Thanduin turned to the Partian’s shifting shadow.
Is this thing the cause of it?
The sound of glass cracking.
Fracture lines spidered across the barriers, framing the monster’s face in interwoven shards.
Then the walls shattered.
Its claws emerged like bared fangs—a humanoid hand, sharpened with talons that could slice steel like paper.
A glint.
Thanduin’s eyes flinched.
Another ring of barriers crashed down, the space narrower this time.
His arms flung forward, gesturing for the glassy prison to shrink and crush the creature.
But it was pointless.
The walls trembled under the Partian’s twitch, splintering with an ease that sent a prickle to his spine.
He had run out of Rage.
He couldn’t afford to summon another wave of barriers.
The Rage presence in the air constantly bothered him, thickening with each second—as if he were conserving his strength for whatever was causing it.
Bloody hell—this much interference already…
damn it!
His gaze flicked toward Kisatsu, eyes sharp, burning with urgency.
“Kid!” he cried, voice cracking.
The boy was still there, inert, oblivious.
“Run—now!
I can’t hold this bugbear back any longer!”
Kisatsu ran, though not without hesitation.
Thanduin’s stance tightened.
A heater shield materialized in his grasp.
Easy, he thought, eyes glazing over.
I’m no good in a straight fight—and even if I were, it wouldn’t count for much.
He stepped backward slowly, glancing between the Partian and the advancing footsteps, expression cold, calculating.
Smashing barriers with brute force?
He snorted dryly.
Not something I’m keen to test with my bare hands.
And I’m hardly quick, either.
They circled one another slowly, each step careful, measured.
The dense air bore down on him, heavier than anything he carried—the shield, or the monster’s smoldering gaze.
A slight tremor skittered through his finger.
His eyes flicked, blurring the Partian in the background.
A shallow breath.
The creature flickered out of sight—quick, sudden.
He turned to the boy in the distance so fast his neck nearly cracked.
A sound from behind.
He didn’t see it—but he felt it.
The ripple in the air coming from behind.
Icy.
Thick with malign.
He vanished—if only for a blink.
The monster lunged its arms toward him.
Only a whiff of air caught in its grasp.
It had tried to catch him off guard.
But he didn’t yield under pressure.
He leaped away, shield weighing heavier with each trembling breath.
His Rage hadn’t yet been replenished, and stamina clung to him like a thread about to snap.
Only now did the weight of the situation press down on him.
Honestly…
asking for a backup “just in case” every time I’m thrown into an emergency?
He let out a humorless chuckle, breath thin, ragged.
I’m supposed to be the defence, and I’m hardly ever on my own.
A hefty thwack struck his shield.
He recoiled slightly under the impact, feet planted firm.
Once that fails, I’ve got nothing left.
He pushed the Partian over and swung his shield desperately at it.
If I’m not getting out of this in one piece, I’d at least prefer to survive it—with only a limb missing.
The Partian flinched, its severed arm sriking the ground with a dull, meaty thump.
Flesh stirred at the wound—but the regrowth dragged, sluggish, incomplete.
That alone told Thanduin enough.
The fight was bleeding it dry, just as it was bleeding him.
I can still do this.
He tightened his grip.
I can still keep death at bay.
He swept his shield through the air, flicking blood aside as if shaking doubt itself.
The creature growled.
Low.
Wet.
“Your blood…” It advanced, step heavy, deliberate, disturbingly calm.
Thanduin lashed out with his shield again.
This time, it didn’t give.
The Partian caught the shield in a steely grip, talons biting into its surface with a sound like grinding teeth.
Amber eyes simmered, molten, intent, reflecting Thanduin’s strained sillhouette back at him.
He pulled away—not the shield, but himself—arm sliding out of the enarmes.
The shield remained behind, as if it belonged to the monster.
It groaned under pressure—then glass shattered, violent sprays of shards catching the light.
The shield crashed to the ground with a deafening clang, and the Partian closed in on him.
“Well,” he breathed, a hollow chuckle escaping him as he stepped back, a hopeless smirk twisting his face.
“That’s unfortunate.” His voice was wry, uneven.
“And now what, exactly?”
The Partian vanished again—gone in an instant, faster than his eye could track.
A blur flickered through the air.
He ducked, but even that split-second hesitation cost him.
Pain flared—his left humerus spalled, radiating like fire from his arm, every nerve alight.
Blood seeped through his white sleeve, warm, thick, pooling into a dark crimson stain.
The creature’s eyes flared, hawk-like, searing with predatory hunger.
Every inch of Thanduin’s body tensed, tingling from the pain, from the sharp bite of the monster’s burning gaze drilling into him.
“Ha.” He chuckled grimly.
“So that’s it, then.
Finally.” He lifted his head as if resisting his fate, clutching his left arm, useless against the pain and bleeding.
“This is precisely why I loathe Partian incidents—you can’t manage them properly without someone from the higher division at your side.”
“Are you with the researcher?” The Partian let out a low growl, voice vibrating with sheer bloodlust.
Its eyes never stopped seething, choked with a greed that seemed insatiable.
“The researcher?” he repeated.
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean.”
“Then are you here to recapture me…
or to finish me?”
His gaze hardened.
“If you stay down, no one needs to die.” His voice came rasping, edged like a pointed blade.
“But if you try to kill me, I won’t have much choice but to stop you—by whatever means I have left.”
Silence congealed around them, dense, weighty.
“I see…
I’m not going back.” The Partian moved, silent except for the scrape of its talons, closing in with patient, unrelenting precision.
“Your people have done enough—to me, and to my friend.”
The battle flared into chaos.
Each gleam of light flicked from its razor-sharp talons as they thrust toward him with lethal intent.
The knight dodged skillfully, carefully, evading fatal attacks in a practiced motion, just as he always had—not worse, not better.
Almost as if it were inevitable, the monster finally caught him.
Its claws dug into his chest, slamming him down with bone-crushing force.
It stepped over him, pinning him just shy of squashing him completely.
It twisted its foot sharply against his core, testing him, patience thinning as its bloodlust surged, growing more feral.
“Your kind made me this way—against my will.” Its voice reverberated through the air, low, savage.
“And yet I’m still the monster here, am I not?”
Thanduin didn’t answer.
His body began to yield, muscles straining under the creature’s weight.
The sharp taste of rusted steel filled his mouth, blood spurting out as he coughed.
The Partian shifted, then began to chomp into his arm.
Its jaws peeled back, fangs unfurling into a maw, a flower of teeth.
Several steps across from them, Kisatsu stood.
Quiet.
Watchful.
His mind frozen in place.
The sight was familiar, as if it had happened only days ago.
This time, he was facing a real monster—no, they were monsters too.
His breath came shallow, heavy despite making no movement.
His eyes were stretched wide, sharp, too focused on something he should’ve looked away from.
Run away from.
Yet his feet stayed rooted to the ground, as if making the smallest movements would snap the Partian’s attention toward him.
The world began to dim at the edges of his vision, yet he didn’t turn.
Then—the graffiti appeared in his mind.
Fortune favors the bold.
The sound of chewing.
Soft.
Wet.
Thanduin’s eyes closed—everything was unbearable now.
The pain.
The pressure.
The dishonor.
The ground swallowed him more than the animal had, everything inside him screaming for this to end quickly.
Then the sound of footsteps ran toward him, small, sudden.
The Partian was shoved aside.
W—What the hell are you still doing here?” His voice rasped and bled with roughness.
“I’m not running,” Kisatsu clipped out.
“No, no—no, you’ve only given it another meal!” He tried to rise, but pain kept him pinned.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?
You’re trying to get yourself killed!” His brows twisted, gaze piercing.
“I’ve already tried saving you—twice!”
Kisatsu looked at him—firm, unflinching—even as the creature wobbled a few steps away.
I’m not running again.
Not when running only means saving myself.
He turned to the monster, eyes keen, sharpened by a newly kindled determination.
I know—I know I should run.
I should go back to Dalsdair and Anneliese, but…
shit.
I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.
The monster straightened before him.
Dark.
Feral.
Blood dripped down its muzzle, each breath a testament to hunger interrupted.
Kisatsu shuddered just from the puff of air emanating from the Partian’s frothing snout, visible in the day’s frigid air.
“You again,” the creature snarled, voice scraping at his ears.
Its gaze made his skin wriggle beneath it.
“You act as though you understand what I want.
Are you offering it to me?”
Kisatsu swallowed, heart hammering inside him so hard he swore even the beast could hear it.
“I don’t know—and I probably don’t have what you’re looking for.” He inhaled slowly, trying to steady his breath—an ability he’d already lost the moment he ran toward them.
“But I’m not afraid of you.”
The Partian’s eyes stretched wide open, red veins spidering across them like veins of pure malign.
Its snout writhed in raptorial hunger, catching the scent of strong flesh.
“…Such young, tender flesh,” it purred, smirk widening.
“I do prefer saving the best for last.”
The distance shrank.
Kisatsu didn’t move, didn’t flinch.
So it wasn’t going for him yet?
If that was the case, then he wasn’t leaving.
But that wasn’t his decision to make.
The monster smashed its fist into him, sending him bowling across the ground.
Thanduin shifted, wanting to rise and protect the boy, but the Partian slammed its foot into him again.
His bones instantly caved in, wringing from him a gut-wrenching scream that pierced the air.
“But for now—I’ll have you,” the creature growled, voice grating, mouth peeling open with insatiate hunger.
“Your blood tastes different.”
It should be over now.
Then—a beat.
Thanduin vanished.
The monster’s foot thumped against the blood-pooled ground.
Its gaze shot forward, where another knight stood, Thanduin cradled in his arms, away from the ravening beast, a sheathed saber secured at the knight’s waist.
The Partian clenched its teeth in frustration, amber eyes glowing like a galaxy caught in flames—fierce, vicious, bloodthirsty.
Its meal had been interrupted once more, especially when a familiar taste had begun to sate the animal.
“Fine,” it muttered, voice dangerously low, oozing with pure malice.
“If you’re not going to let me have him, I’ll have the boy first.”
The creature sprang toward Kisatsu.
He lay still on the ground, barely conscious, his vision smudging with each second.
His ears didn’t stop ringing—couldn’t stop ringing.
Like prey helplessly waiting to be eaten, immobile, unprotected.
Blood rained, followed by a wet thud of flush against the crimson-painted cement.
The Partian lay on the floor, limbs cut off neatly, dark fur now soaked in a thick coat of maroon.
Its flesh began to weave itself back into a partial whole, but the speed had dramatically worn off.
It was instantaneous—the monster had barely reacted to the assault.
A swiftness that had rent the air by merely passing, far more lethal than the creature itself could move—yet, fortunately, human.
The knight walked over to the Partian, each step gracefully measured, deliberate, red coat swaying elegantly in the quiet, windless air.
He stopped cold, emerald eyes staring down at the Partian’s golden ones with a feather-light sharpness to his gaze, calm against the ferocity before him.
The saber in his right hand hovered in the air, not aimed at the creature, but the faint glint along its edge spoke of a strike ready to come from places invisible to the eye.
“Are you…
with the researcher?” the Partian asked, voice gruff, barely human to the senses—yet audible enough to demand an answer.
What could a vile beast like it want from a researcher?
“I’ve no idea which researcher you mean,” the knight answered clinically, slipping his blade back into its sheath with graceful ease.
“Clyfhowl.”
The air shifted, then a dark-furred hound emerged, towering over twice his size.
Even this beast of a knight commanded a monster of his own.
As he’d instructed, the spectral hound devoured the Partian in a single clamp of its jaws, careful not to tear away flesh with its large, needle-like teeth.
Without warning, the mongrel vanished with a piercing screech.
The knight had successfully recaptured the Partian.