82

  Lyra, Hop, and Lionel backed into the shadowed hall, boots scraping across the uneven stone as the flesh aberration lurched after them. Its swollen body glistened under the sickly torchlight, and again its rubbery arm whipped forward, stretching far beyond what any limb should. Lionel caught the strike cleanly on his bde, the force driving his sword deep into the wall beside them. Hop reacted instantly—her dagger fshed, pinning the writhing limb to the stone. The aberration snarled, its skin quivering as it tried to retract the trapped appendage.

  Then the second arm split—multiplying like wet branches—splintering into three tendrils, all streaking for their throats.

  The moment one tched onto Lyra again, her breath froze.And a vision poured into her head.

  There was an elf on a table—strapped down, eyes wide in terror.The white cloak figure towered over him, pressing a long needle into his veins.A bck-green liquid surged in, and the man’s screams cut short as the world dimmed.

  He awoke inside a cylindrical tank, submerged in cold green fluid.He thrashed.He smmed the gss.Cracks webbed—but never broke.

  Then… something moved inside with him.

  A wormlike organism drifted down, wriggling toward his face.He screamed, but the liquid muted him.The creature forced its way into his mouth.

  He convulsed—eyes bulging, arms warping, bones rewriting their shape.His back erupted into swollen sacs.Veins pulsed like serpents under his skin.

  He broke the tank at st—but he was no longer a man.His arm regenerated instantly when the white cloak severed it.No pain.No will.Just a hollow, monstrous engine.

  Lyra gasped as the vision snapped. She colpsed to the floor, clutching her throat where the tendril had been.

  Three of them—Lyra, Hop, Lionel—were moments from being dragged forward when a lightning arrow tore through the air.

  CRRRACK!

  The bolt speared the aberration clean through the chest, bsting open a hole.Its arms recoiled, freeing them.Hop ripped her dagger back from the wall; the severed limb spasmed before melting into itself.

  Slowly, the hole in the flesh creature’s chest began to seal.

  “Gods…” Lionel stepped back, eyes wide.

  A heavy tremor shook the hall.

  And then—

  A six-foot shadow barreled forward from behind them, horns first.

  Lucille’s summoned bull-beast—all bck hide, glowing patterns, and monstrous curved horns—rammed the aberration in the chest, smming it off its feet and hurling it across the arena threshold.

  The bull nded, snorting steam, cws carving grooves in the floor.

  It charged again.

  The aberration’s arm cracked outward and skewered the bull clean through the shoulder, flicking the massive summon aside. It smashed into a pilr and slid down, roaring in pain.

  Arrows rained from above—Barry, firing furiously from the second floor walkway.Lightning arrow after lightning arrow dug into the creature’s arms, legs, back—each blow exploding with thunderous pop.

  But the aberration did not care.No scream.No flinch.It simply moved.

  The bull-beast regained its stance and smmed forward, weaving around several stretching arms. It buried its fist into the monster’s abdomen—

  —but the flesh absorbed the blow like cy.A wet suction sound followed.

  The bull’s arm was trapped.

  The aberration pulled.

  “NO—!” Lucille screamed as the monster absorbed her summon.

  The bull struggled—but its horns softened… its body liquified… then vanished entirely into the writhing mass.

  The aberration’s flesh turned pale gray, cracking like hardened cy.Its body shrank, condensing into a leaner, more armored form.Two sharp horns erupted from its skull.

  It shrieked, a nightmarish cry that shook dust from the rafters.

  Then it sprang.

  In a single leap, it crossed the arena and the entire hall—nding on the upper walkway where Lyra and the others stood. Wood splintered under its weight.

  Lyra and Lucille dove right.Barry and Lionel dove left.

  The aberration lunged at the two women—

  —but something huge whistled through the air.

  THUUM!

  A greatsword the size of a tree embedded itself through the monster’s torso, pinning it to the wall.

  Therson stood at the base of the stairs, face bloodied, armor shattered, he now fights bare-handed against the bone creature. His eyes still burned with fury.

  The aberration reached up.

  It sliced its own torso in half, letting the top half drop to the ground.The lower half crawled up the wall like insects, stitching itself back together.

  Its newly formed head snapped toward Therson.

  And in that heartbeat, Therson wasn't the only threat it sensed.

  From the arena, the bone creature—still alive—rushed him, cracking stone with each step.

  The aberration lunged.

  The bone creature lunged.

  Therson spun to evade one—but collided with the other. A bone shin crashed into his face, sending him flying. He hit the wall with a crunch and slumped.

  Before he could regain his footing, the aberration grabbed him by the skull and hoisted him up.

  Its wet jaw yawned open, ready to bite.

  A blistering jet of acidic sludge spshed across its face.

  Lucille’s bulbous toad summon had appeared, infting its throat pouch as it spat again—thick ropes of corrosive slime spttering across the creature. The monster screeched as its head blistered and burned.

  Lionel was already there—his sword fshed in a precise arc, severing the grotesque hand holding Therson.

  Therson fell free, gasping for air.

  But the bone creature waited.

  It lunged—

  Therson caught it midair, curled his fingers under its rib cage, and smmed it into the stone floor with enough force to shake the entire arena.

  He seized its ankle, swung it overhead, and hurled the creature directly into the aberration.

  The aberration’s jaw unhinged—

  —and swallowed the bone creature whole.

  A pulse shuddered through its body.

  Then—

  BOOM.

  A pressurized rippling shockwave bsted outward from the monster.Air thickened—dense, heavy, vibrating.

  “GET BACK!” Therson yelled, but the warning was too te.

  The aberration’s arms exploded outward, splitting into hundreds of fleshy coils. They shot forward, ensnaring every one of them—Lyra, Hop, Barry, Lionel, Lucille, Therson—dragging them toward the writhing mass.

  Hop screamed as she was yanked forward, dagger slipping from her fingers.

  Lyra cwed at the ground but was dragged inch by inch.

  Therson strained, muscles tearing, but even he could not break free.

  The monster’s mouth peeled open.

  Closer.Closer.Closer—

  A thunderous roar tore across the entire building.

  TERRY.

  Like a falling meteor, he nded on the aberration’s back with his arms crossed over one another, fists like boulders. Metal ptes strapped to his knuckles gleamed under the torchlight.

  His first punch tore a crater into the monster’s skull.His second shattered its spine.His third turned the world white with shock.

  “RAAAAAHH!!”

  He grabbed the aberration and ripped it backward, breaking its grip on the others.The fleshy limbs recoiled like burned worms and disintegrated.

  Terry didn’t stop.

  He punched it across the hall, the creature smming into the far wall.He dashed, nding blow after blow, each impact sending shockwaves across the arena.

  The aberration dissolved under the barrage—skin melting, bones cracking, organs liquefying into pale gray sludge.

  With a roar that shook the building, Terry delivered the final blow—a fist wrapped in the image of a colossal spectral knuckle—

  —and unched the monster through the wall, out into the open abyss beyond the cliff.

  Silence.

  No movement.

  No regeneration.

  It was finally gone.