Deathstalker 01 - Deathstalker

stench entered the corridor, of rotting flesh and waste products. The Stevie Blues pulled the same disgusted face and scowled even harder. The hole grew bigger, the metal running away like water, and everyone got their first glimpse of Wormboy.
    Finlay edged forward, one arm raised to protect his face from the heat, and
    stared in sick fascination at the endless stretch of luminous flesh, pierced here and there by pipes as thick as a normal man's arm. The wounds had healed around the pipes in tucks of crumpled flesh, encrusted by trickles of escaped waste. By peering up through the widening hole, now the size of a door, Finlay could just make out one side of a vast, inhuman face. The skin was stretched inhumanly taut, so that normal expressions were impossible, but even as Finlay watched, a slow smile spread across the lower face. The lips were almost black from the pressure of engorged blood, and the huge teeth were a dirty gray. The eyes were hidden in shadow, but Finlay had no doubt that Wormboy could see them.
    The Stevie Blues howled suddenly with pain and staggered back from the hole they'd made, gripping at their heads with both hands. It hit Finlay and the others a moment later, and he cried out as the flesh rotted on his bones. The pain was horrendous, swamping his thoughts. His skin grew discolored and cracked apart, revealing maggots writhing in the decaying muscles. Pus and rotting tissue fell from his arms and legs. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew this wasn't real, but his body believed it. Wormboy was playing his mindgames again.
    Finlay squeezed his rotting hands around his sword and gun, though he could no longer feel them. How could Wormboy be doing this? There was no worm in his head, no access for the beast. He doesn't need one, Pindar's voice whispered in his ear. He's drawing on the collective power of all the espers he controls. Our power is nothing compared to his now. Some of the prisoners are trying to hold back, they know why we're here, but he's too strong, too strong. You're our only chance, Finlay. It's harder for him to reach you, because you're not an esper.
    Kill him. Kill the beast. Before our bodies really believe what they're being told and rot for real. He's winning, Finlay. He's killing us.

    Finlay could dimly hear distant screams from the surrounding espers in their cells, goaded to action by the spur in their brains. They were killing their only hope, and they knew it. He almost lost track of himself in the vast sea of minds, but slowly, bit by bit, he curled in upon himself, shutting out everything else, drawing upon the ingrained disciplines of a fighter in the Arena, where to lose concentration even for a moment could mean your death. He pulled back from the brink, but still he was helpless in the grip of such power.
    They were all helpless, alone in the dark with Wormboy.
    And then something wonderful happened. One of those minds exploded in a searing blast of light that threw back the darkness. One mind, pure and potent, reached out and gathered all the captive minds into its fold, and pulled them together in a single vast cry of outrage. Once Jenny Psycho, now fully Mater Mundi, she gave them hope and strength and bound them in a single gestalt mind, fully the equal of the Empire's greatest esper creation. But only the equal. Thousands of minds swept this way and that in the gestalt, torn between Mater Mundi's sheer power and the controlling worms hotwired directly into their brains. The prisoners were literally fighting themselves.
    Finlay was there, too, snatched up into the gestalt by the sheer power of what was happening. He could feel Evangeline there beside him, somehow always just out of reach. Wormboy's power beat around him like the thunder of huge wings, grasping for him but unable to make contact. He had no worm in his brain, and more importantly he was not one man, one mind, but two. Even as Wormboy's thoughts curled around Finlay, pulling him in, the Masked Gladiator remained free, unnoticed, waiting. Finlay plunged deep into Wormboy's mind, seemingly just another small victory over Mater Mundi, another spark guttering in the
    darkness, but the moment Wormboy clamped down on Finlay Campbell, the Masked Gladiator was released. He sprang free, arrayed as always in his familiar armor and featureless steel helm, his sword Morgana in his hands. Wormboy sensed something was wrong, and tried to recoil, but he had already brought his killer deep into his