Chapter 8 v2 Hanged
"Whe…re… am I?"
The thought didn't come out as a shout nor as a whisper: it vibrated inside his skull, reverberating between his temples as if someone else had spoken it aloud.
Kaep barely opened his eyes. Darkness surrounded him, and for a moment he thought he was still dreaming. But the wind struck his face with the sharpness of an icy whip, and his body answered for him: he was awake.
He realized his arms were stretched upward, rigid, as if trying to reach for a sky he couldn't see. He hadn't placed them like that willingly; his own weight was pulling them down. The swaying was gentle at first, an almost imperceptible rocking, until a stronger gust jolted him and he understood: he was hanging.
The rain fell without pause, each drop piercing through his clothes and sliding along his skin until it froze his bones. The cold wasn't just discomfort; it was a stabbing pain that settled deep in his muscles, that made his jaw tremble uncontrollably.
Kaep tried to focus his sight. In front of him, very close, a metallic wall glistened now and then under the flashes of lightning. His still-clouded mind wondered if it was real or a hallucination. He stretched his neck, lowered his gaze, and discovered his legs stuck out through an irregular gap. The position explained why he was upside down, trapped like an insect dangling from a crack.
His heart sped up as he noticed a different pain, sharper than the cold. A burning in his head. Clumsily, he raised a hand to his forehead and his fingers touched something damp and thick. It wasn't water.
His eyes opened wide. He lifted his hand to check. At the light of another lightning flash he saw the dark stain on his palm: a thick red, almost black.
"Blo…od? My blood?" he stammered, though the voice was lost in the roar of the waves.
His hand dropped again, but instead of falling it rose once more, following the swing of his body. Confused, he looked up: his arms weren't answering with firmness, they hung at the mercy of the rocking, just like the rest of him.
Beyond, the waves rose one over another, enormous, devouring each other in brutal clashes against the metallic wall. They were so tall that for a moment he feared they would reach him… but no, the structure rose high enough to keep them at bay.
Then, a different movement tore him away from his thoughts.
A hand emerged from the water. A hand that was not human.
…
A metallic snap broke his stupor.Kaep fixed his gaze and saw it: a bony, elongated hand dug into the steel wall, as if it had sprouted out of nowhere. Webbed fingers clenched hard, ripping sparks out of the metal as they clung.
"What the hell…?" he thought, his mind still too slow to react.From that height the silhouette seemed small, insignificant. But something in the twisted angle of those fingers, in the unnatural way they bent, made his skin crawl.
A second hand emerged, this time higher up, hooking into the plate with a dry thud. And then the body appeared.
The salty air carried the stench to him at once: a grotesque creature, skin covered in wet scales, muscles writhing beneath a viscous layer. The head was a nightmare's horror: a deformed fish with bulging eyes that gleamed with a sickly light, needle-like teeth jutting from a twisted jaw.
Kaep held his breath. The monster wasn't climbing—it was clawing its way up. Each time it sank its talons into the metallic hull, the screech spread through the entire structure, like nails on a chalkboard multiplied by a hundred. The vibration reached into his bones.
Suddenly, instead of climbing, the being raised its arm and drove it down violently. The claw pierced the wall with a metallic crash. Then it slid horizontally, tearing a jagged line of sparks.
Kaep froze, watching as the monster forced the gap wider with its other hand, enlarging it with blows until the plate gave way with a groan. In mere seconds, where once there had been a solid wall there was now a ragged hole.
The monster turned its fish-head toward the darkness inside and, without hesitation, slid into the ship. Its scaled tail vanished last, dragging like a slimy serpent before disappearing behind the metal.
Kaep still hung there, swaying, with the screech's echo in his ears and the bitter certainty that this wasn't a delirium.
A shiver ran down Kaep's spine. Not from the rain's cold, but from a bitter intuition. He swallowed hard.
He turned his head to the left, carefully, so as not to lose the precarious balance that kept him caught in the gap. His heart froze.
On the metallic surface, dozens of silhouettes repeated the same motion. Webbed hands digging in, slimy bodies ascending, eyes glowing in the gloom. It wasn't a lone intruder. It was an invasion.
Each new impact of claw against hull resounded like a maddened drum. Clang! Screeech! A dozen metallic shrieks at once, each one opening a breach, each one announcing yet another hole in the ship. The steel was no longer a wall: it looked like cheese riddled with holes, weakened everywhere.
"Fi…sh?" The word slipped out barely as a breath, but it was all he managed to say.
The image hit him suddenly: a half-fogged memory, blurred by pain. The flash of a coral spear flying toward him, the reflections that had made him react, the electricity concentrating in his arm, the lightning bolt firing back in retaliation. The crack of impact. The smell of charred flesh.
"Fish…" he repeated, this time with his eyes wide open.
His inner voice thundered inside his head:"Fish!"
The mental scream shook him, shattering the haze that had wrapped him since he woke hanging. His muscles tensed in an instant. Confusion dissolved, replaced by the brutal awareness that he was in the middle of an attack and, worse still, in a horrible position.
And with that, came the pain.
A lightning bolt of fire pierced his skull, so intense that for a second he thought the thunder had struck inside his head. The world shrank to that unbearable sting, to the uncontrolled drumming of his heart.
A groan escaped through clenched teeth. Instinctively he raised a hand to his forehead, his fingers fumbling over the wet skin. The touch was torment: burning, raw flesh, and immediately the slippery slickness he had felt before.
He lowered his hand before his eyes. Another lightning flash lit up the sky, leaving no doubt: his palm was covered in blood. His own.
Kaep gritted his teeth. He couldn't even think about how he had gotten that wound; the only clear thing was that he was hanging upside down, bleeding, surrounded by creatures climbing the hull.
Then thunder split the sky. The flash lit the entire horizon for a heartbeat. And in that instant he saw it clearly.
The entire ship.The steel giant in the middle of the raging sea. The storm lashed it mercilessly; each wave struck the structure with such force it seemed the hull would split in two. Everywhere, dozens of breaches had been opened. And in each one of them, fish-creatures sliding inside.
The glow vanished as quickly as it had come, returning him to darkness. But the image was already carved into his mind: the ship wasn't being attacked by a handful of monsters. It was being overrun.
A shiver coursed through his body, colder even than the rain.
Kaep panted. He tried to stretch toward the frame of the window he hung from: if he could grab it, maybe he could climb back inside.
He raised one arm, forcing it to reach the edge. His fingers barely brushed the wet metal before slipping."Tch!" he hissed.
He tried again, arching his torso to gain a few more inches. The pain in his head hammered harder, making him lose precision. His hand failed again, scraping the wall without finding a hold.
A third time. This time he tensed his muscles until his back cracked. His arm stretched desperately… and again, nothing. The frame was just beyond his reach. Too far.
The swaying infuriated him: each swing pulled him farther away, as if the ship itself were mocking him. Kaep lowered his head, clenched his teeth in rage. Moisture covered everything; even if he touched the metal, his hands slipped as though over greased glass.
"Not like this…" he thought. "I'll never reach."
The idea struck like lightning: the fish. They didn't climb with useless effort. They carved their own holds.
"Maybe… maybe I can make a hole too."
He turned his neck, staring at the metallic surface within reach of his left arm. If he could score it, even a little, he would have a grip. He drew in a deep breath, swallowing the taste of blood dripping from his forehead.
He extended his left arm until it touched the cold, wet wall. The contact sent a shiver through him, but he didn't pull back. With his right, he drew it back, fingers together, as if turning it into a spear.
"Can I pierce it?… or will I just break my fingers?"
Doubt gnawed at his mind, but there was no other choice. The pain in his head clouded him, blood blinded one eye, and still he convinced himself: it was that or fall.
Kaep closed his eyes for an instant, trying to focus. The pain in his head didn't relent, but he needed to channel all his energy into the arm.
"Discharge…" he muttered through his teeth, as if the word could summon the spark.A tingling ran through his forearm. First weak, then stronger. The tips of his fingers began to glow with erratic sparks.
Chss… chss…
Tiny discharges jumped between his left hand, pressed against the metal, and his right, tensed back. The air filled with the acrid scent of ozone. Suddenly, both sparks sought each other and met halfway, merging into a single whip-crack that sizzled in the darkness.
That was the moment. Kaep thrust his right arm forward like a spear, his whole body pushing the strike.
The impact never came.
At the decisive instant, a gust of wind shook the structure. His legs, already halfway out the gap, slipped even further, throwing his attack completely off angle. His hand grazed the metal, the discharge dissipated into the air with a snap, and all he achieved was losing his balance.
"No, no, no!" he groaned desperately.
He felt the void pulling at him. His feet no longer had support, the window was behind him. His whole body leaned toward the inevitable fall.
In a reflex, he flung both arms to the sides, seeking any hold. The miracle appeared: an irregular gap, one of the breaches the fish had opened. His hands seized its sharp edge. The skin tore on contact, but he didn't let go.
The swaying stopped abruptly, his body hanging upside down. His legs dangled free, only his feet still inside the window. Blood slid from his palms, mixing with the rainwater, but Kaep didn't loosen his grip.
He had dodged the fall for a second. And he was bleeding more than ever.
Air burned his lungs as he tried to catch his breath. Every muscle in his arms shook, and blood streamed from his palms in dark rivulets.
Then he felt it. A strange warmth, different from the sting of wounds or the cold rain.It came from his left thigh.
He looked down and froze.A golden glow was emerging beneath the soaked fabric, pulsing as if a living spark beat inside his leg. It wasn't the bluish light of his discharges. It was something else… something he didn't recognize.
"What…?" he whispered, unable to look away.
He had no time to find an answer.
BOOM!!!
A brutal blow shook him from the side. The metallic plate to his left bulged outward as if something enormous had rammed it from within. The crash reverberated through the entire structure, and the impact nearly tore him from his hold.
"Aaagh!" he screamed, clinging desperately to the edge of the gap. The sharp edge bit deeper into his skin, shredding the flesh of his palms. A gush of fresh blood fell into the void, but he didn't let go.
The metal gave him no respite. The dent began to tremble, cracking with a terrifying creak.
BOOM!!!
The hull exploded outward, tearing away twisted chunks and warping the whole wall around it. The shockwave swept away everything nearby: the window, the edges that held him, even the fish-hole where his hands had clung.
Kaep felt his grip disintegrate beneath his fingers. The roar of the explosion deafened him, the air turned into an invisible force shoving him backward.
His body lost balance completely.
And he fell.