Chapter 9 - Die Already v2
Kaep was barely holding on. His arms burned, his hands slipped on the mixture of blood and rain. The metal edge was a knife against his skin, and yet he clung on with everything he had.
A fleeting thought crossed his mind: "If I change my position, maybe I can get a better grip."
With a grunt, he let go with his right arm, trying to twist his body to hook himself on at a different angle.
But as soon as he freed one hand, the other could no longer bear the load.
The blood had numbed his grip. The metal edge cut him as if mocking him, and his fingers opened against his will.
"No!" he managed to groan, but the word was lost in the roar of the wind.
His grip gave way.
Suddenly, everything slowed down. The pounding in his ears was a giant drum, keeping time with his fall. Every raindrop fell alongside him like needles suspended in the air.
His body followed, turning heavily to one side, and in that movement, he saw the hole he had tried to hold onto.
First, close. Then farther away. Then, finally out of reach.
His heart shrank.
He stretched out one arm. He grazed nothing.
He stretched out the other. He grazed even less.
Once. Twice. Three desperate attempts.
The hole kept moving away, relentless.
The spin continued, slow but inevitable. His legs rose above him, and his head was left facing the sky. Now he was falling on his back, his body arched, his arms outstretched like a cross.
The night sky devoured him whole: black clouds torn by lightning that flashed on and off. Every flash showed him the magnitude of the hell he was trapped in: the roaring storm, the raging sea, and him floating in the middle of nowhere.
The sensation was twofold: a fierce vertigo that shrank his stomach, and at the same time, a slowness that forced him to see every detail of his fall. He could feel his soaked hair stuck to his face, the throbbing in the wound on his head marking a painful pulse, and the drops of blood detaching from his open palms, following the same descending trajectory as him.
His mouth opened in a useless attempt to breathe, but he only swallowed cold air and saltwater.
For an instant, he thought it was all over. That the last thing he would see would be that blackened sky.
That's what he would have thought…
But something else caught his attention.
[A few moments earlier]
The wall shook with every blow from within. The metal was dented, cracked, about to burst. The din built up like a muffled roar until finally…
KRAAANG!!!
The plate gave way. A hole opened suddenly, spitting into the interior a gust of icy wind and rain that seeped in like blades.
Through the hole shot two intertwined bodies: the six-limbed monster and the red-haired man. The force of the impact propelled them into the open air, beyond the hull.
The redhead felt the impact in the pit of his stomach. The hilt of the sword, still embedded in the creature, drove violently into the bruise on his abdomen.
"Ghrrk!" a choked grunt escaped his throat, his face contorted in pain. Every muscle screamed at him to double over, but he couldn't: the monster was dragging him with it.
The back covered in scaly protrusions was all he could see in front of him. Behind, the interior of the ship quickly moved away, disappearing among shadows and rain.
"Shit…"
The word burned in his mind like a spark of fury. His jaw tightened, his teeth grinding with contained rage. The pain was unbearable, but even worse was the feeling of powerlessness: being dragged like a doll in the hands of that aberration.
The air enveloped them, and the inertia from their exit made them spin together, like an out-of-control wheel turning aimlessly.
But…
Before completing the first spin…
The red-haired man, with a brutal effort, braced his left knee against the scaly torso of the monster. The contact was like hitting a wet, cold stone. Then he stretched out his right leg, covering it in a vibrant red aura. The energy crackled around his thigh and down to the tip of his foot, tinting the rain hitting him.
A roar escaped his chest.
BAM!
A knee strike charged with all the force of his aura slammed into the monster's torso. The creature barely flinched; the blow seemed useless against that hard, slimy flesh… but it wasn't.
The contact had created a gap. The impact hadn't truly hurt it, but it had pushed it enough to break the pressure of the charge.
The redhead separated a few centimeters from the monster. It wasn't freedom, but it was an opportunity.
The pain in his abdomen bit at him furiously again. The bruise burned like fire, every muscle clamored to stop. But he didn't stop. He forced himself to spin more, twisting his body to the limit of its elasticity, ignoring the groans of his own torn body.
Then he saw it.
Among the lightning flashes, right below him, was the unconscious young man… now awake.
---
The chaos of the spin dragged them all equally: the monster, the redhead, and Kaep. The world was a whirlwind of rain, steel, and sea.
Kaep, gasping for breath, saw it: a silhouette with a leg covered in aura, a red-haired man, just a few meters above.
The redhead also made him out. Their gazes met in a flash of lightning.
Both understood the same thing in a fleeting instant: "opportunity."
Kaep stretched out his arm with all his might, fingers open, seeking any contact.
The redhead did the same, tensing his body against the inertia of the fall. The pain in his abdomen bit at him, but he ignored it.
One second.
Another.
Their hands brushed in the air, just a touch of wet skin. The friction almost made them lose the chance.
But the second time, their fingers hooked together desperately.
They caught each other!
The impact of the grip shook them, but neither let go.
The redhead's red aura glowed intensely. Without wasting time, he covered opposite areas of his body: left shoulder, right leg, torso. His energy expanded like an improvised harness.
With a grunt, he began to swing the boy, using the little inertia they had left. Each movement was a titanic effort, like rowing in an ocean of wind and rain.
One… two… three oscillations.
Now!
With a calculated spin, he let go.
Kaep shot toward the wall like a human projectile. The wind whipped his face, the rain blinded him, but he could make out the hole opened in the hull, just a few meters below the breach from which the redhead had been expelled.
The torn edge shone with a wet sharpness. If he hit it head-on, he would be impaled.
"Aaah!" a guttural cry escaped his throat as he twisted his torso in the air.
With a brutal effort, he stretched his right arm forward. His fingers slammed against the metal edge and hooked on with great difficulty. The impact burned his shoulder, and an electric pain ran through his entire arm.
His other arm couldn't join it. He instinctively crossed it over his chest, protecting himself from the irregular blades protruding from the hole. The edge scraped his skin and tore the fabric of his clothes, but didn't pierce him.
For an instant, he hung there, suspended, head bowed, panting.
"I did it…" he thought, his chest burning.
Then, the pull came.
First slight, just a pressure on his leg. Then, a brutal drag downward, as if an anchor were pulling him straight into the sea.
Kaep groaned through clenched teeth.
He knew he had the redhead hanging from his ankle, but this was different. The weight was much greater, a pull so violent that his right shoulder cracked with a sinister snap.
"Ghrrhh!" a groan of pain shot through his throat.
The arm holding him trembled, every muscle about to burst. The left hand, which was braced against the hull to prevent his body from being impaled on the edge, slipped. And in that slip, his palm was trapped against a sharp edge.
The metal tore through the flesh of his hand like a blade.
A jet of warm blood mixed with the icy water of the storm.
Kaep clenched his teeth so hard he thought they would break. But he didn't let go. Even though the wound made him want to scream in pain, he kept his hand pinned against the edge, sacrificing it to keep his body off the blades.
The entire hull vibrated beneath them with the crash of the waves, as if the whole ship were about to split apart.
The pull kept dragging him down. And Kaep understood: it wasn't just the redhead weighing there. There was something else.
The redhead hung from Kaep's ankle like a slab of iron. Every second that passed, he felt how the tension in his own abdomen was tearing him apart.
When Kaep managed to grab onto the torn edge, the inertia threw the redhead against the ship's hull.
THUMP!
The impact was direct on his right side, right where the bruise had formed hours before. The pain exploded like a hammer in his guts.
"Ghhk!" he spat, his face twisted, his mouth open in a snarl of rage and suffering.
His left hand clawed at the metal wall, nails scraping uselessly against the wet steel. The red aura barely contained the internal tearing he felt in his ribs.
But the worst wasn't the pain.
It was the feeling of being pulled down even further.
The redhead looked down, gasping for breath. The wind whipped his face, the rain got in his eyes, but he managed to see it.
"Seriously…!" he huffed, between moans.
The fish monster was there, clinging to his right leg. Its scaly tail had spiraled around his thigh and ankle, squeezing like a constrictor snake. Each contraction made his bones creak and his muscles tense as if they were about to burst.
And it wasn't just that.
The monster arched its grotesque body, trying to use its four free arms to hook itself even more onto the redhead. Its webbed fingers beat the air, scraping its claws against the metal of the hull to get a hold.
Every movement of the tail was a whip-like motion that made him descend another centimeter. As if the creature were testing his resistance, pushing and squeezing, waiting for both of them to fall.
The redhead closed his eyes for a second, clenched his jaw until his teeth creaked. His face contorted between anger and desperation.
The pain was unbearable; his right leg seemed about to burst under the pressure of the tail. Kaep, hanging above, let out choked groans while blood dripped from his hands. The entire hull creaked with each onslaught of the waves.
The redhead lifted his head and shouted furiously, his voice broken by the storm:
"I'll handle it, hold on!"
His left hand rose with a brusque gesture, and the rain hitting him stopped for an instant in the air. The drops that had struck his skin began to spin, coiling into tiny whirlpools. Others joined, drawn as if obeying an invisible order, forming a liquid swarm that grew every second.
The drops elongated, stretching out like crystalline needles until they formed dozens of sharp spirals.
A blink later, forty-two points of water floated around him like an arsenal suspended in the midst of the storm.
The needles dove down.
SHHHH! CRACK! CHSSH!
Each water spiral embedded itself in the slimy skin of the monster, impaling it in different directions. The creature shrieked with a guttural sound. The impact forced it back a few centimeters, arching its torso in a spasm.
The redhead didn't waste the moment. With his left leg covered in red aura, he delivered a stomp on the coiled tail.
BAM!
The hull vibrated with the blow. The monster squeezed tighter.
Another stomp.
BAM!
The tail deformed, the scaly flesh crunching under the pressure, but instead of letting go, it contracted with more force, as if each blow incited it to hold on even tighter.
The redhead growled through his teeth, growing angrier. His face was contorted in a grimace of rage and pain. He felt his own muscles giving way, his right leg burning under the tail's pressure as if it were being crushed.
Above, Kaep's moans grew more desperate.
Below, the monster clung on more viciously, its single healthy eye gleaming.
---
The water needles kept plunging into the monster's flesh, one after another, piercing its scaly torso like liquid thorns. The creature arched its body, shaking, retreating just a few centimeters with each impact.
The redhead gasped, his left leg delivering frantic kicks against the tail that imprisoned him. The hull resonated with each blow, but the tail didn't yield: it contracted even more, sinking its scales into his skin, biting into his leg like a living vise.
Suddenly, the monster changed.
Instead of continuing to shrink, it arched in the opposite direction, flexing its body with unnatural agility. In an impossible movement, it spun on itself, almost three-quarters of a turn, like a wheel of flesh and scales.
The tail dragged the redhead with brutal force.
Kaep, above, felt the pull on his shattered arms, his shoulder about to pop out of its socket. A roar of pain burst from his throat, barely audible among the thunder.
The redhead had no time to react. The monster's spin caught him in the middle of a kick, completely throwing him off balance. His muscles were already at their limit from the effort, and the sudden movement finished breaking his resistance.
"ah…!" he muttered through his teeth.
His grip opened.
First his fingers, then his entire palm.
He let go.
For an eternal second, he hung suspended in the air, his gaze fixed on his right ankle still trapped by the monster's tail. The pain was unbearable: as if his leg had been crushed and burned at the same time.
The redhead could only watch in horror and rage as his hands no longer responded, as his grip had broken.
And he understood that the monster was dragging him down.
The redhead spun in the air, dragged like a doll by the monster's tail. The sea roared below them, the storm seemed ready to swallow everything. The vertigo was unbearable; the pressure on his leg was splitting him in two.
"The tail…!" he roared inside his head.
With a desperate effort, he twisted his torso to one side, forcing the trapped leg to twist with him. The movement tore a groan from him, every muscle burning at its limit. The monster swung him as if it wanted to throw him straight into the ocean.
But before the movement could project him downward, the redhead threw his left hand toward the tail.
The red aura enveloped his fingers instantly, crackling in the rain like liquid fire.
His gaze sharpened… and he clenched his hand with force.
His fingers sank into the scaly flesh. They didn't pierce it completely, but enough to tear a guttural shriek from the creature. The tail contracted violently… and suddenly opened.
The redhead felt the pressure disappear. The monster had released his leg.
But it hadn't completely freed him.
The momentum of the movement still kept them connected: the tail, as it let go, dragged his trajectory with it, throwing him in the same direction. The man's body remained chained to the creature in that chaotic dance, as if the monster refused to let him go completely.
Beneath Kaep, the beast slammed into the metal wall with a rending sound.
KRANG!
Its two membranous legs and two of its arms sank into the hull like deformed nails, clinging to the steel with monstrous strength. Its body arched, twisting like an insect as it extended its other two free arms.
The sword, still embedded in its head, vibrated with every spasm of the creature. The hilt protruded like a bloody noose, trembling under the storm. Drops of water and blood cascaded from the wound, mixing into a puddle that the rain instantly dispersed.
Kaep, hanging above, saw that image and an icy shiver ran down his spine.