Chapter 55
For…
---
[A few moments earlier]
Blink.
Eilor lay on his back amidst an irregular mountain of broken planks and splinters embedded in his clothes. His breathing was a thread, more air entering by reflex than by will.
Blink.
For one second—two perhaps—his mind simply… sank.
As if his brain had been disconnected and forcibly rebooted.
"Why am I looking at the ceiling…?"
The idea floated in the void.
Then, a second idea arose, absurd, almost comical within the chaos:
"Right now, I'd really love to have learned aura…"
Blink.
"Why does my body hurt so much…?"
He thought before trying to spit out a metallic-tasting liquid he felt inside his mouth.
—"Ahg… pufsh"— but he couldn't do it.
His mouth wouldn't close, though his lips tried… it was as if his mouth struggled to move.
He raised his right hand from the rubble, his arm hurt…
"Wow, that's a lot of blood, isn't it?"
He thought, seeing how some splinters jutted from his arm, with red threads dripping from them.
Even so, he brought his hand to his mouth…
"Huh?"
—"Ish… dish…located…"— his words came out slurred. His jaw was dislocated
—"Agh!"— Amidst groans, he lifted his left arm.
Slowly, he brought it to his face, grabbing his jaw on both ends with both hands.
Crack!
A bony sound echoed in the room with a large hole in one wall.
The entire train of thought cut off abruptly.
His hands stopped, raised beside his face.
His whole body tensed.
His memory returned like a direct blow to the stomach.
"The monster."
He tried to get up immediately.
But he fell again, on his back, driving more splinters into his back, releasing a mute gasp he swallowed before it turned into genuine pain.
His hands clenched into fists.
First from frustration.
Then from force.
The noise of the fight was still there, alive, monstrous, but distant… as if he heard it from the bottom of a water-filled well.
And then he realized.
The sword wasn't in his hands.
—"Seriously… shit"—
He half-sat up, propping an elbow on the least broken plank he found.
The world trembled slightly as he turned his head.
He scanned the impact site with his eyes in a short, urgent sweep.
There.
He saw a glint of coppery metal in the daylight within this room.
The hilt protruded from a pile of split wood, tilted diagonally.
Eilor crawled.
His boots pushed rubble; he cared for neither silence nor posture.
His knee hit planks.
He stretched forward and grabbed the hilt.
He dragged himself closer, enough to rise onto one knee.
He pulled.
The sword came free with a dry noise, dragging wood pieces.
He stood up.
This time completely.
Dizziness struck him for a moment, but he stabilized.
His vision trembled… but became functional again.
He looked around the room.
And then he felt it.
A buzzing in his ears.
Loud. Annoying. Vibrant.
As if someone were pressing an electric cable against his head.
It wasn't pain.
It was as if his body half-rejected the sound.
A rejection more instinctive than physical.
He turned toward the hole, toward the irregular opening where the wall had broken when he crashed.
And he saw what was on the other side.
The monster, arched, screaming, a powerful howl with great force.
His companions flinching, bending with one hand on their ears and the other gripping their weapons.
Eilor didn't think about why it didn't hurt him as much.
He didn't think about logic.
Or angles.
Or safety.
He stomped the floor, staggered, but recovered…
He ran.
His boots striking the floor.
An irregular rhythm at first, then growing.
The hole approached quickly.
He jumped over rubble without looking at it.
He didn't slow.
He stomped hard on the splintered edge between the two rooms.
And his whole body erupted in orange sparks that peeled from his skin.
An electric whip shot up his spine.
Pam!
Eilor jumped.
---
In mid-air…
Eilor spun the sword.
Oriented it.
Adjusted it.
His arm contracted for a blow, a thrust.
The monster's scream was still there… but it began to move.
It was turning in his direction.
Then the first thing he saw… became his target.
His gaze sharpened, fixed on the monster's eye as if it were the only existing point.
Eilor no longer heard anything.
He only saw the target he had to reach…
And the discharge ready to erupt in his hand.
[Present]
He fired.
An orange lightning bolt, concentrated, forcibly compressed into that tiny gesture, shot out like a divine bullet.
The bolt traveled in a straight line.
With slight tremors.
With slight deviations.
It went straight into the monster's open maw, those vibrating jaws impossible to close with only half a mouth.
The interior of the mouth—throat lit up for an instant.
Like a flashlight turned on inside a rotten pumpkin.
**
A second of silence.
And then the wet sound of flesh convulsing from within.
**
The fire mage soldier moved his hands again.
First together, tense.
Then apart, as if tearing the air in two directions.
A column of fire twisted between his palms, rising half a meter, bending over itself like a frenzied serpent.
The soldier contracted both arms toward the center.
The column compressed.
A spark burst at the base.
And the spear was born.
A thick, flaming shaft. Fire compressed, concentrated, held by pure technique.
He grabbed it by the middle with his right hand, lowering his center of gravity.
He braced a leg back.
Breathed hard.
Aimed with his left hand.
Aligned shoulders and hips.
And… threw.
The spear shot out with a brutal whistle, crossing the room's air in a straight line.
The daylight entering the window made it gleam like liquid metal.
FWUM!
It impacted full-on the monster's healthy leg.
It stuck.
Entered.
Pierced tissue.
Sank halfway.
The creature trembled.
Its other leg was still regenerating, covered in white vapor bursting out in gusts.
But it had no time to react.
Because at the instant the spear penetrated…
Two silhouettes jumped toward the leg mid-regeneration from different angles.
The one in the blue coat from above, sword pointed diagonally, body tensed into a direct line.
The air bullet soldier from below, short blade in hand, advancing like a human arrow.
Both attacked simultaneously.
The one in the blue coat cut from the top of the thigh downward, a firm, decisive stroke seeking depth.
The aura burst around his arm, just like before, as if responding immediately to the opportunity opened by the spear.
The air soldier struck from the opposite side, his blade entering between wet scales with a rough snap.
The aura responding in the same manner as his companion.
Cut. Cut.
One lowered his sword.
The other raised his weapon.
The two trajectories crossed at a perfect point.
The monster's left leg didn't withstand it.
The weakened, numbed flesh, the interrupted regeneration, gave way.
First a line.
Then another, transversal.
Then a deeper, longer one that went down to the bone.
The limb split.
Into three irregular fragments, each hanging by taut fibers that finally tore under its own weight.
The creature collapsed, falling onto its side unable to support its mass.
And then came the screams.
Sharp.
Unstable.
Loaded with vibration, with abrupt cuts when convulsions closed its throat mid-howl.
Its body writhed.
Its arm clawed the floor.
The three soldiers saw their chance.
And the monster, with a broken shriek…
…
moved its single arm with a speed that didn't match its size.
A sweep.
Another sweep.
Another.
All so wide they cut the air like wet whips.
The arm passed around Eilor twice.
Two complete circles.
An attack that, at any other distance, would have torn a human from the ground like a feather.
But Eilor wasn't on the ground.
He was on top.
He rotated on the hilt itself embedded in the creature's eye, using the sword as an axis.
The monster's arm grazed his back on the first spin, moving the air with a violence that inflamed his ears.
The second spin forced him to partially release his grip, drop his weight, and plant his boots on the scaly surface of the grotesque head.
Wet scales.
Taut flesh.
A skull vibrating under electric impulses, as if the optic nerve were burning inside.
Eilor ran across that slanted surface.
Short steps.
Sharp boot impacts.
Balance measured in fractions of a second.
Each footstep lifted small wisps of vapor escaping from the eye wound.
But then—
The creature lost control.
Its entire body began shaking erratically, too erratically for a monster of that size.
They weren't offensive movements.
They were random, almost convulsive jerks.
As if its own nervous system had received a contradictory order or an internal attack.
Eilor lost stability on the third step.
The head tilted sharply.
His sword, embedded in the eye, vibrated so hard it almost flew out.
The monster ignored the other soldiers' cuts.
It wasn't reacting to them.
Its body twisted in all directions, without pattern, without rhythm.
Torso twists.
Spinal whips.
Clumsy, yet devastating, movements that caused entire scales to detach from its body.
The three soldiers had to retreat, using their weapons to protect themselves from the attacks and reinforcing their bodies with aura to avoid being knocked down by the force.
But a direct sweep at their heads forced them to raise their weapons, cover their heads, fall backward, roll, while a chunk of the floor was torn up by the sweep's force.
The one in the blue coat dodged a movement he didn't see coming, but felt in the change of air.
He slid right.
The arm passed so close the sole of his boot was torn by the claws.
Eilor, still on the head, panted, increasing the intensity of his discharges.
The monster shook its body as if trying to detach itself from reality, each tremor more violent than the last.
The convulsions not only threw Eilor off balance.
They threw everyone.
Splinters shot from the floor.
Chunks of flesh came loose where regeneration failed.
The walls vibrated with a low hum, as if the structure were suffering.
And still…
Eilor kept his hands on the hilt.
The orange discharges kept flowing, even as his body bounced on the skull.
He clung as if his life depended on it.
And the monster…
the monster seemed to be killing itself from within.
---
The monster's convulsions became so abrupt that Eilor finally lost his balance.
A sudden jerk of the skull to the left, a torso spasm, and his boot slipped on a puddle of warm blood that had gushed from the eye.
His body tilted back.
His center of gravity skewed… and he let go.
For an infinite instant, Eilor hung suspended in the air, falling in slow motion, with the sword still embedded in the eye, but his fingers already unable to reach it.
The monster's arm saw it before anyone else.
Or rather:
it felt it.
A spasm, a nervous command, a predatory reflex.
The arm flexed with a sharp crack.
The elbow gave an unnatural twist.
Tendons vibrated.
And the claw, in a low sweep, began ascending straight toward Eilor's exposed back, in a curved, precise, inevitable arc, as if the monster had waited for that instant, with a hatred only an animal could feel.
The air whistled.
Eilor couldn't turn.
Couldn't cover himself.
Couldn't do anything.
His body kept falling.
The claw ascended.
And then—
CLANG!!—
Metal against monster.
A harsh, brutal, metallic sound.
The blow didn't completely stop the claw…
but deflected it a few centimeters, enough so it didn't pierce Eilor's spine.
The sword was knocked from the hand holding it.
The vibration was so strong the sword flew, fell, and bounced off the floor, then against a wall, spinning on itself like a powerless boomerang.
The fire soldier had appeared between the monster and Eilor like a red-orange flash.
He had interposed his weapon, knowing he would lose his grip.
Knew the claw would break his hold.
Knew the impact would shatter his fingers.
But he did it anyway.
Eilor saw, in the brief instant he was still falling, the soldier tilt his head slightly to one side as the claw appeared and ascended to the right side of his own body.
The fire soldier twisted his body in a quick torsion.
Planted his right foot.
Raised his right arm.
His forearm tensed.
His hand clenched into a fist.
And the red aura burst, forming around the fist like red-hot iron.
A dry spark lit his guard.
That fist rose like a hammer that could split an ox in two.
Beside him, Eilor kept falling.
His back hit the floor with a hard, dry, painful THUD that knocked the air from him.
Splinters embedded between his shoulder blade and the torn fabric.
His arms opened involuntarily.
The discharges from the sword in the monster's eye ceased and vanished.
The monster, feeling its attack deflected, convulsively turned its head toward the point of new danger.
Its remaining eye fixed on the fire soldier's ignited fist.
The air between them tensed like a steel wire.
What the monster saw next wasn't confusion or fear.
It was a fist coming toward it like a compact projectile of red aura.
The soldier launched the blow with his whole body behind it:
hips twisted, heel planted, shoulder sunk, tendons prominent.
An attack made to break skulls.
The monster, though legless and now armless, didn't stop.
Its torso twisted.
Its spine cracked like a taut bow.
The impossible-to-close mouth lunged forward, opening to its limit.
And it attacked.
It attacked with its teeth, which could still crush a helmet.
The fire soldier saw the attack coming.
His instinct wanted to scream at him to retreat.
To pivot.
To withdraw his fist and survive.
But his reason closed the door to that option.
Because he knew:
If he retreated even one step, even one centimeter, the monster would recover its deflected arm.
And if it recovered the arm…
it would strike again.
Would spin again.
Would shake again.
And with a single swipe, it would gain space, time to regenerate its shattered legs.
That couldn't happen.
He knew it.
They all knew it.
So he didn't dodge.
He couldn't.
—"Agh!!"— He grit his teeth.
And he followed through with the attack.
The monster lunged forward with a spasmodic jerk.
It was about to swallow his fist.
A moment from shearing off his entire hand up to the forearm.
The soldier clenched his teeth and let out a short, desperate roar.
—"Agh!!!!"—
It was no longer a human shout.
It was a harsh sound, from the diaphragm, from the pure obligation not to retreat.
The jaw closed.
By a millimeter.
The maw was so close the red aura of the fist crackled upon contact with the fangs.
But…
It was close.
Too close.
Though this…
wasn't a 1-on-1.
"It was a 4-on-1."
Stabbed.
Stabbed.