Chapter 23
Eight Limbs: Part 3
Tac.
The snap of chalk against the blackboard cut clearly through the classroom, almost violent within that unnatural silence. The teacher leaned slightly to one side to observe the white line he had just completed, paused for a second to ensure the letters were straight, and, with the same meticulous calm, placed the chalk on the lower ledge.
His two-piece gray uniform looked freshly ironed, without a single wrinkle, and when he turned towards the students, he did so with a measured slowness, as if every gesture had a calculated weight. He didn't raise his voice immediately. First, he raised his hand, a minimal movement that, nonetheless, was enough for thirty bodies at the desks to straighten their backs.
Only then did he speak:
"Attention, class. Today we have a new student. His name is… Bairon Sword."
The phrase hung in the air for a moment. A muffled murmur ran through the room: the rustle of notebooks, the creak of a chair, a stifled sigh. Then, as if they were a single mechanism, all heads turned towards the door.
There he was, still by the door, caught under the force of dozens of eyes examining him all at once.
Bairon finally moved. One foot stepped forward, with a dull scrape of its sole against the waxed floor, then the other. The gesture, so simple, felt to him like a leap into the void. His light brown hair slid over his forehead, half-covering his eyes; he had to blink quickly to push the strand away and reveal that green which seemed too vivid under the classroom's whitish light.
The new uniform hung loose on his shoulders, the sleeves a bit long, as if it had been made for a different boy. With every movement, the jacket gaped open more than expected, giving him a disheveled appearance, an air more fragile than he really was.
And then he felt it.
The stares. All of them. Fixed on him like a swarm of needles pricking his skin. His chest tightened and, for a second, his breath became so short he thought the next one wouldn't come. He tried to keep his chin up, as if he were used to such exposure, but his throat vibrated with a tremor that threatened to betray him.
The murmur started first as a soft rustle, barely a movement of lips at the back of the room. Then it spread, multiplying into whispers, small laughs stifled behind hands covering mouths, a feigned cough that seemed to name him without naming him. Bairon felt those waves of sound reaching him from all directions, pushing him back even as he forced his feet not to retreat.
The teacher said nothing. He remained standing by the blackboard, hands clasped behind his back, his gaze fixed on the newcomer. There was no harshness in his eyes, but there was a weight that demanded a response. The classroom silence tightened another degree; not a pen moved on the desks, not a chair shifted.
Bairon noticed how that expectation enveloped him. His throat went dry instantly, as if the words had gotten trapped there, too heavy to come out. He could introduce himself—it was the logical, the correct thing to do—but the buzz of whispers still vibrated in his ears and the fear of stumbling over the first syllable kept him paralyzed.
He opted for the only thing that seemed possible: he lowered his chin slightly and raised it again in a brief gesture, a restrained greeting that, under any other circumstances, would have gone unnoticed. Here, however, that slight movement felt like a confession.
His lips pressed tightly together, sealing any attempt at sound, while his eyes, green and agitated, shone for an instant with a spark he couldn't contain, a spark that contrasted with the nervousness of his posture. And though he tried to hide it, that fleeting gleam betrayed him more than any word.
***
[Present]
The door frame no longer existed; only an irregular hole remained, a broken frame scorched by burning wood and metal that still smoked. Splinters crumbled with dry cracks, falling to the ground like embers.
From that stormy night, from the foot that set the hall ablaze, emerged the rest of the leg. It wasn't flesh: it was a black, cracked trunk, as if carved from volcanic stone.
Within the cracks pulsed incandescent veins, red filaments throbbing with live heat, like iron freshly drawn from the forge. Each step it took made the floor creak with a brutal weight.
The silence was broken by a new crunch: an arm came out of the shadow, long, deformed fingers scratching the edge of the floor. Then a second one, which braced against the broken frame, sinking its claws into the charred wood and tearing off splinters that sizzled as they fell.
A moment later, the other leg emerged, advancing without even touching the ground.
It was equally cracked, equally fiery, as if that entire body had been baked inside a volcano and now walked among the remains of its own eruption.
The hole burned with the mere presence of the creature. The air around it trembled, distorting the shadows, and a harsh smell of burnt mineral began to spread, forcing one to hold their breath.
The officer narrowed his eyes behind the translucent green rectangle that rose like a wall between him and the creature.
He took a deep breath, trying to maintain his rhythm, but the very air burned: the heat was unbearable, and sweat streamed in rivers down his forehead, his temples, disappearing into his soaked neck under the uniform.
The officer gritted his teeth. He raised his hands a little higher, his fingers stiff with tension over the green wall he had created, and the rectangle responded: from its edges, two new plates of energy began to detach, also translucent, which slid forward until they interlocked with the first.
The impact of the assembly rumbled through the air with a dull blast, like glass hitting glass, and immediately the wall tripled in thickness.
The pressure redoubled. Sweat blurred his vision, but he didn't blink.
Footstep.
Fwoooosh!
A new wave of fire burst forth, as if the creature had opened a fissure in the very heart of hell. The flare spread in a wide, voracious arc, sweeping through the hall with a violence that left no gaps.
The flames swept the place, obliterating the remains of splintered furniture, overturned tables, chairs that still lay in pieces.
The debris, dried by the previous wave of fire, ignited immediately in an explosion of embers. The heavy curtains on the large windows caught fire like vertical torches; the central carpet burned up in seconds, spreading a flaming path that climbed up the columns.
The high ceiling echoed the roars of the fire like a multiplied echo. The heat bounced off the walls and descended in suffocating waves, turning the air into another enemy.
Everything burned until it lost its shape, until one could no longer distinguish what had been a table, what had been a chair, what part was wall or what part was floor.
In a matter of moments, the entire hall became a sea of living fire, an impossible-to-contain inferno.
The translucent wall shuddered as it took the wave of fire head-on. The blast resonated like thunder, and for an instant the wall seemed to hold… until it cracked in its own glow. Two-thirds of its thickness crumbled instantly, dissolving into green fragments that fell like luminous dust.
The heat surrounded him and struck the officer full force. His skin burned, his breath escaped in a hoarse, guttural scream that tore through the silence. With his teeth clenched, he raised his arms again, pushing against nothingness with a desperate fury.
The wall responded. The glow flared up and, with a blinding flash, other blocks of energy emerged, one after another, until the wall regained its size and tripled it again. The officer expanded it just enough to cover himself, wrapping himself in that defense.
But then, in a fleeting flash of an idea, a different movement shook him. He brought his hands together, palm against palm, and separated them slightly. Between them vibrated a new rectangle of green energy, smaller, more compact, which snapped as he projected it against the floor.
The rectangle hit the floor with a low hum, and immediately began to sink as if the wood itself were absorbing it.
A second later.
The rectangle emerged again, but it was no longer flat: it rose from the floor like a frame, dragging the tongues of flame with its ascent, devouring them in sputtering flashes.
The energy expanded sideways with a sudden impulse, pushing the heat outward, and then upward, surpassing the officer himself.
In a matter of instants, the structure closed in on itself. Four translucent walls met at the corners, and a ceiling of light fell from above, completing the shape. The result was a green cube, vibrant and compact, of a respectable thickness that seemed to pulse with the breath of its creator.
Inside that space, the world changed. The roar of the fire became muffled, reduced to a distant rumble. The air, though still hot, was breathable. The officer allowed himself a deep gasp, filling his lungs with the first breath that didn't burn.
Only then, his chest still heaving, did he turn his face towards the monster rising beyond the incandescent walls. His eyes shone with a mixture of weariness and defiance.
From the hole emerged a third arm, as black and cracked as the previous ones. The claw braced against the broken frame and tore it with a harsh screech, leaving a smoking groove.
A fourth arm followed, moving along the charred frame with an insectoid motion, bending its joints at impossible angles. The two new limbs braced with such force that the wall shook, and for a moment it seemed the entire hall would collapse in on itself.
Then the torso appeared. Broad, twisted, a mass of charred muscles crisscrossed by incandescent cracks. The red glow filtered from within like embers pulsing under crusts of rock. With each breath, the chest expanded and released jets of burning smoke through the fissures.
But it didn't end there.
A fifth arm emerged from its side, holding a purple sword that seemed to be made from some kind of living muscle. The arm stretched forward with a spasm, striking the floor with such force that the flames around it leaned as if shaken by a gale.
Inside the cube, the officer slowly opened his eyes. Sweat dripped to his chin, but he didn't even feel it. Disbelief kept him paralyzed: that thing couldn't be in front of him, and yet it was emerging, layer after layer, as if the darkness were giving birth to an endless monster.
Then, from the burning abyss, a sixth arm sprouted. Long, heavy, so laden with flaming cracks it looked like a burning log. The creature let it fall with a dry thud that reverberated throughout the hall.
"Eight… limbs…" murmured the officer, barely a thread of a voice that broke in his own throat.
But that wasn't the worst of it. The true horror was revealed when his gaze, still disbelieving, reached the upper part of the creature.
If it could even be called a head.
The lower half rose like a grotesque parody of a human face, but twisted beyond description. Where there should have been skin, lips, or cheeks, there were only endless rows of teeth. Teeth that interlocked with each other, tightly packed in all directions, like gears ready to grind anything. There was no flesh covering them: the jaw opened and closed in a dry motion, snapping with a metallic echo that froze the blood.
And the other half… was pure fire. A living torch, a receptacle of incandescent stone that held within it an impossible flame. The intensity of the glow was such that the walls of the hall seemed to burn with its reflection, and every oscillation of the flame illuminated the monster as if it were surrounded by green and red lightning.
Over there, on the other side of the hole, the rain continued to fall in heavy curtains. But every drop that tried to cross the invisible line towards the creature disintegrated in the air with a sharp hiss, vaporized before even touching it. The entire scene smelled of steam and molten metal.
The officer felt his stomach contract. The air inside the cube became even denser, as if the mere sight of that thing could suffocate him.
The officer swallowed, feeling the thick knot stuck in his throat. The simple act of swallowing was painful, as if fear had hardened every fiber of his body.
The creature advanced. A single step was enough to shake the hall. The burning limb stamped against the floor and, immediately, fwoooosh!, a new wave of fire was released in all directions. The roar of the flames filled the air as they crashed head-on against the green wall.
The impact shook the barrier as if it were a crystal bell. The officer retreated half a step inside the cube, teeth clenched, feeling the translucent surface vibrate until it was almost shattered. It held, yes, but the price was high: the wall lost part of its thickness, shrinking, weakening visibly. The light that had once bathed the space firmly now flickered as if it could go out at any moment.
With a stifled grunt, the officer raised one arm and swept it in a wide gesture, as if throwing an invisible weight forward. The energy responded to his movement: the wall suddenly widened, its thickness multiplied until it tripled again, and a blinding glow covered the crack before it could break.