Chương 86: Ice Spike

Lloyd tried to get up, but the blow had been so powerful that every attempt to rise sent a wave of tearing pain through him, as though every rib had been shattered at once, his lungs scraping against something sharp with every breath. The ground beneath him was cold and damp, soaked with the smell of smoke and blood, dark spots still swimming across his vision, making it impossible to focus on any one thing.

He watched with bitter eyes as Brand remained utterly unable to move — the Creature's hands gripped him so tightly that he could barely breathe, let alone fight back, his chest rising in short, ragged jerks. The flame on his shoulders, usually bright and steady, now burned weak and dim, as though his strength were slowly draining out of him, seeping away through the fingers of the dark hands wrapped around him from every side.

Casper looked as though his own strength were about to give out completely, his face gone grey, breath coming in fits and starts, his knees buckling, sinking lower and lower toward the ground. The Creature, meanwhile, slowly extended its hands toward Brand, its writhing dark fingers approaching his face with an almost tender, mocking unhurriedness, clearly intending to do something to him, and Lloyd, with nothing better to try, decided to stall for time, if only to delay the inevitable by a few precious seconds.

— Stop! The Creature turned toward Lloyd, lying on the ground, all three eyes blinking in perfect unison, studying him with sudden, unexpected interest. — Why bother, why any of this? You can't kill anyone here, this is just a waste of time! It studied Lloyd as though examining some curious specimen behind glass, tilting its nonexistent head to one side, the cloak on its shoulders shifting faintly.

Then it suddenly let out a laugh — quiet at first, insinuating, and then hundreds of voices merged together into one deafening, ear-splitting cackle that rolled across the clearing in a wave, shaking even the surviving trees, shedding their last leaves untouched by fire. And then, just as suddenly, it turned serious — more serious than Lloyd had ever seen it before, all its former playfulness vanishing in an instant, the darkness around it seeming to thicken, deepen, growing denser, almost tangible.

— You're right, I don't have any goals. I do this because I want to do it. I don't need reasons to justify my actions. I'm not like you. Trash, submitting to a system built by trash just like yourselves. Lloyd's eyelids trembled, a chill crawling across his skin that had nothing to do with the temperature, sticky and unpleasant, settling somewhere deep beneath his ribs, as though those words had snagged on something important inside him.

"System? What's it even talking about?" Lloyd was about to keep stalling, frantically searching for anything else to say, anything that might hold the Creature's attention for just a few more seconds, feeling his mouth go dry with tension, his tongue growing heavy and clumsy. But then an unpleasant, scraping sensation suddenly washed over him, as though it were... Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! Cold.

He immediately turned toward Casper — the man was kneeling on one leg, hand clamped over his mouth, whispering something under his breath, his lips barely moving, while a thin layer of frost had already begun spreading across the ground around him, branching out in fine white veins, like a web spun from ice, stretching further and further from where he knelt.

"Was he just pretending to be exhausted? No, something's not right here." The Creature simply stood in place, still holding the restrained Brand with its many arms, glancing back and forth between Lloyd and Casper, clearly amused by the whole situation, as though watching some entertaining but not particularly dangerous game unfolding purely for its own enjoyment, as though the entire scene were nothing more than a performance staged specifically for its pleasure.

But beneath its feet, tiny snow patterns began to form, blooming like frost flowers, radiating a bone-deep, icy cold, spreading across the ground with a faint, barely audible crackling, coating the scorched earth in a thin white crust that grew thicker and denser with every passing second.

The Creature glanced down at its own feet, as though noticing this strange phenomenon for the first time, and something like genuine surprise flickered across it, all three eyes widening for an instant, the cloak on its shoulders going still, no longer swaying. Then a smile spread across its dark semblance of a face, stretching wider than any normal anatomy should allow, revealing something like an endless blackness within, like peering into a bottomless abyss. — Interesting.

Lloyd's eyebrows shot up in horror, his heart skipping a beat, a wave of icy, paralyzing fear washing down his spine, far stronger than anything he'd felt up to that point, stronger even than his fear of the Creature itself, a fear so overwhelming that for a moment it felt as though his lungs had simply stopped working.

He screamed, his voice cracking, pouring every ounce of desperation built up inside him into that cry, every last drop of panic rising from the deepest part of his being, every remaining sliver of hope that it wasn't already too late. — Stop, don't do it, Casper! But it was already too late.

The ground beneath the Creature's feet began to tremble, a web of cracks spreading rapidly in every direction, like a spiderweb straining under some invisible weight, splitting and popping with every passing second, and then, with a deafening crack of splitting stone, an ice spike erupted from the earth — massive, sharp, like the fang of some colossal beast, shooting toward the sky at incredible speed, slicing through the air with a piercing, cutting whistle, trailing a cloud of fine icy dust that glittered faintly in the dim light filtering through the smoke.

The air around it rang with tension, charged and humming, and the ground itself shuddered, as though protesting this powerful surge of force tearing its way up from the depths, as though the planet itself had cried out in pain.

The spike impaled the Creature completely — along with Brand, whose body remained locked helplessly in its grip — with a wet, sickening sound that spread across the entire clearing, echoing off the charred tree trunks, followed by a ringing, deafening silence in which Lloyd could hear nothing but the frantic pounding of his own heart, thudding dully somewhere behind his temples, drowning out even the faint creak of settling ice.