Chapter 21 - Eight limbs
Laios breathed in ragged bursts, each gulp of air scraping his throat. He clenched his teeth with the little strength he could still muster, feeling his jaw tremble. Sweat mixed with raindrops.
Behind him, the wooden floor began to ripple as if it were breathing. The planks shifted against each other, forming a spiral that slowly rotated, opening into an impossible whirlpool. Colors bled from the grain like living liquids: first a blue that did not seem to belong to this world, then a red that throbbed with every turn, and finally a hollow white that hurt to look at, as though it wanted to erase all reality. The spiral kept expanding, and with each rotation the air grew colder, saturated with a vibration that belonged to nothing human.
And yet he was not moved from the center.
"Cla…" he tried to answer the figure's words, but his voice broke, more a gasp than a word.
The woman's face remained motionless, but in the middle of her skin a thin line appeared, no more than a scratch. Laios blinked in disbelief. The mark widened. A diagonal cut advanced as if something within were forcing its way out. The skin opened in silence, stretching to both sides, and as the slit grew, a damp, unnatural glow gleamed from its depths.
The sound came after: a sharp crack, flesh tearing like taut fabric. The fissure ran across her face, nearly reaching her cheekbones. The sight churned his stomach.
Laios tried to form another word.
"Ro—!" But what came from his throat was no longer a voice.
His mouth opened wider than it should have been able to, the corners stretching until they split into red threads. The scream that followed turned harsh, broken, plunging into a frequency that made the skin crawl. It sounded like a roar, like iron scraping against iron, a timbre no human ear could mistake for language.
Dark lines began to spread across his neck and arms, as if something inside were pushing outward. His skin cracked in jagged streaks, splitting open with wet snaps, and from the fissures oozed a black substance that clung to his flesh like living tar.
His eyes burst with pain. His pupils dilated violently and then exploded into liquid shadows that spread to cover the entire eyeball, erasing every trace of white. Only blackness remained—absolute, unnerving.
He screamed with all his throat as his body arched. His torso rose with a force that was not his own, as though the ground itself were pushing him upward. His vertebrae cracked, his back stiffened, and each convulsion twisted him further, wrenching sounds from him that were halfway between a roar and a howl.
The female figure, until then unshaken, stepped back. Then again. The third step was clumsy, as if for the first time she felt fear, her arms trembling at her sides.
The floor responded before she could retreat further.
A sharp crack ran through the wood, followed by a tremor that spread nearby. From the spiral burst four new fissures that sprouted like dark spikes. At first they were as thin as claws, but soon they stretched, twisting upon themselves in impossible spirals.
The spirals rose together with a horrid creak, and in an instant hurled themselves at Laios. The impact was brutal. All four pierced the sides of his torso with a wet snap, driving through flesh and ribs. A gush of dark blood splattered the floor—but it did not look human.
Laios's body convulsed with the strike. Instead of collapsing, he arched even further, as if pain itself were driving him upward. His skin, already torn in many places, began to peel away in tatters that dropped like burnt rags. From the wounds, something new was growing: elongated fangs pushed from his jaw, forcing their way out, gleaming wet and bestial.
More horrors emerged. From his torso sprouted black fragments, solid as volcanic rock, with jagged edges that seemed to cut the air. They piled up in his flesh like deformed scales, forming a monstrous shell. Each new plate appeared with a sharp crack, tearing apart what little skin remained.
Laios was no longer merely a man screaming. He was a body in ruins, ripped from within by something dark that was claiming every inch of his being.
Blood poured in torrents along the spirals impaling him, sliding down their twisted surfaces like rivers. It was no longer red: upon contact with those lances it thickened, turning into a viscous, oily black.
Laios's body rose slowly, lifted by the spikes that skewered him like hooks. As he ascended, the blood spilling from his wounds seemed to gain will of its own. On the surface of the dark wooden fragments holding him, threads of tissue began to appear—crimson filaments weaving together, layering into new flesh. A moment later, fresh muscles sprouted upon that flesh, trembling, as though the body were trying to rebuild itself.
But there was no salvation in it. Before they could solidify, those formations were torn apart from within by the very black fragments consuming him. With every contraction, dark plates burst to the surface, shattering the newborn flesh, scattering shreds to the floor.
The spikes that held him aloft creaked under the strain, as though their purpose had been fulfilled. One after another they fractured, breaking into pieces that crumbled with dry cracks. The remains fell and, upon touching the wood, twisted into impossible shapes, carving a macabre spiral into the very floor.
By then, Laios's legs no longer existed as such. They had been completely engulfed, covered by that black, stony material. His knees, his thighs, his feet—everything was hidden beneath an irregular armor that seemed to pulse, alive, as though each fragment of dark rock breathed with him.
Then his torso, buried beneath that same dark matter, an irregular shell closing like tectonic plates colliding. The cracks of skin that still held a trace of humanity were sealed one by one until nothing remained but that living shell.
Then the arms. The veins that still pulsed in his flesh swelled, burst in black streams, and were replaced by stony, angular limbs that screeched with every movement.
His neck cracked with a dry snap, and from it emerged a new layer, wrapping him like a collar of obsidian. His jaw deformed: the skin burst and his mouth split far beyond human limits, reaching nearly to his ears. Beneath his nose no skin remained, only a slit that revealed an endless row of teeth—shining, sharp, a grotesque arc from ear to ear.
Finally, the face. The last mask of skin crumbled, falling away in wet shreds, leaving behind an unrecognizable visage, stripped of human traits—only a blackened skull crowned by sunken eyes of darkness.
Then his hair ignited. An invisible spark set it alight, and in a second it erupted into crimson flames. The explosion was violent, carrying away half his head, illuminating the stormy night for a moment in red light. The fire rose high, defiant, a blaze that neither rain nor wind could extinguish. It was a crown of destruction encircling him.
Crack. Crack. Crack.The silence broke with the dry sound of stones falling and bouncing on the floor. Three small fragments fell from his chest, rolling until they stopped at the woman's feet. Each emitted a faint golden glow, a trembling flicker that seemed to cling to life. But one by one they went out, until they were completely extinguished.
When the echo of their fall faded, the thing was already standing.
Eight limbs emerged from his body—three pairs of monstrous arms and one pair of deformed legs—all coated in the same black rock that twisted in rhythmic pulses. The creature rose, massive, upright, like a colossus born of corruption itself.
The eight-limbed monster was there. Alive. Whole. And breathing.
Beside him, at his right, stood the woman. Her face could no longer be called a face: the fissure splitting it had widened too far, erasing features, leaving only a gaping void that quivered like an endless wound. Nothing human remained in that broken mask.
The monster turned slowly. His whole body creaked as he moved, like rocks grinding against each other. One of his six arms rose, each joint twisting with jerky, awkward movements, until it hovered near the female figure. Next to him, she seemed tiny, like a child beside the colossal shadow of her father.
For an instant the air tensed. The limb hung still, its dark tip barely grazing the space between them. Then, suddenly—
—it lunged.
The thrust was brutal. The arm shot forward like a spear and sank into the woman's side with a dry sound. There was no resistance, no bone breaking, no flesh tearing. Only a sensation of emptiness.
The creature remained there, its arm driven through her body. But nothing came out. No blood, no fluid, not even a gasp. The woman did not flinch, did not scream, did not show pain. Her figure stood tall, hollow, as though the pierced body were nothing more than a husk.
The heap of folds shuddered for barely a second, then began to dissolve. A dark mist, faint yet persistent, rose from its surface like smoke from a dead fire. The material evaporated into the air, drop by drop, until it lost all substance.
Nothing remained—not a stain, not a body, not a trace she had ever been there. Only emptiness, as if space itself denied her existence.
But not everything vanished.
When the mist faded, something remained in the monster's hand. In one of his three right limbs, raised rigidly, he held a weapon resembling a sword.
The weapon pulsed. Its blade was a deep violet, and across its surface ran thin lines that wove together like veins. They shone in lilac and pink hues, like living flesh coursed through with fresh blood. It did not seem forged, but born. A creature more than an object, breathing silently in the claw that gripped it.
The monster raised the sword slowly, testing its weight. He tilted it to one side, then the other, until the blade gleamed under the rain's reflection. With one of his three left limbs he gripped the edge, pressing hard as if to prove it was real.
Then it happened.On the right limb holding the weapon, new veins sprouted—black at first, then flushed with the same violet that coursed through the sword. They throbbed in sync with the blade's lines, as though both shared a single pulse.
The sword vibrated in his hand, emitting a low hum, almost imperceptible, yet so intense it made the air tremble around it. The monster did not let go.
Then he began to move.
All eight limbs set in motion, advancing with a heavy but steady rhythm. The floor shook beneath his steps, each impact leaving deep marks in the wood.
The monster was heading toward the door.The door of the great hall.