Chapter 45 - Doomhorn.
A gray, scattered light lay across the clearing without shadows or clear direction, making it hard for the eye to judge distances.
Where the trees had parted to form an open space, the ground was soaked through with moisture from centuries-old moss that gave underfoot with a barely audible sound, while along the edges dark mossy trunks towered into a grey-green canopy.
Beyond them lay an impenetrable darkness, from which the creature had just emerged.
The creature stood motionless, its skull lowered below the level of its shoulder blades, weight shifted onto its front legs.
It watched Aren with four red eyes, not looking away for even a fraction of a second, while its wet, deep breathing was clearly audible at twenty paces, with a long exhale through the nostrils leaving dense vapor in the air between them.
Each of the creature’s several tails moved independently behind its body, tracing slow arcs with their bone spikes.
The body of the dead horse lay three meters behind Aren, and the smell of its blood settled in his throat like a heavy sediment with every breath.
He tightened his grip on the hilt, holding his position and keeping his gaze fixed on the burning points in the shadow, while neither of them moved, as the pale cloud from his exhale slowly dissolved between them.
In the next instant the creature lunged forward, leveling its massive horns at Aren’s torso and tearing a deep roar from its chest.
Aren stepped into a half-profile, bringing his blade into position for a simultaneous counterattack with a sidestep, before the beast sharply flung all its tails over its own body, instantly extending them far beyond its torso.
Aren threw an energy shield from his left palm at the last moment, but the tails struck the surface in that same instant, immediately sending branching cracks across the blue surface.
“WHAT THE?!” flashed through his mind.
He immediately began deflecting the next strikes with his sword, parrying each one aside, then sharply jumped back to dodge a blow from the horns.
“One shield won’t be enough…” Aren thought, covering himself in white-stone armor and tightening his grip on the sword hilt.
The monster was already turning, picking up speed again, while Aren moved to meet it, calculating where the tails would strike from.
“Need to get rid of them first.”
The attacks came in alternating cycles, each new one unfolding before the previous had finished, forcing Aren to parry without pause and retreat step by step.
“Damn it! Just one tail!… Each one just keeps taking the others’ place and gives me no room to counterattack.”
Still retreating, he backed into a tree trunk, then with a sharp step dodged aside from the next strike, which drove deep into the wood and stuck there.
“THERE IT IS! MY CHANCE!”
Deflecting the remaining thrusts, Aren seized the brief window while the beast was freeing its stuck appendage, then hacked at it with a full pivot.
Suddenly, the sword blade bounced straight off with a painful vibration through the hilt, leaving no mark on the creature whatsoever.
“FUCK!” shot through Aren’s mind, as the tails were already flying back, and he raised a magic shield, but one of the tails punched straight through it and drove deep into his shoulder.
The creature immediately charged forward, keeping the tail buried in Aren’s shoulder, and he immediately threw aside his sword, covered both hands in energy claws, and in one chopping motion severed the tail at the base, then stepped sharply aside, and the monster by its own momentum drove its horns into a tree trunk, punching through it and bringing the tree crashing to the ground.
Aren dissolved the claws on his right hand, then with a pained roar tore the spiked stump from his shoulder and pressed his palm to the wound. Blood seeped slowly through his fingers, trickling down his wrist with every movement.
The monster slowly turned toward him, lowering its gaze to the severed appendage at the roots, which then began to tremble, causing dark flesh to rapidly grow across the cut surface, recreating the lost section right to the very tip.
“It punched through the white-stone layer… and regrew the tip of its tail in an instant… on top of that, looks like only weapons with magical energy can pierce its hide…”
Aren reached for the pouch on his belt, but the creature immediately lunged at him, forcing him to throw his right hand aside.
The first tail came in a wide horizontal arc, and Aren stepped back, letting it pass right along his torso, then immediately dropped into a crouch, letting the second pass over his shoulders.
The beast switched to alternating thrusts from below and from the side, and Aren retreated with rolls, shifting along an arc, working his right hand toward the pouch on his belt in every gap between attacks. He felt the vial, closed his hand around it, and kept evading.
During one of the following rolls he managed to rip the cork and drain it in one go, after which several appendages came down on him simultaneously, raising a dense cloud around the point of impact.
When the dust settled, the space where Aren had been a moment ago was empty.
The creature sharply turned, and Aren was already standing at its right shoulder, landing a chopping strike with a step forward and severing the nearest appendage right at the base. Then a second strike, horizontal with a spin, caught the next tail in the middle, and a third downward thrust took the last of the three. In that same instant, a barrage of slashing strikes rained down on the beast’s body, leaving deep furrows in its dark fur.
The monster bared its teeth and charged in answer, aiming its horns at his torso.
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Aren dodged with a short turn to the right, letting the horns pass by his shoulder, and in the same moment hacked upward with his left hand, cutting away another appendage.
The next tail came from above, and he dropped into a crouch, letting the strike pass over his head, then immediately caught the beast with a short thrust to the side. But suddenly, it sharply bent, and the spike at its tip drove into Aren’s side.
Sharp pain was accompanied by a faint pulling sensation from within, one he had never felt before, and Aren immediately cut down the last tail, leaping sharply backward.
Pulling the spike from his body and looking through his magical sight, Aren saw how through the stump of the beast’s tail, a thin stream of his energy was flowing into the creature’s body, healing its wounds and growing new appendages.
“It… just drained energy from me?…”
The pain from the wound in his side made itself felt with every movement, but Aren held his distance and kept deflecting thrusts, slowly pressing forward.
With a sharp rush he closed the distance, deflecting the attacks with successive parries, but not a single opening for a counterattack ever appeared, while the creature advanced with slow steps, simultaneously keeping Aren under pressure with long-range tail strikes.
Cuts came one after another along his arms and thighs, and with each of them that familiar draining pull appeared at the site of the cut.
“Shit… I have… no options… none at all…”
Aren broke clear with a sharp leap, letting another thrust pass by his torso, but a long cut ran across his chest, after which he turned and ran, hearing the growing thunder of heavy footsteps behind him.
The creature was already catching up, and at the right moment Aren leaped aside, and the beast by its own momentum drove its horns into the nearest tree trunk, while the tails immediately followed, driving into a tree behind him.
The creature tore its horns from the wood and resumed the chase.
“Damn it!… Too many tails, and my hands simply aren’t enough to keep up with defense and counterattack… if there were fewer tails… or more hands…” flashed through his mind.
The image of Ursus flashed in his memory as he ran, and with it came the memory of how he had defeated him back then.
“Shit… but will it work?…”
He glanced back as he ran, catching sight of the massive silhouette that hadn’t fallen behind by a single step.
“No other options…”
Aren sharply turned to face the creature hurtling toward him, which with a roar launched its spiked tails mid-charge, and Aren deflected them with his claws, after which the beast lowered its horns and drove them into him with the full momentum of its charging body, and a shockwave erupted from the point of impact, raising a dense whirlwind of dust and leaves.
The beast’s four red eyes snapped wide when its horns met the resistance of two massive clawed forms of blue energy, extending from behind Aren’s shoulders and gripping the creature’s horns on both sides in a death grip.
Aren hurled it aside with a roar, and the monster, by its own mass, shattered five trunks in a row and rolled across the ground in a cloud of pine needles and splinters.
Aren straightened and turned his gaze to the extra pair of limbs.
Each bore four long claws and was four times as wide as his own arm at the base, shot through with the blue glow of runes.
He grinned, pulled the second vial from his pouch and drained it in one go, feeling the wounds along his body begin to quickly close.
The creature meanwhile rose with a muffled roar, turning its muzzle toward him.
Aren covered his hands in claws again and raised the extra pair of limbs higher, taking his stance.
The beast let out a thundering roar, and a dense surge of wind swept through the space, scattering Aren’s hair, after which the creature sharply lunged forward, accelerating with each step and sending its tails ahead.
Aren rushed to meet it, already deflecting and hacking at the appendages with all four limbs at once, severing them one by one. At the last moment he shifted to the side, turned one of the clawed hands into a massive white-stone fist, and slammed it into the creature’s muzzle at full speed.
The beast collapsed on its side and immediately began to rise, but in the next instant the strike came down on it again, driving its head into the ground, sending a wave of air lashing along the ground, a crater forming beneath the beast’s head, and one of the horns snapping off with a crack.
Aren drew a deep breath and with a screaming roar brought dozens of simultaneous strikes crashing down on it, alternating between the extra limbs and his hardened palms, breaking and tearing the creature’s body apart, while unceasing blasts of air and crimson spray flew in every direction.
When he finally stopped, blood soaked him from head to foot, while he breathed heavily, slowly dissolving the extra limbs together with the white-stone armor.
Before Aren lay a mess of flesh and bone, gradually beginning to dissolve into a dense energy mist that was drawn into the tattoos along his body.
He breathed in deeply, then lowered his gaze to his right hand and closed his eyes, slowly clenching his palm. Focusing on the sensations and trying to feel the changes that had taken place in his body, he felt the fatigue receding thanks to the absorbed energy.
Aren snapped his eyes open and thrust his hand forward, releasing a long energy tendril from his wrist with a sharp spike at the end. It drove into a tree trunk twenty paces away, after which he sharply pulled himself forward and in a leap cut through it with the claws of his other hand, covered in blue energy.
Aren straightened and for a few seconds watched as the energy tendril slowly drew back into his wrist.
“That’ll come in handy.” he said with a slight smile, then raised his head and moved forward.
Along the way he picked up his sword from the ground and sheathed it, and returning several minutes later to the place where the horse had been, he stopped sharply, finding on the ground only a long trail of blood in place of the body, while the bags lay in their places untouched.
“What the… hell…” he thought, slowly looking around.
Aren brought his gaze back to the bags and began carefully lifting them onto his shoulders, but some of his things immediately started spilling out through the holes punched by the beast’s spikes.
He had to redistribute the surviving contents among the less damaged bags, leaving the rest where it lay, then packed everything into one intact bag and tied it tightly across his back, after which he set off from memory in the direction where, by his reckoning, the nearest exit from the forest ought to be.
Aren walked forward, glancing at every trunk and listening to every sound, ready for anything unexpected.
“Hope those bandits haven’t come around yet…”
Suddenly, a piercing human scream sliced sharply through the air from behind him, and Aren spun around instantly.
He saw the young seeker he had released earlier, running flat out with blood on his face and clothes.
“HELP!!! HELP!!!” he screamed, hurtling toward him.
Aren immediately went on high alert, drawing his blade and fixing his gaze on the tree line behind him.
The trees behind the runner split apart with a deafening crack, and from the gap that formed stepped a creature whose appearance made Aren freeze on the spot.
It stood three men tall and moved on four limbs, with rags wrapped tightly around its shins.
Its entire torso was made of human bodies fused together, with bare arms jutting in all directions at unnatural angles and legs without their lower portions.
Human faces were pressed into the shared flesh up to the cheekbones and visible only as a narrow vertical strip, while from the left side of the torso protruded the upper body of a warrior in a rusted helmet with chainmail and bones jutting outward.
Over all this fused mass loomed a horse’s skull with its mouth wide open and a long row of bared teeth, coated in dried blood, and Aren instantly recognized the outline of his own horse.
The creature slowly turned its empty eye sockets toward him and erupted in a roar of human screams, horse shrieks, and animal growling fused into one, piercing straight through the space.
It sharply lunged after him, accelerating with each step and snapping branches aside as it went.
The seeker tripped on a root, fell to the ground, and snapped his head back, seeing the figure of the monster looming over him.
Aren rushed forward, trying to get there in time, but before his eyes the flesh at the very center of the creature’s torso rapidly split apart, and from the gap that formed emerged a maw with long curved fangs.
With a sharp movement the creature came down on the seeker, driving in its fangs, and the victim’s wail tore through the silence of the forest, while Aren stood rooted, watching in complete stupor as the screams ahead gradually faded.
The monster slowly straightened and turned the horse’s skull toward Aren, while the remains at its feet began to tremble, drawing together into a dense bloody clot and gradually being pulled into the monster’s torso.
“What the… fuck… is going on here?…” Aren murmured quietly, tightening his grip on the hilt.
The creature erupted once more in a deafening roar of dying human screams, horse shrieks, and animal growling, flooding the space on all sides.