Chương 10: Don't Fall

Right. Nix was going to take on an amalgamation with nothing but her weak, sickly, emaciated body. Nothing could go wrong. She'd survived being eaten by a damn Eidolon God, after all. How could one of the weakest manifested beasts pose a problem to her? Hmm, she thought. Maybe the creature will get so intimidated by my confident aura that it will simply throw itself to its death.

Well, she doubted she'd get that lucky, but it was rather high; if she somehow manoeuvred the beast off the ledge, the fall itself might kill it. Or at least hurt it. Or maybe just shoo it away. Considering she held nothing but the clothes on her back, there really wasn't any other options before her. Either she threw all her eggs in this basket, or she died. Nix wouldn't die again. The constant scratch of bony fingers tapping against metal grew louder as the amalgamation approached.

It was across from her, but with steadier hands, it had climbed as far as the second ladder without falling. There was only moments before it would strike. The rail pressed against her back, and she feathered her hand over the hard metal surface to make sure she wasn't imagining it — Nix refused to take her eyes from the monster — before bringing them back ahead of her. She would need her hands. If there was any one thing Nix was thankful for, it was the lack of any fangs or claws on the amalgamation.

Those bony fingers were long and hard, but they were unlikely to kill her before she could fight back. Only its strength did she have to worry about, and she intended to use that against it. If there was any second thing Nix was thankful for, it was the lack of eyes. She didn't like eyes. The four armed beast finally reached her level. Each time its long fingers clattered into the structural beam, or latch around those strange, arm-long barbs in the tower, they would clamp shut with force.

When it let go, an equal force went into that action. It made for an unsettling pivot between two extremes. And didn't help that when it clamped its fist shut, the fingers would often splay in ways no joint should allow. Its rapid climb up the vertical beam lurched to a stop the moment it went above Nix's height. For a moment, it froze, as if befuddled that it couldn't reach her by following the same path it had. That didn't last.

As soon as its hands found the criss-crossing beams that crossed the structure, the creature was bounding for her once more. Twitchy arms pulled it along the side of the tower, before it found the ladder, and all restraint disappeared. The amalgamation flung itself at Nix. Unable to stop her racing heart, she tucked her legs beneath her, and scooped her hands out before her, then over her head as she dropped. She didn't even notice when she'd closed her eyes.

Something struck her hand, then there was a scrape along her forearm before something clanged. Her eyes snapped open as she struggled to get her feet beneath her. Her hand reached the rail, and she spun, expecting to find the amalgamation falling to its death. It wasn't. The beast hung from the last alloy beam before Still Tower's vast empty interior. If only it had missed that, it would have fallen. If only Nix had pushed a little harder. In an instant, it flung itself back at her. She had no time to react.

She tried to back away, but quickly found three inhuman hands grasping at her with strength she couldn't hope to compete. One on her shoulder and one on her opposite elbow, she felt like the beast was trying to pull her apart. But it was the hand that grabbed at her hair that hurt the most. The rail was still between them — separating them — but she couldn't pull herself back. Nix tugged at the arms, tried to peel open the fingers, and wailed into the creature's torso, but nothing worked.

She was just a teenage girl on her naming day. Had she been given this second chance only to die a few hours after returning? Would K'tan and the great cults continue to go unpunished because some creature coincidentally spawned from her blood? Nix wouldn't allow it. If death was her future regardless of the choices she made, then she would take the path that left her on top. The only path that would give her what she wanted. She stopped resisting the amalgamation.

Her weight shifted, crashing into the chest of the creature, and sent them both away from the safety of the railing and into freefall. The fall was too quick. There was no time to adjust her position to remain on top, nor could she even think of such an action; one moment she was five-ish storeys up, the next she was on the ground. In pain. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Something inside her chest burned, and she didn't even bother to look at her arm. It didn't move right. And blood was dribbling down her mouth again. The monster! Where was it. She rolled, adrenaline muting the agony she was sure would soon strike. The beast was flailing. All four of its arms were broken, but with how they continued to scratch at its torso, she doubted it cared for them. No, it was scratching at something that burned on its chest. Whatever burned at the beast did not last.

And once the smoke was clear, the amalgamation was back to scrambling after her. Nix scooted away, before forcing herself to ignore the pain in her arm and chest and get to her feet. She was always just one swipe out of range of the creature, and finally on her feet, she could limp faster than it could clamber with its confused body. Each break in the creature's limbs now acted as another joint to bend. It now had to relearn to walk. That was the only reason Nix could escape.

"Why do you not kill it?" the floating eye taunted her.

"You could do it so easily." She ignored Little God's jeers, but knew what her subconscious was screaming at her. She couldn't run. Even with her injuries, she could not leave this fight unfinished. It didn't matter that she had no weapon or her opponent was an illogical being, just that it was still alive. She saw herself in the same situation with the targets of her revenge.

Would she run from them, when it wasn't impossible to take her slice, or would she drive a dagger through their skulls and make sure they could never repeat their sins in this version of reality. But… she didn't have to fight without a weapon. She dashed — or at least the best impression of a dash her aching ribs and limp arm allowed — to the ancient fence. With a heave, she threw her entire — albeit light — weight into dislodging the metal bar from the fence. It bent the wire mesh, but remained in place.

She grabbed it with her one good arm, and tugged. But that was no more successful. The makeshift weapon wouldn't snap free, and the creature was closing in, moving faster with each step. So she shifted strategies. Nix angled the pole towards the beast and waited for it to pierce itself. It was hard to do even this; the wire mesh resisted, and her body didn't want to listen. She shoved the metal pole down anyway. Wires scraped along her back, tearing holes in the shoulders of her gown and the skin beneath.

Her head pounded, and she felt dizzy, but she couldn't let it bother her. She had to hold until the beast impaled itself. The amalgamation did so without any hesitation, as if there was no pain in getting your chest punctured. Nix took a few steps back, and the mindless creature continued to clamber after her, even as ancient fencing held it back. A heavy creaking foretold the snap. In an instant, all resistance was gone.

With the fence no longer holding back the amalgamation's weight, it lurched forward, barely missing Nix as it crashed and shoved the pole clear through its chest. No blood came out. Instead a black ooze dribbled free. Nix leapt on the protruding pole and ripped it from the creature. It tugged free far easier than she was expecting, considering she only had the one arm in working order. She twisted the makeshift spear so the sharp end was facing down again, and shoved it in.

The flesh resisted, and an arm rose to grab her ankle. She jabbed the weapon through the arm and twisted. It wasn't enough to sever the hand, but it certainly forced it to let go. Again and again, she shoved the pole through flesh, splashing black ooze everywhere. It kept trying to get back up, and she kept shoving it down. Her spear cut through flesh and scraped against bone like that was its purpose. Some worn down pole from a time long forgotten: now an implement of death.

Whether it was the adrenaline, or the hate deep within her, Nix ignored the wounds and exhaustion that should stop her, and shoved the pole into the pile of flesh over and over again. When she was done, the amalgamation was nothing but a mass of flesh and black sludge that gradually melted away into nothingness. Nix stood there, panting. Her pole tapped against the hard ground as if she would find more flesh to stab. The death of an amalgamation — as with many monster — was a strange thing.

Its flesh melted away without leaving a trace, as if reality itself consumed them. What was even stranger, was that a tiny dash of salt would prevent it from happening. If one wanted to, they could keep the corpses. It was disgusting practice and Nix didn't know why some wanted to have more to clean up afterwards, but many cultists were… unique. The pole stabbed at the ground again, finding nothing left. It was over. Nix had killed an amalgamation.

She'd gotten so lucky in so many aspects, but she was alive and the monster wasn't. If even a single thing had gone differently in the past few minutes, Nix would have been torn apart in the hands of that thing. She must have landed on the beast when they fell to only have the wounds she did. Her gaze dropped to her arm, finding that just below the elbow, it hung at an angle. As soon as her eyes landed on the clear break, she couldn't turn away.

It was so horrific, and her stomach turned at the sight, but there was a weird disparity between what she saw and what she felt. Seeing it bent like that made her think it should be a thousand times more painful, and while it certainly hurt, it wasn't that bad. Like how a bruise would feel after being hung by the arms all day. Still, despite the horrific state of her arm, she was alive. She could live to see another day. A vicious growl made Nix freeze.

Tilting her head, she found another, much larger beast crawling out of her still boiling pool of blood. The thing was like a trolley it was so big. A long, toothy maw spread across the oversized head of a cat. A dozen spindly insectoid legs rose from the pool and tried to pull the amalgamation through the mass of blood that was clearly not wide enough for it. Nix stumbled back, her legs deciding then and there that they were done, and collapsed.

Her makeshift spear rose, but the sight inspired none of her earlier confidence. The pole was a toothpick to this thing. Where she'd struggled against something that was probably smaller than herself, this amalgamation was ten times greater. If not more. Waves of blood rolled off its sides, spreading the pool of boiling crimson further, and soon it was wide enough to free this monster. It skittered out, revealing its full two-storey height beneath the accretion's light. The massive head only held the mouth.

No eyes, or snout, despite the structure that seemed to support them. The cat's head was attached to a lizard body, but connected far too low. It gave the beast a terrible hunchback. And, somehow, the lizard's body connected to a hundred randomly sprouted centipede legs in a way that didn't look terribly unnatural. The beast as a whole still looked like a nightmare turned reality, but it somehow made the uselessly hanging legs sprouting from its back seem fitting.

Like evolution had decided — for some anomalous reason — that's where they should go. One moment, the amalgamation stepped towards her. The next, it was a pile of black ooze and flesh. Nix hadn't even been able to comprehend when it happened. She just knew that at some point in the past few seconds, the monster went from living to dead. And there was now a man standing in its melting corpse. A man glaring at her.