Chapter 21
Eight Limbs
Laios breathed in ragged gasps, each mouthful 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 breathing. The planks shifted against each other, forming a spiral that slowly turned, opening into an impossible vortex. Colors erupted from the wood grain like living liquids: first a blue that seemed not of this world, then a red that pulsed with each rotation, and finally an empty white that hurt to look at, as if it wanted to erase all reality. The spiral kept expanding, and with each turn the air grew colder, saturated with a vibration that belonged to nothing human.
Yet he remained unmoved at its center.
"Cla…" he tried to respond to the figure's words, but his voice cracked, more a gasp than a word.
The woman's face remained immobile, but a thin line began to trace itself in the center of her skin, barely a scratch. Laios blinked, incredulous. The mark widened. A diagonal cut advanced as if something from within pushed to get out. The skin opened silently, stretching to both sides, and as the fissure grew, a wet, unnatural gleam peered from the depths.
The sound came after: a dry snap, flesh tearing like taut cloth. The crack ran across the face until it almost reached the cheekbones. The sight turned 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 possible, the skin at the corners stretching until it tore into red threads. The accompanying scream grew harsh, fractured, and descended to 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 mark his neck and arms, as if something inside pushed outward. The skin cracked in irregular strokes, opening with wet snaps, and a black substance oozed from the fissures, clinging to his flesh like living tar.
His eyes exploded with pain. His pupils dilated suddenly and then burst into liquid shadows that spread to cover the entire eyeball, erasing any trace of white. Only absolute, unsettling blackness remained.
He screamed with his whole throat as his body arched. His torso lifted with a force not his own, as if the ground itself pushed him upward. His vertebrae cracked, his back tensed, and each convulsion twisted him further, wrenching sounds between a roar and a shriek.
The female figure, until then seemingly imperturbable, took a step back. Then another. 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 dry crack ran through the wood, followed by a shudder that propagated nearby. From the spiral, four new fissures emerged like dark points. At first they were thin like claws, but they immediately stretched, twisting upon themselves in impossible spirals.
The spirals rose simultaneously with a horrendous crunch, and in an instant they launched at Laios. The impact was brutal. The four points drove into the sides of his torso with a wet snap, piercing flesh and ribs. A spray of dark blood splattered the floor, but it didn't seem human.
Laios's body shuddered with the assault. Instead of collapsing, he arched further, as if the pain propelled him upward. His skin, already torn in several places, began to peel away in shreds that fell to the ground like burnt rags. Between the wounds, something new grew: elongated fangs pushed out from his jaw, gleaming wet and bestial.
More horrors emerged. From his torso sprouted black fragments, solid like volcanic rock, with irregular edges that seemed to cut the air. They piled on his flesh like deformed scales, creating a monstrous carapace. Each new plate appeared with a dry crunch, tearing what remained of skin.
Laios was no longer just a screaming man. He was a body in ruin, torn apart from within by something dark that was reclaiming every inch of his being.
Blood gushed down the spirals impaling him, flowing like rivers over the twisted surface. It was no longer red: upon contact with those spears it thickened, turning into a viscous, oily black.
Laios's body rose gradually, lifted by those points piercing him like hooks. As he ascended, the blood overflowing from his wounds seemed to acquire a will of its own. On the fragments of dark wood supporting him, threads of tissue began to appear, crimson filaments intertwining, forming layers of new flesh. A moment later, fresh, trembling muscles sprouted from that flesh, as if the body tried to rebuild itself.
But there was no salvation in it. Before they could solidify, these formations were torn apart from within by the same black fragments that dominated him. With each contraction, dark plates burst onto the surface, breaking the nascent flesh, scattering shreds that fell to the ground.
The points holding him in the air creaked under the pressure, as if their purpose was already fulfilled. One after another they fractured, breaking into pieces that crumbled with a dry sound. The remains fell to the floor and, upon touching the wood, twisted into impossible shapes, drawing a macabre spiral that seemed engraved on the floor itself.
By then, Laios's legs no longer existed as such. They had been completely enveloped, covered by that black, stony material. His knees, his thighs, his feet, all were hidden under an irregular armor that seemed to pulse, alive, as if every fragment of dark rock breathed with him.
Next, his torso was buried under that dark matter, an irregular shell closing like tectonic plates colliding. The cracks of skin that still breathed humanity were sealed one by one, until nothing remained but that living carapace.
Then his arms. The veins still pulsing in the flesh swelled, exploded in black jets, and were replaced by stony, angular limbs that grated with every movement.
His neck cracked with a dry sound, and from there a new layer emerged, covering it like a collar of obsidian. His jaw deformed: the skin burst and his mouth opened far beyond the human, reaching almost to his ears. Below his nose no skin remained, only a fissure revealing an endless row of teeth, gleaming, sharp, a grotesque arc from ear to ear.
Finally, the face. The last mask of skin crumbled, falling in wet tatters, leaving behind an unrecognizable visage, without human features, only a blackened skull crowned by sunken eyes of darkness.
Then his hair caught fire. An invisible spark ignited it and, in one second, it burst into crimson flames. The explosion was violent, taking with it half his head, illuminating the stormy night for a moment with red light, and the fire rose upward, defiant, a fire that neither rain nor wind could extinguish. It was a crown of destruction enveloping him.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
The silence broke with the dry sound of stones falling and bouncing on the ground. Three small fragments detached from his chest, rolling to a stop beside the female figure. Each emitted a faint golden glow, a trembling flicker that seemed to cling to life. But one by one they faded, until completely extinguished.
When the echo of their fall dissipated, the thing was upright.
Eight limbs emerged from its body, three pairs of monstrous arms and one pair of deformed legs, all covered by the same black rock that twisted in rhythmic pulses. The creature stood, corpulent, on its feet, like a colossus born from corruption itself.
The eight-limbed monster was there. Alive. Complete. And it breathed.
Beside it, to its right, the woman remained. Her face could no longer be called a face: the crack crossing it had opened too wide, erasing features, leaving only a disfigured hole that vibrated like an endless wound. Nothing human remained in that split mask.
The monster turned slowly. Its whole body creaked as it moved, like rocks scraping against each other. One of its six arms rose, each joint twisting with abrupt, clumsy movements, until it hung suspended near the female figure. Beside it, she seemed tiny, like a child next to the colossal shadow of its father.
For an instant the air grew tense. The limb remained motionless, its dark tip barely brushing the void between them. Then, suddenly…
it accelerated.
The assault was brutal. The arm shot forward like a spear and sank into the woman's side with a dry noise. There was no resistance, no broken bone, no torn flesh. Only a sensation of emptiness.
The creature remained there, its arm plunged into her body. But nothing came out. No blood, no fluid, not even a moan. The woman didn't shudder, didn't scream, showed no pain. Her figure remained erect, empty, as if that pierced body were merely a shell.
The mass of folds trembled for a second and then began to dissolve. A dark mist, faint but persistent, rose from its surface, like smoke escaping a extinguished pyre.
The material evaporated into the air, drop by drop, until it lost consistency.
No stain remained, no body, no trace that it had ever been there. Only emptiness, as if space itself denied its existence.
But not everything disappeared.
When the mist dissipated, something remained in the monster's hand. In one of its three right limbs, raised stiffly, it held a weapon resembling a sword.
The weapon pulsed. Its edge was a deep purple, and across its surface ran thin lines that intertwined like veins. They shone in lilac and pink tones, akin to living flesh traversed by fresh blood. It didn't 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. It tilted it to one side and then the other, until the blade gleamed under the rain's reflection. With one of its three left limbs it gripped the edge, pressing hard as if to confirm it was real.
That's when it happened.
On the right limb, the one wielding the weapon, new veins sprouted, black at first, then tinged with the same purple that ran along the sword. They pulsed in sync with the weapon's lines, as if both shared the same pulse.
The sword vibrated in its hand, emitting a low hum, almost imperceptible, but so intense it made the surrounding air tremble. The monster didn't let go.
Then it began to move.
Its eight limbs set into motion, advancing with a heavy but sure rhythm. The floor rumbled under its steps, and each impact on the wood left deep marks.
The monster was heading for the door.
The door to the great hall.