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Decaying

The Cruel Continent Ch. 5

By Rebecca PattonPublished 2 years ago Updated 3 months ago 9 min read
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Decaying
Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash

Haganto instantly jumped out of the way and landed on the other side of the creek. Erzu scrambled to a stop and turned to face him. Her good eyes focused on the creek for a moment before she darted into it. But she didn’t get far before she suddenly screeched and backtracked. Once Erzu was back on shore, she flung her legs with panicked cries, causing droplets of water to fly in the air. Haganto stared at this strange behavior, it was almost like she was scared of-oh. Of course.

Agron must have attacked her from some kind of water source like a river. And now, it took everything Erzu had, a child of the monstrous Salith, to even step into a shallow creek.

Erzu then stopped flinging her legs and crouched down before jumping over both the creek and Haganto. He himself spun around just in time to block Erzu’s blow. Using the same leg, the spider quickly bombarded him with a long series of attacks but Haganto managed to stop each one from slicing up his body.

Then he heard a small cry. Haganto glanced down just in time to see the kit go back into his pocket, apparently curious enough to want to see what was going on, but not brave enough to keep looking. Luckily, this also distracted Erzu enough to stop bombarding him and not wanting to waste this opening, Haganto swung his club and hit Erzu squarely on the side.

As a result Erzu was sent tumbling away and Haganto rushed after her. When she seemed to come to a stop, he struck his club at her but she rolled away to the right before he could hit her. Erzu got up and after a quick hiss, sprung at him. Haganto jumped backwards and raised his club but she quickly scrambled away before jumping up onto a thin tree. The tree creaked terribly and bent under her weight before completely breaking in half. Erzu jumped off just as the broken tree fell into another tree on the side, her stinger aimed right at his neck.

Haganto just calmly stepped aside and swung his club. The stinger missed him completely but his club collided with her front left leg with a resounding crack. Erzu screamed as she crashed to the ground and Haganto quickly attacked her again but Erzu suddenly shot straight up and bit into his club. Haganto put one hand on the other end of his club and tried to shake her off but Erzu wouldn’t let go. Then, despite her injured leg, Erzu pushed against him so that he was forced to take a couple of steps back. Meanwhile, one of her remaining good eyes was starting to twitch.

He gritted his teeth and quickly replanted his feet. Then he took the hand not holding the club handle and quickly, before Erzu could use this as an opportunity to gain more ground, hit her face. Erzu hissed in pain but she didn’t let go. Haganto hit her again, and while her teeth were still embedded in his club, her bite had loosened. He took this chance to rip his club out of her mouth and strike her right in the face with it.

Erzu cried in pain as she stumbled backwards, her leg oozing a trail of blue blood. Haganto rushed forward and hit her side with all of his might, sending her deeper into the forest. Now out of his line of sight, he tightened his grip on his weapon before he rushed to follow the trail of blood.

Haganto expected to find her quickly but after a minute of only finding blue blood on the leaf-covered forest floor, he realized that Erzu must have found the strength to run away despite a hit like that. He briefly pondered if her sudden strength was an effect of adrenaline or one of the many effects of Agron’s poison before he shook his head. He was in a middle of a battle right now, he needed to keep focused.

Then he noticed that the trail took a sharp turn to the left, right as he heard a pained whine. Haganto took a deep breath as he turned along with the trail. A second later, he saw something glistened in the corner of his eye. Haganto looked up and saw a giant cobweb spread across two trees, with several cocoons of silk, all of varying sizes, stuck on it. And as soon as he saw the web, a loud thumping filled the air.

Realizing that Erzu must have retreated to her new nest, Haganto treaded carefully forward, not wanting to get trapped by one of her webs. As he moved towards the repeated thumping, he found other webs, all filled with lifeless cocoons. However, Haganto noticed that some of them were not as tightly woven between the trees like the first one. He even saw one web that seemed to be literally hanging on by a thread. The cocoons on the spiderwebs weren’t much better, Haganto could see specks of fur or feathers peaking through the silk. Some of the cocoons even had splatters of dried blood staining the white silk, like Erzu had gotten tired of feeding on those poor victims.

Then, as the thumping became both louder and quicker, Haganto found himself in front of a giant web, sagging a mere inch off the ground due to all the loose threads. There were many cocoons on this one as well, but Haganto’s eyes were fixed a small one near the center, as well as the four even smaller ones surrounding it. It was hard to miss the tail that was coming out of the bloodied silk.

Or that the tail looked like a bigger version of the kit’s.

Right at that moment, Haganto felt said kit move around in his pocket. He quickly placed his hand gently over the pocket so that the kit wouldn’t see what had become of his family. Haganto then took a deep breath and walked around the web, fearing that it would collapse and disturb the victims’ rest if he tried to go under it.

The thumbing sound became more erratic and not only that, it sounded close. Very close. Seeing some kind of movement up ahead, Haganto tightened his grip on his club and walked forward.

Erzu was in a small clearing and she was repeatedly banging her face against a rock. Haganto looked closely to see if there was anything on the rock, but he saw nothing. Not even a blood splatter. Erzu suddenly screeched as she finally stopped banging against the rock and as she reared her head back while turning slightly. Haganto then saw clearly that the eye that had been twitching earlier was now erratically looking in every direction, just like her other three bad eyes.

Then, with a loud and painful scream, Erzu started biting her broken leg, exactly where the injury was. She clearly was going to bite her own leg off.

Erzu, whether he did anything or not, was going to die. Agron’s poison had affected her mind to the point where it was going to shut down soon. And painfully at that. Haganto had been prepared to kill her when he accepted Tolden’s request but now he had to end her life. For the creatures that used to live in this forest, for the kit that resided in his pocket, and for Erzu’s remaining sanity.

So without a second thought, Haganto rushed forward, hoping to end this with one more hit. However, Erzu turned her attention away from her mangled leg and she dodged Haganto’s strike at the last second. Then she jumped at him and due to the close proximity, Haganto was unable to move out of the way. Erzu knocked him down and tried to bite his head off but Haganto managed to lift his club in time to block her teeth. While Erzu was biting down on his club again, he saw that her stinger was seconds away from piercing his stomach.

Suddenly, with a high-pitched squeal, the weasel kit climbed out of his pocket and raced towards the stinger. Haganto’s eyes widened in alarm but instead of getting stabbed, the little kit jumped onto the stinger and bit it.

Erzu screamed in pain as she reared her head back, ripping Haganto’s club out of his hands as she did so. However, the movement had too much for her mangled leg for it finally snapped off and was falling within reach. So Haganto swiftly caught the leg, quickly turned it around so that the foot of the leg was facing Erzu, and plunged it upward.

The spider stopped screaming when her own leg pierced her torso. Haganto then pulled out the leg, causing a cascade of blue blood to spill onto him. Without a sound, Erzu twitched a bit before all her eyes rolled back upside her head. When her body started to fall, he caught Erzu with both hands and shoved her to the side before she could collapse on top of him.

Haganto then instantly searched for the baby weasel, only to see that he was still hanging onto the stinger, his eyes closed.

Before Haganto’s concern and worry could grow though, the kit opened his eyes and chirped, like he couldn’t believe what just happened.

“Hehe, you didn’t know you had it in you, did you?” Haganto chuckled in relief as he reached out to pry the kit off the stinger. He did so without any difficulty and as soon as the kit was on his palm, the baby weasel curled up and went to sleep. Haganto smiled.

“Thank you little one.” Then he looked at Erzu’s body and sighed. Salith, a monster that Haganto was wary to fight himself, was not going to be happy if she learned that her daughter had been killed. However, this would not be the first time one of her children had perished and Salith had only gone on a murderous hunt once when her eldest son died. The other times, she just limited her murderous rampage to the mountain in which she lived. So as long as Haganto spread the word to stay away from the Decaying Peaks, something almost everyone were inclined to do anyway, people should be fine.

Which was good because Haganto did not want to have to worry about Salith on top of Agron.

Then the brave kit in his hand purred in his sleep, causing Haganto to sigh.

“Let us go...Animo,” he said quietly as he gently placed the newly named kit back into his pocket. Then he ripped his club out of Erzu’s mouth, placed it back into his sheath, and started his journey to fight the one monster he was even more wary to fight than Salith.

But it had to be done.

Previous: Chapter 4: https://vocal.media/fiction/an-answer

Next: Chapter 6: https://vocal.media/fiction/alanus

Horror
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About the Creator

Rebecca Patton

Ever since I discovered Roald Dahl, I wanted to be an author who would delight and move her readers through her stories and characters. I have also written my debut novel, "Of Demons and Deception."

IG: https://www.instagram.com/rspatton10/

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