Chapter 168: First Encounter
Chapter 168: First Encounter
Three creatures circled the cart.
They were low to the ground, each about the size of a large dog, though that comparison felt insulting to dogs. Their bodies looked like they had been assembled from ash, bone, and shards of black stone. Thin limbs bent in too many places, ending in hooked claws that scraped softly against the slabs. Their heads were narrow and eyeless, with vertical slits where mouths should have been. Whenever they opened those slits, Rohan saw faint orange light inside, like embers buried under ash.
A fourth creature clung to the side of a leaning slab above the basin, almost perfectly still.
Rohan nearly missed it.
’Wonderful. Ash spiders? Ash dogs? Ash nightmares? Why does everything here look like it crawled out of a furnace after dying badly?’
One of the creatures approached the trapped human.
The human swung the hooked blade, but the movement was weak. The creature recoiled just enough for the edge to miss, then darted forward and snapped its mouth slit near the person’s wrist. It didn’t bite down, almost as if it were testing the range of the weapon. The other two creatures shifted around the cart, patient and ugly.
They were wearing the human down.
Rohan’s first instinct was to charge in.
He immediately crushed that instinct under both feet.
There were four creatures that he could see. Possibly more hidden in the ash. The basin had terrible footing, limited exits, and an injured civilian in the middle of it. If he ran in blindly and got surrounded, he would die beside the people he was trying to save. Very heroic. Very stupid.
He needed information.
Rohan watched for several seconds, forcing himself to observe instead of act. The creatures moved lightly across the ash, but they avoided the larger black slabs whenever possible. Their claws scraped stone awkwardly when they had to cross it, producing a faint clicking sound. They preferred ash. They were faster on it too.
The one on the wall was the problem.
It might be waiting to drop on anything that entered the basin.
Rohan glanced down at his ash-darkened hands.
’If they like ash, maybe they sense through it.’
That would explain why they were circling instead of rushing. The trapped human was on the cart frame and half on stone, not fully in the ash. The wounded body near the cart had one arm stretched into the drift, and Rohan noticed the nearest creature kept turning its head toward that arm, ember-mouth twitching.
Vibration? Heat? Blood? All of the above?
The trapped human inhaled shakily and tried to shout again.
"Help! Please!"
One of the creatures lunged at the sound.
Rohan moved.
He didn’t enter the basin through the obvious gap. Instead, he grabbed a loose shard of black stone from the ground, weighed it in his hand, and threw it hard toward the far right side of the enclosure.
The shard struck a slab with a sharp crack.
All three creatures on the ground snapped toward the sound at once.
The one above did not move.
’Thought so.’
Rohan raised Hestia’s spear, took aim at the creature clinging to the wall, and threw.
He regretted releasing the spear almost immediately. Hestia’s weapon was currently his best tool, his walking stick, his monster deterrent, and the only thing in this entire place that made him feel slightly less like a lost idiot waiting to be eaten. Throwing it away went against every cautious instinct he had.
But the spear flew regardless.
It crossed the basin in a straight silver-dark blur and punched through the wall-clinging creature’s body before it could react. The impact drove it off the slab and slammed it into the ash below. The creature writhed soundlessly, limbs scraping in a frenzy as the spear pinned it through the centre of its body.
The other three creatures turned.
Rohan was already squeezing through the gap.
"Don’t scream!" he snapped at the trapped human.
To their credit, they didn’t.
They stared at him with wide, terrified eyes, but they bit down on whatever sound had been rising in their throat. Rohan appreciated that immensely. Panicking civilians were one thing. Panicking civilians in monster-infested ash basins were another.
The nearest creature charged him.
Rohan stepped onto a protruding slab rather than the ash, pivoted, and kicked loose ash toward it with his heel.
That was all it took.
The creature flinched as the ash sprayed across its head and chest. It wasn’t injured, not seriously, but its movement stuttered. Rohan’s ash-darkened skin prickled as the loose grains scattered through the air, and some instinct born from Molten Assimilation told him the creature was not reacting to blindness.
It had felt the ash go wrong.
The ash he had disturbed carried a trace of him now.
Rohan didn’t understand it, but he used it.
He stepped forward and drove his elbow down onto the creature’s narrow head as it stumbled beneath him. His skin scraped against the thing’s surface with a harsh grinding sound. The impact hurt, sending a jolt up his arm, but the creature’s head cracked against the slab.
It recovered too quickly.
The mouth slit opened, ember light flaring.
Rohan thrust his left hand toward it and pushed Molten Assimilation outward on instinct.
Ash surged from his palm.
Not much. Not enough to be called an attack by any reasonable standard. It was more like a smoky burst of powder, a concentrated cough of grey-black dust that blew directly into the creature’s open mouth.
The ember light inside it flickered.
Then the creature convulsed.
Rohan didn’t wait to admire the effect. He stomped down on its neck with all the force he could muster. The first stomp pinned it. The second produced a brittle crack. The third crushed something important, and the creature collapsed into a loose heap of ash and black fragments.
No notification appeared.
Rohan had expected that by now, but the absence still felt strange.
’Right. Different universe. No comforting murder receipt in this place I guess.’
The remaining two creatures split apart.
That was bad. Anything smart enough to flank him was smart enough to be a real problem.
Rohan backed toward his spear, keeping his feet on stone wherever possible. The pinned creature was still writhing weakly, legs clawing at the shaft lodged through its body. He needed the weapon back, but retrieving it meant getting close to the other two.
One creature darted toward the trapped human instead.
"Hey!"
Rohan grabbed another loose shard from the ground and hurled it. The throw was clumsy but close enough to make the creature veer away from the cart. It hissed, mouth slit widening, and for a moment the ember glow within it brightened from orange to a deeper red.
Heat rolled outward.
The ash around its feet trembled.
Rohan’s skin prickled again, more sharply this time. The ash he had assimilated recognised something in that heat. Not fire exactly, but the promise of ignition.
His earlier concern returned with interest.
’Ah. There it is. The part where becoming more combustible starts sounding less clever.’
The creature spat a stream of glowing cinders at him.
Rohan threw himself sideways behind a tilted slab.
The cinders struck the other side with a rapid series of cracks and pops. Heat washed over the stone, and a few sparks scattered through the gap near his boots. The ash on his forearms warmed instantly, not burning but waking, and a crawling sensation spread up to his elbows.
He clenched his teeth and forced Molten Assimilation inward, compressing the response rather than letting it flare.
The ash wanted to smoulder.
He refused to let it.
’Not now. Not accidentally.’
The second creature used the attack to close the distance. It skittered over the ash toward his exposed side, claws barely making a sound. Rohan caught the movement at the edge of his vision and barely managed to twist away before it leapt.
Its claws raked across his left forearm.
Pain flashed hot and immediate.
The ash layer took most of the damage. Instead of tearing deep into flesh, the claws scraped through the grey-black coating and sent a spray of dark powder into the air. Three shallow lines opened beneath, bleeding red through the ash.
Rohan hissed.
"Okay. Hate that."
He slammed his injured arm down onto the creature’s back and grabbed. His abrasive fingers found purchase on its rough surface. The thing thrashed, stronger than its size suggested, but Rohan dragged it with him as he stumbled backward, using its own momentum to smash it against the edge of a slab.
Once.
Twice.
On the third impact, one of its legs snapped.
It twisted its head impossibly far, mouth slit opening near his wrist.
Rohan shoved his bleeding forearm directly into its face.
The creature bit down.
Pain exploded up his arm.
Rohan’s vision whitened for an instant, but he had gambled correctly. The moment the ember-lit mouth closed around his ash-coated skin, he pushed every trace of borrowed ash and metallic dust he could gather into the wound and down the creature’s throat.
The effect was immediate.