Before the arrival of the Sheepman Sailor...
SHATTER!!
The window glass exploded inward, showering the wooden floor with thousands of sharp diamonds. Eldrum barreled in like a cannonball, rolling across the dust-choked floor with smooth, tactical precision. He was not alone.
From the darkness of the night outside, a nightmare leaped in after him. It was Danica's Skeleton—a structure of white bones clean of flesh, moving with the speed and agility of a spider, its joints rattling horribly. The creature lunged, its sharp bony fingers ready to gouge out eyes.
But Eldrum was faster. With one fluid motion, he snatched an old wooden chair nearby and tossed it into the air as a distraction.
KRAK!
The skeleton swatted the chair, shattering it into pieces in mid-air, but it was a fatal mistake. That split second gave Eldrum an opening. His double-barreled shotgun barked.
BLAM!!
A tongue of flame spewed from the weapon's muzzle. Thousands of buckshot pellets slammed into the skeleton's chest at point-blank range. Ribs exploded into chalk dust, and the stopping power sent the bone doll flying back out the window with a pitiful clang-clung sound as it hit the ground outside.
Before Eldrum could catch his breath, the floor beneath his feet rumbled.
KRA-KRA-KRAAAK!
Giant pitch-black tree roots, as thick as a grown man's thigh, smashed through the back wall and the floor of the house like giant octopus tentacles from hell. The house's timber screamed as it was pulverized into sawdust. Eldrum sprinted to the side, his feet dancing among the debris, dodging the thrusts of roots trying to skewer his body.
His exit lay at the front door. But the door was blocked by something repulsive.
Another version of Danica—a monstrosity made of interwoven naked red muscle and stretching skin—ambushed him from the entrance. Its body widened, muscle fibers stretching and adhering to the doorframe, creating a wall of living meat blocking the escape route.
Eldrum didn't slow down. If he stopped, he died. The 'Rat' Sin Mark on his neck pulsed hot, pumping adrenaline that bent the limits of human physics.
Eldrum:
"(Break through or die!)"
He compacted his leg muscles, the ground beneath him cracking as he launched himself. He was no longer a man; he was a living projectile. The air around him split, creating a mini sonic boom as he shot straight forward like a meat spear.
DHUAAAARR!!
Eldrum's shoulder slammed into the wall of flesh with the momentum of a freight train. The sound of wet tearing and a loud boom merged. The muscle doll couldn't withstand the kinetic force. Eldrum punched through it, dragging the doll's body with him, smashing through the front wall until it crumbled apart, and landed rolling in the muddy yard.
On the roof of the house across the way, the 'real' Danica stood—or at least, her core part. She was a grotesque Wooden Doll; her chest cavity was made of twisting roots, serving as a cage for internal organs, nerves, and a brain that pulsed wet and naked. A sight that would make a sane person want to vomit.
The eyes in her skinless organ-head glanced down at her shattered skeleton on the ground. With a single nerve twitch, the bones vibrated, snapped back together, and knitted themselves whole in the blink of an eye.
The Wooden Doll lifted the newly restored skeleton with one root hand, as if it were a mere action figure, and hurled it high over the house, straight toward Eldrum's position.
Below, Eldrum had just risen from the pile of rubble, breath heaving, wiping dust and blood from his bruised shoulder. Suddenly, a sense of danger screamed at the back of his neck.
Behind him, the muscle doll he had just rammed rose again with a wet squelch. But this time, it did something insane. The layer of skin on its body peeled off just like that—like a discarded costume—and floated in the air, wide and thin like a sheet of wet rubber.
The skin lunged, wrapping around Eldrum's body from head to toe like a suffocating corpse shroud.
Eldrum:
"What?!—Mmphhh!!"
His scream was muffled, his vision went pitch black, his nose filled with the musty smell of dead skin. He struggled, but at the same time, the now-skinless muscle doll hugged him from behind, locking Eldrum's arms in a bear hug that could crush steel.
He was trapped. Blind and bound.
THUD!
The tremor in the ground told him something heavy had just landed in front of him. The Danica Skeleton had arrived. And without further ado, it went to work.
BRAK! BRAK! BRAK!!
Hard bone fists slammed into Eldrum's stomach repeatedly. Every punch carried enough force to stop a bull's heart. Eldrum coughed violently behind the skin blanket smothering him, the taste of iron filling his mouth. His ribs screamed in protest.
However, a Rat is not an animal that dies easily when cornered.
Eldrum let out a suppressed roar. Instead of trying to break free forward, he pulled his head forward, then snapped it back with all the strength of his neck.
KRAK!
The back of his head smashed into the face of the muscle doll holding him. The sound of a nose bone (or whatever resembled a nose on that lump of muscle) breaking sounded crisp. The grip on his body loosened slightly—only an inch, but it was enough.
Eldrum lifted both legs, leveraging his weight against the muscle doll behind him, and unleashed a two-legged dropkick right into the chest of the skeleton in front of him.
PYARRRR!!
The kick was so explosive that Danica's skeleton shattered into pieces, ribs and vertebrae scattering in all directions like bowling pins hit by a cannonball.
The recoil force of the kick also sent Eldrum and the muscle doll on his back tumbling backward. That moment in the air gave Eldrum freedom. He tore the skin blanket off his face, elbowed the muscle doll's face with his sharp elbow—SPLAT!—then twisted his body as he landed.
He mounted the chest of the sprawled muscle doll and drove his fist straight down.
DENTUM!
The muscle doll's head burst like a rotten watermelon, scattering fragments of red flesh into the mud.
Eldrum stood, panting. His face was a mask of blood—his own and the blood of the Danica dolls. He wiped his chin with the back of his hand, his eyes wild as he searched for the next target.
There. At the end of the muddy road. The Wooden Doll containing Danica's organs stood motionless. It had no expression—because it had no face—but an aura of cold emptiness radiated from it. Fine muscles on the organ-neck twitched repulsively like a cluster of wet earthworms.
Meanwhile, all around him, the shattered skeleton pieces began to vibrate, dragging themselves back to reunite.
Plop... Plop...
A strange sound was heard near his feet. Something wet, cold, and fishy tried to creep up his boots.
With sharp hunter reflexes, Eldrum jumped upward.and landed at the roof.
Eldrum:
"What was that?"
He stared down. It wasn't just a pool of blood. The pitch-black liquid moved against gravity, forming small hands trying to grab hold. And from the lump of flesh of the destroyed muscle doll earlier, something was separating itself.
Lumps of red meat (Flesh) detached themselves from the red fibers (Muscle). The sheet of skin that had smothered him earlier (Skin) now stood on its own, inflating into a hollow but moving mummy figure.
Eldrum took another step back, his eyes widening in disbelief as he counted his new enemies.
One: Wooden Doll/Organs (The Core Commander).
Two: Skeleton reforming itself (The Immortal).
Three: Muscle shaped like a skinless red humanoid (The Fighter).
Four: Skin floating like a deflated ghost (The Trapper).
Five: Flesh lumps beginning to solidify into a rough shape (The Shield).
Six: Black Blood pooling and forming liquid spears (The Weapon).
One woman. Six nightmares. An anatomy of horror dissected and brought to life to kill.
Eldrum spat on the ground, the mixture of spit and blood sizzling in the mud. He recocked his already hot shotgun, even though he knew bullets might not be enough for this biological nightmare.
Eldrum:
"(Damn it... could you get any trickier than this, bitch?)"