Chapter 11 - Die Already Part 3
The ocean roared beneath the storm. Brief flashes of lightning cut across the surface like blades of light, revealing black, jagged waves rising like mountains before crashing down with hollow thunder.
Suddenly, the water exploded. A liquid column burst open, and from it emerged two figures.
The first: an impossible creature. A torso covered in scales that gleamed under the lightning's flash, four long, knotted arms ending in deformed claws, two bent legs like those of a marine predator, and a powerful tail that snapped as it lashed the air.
The second: a man. Red hair plastered to his face by blood and water, blue uniform in tatters, shreds drifting like seaweed around his body. The monster held him by the head with one hand, as though he were nothing more than a ragdoll.
For an instant they hung suspended in the air, frozen by a lightning strike into a brutal silhouette. A second later, gravity claimed them.
The beast swung the redhead wide, more than a hundred and eighty degrees, and slammed him into the ocean.
The impact cracked like a whip. The water split as if they had struck glass, then closed again in an unrelenting embrace of foam and bubbles.
The darkness of the ocean swallowed them. The sea was a cold, bottomless tomb; only the intermittent lightning managed to stain the closest waters. Beyond that, there was nothing but black.
With ease, the monster thrust down another of its four arms and caught the man by the legs. The redhead's body was inverted, hanging upside down like a freshly torn piece of meat. His head lolled from side to side, his arms swayed with no will of their own.
His half-closed eyes were glazed. His chest barely moved. Blood thinned into the water, stretching in a red trail like smoke.
To the eye, he was a corpse. A dead toy in the hands of a sea beast.
Slowly, the monster drew the man's torso toward its jaws. Its mouth opened with a wet crack, revealing two rows of short, tightly packed teeth, all hooked inward like fishhooks. The jaw stretched farther than nature allowed, the corners splitting its scaly skin, and a deep bubbling rumbled from its throat, like a growl beneath the water.
In the suffocating stillness, the redhead's thought flashed like a dry spark:"Thanks for letting me breathe."
The corpse broke in an instant. The man's back arched, and from his spine burst a spiral of compressed water that spun violently on itself. The current writhed like a furious serpent, swept past his left side, and lunged straight at the monster.
The jet stretched like a liquid spear and pierced the creature's belly. The strike was so sudden the monster froze, shaken from within, unable to utter a single roar.
The beast convulsed violently, bubbles bursting around its body as the spiral rammed into it. The water quaked as if an explosive had gone off inside its gut.
The redhead seized that instant of stillness. His left hand, until then limp, tensed. Fingers spread as though gripping an invisible blade.
A crimson glow began to wrap around his skin. First a timid spark, then a liquid fire rushing through his veins until it coated his palm and forearm. The water's turbulence made the light flicker like a torch in a storm.
The man twisted his torso sharply, pulling his arm back. His stance was not that of a boxer, nor a soldier with a weapon, but of someone wielding his own flesh as a sword.
The invisible edge split the water as it advanced. In a horizontal arc, his open hand carved into the monster's head.
The resistance was thick: first the hard scaly hide, then the fibrous layer of muscle. The force of the slash made its jaw tremble, bone cracked with a muffled crunch, and a dark cloud of blood expanded upward like smoke in slow motion.
The creature did not roar. Instead, a guttural sound rose from deep within its chest: a grave rumble, almost as though the storm itself had answered from its entrails.
The vibration spread through the water, reached the man's body, and chilled his skin.
The crimson arm froze before him, blood floating like a red veil. For an instant, the redhead thought he had done it.
Until the claw that held him suddenly opened.It let him go.
The man floated free… but with a lag, as though his body had not yet realized it could move.
That was when he felt it: A black void, hidden deep below, in the bottomless dark. Something else was down there, waiting.
Fear froze him faster than any claw.
The abyss gave him no time to think.A brutal shock tore through the ocean: an unleashed current struck them both like an invisible wall.
The redhead was dragged into a spiral, his body spinning out of control, lungs burning from lack of air. He could barely make out shapes within the whirl of bubbles and foam.
Then he saw it. A metallic glint drifted across his face, turning in slow motion, dragged by the same current that was devouring him.
The sword.
The blade spun as it sank, catching fragments of lightning that bled through the water like stolen shards of sky. The weapon drifted farther and farther, sinking toward an abyss of shadows.
The redhead's heart clenched. He reached out, fingers straining until his joints cracked, as if sheer will might close the distance.
But the current was stronger. The water shoved him the other way, hurling him sideways like a ragdoll in a raging tide.
Desperation clouded his sight. In the chaos, he turned his head to the right…
The monster was coming straight at him. Mouth wide, jaws unhinged, curved teeth gleaming with the glimmer of distant lightning.
Darkness closed like a trap.
The beast lunged with its jaws open. The black of its throat was an endless tunnel that would swallow him whole.
The redhead opened his mouth too. Water rushed into his throat, but inside it began to churn, compressed by a force that did not belong to the sea but to him. A tiny whirlpool was born in his chest, surged to his mouth, and spun violently, vibrating as though it would tear him apart from within.
In an instant, he released it. A pressurized jet burst from his mouth, a sharp, swift torrent that sliced through the waters like a liquid spear.
The strike hit right at the hinge of the monster's jaw. A muffled crack, like bone tearing, thundered through the water. The creature's mouth twisted left, one side collapsing as though the hinge had snapped.
The jaws kept closing, but they were no longer a perfect lock. The fangs no longer matched: they bent, they scraped, they slipped out of alignment.
The monster loomed over him, its head descending like a living ceiling. The redhead felt the viscous heat of its breath bubbling around him. Inside that mouth, past the torn tongue and bleeding gums, he glimpsed something that should not exist: a mass of throbbing flesh, an aberration hidden in its throat.
Instinct struck him like lightning. He refused to be swallowed.
The red aura flared again across his body, and with it, the fury of the water around him. He used both forces as invisible levers, shoving himself through the narrowing throat.
He escaped by a hair. The monster's claws snapped shut behind him, grazing his back and leaving three burning gashes that stung worse than saltwater.
The pain made him growl bubbles, but he was out.
The ocean raged in all directions, currents gone wild, but in that moment the redhead saw the glint again: the sword, spinning adrift, lit for a second by lightning.
The flash pierced him like a call. Lightning lit the blade for a heartbeat before darkness swallowed it again.
The redhead did not hesitate. With a sharp gesture, he summoned a whirlpool beneath his feet. The water spun, taut like a coiled rope, and catapulted him forward. Pressure crushed his chest and eardrums, but the thrust hurled him straight toward the silver gleam.
The monster wasn't far behind. With a metallic screech, like iron twisting, the creature lunged, its massive silhouette slicing the water like a projectile.
The two raced in a frantic chase for the same prize: the sword.
The redhead stretched out his hand. His fingers brushed the cold, slippery hilt the same instant the monster's claws sank into his shoulder.
The pain was brutal. A piercing shock ran to his spine, robbing him of air and tearing a spray of bubbles from his lungs. The world flickered red.
But his fist closed. The sword was back in his hand.
The red aura leapt from arm to blade, igniting it as though the metal drank his blood.
The monster opened its broken jaw wider, ready to tear his head off in one bite, but the redhead answered with a swift, ferocious slash.
The blade cut through the beast's abdomen, and the water itself became a weapon. Furious jets burst from the sword, dragging the edge along and extending the slash until it ripped the creature's belly open.
Pressure released in a violent surge, raising a cloud of blood. Darkness turned crimson, a murky spiral that blinded everything.
For a moment, he lost sight of his enemy.
A mistake.
The jaws reappeared from the gloom and clamped onto his side. The bite shook him, ripping out more air than he had left. Pain blurred his vision… but he did not scream.
With a contained roar, he clenched his jaw and drove the sword in again, this time the tip wrapped in burning aura.
The monster writhed with the blade inside its flesh, but instead of pulling away, it closed more arms around him. Two locked him in like a cage, claws raking above the sword to pin it, while the third clamped him tight around the torso.
The redhead was trapped. The blazing blade burned in his hand, but he couldn't move it an inch further. Then he felt it: the water beneath his feet was trembling. A whirlpool far greater than any before was forming, spinning with untamed force.
The maelstrom coiled around him and suddenly hurled him upward like a projectile fired from the ocean floor.
The monster didn't let go. It clung with two more arms, trying to halt the ascent, but the current was too strong. Both bodies shot up together, dragged by the violence of the water.
The world erupted in foam as they broke the surface.The wind lashed them, the storm greeted them with thunder. Around them, the sea raged with white-crested waves and lightning flashing like bursts of war.
In that instant, the redhead twisted the sword.The crimson aura engulfed him whole, from arms to blade. With a restrained shout, he raised the weapon overhead and swung it down in a diagonal cut, ready to cleave the monster in two as they fell.
The slash was already in the air when his body froze. Something even more devastating was coming.
The horizon rose. A wave several stories tall, a liquid wall tearing across everything in its path, bore down on them both.
The monster screeched with a warped metallic cry. The redhead barely had time to open his eyes before the wave struck.
The impact was a muffled thunder. Foam, blood, and flesh whipped together in a violent lash that dragged them into darkness.
But the current did not pull them down. It pushed them.
And its push had a clear destination: a colossal shadow looming through the storm.
The hull of a ship.
A steel wall rushed toward them at full speed. There was no room to react.
The crash was brutal.The water smashed them against the metal, the impact echoing like a cannon shot beneath the surface. The hull dented, then split in cracks, until finally it burst open like dry bark shattered by a hammer.
Both bodies were swallowed by the breach.The ocean surged in with them in a furious torrent, dragging beams, pipes, and dead sparks from drowned boilers.
The torrent spat them inside the ship like waste down a broken drain. The clangor of metal still rattled the redhead's bones when his body hit the floor.
He landed on iron plates that bent under his weight. He coughed up water and blood together, gasping as though swallowing knives. Half rising, staggering, his arms trembled beneath his weight.
Around him, the engine room was a flooded hell.Cogs still spun with desperate shrieks, each gear biting the air like a rabid animal. Burst pipes spat scalding steam in fiery gusts that mingled with the water pouring in. The stench was a suffocating mix of damp coal, rancid oil, and iron.
The redhead spat red-stained saliva. His breathing burned his throat, his vision shook. He leaned on the sword, driving it into the metal floor as a makeshift staff, and lifted his gaze.
The monster lay slumped against a broken boiler, its body twisted, unmoving. Water pooled around its scales, reflecting lightning flashes that slipped through the cracks in the hull.
For a moment, it seemed over. Silence weighed heavier than the storm.
The redhead scowled, jaw tight.He raised the sword and stepped toward the beast. Every movement ached like nails in his shoulder, but he didn't stop.
"…Die already." His voice was a growl, charged with fury and relief.
The word had barely left his lips when something changed.
The monster shuddered.Its scaled body quivered like a drum under water, and disbelief spread across the redhead's face.
The folds of its massive fish-head began to split.Not like a mouth: like a hood being pulled back.
The man stepped back, eyes wide.
From inside emerged something even more repulsive.A deformed tongue stretched outward—and that tongue had the shape of a human-like head.No eyes. No nose. No ears. Only a fleshy relief with a slit imitating a man's mouth.
Disgust hit him like a fist.Shock stunned him, freezing the sword for an instant.
The creature's flesh convulsed. The tongue-face quivered, and from its grotesque mouth erupted a silent shriek that resonated in the marrow more than in the ears.
A chill ran through the redhead as he understood the inevitable:The battle wasn't over.It was only about to begin again.