What the gaunt, now pale, man saw… was unlike anything he had ever seen. He had heard of truly vile abominations that could turn a brain to mush just by looking at it, and while the… thing… in the water didn't do exactly that, it also wasn't exactly pleasing to lay eyes upon.
It had a vague humanoid shape from what the gaunt man could tell. By the time he was able to regain a semblance of stability, the creature was already halfway out of the water. Two arms that almost stretched the length of the creature's torso and legs dragged sluggishly through the water, leaving a moderate wake. Its torso was the most humanoid part of it, except for the fact that instead of skin, it instead had a rough hide that resembled shark scales. Beneath its seemingly impenetrable hide, bulging muscles were stretching and straining, powering the abomination through thick waters. But the most grotesque part of the cursed creature…
…was its face.
The abomination barely had a neck connecting its grotesque skull to its torso, covered by rolling muscles. Its face resembled that of a shark and a lizard. Its black pearly eyes nestled on either side of its head gazed at the scrawny man, filled with hunger and avarice. Its protruding snout was split horizontally by its wide maw, adorned by hundreds of teeth sharpened from years of hunting. The only dissimilarity it had to a shark was the fact that it didn't have a fin on its back. Rather, a hideous mound of bleached coral tubes sat atop it, seemingly symbiotic with the shark-like creature. The young gaunt man was able to get a good look at it when the creature bent forward…
…and shot thousands of spikes out of its coral tubes heading straight for the gaunt man.
His eyes widened, processing what just happened after somewhat recovering from his dazed state. But, it was too late.
A sharp pain shot through the left side of his abdomen…
Another needle nicked his left shoulder…
Another needle pierced the right side of his chest…
Another needle came…
And then two more…
And then ten more…
By the time the barrage stopped, the gaunt man was no longer pale. Instead, his skin was tainted with the red crimson of his own blood… his cursed blood. Blood poured out of the holes pierced by the needles like a sponge being squished, with no signs of stopping.
"D… damn… y…"
Before the gaunt man could finish his sentence, he broke out into a fit of coughing with a side of blood. Tears formed and flowed down his face, temporarily cleansing it of crimson, only to dry and have the cursed blood tarnish his pale skin. He took in a hoarse breath and stumbled backwards, tripping on the slope and ending up laying on his back.
He broke out into another coughing fit, almost choking on his own blood, which he was now sitting in a pool of. He strained his abdominal muscles and used what remained of his arms to get himself to sit up. He took another breath.
The world looked bleak and desaturated, painted in values rather than hues. With the amount of blood loss the man received, he would surely die if he didn't regain his blood. The holes punctured by the creature's sharp needles still haven't clotted, if they ever would, with blood pouring out at an alarming rate. The truth was, the gaunt man had haemophilia, a condition where blood has a weakened ability to form a clot and stop a bleeding wound. The types of wounds the man usually dealt with were minor, such as small scrapes or cuts from foraging, or the occasional feisty fish. These cuts weren't life threatening at all, and just needed a little bit more attending to.
However, the man had received several injuries, with each one having the potential to completely wring his body dry of blood. That was the flaw that he had carried ever since childhood, mostly trying to keep this fact of him secret.
From a logical perspective, all he needed to do was to regain the amount of blood he lost. In this unwinnable situation, the man had to find a way to get his spilled blood back into his body….
…which was practically impossible.
But, he wasn't thinking about that right now, because the monstrous abomination was a mere meter away from the man, one of his legs winding up for a devastating kick.
And before the man even knew what was happening, the feeling of a hundred tonne boulder pressed into his chest.
First, his ribs cracked.
Then, they shattered.
Then, his lungs collapsed, fragments of his ribs digging into the soft flesh.
Then, he was flying through the air.
Finally, his consciousness faded.
But just before it did, the gaunt man heard a sudden thunderclap of lightning and the unmistakable clangor of metal.
'Who…'
There would be no coming back from the devastating kick. Even before he was hit by it, the chances of him surviving were near zero. He was as good as dead.
But, unbeknownst to the gaunt man, who was now laying unconscious on the other side of the shore, his pool of blood was slowly crawling up the slope where he once laid. Small crimson tendrils grabbed and dragged the pool of cursed blood up the slope and away from the creature.
Away from all of the fighting.
It was crawling towards him.
End of Chapter 2: Abominable