Victors Quill

The world didn't wake me.

It threw me.

Something slammed into my ribs—blunt, silent, massive. No warning, no sound. One moment I was asleep, the next I was airborne, my body flung sideways through thick, wet fog.

I hit a tree. Hard.

The bark cracked. My spine screamed. I dropped into the mud like a stone.

The cold hit me, then the silence, then the pain.

Everything spun. My lungs buckled. My ears rang. The fire must've died hours ago because there was no warmth, only the hiss of moisture on buried coals and the weight of fog pressing against my skin like a second body.

I couldn't see anything.

Not Plor. Not the thing. Not even my own hands.

This is a pretty shitty way to go out.

Then—

Clang.

Steel hit steel somewhere in the dark. A sharp, shrill spark. It rang out like a lightning bolt caught in a metal cage.

Another spark. Another clang.

Brief flashes in the mist lit up the night like static, snapping through the wet air. I caught glimpses—shadows, shapes, the glint of spinning metal.

Then came the pressure.

Something hit the ground, heavy enough that I felt it before I heard it. A thump deep in the mud, like the marsh flinched. The fog rolled back in a shockwave, only to collapse inward again.

I pushed myself up, back groaning. My hand fumbled for the sickle at my belt, still hooked there. The other was gone. My fingers were wet, maybe blood, maybe water.

I couldn't see the fire anymore. Couldn't see anything. Just haze and movement and something pacing through it.

And then—

Shhk. Clang.

Two curved blades flashed through the fog, spinning low. When they collided, sparks erupted, throwing a burst of brief, white-blue light into the mist like lightning behind a curtain.

For a heartbeat, I saw Plor.

She was already moving.

Half her coat was soaked in mud. One of her chakram halves spun slow in her hand. The other hung behind her, suspended in the air like a leashed predator.

She moved like something in her had just turned on.

A blur shot from the fog—a spear, sharpened from hardened mist, silent and fast. It jutted from the darkness behind her, aimed for her spine.

She didn't dodge.

Instead, she stepped forward and slammed her hand into the mud. There ground inhaled.

Then, with a wet, cracking roar, a geyser of earth shot up beneath her palm, pulled upward by a force so strong it tore the marsh open. The spear shattered in the rising surge, fragments of fog dissipating in the updraft.

Mud and reeds flew everywhere. The ground quaked beneath her.

Then—

SNAP!

Her other chakram half tore back through the mist, slick with something black. She caught it without looking.

Plor didn't slow.

She slammed her heel into the ground, and a wide pulse of force erupted from beneath her, blasting the fog away in a dome. The haze rolled outward like it had been physically struck—flattened to the edges of the clearing.

For a breath, just one, I saw everything.

And I wish I hadn't.

The creature stood maybe ten paces from her, hunched on long, backward legs. Its skin was sickly and wet, blotched in irregular gray patches. Its limbs were too many—four, maybe six—and they unfolded like they weren't meant to stop. No eyes. Just those slit-lined ridges down its snout, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat.

It looked like it had been grown, not born.

Then it sprang.

Plor reacted with a flick of her wrist—her chakram split again mid-air, halves veering into wide arcs. One soared upward and carved through another rising fog spear, the other skimmed the earth, slicing low across the beast's thigh as it lunged.

The creature twisted. It missed her by inches, claws tearing trenches into the muck.

She didn't retreat. She stepped into it.

A burst of pressure radiated from her chest—an invisible pulse, like space itself was shoved aside. The creature staggered, limbs skidding across wet ground.

Plor's right arm snapped forward.

Clink.

Her chakram half returned like a bullet. She caught it—and punched right into its ribs.

A sound like a log splitting rang out. The thing was thrown backward, its feet dragging, before it crashed into a half-submerged stump with a wet crunch.

The fog rushed to fill the gap again, and silence fell back over the marsh.

Only the breath in my throat reminded me I was alive.

But not for long.

The fog rushed back in, greedy and alive.

I could barely see Plor now—just a shadow with teeth, breathing slow.

But the creature hadn't stayed down.

A wet shift in the mist. Then another. It was moving again, dragging one leg now, its side torn and twitching, leaking something dark and bitter-smelling. It didn't flinch. Didn't cry.

It adapted.

From behind the fog, something grew.

A new shape—longer. Sharper. Alive.

A tentacle of hardened mist, barbed with jagged thorns, uncoiled from the haze.

I saw it half a breath too late.

The whip cracked toward the ridge, tearing through ferns and rot and rain-slick mud. It was smart—aiming for the weaker one. The one not standing.

Me.

I flinched back and rolled, ribs screaming. The thorned tentacle smashed the mossy stone I'd been crouched behind, splintering it into gravel. Fog poured through the crack like blood welling up in a wound.

Another swipe came for my legs.

Plor intercepted it.

Steel shrieked—her chakram halves collided mid-air, scattering sparks. The sound was so sharp it felt like it tore a hole in my eardrum. The mist stuttered. The tentacle jerked off-target and crashed into a tree behind me, carving a groove deep into the bark.

The creature reeled—not from pain, but from disorientation.

That sound… it didn't belong. Too precise. Too loud. It turned its snout away like it could smell the wrongness.

Plor advanced again, step by careful step.

She didn't strike.

She stepped close.

Let the thing feel her.

The creature crouched low again. Its slits flared, limbs rising. The fog thickened fast, spears forming midair all around it. More tentacles swirled from the sides, coiling and aiming—at her, at me, everywhere.

Still, she didn't flinch.

Instead—

She clicked her blades together.

Magnetic lock. One weapon.

Then—

Boom.

She launched herself skyward with a force so explosive it sounded like a cannon went off. The ground cratered behind her, chunks of mud and moss flying outward. She tore upward into the air—maybe ten meters—just a blur in the mist, coat snapping behind her like a banner.

And then, above the fog—

She hovered.

I don't know how.

Her weapon spun in her hands. Her arms spread.

And she pushed.

Both palms thrust downward.

The air shuddered. A pressure built—so sudden and enormous I couldn't breathe. The fog didn't drift this time.

It collapsed.

A thunderous push force struck from above, like a boulder dropped on the world. The mist flattened in every direction. Trees bent. Mud curled. The creature dropped—its legs buckled, limbs slamming to the ground as if an invisible hand pinned it there.

I felt the force from here, and I wasn't even the target.

The entire marsh cleared.

For the first time, I could see the battlefield: the broken ridge, the corpse-tree it had slammed into, the fire reduced to smoke.

And the creature—pinned, all limbs splayed and twitching, its body braced like it was resisting a god's heel pressing it into the earth.

Plor fell like lightning.

Like an executioner's blade.

She dropped from the air with momentum thick as stone, chakram locked in both hands, coat whipping behind her like torn wings. The fog had no time to recover. The creature had even less.

Its limbs strained against the push, half-sprawled, twitching, pinned to soaked earth that wanted to swallow it whole.

Plor slammed into the ground with enough force to ripple mud outward in rings.

The instant she landed, she moved.

She darted forward, low and fast—faster than she had any right to be—blurring through the wet dirt and broken ferns like a living blade.

Her right hand came down first.

A slap, almost casual, against the creature's ribcage.

Pull.

The charge flared, invisible but instant. A tether anchored deep.

She surged past, spinning.

Left hand—opposite flank—

Another slap.

Pull.

Two opposing charges, set like teeth deep in the monster's flesh.

The creature howled—not with sound, but motion. Its body thrashed. Its limbs snapped upward. Its torso fought itself, struggling to stay whole. Muscles twisted across the divide. Spine arched high, pulled in both directions, refusing to yield.

Plor stepped back, both arms out, one hand still tingling with charge.

And then—

She yanked.

The forces snapped toward each other.

I don't know what I expected.

But it was precise.

Like peeling bark. Like splitting fruit.

The body tore.

Wet. Fibrous. Deep.

It split from the stomach up—first the skin, then the ribs, then the spine, each piece unraveling like a bad seam. One side yanked left, the other dragged right. The arms pulled free of their sockets. The chest caved in.

Then—

Crack.

The spine broke.

Once. Twice.

Two halves collapsed onto the soaked marsh like twin sacks of ruined meat. Twitching. Leaking. Steaming black into the cleared air.

The fog dared not rush back yet.

It recoiled.

The sound of the tear still lingered in my ears. It hadn't been violent. Not exactly.

Just… final.

Plor stood in the center of the split, coated in filth, steam rising from her shoulders.

She exhaled once. Not shaky. Not exhausted.

SImply done.

She clicked the chakram halves back together and clipped it to her belt with a soft hum.

Then—without a word—she turned her back on the corpse, and started walking.

I sat there, still half-sunken in mud, one hand curled around my sickle, ribs throbbing from whatever had hit me hours—or maybe seconds—ago.

The marsh was quiet now.

Not dead. Just... different.

Like the predator that had ruled it was gone. And every sound knew it.

I watched her walk, coated in fog and blood and silence.

What kind of monster leaves another one like that?