Chapter 11
Die Already Part 3
The ocean roared beneath the storm. Brief lightning flashes illuminated the surface like slashes of light, revealing black, frothing waves that rose like mountains and collapsed with a hollow boom.
Suddenly, the water exploded.
A liquid column burst open and two figures emerged from it.
The first: an impossible creature. A torso covered in scales that glinted with the lightning flashes, four long, gnarled arms ending in deformed claws, two legs arched like those of a marine predator, and a powerful tail that snapped as it hit the air.
The second: a man. Red hair plastered to his face by blood and water, blue uniform in tatters, shreds swaying like seaweed around his body. The monster held him by the head with a single hand, as if he were a ragdoll.
Both hung suspended for an instant in the air, illuminated by a lightning flash that froze them in a brutal silhouette. A second later, gravity reclaimed them.
The beast swung the arm holding the redhead and whipped him in a wide arc, over one hundred and eighty degrees, to smash him against the ocean.
The impact was a whip-crack. The water parted as if they had fallen onto a pane of glass, then closed over them in a relentless embrace of foam and bubbles.
The ocean's darkness swallowed them. The sea was a cold, bottomless tomb; only the intermittent lightning managed to tinge the nearest waters. Everything else was blackness.
The monster, effortlessly, sunk another of its four arms and grabbed the man by the legs.
The redhead's body was inverted, hanging upside down like a piece of freshly torn meat. His head lolled side to side, his arms swung without will.
His eyes, half-closed, seemed glazed.
His chest barely moved.
Blood diluted in the water in a red trail that stretched like smoke.
To the naked eye, he was a corpse.
A dead toy in the hands of a sea beast.
The monster slowly brought the man's torso toward its maw. It opened its mouth with a wet snap, revealing two rows of short, tight teeth, curved inward like hooks. Its jaw unhinged more than naturally, the corners of its mouth tearing the scaly skin, and a deep bubbling escaped its throat, as if it were growling underwater.
In the suffocating stillness, the redhead's thought flashed like a dry spark:
"Thanks for taking me out for air."
The corpse broke in an instant. The man's back arched, and from his spine erupted a spiral of compressed water that spun violently on itself. The current twisted like a furious serpent, grazed his left side, and launched itself head-on at the monster.
The jet stretched like a liquid lance and pierced the creature's belly.
The impact was so sudden the monster stood motionless, shaken from within, not emitting a single roar.
The monster thrashed violently, bubbles exploding around its body as it received the spiral's assault. The water trembled as if a device had exploded in its guts.
The redhead seized that moment of stillness. His left hand, until then limp, tensed. His fingers splayed as if gripping an invisible blade.
A crimson glow began to envelop his skin. First a timid flicker, then a liquid fire that ran through his veins until it covered his entire palm and forearm.
The water's turbulence made the light vibrate like a torch in a storm.
The man twisted his torso with a sharp movement, arcing his arm backward.
The pose wasn't that of a boxer, nor an armed soldier, but of someone wielding his own flesh as a sword.
The invisible blade cut through the water as it advanced.
In a horizontal arc, the extended hand pierced the side of the monstrous head.
The resistance was thick: first the hard, scaly skin, then the fibrous layer of muscle.
The force of the slash made the jaw tremble, the bone crunched with a muffled sound, and a dark cloud of blood expanded upward like smoke in slow motion.
The monster didn't roar. Instead, a guttural sound emerged from the depths of its chest: a deep rumble, almost as if the storm had answered from within its bowels.
The vibration transmitted through the water, reaching the man's body and freezing his skin.
The crimson arm remained poised before him, blood floating around it like a red veil.
For an instant, the redhead thought he had succeeded.
Until the claw holding him snapped open.
It released him.
The man floated, free… but with an instinctive delay, as if his body hadn't yet realized it could move.
That's when he felt it:
A black void, hidden far away, in the bottomless depth.
Something else was down there, waiting.
Fear paralyzed him faster than any claw.
The void in the depths gave him no time to think.
A brutal shudder ran through the ocean: an unleashed current hit them both like an invisible wall.
The redhead was swept away in a spiral, his body spinning out of control, his lungs burning from lack of air. He could barely make out shapes in the whirlwind of bubbles and foam.
Then he saw it.
A metallic glint crossed in front of his face, spinning in slow motion, dragged by the same current devouring him.
The sword.
The blade spun on its axis, reflecting fragments of lightning falling through the water like lights stolen from the sky. The weapon moved further and further away, sinking toward an abyss of shadows.
The redhead's heart shrank. He raised his hand, stretching his fingers until his joints cracked, as if he could reach it by pure will.
But the current was stronger.
The water pushed him in the opposite direction, away from the blade, throwing him sideways like a doll shaken by a raging tide.
His vision blurred with desperation. In the confusion, he turned his head to the right…
The monster was coming straight for him.
Mouth open, maw unhinged, the curved teeth gleaming with the glow of distant lightning.
The darkness was closing like a trap.
The monster lunged at him with its maw wide open. The darkness of its throat was an endless tunnel about to devour him whole.
The redhead also opened his mouth.
Water entered his throat, but inside it began to spin, compressed by a force belonging not to the sea but to him. A small whirlpool was born in his chest, rose to his mouth, and swirled violently, vibrating as if it would tear him apart from within.
In an instant, he released it.
A high-pressure jet burst from his mouth, a sharp, swift torrent that pierced the waters like a liquid lance.
The impact struck right at the joint of the monster's jaw.
A muffled crack, like torn bone, rumbled through the water. The creature's mouth twisted to the left, one side collapsing as if the hinge had come undone.
The maw kept closing, but it was no longer a perfect lock. The fangs didn't align: they bent, scraped against each other, were misaligned.
The monster covered him with its shadow, its head descending upon him like a living ceiling. The redhead felt the viscous heat of its breath bubbling around him. Inside that mouth, beyond the torn tongue and bleeding gums, he glimpsed something that shouldn't exist: a pulsating mass of flesh, an aberration hidden in the throat.
Instinct struck him like lightning.
He refused to be swallowed.
The red aura ignited again on his body and, with it, the fury of the water around him. He used both forces as invisible levers, pushing himself through the closing throat.
He escaped by a hair. The monster's claws closed behind him, scraping his back and leaving three burning cuts that stung more than the saltwater.
The pain made him groan bubbles, but he was out.
The ocean churned in all directions, the currents gone mad, but in that instant the redhead saw again the glint of what he sought: the sword, spinning adrift, illuminated for a second by lightning.
The sword's glint pierced him like a call. The lightning illuminated the blade for a second before darkness swallowed it again.
The redhead didn't hesitate.
With a sharp gesture, he summoned a whirlpool under his feet. The water spun, tensing like a rope, and catapulted him forward. The pressure compressed his chest and eardrums, but the momentum launched him straight toward the silvery gleam.
The monster wasn't far behind. With a metallic screech, like twisting iron, the creature launched itself after him, its gigantic silhouette cutting through the water like a projectile.
The two met in a frantic race toward the same objective: the sword.
The redhead stretched out his hand. His fingers brushed the cold, slippery hilt at the very instant the monster's claws dug into his shoulder.
The pain was brutal. A stabbing shock ran through him to his spine, stealing his air and wrenching a handful of bubbles from him that rose desperately toward the surface. The world became a red blink.
But his fist closed.
The sword was back in his hand.
The red aura leaped from his arm to the blade, igniting it as if the metal drank from his blood.
The monster opened its broken jaw even wider, ready to bite his head off, but the redhead responded with a lateral slash, quick and fierce.
The edge cut through the creature's abdomen, and the water itself became a weapon.
Around the sword, furious jets exploded, dragging the blade, prolonging the cut until it tore open the monster's entire belly.
The pressure released a violent gust that raised a cloud of blood. The darkness turned crimson, a murky spiral that blinded everything.
For an instant, he lost sight of his enemy.
A mistake.
The maw reappeared suddenly from the gloom and closed over his side. The bite shook him whole, tearing away more air than he had left. The pain was so great his vision blurred… but he didn't scream.
With a contained roar, he clenched his jaw and sank the sword again, this time with the tip wrapped in the burning aura.
The monster twisted upon feeling the sword buried in its flesh, but instead of retreating, it wrapped more limbs around him. Two arms closed the circle like a cage, claws scratching over the sword to contain it, while the third gripped him with brutal force at the torso.
The redhead found himself trapped. The blade burned in his hand, but he couldn't move it a centimeter further.
Then he felt it: the water under his feet vibrated. A whirlpool much larger than all the previous ones was forming, spinning with an indomitable force.
The vortex enveloped him in a spiral and, suddenly, propelled him upward like a projectile fired from the ocean floor.
The monster didn't let go. It clung with two more arms, trying to halt the ascent, but the current was too strong. Both bodies emerged together, dragged by the water's violence.
The world burst open in an explosion of foam as they broke the surface.
The wind hit them, the storm welcomed them with thunder. Around them, the sea roared with white crests and lightning that illuminated the scene like flashes of war.
In that instant, the redhead twisted the sword.
The crimson aura enveloped him entirely, from his arms to the blade. With a contained shout, he raised the edge above his head and brought it down in a diagonal slash, intent on splitting the monster in two as they fell.
The slash was already in the air when his body froze.
Something even more devastating was coming toward them.
The horizon was rising.
A wave several meters high, a liquid wall obliterating everything in its path, was rushing toward them both.
The monster shrieked with a metallic, distorted sound. The redhead barely managed to open his eyes before the wave hit them.
The impact was a muffled thunder.
Foam, blood, and flesh mixed in a violent whip that dragged them toward darkness.
But the current didn't sink them.
It pushed them.
And the push had a clear destination: a colossal shadow standing tall amidst the storm.
A ship's hull.
A wall of steel was approaching at full speed. There was no room for reaction.
The collision was brutal.
The water slammed them against the metal, and the rumble propagated like a cannon shot beneath the surface. The hull dented first, then cracked, until it finally split open like a dry crust breaking under a hammer blow.
Both bodies were swallowed by the opening.
The ocean entered with them in a furious torrent, dragging beams, pipes, and extinguished sparks from drowned boilers.
The torrent threw them inside the ship like debris in a broken sewer. The roar of the metal still rumbled in the redhead's bones when his body hit the floor.
He landed on planks that bent under his weight. He coughed up water and blood simultaneously, gasping as if swallowing knives. He half-rose, unsteady, his arms trembling under his own weight.
Around him, the engine room was a flooded hell.
Toothed wheels kept turning with desperate screeches, each gear biting the air like a maddened animal. Burst pipes spat steam in searing gusts that mixed with the still-pouring water. The smell was a suffocating mix of damp coal, rancid oil, and iron.
The redhead spat saliva tinged with red. His breath burned his throat and his vision wavered.
He leaned on the sword, sinking it into the metal floor like an improvised cane, and raised his head.
The monster lay against a broken boiler, its body twisted, motionless.
Water pooled around its scales, reflecting the lightning flashes filtering through the cracks in the hull.
For a moment, everything seemed over.
The silence weighed heavier than the storm.
The redhead frowned, jaw clenched.
He raised the sword and took a step toward the monster. Every movement hurt as if he had nails in his shoulder, but he didn't stop his advance.
—"…Just die already."— his voice was a growl laden with fury and relief.
The word had barely escaped his lips when something changed.
The monster trembled.
The scaly body vibrated like a drum underwater, and a grimace of disbelief formed on the redhead's face.
The folds of the enormous fish-head began to open.
Not like a mouth: like a hood being removed.
The man took a step back, eyes wide.
Something even more repulsive was emerging from within.
A deformed tongue stretched out, and that tongue had the shape of a humanoid head.
No eyes. No nose. No ears. Just a fleshy relief with an elongated orifice mimicking a man's mouth.
Disgust hit him like a fist.
The surprise left him stunned, unable to move the sword for an instant.
The monster's flesh quivered. The face-tongue vibrated, and from its grotesque mouth came a mute shriek that resonated in his marrow more than in his ears.
The redhead understood with a chill the inevitable:
The battle wasn't over.
It was only about to begin again.