Chapter 37: Symbiosis

  He was still lying there.

  Drowning and Suffocating.

  The mud worked relentlessly against him, sucking at his mouth with every reflexive breath, crawling between his lips, pressing inward as if it were merely waiting for his body to make its next mistake.

  Somewhere between two burning breathing reflexes, he wondered what the monster had been doing all this time.

  It clearly no longer wanted to eat him.

  Apparently not truly kill him either.

  Otherwise it would have stomped down long ago, would have finished him off, would have ended this farce.

  Ah, how could it be any different.

  It’s probably just standing there watching me suffer.

  What would this spectacle be without an audience, after all.

  A bitter thought forced its way through despite everything.

  Seems like my sarcasm is especially pronounced on days like this.

  This bastard.

  With a guttural sound that hovered somewhere between gagging and a failed breath, Darek gathered his remaining strength and tried to free himself from the swamp’s grip.

  He pushed himself upward.

  First he wrenched his head out of the mud with all his strength, tore his mouth open and spat out the entire thick sludge that had collected in his throat, only to be seized the next moment by a pitiful coughing fit that drove tears into his eyes and forced burning cramps through his chest.

  Then he dragged the rest of his upper body backward, pulling himself piece by piece out of the morass, feeling as his body beneath him began to regenerate painfully, hastily, and anything but gently.

  It felt wrong.

  When he finally lifted his gaze, he met the monster’s face.

  Neutral and condescending.

  Unchanged.

  Yet when Darek looked closer, he could have sworn that a trace of perverse amusement settled around the creature’s mouth, barely visible, almost playful, as if it were counting each of his breaths.

  Probably imagination.

  Blood loss.

  Exhaustion.

  He hauled himself further upright, stood on his regenerating leg stumps that still gave way unstably beneath him, and laboriously brought himself into an upright position.

  He faced the monster.

  Darek once again gathered a pitiful amount of red dust, while the majority of his remaining strength was occupied with reforming his lower body at all. Despite everything, something provocative lay in his gaze, fueled by the expression he believed he had seen on the monster’s face.

  The monster took a step forward.

  Directly toward him.

  Darek threw the dust at the creature from close range and called out again:

  Pain.

  But nothing happened.

  The amount was simply too small this time, and the monster took another step.

  Now it stood so close in front of him that Darek could feel its breath, hot, damp, and foul, a mixture of rot, wetness, and something animal that forced itself upon him.

  Then something sounded inside him.

  A noise that should not have been there.

  A hiss.

  Could it be…

  Darek spun around, his heart suddenly beating faster, not only from pain but from the abrupt rise of a new possibility.

  Seraphis? Here?

  The thought came so unexpectedly that he almost believed he was mistaken.

  Did he get Ursula back on his feet?

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  A brief glimmer of hope flickered — but it died immediately.

  No. I doubt it. There was hardly anything left of him…

  Another scenario pushed into his thoughts.

  Did he leave him in the cave?

  Impossible.

  That doesn’t fit him either.

  Another thought passed through him, colder, more sober.

  He wouldn’t need to guard a dead body…

  Seraphis wouldn’t need that.

  Darek lifted his gaze and saw him.

  In the distance, a familiar figure moved through the mud, fast, fluid, almost elegant. Seraphis glided through the morass as if the swamp were not slowing him but carrying him, his body cutting through the sluggish terrain at a speed that seemed almost unreal out here.

  He was uninjured.

  So far.

  He shouldn’t interfere.

  Not in such a hopeless fight.

  Darek’s voice sounded rough as he called out.

  Seraphis, stay behind me.

  But Seraphis did not react as ordered.

  He reached Darek and positioned himself with a quiet, determined hiss directly in front of him, his body half-raised, protective, as if this decision had long been made before Darek had spoken it.

  The monster regarded them both expressionlessly.

  Then it slowly licked over its lips.

  More assessing.

  As if it had perhaps found something edible after all.

  Its massive head tilted slightly in Seraphis’ direction, the movement calm and controlled, almost curious, while its mouth slowly opened and a heavy, rotten stench escaped, seeming to poison the air around them.

  A deep roar followed, muted, not loud, but vibrating, as if the creature did not wish to attack but to claim ownership, to utter a threat that required no translation.

  Yet in Seraphis’ stance there was no hesitation.

  No trembling.

  No retreat.

  His gaze was calm, focused, almost cool, and even as the monster’s mouth opened wider, he made no attempt to evade or retreat into defensive coils.

  Darek wanted to shoo him back.

  Wanted to push him away.

  But they were part of the same soul.

  And so he felt it.

  The determination.

  The ambition.

  That clear, unwavering knowledge that retreat was not intended here.

  It was not blind bravery.

  It was decision.

  Darek swallowed.

  Fear was there.

  Concern was there.

  But as he stood beside Seraphis, he felt something else as well.

  Composure.

  He straightened slightly, despite the pain, despite the burning regeneration in his lower body, and waited.

  For whatever would happen next.

  Then, at the very edge of his field of vision, Darek noticed a movement.

  Something unnatural.

  Something that did not fit the sluggish rhythm of the swamp.

  He blinked, his perception still blurred from blood loss, and for a heartbeat he thought it was a hallucination.

  But there it was again.

  Vines.

  Thin at first, almost like shadows crawling up along the flanks of the massive monster, silently drawing themselves along its enormous body as if they had always belonged there.

  Darek’s gaze sharpened.

  Skeptical.

  The vines did not move hastily.

  They slid, they grew.

  They thickened, grew stronger, as they spread like living veins across the flesh of the colossus.

  The monster did not seem to notice at first.

  Or it ignored them.

  Its head was still directed at Seraphis, its mouth half open, the stench heavy in the air.

  Then the vines shot forward simultaneously from both sides.

  With a precision that could not have been accidental.

  They struck.

  Directly into the monster’s mouth.

  From the right.

  From the left.

  For a fraction of a second, nothing happened.

  The world held its breath.

  Then came the jerk.

  A massive, brutal impulse, as if two invisible forces were pulling in opposite directions.

  The monster’s mouth was torn apart vertically.

  Not like flesh giving way.

  But like something that had been under tension.

  A revolting crack tore through the air, followed by a sound somewhere between splintering wood and tearing metal, as bones broke, tendons snapped, and the structure of the massive skull gave way.

  But the tear did not stop.

  It continued.

  Through the skull.

  Through the neck.

  Through the massive torso.

  Blood and dark matter sprayed in an arc through the humid air, while the colossal being did not simply fall, but was pulled apart, as if split along an invisible axis.

  Unstoppable.

  The monster was torn into two halves.

  Clean.

  Vertical.

  From front to back.

  For a moment, the two parts still stood upright, separated, as if they themselves could not comprehend the reality of what had just occurred.

  Then they collapsed inward.

  With a dull, crushing impact, both halves crashed into the mud, which swallowed them greedily as a wave of morass and blood surged outward and struck Darek.

  Silence.

  No movement.

  Only the soft yielding of the swamp beneath the weight of what had just been a threat.

  And Darek stood there.

  Breathing heavily.

  And did not immediately understand what he had just seen.

  Darek stood there.

  Mouth open.

  Astonished, dazed, unable to grasp what had happened in the last seconds, as if his mind had decided not to process the sight just yet.

  He did not know what had happened.

  Not really.

  Not what those vines had been.

  Not what force had so effortlessly torn this colossal monster into two halves.

  Before him lay the two massive parts of the being in the swamp’s morass, half sunken, still steaming, while dark liquid slowly seeped into the muddy water and set the surface into sluggish ripples.

  And behind the divided corpse, a figure emerged.

  Large.

  Upright.

  Unmistakable.

  Darek’s heart skipped a beat.

  How… how can that be…

  That’s impossible.

  A wild, deep roar tore through the air.

  It rolled across the entire swamp, made the water’s surface tremble, sent vibrations through the morass and caused even the last, still-floating remains of the monster to shudder.

  Ursula.

  Darek forced himself to look closer.

  His legs were still immobile, softened, muddy, unnaturally deformed, but they looked better than before, less decayed, less lost, and within them a small, stubborn healing process had begun to take shape, like a quiet promise that this condition was not final.

  But that was not what truly froze him.

  Vines.

  Everywhere.

  They coiled around Ursula’s legs, thick and pulsing, moving them for him as if they possessed muscles of their own, as if they were replacing what his body itself could no longer accomplish.

  The same was happening with his seven arms.

  What had once been remnants, incomplete and destroyed, was now wrapped in vines, threaded through, reinforced, until they shaped his claws to nearly double their size, massive, sharp, and charged with a force that felt not merely physical.

  Even along his head the vines flowed, drawing over his skull, pulsing beneath his skin, as if they had not overgrown him but expanded him.

  Darek felt another thought forming within him.

  Is this what Aria meant…

  But immediately he shook his head inwardly.

  No. I don’t think so.

  Because unlike her warning, Ursula did not seem empty.

  Not controlled or possessed.

  His eyes burned.

  His chest rose and fell heavily.

  And his roar had carried nothing foreign within it.

  It had been hatred.

  Raw.

  Unfiltered.

  An impulse of pure destruction that clearly came from him.

  Not from the vines.

  Not from something controlling him.

  But from Ursula.

  And that was what made it even more terrifying.