Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12: Fleeting

Arkyn dove out of the way the best he could. He was already at disadvantage with his back to the wall and ass on the floor.

Luckily the monster dove for where he had fallen originally, indicating simplistic thinking.

Its swipe at his flesh only managed to catch the back of his tunic and tear it from the neck to the shoulder blades.

There was a stumble to his step from the claw-like nails, but Arkyn quickly fled down a hallway that was the narrowest he could recall.

He turned back to see if he gained any safe distance and was disappointed to see the tall abomination was still close behind.

It wasn't just running, its limbs were extending far enough to grab the narrow walls, floor, and ceiling to propel its body in the unfamiliar terrain.

The only reason Arkyn managed to not be overtaken, was he knew when to suddenly shift down another hallway or cut into a different direction. The maneuvers gave him a few seconds each time, but pretty soon he was gonna run out of room.

The upper regions were a few hallways and rooms that Kresha exclusively lived in, and then a large descent would take him down to all the other caverns far below. All those long passageways would leave him to be captured.

Even if he managed to get himself down below, it was mostly dead ends anyway. He could try to fight the monster, but Arkyn had no experience in combat or monster hunting.

For all he knew, the creature could break him to pieces using that same strength it had used to ram the door apart and launch him like a bag of vegetables.

In his brief moment of thought, Arkyn was surprised to turn a corner and spot a plaster golem lazily walking by.

Out of instinct, he jumped over the medium sized golden to keep pace and not stop. Just to hear it get stomped on with no regards by the monster a few moments later.

The golem clattered loudly to the floor and the creature kept going, letting out a guttural roar at Akryn in annoyance.

'Sorry Soppy, thankfully your distress may have saved my life.' Arkyn internally apologized to the replaster machine without stopping.

A rough idea of a plan came together in his head at the thought of the golem. Replaster golems only left the Golem cavern in the event of leaking water or eroding sections of the halls.

Sure enough, a bucket appeared around the corner of an intersection not too far away. Arkyn quickly kicked it over to spill the muddy water across the floor behind him and dove to the side.

Both he and the monster had been running full speed, which meant it slipped on the now wet rock with all of its momentum.

It flew through the intersection, passing Arkyn, and failing to stop tumbling out of control for quite a distance.

Without any delay, Arkyn hopped over the huge puddle he made and released all the redirected energy of his water mana paths to his left arm. He hurtled the energy straight out of his fingertips and into the wet floor.

Such a sudden surge of below freezing temperatures and an upward arc motion of his arm, the rapidly forming ice went vertical. He closed off the hallway with a wall of ice, it instantly became several inches thick and was slowly expanding as he fed more energy into it.

By the time the creature recovered and returned to Arkyn's position, he had already expended half of the water magic in his body. The wall stopped at over a foot in solid ice, making him confident it was trapped.

It began slamming its body against the wall, making the whole area quake with each hit.

'That might hold long enough to find out what the hell happened in Kresha's room.' Arkyn thought before It punched a hole in the corner of the ice wall.

'Or maybe not.'

A long arm of broken nail talons swished through the opening, grasping for anything that could be considered any sort of edible flesh.

"What are you?" He asked. Arkyn didn't expect an answer, as he was only talking to himself and trying to figure out an answer.

All the codexes he had read so far in the library were old to some extent, but a monster as large and distinctive as this one must've been documented somewhere.

The closest thing he could consider it to was maybe the head of an owlbear with the body of a Wendigo, but highly unlikely. There was even a chance it was a mutated version of something else, but he just couldn't understand what.

After a few more failed swipes that remained out of reach, the clawed hand retracted inside the hole. The creature seemed to comprehend that it was trapped behind the ice and couldn't break the barrier. Though Arkyn could hear it panting heavily at him from the other side.

He moved to an angle that let him see through the opening without compromising his safety and was startled to see a large red eye staring back at him.

It was a round pupil that rapidly expanded and contracted, also like the iris was heavily panting too.

Being much closer, he realized that the coloring of the eye wasn't actually red, there were just so many burst blood vessels that leaked over the irises and painted them a reddish-pink.

The strange phenomenon didn't help Arkyn in identifying the beast, but it was certainly a unique trait that could help him find the information later.

That implied he would manage to survive long enough to search.

The eyes seemed to fade from blood red to yellowish green for a moment, a familiar pairing that had been judging and staring him down for the last twenty years.

"Kresha?-" He barely got her name out before the whole wall instantly changed to a small wave of water that fell to the floor, leaving him less than two feet away from her maw of fangs.