Chapter 110: Choice is a Luxury in the Apocalypse

Basil raised the heavy frame of the CZ pistol.

"Don—" Dion blurted out, reaching a hand forward to grab the barrel.

The shot shattered the damp quiet of the crossing before the warning could clear his throat. The lead bullet buried itself deep into the creature's sloped shoulder.

The skunk let out an ear-splitting screech, its massive body stiffening as its broad tail slammed downward against the wet asphalt.

A dense, blinding wave of brilliant white mist exploded from beneath its tail in a broad, rapidly spreading fan.

It swept low along the blacktop, rolling over the wet pavement, washing beneath the undercarriages of the abandoned cars and throughout the street for them.

Within the space of a single heartbeat, the cloud crested over the bonnets of the cars and swallowed the entire intersection whole.

Dion's eyes burned terribly the second the fringe of the cloud touched his face.

He slammed his eyelids shut and locked his jaw, sealing his breath tightly behind his teeth.

A heavy, wet impact echoed behind him as someone hit the road hard.

Dion forced his stinging eyes open just enough to see through the narrow slits of his lashes.

Anton was down on his knees, his palms pressed flat against the slick tarmac as his body shuddered violently. His elbows buckled outward beneath his weight, spilling him heavily onto his left shoulder.

Anton's eyes remained wide open, darting frantically back and forth, but the rest of his limbs lay completely inert against the wet road.

A few paces away, Basil collapsed straight down where he stood, his knees folding beneath him.

The CZ slipped from his fingers, clattering uselessly onto the wet pavement.

Madeline slumped sideways against the rear wheel of the car she had tried to use for cover, going totally limp.

Paris had managed only two frantic steps toward Florence and Julian before the white fog overtook him.

His legs gave out simultaneously, sending him sliding across the asphalt with his face turned flat against the cold, wet road. His hand remained frozen over the weapon he had carried, just as Irvin was reduced to a crumpled mess as well.

Florence lay crumpled entirely over Julian's small body, shielding the boy beneath her own back.

Neither of them could move a single inch.

'Don't breathe!', Dion ordered himself, his jaw aching from how hard he gritted his teeth.

The skunk erupted over the roof of the nearest sedan, throwing its massive weight through the white cloud.

There was none of its previous slow, lumbering walk in its movements. The sedan's roof crumpled inward with a shrill screech of tortured sheet metal under the tremendous force of its hind paws.

Three meters of dense bone, quills, and black muscle dropped out of the white haze directly toward Dion's head.

Dion threw his entire body sideways onto the wet road. Red mist bled rapidly from his open palm, hardening instantly into the heavy, dark mass of the longsword.

The ground cracked beneath the beast's heavy landing right where Dion had been standing a microsecond prior.

Dion whipped the heavy blade downward in a fierce, diagonal arc aimed straight for the creature's exposed foreleg.

The blade sliced clean through empty air as, despite all its bulk, the beast poured its long body around his strike with sickening fluidity.

It slipped past him in a blur, and the thick, jagged quills along its flank raked sharply across Dion's hip and thigh as it passed.

They punched straight through the tough fabric of his trousers, dragging hot, fiery lines of torn muscle along his leg.

A sharp gasp almost escaped Dion's throat, but he clamped his jaw shut just in time, swallowing the sharp burst of agony down into his gut.

He spun on his heel, sweeping his blade back around in a counter-attack, but the monster was already rotating its hindquarters.

Its colossal, spiky tail rose high into the air once more.

Dion launched himself headfirst over the bonnet of an abandoned coupe to avoid the direct line of fire. The jet of chemical spray struck the metal bonnet right beneath his flying boots, washing up the far side in a thick, wet sheet.

Dion landed hard on the slick blacktop on the other side, his boots slipping instantly out from under him.

He went sliding three meters across the wet road on his shoulder, his eyes screwed shut to keep out the caustic fog.

His lungs were already beginning to push painfully against the locked valve of his throat, demanding air. His sliding shoulder struck the hard concrete base of a shopfront pillar, bringing him to an abrupt, jarring stop.

He dragged his eyelids open, only to find the entire intersection transformed into a solid wall of opaque white fog.

He couldn't see the creature or hear its heavy footsteps over the steady, pounding drone of the falling rain.

Every single sensory advantage of his had been affected by its spraying. The only thing his nose could feel was the overpowering, acrid burn of chemical acid clawing through his nostrils.

The fog served a dual purpose; it wasn't merely a paralytic to drop food in its tracks, it completely blinded everything around it.

The pressure inside his lungs mounted rapidly, turning into a fiery ache that pulsed in sync with his pounding heart.

He understood with grim, absolute clarity that whatever buffer time his mutated body provided, it was running out fast because of the spray effects.

'Of course the one thing the skunk's power mutates to make stronger is its greatest weapon!' He cursed

Within those moments, he understood that for this fight, he could not afford to be willful. He had to use blood manipulation.

The cuts across his open palm had been leaking freely since the stairwell, and his longsword had kept the wounds fresh.

All of that crimson life was still out there, thinned across seven paces of wet tarmac, suspended in the standing rainwater.

Dion opened his bleeding hand flat toward the foggy blankt and every single drop of his spilled blood answered the call instantly.

The scattered liquid gathered itself mid-air before his chest, swirling into a glowing, suspended mass of dark fluid.

There was barely a mouthful of usable mana stored in the entirety of the gathering.

It was nowhere near enough to form heavy pikes across this distance, and he didn't have the breath left to craft delicate shapes.

He shoved his open palm forward, driving the red fluid straight through the center of the intersection as a broad, pillar of force.

The white mist rolled backward off the asphalt as the red blast parted it, opening a clear corridor straight through the center of the street.

The skunk stood eleven paces away at the far end of the corridor, its head held low to the pavement, tail coiled over its back as it landed from dodging the attack.

Dion closed the distance in lunging strides, and blood ahead of him fractured into four crude, jagged pikes as he sprinted forward.

The blood spikes flew through the air ahead of his boots, striking the beast across its broad shoulder and exposed flank.

The skunk dodged most of them, while a few managed to bury themselves a quarter of their length into the thick hide with a wet crunch.

The creature let out a furious, deafening shriek and whipped its bulk sideways in a frantic attempt to crush its attacker.

Its massive tail began its lethal downward arc, swinging toward the exact spot Dion was running through.

Dion dived straight beneath the arc of the tail, sliding directly under the monster's belly.

Underneath its massive torso was the single spot the blinding spray couldn't reach.

Dion drove his blood-forged longsword upward with all the remaining strength in his shoulders from the lack of air.

He aimed straight for the soft, unarmored crease beneath its massive jaw.

The blade plunged half its length deep into the dense muscle and sinew behind the beast's chin.

The thick, jagged quills of its lower neck pressed hard against the back of Dion's knuckles as the sword seated itself.

The creature reared upward in explosive, agonizing shock, lifting its large front half into the air.

The longsword ripped violently sideways through the wound, dragged along by the sheer momentum of the beast's rise while Dion clung tightly to the hilt.

For one terrifying second, Dion hung suspended nearly three meters in the air, his fingers locked around the blood-slicked grip.

Then the full weight of the monster's heavy shoulder came crashing back down toward the road like a falling wall.

It caught Dion full in the chest mid-descent, driving him into the hard asphalt.

The wet road struck his back with tremendous force, and the sheer violence of the impact smashed the last remaining pocket of air straight out from between his locked teeth.

Dion gasped for air as his lungs acted on raw, helpless survival instinct.

The world spun in his vision and he wheezed, unable to stop himself for pulling for skuk spray ladend air, and he coughed harshly at the same time.