Battle of Monsters (3)

'What? I missed him? What is he talking about?' I felt confused and stared at him.

Dozens of daggers penetrated his body, but no blood was coming out. There were daggers stuck in his limbs, tummy, and chest. But he still stood there as if nothing happened at all.

Bat-black darkness creeped over his skin and changed his skin colour from a bone-white to a deep black.

His limbs and body twitched and bulges formed on his skin, looking as if something tried to escape from his body.

Suddenly his clothes started to move too. His black cape twitched and flew into dozens of parts.

Looking more closely, I saw little teeth on the parts and wings spreading.

'Bats!' I concluded.

His entire cape turned into countless bats, squirming in the air above him. His body fell apart too and turned into dozens, maybe hundreds, of bats. They flew above the arena like a hive of bees and blocked the sunlight.

Darkness took over.

With him gone, the daggers which penetrated his body before plummeted onto the barren ground, untainted by blood.

I completely lost sight from him and turned my gaze towards the squirming and moving patch of black in the sky.

Hundreds of bats screeched horribly, sending shudders down the viewers' spines. Everyone from the onlookers had an expression of despair plastered onto their face. Some even fell onto their knees and prayed while others pushed people aside and ran away.

A big mass of bats flew towards the same point in the sky. Before they touched each other, they turned into a liquid mass of darkness, mixing with each other.

With the bats turning into liquid darkness, they melted together and formed limbs, then torso, and lastly a head. It had the form of the man from earlier but he was in complete black.

He stretched his hand outwards and grabbed a bat, squeezing it tightly. Dozens of other bats joined together and liquefied to form a cauldron-black sword, completely void of light.

He shot the hilt of his sword towards his chest and cracks spread from his chest.

Like a shell, the darkness crumbled away and there was the original appearance of the man from before. The only difference was his amour.

Blood-red leather armour covered his arms and torso, giving him a blood-curdling aura of death. The body of a dragon was engraved on his chest armour and each shoulder pat was in the form of a howling dragon's head.

Proudly he stood with his dark sword in the air and looked down on me.

Hundreds of bats gathered at his back and melted together to form bat-like wings, more than 4 meters wide each.

Seeing this, even the former calm viewers were sent into panic and had a look of horror on their faces.

Everybody pushed and squeezed in the masses of people and ran away from the arena. Some unlucky ones were trampled in the process.

Deafening screams came from the onlooker and overshadowed the horrible voices of the bats.

"It's a vampire!"

"RUN!!"

"ARghhhh!!"

"Run!"

Now I understood. This isn't a human, but a monster created by the apocalypse. Or maybe he was even here before the apocalypse.

I gulped my anxiety down, and calmness returned to my face.

'So he said I missed him because I didn't hit his heart?' I thought and readied my spear.

I drew my leading foot forward with crunching noises coming from the barren ground.

Slowly I lowered my hips and got into a lower stance, pointing my spear at him.

The vampire's wings flapped once and he shot like a tempest towards me. He drew his sword over his shoulder and came rushing towards me.

I raised my spear and thrusted it at his sword. The spearhead glided along his sword, deflecting its path. With my spear being longer than the sword, I had the advantage.

With his sword now being off-target and his body being unprotected, I continued my thrust and bored the spear into his lead shoulder, missing his heart.

I retracted my spear and moved a few steps back into a defensive positon, holding my spear horizontally before me.

Black darkness gushed out from the wound. Suddenly, wings came out from the wound and a dead bat dropped to the ground.

Instantly a new bat flew towards the hole at his shoulder and replaced the dead bat's position.

The wound was gone.

'What is he? That is totally unnatural!' I got agitated and gritted my teeth.

No matter where I would strike him, he would just change the parts with new bats like a car changes its parts. I can only kill him by hitting his heart and nothing other.

The completely healed vampire raised his sword with a grin on his face and came rushing at me again.

Seeing his blade coming from above me and flying down, I raised the shaft of my spear and blocked the sword with the spear's body.

*pak*

A sudden pain assaulted my chest and I flew backwards. Squinting my eyes and looking at him, I saw that it was a kick from him that hit my chest.

As soon as I had ground under my feet again, I stabilised my position and came rushing back at him.

With my spear raised, I feinted a thrust towards his head. And as expected, he moved his sword upwards, trying to reflect my strike.

Swiftly changing the course of my spear, I targeted his heart. A bat separated from his chest and pushed the spearhead off target, missing the heart again and drilling beside the heart into his chest.

Dead bats dropped from the wound to the ground again and the hole was replaced by new bats.

He stepped over the corpses of the bats and thrusted the tip of his sword towards me.

I swiped my spear towards his sword of deflected it.

He grabbed with his free hand towards the shaft of my spear and clutched it tightly, pulling me closer to him.

In my panic, I let go of the spear and retreated a few steps backwards, standing with raised fists before my face in a defensive position.

'Shit! I made a mistake! F*ck!!' I panicked.

My thoughts raced to come up with a solution. My heart pounded against my rib cage and pumped pulsating blood through my veins.

I gritted my teeth with gnashing noises and my fingertips bored into the skin of my hands; blood trickled down from my hands and dyed the barren ground red.