Born a Monster

545 A Hero Falls

The spear rose, and our hopes with it. It reached a peak, and began descending. Our hopes still rose.

She caught it in one hand, grasped it in the other, and shattered it into small pieces.

My hope, at least, remembered somewhere better it had to be. It left no forwarding address.

“Her hand!” Zoltar said. “She can no longer use her right hand!”

It did hang there loosely, but I could barely see for all the blood in my eyes. My nose, my tongue, gone. I was bleeding like a...

I was bleeding.

That had to stop.

“Gloves of Fire!” I called, and wafted them over my bleeding... what DO you call a face when over half of it is gone?

I didn’t see what happened to Zoltar or the hero. When I stopped screaming, both were gone.

.....

“Nwug.” I said. “Nug, nug, nug.”

“Spirit Brothers!” Negla cast.

Two wolves formed of deathlight appeared behind and to either side of her.

The one to her right left out a whimper, and so did the one on her left.

“What are you two waiting for?” Negla asked them.

They turned, tails between their legs, and vanished into the Otherworld.

“Cowards!” she shouted at where they had arrived. “You suck more cock than all my brothers combined!”

With a wicked smile, She Who Speaks moved to crush Negla under a foot.

“Chains of Purity!” Nogar cast.

An impossibly thing line of glowing light wrapped its ends around her ankles, and drew them together. She didn’t even totter. There was no stumbling. She fell forward, striking the ground with a splatter and the crunch of more bones than any body ought to have.

There is a saying, the bigger they are the harder they fall. That ability that giants and ogres and even cyclopes have that keeps there skeletons from shattering when they fall over? I guess Merge Fleshes just don’t have that.

“It is done!” Nogar shouted. “Without bones...”

“Needle Spray!” I cast. If I did anything more than superficial damage, it didn’t show.

<I am beyond life and death.> she sent. <I am beyond bones.>

She sprouted tentacles, began lashing about herself.

Negla was swift enough to get away. Nogar... wasn’t.

“Don’t let it get me! Not alive!” he shouted. “Kill me!”

By then, a second tentacle had him, and was pulling him face-first to his doom.

“Gods.” I said. “Water Spear!”

It took him in the forehead, and took his... I like to think it freed his spirit, or at least destroyed his knowledge. But I am a Truthspeaker, and I cannot speak those words.

“You’ve killed him!” Negla shouted at me.

“He asked me to!” I shouted back.

“I can’t kill the Merge Flesh,” she said, sprouting fur and claws, “but I can kill the monster!”

Only she couldn’t. Or perhaps, she deliberately came too close to the Merge Flesh. The last I saw, she was doing her best to destroy enough critical parts that it would be a net loss for the Flesh.

“Shroud!” I shouted, leaping to the mausoleum roof.

It wasn’t enough to evade the Merge Flesh; it slammed into the wall, and began rolling layers up toward me. I got off an incantation, but didn’t have time for a second.

Damn it! I could see the Flesh was hurting. If I fled, it would heal at least as fast as I could.

<Insect. Arrogant.> she sent. <Kill you.>

But I could withdraw, and once she cleared the lip of the roof, I had to.

She tried passing around the building; she was fast, but she was clumsy. On the other hand, I had to avoid tombstones, the same ones that she would send bounding through the air.

I led her in looping spirals, careful not to pass the places her blood had corrupted.

I mean... I was tired, she HAD to be.

I twisted my head, far enough to see her with my left eye.

She had lost all pretense of shape; a roiling mass of meat rolled after me. Her eyes and noses were clogged with dirt; several of her ears bled; her mouths, those that still moved, spat earth. Areas of her skin opened, sucking air into her lungs.

She was shedding segments of bone and dead flesh as she moved, but she still had me outmassed, I’d guess possibly eight times mine.

On an open field, she’d have had me, no matter what footwork I employed. As it was, night stretched on and on, with no sign that the morlocks were coming back.

Just burning through charges of [Fleet of Foot], and all manner of creative ways to slow her...

She didn’t seem to be learning. I wonder sometimes why something with so many brains could be so bad at that. Even with normal brains...

But yes, not the point. We ran for hours in spirals and loops, with nothing to indicate I was doing anything other than making a ruckus before I was inevitably caught and eaten. There was no time to trip, so I focused on running, rather than pelt her with all kinds of painful spells.

She wasn’t in any danger of running out of fatigue. I figured that since she was on par with my running speed, she was probably matched up at two more Might than myself. Or she had some equivalent of Running skill that rolling meatsacks use.

And that meant a health and a fatigue gauge of greater than my own. Even reduced in health as she was...

But when I was wounded, my fatigue gauge fell in proportion. Up until the third hour, it was my only hope.

That was when, her breathing ragged and broken, she just stopped. A dozen ragged mouths, each capable of swallowing me whole, and none of them providing her enough air.

“Brothers of fire, cousins in flame,” I chanted. “It is I, Rhishisikk, who have converted hundreds of wood mana to enable your users in the Daurian Prison Island Revolt. Hear my plea, and please grant my request. Fashion for me a curtain made of charred air. Wall of Smoke!”

Now I know what you’re thinking. It’s a simple spell, intended to conceal an area. It has the advantage, though, of also burning up needed life forces in the air to fuel itself. Her gasps became coughs, and her eyes closed where the smoke touched her.

If your foe cannot breathe, they cannot fight.

“Wind of Ice!”

“Jaws of Wrath!”

“Hurl Stone!”

“Midgardian Spirit Axe!”

Each spell did just a little bit of damage. Her health, even below half, was impressive.

I think I’d gotten down to [Sunburn] when She stopped trying to advance upon me, and tried to flee, using those same buildings as cover.

What the HELL? Was I winning?

Or had I passed the threshold of madness?

[Insanity – Arachnomorphia. Fear of being turned into spiders.]

[Insanity …]

<Dismiss list!> I sent, then: <Save list to System file.>

[Cannot comply; list no longer exists.]

I spat out blood among my cuss words.

Oh, Blood.

“Blood of life, blood which flows through me...” I pursued the Merge Flesh. Without remorse, without

pity. One by one, I worked through the pools of mana that I kept within me. I must have learned or formed dozens of spells that night, and gained uses per day of at least equal cost.

It was a LOT of cost; I hadn’t been the most aggressive spell caster.

For that matter, I normally didn’t use so much magic in so short a time. But the fear of losing myself, of being touch-eaten...

“Wave of Fear!” I cast from my psychic abilities.

[This ability cannot affect unconscious targets.]

There was no kneeling; I keeled forward into the dirt.

The tracks of salt... when had I stopped sweating? The tracks of salt marred my skin, like little streams of lava, or maybe acidic slug tracks.

Oh, I just wanted to pass out. But I suspected if I did, I would not awaken; not as myself.

“Infection: Yellow Fever! Infection: Kuru Sickness.”

[Kuru Sickness is not among the diseases your body has been exposed to.]

What? No, that wasn’t right.

.....

Only it was, wasn’t it? When my body had reformed from being outside the world... I lost so many diseases.

I had encountered plenty of new ones, though. I hit She Who Speaks with all of them, hoping that at least one would stick.

I need not have bothered; thirty seven minutes after the battle ended and the slaughter began, the morlocks showed up, some with scythes. They used these to cut her in pieces, and the ones with the spears impaled anything that looked like an organ.

They were caked in her blood, and they laughed about it.

“Hey, I think this one’s just going to die, anyway.” one morlock said about me.

“Did you promise him a kindness?” their war leader asked. “Probably tainted meat anyway. Leave him for the scavengers.”

And this they did. Bastards.

I checked the System file, later. Fifty XP, divided by thirteen, rounded up to 4 XP for a LOT of rewards. I got back a Hero Point, a full refill of my Champion Points, and even gained a title, “Horror Slayer” that gave me three bonus damage against any tainted target.

As if there were enough rewards to EVER do that again.

I was alive, I was conscious, so why did it feel like a loss?