Volume 1: Rebirth Arc
Chapter 19: The Narrow Escape
The creature didn’t just charge; it detonated forward.
The ground shuddered beneath its powerful, multi-jointed legs, closing the distance between them in the blink of an eye.
“Back!” Shu shouted, shoving Kai’Sa violently into the recess of a shallow side-alcove just as the beast swept its massive, armored tail through the space they had occupied a microsecond before.
The tail struck the rock wall with a deafening crack, showering them in sharp splinters of stone.
Shu didn’t hesitate.
Adrenaline flooded his small veins, muting the dull throbbing of his cracked ribs.
He sprang forward from the alcove, abandoning any thought of a clean, defensive strike.
With his height disadvantage, he couldn’t reach its vital throat membrane head-on.
Instead, he dropped low, sliding across the slick, ichor-stained floor right beneath the beast’s sweeping forelimbs.
Clang!
His granite shard struck the underside of the creature’s chest plate, sparking uselessly against the dense chitin.
The impact jarred his arm to the shoulder, nearly knocking the weapon from his grip.
The Voidling hissed viciously, pivoting on its rear legs with unnatural speed to crush the tiny nuisance beneath its bulk.
Its massive maw unhinged, revealing rows of translucent teeth dripping with corrosive digestive saliva.
“Shu!” Kai’Sa screamed from the shadows, her voice laced with sheer terror.
Realizing he couldn’t overpower or outmaneuver the beast in a direct clash, Shu used its own momentum against it.
As the creature lunged downward, Shu threw his entire body weight forward, driving his shoulder straight into its sensitive, unarmored sensory membrane just below the blind head.
The beast convulsed violently, blinded by the sudden shock to its primary cluster of nerve endings.
It shrieked a high-pitched, vibrating wail that echoed painfully through the tight corridor, thrashing blindly as dark purple blood spurted from its torn flesh.
“Now!
Run!” Shu yelled, grabbing Kai’Sa’s hand with fingers slick with sweat and blood.
They didn’t look back.
They scrambled blindly down the winding, organic-lined tunnel, their bare feet slapping rapidly against the stone, fleeing into the suffocating heart of the dark while the wounded predator thrashed itself into exhaustion behind them.