Chapter 10: Chapter 10 — You Damn Son of a Bitch
My mind had gone completely blank, suspended in a void of absolute horror after fixing my gaze on the pale face of the crab-child. My pulse pounded in my ears with the force of a cannon.
With a violent spasm, I had to tear my eyes away to the floor, but that infantile stare—empty, terrified—had been seared like a brand onto the back of my eyelids; I was paralyzed, my boots nailed to the dungeon stone as if cement had been poured into my veins.
I gulped down lungfuls of cold air, forcing my collapsed lungs to work.
Huff... huff...
It had to be another of that damn psychopath’s illusions. Yeah, that was it. A residual trick of the Mental Illusion Spell Samira had just broken.
"It has to be another illusion... it has to be another fucking illusion," I repeated over and over in a hoarse whisper, clenching my teeth until my jaws ached.
Like a mantra of desperate self-deception, I tried to cling to that comforting lie so I wouldn’t go insane. However, as I lowered the flaming sword and forced myself to examine in detail the rest of the hybrid corpses Dorko and Domack had torn apart around me, reality imposed itself with the rawness of a hatchet to the forehead.
It was evident, disgustingly evident: the proportions of the torsos beneath the insect carapaces, the length of the mutated limbs... all those bodies belonged to children.
Judging by their non-deformed anatomical features, they couldn’t have been more than 5 to 8 years old.
Holy God. I had killed children. My summons and I had been massacring a horde of cursed, deformed children.
My stomach churned violently, flooding my mouth with the bitter taste of bile.
KRRRRUUUUUOOOAGH!
A piercing roar, a disturbing mix between the shriek of an arthropod and the sharp wail of an infant, violently yanked me from my thoughts. It was another of the hybrid creatures, one that emerged from the mist with unnatural speed, lunging directly at my throat.
SWOOSH!
One of its chitinous, razor-sharp pincers passed mere millimeters from my temple, slicing the air with a lethal hiss; if I hadn’t raised my arm by pure defensive reflex, using the pommel of my sword to deflect the impact, that thing would have impaled my head from side to side.
We locked together at close range and I hesitated once more: this hybrid’s right eye was large, brown, and overflowing with purely human panic. It was the face of a child trapped in a nightmarish shell.
What the hell was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to defend myself? If I didn’t attack, they would kill me, but... they were fucking kids!
"Shit, shit, shit!" I bellowed, losing control as adrenaline took over my muscles.
SSSHHIK!
In an instinctive movement of pure survival, I thrust the burning blade forward. The steel imbued with Runi’s fire pierced the soft flesh of the hybrid’s chest with horrifying ease, cauterizing its internal organs instantly.
SIZZLE... CRACK!
The crunch of the shattered exoskeleton and the inhuman roars ceased all at once. The creature’s weight slumped against my body, and all that was left was that small semi-human face that began to fade little by little.
Just before the light of life abandoned its pupil, a single thick black tear slid down its human cheek.
"I’m sorry... I’m so sorry, little one..." I whispered, my voice broken by a knot of unbearable guilt.
I let the flaming sword fall; it dissolved immediately into sparks as Runi returned to my shoulder with a sorrowful hum.
Fizzle...
She tried to console me. But I only fell to my knees directly onto the floor soaked with dark fluids, dragging myself toward the corpse, and extended trembling fingers to touch the cold, pale features of the twins who lay fused together by a chitinous malformation in their torso.
In the exact instant my fingertips made contact with their skin, a violent electric discharge, cold as the ice of a tomb, surged through my arms and burst directly into the center of my brain.
ZZZAP!
---
"What... what is this?" I managed to stammer as the echo of the dungeon faded and my surroundings shifted abruptly once more.
I was no longer in the catacombs. My eyes blinked at the sudden warmth of a home; I found myself inside a small, humble medieval-style house, with rustic wooden beams and a comforting smell of baked bread and burning firewood.
Suddenly, a figure ran in my direction and passed right through my chest without stopping, making my heart lurch. Looking at my hands, I noticed my silhouette had turned translucent and floating; I was a mere specter, a silent observer trapped in the shreds of someone else’s memory.
In front of me, two twin boys with light brown hair were laughing their heads off as they played knights, wielding a pair of crude wooden swords.
Clack! Clack!
"Back, vile creature!" shouted the taller twin, raising his carved branch. "Sir Oliver will not allow you to destroy our kingdom!"
"Yes! And I’m Sir Ethan, Guardian of the Great Wheat!" exclaimed the other, giving a little jump. "Surrender, monster of the mountains!"
A few meters away, seated next to the fire, a woman with a sweet face and almond-shaped eyes watched them with a smile overflowing with infinite love.
"Careful with the table, my brave knights!" she warned them between laughs, adjusting her apron. "If you break the jug, the monster will go without supper."
The husband, a robust man with hands calloused by the fields, got down on all fours on the floor, mimicking crude claws with his thick fingers and letting out a fake, cavernous roar that resonated through the room.
"GGRRRAAARRRGH! No wooden sword can pierce my stone scales!" the father bellowed with a gigantic grin, pretending to advance heavily toward them. "I’ll eat all your mother’s bread if you don’t stop me!"
"You won’t! Oliver, from the left!" Ethan coordinated.
The twins synchronized their attacks with clumsy leaps and gently struck the man’s sides, who exaggerated his defeat by letting out a booming laugh that filled the entire room as he collapsed onto his back on the carpeted floor.
THUD!
"Oh, no! I’ve been defeated by the village’s bravest warriors!" the father exclaimed, raising his arms in surrender as the children threw themselves onto his chest to hug him amidst uncontrollable laughter.
Ha-ha-ha-ha!
It was a painfully warm scene, overflowing with a happiness so pure it tightened my chest; for a microsecond, it reminded me of the few happy Sundays I spent with my own father before tragedy destroyed our family back on Earth.
---
ZAS!
The warmth was snuffed out like a candle blown by an icy wind. The temporal flow of the memory jumped forward, relocating me in the same room, but now the family was gathered around the table during a silent supper.
KNOCK! KNOCK!
Two dry, heavy knocks resounded on the wooden door, freezing the atmosphere. The father rose cautiously, asking his wife to shelter the children behind her.
Upon opening the latch, the threshold of the house revealed an imposing silhouette, wrapped in torn black robes that exhaled wisps of necromantic mist, and a pair of scarlet eyes that shone in the gloom like live embers.
I recognized him instantly: it was the Lich.
That skeletal bastard didn’t even utter a word; he simply raised a bony hand and snapped his fingers with deliberation.
SNAP!
A wave of invisible energy struck the mother, paralyzing her completely in place; her eyes opened disproportionately wide, but she couldn’t emit a single sound.
The father, roaring with desperation, grabbed a kitchen knife and tried to lunge at the intruder to protect his family, but the Lich merely made a slight wrist movement...
POP!
...and the man’s head burst immediately in a violent explosion of brains and imploded bone.
SPLATTER!
The father’s thick blood was scattered in a grotesque pattern across the floor and the wooden furniture, bathing the faces of the small twins, who remained completely motionless, their minds shattered by the traumatic impact of watching their parent die in the blink of an eye.
The black-clad bastard curved his dried lips, displaying a hideous grin filled with sharp, yellowish teeth. The children, snapping out of their stupor through tears and pure fury, drew the little wooden swords hanging from their waists and tried to strike the monster’s robes with useless blows.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
The Lich let out a dry laugh, like the crunch of dead leaves, and with a blink of his magic paralyzed them too, locking their limbs in place.
Zzip!
With sadistic slowness, he moved a single crooked index finger. The mother’s rigid body floated through the air, dragged directly toward the decaying jaws of the necromancer.
The twins shed tears of despair and helplessness, forced to stare fixedly as the bastard’s rotten fangs sank into their mother’s neck to mark her with the curse of the flesh.
CRUNCH... squelch...
But that putrefied monster didn’t stop there; the true hell was only just beginning.
Comments