His eyes burned under his eyelids. Flashes of pain radiated in his head. The mouth felt as if filled with sand or cotton swabs. His eyes slowly opened, waking to the nightmare that was his life right now.
His kidneys hurt, and his chest scabbed over and throbbed with every heartbeat. Both hands radiated freezing cold seeping into his spine, traveling upwards through his nervous system to, with a splash, drown his thoughts in icy waters.
His body was covered in countless wounds, both big and small. From his nose fell droplets of blood, he licked it off his lips. The tangy taste of copper brought some sense into him.
With a sluggish sway, he stood up. A familiar sight welcomed him, his new friend, size extra small.
“How was your rest?”
"Five stars would come again.” He started stretching methodically, with his arms up in the air, closing his eyes shut and tightening his body enough to feel a tingle at the base of his spine. Shaking a bit he finished his stretch with a big exhale full of bliss.
Looking wearily at the entrance of the colossal room, he asked:
“Anything happened while I was out?”
“Not really, I checked out the thing every so often, it just mindlessly sweeps the waters. It must be some Flesh Construct… And how are you doing?”
“Honestly? Easily in the top 3 worst feelings of my life right now, I probably overdosed, the fever is eating me away, and every moment is filled with pain from the body, soul, and mind. If I focus on any of it for a minute I know I will shatter like a porcelain figure. So the time for Future Luke is now, and I hate being that guy. Let’s take out some trash.”
“… you deserve that pain.”
“I know. Now shush, let me prepare for what’s to come. If fate wishes to crush me, let’s not make it too easy.”
He could feel his body had changed yet again, got stronger, and the flow of energies got more powerful, yet more tamed. Deeper, the physical interacted with the immaterial. With barely a thought ball of sparks exploded from his cupped hand. He smiled. Next, the air twisted around his fingertips, releasing ash-like plums of obsidian smoke. Air around his hands started vibrating violently, humming with a static noise. Shredded and disrupted by his will.
The bones mended, somewhat, and muscle pain became more bearable. The skin scabbed enough in most places to not open up with sudden movements. He felt that his body fought hard while he rested, but he was drained. Magic or not, infections, blood loss, overdosing, hunger, and thirst robbed him of his strength and will.
It's his last stand, there won’t be any more steps to take, no more working through the pain.
His clenched fist trembled. He could feel his nails digging into his palms, the pain refocusing him.
One last dance.
He started warming up, feeling out the new limits of his body, with just light footwork and shifting from foot to foot he could easily reach 0.5 meters in the air. His hands left the air shaken, and the sound they made reverberated through the tunnel. A spinning high kick was fluid and sharp. Even his balance and range of movement improved.
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"Good."
Steam rises from the sweaty body after a good, ten-minute warm-up.
He felt the pain restricting him, fishing out the mangled foil packet from his dirt-encrusted pants he sighed. That amount he consumed since he has been in here should have already killed him.
“Oh well, no point stopping now.”
Taking Little Fella's word to heart, he exhaled deeply, jammed the bill into his nose, and inhaled like a feeding whale.
Pain shooting up into the back of his head he started coughing and cackling madly. The light around him pulsed, and reality switched between getting denser and stretching outwards.
Ready, and roaring to go, he swallowed his salty-tasting saliva filled with the tiny narcotic crystals, contorting his face in disgust.
With a sudden turn, he faced the exit of the tunnel. With a mad dash, he rushed through it, jumping up ten stairs at once, landing on a metal, grate walkway resting above a stadium-sized reservoir of water.
Just as promised, above him, the afternoon sun shined on his tired face, and he smiled. In front of him was his prize, the stairway to heaven, to rest, to freedom.
Blocking it was a massive creature, almost twice as tall as him. With short stubby legs, it wobbled near the waterfall leading down into the darkness.
It really was fucking huge, and a sack of lard at that, corpse lard. The rolls of stitched fat and seeping with puss and rot covered the body, almost as wide as it was tall. You couldn’t tell where the chest ended and head started, the amount of chins more resembling a mudslide in progress. Mouth stitched with bronze metal wires, the flesh shredded and bloodless around the wound. Eyes clouded over with milky white. He has seen that stare before, the eyes of the dead.
Fulfilling this nightmare postcard were its 2 different limbs. One, a few meters long tentacles ending with nails-like protrusions the size of dinner plates. The other one was almost gorilla-like but without any fingers. Just the shoulder and an elbow, finishing in a mace of flesh and covered in a bucket of dead nails, a few centimeters thick.
It felt him the moment he stepped on the walkway. With its fat jiggling like a spoiled pudding, it turned to face him.
He rushed at it, covering the distance of tens of meters in a blink of an eye. The tentacle thrashed vertically, trying to smack him off the metal walkway into the frothing water. He jumped up and landed with a roll, almost slipping off it at the end he finished his tumble with a deep squat, launching himself with full force forward and up. Superman punch covered in Rippling Void connected with the Stitched Horror face, shearing skin flaps off the skull, revealing cracked bone with weird symbols carved into it.
Not that Luke had the time to admire the craftsmanship, he overshot his punch, following behind the fist that slipped off the creature he hit its shoulder, vaulting over it and landing on the floor behind its back.
It turned to its right, making the hair stand on Luke’s arms. Without thought he pushed off the ground with full force, ejecting to the side. Almost crushing his arm, a flesh pillar hit the spot he just landed on with the force of a cannonball. Sending cracked rock and dust-like projectiles.
Back on his feet, he closed in to avoid another sweep of the tentacle, forcing more Energy into his torso and arm while letting the Void release from his palm, disrupting the Order of Flesh on the creature, liquifying it into chunks that slid off with buckets of boiled fat.
He felt something wrap around his leg. The world around him lurched and started a race faster than his eyes could follow ending with a loud bang of his back and head hitting the stone tiles above the gate.
The tentacle started whipping him around, even a hit against the water was like belly-flopping into a concrete street from the roof of a house.
He let the rage overflow, his heart pumped with madness and intent, with his leg cupped around the tentacle he let the energy guide, forming it on instinct, feeding it energy and his mind releasing the roaring concept.
“ISKRA!”(SPARK)
Ozon crackled as the stench of burned flesh overpowered the sewage stench. The creature wailed like the damned, losing its appendage and grip on the intruder.
The intruder in question lost the only thing that kept him in place, letting the momentum carry him he crashed into the metal gate, denting it with his body.
Dizzy and confused he shakily stood up only to be met with a full force from the corpse blob, once again imprinting his body into the door.
Vomiting blood he lifted his arms to the sky, dropping his elbows flooded with darkness like two pickaxes, cracking into the creature's bio-armor, loosening its hold.
Using his right forearm like a swinging axe he smashed away the rotted limb, with the sway of his body rebounding from the metal doors he pierced deep into its belly. Focusing even more power than before he willed it to spread.
“EKSPLOZJA ISKIER!” (SPARK EXPLOSION)
A small sun lit up the creature from the inside, showing its ribs like an x-ray. Steam and stink rising off it, the flesh puppet bent lower and stepped forward trying to become the anvil and make the door behind Lukas the hammer.
His hand sloshed outside as he jumped higher than he ever did before, trailing behind it were boiled intestines, burned to charcoal crips. The giant bounced off with its belly jiggling, taking a few steps back.
Rotating his body enough to plant his feet on the wall he let go of restraint, flash-flooding his body with both energies. His mind gone from the overstimulation of battle he simply smashed downward. Like a meteor cleaving the thing in two, landing in a crater of boiling rotten flesh scraps shredded into minced meat. Pieces of skin with huge warts lay splattered like drops of paint on a canvas.
On his knees and elbows he crawled out of the crater of destruction he created. Delirious and drained of all power he collapsed to his side.
Carefree and exhausted.