Chapter 21 – Night of Scales
Whoosh—
Four lifeless lizard bodies sailed through the air before landing in the growing pile a couple blocks outside the school's broken walls. Seth exhaled, shoulders heavy, as he muttered to himself.
"That was the last of them."
The corpses fell atop dozens of others, a grotesque mound of green and grey. Nearly fifty carcasses now lay there, their blood soaking into the dirt, filling the air with a sickly tang.
Seth wrinkled his nose. He had done this because, If he wanted a peaceful night, they couldn't stay in the building with the bodies. Dead bodies meant two things: the stench of decay and the promise of more beasts drawn in by blood. Neither was a risk he could afford.
He dusted his palms against each other, though it did little good. Sticky green stains clung to his skin. His entire body was a mess—head to toe spattered with gore, most of it dried stiff on his skin and clothes. His black hair was stiff and matted. What remained of his clothing barely counted as such: a pair of tattered shorts whose original color was buried beneath dark stains. His shirt had long since been shredded away in battle.
Not that he had a choice.
With a sigh, Seth turned his back on the mound and trudged into the shadow of the ruined school. His steps carried him to the library, the place he had chosen as his shelter. Inside, faint warmth flickered against the cracked walls. He had built a small fire from scavenged splinters of broken bookshelves, the flames licking greedily at the dry wood. Above the fire, skewered over bent metal rods, a headless rabbit roasted slowly. The smell filled the library, sharp and savory, cutting through the lingering stench of lizard blood.
Seth lowered himself beside the fire. His body ached, but a strange impulse seized him. Without thinking, he began humming—a low, uneven tune at first, but one that slowly steadied. A smile tugged at his lips, and he nodded faintly to the rhythm, his voice carrying into the silence of the empty library.
It was… almost comforting.
The fire crackled. His voice echoed softly against the ruined shelves. For a moment, it was as though the loneliness of the world pressed a little less heavily upon him.
When the rabbit was cooked through, he pulled it away from the flames and ate in silence. The crackling fire was his only companion. He finished quickly, setting aside the bones and scraps, then stretched out on the floor. His head rested against his folded arm, gaze fixed on the ceiling where cracks spiderwebbed like veins across the stone.
A hundred stray thoughts drifted through his mind—memories, half-formed plans, lingering questions. But eventually, his eyelids grew heavy.
"…I'll check my gains tomorrow," he murmured.
Sleep claimed him.
But then again...
The night was far from still.
From beyond the half-collapsed gates of the school, something stirred.
A low scrape of claws against stone announced its arrival as a massive lizard slithered into the ruins. Its body stretched ten feet from snout to tail, its torso two feet thick with corded muscle. Its short, spiky scales shimmered faintly in the moonlight, each ridge edged like sharpened glass. The creature's tail swayed lazily side to side, its barbed end gleaming with lethal sharpness.
Twin red slit-pupils glowed in the dark, glinting with something most beasts lacked—awareness.
The lizard's head lifted. Its nostrils flared, sucking in the air with sharp, wet sniffs. For a moment, it was still. Then its body stiffened.
The scent of slaughter. The blood of its kin.
A hiss tore from its throat, echoing through the night like steam escaping a furnace. Its pupils shrank to narrow slits, and with a violent shudder, it lunged forward.
It did not creep or stalk. It did not hesitate. It moved like a spear cast by a giant, the force of its speed sending cracks across the ground.
Obstacles were nothing to it.
A crumbling classroom wall loomed ahead. The beast did not slow. At the last instant, a ripple of translucent energy shimmered across its scales. Its entire body blurred, slipping through the solid wall as though the stone were no more than smoke.
With a loud BOOM!!!
The section of wall detonated a heartbeat later, collapsing into rubble in the monster's wake.
Seth jolted awake.
A few more BOOMING sounds followed suit.
The crash of stone and the tremor of collapsing debris shook the library like thunder. He rolled instinctively, his body moving before his mind caught up.
A green blur split through the space he had been lying only seconds before. The wall behind him erupted into shrapnel as the blur punched straight through, carried by unstoppable momentum. Dust exploded into the air, choking and blinding.
Coughing, Seth scrambled upright, one hand shielding his eyes. Through the haze, he finally saw it.
The thing that had crashed into his refuge.
The lizard.
Its body loomed through the dust, spines glinting, pupils burning like embers in the dark.
And its gaze was fixed entirely on him.