Brutality

The massive creature comes thundering in upon the Veil like light erasing a shadow. Its arms raised, rock in hand, it leaps into the air and brings the weapon down with enough force to break anything in its path.

But the Veil ... is not there to be crushed.

The dark shadow shifts himself aside with a movement so fast, the rock barely has time to strike the ground before he makes his counter.

Thrusting his hand in a straight line, the Veil targets the throat of his attacker with immense force.

He makes a cut that runs perfectly from one side of the creature’s head to the other, slicing its neck to the bone. There is no time for the beast’s reprisal, there is not even enough time for it to turn its head to see what happened.

Its body hits the ground, and the Veil puts a second strike through its eye that cleaves it in half. He watches the gel drain from it.

Fawn sees the heavy creature fall to the ground and bleed like everything else that has come after the Veil. She feels a cheer build in her lungs, but she knows now that the prudent thing is always to stay quiet.

The Veil turns as the second dust cloud gets closer and louder.

As he watches, he reaches his hand down and tears some of the teeth from his latest poorly educated assailant, and eats them while waiting for his next attacker.

He casts his eye up to Fawn sitting in her hammock, and seeing she is fine, moves his attention to the next closest cloud.

The sun is further up and it will soon be harder for the Veil to use his best vision, as he is now having to close his nictitating membranes to reduce the impact of the bright light on his sensitive eyes.

The second cloud gains momentum and races closer, howling and eager to take out its rage on the Veil. As it comes into sight, the second creature sees what has become of its brethren and stalls its approach.

The Veil notes the hesitation and makes his coarse, grating, clicking sound with more volume than usual.

The pale beast lunges itself forward and makes a motion toward a small boulder sitting on the ground.

This time the Veil takes exception to the attempt. As the white creature reaches for the boulder, the Veil streaks across the ground, low and fast.

Making very little dust, he reaches the creature before it can obtain its weapon, and severs the offending arm at the elbow. Fresh blood scatters in an arc on the ground.

Howling and writhing in pain, the second assailant scrambles back away from the Veil, yelping and recoiling from its catastrophic exsanguination.

The Veil stands on his hind legs and roars at the grievously wounded opponent, but it is unneeded as the withering animal is already crawling away—screaming as its blood stains the dry ground.

The second vanquished enemy causes a moment of uncharacteristic distraction for the Veil, drifting his gaze to the treetop to see how his Ward is keeping, with unfortunate timing.

The third cloud suddenly collapses, the creature within it having already left the ground. It lands like a meteor onto the back of the Veil.

The impact causes him to collapse immediately as the third attacker brings its fists down on his head. Thudding and cracking sounds emanate from the Veil’s assaulted upper body, heralding the depth of his mistake in distraction.

The impact cracks his bones: the force that the huge animal on his back exerts is incredible.

From where she is sitting Fawn sees that her compatriot is downed and begins to panic.

“Oh no no no no. Gods, how can I help him?!”

Fraught, she can do nothing but watch and hope.

She sees how different this particular animal is from the others. It is bigger, far more powerful and has spikes along its spine.

There are talon-like weapons on its elbows and along the underside of its wrists that it uses to amplify its strikes on the Veil. A collar of solid bone protects its neck like custom-made armor.

Struggling beneath the constant barrage of the monster on his back, the Veil tries to pull himself from the prone position he’s stuck in.

Scraping forward, he feels his lateral torso bones cracking. Even the immense thickness of his bones cannot save him from the incredible strength and determined ferocity of the savage attacker planted so thoroughly on his back.

After a few more moments of extreme beating, the Veil’s body goes limp, still and looks broken.

There are holes in his back from the wrist weapons, and his tail is damaged where the animal is standing on it.

This particular beast has clearly killed Veils before. It exhibits no ingrained fear and seems to have knowledge on how to cause him serious injury. A capable killer, that bears the presence of an Alpha of its species.

After its target goes limp, the great monster climbs off his back, moves itself in front of the Veil, and begins to growl a terrible sound.

It reaches for the Veil’s head and grabs hold of it on each side. It leans in close and howls in his face. Moving back, it begins to squeeze and pull at its prone enemy.

Just then, the forward-facing plates on the Veil’s neck begin to move.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

The beast holding his head is caught in curiosity and slides its hands down his neck to pull at the plates. It strikes the Veil on the side of his head as it does, like an irritable child.

The plates continue to move, unfurling from the center outward, and as they do, a row of black, crystalline spikes protrude slowly from the space.

As the spikes grow in length, their shape reveals knife-like edging facing forward and back. They continue to extend further out, and the beast reaches for them with little understanding of their capability.

The spikes cleave its fingers the instant they make contact.

A new howl of suffering rips the air, as the edges of the spikes slice through the flesh and bone of the beast so effortlessly, that it barely has time to react before two of its fingers are reduced to raw, shaking stumps.

The Veil draws a long breath.

“Clunk ... clunk ... clunk.”

The Veil moves his hand slightly, and the beast turns its attention to the movement.

An instant later, the Veil’s collar weapons extend to their full length, like a row of swords across his neck.

Another moment passes and the Veil reaches up and forces his claws through the arm of the huge Alpha above him.

It screams and brings its other fist down like a hammer, the barb on its wrist aiming for the Veil’s shoulder, but it makes no contact as the Veil moves himself in a flash of dust.

Rolling over, he swiftly severs the remaining fingers from the Alpha’s hand, and begins to climb back to his feet.

As he does, he brings his wounded tail up over his body, slamming it into the open wound on the Alpha’s hand, again and again—the tail barb leaving egregious acidic damage with every strike that it makes.

The Alpha screams, the corrosion eating through its bones as it flails madly to get free of the Veil’s grasp.

Swinging its free arm, the Alpha aims its strike for the Veil’s head. As it comes down, the Veil shifts his head slightly and the fist lands on his collar blades, straight down, as if he had planned the attack himself. The Alpha’s hand shreds against the row of organic blades.

Hubris and assumption lead the Alpha to lose both hands in moments. A wild rage takes over and it moves its head forward, opening its fierce jaws and aiming a bite at the side of the Veil’s face. As it comes close, it widens its powerful maw and bites into the Veil’s blackened hide.

The Veil feels the fangs of his enemy land, as the teeth start to cut through the flesh of his cheek. With this, he turns.

The skin folds down, peeling away from his face and the biting Alpha, revealing rows of his teeth and crimson gums.

With a brutal snap, the Veil catches the Alpha’s teeth in his mouth.

Corrosive agent foams around the fangs of his enemy as all the muscles of his jaw engage at once—crushing his enemy’s teeth, splintering them in an instant.

With a shattered hole in its teeth, the Alpha reels back, coiling what is left of its hands, screaming and struggling to put its feet underneath it.

As it pulls away, the Veil, still chewing on the teeth he has taken, presses advantage, jumping across the ground towards it, cutting all the tendons of both its ankles.

The Alpha learns about the true horror of the Veil. The reason it has terrified the creatures that live on this world for generations is not in its speed, or even its bone-rending claws, but its capacity for the exquisite, calculated, savagery and torture of any being that it deems to be an ongoing threat.

Falling backwards, the Alpha rolls around trying to get some purchase on the rough ground, but with nothing but elbows and knees to grant it motion, it covers very little ground before the Veil is fully upright and standing over it, casting a shadow across it like the herald of an endless darkness.

The Alpha’s hand completely collapses from the caustic tail strikes it has suffered, each finger it tries to bend, snaps and crumbles into an emulsion of itself.

The Veil stands watching it, and for a moment makes no movements of offense nor defense. He circles around the horribly wounded and now pitiful looking creature on the dirt.

The Alpha makes a new sound now, a higher pitched wail, as it tries in desperation to move itself away from the foe it drastically underestimated.

Fawn watches on as she feels the pressure in her shoulder’s ease. She allows herself a moment of celebration, observing her champion now circling the downed beast, and although he is limping from the damage to his back, he is clearly still the incarnation of absolute force and cunning that she considers him to be.

Knowing what the Veil has done to previous attackers he is offended by, she braces herself.

This time the notion brings with it not fear, or even disgust. In fact, she is beginning to feel an excitement she has not felt before.

She is now the only living thing that has encountered this ruthless predator and survived. More than that, he is guarding her.

The Veil stops circling his prone victim and hooks his claw through the empty space in its jaw line, where once there were teeth. He drags the screaming creature into the shade of the tree on which Fawn is situated.

The sun is getting higher now and he hates the feeling of it on his skin. His eyes, shielded with the membrane that protects them, reduce the spectrum and acuity of his sight significantly.

The Alpha struggles to turn itself toward its attacker, but with both hands cut to pieces, and neither of its feet able to do anything but trail behind it, the struggle yields nothing.

Biting left and right, trying frantically to gain a grip on the hand that drags it, the beast tears its own face as the Veil’s claw passes through the space between its teeth, and slices a hole in its upper snout.

Frustrated by the loss of grip, the Veil’s calm calculation turns to fury for a moment. He turns to face the wounded head of the beast, curls his claws back, and begins striking the head of the prone Alpha with his palm, over and over, fast and accurate enough to hit the same spot every time.

He follows the beast around as it moves to try and escape the pummeling, with no success.

The cruel thumping continues until he has struck the Alpha on the head more than thirty times without missing his mark.

Once the beast’s movement slows to little more than twitching and sluggish biting, the Veil stops his assault and holds his quarry down with his foot.

Recognizing what’s coming, Fawn drifts her gaze from the fight and starts to examine the fiber that holds her aloft.

I hate this part.

Holding his next meal firmly in place, the Veil turns his attention to the Alpha’s left leg and cuts a line from its lower back muscles all the way to its profusely bleeding ankle.

The beast wakes from its daze and starts shrieking as the Veil heaves its shin bone from its proper place, cutting it from the tendons and cartilage of its knee.

From the sound she can hear, Fawn knows what’s going on. The memory of the cruelty that she has seen visited on the men who hunted her comes rolling back with all imaginable force. She felt herself clench her whole face to prevent the memory from taking hold.

“He did this to protect me just like ... last time.”

She tried to hold on to the idea that her champion was heroic in his efforts to preserve her life, rather than the mounting feeling that he was, without exception, the most dangerous and cruel creature she had ever encountered.

To her knowledge, even the Cast Soldiers didn’t pull bones from living victims and eat them.

Shuddering from the thought, she returned her attention to the fiber and its remarkable qualities. It was soft, flexible and strong. It seemed impossible for her to tear it or stretch it beyond a certain point.

Each thread of foliage was held in place by a ductile sap at the ends and edges where it met the branches. The sap was intensely sticky at the spots where it had leaked from the tree recently, and incredibly strong once it had congealed and aged at the point where the sheets of fiber were bound to the branches.

It looked as though the fiber grew from the branches, and was then carried on the wind to adjacent branches, then caught and held thereafter by the sap substance.

There was an entire canopy as a result: a lattice of threads that began on one set of branches and looped over the others.

Taking out her claw, she cut a small, young branch off closest to where she was sitting.

The small branch she had cut immediately began to seep a significant amount of sap from the wound.

With some effort she was able to cut a small section of canopy free.

Acting quickly, she spread the sap upon the piece of fiber she had collected. The sap that had come into contact with the fibers directly, began to thicken into a powerful adhesive that disagreed with the skin of her forefingers immediately.

“Ow ow ... ooh don’t touch it Fawn.”

She managed to get the fiber sheet to stick to itself, far more successfully.

Once she had made a piece that was successfully joined, she went on to attach it to the tree itself. The bond was very thorough, and almost instant.

Pulling the sheet out flat, she worked to see how well it would stretch. Just as with the larger sheets, it would stretch easily to a point and then stop. Holding it taut, she thrust the claw at it, and although it made a small hole, it did not pierce through it. She sat back in amazement.

“This has to be how I make something better to wear ... somehow.”

–Garrick M Lynch–