Chương 55: Teeth

BOOM! My senses crashed back to me as I saw the man who took them from me's face, smiling with a warmth like he had just saved my life. I knew I couldn't, but I had to try to take his. Lightning bounced through me; it was a feeling like no other. There might have been something like it before, but I just couldn't put my finger on it. There was a word for it that left me, and I can't find it anymore. It didn't matter. BOOM! That sound blaring in my head nearly stopped me, but my instincts couldn't be stopped.

There was no coordination or planning; my body just instinctively went to his limbs, yanking at them as hard as possible. Barbs shot out from where I grabbed, stabbing into my palms and fingers. There was a split second of burning agony, but pain isn't real. It was so easy to let it wash away while I pulled, and pulled, and pulled. KRRKKK His arms flew from his shoulders, letting sap and splinters fly. Not a drop of blood. I wondered where and how hard I had to hit him to make the red show up. I needed red.

Red needed to come out from him to sate me. The first attempt was to just start swinging his own arms at him, which he weaved out of the way from as he started stumbling off of me while I stood. His arms reformed in a shrugging motion from more vines that shot out of the stumps. A horrible laughter came from him.

"Amazing! I've never seen a response like that to the vision! You're far more interesting than I thought. I could have just killed you during that trance, but I knew it was the right move to let you fester. But!" The vines coiled and reshaped into hands, brandishing a raised finger.

"That doesn't mean I'm done playing with you." Thick brambles and vines shot out of the ground, hurling him at me. That must have been how he was crossing gaps so quickly. He pivoted in the air, curling his body up to send another kick out at me. I saw it coming this time. There was no surprising me like this. I readied a punch knowing that if I just stood my ground, an extended arm would split him crotch to cranium. That was what I thought, at least. BOOM!

He extended his legs much earlier than the last time, before spreading them out. They then grew, and stretched, and bent until they formed a barbed maw that bit down on my arm. The pain was so intense I saw stars. It rocked through my body and formed a pit in my stomach, like all of the contents of it were trying to climb out. I managed to keep the contents of my stomach inside me for now, but my arm was screaming for release from the hold.

I reared the limb up and just started slamming him up and down on the ground again and again. THUD! THUD! THUD! He crashed into the dirt and rocks over and over, laughing like a child while my body was going limp from the pain. My eyes could barely process color. Everything looked like it was under w... water. That was it, water. All bouncy and shaky. Like it was all under some water. As I reared my hand up yet again- BANG!

Some kind of miracle, for whatever reason his torso just exploded in a puff of smoke and wood chips, and the pressure on my arm lightened. The jaw was still holding on, but it wasn't crushing me anymore. It couldn't exert that force on me. That was it. He could control Wyrdwood so long as he was touching it. The ones coming out of the ground, he must be using roots or something to reach out to them and bring them up. When I threw his giant sword, he must have used a root or vine to get early contact with it.

His sword swallowed that tree man's leg because it all made contact. Digging my arm into the snapped pair of jaws on the other, I wrenched it free while putting together my options. I couldn't hit him. I couldn't throw things he made. My s... whatever it is, was broken. Split in half. Looking around, I saw a glint of or... orange? That might have been the color. What I thought might be orange was there, jutting out of the dirt. One half of the whatever-it-is.

Limping over, my good left arm grabbed the visible handle of that whatever-it-is and yanked it out of the ground. This was my cl... club. The word was club. It's what he said. Heroes use clubs. This was my club.

"Oh, you want to try a weapon again? Go ahead!" He called out in sounds I didn't understand, roots scrambling out of his lower body before they stood him up on what would become his feet. Another sword grew out of the vines in his arm. About the same length as my newfound club. He was trying to make this even. He still saw this as play. I limped ahead, my body finally reminding itself that pain doesn't matter. There was red coming out of me, falling everywhere. If I ran out of red, I was dead.

I wasn't going to die. I refused. BOOM! There was something like this before. Where I felt if I didn't keep moving forward, something would pull my own life away from me, that I would die. Was it this? No. It wasn't. Nothing like this. But it was all close. The same feeling. The same one I felt then. That I wasn't going to let this be the end of me. That I wasn't going to die before I would let myself have a chance to live.

My heart could be felt thundering and pounding away in my tonsils, my sinuses pushed tears into my eyes. Every sense was just approximated. Just a patchwork guess based on the information I could barely derive in my worn-down state. But it was enough. He was in my face, sword swinging down. I had no idea how to use a weapon. I just swung it up at the sword, cracking it in half. Just forcing my body to push as hard as possible, like I was trying to hold still and launch off the ground at the same time.

It let me move fast, but it hurt everything in me. My lower back was still injured, protesting the strain I was putting on my body. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. I then pushed in reverse, swinging my club across his chest, splitting it open and revealing wet foliage underneath. I didn't feel that before when I punched through his chest. Something important? Maybe just hadn't settled in healing yet.

I might have been hurting him faster than he could heal fully. Maybe. Something like that worked for me before. Push harder. My calves felt like they were splitting in half as I swung back across his chest, taking a portion of his left arm off, from the elbow down. Push harder. Another swing back, this time breaking off his hand. Push harder! I swung down, aiming to split his crown- SHNK Warmth. Pressure. In my left bicep now.

It then expanded into a million little hot pokers that stretched from skin to sinew and then to bone. I couldn't even scream; all I could do was croak out a nauseated groan. Looking down, I could see a root shoved into the affected area. It connected back to the wooden fucker's chest. His voice, speaking more of those strange words, slithered through my ears like a serpent.

"Getting a bit too eager there. You were acting like that was going to kill me! You need to understand, this body of mine exists as just a tool for Nemea's ambitions. Wearing it down isn't going to stop her. I'll recover well before that could happen. That over-confidence could have gotten you killed." A leg came up and shoved me off of the branch, making me sprawl onto my back again. He walked over, looming over me with his fists on his hips, already reformed.

"You know how easy it could be to just kill you myself? I could jam another barb into your neck and turn you into a colorful pincushion. But you've been the most entertainment I've ever had! I'm not going to just waste that. But... I need to make sure you live up to that potential. So I'll leave you and the girl be for now... but my attendants are going to make sure you don't get to just happily limp away." What girl? There was no time to ask as from the ground came two more tree-like creatures.

It was more of those hulking, tailed wooden beasts. Foliage hung off of random parts of them. They seemed more... refined I guess. Like there was a lot more thought put into their bodies. Didn't care. They're not alive. I would put them back in that fucking ground. The wooden asshole who brought them up was sucked into the soil to God knows where as the two creatures pounced for me. BOOM! That fucking noise was pissing me off royally.

I was lucky it didn't distract me from the one closest to me as I spanned my arms out to catch it by the midsection. The plan was to simply squeeze the thing in half, but that failed. It just wouldn't budge. Wasn't sure why. I opted to instead roll with it, taking advantage of the size difference to put me back on my feet so that I could throw it over my shoulder, where it crashed into the soil.

The focus I had on it was to my disadvantage as the tail of the other swung down at me, whipping me down to the ground with enough force to send me on my knees. These things were as strong as... something. Somebody? I couldn't remember. It didn't matter. I just had to be stronger. Being stronger was what mattered. All that mattered. BOOM! I thought I had yelled out something akin to "Shut up!" at that point, whatever that meant.

Something in me said it was the bark you make at other animals to make them stop making noises. Maybe it would stop that awful booming. While I was pushing back onto my feet, the tail-whipping one was trying to pounce on me. Reaching up, I managed to catch it by the chest and tear out a chunk of the bark protecting its midsection. More bark, but a lighter shade. The tail swinging towards my arm, likely trying to cut it off given the sharp form tipping it, interrupted me from going to see if these things had hearts.

Reactively, I just swung it at one of the trees, where its body spread out against the trunk. Orange, yellow, red. F... fire? Fire, right. Fire came from it. A voice, yelling. My gaze went towards the voice. A girl, lying in the dirt. Was that the girl he was talking about? She was covered in shiny things, and red was everywhere around her. I couldn't tell what she was saying, but it was interrupted when the other tailed thing began swinging down at her. No, that wasn't supposed to happen. I needed to prevent that.

My feet pushed off of the soil and sent me flying towards the creature, bringing it with me into the woods again. As we rolled through the soil, I ended up on top of it. My first check was to look around me. The burning creature had got up again, and began lurching towards the fallen gir- BANG! It fell to the ground mid-stride, not moving another... the word might be inch. That wasn't the other sound. This one had this cracking noise in the air. I wasn't sure what it was.

But it stopped that thing, so I had no reason to complain. My focus was instead on the one I had pinned. It was right there in my grasp. One of its own took something from one of me and mine. I didn't know who she was, but we both were the same kind of "thing." With the arms and the legs and the red and that thing, the soul I think, we both had that thing. That's what I was trying to protect, that's what all those vines tied together and hugging were threatening. This thing was putting that at risk.

I wasn't going to let it. If I couldn't kill it normally, I was just going to turn it into as many little pieces as I could. My fists went up, and they came crashing down. KRAK Up and down. KWUK Up KYIK and GRK Down. BKCH My hands couldn't stop moving. It was reaching up to try and stop me, but after the first couple of attempts I just ripped the arms off to keep smashing away. BOOM! And that noise wouldn't fucking stop blaring in my head. It just made me angrier. I just kept slamming my fists on it.

More and more parts came flying off. Bits of wood and leaves and whatever else trees were made of. It didn't matter. There were still pieces left, so I just kept slamming my fists into different parts of it, ripping and ripping away. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Every pounding met with that horrible noise. I yowled out some noise. There was no form to it besides a cloud of anger, as I brought my right hand and swung it straight down the large opening in the middle.

"Leo fucking Holt! Please!" came a screaming woman's voice, echoing the same way as that booming sound. CRUNCH What the Hell was that? What's Leo? Wait. No. I'm Leo. It all started coming back. This thing was one of the tree men from the ADU. Something modified. We were on a raid. The agents we were with got killed. Brother Gleditsia got away. That girl, that was May. She came out to help. This thing took her leg off. I stopped it. Was easy. Like ripping through cardboard. So why was Sam yelling at me?

A dripping sound. Rain starting? Looking up, the skies were completely open. Not a single cloud. The dripping continued. Looking down, I saw my hand. Covered in blood.