Chapter 10: 10 – Encroaching Monstrosity

For a brief few minutes she sat there, eating food offered up by damned soldiers and taking in the beauty of a place at the very edge of desolation, acutely aware of how transitory this situation was. 

It was a peace like no other.

“Sorry ‘bout the aggression back there. Red sickness ain’t nice,” Sigmund said, turning his wizened eyes toward her again. The dancing flames painted his face in shadows deeper than any night, drawing out a harrowed visage that remained hidden in the daylight.

Just that single look was enough to give her an impression of how much he had gone through.

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Despite the towering woman’s remark about the pointlessness of remaining by his side while the Tablet did its work, Spliteye couldn’t help but do so anyway. She sat by his side, watching the projection flickering in staccato and simply waiting, listening to the rustling of the leaves and the distant crackling of the fire.

The sound of stomping feet from behind the transport echoed through the wall. She thought it was just Sigmund pulling some carrots, but… His voice could clearly be heard from the direction of the firepit. The stench of rot and death hit her nostrils like a hammer, and the impact of something very heavy on the transport’s exterior cemented a suspicion in her mind.

The locker. She yanked it open and grabbed her gun alongside a handful of paper cartridges, pulling out the ramrod as she ran out of the transport, yelling at the other two. By their faces, she knew that they knew something was amiss.

“It’s the beast! It must’ve followed us through the crossing point!” she exclaimed, sprinting to the other side of the clearing and taking up position behind a tree. With one swift motion she dropped a cartridge into the muzzle of her rifle, rammed it down and took aim at the front of the transport, from behind which she expected the creature to emerge. 

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By the time Spliteye ran out of the transport Zelsys’ instincts had already kicked into high gear, the beast’s ponderous movement easily loud enough to hear from where she sat. She looked to Sigmund and he looked to her, his breathing growing erratic as his posture stiffened. “I’ll b’fine,” he slurred as the seizure took hold.

“Shit, he’s out,” she thought, dropping the mess tin and reaching for the bandages that covered her gun. They wouldn’t budge, she had wrapped them too tightly. As she tried to pull the wrapping loose, there issued a thunderous noise and a bright yellow flash emanated from Spliteye’s position, soon followed by a thud and a horrific, gurgling roar. It sounded like…

“It’s a fuckin’ mutated bear!” Spliteye yelled, scrambling to reload her gun.

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A sharp breath in. A breath of Fog out. A swift yank to rip the wrapping off, bringing the gun to bear on the creature’s head - or rather, what was left of it. A skinless skull with bloodshot eyes in its sockets, curtains of half-rotten skin hanging around its neck and long ropes of Black Fog trailing from its mouth. Spliteye’s bullet was embedded into its forehead, but it seemed unaffected, ponderously making its way towards the source of its newest pain. Zelsys could see most of its front half now, its wretched heart visibly beating beneath exposed ribs.

She grabbed the lever and pushed down. 

Click. 

Click. 

The gun erupted with a blinding flash and a deafening boom, the recoil so forceful it threw Zelsys into a brief backwards roll. A fleshy thunk resounded, followed by an angry gurgle-roar from the beast just as Zelsys landed on her feet. She couldn’t clearly see where she hit through the smoke, but she saw clearly enough to see the beast was still moving. The thought of reloading crossed her mind, but was immediately quelled by the realization that the rest of the ammo was stored within the Tablet. She scanned her surroundings for any other weapons, thinking that perhaps Wire had his gun by his side, but no such luck. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw it - the silvery gleam.

“Keep it busy! I’ll get it from behind!” she yelled at Spliteye, sharply inhaling and taking off towards the transport, a trail of silver Fog marking her superhumanly fast dash. In the face of imminent death, Zelsys felt not fear, but exhilaration - she was alive, ready and willing to try killing the beast with her bare hands if her current plan failed - if the cleaver was too heavy.

She grabbed it with her right hand as she leapt over the makeshift butchering table, its weight so massive she had to rebalance herself to remain upright. Then, as she ran through the small vegetable field and trampled the lentils underfoot, she felt a buzzing warmth spreading up her arm and the apparent mass of the blade becoming lesser and lesser with each step. The sound of a gunshot echoed, followed by a roar from the beast as it reared up on its back legs, tall enough that its head was visible over the transport.

When she finally got to the bear-beast’s rotting backside, the cleaver had shifted into a double-edged instrument of slaughter - one side an inward-curved blade and the other a push-saw with massive feather-shaped teeth. The bear-creature noticed her presence and dropped onto all fours, but it was too late. She had already noticed a weak point where its hide had rotted away, the ridges of its lower spine showing through.

The huge weapon noticeably trembled in her grip as she gripped it with both hands and raised it, but the bear was already moving, it would be able to dodge faster than she could follow through with a chop. Midway through raising the blade, Zelsys twisted her core to the left and rammed its push-saw side sideways into the beast’s back. 

The sickening crunch of bone and the pained roar of the beast as its back legs gave out were both as though sweet music to her ears. It began thrashing, twisting about on the ground as it failed to understand why its back legs wouldn’t move.

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