Eater Blade: Grinding in Apocalypse-Chapter 39: INTO THE QUEEN’S NEST.

The jingle faded behind them, replaced by a new sound: a low, eerie hum like something huge breathing below.

Johnquis stopped at the railing and looked down. What used to be a mountain of rubble and broken beams was now cleared away. In its place, the old buried escalator gleamed under flickering lights, polished glass railings and squeaking rubber steps moving slow and steady.

When they reached the landing, Johnquis froze and smiled.

"Holy shit... would you look at that."

The escalator was actually moving. It creaked, but the steps kept flowing down like a gentle metal waterfall. He leaned over the railing, staring at the way the metal plates dipped into the lower floor, carrying air and shadows with them.

"A magic stair..."

He said, his voice almost boyish. "Back in the cathedral, the kids called these things magic stairs, they’d carry you up and down without a rope or chain. I always thought they were all gone by now. But this anomaly... it really brings back everything we’ve lost."

He bounced on his heels, chain rattling on his arms. "I’m tryin’ it. Come on, Dancer. Watch this."

He planted a foot on the moving step, wobbled then braced himself, arms flaring out like a kid testing ice. The escalator tugged him forward, and he laugh that bounced down the echoing walls.

"Ha! It works! Look, no climbing, no hooks, no sweat, I could get used to this. Heading straight for the Queen’s nest... on a magic stairway!"

Dancer crept up beside him, peering over the edge. Her claws clicked against the glass as she sniffed at the moving steps. The shifting rubber treads squeaking up and down. She tensed, eyes narrowing at the constant motion.

"Oh no... don’t tell me you’re scared of a baby escalator?"

Johnquis laughed out loud. "Big bad Tanker-killer, but you see a magic stair and you freeze up?"

Dancer crouched at the top landing, foot-blade tapping the edge like she was testing the water. The steps groaned under the faint weight of her claw, then she pulled it back with a tiny snarl. Johnquis doubled over laughing halfway down the ride.

"Come on, come on! Get your ass down here, the Queen’s not gonna wait all day! Or... I guess she would, but you know what I mean!"

Dancer hissed at the humming rubber, then finally lunged, landing on the moving stair like a prowling cat on a rolling log. She stayed low, claws scraping for balance, every muscle tight as the escalator ferried her down alongside him.

"See? Not so bad! One giant death mall but the escalator still works! Magic stairs! I’m telling you, the old world had its perks."

The escalator groaned one final time, spitting them out onto the first floor’s spotless marble.

Johnquis stepped off first, Dancer hopped down beside him, landing light. She gave the escalator one last suspicious glare, then turned her nose to the air.

Immediately, they both froze.

The jingle above cut out with a broken pop. In its place, the silence was thicker than ever, except it wasn’t really silent. The air itself seemed to breathe down here.

Johnquis ran his palm along a nearby pillar, half-expecting dust. Instead, his fingers came away slick. A faint, oily sheen clung to the surface. The whole floor gleamed like it had been buffed to a mirror shine, yet the reflections swam and wavered under the flickering emergency lights.

"The hell is this?"

His boots left faint smears on the marble, and when he breathed in, his throat burned. The air carried a sweet, rotting stink.

Dancer padded ahead, claws tapping. Her eyes flicked left to right, tracking something unseen. The restaurants lining the first floor stood untouched, tables set, neon menus blinking through static. In one glass window, a family of mannequins smiled wide behind a display of fake fried chicken, their plastic faces fractured by faint cracks that wept dark sap.

The entire floor glitched around them. Lights stuttering, signs flickering between "OPEN" and static bursts. Somewhere deeper, an old arcade machine croaked out a dying theme song that never finished.

Johnquis trailed Dancer through the humming fog. They ducked under a dead chandelier, stepping past a boutique storefront where dresses swayed on their racks though there was no breeze.

Then he saw it... a thin, ropey shape curling down from the ceiling.

"Hold up."

They both stopped. The ’rope’ was no rope at all, a root, slick and pulsing like a vein under skin. It snaked down from the rafters, through the cracked marble floor, and vanished into the gloom.

"Something’s feeding this floor."

His eyes tracking it upward. High above, the root spread like a spiderweb. Thin tendrils threaded through air vents and light fixtures, branching across glass and tile like diseased veins. Some pulsed visibly, faint lumps traveling inside them like they were ferrying fluid... or worse.

Dancer clicked low, a warning rumble in her throat.

"Yeah... yeah, I see it too. Let’s see where this freakshow goes."

They followed the thickening vein deeper into the floor. It spread out like a diseased river — splitting into dozens of smaller threads that crawled across restaurant counters, dripped from ceiling fans, even wound tight around a toppled kiddie ride shaped like a smiling dolphin. Wherever they looked, the web pulsed and throbbed, the floor beneath their boots faintly warm.

The smell grew worse.

They rounded a corner into what used to be the center of the mall’s big open plaza and stopped dead.

The root there swelled huge, a trunk of weeping flesh stuck to marble and glass alike. Around it, the web blossomed into bulbous sacs. Eggs or something like them. Each was strung in mucus-thick strands like pearls in a rotting necklace. Some twitched. Inside, vague shapes curled and kicked. Half-formed Eaters still wrapped in translucent sheaths of pulsing flesh.

Johnquis felt his gorge rise. "Oh, look at this mess... The Queen’s nest, huh? She’s farming the next batch. I knew she was big but... this is a whole damn factory. This is what you expect from a D-tier nest."

One of the sacs rippled. Inside, something shifted.

A blurred face pressed to the membrane, teeth forming in a mouth that hadn’t finished yet. It bit the inside wall, drawing a line of dark ichor before going still again.

Dancer stepped forward, foot-blade tapping the tile like she was itching to carve it all apart. She tilted her head, eyes gleaming with a hunter’s delight and hate.

Johnquis wiped a hand across his mouth, tasting the rot in the air. "Well, you wanted another canvas, Dancer. Looks like we just found the Queen’s maternity ward. Hope you’re ready to wreck her nursery."

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