CHAPTER 5 Inferno

A naked sword flashed again and again, cleaving off chunks of flesh that scattered and plopped down throughout the meadow. Beneath the moonlit Otherworldly sky, a beast and a knight engaged in fierce battle.

The gargantuan, hideous monster loomed over the small, sword-wielding knight. Yet this knight wore no armor and carried no shield. Neither his clothing nor his cape were of this world. However, the steel in his hand and the skill with which he brandished it proved him a true knight.

The beast went into a maddened frenzy. It flailed its limbs around haphazardly as it tried to pulverize the small figure, but it could not land a single blow. A silver web of light glittered. The monster bellowed as the slashes dug into his skin, claiming all his tails and half his body. Enough blood to flow from the deaths of a hundred humans gushed out.

The knight pushed on, as if to say, Look.

“Witness my battle. I shall continue. None shall stand in my way. I shall slice away even this bloody rain falling upon me. My friend, the ‘true knight,’ was nothing like this despicable creature. He was better than that. He would have never cowered, never shown fear, never lost.”

The beast’s body squirmed, then shot out another mammoth arm. Densely covered in thick hair, it dwarfed the entire creature itself. It reached out as if to snatch one of the moons from its perch, then came down toward me.

And? What of it?

A single slash—the monstrous arm went flying. I approached the beast, embodying my ideal knight. Composed, dignified, I aimed for its neck and heart. Seeming to sense that, it produced yet more tails and resisted. A snake’s tail on par with the dragonoise neck rushed at me. Flesh squished, crunched; dirt flew from the impact.

I seized that appendage with both hands like taking candy from a baby. My five fingers shattered scales harder than armor, crushed the thick muscles beneath, and ripped the whole thing off.

After unleashing an even louder, hair-raising wail, the dumb beast lost its balance and offered its neck to me on a platter. In a split second, I relieved it of its head, careful not to tarnish the honor of the real knight’s grandfather. With my return stroke, I slashed for its heart. Though the deformed, misshapen monster writhed violently, it could not hide its heart from me.

I put all the amped-up swordsmanship I wielded into a single, lethal blow that—failed to cleave the beast’s heart. Something rebuffed my strike, pushing me far away.

“Loyal, aren’t we?”

Sparks bloomed like fireworks in the darkness. The enchanted sword assaulted me, trying to protect its master turned monster. Neither its speed nor its heft nor its intent to kill could compare to what it had been before. With my newfound power, I knew right away that this blade possessed masterful skill—expertise fit for a hero. Even less reason to give a shit about it, then, I thought, beating it back. I drove down hard, trying to shatter it, but managed only to send some cracks running down the length of its blade. Just then, however, the weapon stopped. A turbulent, evil gale began to violently whip up out of nowhere.

“Urgh!” I groaned as a thick, warped arrow—no, a monstrous claw—I couldn’t rebuff sank into my thigh.

Its head and the missing half of its body regrown, the beast had spread its bone wings out wide. Innumerable strings of the claws hung from each. The flightless freak flapped its wings, stirring up raging gusts that launched its vicious claws through the air in such overwhelming numbers that they cast a shadow over the night.

Clenching the hilt of my sword between my teeth, I grabbed all the arrows from my quiver and hurled them at the talons, each one leaving a fiery comet tail in its wake. Still, the claws came down in overwhelming numbers. I switched back to my blade and spun it with godly speed, but the talons pierced both my legs and my left shoulder regardless. I gritted my teeth.

What is pain to me? You won’t make me scream.

The mutant ruffled its wings, conjuring more and more talons, loading bullets to attack. A curtain of beastly claws obscured the night sky.

Don’t you dare shrink from this.

Giving my body no other orders, I furiously slashed my weapon. It was a doomed endeavor, like slicing through a raging waterfall, but I kept going. Even after my field of vision closed in and I could see no more, I persisted. I heard my muscles get squashed along with the crunching of my bones. That was accompanied by the sound of my blood spewing out. The beast reveled in vile jubilation, but my heart pounded louder still.

Don’t think you can snuff out the Dark Flame of my covenant with this shit.

A single swipe of my blade cleared my view, blasting away an enormous wave of talons that stretched out like a field of billowing grass in just one move.

My body burned. Like a scorching fire, it raged hotter and hotter within me until it reached such blistering temperatures that it incinerated the claws digging through my flesh into ash.

I felt heavy. Time itself slowed under the weight of my form. Quicker than it took a drop of blood to reach the ground, I closed the gap between me and the beast, lopped off its head with a single blow, and, with the next, rent its heart in two.

“Rgh!”

My senses, heightened to the extreme, snapped back. A muddy fatigue and promises of sweet death whispered to me.

No, not yet.

Other hearts beat within the beast. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven pulses I could perceive. Now eight. All out of sync, beating chaotically, with what felt like endless energy.

“Ooh yeah, that’s what I like.”

The monstrosity pounced, regrowing limbs, shooting out talons, and lashing its tails at me. I cut them all down, too many attacks to count, and stabbed its hearts to death, one by one. It was as if we were trapped in the lowest pits of hell, doomed for all eternity to continue this struggle to the grave.

I stabbed the beast’s eighteenth heart, but more kept stubbornly beating—not that I had any plans to give in, either. Nothing could keep me from continuing to butcher him. I’d hunt down this prey if it destroyed my soul.

Swimming in an ocean of steely blades, I carved away at the savage brute who fought back with limitless regeneration. Amid the storm of flying flesh and blood, I noticed a woman in the corner of my augmented senses. She had long raven hair and looked at once like an elegant dame, a young girl, and a mother, though she was in fact my goddess. And she was kneeling. Her hands clasped together, she knelt on the ground and prayed.

Whom would a goddess pray to? What is she praying for?

But before I could explore these questions further, the gaping mouth lunging for me cut off my train of thought. I managed to freeze the beast in place, but then its entire body mutated into a colossal maw that now threatened to swallow me whole. Thrusting my sword through the roof of the mouth, I dug my foot between the fangs of its lower jaw and resisted with all my might.

“Ugh!” Its powerful jaws clamping down on me forced blood to spew out of my body. I couldn’t hold out for long. Endless rows of fine teeth lined the cavernous maw. They wouldn’t need more than a second to pulverize me into mincemeat. While desperately trying to come up with a plan, I heard someone pray:

“My goddess, grant this man your mercy, your devotion, and the grace of your divine protection.”

For a moment, I thought I’d hallucinated the quiet voice—but then a real miracle occurred. A globe of light enveloped me, staving off the demonic fangs. It shone delicate, yet strong. Then a pocket on my fatigues began to faintly sparkle in response—the one where I’d safely tucked away my keepsake of Arvin, his emblem.

His spell swelled into a gigantic sphere, cleaving an enormous gash in the beast’s mouth, then its stomach. Far back in the depths of its guts, I spotted a heart. This one belonged to no beast: Pulsing in a shallow, frantic rhythm, it was human indeed. It seemed the monster had generated hordes of other hearts to hide this one from me.

“Guess my endgame needs some work, too.”

I laughed derisively at myself. Twisting my mouth into a feral grin, I glared at the beast like a wolf staring down his prey. The protective light he’d summoned disappeared; his sword flickered. One thing I now knew for sure: Miracles did not simply come to you. You had to beg and plead and chant and fight and struggle, offer all you had to offer—only then would they come within reach.

This world probably had as many gods as it did prayers. I prayed to them all, not caring if their answer came absolutely drowning in irony.

Please, grant my friend glory.

The final strike cleaved the night sky in two, and the beast with it.