Chapter 11: 11 – Butchery

Zelsys ripped the cleaver from its back, raising it in preparation to butcher the thing as it thrashed helplessly on the ground.

The moment her blade left the beast’s back, its flesh pulled itself back together and even its spine reattached, putrid black blood congealing instantaneously within the hole to compensate for lost mass. Almost instantly it was back on its feet, the only things that stopped it from instantly lashing out at Zelsys being its own size and a well-timed third gunshot to its cranium from Spliteye’s rifle. The shock was enough to slow it down, but it wasn’t enough to drag its attention away from the one who had severed its spine.

It turned around, lashing out at her with its maw gaping like the gates of hell themselves.  Zelsys eagerly rammed her open left hand down its throat, grabbing its tongue at the root with confidence that its fangs were too far apart to even nick her flesh. Its jaws slammed shut much like those of a bear trap, met by the hard steel of her gun’s barrel at the top and the trigger lever on the bottom. 

She took a deep breath of the fetid air, a manic grin stretching across her face in proportion to the exhilaration coursing through her body. With a long exhalation of Fog she swung the cleaver upward one-handed. Flesh split like mud and bones like twigs underneath its razor-sharp edge and tremendous momentum, and the bear-thing’s left foreleg was gone, black blood gushing from the stump. Wherever its blood landed, the plants withered.

It thrashed, pushing and pulling, nearly ripping Zelsys off her feet, but she just laughed and guided the blade towards its neck on downswing, still holding onto the thing’s tongue like it was a giant fish. A disgusting squelch. She let go of the handle and switched her grip to the hilt, using it as a push bar in an attempt to engage the saw-action and sever the beast’s head. It wouldn’t budge.

Zelsys took a breath, and pushed again as she exhaled a rope of Fog. Crunch. The bear’s thrashing grew weaker, its ability to pull itself back together entirely countered by the cleaver’s presence as a physical barrier. Yet, despite the fact its cervical spine had been severed, it continued to move.

With heavy, Fog-filled breaths she sawed violently at the beast’s neck, confident that the next push would leave its head dangling in her grasp. Sensing its impending death the beast threw itself at the transport as she pulled, dislodging the cleaver and slamming her into the hull. Pain shot through her body from the impact, and she felt her consciousness slip as she fell into a bed of lentil plants.

It was only a few seconds before she woke and leapt to her feet, the sudden waking breath fueling a rising handspring. The bear’s head had reattached itself, the wound sealed shut by a huge plug of congealed blood. It was lumbering towards her in some lopsided approximation of a charge, fangs bared and black foam bubbling from the corners of its mouth. The absence of its left foreleg made the creature’s gait skewed to the right as it tried to compensate, exposing its neck.  

Zelsys inhaled sharply through a toothy grin, her face as much a snarl as the beast’s, her eyes shining in silver just as the beast’s did in yellow. She tossed its tongue aside and gripped the cleaver with both hands, resolute in her decision to end the beast with a single decisive strike.

“Come on! Come at me!” she mocked, walking towards the creature, staring it down. “So I may put you out of your misery.” 

It lurched forward with the last remnants of its strength, teeth flashing and tongueless maw snapping. A step forward, and upward cleave, flesh and bone and congealed blood yielding to the cleaver’s barbarous power. Its dying roar, the brass. The blade’s resonant ring, the strings. Her own heart, the percussion. The ironclad kick that sent the bear’s head flying into a tree, the final note.

A song of battle, concluded. 

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Zelsys couldn’t help but sigh in relief as the beast’s body slumped to the ground, its fetid blood poisoning the ground. “Rest in pieces,” she said as she lowered the cleaver, more to herself than the bear. The unearthly glow faded from her eyes and small strings of silver Fog trailed from the corners of her mouth as she stepped around the corpse, slowly walking towards the firepit. Spliteye slipped out from behind her tree, questioning “Is it dead?” with her gun still up and pointed at the motionless beast’s rear end.

“Its brain is splattered against that tree over there, of course it’s dead,” Zelsys replied, making no attempt to hide the self-satisfaction in her tone, a beaming smile on her face.

The riflewoman let out a relieved sigh, tension visibly leaving her body. As she walked towards the firepit, she stowed the remaining cartridges into her pants pocket and stuck the ramrod back into its slot below the rifle’s barrel. 

“How much longer do you think he’ll be out?” the towering bear-slayer mused, stabbing her newfound tool of slaughter into the ash-covered soil around the firepit before she sat down on the log next to her cyclopean compatriot.

“Long enough to get you the proper holster for that thing,” answered the blonde with a nod towards the cleaver. “Knowing him, he won’t try tangling with someone objectively stronger than him.”

“Objectively- Oh, because I can use the cleaver and he can’t.”

“Yeah. His Aether’s barely good enough to make it shift, and he isn’t even strong enough to swing it with both hands, even though he’s the strongest among us by a hair.”

“I assume the second strongest is-”

“Sigmund, yeah,” said Spliteye, turning her eyes to the man. Motionless as he was, his eyes shifted to meet hers. “When he’s not seized up, at least. You good there buddy?”

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