Perhaps this was the moment to wonder what had possessed this highly imaginative and self-persuading heresy to send dozens of people to meet the "Angels," answering through firsthand experience a question that had lingered for ages: what happened after a Crawling Creature successfully captured its prey?
Now they had their answer—it expanded without limit, to a staggering scale, until its fungal-scaled limbs could topple like falling pillars.
The Fungal Light Pillar twisted and rose, like a long neck hauled upright by dozens of arms. Then, using its own weight and the contraction of its segments, it swung down. The bricks and stones built on faith were nothing before its strength.
Kraft hurled his torch and rolled beneath a desk that had been shoved aside. Debris, bleached by the dazzling light, fell like a rain of rubble, vanishing into the swollen mushrooms on the bookshelves. They struck with dull splashes, scattering clouds of Spore Powder.
"What a rude fellow!" It didn't even need to knock. It smashed the window and half the wall along with it.
The torch had successfully ignited the grease, but Kraft knew it was meaningless. The fire wasn't even a threat to that thing; it was just a little flame, entirely negligible.
Without stopping to think, he sprang up and fled the desk that had offered him a false sense of security. As expected, a second enormous limb came crashing down, turning everything in its path—including the desk—into a pile of rubble.
He couldn't run farther back. Martin and Kup were struggling to retreat through the mushroom-choked corridor, so he had to draw the thing elsewhere.
Before the next attack came, he leaped through the hole smashed in the wall. Fortunately, this wasn't The Cathedral. Even the height of the second floor could have caused a compression