Chapter 4
Burden
—Tsk… these things are so repulsive,— the man spat, and his voice held a strange edge: not just disgust, but a cold concentration, like someone tightening every muscle before a decisive move.
Suddenly, he pivoted. It wasn't an elegant or measured turn, but an explosion. His heels scraped the wooden floor, his shoulders twisted as if his spine were about to snap, and his entire torso channeled its force into a single axis. The air whistled around his movement, cut by the violence of the torsion.
That spin culminated in a throw. The Young Man's body was flung from his hands with a violent jerk, as if catapulted without warning. For a fraction of a second, he hung suspended in the air, out of control: arms splayed, legs bent at odd angles, hair fluttering as if trying to keep up with the flight.
The bed received him without gentleness. He landed on his back on the rumpled sheets, bouncing once like a doll thrown against a mattress that was too soft. The dry sound of his body hitting the fabric echoed in the room, accompanied by a muffled groan that was immediately lost under the roar that followed.
The air split with a crack. Not wood or bone: it was the very floor buckling under a brutal weight. The creature lunged forward, and the charge was so violent the atmosphere seemed to hold its breath for an instant before erupting.
The man lowered his center of gravity with a slight bend in his knees. His heels dug into the wood, which screeched in protest, and his torso leaned forward just slightly. His left hand still hovered in the position from throwing the Young Man, frozen in mid-air. His right hand, however, was already instinctively seeking the hilt of his sword. His fingers closed tightly around the grip just as the beast's shadow descended upon him.
The first clash wasn't what he expected. The sword left its scabbard with a hiss and described a clean, swift horizontal arc, a slash so sharp it could have split a beam in two. The steel cut the air, leaving a vibrant hum in its wake.
But the creature contracted mid-flight. Its body coiled like a living spring, bones and muscles folding inward with an impossible agility for something so heavy. The slash passed mere centimeters away, grazing the rough skin without cutting it.
Then, with the same violence, the monster stretched out again. The floor trembled as its hind legs impacted like spears, puncturing the planks to absorb the momentum. Splintered wood flew in fragments, and the echo of the blow traveled through the walls.
The man was left with his flank exposed, his sword still moving to the left. Too open. Too late.
A harsh hiss cut the air: the monster's claws, extending toward him like butcher's blades. They weren't aiming just for his left eye, but for the entire half of his face. Five points gleamed for an instant under the faint light, ready to sink into flesh and bone.
The man knew it in a heartbeat. His pupil dilated, and the muscles in his face tensed as if trying to contain the blow on their own. He had tried to block, but the blade wasn't in position yet. The edge came straight on, and the world narrowed to those few centimeters between his head and death.
Then, something strange happened.
It wasn't the clash of steel or the snap of bone. It was a wet friction, a faint sound, almost inadequate for such violence: water.
Two thin, flexible jets erupted from his own mouth, vibrating like taut whips. They coiled around the claw seeking to tear him apart, deflecting its trajectory at the last possible instant. The impact was strong enough to force the monster to correct its angle, but not enough to break through that liquid defense.
The result was brutal nonetheless. The deflection changed the path of the blades, which scraped across his head as they passed. Blood welled in three uneven lines across his face and spattered the floor behind him. His head was knocked to the right by the blow, revealing a red void where his ear should have been.
The water jets remained there, taut, like cables vibrating under the weight of the attack. They weren't simple splashes: they held firm, resisting, with the precise force maintaining the difference between life and death.
The man swallowed saliva mixed with iron, felt the heat of blood running down his neck… and yet, he tightened his grip on the sword. The monster had been left open in that moment of deflection.
With the creature off-balance from the parry, the man didn't wait.
His wrist turned with precision and launched a new horizontal cut, this time aimed at the torso, intent on splitting it in two. The steel gleamed as it advanced, a silver flash promising to part flesh and bone.
But the monster was no easy prey. Its right arm rose like a wall, seeking to intercept the blade with a violent sweep. The edge passed by, barely deflecting its trajectory. The man crouched, his body contracting as if liquefying, reducing his height to evade the counter without halting his offense.
For a moment, it seemed he would succeed. That the slash would find its mark before the creature could respond.
Then, something unfolded.
A sound, both wet and dry, resonated in the room: two additional limbs sprouted from the monster's thighs, hidden until that moment, like armor plates that had come to life. They were shorter, but thick and hard, formed for resistance.
One of these extra limbs intercepted the sword's path. The impact sounded like metal hitting rock. The steel vibrated from tip to hilt, and the man's arm shook with the reverberation. For an instant, the blade seemed embedded in a living wall.
—So hard…— he thought, feeling how the force of his strike hadn't cut anything, only awakened an impossible resistance.
Meanwhile, the water whips jetting from his mouth began to coil around each other. They were no longer two simple threads, but a spinning spiral, a liquid drill vibrating with contained fury. He was ready to launch it at the monster…
But when he looked up, the enemy was no longer in front of him.
A sharp crackle forced him to look up.
The monster was no longer on the floor: it clung to the ceiling with its claws, like a gigantic spider. Its body was hunched, all six limbs tense, muscles vibrating under the rough skin. From there it watched him, inverted, with fixed eyes and a disturbing stillness, the false calm of a predator about to strike.
The man clenched his jaw. He felt the warm blood trickling down his cheek to his neck, but he didn't look away. Time stretched into unbearable seconds.
Then the leap happened.
There was no warning, no roar: just a dry, brutal impulse, as if a giant spring had been released all at once. The ceiling split under the launch, splinters falling in all directions. The creature projected itself downward in a straight line, all its weight concentrated in its legs extended like spears.
Instinct screamed before his mind could.
*Move back!*
The man threw himself backward at the last instant. His right foot slammed violently into the floor, and his body bent into an arc as he retreated with a desperate leap.
The impact of the beast against the floor was deafening. It tore through the floorboards.
The wood split open like a broken mouth, the floor sinking several centimeters, and the vibration whipped through the entire room. Liquids, nails, and pieces of planking shot out, filling the air with fragments.
The destroyed space didn't cover the whole room, but it did cover half of it. The margin to move was minimal.
The man landed barely, his chest still heaving from the recoil.
He knew he hadn't bought time: he had only just survived the first leap.
The dust hadn't even settled when the man reacted.
He couldn't lose a second: the young man was still on the bed, exposed.
He turned left, his body still under the pressure of the recoil, and advanced in a couple of quick strides. The mattress creaked as it sank when he shoved his left arm under the boy. The fabric tore with a rough sound; the bedframe's wood gave way under the pressure. His fingers punched through the bottom and emerged on the other side.
With a single motion, he hauled him upward.
The young man's body lifted abruptly, inert, as if it weighed no more than a sack of grain. The boy didn't wake, only a faint gasp escaped his throat as the pressure changed his position.
The man placed him over his shoulder with a quick gesture, adjusting his right arm around the boy's legs to secure the load. The weight was unbalanced, but he couldn't afford to think about that.
The floor trembled again, a sign the creature was preparing to move.
He didn't wait.
He lunged forward, crossing the room with long, heavy steps, each one accompanied by the screech of planks yielding under two bodies at once. With each stride, he avoided the freshly opened fractures in the floor: a short leap to the left, another to the right, the air cutting his face, the rumbling of the beast in the crater.
The door was close.
He leaped with a half-turn in the air, twisting his torso so the young man wouldn't hit the frame. The sword was still in his hand, pointing backward, ready to cover an attack as he crossed the threshold.
He landed in the hallway.
His eyes swept the place: clear to the left. Before losing momentum, he planted his right foot on a thin sheet of water welling from the floor like a liquid mirror. He used the slide to immediately pivot right, adapting his position without losing speed.
Behind him, a roar forced him to turn his head back toward the room's interior.
The creature was there again.
Hanging from the hallway ceiling, like a nightmare refusing to release its prey.
The crunch came before the leap.
The monster launched itself from the ceiling again, shattering the wood with such violence that the ceiling finally gave way, collapsing, burying the room in rubble. The air grew thick, saturated with fragments that gleamed for an instant as they reflected the light from lamps being shattered by the falling debris.
The man was already running, the young man bouncing on his shoulder with each step. The second stride was treacherous: the entire ship tilted backward slightly. The floor rose to meet him mid-air, just as he was lifting his foot, striking him.
That impact, though minimal, diverted his momentum just enough to make him stagger back instead of advancing. He lost his rhythm, left suspended, mid-step, right in the doorway.
Too exposed.
A dull roar enveloped him.
The monster's claws dug into the wood and iron frame like pincers. With a single pull, it ripped the entire structure out. The sound was rending: nails snapping, metal twisting, wood shattering. The hallway rumbled as if the ship had taken a cannon shot.
In a matter of seconds, the only escape route was blocked. The man and the young man were trapped between two of the monster's limbs ahead and behind. To the left, the monster and the collapsed wall; to the right, the solid wall, now with another wall of debris on top of it.
The frame, torn completely loose, still vibrated in the creature's claws, splinters falling between them in slow motion. The smell of dust and rust filled the air.
The man understood immediately: there was no way out.
And he hadn't even touched the ground yet.