Chương 142: Where Luck Runs Out

The serpent was only a couple of meters from the boy. It opened its jaws, studded with crooked but sword-sharp teeth crowded in several rows, glinting in the light of the dying streetlamps and dripping long, viscous strands of saliva onto the asphalt, where they hissed against the scorching debris.

To Lloyd, the maw seemed so enormous it could have swallowed the boy whole without so much as choking, and the stench pouring out of it — a blend of sulfur, rot, and old blood — slammed into his face before the teeth had even closed. But he was not fated to find out. A moment before death, Lloyd shot forward and, slamming into the boy with his shoulder, knocked him to the ground, rolling aside together with him. For a second the world turned into a chaotic blur of sky, asphalt, and someone's elbows and knees.

The serpent crashed with monstrous force into the spot where they had been standing an instant earlier. The ground shuddered as if struck by a giant hammer, chunks of concrete flew in every direction, whistling over their heads and ringing as they smashed against the walls of nearby buildings, and then a thick gray veil of dust rose up, swallowing everything at once, as though the street itself had vanished along with the fading light of the lamps.

Somewhere close by, storefront windows rained down with a plaintive jangle, and in the brief silence that followed, he could clearly hear smaller fragments still falling from above, drumming on the asphalt like the start of a hailstorm. His ears rang, and his mouth tasted of stone grit and blood from a bitten cheek. Somewhere far off a siren wailed desperately, but the sound reached him as though through a thick layer of cotton, having nothing whatsoever to do with what was happening here and now.

Lloyd forced himself up, swaying on legs gone to jelly, and stood in front of the boy, shielding him with his body. His knee stung, and tiny beads of blood welled up on his palms, scraped raw against the asphalt, but he hardly felt the pain, as if his whole body had become a single taut nerve.

Behind him, the boy, still sitting on the ground, gulped for air, and the phone that had fallen from his hands, its screen cracked, glowed dimly among the shards of glass, still cheerfully playing some upbeat tune, absurdly out of place amid the chaos. Red sparks flared up beside his palm, swirled in the air, and, rapidly weaving together, merged into a plain black sword — no frills, no ornaments, yet cold and heavy, as if carved from a piece of night itself.

He pointed the blade into the veil of dust, inside which a true monster was stirring — the Phantom. This might be Lloyd's last battle. If it could even be called a battle. After all, even against a single Shadow he had given everything he had, and his victory over the previous Phantom had been nothing more than blind luck, a fluke that doesn't happen twice. And it seemed he had used up every last scrap of his luck back then. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The cloud of dust began to settle slowly, revealing the Phantom in all its horrifying glory. Thick saliva trailed from its tooth-studded maw, and its crimson eyes, burning with cold malice, were fixed on Lloyd, unblinking, unyielding, as though the serpent had already passed sentence and was merely savoring the moments before carrying it out. Its massive body undulated slowly, the violet plates on it grinding softly against one another, as if someone were sharpening hundreds of blades on stone all at once.

Around it the air quivered with dense, oppressive phantasm that made his temples ache and his breathing heavier with every second, as though the air itself had turned into a thick, heavy sludge. The asphalt beneath the serpent's scaly belly cracked and crumbled, leaving a deep, ragged furrow stretching all the way back to the ruined wall of the building.

Lloyd gripped the sword with both hands, but even that failed to quell the tremor running through his fingers and echoing in the hilt with a small, treacherous rattle that, to him, seemed audible across the entire street.

"Damn it, what an idiot. What an idiot I am!" Suddenly an idea flashed through his mind, and he summoned into his right hand a round, smooth red sphere, which settled heavily into his palm as though something far more alive than a mere object were contained within it. The surface of the sphere pulsed dimly from within, as if a tiny, white-hot heart were beating inside it, casting crimson, trembling glints onto his fingers and sleeve. Perhaps this was his only key to the door behind which life still waited.

"The last Phantom had no durability, which is why this relic tore it to pieces," he thought, scanning the violet plates covering the serpent's hide, thick, heavy, overlapping like the armor of some ancient lizard.

"But will it be able to tear this Phantom apart the same way? And besides..." He glanced at his own hand, at the red surface of the sphere, from which a noticeable, steadily growing warmth was already radiating, prickling unpleasantly at the skin of his palm and then swelling into genuine heat.

"Where am I supposed to put it out here? I'll burn alive first. I don't know which death is better." Lloyd looked straight into the monster's eyes, and a shudder passed through his body, briefly buckling his knees. Behind him the boy breathed quietly, raggedly, and that sound, strangely enough, wouldn't let him retreat a single step.

Around them, somewhere beyond the veil of dust, he could make out the silhouettes of frozen onlookers, but not one of them rushed to help, and in that echoing, taut silence between two heartbeats, Lloyd clearly understood that he could count only on himself. The serpent raised its head slightly, and a low, rolling hiss escaped its throat, setting the glass in the remaining intact windows trembling, while a chill ran down Lloyd's spine as though someone had drawn a piece of ice along it.

Time seemed to slow, stretching out to an unbearable, ringing thinness. Lloyd heard his own heart pounding in his temples, heard the plates creaking, heard water dripping somewhere from a burst pipe, and every one of those sounds seemed distinct and important, as though the world were saying its farewells in advance, hurrying to commit the smallest details to memory. He merely whispered, barely audible, without taking his eyes off the crimson ones: — Looks like this is a one-way road...