Chapter 9
Die Already v3
Kaep could barely hold on. His arms burned, his hands slipped with the mixture of blood and rain. The metal edge was a knife against his skin, and yet he clung with everything he had.
A fleeting thought crossed his mind: "If I change my position, maybe I can get a better grip."
With a grunt, he released his right arm, trying to twist his body to hook on at a different angle.
But as soon as he freed one hand, the other could no longer bear the load.
The blood had ruined his grip. The metal edge cut him as if mocking him, and his fingers opened against his will.
—"No!"— he managed to groan, but the word was lost in the roar of the wind.
The grip gave way.
Suddenly, everything slowed. The beat in his ears was a giant drum, keeping time with his fall. Every raindrop descended alongside him like needles suspended in air.
His body turned heavily to one side, and in that movement he saw the hole he'd tried to cling to.
First close. Then further away. Then, out of reach.
His heart shrank.
He stretched an arm. Touched nothing.
He stretched the other. Touched even less.
Once. Twice. Three desperate attempts.
The hole kept receding, implacable.
The spin continued, slow but inevitable. His legs rose above him, and his head faced the sky. Now he was falling backward, body arched, arms outstretched like a cross.
The night sky devoured him whole: black clouds torn by lightning flashing on and off. Each flash showed him the magnitude of the hell he was trapped in: the storm roaring, the raging sea, and him floating in the middle of nothingness.
The sensation was twofold: a fierce vertigo shrinking his stomach, and at the same time, a slowness forcing him to see every detail of his fall. He could feel his soaked hair plastered to his face, the throbbing in his head wound marking a painful pulse, and the drops of blood detaching from his open palms, following the same descending trajectory as him.
His mouth opened in a useless attempt to breathe, but he only swallowed cold air and saltwater.
For an instant, he thought it all ended there. That the last thing he'd see would be that blackened sky.
That's what he would have thought…
But something else caught his attention.
[A few moments earlier]
The wall trembled with each blow from inside. The metal was dented, cracked, about to burst. The din built like a muffled roar until finally…
KRAANG!!!
The plate gave way. A gap burst open, spewing a gust of icy wind and rain that sliced in like blades.
Two intertwined bodies shot out through the hole: the six-limbed monster and the red-haired man. The force of the charge projected them into the open air, beyond the hull.
The redhead felt the impact in the pit of his stomach. The sword's hilt, still embedded in the creature, drove against the bruise on his abdomen with violence.
—"Ghrrk!"— a choked grunt escaped his throat, his face contorted with pain. Every muscle screamed for him to double over, but he couldn't: the monster was dragging him with it.
The back covered in scaly protrusions was all he could see in front of him. Behind, the ship's interior receded rapidly, disappearing into shadows and rain.
"Shit…"
The word burned in his mind like a spark of fury. His jaw tightened, teeth grinding with contained rage. The pain was unbearable, but worse was the feeling of powerlessness: being dragged like a doll in the hands of this aberration.
The air enveloped them, and the inertia of their exit made them spin together, like an out-of-control wheel turning aimlessly.
But…
Before completing the first rotation…
The red-haired man, with a brutal effort, braced his left knee against the scaly torso of the monster. The contact was like hitting a wet, cold stone. Then he stretched his right leg, coating it in a vibrant red aura. The energy crackled around his thigh and down to the tip of his foot, tinting the rain hitting him.
A roar escaped his chest.
BAM!
A knee strike charged with all the force of his aura slammed into the monster's torso. The creature barely flinched, the blow seemed useless against that hard, viscous flesh… but it wasn't.
The contact had created space. The impact hadn't truly wounded it, but it pushed it enough to break the pressure of the charge.
The redhead separated a few centimeters from the monster. It wasn't freedom, but it was an opportunity.
The pain in his abdomen bit him again with fury. The bruise burned like fire, every muscle cried out to stop. But he didn't stop. He forced himself to spin further, twisting his body to the limit of its elasticity, ignoring the groans of his own torn body.
Then he saw him.
Between lightning flashes, right below him, was the unconscious young man… now awake.
---
The chaos of the spin dragged them all equally: the monster, the redhead, and Kaep. The world was a whirlwind of rain, steel, and sea.
Kaep, breathing raggedly, saw him: a silhouette with a leg covered in aura, a red-haired man, just a few meters above.
The redhead spotted him too. Their gazes met in a flash of lightning.
Both understood the same thing in a fleeting instant: "opportunity."
Kaep stretched his arm with all his strength, fingers open, seeking any contact.
The redhead did the same, tensing his body against the inertia of the fall. The pain in his abdomen bit him, but he ignored it.
One second.
Another.
Their hands brushed in the air, just a touch of wet skin. The friction almost made them lose the chance.
But the second time, their fingers hooked together desperately.
They caught each other!
The impact of the grip shook them, but neither let go.
The redhead's red aura glowed intensely. Without wasting time, he covered opposing areas of his body: left shoulder, right leg, torso. His energy expanded like an improvised harness.
With a grunt, he began to swing the boy, using the little inertia they had left. Each movement was a titanic effort, like rowing in an ocean of wind and rain.
One… two… three oscillations.
Now!
With a calculated spin, he released him.
Kaep shot toward the wall like a human projectile. The wind whipped his face, the rain blinded him, but he could see the hole torn in the hull, just a few meters below the gap from which the redhead had been expelled.
The torn edge gleamed with a wet sharpness. If he hit it head-on, he'd be impaled.
—"Aaah!"— a guttural scream escaped his throat as he twisted his torso in mid-air.
With a brutal effort, he stretched his right arm forward. His fingers slammed against the metal edge and hooked on barely. The impact burned his shoulder, and an electric pain shot through his entire arm.
His other arm couldn't follow. He instinctively crossed it over his chest, protecting himself from the irregular blades protruding from the hole. The edge scraped his skin and tore the fabric of his clothes, but didn't pierce through.
For a moment, he hung there, suspended, head bowed, panting.
"I did it…" he thought, his chest burning.
Then, the pull came.
First slight, just a pressure on his leg. Then, a brutal drag downward, as if an anchor was pulling him straight into the sea.
Kaep groaned through clenched teeth.
He knew he had the redhead hanging from his ankle, but this was different. The weight was much greater, a pull so violent his right shoulder cracked with a sinister snap.
—"Ghrrhh!"— a groan of pain tore through his throat.
The arm holding him trembled, every muscle about to burst. His left hand, braced against the hull to keep his body from being impaled on the edge, slipped. And in that slip, his palm was trapped against a sharp edge.
The metal tore through the flesh of his hand like a blade.
A stream of warm blood mixed with the icy storm water.
Kaep clenched his teeth so hard he thought they'd break. But he didn't let go. Even though the wound made him want to scream in pain, he kept his hand pressed against the edge, sacrificing it to keep his body off the blades.
The entire hull vibrated beneath them with the crash of the waves, as if the whole ship was about to split apart.
The pull kept dragging him down. And Kaep understood: it wasn't just the redhead weighing him down. There was something else.
The redhead hung from Kaep's ankle like a slab of iron. Every passing second, he felt the tension in his own abdomen tearing him apart.
When Kaep managed to grab the torn edge, the inertia slammed the redhead against the ship's hull.
THUMP!
The impact was direct on his right side, right where the bruise had formed hours before. The pain exploded like a hammer in his guts.
—"Ghhk!"— he spat, face contorted, mouth open in a snarl of rage and suffering.
His left hand clawed against the metal wall, nails scraping uselessly on the wet steel. The red aura barely contained the internal tearing he felt in his ribs.
But the worst wasn't the pain.
It was the sensation of being pulled down even further.
The redhead looked down, breathing ragged. The wind whipped his face, the rain stung his eyes, but he managed to see it.
—"Seriously…!"— he huffed, between gasps.
The fish-monster was there, clinging to his right leg. Its scaly tail had coiled spirally around his thigh and ankle, squeezing like a constrictor snake. Each contraction made his bones creak and his muscles feel ready to burst.
And that wasn't all.
The monster arched its grotesque body, its four free arms seeking to hook onto the redhead even more. Its webbed fingers beat the air, scraping its claws against the metal hull for purchase.
Every movement of the tail was a whip-lash that pulled him down another centimeter. As if the creature was testing his resistance, pushing and squeezing, waiting for both of them to fall.
The redhead closed his eyes for a second, clenched his jaw until his teeth creaked. His face twisted between fury and desperation.
The pain was unbearable, his right leg felt ready to burst under the tail's pressure. Kaep, hanging above, let out choked moans as blood streamed from his hands. The entire hull creaked with each wave impact.
The redhead lifted his head and screamed with fury, his voice broken by the storm:
—"I'll handle it, just hold on!"
His left hand rose with a sharp gesture, and the rain hitting him stopped for an instant in mid-air. The drops that had struck his skin began to spin, coiling into tiny whirlpools. Others joined, drawn as if obeying an invisible command, forming a liquid swarm that grew with every second.
The drops elongated, stretching like crystalline needles until they formed dozens of sharp spirals.
A blink later, forty-two points of water floated around him, like an arsenal suspended in the midst of the storm.
The needles dove downward.
SHHHH! CRACK! CHSSH!
Each water spiral embedded itself in the monster's viscous skin, impaling it from different directions. The creature shrieked with a guttural sound. The impact forced it back a few centimeters, arching its torso in a spasm.
The redhead didn't waste the moment. With his left leg coated in red aura, he stomped down on the coiled tail.
BAM!
The hull vibrated with the blow. The monster squeezed tighter.
Another stomp.
BAM!
The tail deformed, the scaly flesh crunching under the pressure, but instead of releasing, it contracted with more force, as if each blow incited it to cling even harder.
The redhead growled through his teeth, growing angrier. His face was contorted in a grimace of rage and pain. He felt his own muscles giving way, his right leg burning under the tail's pressure as if being ground to pulp.
Above, Kaep's moans grew more desperate.
Below, the monster clung more viciously, its single good eye gleaming.
---
The water needles kept plunging into the monster's flesh, one after another, piercing its scaly torso like liquid thorns. The creature arched its body, shaking, retreating just a few centimeters with each impact.
The redhead panted, his left leg delivering frantic kicks against the tail imprisoning him. The hull resonated with each blow, but the tail didn't yield: it contracted further, sinking its scales into his skin, biting into his leg like a living vise.
Suddenly, the monster changed.
Instead of continuing to shrink, it arched in the opposite direction, flexing its body with unnatural agility. In an impossible movement, it spun on its axis, almost three-quarters of a turn, like a wheel of flesh and scales.
The tail dragged the redhead with brutal force.
Kaep, above, felt the pull on his shattered arms, his shoulder about to dislocate. A roar of pain burst from his throat, barely audible over the thunder.
The redhead had no time to react. The monster's spin caught him mid-kick, completely throwing him off balance. His muscles were already at their limit from the effort, and the sudden movement finished breaking his resistance.
—"ah…!"— he muttered through his teeth.
His grip opened.
First his fingers, then his entire palm.
He let go.
For an eternal second, he hung suspended in the air, his gaze fixed on his right ankle still trapped by the monster's tail. The pain was unbearable: as if his leg had been crushed and burned at the same time.
The redhead could only watch, with horror and rage, as his hands no longer responded, as his grip had broken.
And he understood the monster was dragging him down.
The redhead spun in the air, dragged like a doll by the monster's tail. The sea roared beneath them, the storm seemed ready to swallow everything. The vertigo was unbearable, the pressure on his leg was splitting him in two.
"The tail…!" he roared inside his head.
With a desperate effort, he twisted his torso to one side, forcing his trapped leg to turn with him. The movement tore a groan from him, every muscle burning at its limit. The monster swung him as if wanting to throw him straight into the ocean.
But before the movement could project him downward, the redhead thrust his left hand toward the tail.
The red aura enveloped his fingers instantly, crackling in the rain like liquid fire.
His gaze sharpened… and he clenched his hand with force.
His fingers sank into the scaly flesh. They didn't pierce it completely, but enough to tear a guttural shriek from the creature. The tail contracted violently… and suddenly sprang open.
The redhead felt the pressure vanish. The monster had released his leg.
But it hadn't completely freed him.
The momentum of the movement still kept them connected: the tail, upon releasing, dragged the redhead's trajectory with it, throwing him in the same direction. The man's body remained chained to the creature in that chaotic dance, as if the monster refused to let him go entirely.
Beneath Kaep, the beast slammed into the metal wall with a rending sound.
KRANG!
Its two webbed legs and two of its arms dug into the hull like deformed nails, clinging to the steel with monstrous strength. Its body arched, writhing like an insect as it extended its other two free arms.
The sword, still embedded in its head, vibrated with each of the creature's spasms. The hilt protruded like a bloody tether, trembling in the storm. Droplets of water and blood cascaded from the wound, mixing into a puddle the rain instantly dispersed.
Kaep, hanging above, saw that image and an icy shiver ran down his spine.