Chapter 23
Eight Limbs Part 3
Tap.
The snap of chalk against the blackboard sounded sharp in the classroom, almost violent within that unnatural silence. The professor 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 seemed freshly ironed, without a single wrinkle, and when he turned toward the students, he did so with a measured slowness, as if every gesture had a calculated weight. He didn't raise his voice immediately. He first raised his hand, a minimal movement that, however, 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 suppressed sigh. Then, as if a single mechanism, all heads turned toward the door.
There he was, still by the door, trapped under the force of dozens of eyes examining him at once.
Bairon finally moved. One foot crossed, with a dull scrape of his sole against the waxed floor, then the other. The gesture, so simple, felt 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 aside and reveal that green which seemed too vivid under the whitish classroom 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 more than intended, 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 piercing 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 accustomed to such exposure, but his throat vibrated with a tremor that threatened to betray him.
The murmur began first as a soft rustle, barely a movement of lips at the back of the room. Then it spread, multiplied into whispers, small stifled laughs behind hands covering mouths, a fake 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 professor said nothing. He stood by the blackboard, hands crossed behind his back, gaze fixed on the newcomer. There was no harshness in his eyes, but a weight that demanded a response. The classroom silence tightened a degree more; not a pen moved on the desks, not a chair adjusted.
Bairon felt that expectation enveloping him. His throat dried instantly, as if the words were trapped there, too heavy to emerge. He could introduce himself—it was the logical, the correct thing—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 possible: he lowered his chin slightly and raised it again in a brief gesture, a restrained greeting that, under any other circumstance, would have gone unnoticed. Here, however, that slight movement felt like a confession.
His lips pressed tightly, 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.
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[Present]
The door frame no longer existed; only an irregular gap remained, a broken, charred frame of burning wood and metal still emitting smoke. Splinters crumbled with dry cracks, falling to the ground like embers.
From that stormy night, from the foot that ignited the hall, 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 a live heat, like iron freshly pulled 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 emerged from the shadow, long, deformed fingers scratching the edge of the floor. Then the second, which braced against the broken frame, sinking its claws into the charred wood and tearing out splinters that crackled as they fell.
A moment later, the other leg emerged, advancing still without touching the floor.
It was equally cracked, equally burning, as if that entire body had been baked inside a volcano and now walked among the remains of its own eruption.
The gap burned with the creature's mere presence. The air around it trembled, distorting the shadows, and a harsh smell of burnt mineral began to spread, forcing him to hold his breath.
The officer narrowed his eyes behind the translucent green rectangle that stood like a wall between him and the creature.
He took a deep breath, trying to maintain his rhythm, but the air itself 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, fingers rigid 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 locked with the first.
The impact of the assembly rumbled in the air with a dull burst, like glass hitting glass, and immediately the wall tripled in thickness.
The pressure redoubled. Sweat blurred his vision, but he didn't blink.
Step.
FWHOOOOSH!
A new wave of fire erupted, 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 scoured the place, ravaging the remains of splintered furniture, overturned tables, chairs still lying in pieces.
The debris, dried by the previous fire wave, ignited immediately in an explosion of embers. The heavy curtains on the windows lit up like vertical torches; the central carpet burned in seconds, spreading a flaming path that climbed the columns.
The high ceiling returned the fire's roars 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 form, 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 instants, the entire hall became a sea of living fire, an impossible-to-contain inferno.
The translucent wall trembled as it took the fire wave 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, the air escaped him in a hoarse, guttural scream that tore the silence. With teeth clenched, he raised his arms again, pushing against nothing with desperate fury.
The wall responded. The glow flared and, with a blinding flash, other blocks of energy emerged, one after another, until the wall regained its size and tripled again. The officer expanded it just enough to cover himself, enveloping himself in that defense.
But then, in a fleeting flash of an idea, a different movement shook him. He brought his hands together, palm to palm, and separated them slightly. Between them vibrated a new rectangle of green energy, smaller, more compact, which burst with a snap as he projected it against the floor.
The rectangle impacted the floor with a deep hum, and immediately began to sink as if the wood itself absorbed 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 fire with its ascent, devouring them in crackling flashes.
The energy expanded sideways with a brusque impulse, pushing the heat outward, and then upward, until it surpassed 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 was 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 toward the monster rising beyond the incandescent walls. His eyes shone with a mix of exhaustion and defiance.
From the gap 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 across the charred frame with an insectoid motion, bending its joints at impossible angles. The two new limbs braced with such force that the wall trembled, 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 crossed 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 made from some kind of living muscle. The arm stretched forward with a spasm, striking the floor with such force that the surrounding flames leaned as if hit 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, sprouted a sixth arm. 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…" the officer murmured, barely a thread of voice that broke in his own throat.
But that wasn't the worst. The true horror was revealed when his gaze, still incredulous, reached the upper part of the creature.
If it could be called a head.
The lower half rose like a grotesque parody of a human face, but twisted beyond words. Where there should have been skin, lips, or cheeks, there were only endless rows of teeth. Teeth that interlaced with each other, packed in all directions, like gears ready to grind anything. No flesh covered them: the jaw opened and closed in a dry motion, clicking 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 hall walls seemed to burn with its reflection, and every oscillation of the flame illuminated the monster as if surrounded by green and red lightning.
Over there, beyond the gap, the rain continued to fall in heavy curtains. But every drop that tried to cross the invisible line toward the creature disintegrated in the air with a sharp hiss, evaporated 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 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 nearly shattered. It held, yes, but the cost was high: the wall lost part of its thickness, shrinking, weakening visibly. The light that once bathed the space with firmness now flickered as if it could be extinguished at any moment.
With a choked grunt, the officer raised an arm and swung it in a wide gesture, as if throwing an invisible weight forward. The energy responded to his movement: the wall suddenly widened, the thickness multiplied until it tripled again, and a blinding glow covered the crack before it could break.