Chapter 44: The Isulfr

All of the other monsters had rushed from their gates as soon as the bars retreated enough, but when the Isulfr's cage opened completely, nothing emerged. Kai could feel it within, even aside from its aura distorting reality. He tried to remain calm by inventorying his weapons: he would begin with his bow and his gauntlets would be useful if it got close, but he had to assume his sword would be destroyed if he ever needed to use it.

Finally the Isulfr crept into the light. It looked like a short serpent with four squat legs, but moved more smoothly than such a thing had any right to. An elongated head extended from its shoulders, rising up to the level of his shoulders. Instead of anything resembling a normal face, it had four red eyes set at the front of its head. No mouth at all, which contradicted what he'd read.

Kai carefully took two arrows and nocked the first. Most likely he would only get one chance before the monster realized that he knew what it could do, so the first strike had to count. When the Isulfr took another step forward, he loosed.

The shaft sped toward the creature's center of mass and it immediately distorted. Instead of spiraling out of the way, its flesh retracted and then expanded, somehow knocking the shaft out of the air. Kai was taken off guard, but his instincts had already released the second shaft.

Fortunately, this one sank deep. The Isulfr twisted its head in a circle to examine the arrow, no more than mildly curious... and then it scrambled in the other direction and began scaling the side of the pit.

Several guards began to thrust at it with pikes, but none of them were rated higher than 20 and they didn't have a chance. Kai immediately loosed another arrow, but this time his aim was off: the Isulfr twisted again and it knocked the arrow from its back.

He sprinted toward it, releasing arrow after arrow as he got closer. Some of these did manage to sink in, not that they slowed it down much. By the time he arrived, he had to jump up to grab the monster's tail. Kai braced his feet against the wall and then tugged the Isulfr backwards. Even his full strength was barely enough to dislodge it, pulling it back to slam into the stone upside-down.

Though Kai sprang back to his feet, the Isulfr was faster. That elongated neck was twisting toward him in serpentine movements, all four eyes fixed on him... and then the head split open.

Despite all his experience, Kai was still frozen for a moment. The monster didn't have jaws like an ordinary beast, its entire head split open into four pieces with one eye at the end of each jaw. Each quarter had a long line of razor sharp teeth and the entire jaw undulated as they fell on him.

The jaws clamped down around his bow and his arm. Kai let out a scream as he felt the teeth cut deep into his flesh and grind against bone. One of the eyes was almost at his face, since the long jaw was chewing his shoulder. It stared at him with lethal indifference as it continued biting down.

Since he still had the arrow he'd been meaning to shoot in his other hand, Kai slammed it directly into the Isulfr's eye. It didn't roar, but it did flail backward and finally release his arm. There was no time to think about the pain or his position: Kai pulled another arrow and slammed it into the monster's chest. A moment later he slapped his gauntlet against it, driving the arrow as deep as it could go.

Before it could recover, Kai tackled the Isulfr's central body and knocked it over onto its back. The head immediately twisted upward to bite him again, but he slammed another arrow into its throat. This managed to pin two segments of its bizarre throat together, so Kai straddled the neck and began thrusting more arrows into its neck.

His vision was growing dim. Had he lost so much blood already? He could see blood flying from his arm with every movement, but he pushed himself onward. The best chance of victory was to kill it then, suffocate it if he had to, cut off its-

The Isulfr twisted with immense strength and Kai was flung across the bottom of the pit. It seemed to take so much longer to fall to the ground than it had taken him to fly there. With the raw fury of battle broken, his gnawed arm became a mass of agony. Kai reached for another arrow and realized that his quiver was empty. He'd used every one of them on the monster and it wasn't enough.

Somehow the crowds were cheering. As if this was part of the show and some of them hadn't nearly been killed. Above, the old man cast him a gesture that Kai entirely ignored. This wasn't about entertainment. He needed to kill this thing.

Across the pit, the Isulfr twisted itself into a spiral and the arrows fell from its flesh. Black blood oozed from the holes, but it wasn't anywhere near as close to death as he'd hoped. At least there was the chance that he could get to the arrows on the ground and use them as weapons again.

The four part mouth arced open toward him and Kai was surprised by a high-pitched whine. He rubbed his head, trying to brace himself against it, and then realized that the world was growing dark again. Shadows clouded his vision as if he was losing his sight. Kai stared up in horror as he realized that the Isulfr was responsible, and the last thing he saw was it charging silently.

He had only heartbeats left, and despair filled them. Kai realized that it was hopeless to try to resist the strange darkness, so he had only one chance: relying purely on what he'd seen of the monster and trusting his instincts.

Even though the Isulfr emitted no noises, he could hear its footsteps against the stone. Its head could stretch far in front of it and he guessed that it would open its jaws to bite him at full extension. So as soon as he heard the footsteps get within range, Kai threw himself into a roll.

No teeth tore into his body. As Kai came up, he knew that the Isulfr had likely pulled back. It would strike for him right away, while he was disoriented: that meant it would either be coming at him from the side or circling around to his back.

Kai drew his sword as he rose, swinging blindly in a broad arc that covered his front and side. Nothing, so it was at his back. Jaws no doubt opening. He dropped the sword and hurled himself backward.

This time he hit flesh. He had no idea what part of the beast he had struck, so he just forced it to the ground with his weight. When he brought a fist down, he could feel its flesh giving way. Again and again he brought the Irunian steel down on the Isulfr, slowly battering it into submission no matter how much its body twisted. If it got away again, his blindness would be fatal, so this was his only chance.

Then four jaws closed around his torso and Kai screamed.

The second bite was even worse. Teeth were cutting deep just beneath his ribs, threatening to saw into his organs. Two of them struck his rib cage, agonizing but not lethal for the moment. The last jaw was across his shoulder, but twisting violently, trying to wrap around his neck.

Instead of darkness, Kai's vision became red. He grabbed the jaw by his neck and bit into it before he knew what he was doing. One of the teeth dug deep into his mouth and he tasted blood, but he kept biting and he tasted its blood as well.

Somehow the jaw came off between his teeth. Kai twisted his head savagely, tearing it away from the body. He whirled blindly and fell upon the Isulfr, striking over and over until he began to feel grisly stone beneath his fists instead of flesh.

As soon as he felt its life give way, Kai collapsed. All of the exhaustion and injuries flooded over him, absolutely undeniable now that the battle was over. He couldn't so much as move an arm. As his human mind slowly reemerged, he realized that he must have ingested a large quantity of monster blood, which was now poisoning him.

Wait, the flask Juray had made for him... Kai struggled just to remember where it was on his belt, or if he'd left it in the stands. He fumbled at a pouch, the fingers of his gauntlets sliding off the surface. Even those small movements exhausted him and his arm refused to move any further.

Lying on his face meant he risked suffocating in the fallen monster, but he didn't have the strength to roll over. Only his mind still worked, and that was faltering. It occurred to him that he hadn't told anyone about where he was going. He had inadvertently trusted himself to people who ran an underground monster pit and cared more about profits than human lives.

Stupid, so stupid... he had no more time to think anything else before the darkness claimed him.