Chapter 54
To Remember Part 5
Eyelids squeezed shut,
the soldier in the blue coat reacted with a shout.
—"I can't see!"—
His arms came up, crossing in front of his face.
In the orange-tinged darkness filtering behind his tight eyelids, he heard something break.
An irregular CRSH—KSHH.
The sound pierced him like an urgent warning.
He lowered his arms slightly, trying to open his eyes quickly.
While retreating with a short, sharp hop.
He opened his eyes slowly, just a slit, but his vision didn't have time to recompose.
Just outlines.
Just shadows.
He lifted his gaze as soon as he felt his body touch the floor, but amid those confusing flashes, the first thing he began to distinguish was something grotesque.
Maw.
Its maw.
The head, without a lower jaw, burning with white vapor and dark blood dragged by its speed.
The upper part of the monster's head descended toward him at a ridiculous angle, as if trying to swallow him whole.
The soldier smelled the acidic odor first. Then, the animal vertigo that only appears when death is so close it seems to project heat.
His eyes, still squinting, captured just one frame.
The upper fangs, split, sticky, approaching…
very fast.
Closer and closer.
Too late to think clearly.
Before he could react, a boot appeared beneath the monster.
—"Ghh!"— a formless gasp escaped.
His body folded around the boot.
It was a direct, compact, brutal kick that drove into his stomach and ripped the air from him in one pull.
As he arched, heat and an orange light passed over his head at great speed, so close he felt the hot air graze his scalp. Plus a sharp whistle and then a scream of pain, alongside the sound of something piercing flesh.
The kick launched him like a sack.
The soldier in the blue coat felt his boots skid across the floor, dragging him several steps.
Mid- and at the end of the retreat, he lifted his head with a clumsy motion, and then he saw Eilor.
Eilor's body sparked.
He was still with his leg extended, lowering it after the kick, his hip on the floor and his left forearm on the ground, teeth clenched.
His right arm with his sword rose and in a diagonal motion, the blade entered the monster's torso, near what would be the "stomach."
Eilor, still sliding, moved his arm with force, from top to bottom, his breath whistling between his teeth, opening a trail of dark red blood.
From the stomach to the chest, plus the monstrous scream of the monster that now had a spiral fire spear in its maw. The movement ended at the opposite end of Eilor's body beneath his right side, with a veil of red liquid and orange sparks behind him.
The soldier in the blue coat barely had time to fix his gaze.
Because Eilor was already moving.
In the same flow of movement following the kick and the cut, Eilor rolled on the floor at the end of his attack. After a turn, he braced on one knee and with his left leg planted his foot flat on the floor, and with a short step, stood up while the monster arched backward with the "javelin" of fire in its open mouth and the cut that would split its torso, closing with white vapor seeping from the edges.
Eilor pulled back his right arm, ran, closed in, and stabbed. Straight into the lower joint of the monster's right arm.
The blade sank right at the point where the deformed shoulder joined the rest of the torso, at a narrow, dangerous angle.
Scales, tendons, and flesh gave way with a wet, unpleasant sound.
The monster reacted instantly. Turning its head so fast Eilor's nerves tensed with fright.
The arm arced to grab him, moving with eerie precision.
The black claws descended in a whip-like motion.
Death… was approaching.
An invisible shockwave struck the monster's arm and deflected it just a few centimeters.
The claws passed, grazing his skin, enough to tear the fabric of his shirt at his neck, leaving a reddish line in their wake from which barely any drops escaped before he covered it with his right hand.
Eilor froze for an instant.
A fraction of a second.
A thread of terror.
The expression on his face contorted, his eyes widened, his pupils trembled, his lips parted slightly, without air, like someone who saw their own death pass by their throat.
---
The monster growled, or tried to growl, but the sound came out deformed, whistling, because a short "javelin" of pure, tensed fire was piercing its incomplete mouth like an incandescent lance, vibrating with each spasm of the creature.
The fire crackled inside its open throat, illuminating that mass of flesh from within.
But the spear began to slacken until it dispersed and was lost as small flames in the air.
It turned.
A brutal twist. Its arm traced a horizontal sweep, brutal, aimed directly at Eilor, still paralyzed with his hand on his neck.
—"Kaep!"— two soldiers shouted,
while the third pulled his arm back and contracted it in a horizontal arc, launching something.
Eilor barely had time to react. The claw approached, growing, each time larger, closer… it was going to hit him.
Thud.
A weapon, a sword struck and crossed between Eilor's legs, pulling his right leg backward, followed by the left going left, toppling his whole body forward.
His body fell, chest hitting the floor.
The monster's arm passed overhead, cutting the air centimeters from his back.
Stunned, Eilor braced on the floor, only able to see it, but something else was choking him, an unpleasant and cold sensation.
—"Roll!"— shouted the one in the blue coat, running toward the monster.
Eilor, without thinking further, rolled immediately.
Wood creaked, splinters flying.
The monster stomped the floor with violence, leaving an irregular indentation right where Eilor's head had been.
Eilor had barely finished the roll when the monster jumped again. Still on the floor, he rolled once more, more hurriedly, more clumsily.
The second stomp came with the other leg, so close and strong the impact made Eilor bounce mid-roll while splinters and wood chips levitated near his vision.
Then came a third, but this time it was a descending blow from the arm.
Eilor could barely brace himself with his hands in an attempt to stand before the creature did that.
The three soldiers reacted with a simultaneous jolt.
His arm hit the floor, sinking it a little and… The monster… levered itself up on its arm, lifting its entire weight.
The scene was as absurd as it was terrifying: its torso was suspended, legs bent upward, as if preparing an impossible jump.
Eilor made the mistake of being impressed by something so unexpected and unreal.
And in a spin, the monster dropped its body in a full 180-degree arc, like a living mass intending to hammer the floor with both legs at once.
Eilor understood what was coming a microsecond before impact.
He tensed his arms and, without standing, orange electricity surrounded and enveloped his body.
Then…
He lunged into another roll, but this time more aggressive, more uncontrolled.
The blow fell.
The monster's two legs crashed against the floor with a force that threw up splinters, dust, and wood fragments as if a silent grenade had exploded.
Eilor managed to move away by centimeters…
And that was the worst thing that could have happened to him.
The shockwave and the floor breaking with the impact lifted Eilor's body off the floor like a leaf.
He felt his spine tremble, muscles contracting reflexively, air leaving his chest, even though he hadn't taken a direct hit.
He understood he was finished.
And on top of that came a sharp, immediate pain.
The splinters.
Dozens of them, large and small, jumped from the explosion of the impact and embedded themselves in his back as he rolled.
Some stuck in, others scratched his skin, tearing minimal strips of cloth and blood.
Eilor made a silent grimace while floating in these slow seconds.
And the monster was already turning to attack him again.
In those brief seconds…
As he completed a turn in the air, Eilor was suspended a meter off the floor, his back still aching from the embedded splinters.
In that fleeting instant, he saw the monster.
The creature bent over its own legs, torso almost dangling forward like a deformed beast about to attack at ground level.
And from that low, animalistic posture, its arm cut the air in a brutal sweep.
Eilor only managed to tense his abdomen.
The blow caught him full-on.
The monster's arm slammed into his side, hooking him like a steel hook.
The impact cut off his breath; a grunt escaped, involuntary and choked.
And at the same instant of impact…
the orange sparks erupted.
But not like before… This time they stretched, elongated into filaments peeling from his skin as if the energy sought a more solid, more lethal form.
While the monster remained bent and dragged Eilor in its sweep…
another light, a light of warm tones, ignited behind the creature.
And in the blink of an eye, that light condensed into an arrow… no, into something thicker, denser:
a short spear of fire, resembling a compact, burning trident, with a single point.
A soldier grabbed it from the center and, stepping forward, threw the spear.
The projectile shot out with a dry whistle.
FWOOM—KRAK
The spear pierced the monster's arm from side to side.
The creature's body jerked; the skin of the arm burst open in an explosion of vapor and black blood, flesh recoiling around the luminous weapon.
Eilor's electrical energy crackled violently, climbing the monster's skin.
The flesh began to char, blackening on contact with the rays.
The electricity advanced through the muscles, like orange snakes, climbing to the shoulder, invading the torso and the creature's deformed back.
The monster stiffened.
And while the monster stiffened, vibrating, the soldier in the blue coat ran without a shred of doubt.
His body leaned forward, feet crunching against splinters, running straight toward the beast, completely ignoring the risk of entering the range of a monster that could kill with a single movement.
His hands closed over his sword's hilt—both of them—squeezing. A rough exhalation left his chest… and instantly, his aura ignited.
The light enveloped each muscle, tensing, reinforcing, hardening his entire body.
Behind him, the other soldier of the air bullets had his arms spread apart, one to the left, one to the right, his chest inflated as if wanting to split the air in two halves…
CLAP!
A brutal clap. His palms collided with such force the impact resonated like a dry thunderclap within the closed room.
From that clap, a wave of compressed air was born, an invisible bullet the size of an anvil. The air deformed, vibrated, and shot out in a straight line, roaring like a silent cannon.
All of that happened at the same instant the monster, still stiffened, squeezed Eilor's body tighter, wrenching a ragged gasp from him, and lifted him even higher into the air, to one side. With its body stiff.
The monster spun on itself—with an unnatural torsion—and threw Eilor's body toward the left wall of the room.
Eilor spun at such speed his entire vision became blurred and stretched, his eyes opened with panic before feeling himself crash into something flat and rough.
PANG—
The impact rumbled like a muffled explosion with discharges. Chunks of wood flew, sparks jumped. The wall collapsed into a hole larger than a human body.
The monster hadn't even finished that movement when the shockwave from the clap hit its leg.
A dry sound, like a hammer striking a wet log.
The monster's leg trembled, muscles vibrated, and its structure tilted with a sudden imbalance. The creature took an awkward step to the side, as if its own weight betrayed it for an instant.
But it didn't fall.
It wasn't enough.
The monster braced at the last moment, driving one of its feet into the floor like an anchor that splintered the wood and halted the fall.
Its torso turned with an almost serpentine movement, faster than that colossal volume should allow. Its head—or what was left of it, vapor tongue included—twisted until it pointed right at someone:
The soldier in the blue coat.
The empty eyes focused on him.
Vapor expanded from the cracks of its broken face.
To the right of the young man who had generated the air bullet, the third soldier was already in motion.
He didn't wait to confirm if the wave had made the monster fall.
He didn't stop to see if Eilor was alive.
He didn't think of anything other than creating a second attack angle.
His run described a semicircle, skirting the space the creature occupied. Boots hammered the floor, each step raising dust and particles of charred wood. His breathing accelerated in short bursts, synchronized with the rhythmic echo of his strides.
But when he saw—with a half-second delay—how the monster didn't fall, how it braced against the floor and turned its hideous body toward the young man in the blue coat…
he dug in his heels.
SHRRRAK—
Boots scraped the floor, leaving a deep line where the wood gave way under the friction.
His knees bent.
His body stabilized.
His fingers opened.
And immediately after—
PAM!
He slapped his palms together.
…
He pulled them apart.
One palm tilted upward.
The other downward.
Between them, the air vibrated, with a thread of flames.
Then they extended into a column of fire.
Then a spiral of flames.
A compressed vortex that spun on itself with a dull roar, accumulating heat until it illuminated the soldier's face with an infernal glow.
The fire twisted for another instant…
then both ends were gripped between his fingers and were stretched, sharpened, tensing like white-hot metal.
Both of the soldier's arms opened, taut like ropes about to snap.
The flaming column followed the gesture, extending with him…
Until it became a spear of fire, long, firm, with a white core and undulating edges of orange and red.
The soldier quickly released it before it could slacken, grabbed it by the center, feeling the heat burn his forearms without injuring him thanks to the aura covering that activated over his skin in a blink and his minimal resistance as its creator.
He took his stance.
One foot back.
The other firmly forward.
Hips rotated.
The spear aligned with his shoulder.
One breath.
Two.
And bracing on his back leg—all his strength concentrated into a single vector— he threw the fire spear.
The projectile shot out like a luminous streak, cutting the air with a dry whistle, reflecting light in its wake.
Straight at the monster, which had now focused entirely on the soldier in the blue coat.
**
The monster halted for an instant.
A blink of stillness.
A tense silence.
And in the next heartbeat…
Its "legs" and "torso" lowered.
It collapsed its weight downward, sinking its torso a few centimeters as if its spine had suddenly lost all rigidity. The floorboards groaned under the sudden drop.
That contraction charged the attack.
It swept its left "leg" backward with a turn.
Its arm shot out in a low sweep.
WHOOOM—
A brutal arc, dragging dust, splinters, and vapor. The movement was so wide it deformed the surrounding air, creating a hot turbulence that struck the soldiers even before the arm arrived.
The soldier in the blue coat reacted at the last second.
He jumped.
A short, fast leap, just enough to avoid the direct impact.
But not enough to evade it completely.
The arm grazed his boots.
A graze that wasn't a graze:
a barely cushioned lateral battering ram.
The contact tore through the fabric, crossed skin, struck muscle, and projected his body upward and backward.
The soldier lost control immediately.
He spun.
One complete rotation.
Then another nearly equal, momentum making him float for an instant like a doll caught in a whirlwind.
Meanwhile…
The monster's arm didn't stop.
The sweep continued tracing its natural arc, like a horizontal guillotine completing its path.
The monster turned with the movement, torso accompanying the torsion, skin stretching grotesquely along its back.
And when its arm reached the other end…
it struck the fire spear.
A dry impact, a clash between physical matter and living energy.
KRRRSH!
The spear disintegrated into loose flames in the air, after being split in two by the blow.
Meanwhile, the soldier in the blue coat was still falling, still in his second spin, having not regained control of his body.
And the monster, with its arm still extended after the sweep… now seeing the fire soldier, who shuddered with a chill.
The one in the blue coat landed on both legs, his heels hitting the floor with a sharp bounce that nearly made him stumble.
Dizziness crossed his vision like a hot wave, but he pushed back by pure discipline.
He took a deep breath.
His body trembled inside, but his hands did not.
He raised his sword before him, crossing it in front of his chest, over his left shoulder.
The aura enveloping him dissipated in a blink, leaving the soldier naked of power for a second that felt dangerous, almost suicidal.
He leaned.
Right leg forward.
The left supported the rest of his weight like a living anchor.
His torso lowered almost to touch his thigh, posture compressed, muscles tense, his entire body serrated into a single vector.
And he concentrated more strength into his forward leg and his arm…
…and launched the cut.
A precise diagonal cut, straight at the monster's leg.
The sword traveled like a line of silver.
The aura didn't return.
Not in his hand,
not in his arm,
not in the blade.
It still hadn't appeared.
The edge advanced centimeters from the monster's leg…
And then it passed.
WUM!
The aura reappeared, but not as usual.
Not as a gradual ignition, nor as a coating over the skin.
It emerged as a pulse.
A concentrated wave that burst from his abdomen and spread through his arm, through his hand…
and shot outward, projecting ahead of the sword.
It wasn't a single wave.
It was several.
Multiple pulses of aura, compact, invisible at times, then visible as vibrant lines, colliding with each other, barely leaving space between one and the next, like a drum of impacts compressed into a single beat.
The blade kept advancing toward the monster's leg.
And the waves—
the first ones surged ahead—
the rest passed between the sword and the monster's flesh…
…at the exact instant.
SHRRRT—
The waves, like a single sheet, bent, yielded, and coated the blade.
And the sword, in that same microsecond, completed its trajectory.
SHRRRT—
The wound opened.
Black blood gushed with condensed vapor around the injury.
The monster screamed without sound, its leg trembling like a worm-eaten log, and its body's weight seemed to waver.
While the one in the blue coat opened the wound in the monster's leg, the other two soldiers didn't waste a second.
Both shot off in opposite directions, crossing to the monster's sides like living arrows, like a semicircle.
The monster turned its head.
The movement was clumsy, as if the reassembled flesh didn't react with the same speed as before, but the intent was clear.
It wasn't looking at the one in the blue coat.
It was looking straight at the fire mage.
The fire soldier felt it before confirming it.
The weight of the air behind his neck.
The change in pressure on his back.
Instinct screaming at him: "it's fixed on me."
He didn't brake.
He didn't try to hide.
He simply ran harder, straight toward the back wall.
The monster tried to follow him.
Its torso arched, turning as if to launch itself headfirst in his direction…
But then reality caught up.
Its leg.
The wound.
CRSHH—KRRRK!
The monster fell, its body collapsing like a block too heavy to support itself.
It folded over its own leg, sinking it under its colossal weight.
And in that instant…
…it released a scream.
A broken sound, a scream made of torn flesh and lungs vibrating with a pain its vocal cords couldn't translate.
A wet, irregular, almost liquid sound that struck the walls like a viscous wave.
The soldier in the blue coat—the closest—reacted with pain.
His sword lowered a few centimeters, his body hunched.
His hands moved faster, covering his ears with force before he could launch another cut.
The sound was so loud all the wood in the room seemed to tremble with it, as if the monster's pain had filtered through the very structure.
His vision vibrated.
His teeth clashed.
For a moment, he felt his balance slipping.
The monster kept writhing, falling further onto its side, spewing white vapor with each new contraction.
And its enraged scream continued.
—WRRROOOOAAARRRR!!!—
During its scream, the creature turned, and far from decreasing the sound's intensity, it increased it even more, as if it had discovered that scream served as a weapon.
The floor vibrated.
Splinters trembled.
The three soldiers felt their chests resonate.
Perhaps the creature was trying to see what had happened to its right leg, because its torso twisted, bracing on its single functional "leg," the left one, twisting all its weight to that side.
But it never finished that movement.
Because as it turned…
It heard a roar behind it.
As it twisted brutally to the left, in its field of vision…
For the second time, it saw him.
Again.
That young man glowing with electricity around his body.
Orange sparks crawling over his skin like tongues of living electricity.
—TRAKK—
A short vibration.
A precise thrust.
Eilor drove his sword into its left eye again.
Hanging from the embedded sword itself, legs flexed, muscles taut, his body converted into a human anchor penetrating the monster's skull through the eye socket.
The orange discharges exploded from his hands.
First from his skin, then down to his knuckles, jumping to the hilt, sliding like a violent river down the blade…
…and finally entering the interior of the monster's head.
An internal electrical burst.
—WRRROOO… OAAARRRR!!!—
The creature shuddered.
The scream broke for a second, as if the electricity had cut off its air.
But Eilor didn't stop there.
He wasn't content with electrocuting it from one point.
He released one hand from the hilt.
He hung by a single hand, muscles of his left shoulder trembling.
His right hand rose before him…
…and formed a gesture.
Two fingers extended.
The others curled.
Thumb behind.
A gun.
Between his fingers, a luminous vibration began to form, small orange sparks intertwining as if seeking something to break.
His pulse trembled from the force.
He opened the gap between his fingers a little more.
And then…
he fired.