Ch. 150

Ch. 150
I try to dodge, but my injured body responds too slowly.
I brace for the impact of teeth or claws, but it never comes. Instead, there's a blur of movement, a rush of displaced air, and suddenly Perris stands between me and the monster. His back is to me, his posture radiating a dangerous, coiled energy I've never associated with the languid aristocrat I thought I knew.
He grabs the tentacle that had been racing toward me only seconds before. Perris digs his own claws into the squishy flesh and tears the thick appendage in two, muscle, sinew and all. The lamprey monster lets out an ungodly howl. Its remaining tentacles flail as it rears back to retreat into the swamp water.
"Get away from her," he snarls, his voice barely recognizable—deeper, rougher, vibrating with power that makes the very air hum around us.
Perris stands tall, his vampiric nature no longer hidden behind mortal pretense. His eyes have settled into that unnatural red, but there's awareness in them now, cold intention.
Without looking back at me, he flexes his hands, claws extending from his fingertips. "Come on," he says, his voice still carrying that dangerous edge, "I have a promise to keep, but I don’t plan on doing it alone."
The monster, having assessed a new, more aggressive threat, recalculates its attack. I push myself fully upright, ignoring the screaming pain in my back, and move to stand beside Perris rather than behind him.
"About time," I agree, reaching down to grab a jagged branch from the muck. "Any ideas how to kill it?"
Perris stares at the monster with calculating eyes, his fangs gleaming in the phosphorescent light as he analyzes our opponent. "Its skin is softer when it’s transparent, I could only dig my nails in after it shifted," he says, his voice carrying that new edge of power I've never heard before. "If we time it right, we’ll be able to chip away at it." He looks at me, those blood-red eyes assessing my condition with unexpected concern. "Can you still move quickly?"
"Quickly enough," I answer, testing my weight on my injured leg. Pain shoots up from ankle to hip, but it holds. My back screams silent protest with every movement, but there's no time for weakness. "What's the plan?"
"You go right, I’ll go left, and split its attention." His aristocratic features sharpen with predatory focus. "If you see an opening, take it. "
I nod, tightening my grip on my makeshift weapon. "Sounds simple enough. Don’t die, alright?"
He shoots me a tired grin. “Ditto.”
We begin to move in silent coordination, circling the creature from opposite directions. The monster tracks us both, its hideous maw rotating between us as it tries to decide which prey to pursue. Perris catches my eye across the clearing and gives a slight nod—then launches into motion.
He moves with supernatural speed, a blur of pale skin and torn clothing as he darts within the monster's reach and away again before it can respond. The creature lashes out with three tenticles simultaneously, but Perris is already elsewhere, appearing at another angle to taunt it again. His movements have a fluid grace I've never noticed before—perhaps because at Widdershins, he's always careful to move at human speed, to maintain the illusion of normalcy in order to put everyone else at ease.
I use his distraction to study the monster more carefully. Its skin pulses between opacity and transparency, revealing glimpses of internal anatomy. When Perris lands, it manages to gouge a hole in another tentacle, and I notice how the creature's skin momentarily halts its shifting, as if it’s stunned or… instinctively refocuses its energy to reinforce the skin around its injury? Either way, the unconscious stress response leaves other areas temporarily vulnerable.
The monster grows increasingly agitated as Perris continues his hit-and-run attacks, never staying still long enough to be caught. Its tentacles flail with less coordination, some striking others in its frenzy. I edge closer, keeping low to the ground, mud squelching beneath my feet as I work my way toward its blind side.
One of the tentacles suddenly changes direction, whipping toward me with unnerving accuracy. I drop flat, the barbed tip whistling over my head close enough to ruffle my hair. The monster's divided attention has limits—it can still track both targets.
"Now would be a good time to tap in!" Perris calls, narrowly avoiding being impaled on a broken tree trunk as a tentacle manages to smack him out of the air.
“I need you to hit it!” I yell.
“The hell do you think I’ve been doing?”
I roll my eyes. “Just do it!”
Perris grits his teeth and launches himself at the swamp beast at just the right moment, meeting a tentacle in mid-air. I force down a dry heave as Perris rears back and sinks his elongated canines into the thing’s gnarled, slimy flesh.
Just as I’d observed, the color shift pauses, converging toward the injured tentacle, leaving the monster’s left flank transparent and open to attack.
I scramble to my feet, mud sloughing off my clothes as I sprint toward the creature. I spot what I hope is an important organ—a gooey, vaguely oval-shaped clod embedded just beneath its hide that throbs with whatever passes for this thing’s blood. Without hesitation, I drive my jagged branch directly into it.
The monster convulses violently, another subsonic shriek vibrating the ground beneath my feet. The mystery organ ruptures, spilling thick, black fluid that burns where it splashes my skin. I stagger back, narrowly avoiding a wild swing from a nearby tentacle. The creature's entire body writhes in pain, its movements becoming even more erratic.
"Hey, Carlisle! Ever gone spear fishing?" Perris shouts, pointing at the monster.
I follow his gaze to the monster's gaping maw, where the concentric rings of teeth continue their mechanical rotation despite the creature's distress. Between each ring, I can just make out thin membranes of paler tissue connecting them like the webbing between fingers, and dead center? It’s dank, dark gullet.
"Help me line up the shot!" I call back, already looking for a suitable weapon. My eyes land on a fallen branch partially submerged in the swamp—long, straight, with a broken end sharp enough to pierce flesh.
A wide grin spreads across his face, made that much more mesmerizing by the battle wounds marring his ethereal features. He leaps onto a low-hanging branch, then propels himself higher into the twisted canopy of the nearest tree. The monster's attention follows him immediately, its body rearing upward, maw tilted toward the sky as it tracks his movement through the branches above.
"Ready, Dezi?" Perris calls down. “Kill this fugly bastard.”