be enough space in the burning room to evade him for long, but I couldn’t let him get near Chris or Jamie. I’d already failed to rescue Madison; I wasn’t about to lose my two best friends in the entire world to Vecitorak’s blade. If that meant playing a losing game of cat-and-mouse with this walking demon, then so be it.

I pivoted left and managed to turn to let off a burst from my submachine gun as I fled, but the rounds had as much effect as if I’d thrown a handful of pebbles. Striding after me with triumphant ease, Vecitorak barely flinched at the incoming lead, and smashed through partitions of vines or walked over flames as if they weren’t there.

“To have come all this way.” Unphased by the chase, he tracked me through the clouds of fiery ash, Vecitorak strengthened by the Oak Walker’s rise to an invincible degree. “Only to hide in the dark from your true potential . . . what a waste. Come with me, and together we will—”

Bang.

A gun barked in the shadows, and Vecitorak’s head twitched in the shock of a speeding bullet. Like before, it had little effect, but it made the vine-encrusted fiend pause and turn his masked head in annoyance.

Chris stood beyond the tide of fire, watching me in desperation over the sights of his Mauser pistol. On his right shoulder he supported Adam, whose broken legs dragged over the floor, while Jamie held Tarren’s unconscious form in her arms next to Chris. I could see in their pale expressions that both wanted to rush to my aid, but the heat was too intense. At this rate, if either tried to come after me, it would mean not only their death, but the death of whoever rested on their arm. Still, I knew that wouldn’t stop them from trying.

No. I won’t have more dead people on my conscience. No more.

In md panic, I cast around the soot-covered room with my eyes and caught sight of the groaning ceiling shift above me. My enhanced senses kicked in at last, and I picked out the other spots in the room where more sections did the same, many of the support already torn to bits by Vecitorak’s rampage. The high winds outside clawed at the teetering structure, and I figured there had to be enough metal and wood above me to do the job.

“Get out!” With a curt wave to Chris, I darted around a stack of wooden boxes that were turning black in the inferno and avoided a swing from Vecitorak’s knife. “Take Tarren and go!”

Crash.

The heavy blow landed instead on a nearby partition of growth and sent it crumbling into broken shards of dried out husks.

“You can make it!” Chris tried to keep the front blade of his antique handgun on Vecitorak’s head, but the arcane mutant was too quick, almost keeping pace with me in the dark. “Jump across, come on!”

Thud.

Another jackhammer of a strike missed me by inches and pulverized one of the old concrete support sections of the original tower room.

“It’s too hot!” I dodged falling chunks of cement and fought to breathe in the suffocating atmosphere of dust, smoke, and flame. “We can’t leave the others here. Go, I’ll be fine!”

Chris opened his mouth to shout a contradiction, but a dull crunch cut him off, and I looked up in time to watch the tower roof give out.

With most of its beams demolished, the celling tumbled down around me in a rain of burned wood, rusted metal, and cracked cement. Some of the flames were smothered by the falling debris, and the rain poured down from the gray clouds to quench more of it, but the sudden influx of fresh oxygen outpaced it all. In a great whoosh, a sea of red flames and black smoke boiled into the sky, and the heavy wind fed it like a furnace blower. Shrapnel beat me all over, but a large slab of concrete buried Vecitorak, while Chris and the others fell backward as the floor under them buckled. To my horror, they careened down into the staircase below and were hidden from my sight.

Smack.

A red-hot piece of broken metal glanced off the side of my head, and I dropped to the floor to curl into a ball, bracing myself for the unavoidable pain of being crushed.

Fire crackled, the rubble clattered to a halt, but all went still in the icy onslaught of rain.

No way that should have worked.

I blinked, opening my eyes to find myself half-buried in dried vines, a twisted piece of sheet metal, and a few heavier bits of cement. Flames leapt across the heaped-up growth across the tower’s surface, but for the moment I was alone on a tall island in a sea of night.

Each breath hurt, and I tasted coppery blood on my lips, but I dragged myself out from under the junk to peer down at the ground below. Tracers zipped across the marshy field, the combined ELSAR and coalition troops putting up a fierce fight, but it was no use. Wave after wave of flitting shadows hurled themselves into the machine gun fire, unending, unafraid, with a single-minded drive to conquer. Over them all stood the Oak Walker, its mighty feet crushing anyone who got in its path, and the bark-like hide sealed over the bullets holes as fast as they were punched into it.

Exhausted, I sat back on my heels and gulped down a fresh breath of the cool night air, hunched behind the wide piece of sheet metal to hide from the searing heat. My toes poked out over the edge, and I felt defeat creeping into my mind, as I stared down into the carnage.

I can’t get down, they can’t get out; we’ve lost, we lost everything. My fault. It’s all my fault.

Behind me, the bent sheet metal creaked, and I scarcely had a moment to turn before a clammy hand yanked me off the ground by the steel collar of my cuirass.

Thunk.

A hard jab hit me in the ribs, but the steel of my armor turned the wooden point of his dagger ...

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