chsdbacks Chapter 49 London Bridge Collapsed
Chapter 49 London Bridge Collapsed
"London Bridge has collapsed!"
"Golden and sparkly~ Good luck!"
"Shields clang, horns blare, arrows whistle, armor jingles."
"London Bridge has collapsed! Odin, may Olaf win the battle!"
The girls sang strange nursery rhymes in unison, holding hands and forming a circle on the lawn.
The Viscountess knew she was daydreaming; in her dream, she was still a young girl, kneeling naked among her kind, with a third leg, like a grotesque tail, extending from her lumbar spine like a malignant tumor.
They looked down at her from above, their eyes filled with curiosity, fear, and hatred. The song rang out again and again, and the children spun around and around, as if this cycle would never end.
"London Bridge is collapsing, collapsing, collapsing, London Bridge is collapsing, my beautiful lady—"
"Do you know who Odin and Olaf are in this nursery rhyme?"
The man who called himself Colonel Moriarty sat by the warm fireplace, holding a book that was at least two inches thick, and casually asked the Viscountess a question.
In the dream, the Viscountess remembered her answer being: "I don't know, I'm sorry."
"That happened on Earth nearly eight centuries ago," Colonel Moriarty said. "Back then, 'them' didn't exist yet. St. Olaf II Haraldson, known as the 'Eternal King of Norway,' destroyed London Bridge. Odin was their god—do you know where Norway is?"
The Viscountess stared at the crackling fire in the fireplace, barely suppressing her impatience. "I'm sorry, I don't know. I don't care about such things. Perhaps you can't tell, but I am a devout follower of the Queen. May the stars bless you!"
"You should open your eyes and look at the world, and then you will gradually stop feeling that there are troubles all around you."
Colonel Moriarty said with concern, "Great Britain is actually very small, and Norway is not far from us at all. It is located in Northern Europe. I have a map here that I hand-drew myself when I went to sea on a ship years ago..."
"Colonel Moriarty!" the Viscountess had to interrupt him, speaking sternly, "Do you remember what I asked you to do?"
"Ah, of course I remember." The colonel resumed his nonchalant demeanor, and the sparkle that had appeared on his face when he mentioned "going to sea" vanished. "Your request is quite simple."
The Viscountess's heart pounded, and she involuntarily lowered her voice, "What should I do?"
"Frame him," the colonel said. "Use someone else to do the dirty work, leave everything to the police and the government, and you can stay out of it. After all, Charlie Hammond himself isn't innocent, is he?"
"The police station? But they always just go through the motions."
"That's how it usually is, but with the prime minister about to change, things will be different. Most importantly, you've discovered that Viscount Hammond has been transferring assets behind your back. If you don't want to kill him but still want to get the money back through a trust agreement, the only way is to get him convicted."
The Viscountess's expression shifted several times; she was clearly tempted yet hesitant. After a moment, she even began to confide her troubles to Colonel Moriarty:
"I really can't understand why he would sell all our properties in London, and wouldn't even wait for a suitable buyer, preferring to sell at a lower price. Our relationship hasn't been that great over the years, but I've always helped him manage the family business and maintain his relationships—he even killed my parents for the Queen's sake! And now he's transferring all this money away, who knows if he's fallen in love with another woman?"
This time it was Colonel Moriarty's turn to get impatient: "Blood for blood is permitted by the gods. You can kill him too, and then all his money will be yours."
The Viscountess did not answer.
The colonel glanced at her, understanding dawned on him, and chuckled inwardly. He said softly, "But you still love him, don't you?"
"I have no choice," the Viscountess said quietly, bowing her head. "My love for him is like this third leg that's attached to me; it's never a choice I make."
……
The Viscountess was immersed in her dream, watching the unfolding events from afar like an observer. She saw herself, under Colonel Moriarty's guidance, secretly delivering a letter of denunciation to the police station without revealing her identity. She sent invitations to a salon to a group of eccentrics like herself, and then led them into the abyss.
This isn't my fault! The Viscountess thought to herself. Becoming monsters is our destiny!
Just as it was then, it is now her turn.
The Viscountess ran down the corridor; her body no longer belonged to her.
The downy hairs on her white exoskeleton shimmered slightly in the moonlight streaming through the corridor window. Each time her limbs struck, they pierced a fist-sized hole in the carpet. The corpses of dead servants lay across the corner, their faces disfigured, staring at her. Without hesitation, she stepped over them. One of her limbs accidentally crushed the wrist of a maid who worked tirelessly before her every day. The sensation of shattered bone traveled along the exoskeleton into her nerves, and she felt a strange and intense wave of nausea.
These are not my hands. These are not my legs. This is not my body.
But she kept running.
The gate blocking her path stood before her. Her two human arms stretched forward, and the instant her palms touched the door, the two wooden beams that she had never thought could budge instantly shattered. Before the dust even settled, her massive body had already crashed into the banquet hall, the tips of her eight limbs scraping across the floor with ear-piercing screams.
The translucent film covering the surrounding walls came to life upon her arrival.
Of course, they were of the same kind, curious about each other, fearing each other, and hating each other. The Viscountess saw the reflection on the surface of the flesh membrane suddenly change angle, just like the group of little girls who held hands and circled around her long, long time ago.
then.
The other side surged forward.
The overwhelming fleshy membrane peeled off the four walls like a tsunami, suddenly arriving from all directions. Its translucent surface changed thickness upon impact, swelling from a thin, cicada-wing-like membrane to a thick, quilt-like mass, and then expanding into a fluid that engulfed everything.
With no blind spots and no space to hide, the Viscountess watched as the chandelier above her head was engulfed, the candles melting and extinguishing the moment they touched the fleshy membrane, leaving only the skeletal remains of the lamp stand.
However, she didn't even consider dodging.
The Viscountess willingly faced the seamless flood, spreading all her limbs in all directions, with all the limbs capable of grasping objects simultaneously piercing the flesh membrane, dragging whole pieces of translucent material toward herself.
The next moment, she opened her mouth and bit down.
To pounce, to tear apart, to swallow.
Her wild instincts awakened from the depths of her soul the moment she acknowledged her inhumanity. Like a mother leopard that had endured dozens of winters of hunger, she ignored all the warnings from her body and devoted herself wholeheartedly to eating.
The first bite caused the membrane to crumble between your teeth, its texture neither like meat nor skin, but rather somewhere between solidified fat and protein.
How disgusting.
So delicious.
She swallowed it quickly, opened her mouth, and took a second bite.
No longer content with small-scale biting, she inserted her arms and limbs into the fleshy membrane, bent her ten fingers into claws, and pierced the translucent outer wall with her nails, tearing off a whole piece of the alien and stuffing it into her mouth.
At the same time, the uterine membrane is doing the same thing to her.
It covered her body, and millions of tendrils, finer than spider silk, burrowed into her skin, prying open the edges of the spider's exoskeleton and meandering deeper along the seams at her joints.
Her enormous abdomen began to spasm upon contact with the tentacles, and she could feel something inside her slowly, inch by inch, dismembering her.