Duria moved significantly faster than the human eye could possibly track.
Capitalizing on the sheer fact that Bregg’s colossal armored arms had entirely immobilized the ceramic servant, the vampire blurred straight past the creature’s back.
“Gomen ne (Forgive me),” she whispered intimately into its ear with feigned sympathy.
Her wakizashi flashed brilliantly in the dim candlelight.
The razor-sharp steel slid effortlessly between its shoulder blades, aiming precisely for where the heart should be beating.
There was a harsh, scraping grind of steel meeting ceramic, followed instantly by a sickeningly wet squelch as the blade tore through the last remaining shreds of organic tissue.
Duria twisted the blade, fully expecting the wretched marionette to instantly go slack.
But he did not fall.
Instead, the jagged fissures actively crisscrossing his ruined body; the ones packed with pulsating silver; began to flare with a blinding, incandescent brilliance.
Blood did not spurt from the fatal wound Duria had just inflicted; instead, a massive geyser of searing steam and pure, blinding light erupted.
The sickening sound of fracturing ceramic rapidly intensified, sounding exactly like river ice shattering beneath a sledgehammer.
“Warii (Oops),” she casually remarked, taking a swift step backward and smoothly sheathing her blade.”It seems instead of cutting the strings, I’ve gone and lit the fuse.”
“Get back!” Lengos roared.
He did something that was exceedingly rare among the seasoned warriors of this grim realm; he threw himself bodily into harm’s way to actively shield someone who was not his sworn liege.
He planted himself squarely in front of the seated Matron and slammed the bottom edge of his massive kite shield directly into the floorboards.
The holy barrier of “warped light” instantly flared to life, forming a brilliant, semi-transparent bulwark actively isolating the old woman from the imminent detonation of the “doll.” The Matron didn’t even grant him a single blink, continuing to calmly puff her pipe, but a fleeting shadow of genuine respect for the steel-clad foreigner flickered deep within her aged eyes.
Perval and Zedora didn’t wait around for the explosion.
“Going up!” the monk bellowed.
He vaulted off the nearest wall, snatching one of the thick “hair tentacles” currently dangling from the ragged hole in the ceiling.
He utilized it exactly like a jungle vine to hoist himself up to the second floor, completely ignoring the searing, acidic burn of the demonic material against his bare palms.
Zedora opted for a significantly more direct route.
And an infinitely more destructive one.
“Taking a shortcut!” she roared, winding up for a massive swing.
Her axe bit brutally deep into the primary, load-bearing wooden pillar actively supporting the entire mezzanine.
She wrenched the thick wooden haft, effortlessly tearing out a jagged chunk of timber the exact size of a child’s head.
The surrounding architecture groaned pitifully, sounding exactly like a dying beast.
“Zedora, no!” Figlin shrieked in terror, watching the ceiling directly above his head begin to lean dangerously.
He was far too late.
The critically undercut support snapped.
The entire section of the upper floor collapsed with a deafening, catastrophic crash, raining floorboards, shattered furniture, and a lethal hail of jagged splinters down into the hall.
The dwarf launched himself into a frantic dive behind a solid oak dish cabinet, avoiding being instantly crushed into paste by the falling balustrade by a mere fraction of a second.
The portly silk merchant who hadn’t managed to escape was significantly less fortunate; a support beam pinned him brutally to the floor, instantly silencing his frantic screams.
The entire building shuddered down to its stone foundations, and thick clouds of biting wood dust plumed into the stifling air.
For Zedora, however, this wasn’t wanton destruction; it was simply aggressive landscaping.
The collapsed mezzanine had conveniently formed a perfect, albeit unstable, ramp leading directly up toward the jagged hole in the roof.
The barbarian, entirely unconcerned with whoever she might have just buried alive beneath the rubble, vaulted onto the still-collapsing timbers, scrambling up the ruins like a feral cat charging straight into the open jaws of a beast.
Dead center in the ruined hall, the servant transformed into a living bomb began to hiss and vibrate, the molten silver packed into his fissures shining brighter by the second, actively heralding his inevitable detonation.
The ambient heat radiating from the marionette was rapidly becoming unbearable.
Figlin, still huddled desperately behind the dish cabinet, unleashed a vicious string of curses, acutely aware that it was getting entirely too hot and entirely too cramped inside the crumbling inn.
The distinct prospect of being roasted alive in the intimate company of murderous hair and armored undead did not appeal to him in the slightest.
“I’m out!
A man can’t even think straight in here!” he shrieked, completely ignoring the lethal shrapnel flying through the air.
Capitalizing on the sheer chaos, and the convenient fact that Bregg was still actively grappling the living bomb, Figlin made a desperate break for the exit.
He kicked the delicate paper doors clean off their tracks and bolted from the teahouse straight into a towering snowbank, plunging into the freezing, pitch-black night of the port city.
“Aaaaaah!
By my mother’s braided beard!” he shrieked, hopping wildly from foot to foot like a man walking on hot coals as the freezing snow instantly soaked through his thin wool socks.
“It’s freezing!
It’s wet!
Where are my bloody boots?!”
Actively ignoring the biting chill gnawing at his freezing toes and the violent chattering of his own teeth, he yanked his battered brass ear trumpet from his belt.
He jammed it aggressively into his “good” ear and aimed the bell directly at the roof of the building, from which unsettling vibrations were currently emanating.
“What in the hells is making that racket?!” he demanded, straining to listen and desperately trying to shout over the howling gale.”Mice?
Stray cats?”
Through the battered brass cone, he heard something that instantly chilled him far deeper than the ice currently freezing his toes.
It sounded exactly like the wet, ragged, rattling breath of a dying whale, paired with the sickening grind of a thousand rusted shears scraping aggressively against solid bone.
He looked up.
And completely froze.
Straddling the peak of the roof sat the Jorōgumo.
In the pale, ghostly moonlight piercing the storm clouds, the monstrosity looked exactly like something ripped directly from the darkest nightmares of a raving lunatic sculptor.
Its primary torso consisted entirely of a colossal, bloated, sickly-blue woman’s head boasting dead, milky-white eyes.
But this was no ordinary, severed head.
Sprouting aggressively from its thick neck and the base of its skull were hundreds of jagged, twitching spider legs.
However, these were not the chitinous limbs of an arachnid; every single one was constructed from severed human arms, brutally fused together into grotesque, multi-jointed limbs.
The grasping fingers of these hands frantically scratched and clawed at the clay roof tiles, desperately seeking purchase.
But the hair was infinitely worse.
It was incredibly thick, pitch-black, dripping with caustic slime, and clearly possessed a vile, sentient life of its own.
It vomited continuously from the gaping maw of the giant head, aggressively drilling its way beneath the roof tiles, penetrating the building’s architecture exactly like the invasive roots of a highly parasitic plant.
The abomination slowly swiveled its hideous, bloated head and locked its milky gaze directly onto the small, freezing dwarf standing below.
“Oh, you’ve got to be bloody kidding me…” He slowly lowered the brass trumpet, his hand instinctively dropping to the cold grip of his flintlock pistol.
He swallowed hard.”Oi!
Crew!
There’s an overweight, balding hag sitting on the damn roof!
And she looks bloody starving!”
Meanwhile, at the very apex of the structure, amidst the raging blizzard and the writhing mass of sentient hair, Perval touched down on the snow-slick roof tiles with the flawless grace of a circus acrobat.
The exact second his bare feet made contact with the freezing surface, however, all of his practiced, stoic monkly composure instantly vanished.
He curled in on himself, shivering uncontrollably.
In the utter chaos of the ambush, his wool coat had been left sitting comfortably in the vestibule of the inn.
“Achoo!” he sneezed , aggressively wiping his freezing nose with the back of his massive, scarred hand.”Blast it all to hell.
I bloody well knew it.
I am severely allergic to sub-zero temperatures.
I can actively feel my chakras freezing solid in my meridians.”
Zedora, who just moments before had hacked her own path straight through the ceiling and was now standing firmly on the treacherous, slippery roof, swung her axe down hard against the tiles, missing one of the monster’s “hand” appendages by a mere fraction of an inch.
She looked down at Perval with unadulterated pity.
The biting gale actively whipped at her bare, tattooed skin, yet she seemed entirely immune to the biting cold; she was being kept comfortably warm by the sheer, boiling heat of her battle frenzy.
She bared her teeth in a vulgar, mocking grin, thoroughly evaluating the shivering, sniffling monk.
“Yeah?” she cackled, actively shouting over the howling wind and the violent hissing of the beast.”You’re certainly looking a hell of a lot smaller.
Did everything shrivel up from the frost, or was it just your bloated ego?
Do you want me to lend you a magnifying glass so you can actually find your…”
She didn’t get to finish the insult.
The monster; the grotesque, bloated head propelled by twitching spider-hands; abruptly lost all interest in the two armed warriors currently occupying its roof.
The panicked shrieking of the freezing dwarf down below, coupled with his frantic fumbling for a weapon, evidently proved vastly more appetizing than a hardened barbarian or a colossal monk.
The beast hissed , opening its bloated jaws unnaturally wide and vomiting a thick cloud of black, putrid steam.
With terrifying, wholly unexpected speed, it hurled itself over the edge of the roof.
Hundreds of grasping human hands scratched frantically against the wooden siding as the monstrosity began to descend vertically down the facade of the building, dropping straight toward the snowbank where Figlin was standing.
Perval and Zedora were left standing completely alone at the apex of the roof, staring blankly at the empty, snow-dusted tiles and the exact spot where the abomination’s abdomen had just vanished.
“Oi!” the barbarian shrieked, sounding genuinely offended.
She stomped her boot , completely crushing a copper rain gutter.”I wasn’t bloody well finished with you, you overgrown hag!
Get back up here and fight!”
“I think she strictly prefers dwarf meat,” the monk sniffled loudly, casually flicking a small icicle off the tip of his nose.”She evidently possesses specific culinary tastes.
Or perhaps it’s simply warmer down there…”
Down below, Figlin stood rooted in the deep snowdrift, frantically shifting his weight from one bruised, freezing foot to the other.
The biting frost aggressively gnawed at his bare toes, but the plunging temperature was currently the least of his pressing concerns.
The monstrosity was rapidly descending the wall of the ryotei headfirst, its massive, milky-white eyes locked directly onto the freezing dwarf with an hateful, predatory intensity.
The hundreds of severed human hands serving as its legs produced a sickening, wet, slapping sound with every single frantic point of contact against the wooden facade.
“Oh, for the love of rum…” the would-be marksman groaned, slowly lowering his flintlock pistol.
The brass barrel trembled in his grip.
“Stupid idea.
Incredibly stupid idea.”
He desperately jammed the brass trumpet back into his ear, as if genuinely hoping to hear a broadcast of good news; perhaps a choir of angels actively heralding his miraculous, imminent salvation.
Instead, he heard nothing but the loud, wet smacking of rapidly approaching, bloated jaws and the sickening crunch of grinding joints.
“Crew?!” he shrieked, frantically backpedaling deeper into the snow, tripping over his own freezing feet.”She’s coming down!
And I think she wants to bloody well kiss me!”
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