---Ghouls---

---Victor’s perspective---

This isn’t right!

I’m dazed from the impossible way this guy moved toward me and slammed me in to the floor.

I’m unable to breathe from the hand wrapped all the way around my neck.

A lipless mouth, wider than my entire head and full of large, peg like teeth, opens in a scream that I can’t hear but I can feel!

Agek have eyes but they’re beneath their skin (which I can’t see through) giving the face I’m looking at a disturbingly eyeless appearance.

A new light appears from over my head.

Something blindingly white streaks from my left before burying itself into the side of the creature’s skull.

That’s not right!

I don’t blame Thran for immediately resorting to lethal force… that’s not what I’m talking about… It’s the fact that there was no explosion of steam!

All animals have some kind of liquid in their bodies. If not water then something else!

Gardenworlders almost always have drier bodies than Terrans (since water is heavy) but no creature has their body completely dry!

I know this and, yet, the beak of Thran’s bec just disappeared into this guy’s skull for a quarter second and managed to not create any steam at all!

I come to my senses a little and aim a two footed kick directly at the skinny waist of the one pinning me down.

He’s thrown over my head and must land on his back.

Before I’m fully to my feet, a strong hand has closed around my wrist.

I barely have time to react before I’m being pulled along the corridor at a speed I’m having trouble staying on my feet at!

I manage to determine that the one dragging me away is Thran, her powerful legs working like the pistons of a steam engine in the low gravity!

I look behind me just in time to see the creature (which I can no longer think of as a ‘person’) righting itself and looking around for us before it disappears around the corner.

My legs are working as hard as they can to keep up with Thran and I’m only just able to keep her from dragging me down onto my face!

Even after so many times that she’s demonstrated her superior physicality, it still seems impossible that she would be able to run so much faster than me with such short legs!

Her stamina doesn’t last, though…

Before long our roles are reversed and I’m the one dragging her along by the arm.

I dive into a dark room to hide and let us catch our breaths.

I select the open comm channel and, doing my best to actually whisper, say “All receivers: We’ve encountered a hostile. Subject appeared to be an Agek but was much stronger and faster than us! Subject was nonverbal and unresponsive to communication. Likely under outside control or direction. Do you read!?”

“I… read you… Victor!… A… little… LATE!” returns Samus’s voice, via my translator.

My stomach drops.

---Brunhilda’s perspective---

“GodsandGoddessesofÁsgarðrandVanaheimr,

Icalluponyourstrength,yourwisdomandyourgrace

ToshieldandprotectmeandallthatIholddear!

MightyÞórr,GodofThunderandprotectorofMiðgarðr,

Wieldyourhammer,Mjölnir,andguardmefromharm!

AsIwalkthepathoflife,letnoillbefallme!

Óðinn,wiseAlfǫðr,GodofWarand…” prays Tuun, frantically and out loud, so fast that if every word’s meaning wasn’t being forced into my brain by my translator, I’d have no hope of keeping up with it in any language I speak!

The mindless horde rattle the barred door of the room we’re locked inside, the features of the various faces completely rabid!

I brought a single spare magazine for my gun… not that it did any good!

I unloaded a full 100 rounds into the throng of them, then reloaded and unloaded another hundred to no effect!

One of them got close enough to us that Tuun was able to stab it between the eyes…

I can still see it through the porthole, Tuun’s cooled off dagger sticking out of its head, still, impossibly, moving around and seeming to have suffered no loss of function!

My dominant arm is broken, either in the ulna or the radius but the pain is so blinding that I can’t tell which… maybe both?

I let it hang down at my left side, doing my best to suppress the pain, and tap the left side of Tuun’s helmet with my right hand, snapping her from her reverie.

“Tuun, I get that you’re scared, I’m scared too, but the gods aren’t helping us out of this one!… We need to figure something out!” I say, my tone stern but not angry.

The bright blue lights of her helmet sensors flick to the door and she raises a slender finger to point at the deranged faces.

“Those things are draugar!… Straight from Helheim!… The Swift Claw’s stuck, Toothless got herself electrocuted off the space station, Victor and Thran are gone!… What is there for us to figure out!?…” she asks, her translated voice being layered with the tone of being on the verge of tears.

“I don’t know but I don’t fancy dying in this room, so…!!!”

Just that moment, the scrabbling at the door ceases.

Tuun and I both look to the door and then back at eachother.

“Maybe… Maybe they gave up…?” suggests Tuun.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Mmmm…” I grunt.

I step back to the door to look out of the porthole.

Tuun is right behind me and has no problem looking over my head.

The demented beings haven’t gone away…

They are, however, suddenly, unnaturally still…

They’ve stepped away from the door and formed two ranks, one either side of it.

“Could…. Could they be offering us safe passage?” asks the Elf girl.

“I wouldn’t count on it…” I answer, my eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Then, down the corridor, I see it.

A massive, looming shadow appears, thick set and nearly twice my height!

“Shiiiiit… She’s a Threndian!” I say, feeling the blood drain from my face as her shaggy purple fur and distinctive two pronged horn come into view.

The titanic woman drops to all six and it takes me a moment to work out what her intention is…

As soon as I realise, I immediately turn and begin shoulder barging Tuun away from the door as I say “She’s taking a run up! They’re letting her break the door down!!!”

Having got as far from the door as we’re able to, I draw my sword (which is really too long for such close quarters!) with my unbroken right arm.

Tuun draws her three remaining daggers and (wisely) stands behind me.

“All receivers:…” I say into the open comm channel as I feel (rather than hearing) the monster woman’s approach “…I don’t think me and Tuun are gonna make it…”

The Threndian woman impacts the locked door and rips it from its frame in a way that no biological ever should have been able to!

She draws back up to standing and turns her expressionless face to us as the other ghouls pour in around her…

---Thran’s perspective---

I look at the mirky water…

My breathing is rapid, my heartrate fast and every muscle in my body is tense!

“I… can’t swim…” I confess “…I’m too dense… I sink straight to the bottom, even out of armour!”

“Yes… but…” Victor raises a hand to flick the side of my vacuum helmet “…you can breathe, right?… Don’t need to swim, so long as you can breathe!… You’re too dense? Walk on the bottom…”

“I… I-I d-donnn’t… i-it’s…” I stammer, on the verge of a panic attack!

“Thran… Thran! Look at me!”

I look up at the gold and silver helmet with the bright green sensor bar that’s pointed down at me.

“You’re hyperventilatin’…” he says, gently “…close your mouth and breathe through your nose… slowly as you can…”

He puts a hand on my shoulder, not that I can feel it through my armour, and stoops to bring his head level to mine.

“You’re doin’ fiiiiine…” he soothes “…Just think of it as thick air… K?… I’ll be right beside you the whole way!… Then, when we get to the other side, we’ll find where Tuun and Samus’ve barricaded ’emselves, we’ll get ’em outta there and we’ll figure out some other way off this station since Toothless got hospitalised… We’re going to make it outta here… Alright?”

Having managed to get my breathing under control while he spoke, I give a little nod.

I imagine he smiles at me before taking my right hand in his left and turning towards the water.

He steps forward, confidently submerging his foot.

I follow his lead.

As the water climbs up my body, it seeps through my armour to press against the flexible vacuum suit I’m wearing.

My helmet works to remove some of the air to keep the pressure constant… It does it almost perfectly but I do wince as a slight pressure spike causes sharp pain in my (one damaged, one destroyed) eardrums and sinuses.

I close my eyes as the water passes my face.

Once both of us are fully below the waterlevel, Victor turns to me and says “See?… Not so bad… just like thick air(!)… You can still breathe, can’t you?”

“Mmmm-Hmmmm…” I confirm, not opening my mouth in case I start hyperventilating again.

“Alright, this way…” he gestures and begins walking along the waterfilled corridor.

It’s… so much harder to walk underwater than in air!

My increased buoyancy keeps my feet from getting proper purchase and every step means I’ve got to push hundreds of kilos of noncompressible fluid out of my way!

It’s 187m until this corridor levels back up…

We’ve come 25m or so… So 162?

I hate how much more than air water swallows the light from our helmets!

We’ve come around 100m now and I’m just starting to relax when the hairs on the back of my neck stand up…

I really don’t want to turn around… I desperately try to convince myself that there’s nothing behind us.

I stop.

Victor stops too.

Without either of us needing to say a word, we turn.

What we see are three shapes, moving with a fluid, undulating, side to side wriggle through the watercolumn.

Victor draws his sword and ignites it.

I ignite my plasmabec.

The heat of our weapons creates a torrent of steam bubbles which envelope the blades before pouring off of them to the ceiling.

The enemies get close enough for me to see what they are.

Xanajoaxans… or, at least, ghouls that look Xanajoaxan!

Pink skin, four limbs, long, finned tails with semitransparent membranes that come most of the way up their backs, a headdress of external gills… These are beings far better adapted for water than Humans!

Their faces make very obvious that there’s no more sapience in them than there was in the Agek earlier.

One of them utterly streaks through the water at Victor, narrowly dodging the slash of his sabre that he aims at it and diverting around in an attempt to flank him.

I can’t worry about him though!

The other two are both coming at me!

Having seen how ineffective headshots were against these things earlier, I aim the beak of my weapon for one of their shoulders.

I sever its arm which sinks to the floor like a stone.

It moves its mouth as if shrieking before darting away.

I bring my weapon horizontal to the ground and lunge the spike straight towards the other one’s centre of mass.

I miss.

My bec is really not the best weapon for this situation!

I chose it because it was what Fabrizio suggested when I asked what the best weapon was for dealing with armoured opponents!

In this situation, I really want something with a better edge ratio!

Amputating enough limbs to immobilise these things seems like the only thing that would actually stop them!

I flourish my bec through the water, hoping to misdirect the two ghouls circling me and create an opening.

Victor cleaves his opponent’s head in half.

There’s an orange glow emanating from inside the wound when he withdraws his blade.

In that moment, I finally realise the true nature of the ghouls.

I know what they are now… not that that will do anyone any good if I don’t survive this fight!

I swing the hammer of my bec into the ‘ribs’ of the one that’s arm I amputated moments ago.

I slam it into the wall and, before it can right itself, I aim a flurry of vicious strikes at it in followup.

Just as I thought… Having burned away some of its ‘skin’, I can see what’s underneath… metal…

I turn away from the one that I’ve just destroyed back to the other.

“Thran! Behind you!” comes Victor’s voice, just too late.

I’m seized from the back by the one with its head split in half.

It’s hand reaches to the seal of my helmet.

Water floods over my face as the air rushes out.

Somehow, the adrenaline, far from making me panic, keeps me paradoxically calm as, instantly, I reach over my shoulder and throw the split headed one off of me.

Victor dashes into the gap between the axolotly ghouls and me.

He gestures me away, down the corridor towards the air, holding the two at bay with his sword.

Not wanting to abandon him to this fight but realising that I will quickly drown if I don’t, I turn away and begin slowly running through the water.

I catch my helmet before it fully sinks to the floor and tuck it under my right arm.

Ironically, now that I’m less buoyant from the air being let out of my suit, running is actually easier!

Having no air to breathe is not ideal though!

Never having been able to swim (to the extent that I was excused from the mandatory swimming lessons that everyone else had to take at school) I’ve never learned how to hold my breath, so I inhale a lot of water as I clear the distance to the precious, lifegiving air!

I look over my shoulder and see an unhelmeted, swordless Victor being dragged away down a side corridor by the enemies.

My heart breaks as I realise that he’s as good as dead and there’s nothing I can do about it!

With my current hypoxia, I am going to drown if I turn around!

I have to get to the air!

I have to breathe!

I have to tell everyone what I’ve realised!

When I can see air above me, I try jumping for it.

My face breaks the surface of the water but…

It’s no use… I’ve inhaled to much water and, until I can get it out of my lungs, I can’t get any air.

I make it to the water shallow enough that I can stand with my head above it…

I can see the edge, still about 10m away!

I just need to get to where the water is shallow enough for me to bend over!

I make it and collapse to all fours, dropping my bec and helmet as I thump my diaphragm with my left fist.

I choke, splutter and cough as the aspirated water pours from my mouth.

Finally able, I take a long, gasping breath!

I reach for my helmet and place it onto my head.

I’m just in time to hear Brunhilda’s voice in my left ear.

“All receivers: …I don’t think me and Tuun are gonna make it…”

Those words feel like being shot in the stomach!

But there’s no time to wallow in selfpity…

Even if I’m the last survivor… even if I don’t survive, I have to make sure everyone knows what happened here!

“All receivers!” I say into the open comm channel “Hostiles have been observed to have metal interiors! Reason to believe hostiles are droids being piloted by a deranged AI and are-aaaah!”

A strong hand closes around my ankle and yanks me back into the water…