"Shit," Gelemia growled, the curse dropping like a stone into a well. Her fingers clamped onto my arm, hooking in like barbs.
"We don't need to watch what comes next," Crokard hissed. "Now." I nodded.
We eased backward, inch by inch, small as shadows, quiet as dust. I moved on the balls of my feet, step by careful step, breathing through my teeth.
Then, out of nowhere, the goat Gelemia had been feeding let out a bleat. One damned note that cut the air like a knife.
Something flashed past us, too fast for sight to catch. Air slapped my cheek, cold and wet; a slick spray of slime spattered the ground, leaving a rank, glistening smear.
I followed the path of that gust and froze, still on tiptoe, lungs held tight like a drummer waiting on the downbeat.
We didn't even finish a blink before the monster swallowed the bleating goat and then not just one, but the entire pen. Teeth and flesh met without pity; pen-bars cracked like old bones. In a heartbeat, all the livestock were gone from the world.
We ghosted along in slow circles, skirting the edges of shadow while it feasted. That's when I noticed Crokard leaking, not in his steps, but in his breath. His tiptoe held true, yet his chest fluttered; each inhale scraped through, a seeping hiss, curses slipping past the cotton in my ears.
Curiosity snagged me. I glanced, couldn't help wondering what it was doing to the scraps of its kill. That was the mistake. The monster turned. Those black eyes, bottomless, blank, closed a fist around the three of us, caught mid-sneak like stray goats with nowhere to run.
"Hey. Don't look sideways," I rasped. By luck or fate, I was last in the line. Third wheel. Gelemia and Crokard kept inching forward ahead of me.
"What do you mean?" Gelemia asked, shoulder starting to turn.
"Eyes front," I snapped, sharp enough to cut her impulse clean.
"On three, we run," I breathed. Still on tiptoe.
"Uh… run why? Is it chasing us or what?" Gelemia panted, her breath coming in shards.
I let it slide past. "One."
I bent my knees, drawing tight like a bowstring cranked to the ear.
"Three."
I sprang. Feet punched the earth, and I shot past Crokard by a hair, yanking Gelemia's arm to fling her free of that brittle silence.
The monster roared, sound that split bone. Tremors rippled; the ground shivered up through my soles and climbed my spine. Each pounding step rattled the village like a chessboard slammed by an angry god. Still, for one held breath, our sprint outran its wrath.
Then it swept an arm and flung slime into the air. Thick strands arced and dripped, a web half-spun, a net not yet knotted. What was all that muck for?
The answer hit before the question cooled: the beast vaulted, hugging the earth, then surged skyward, riding its own slick like a greased ramp. It shot past faster than a honey-drunk bee, and in a blink it was right in front of me.
Its tail whipped, scything for my chest.
Reflex beat impact. The black sphere surged, sleeving my arm to the shoulder. The tail smashed into my guard, the sphere swallowed the shock, but the force still pitched me back into the open square. Air blew out of my lungs in one hard grunt, and false stars broke like glass across my vision.
"Damn it," Crokard hissed. He jabbed a finger, telling Gelemia to run the other way but Gelemia stepped forward instead.
She snatched up a stone, a wild jag of earth, and raised it high. In a heartbeat the air around it buckled, lear ripples swelling into a glassy bubble, small at first, then blooming, bigger and bigger, like someone blowing a breath into the world's thinnest lung.
The monster turned, no panic, no hurry. Its arm came up, a brutal sweep meant to flatten Gelemia and everything under her feet.
Gelemia hurled the stone straight into the salamander's palm.
A muffled boom. The beast's hand kicked sideways, its killing arc skewed. Gelemia lived by a sliver of a second; its skin didn't split, but its rhythm shattered.
No time to breathe. The other hand was already coming low, meaner, a strike crafted to erase a name.
Crokard moved first. The spear on his shoulder went with him as he lunged, he slammed into Gelemia, knocking her into a roll and out of the death-line. The spear-tip skittered off slick scales, spraying mercury-bright slime.
"Crokard!" Gelemia shouted. But he'd already been flung, body pinwheeling into the neat house walls that stood like mute witnesses.
Gelemia ran wild, her steps rattled by the barefaced proof of the monster on her heels. She spotted a bundle of arrows on the ground, she grabbed for them, a blink too late. The salamander's slick hand was closing, a breath of distance left.
I saw it.
And sleeved both legs in black sphere. I bent my knees, a heartbeat's worth of coil, then popped a small jump. Midair, I bled just a dribble of mana into the spheres at my feet. Their surface rippled, tensed, springs wound tight. It worked. My feet kicked the air. My body slung upward, fast and clean, a bullet refusing the rules.
"Get away from her!" I roared.
Still in the rise, both my hands, gloved in black sphere swung in from the side. My fists smashed the salamander's jaw; the thud rippled all the way to my shoulders. Its face shivered like an anvil under a hammer. It rocked then crashed.
I landed clean, knees drinking the weight. Run. I hauled Gelemia behind me.
We slipped behind a house and dropped low.
"You okay?" I asked, clipped.
"Yeah… but Crokard?"
"He's a pig-goblin. Tough as nails. We hide first."
The monster hauled itself up and began to sweep the lanes, nose working, tongue tasting the air. It moved slow, death with all the time in the world.
If Erin weren't napping like a cat in the sun, this salamander would've been breakfast.
"So your plan flopped, huh?" Gelemia muttered.
I hadn't put the chief there for show. The rope was the black sphere, I'd meant for it to be swallowed too. Then, from the inside, I'd swell it and blow the belly clean. Quick. Tidy.
Reality slapped me. The beast had shredded my sphere like a spiderweb between two fingers.
"Yeah," I said at last. "Looks like the only way is straight through." I glanced at the mark my punch had left, cracked earth, broken fencing, but its skin? Smooth as glass. "Problem is, all I can do is rattle it. Drop it, sure. Hurt it? Not a scratch."
"The slime," Gelemia hissed. "It's using that muck to soften every physical hit. The impact still lands, but we can't actually wound it."
Made sense. No wonder it didn't have so much as a scuff.
"And it's fast," Gelemia added, brow creasing.
"It's fast because of the slime lanes. Like rails. The longer we fight and let it make the rounds, the slicker the track gets, the faster it slingshots through the village," I said.
"Give me your hand," Gelemia said.
I offered one. She clicked her tongue and yanked my other into her grip. On both palms, a clear bubble bloomed, small, pulsing.
"What is this?" I asked.
"My Arete," she said, crisp and quick. "I can elevate an object's quality and capability. It scales, depends on how sturdy the base is. These bubbles? They're time made visible. They'll swell with every second. The bigger they get, the higher the level I feed into your black spheres."
I stared a breath too long. The salamander had already crashed through a house.
I threw my guard up, but it hooked me with its slick and dragged me along its curve. It hauled me around the village; wind whipped my skin raw, walls flared past, then scraped me across the ground, slime and grit grinding my teeth, a bitter blanket on my tongue.
In a sliver of opening, I clasped both fists over my head. I poured mana to the ends of my arms; the black sphere went feather-light on the rise, then, on the downswing, I packed it with weight. Anger turned to gravity. My knuckles crashed into its head and hammered it into the earth.
The monster bucked into the ground. A crater yawned; the dirt blew outward in waves like a pond split by an axe. I landed clean, heels creaking as they caught the rebound.
The salamander surged up again, fury writhing beneath slick scales. Slime dripped from its jaw, pattering to the soil with a soft, venomous hiss. Then the little sky above the rooftops broke: a rain of arrows fell, sharp, patient. Gelemia stood on the roof ridge, wind carving her silhouette. At the tail of every arrow hung a small, pulsing bubble.
"Don't worry. Keep hitting it! I'll break its rhythm!" she shouted. Her voice cut the distance, threaded through splintered beams, and slapped sense into our courage before it froze solid.
I charged. The ground napped open beneath my soles; dust jumped and stuck to sweat. From the right, Crokard slid out of nowhere, his spear scything, missing the salamander's eye by a hair, just enough to force its head to cant. Its tail swung, a curving whip with pen-cracking momentum.
I raised my arm; the black sphere swallowed the blow. The shudder ran into my shoulder, rattling the joint. Crokard struck low, hunting tendons that didn't exist, and we switched lanes in a blink. I took the left, he cut behind; our attack lines crossed and re-crossed, a net that never quite closed.
The salamander spattered slime into the air, laying a slick rail that hung there like a glass bridge. It rode its own track in a way that insulted common sense. Every arrow of Gelemia's that slipped through that layer lost its teeth: a touch, then a melt, power softened to a goat's bite. My blows dulled too when they met that shine-slick hide.
But its rhythm… slipped. One of my punches landed flush on the jaw, more luck than genius. Finally, I thought.
I watched its head jolt two steps to the side, claws gouging trenches to brake. Crokard's spear clipped the fulcrum, making its front foot miss its mark; a knee or whatever counted as one, buckled for a heartbeat. The slime tracks in the air quivered too, their lines wobbling like strings gone off-key.
Its motion shifted, not slower, but out of tune. It clawed at its belly, not to tear, more like someone who's just realized a thorn is sprouting from the inside. A growl rattled up its throat, little runaway sounds that refused to become a roar. Its breath hitched, broke into shards. For a heartbeat I saw the skin of its gut bulge, thin as a shadow, a pulse flickering under scales then flatten, like something tried to rise and was forced back down.
It canted its body, jaws yawning, slick tongue lashing the air, primitive motion, but nothing came out. Only a heat-haze breath and the stink it carried: iron-salt, sweet rot, and the echo of resin from hibakujumoku smoke still hanging in the village.
It roared at last, and the stomp that followed hammered despair into the ground. The earth-spikes took the blow; cracks spidered out from its massive soles, racing in all directions like webs blooming beneath glass. Houses around the square shuddered; tiles chattered; the goats that remained—none.
"Now!" Gelemia cried from the roof, loosing two arrows at once. They crossed in flight, their bubbles blinking, one old, one young. The elder burst the slime into a rain of bead-bright droplets, structure stripped away; the younger punched through that gap, not piercing flesh, but nailing momentum in place, like a palm on a runner's chest saying: stop.
I slid into the seam that opened. One step, two, spheres dense on my feet, light on my fists then I flipped the weight on the downswing. My punch cracked the side of its jaw again, lower this time. On the far flank, Crokard spun his spear and set it crosswise between the beast's forelegs not stabbing, but jamming the gait.
Then a strange hush. In that pocket I saw it plain: its belly throbbed again, stronger. The scales above it lifted a whisper, thin as a card edge. The slime around a wound that wasn't there dimpled and rippled, as if something inside was pressing forward, hunting for a door.
"Keep the pressure!" Crokard snarled, wringing sound from a dust-choked chest. He shoved; his knees bit earth; the spear turned into a pillar propping up a sagging sky.
I raised my fist. The bubble at my wrist had swelled to the size of a goose egg. But the salamander tilted its head. Slow, so slow, as if remembering how to be the center of everything. Its slime drew tight to the skin, no longer a curtain but a second hide. Those black eyes, usually empty as a well, caught a glint.
Its movements narrowed. It swallowed the roar, traded wild for a calm that sent cold creeping up the back of my neck. Its mouth parted; its tongue unfurled, supple and for the first time, syllables shuffled out, halting but deliberate.
"D—damn you… human," it muttered, looking straight at me.