The torch on the floor flickered, its flame struggling against the sudden draft. Ryckel didn't move. He couldn't. His boots felt like they were fused to the stone.
Behind him, the mountain was shifting.
The 'dead' Alpha Aboleth didn't roar.
Ryckel felt the vibration through the soles of his feet. He stared at the torch.
No. No. No.
He screamed internally.
The creature stood. It didn't have a head. The black tendrils at its neck stump began to uncoil, stretching out like fingers searching for light.
Ryckel's breath came in shallow, jagged hitches.
Kima said...
He tried to grasp for a reason. She said she killed them.
He didn't curse her. He just felt a cold, hollow dread. He had trusted her. For the first time since the Culling, he had let his guard down because a 'noble' told him it was safe.
It was a physical ache in his chest.
The Alpha moved.
One of its remaining spiked legs lifted. It hovered in the air for a second, the black tendrils at its neck twitching toward Ryckel.
THOOM.
The leg slammed down. Ryckel didn't dodge it so much as the shockwave threw him. He tumbled across the grit, his shoulder barking in pain as it hit the stone.
He scrambled on all fours, sobbing for breath, his eyes wide and wild.
He was a cornered rat. No. He was less than that. He was a bug about to be stepped on.
As he scrambled, his hand slapped into a pool of cold green blood. He slipped, face-planting into the filth. He choked back a retch, his fingers clawing at the dirt, and that's when he felt something.
Metal. Cold, hard, and buried under a pile of discarded Aboleth wings.
A sword!
He didn't grab it heroically. He lunged for it, his fingers scraping against the rust of the hilt. He pulled, and a notched, heavy broadsword slid out from under the heap of husks.
It was a piece of junk but as he gripped the hilt, something in Ryckel snapped.
The terror didn't leave him, but it changed shape. It turned into an ugly spike of spite.
I survived the Culling. Survived in the mists.
He thought, his knuckles whitening as he forced himself to stand.
I didn't survive all this while to just to be eaten by whatever this is!
He looked up at the towering mass. He began to weave a lie to keep him from collapsing.
Kima is asleep. She's probably laughing at me. Well, fuck her. I'll do it myself.
The Alpha lunged. This time, Ryckel was ready. Or as ready as a dying boy could be.
He saw the leg coming, a pillar of burnt chitin. He didn't think about Synapse Grades or Affinities. He just remembered the forge.
He remembered how to find the fracture line in a piece of cooling iron.
He swung.
CRACK.
The brittle, burnt leg of the Alpha snapped like a dry branch. The creature let out a whistling hiss from its neck-stump, tilting violently to the side.
"Yeah!" Ryckel screamed, the sound cracking with a mix of hysteria and triumph.
"You're just glass! You're nothing!"
He was winning. He had to be winning. He dodged a tattered wing that swept through the air, the wind of it nearly knocking him over. He circled, his movements unrefined, hacking at the leg-joints every time the beast staggered.
Snap. Snap.
He was a blur of desperation. He felt a strange, humming heat in his chest, a pulse of red and black static that made his vision sharpen.
He was doing the impossible. He was standing where a noble had stood.
He moved in for the kill. The Alpha was on its belly, thrashing in the dirt. Ryckel stood over its soft, unprotected abdomen. He raised the sword high, his face twisted in a manic grin.
"I'm the one who kills you," he whispered.
Then, the world ended.
From the 'dead' belly of the Aboleth, a forest of black tendrils erupted. They didn't strike like a sword.
They moved like a liquid.
Ryckel didn't even have time to blink before the oily ropes punched through his chest.
He felt the wet, hot slide as they drove through his ribs and out his back. The sword clattered to the floor. The triumph, the heat, all drained out of him, replaced by a cold void.
It... was a trap.
He realized, a thick, metallic spray of blood hitting the floor.
The tendrils retracted with a sickening shloop, dragging him through the air.
He was tossed like a used rag, landing face-first in the dirt. He watched, his vision blurring, as the tendrils dived into the stumps of the legs he had cut.
They swelled, coiling into new, bulging limbs of oily muscle.
The Alpha stood up on its new legs. It looked down at the broken boy.
Ryckel tried to reach for his stomach, but his fingers only met a wet, pulpy mess. His organs were cooling on the stone.
"Not... fair..." he wheezed.
The Alpha raised a massive, newly-formed leg and swung it like a scythe.
The impact was a dull thud followed by the sound of every bone in Ryckel's torso turning to powder.
He was sent flying, a red streak in the dark, until he smashed against the stone wall.
He slid down the jagged rock, landing upside down. His legs were twisted in a crevice above. His head dangled toward the floor.
Slowly, the blood from his mangled chest began to pool upward, coating his eyes in a thick, shimmering red.
Through the crimson veil, he watched the torch flicker and die.
The red turned to a heavy, final black.
The silence has returned to the cave, but Ryckel isn't breathing.
---The End of Chapter 5---