“Cradle!” I called out, and I felt like the words were futile even as I uttered them. “It won’t hurt you! We need you to get in its way!”

All around us, the others were still reeling from reopened wounds. They were slow to move, and the many-handed beast was quick.

And Cradle did not get in its way.

From Within 16.9

The entire ‘room’ shook as the many-handed beast reached to its right and tore a concrete slab out of the ground, reached to its left, and grabbed a chair and a fistful of floorboards from Rain’s room. Cradle and Rain were almost mirrors to one another in how they moved away from the respective damage. Difference was, Rain kept running.

Cradle only moved as far as he needed to get out of the way of any immediate hazards. He maintained a kind of eerie calm, finding a position on another slanted concrete block that was like a massive tombstone with no epitah, that had been tilted to a thirty degree angle.

I had the impulse to fly and I couldn’t, and feeling that lack while facing down something as big and intimidating as this many-handed thing was suffocating. I’d never been especially afraid of spiders, but this thing was like three spiders of varying sizes all overlapping one another, each limb ending in a hand. It was fluid enough in its arrangement that it could be as tall as a two story building, then sweep out to be barely any taller than I was, but with limbs reaching out to every surface across a twenty foot span.

No eyes to look into, but the glowing cords in gaps and joints drew the eye, and gave suggestions of slanted eyes or opening apertures, that weren’t actually there.

It was hard to convince myself to breathe, to move. The thought that broke the paralysis, fleeting as it was, was that I’d seen and been frustrated with civilians in the midst of the Endbringer attack and the broken trigger. It’d be hypocritical to cast aside all self-preservation now.

“Up,” I spoke to myself as much as the people around me, my voice gaining volume as I continued, “Focus, process later! Survive now!”

Sveta was already getting to her feet. She was wholly human, tattooed from the fingertips to her shoulders and up her neck, with the tattoos clearly aimed at covering up deep seams in her arms. I saw her wince as she moved her foot and cut the outer edge of it on what looked like a bed of obsidian and igneous rock that was nearly invisible with the black coloring and the gloom of the room.

“Watch your step!” I called out. This was a time for punchy orders that got everyone on the same page, communicated necessary, lean information with no ‘fat’. “Rooms can have hazards!”

“You’re all idiots!” Tattletale growled.