Chapter 13: Flying through the Dawning Sky
A shark came out of nowhere—a ridiculously huge shark is slitherin’ over the wall fragments.
It took a significant amount of time for it to squeeze through the hole it made. Or maybe that’s just how it felt. In the meantime, it took all the nerve I had to pick up one of the glaives that’d fallen on the floor.
WRIGGLE! The point of its tailfin makes it out of the hole, and now the gigantic carnivorous fish’s whole body is inside the throne room. Sour spit fills my mouth when I see the entirety of it with my own eyes. I realize the revolting truth about its form.
These are people. It’s made up of human bodies! Hands, heads, torsos, faces, feet, eyes, noses, ears, mouths—every part of the human body has been chopped into disconnected pieces and stitched together in the shape of a shark. Worst yet, each piece is still alive. They’re moving!
Crap, crap, crap! This is bad—very bad!
“Get back, partner. Take Princess with you and withdraw!”
“Affirmative.”
This is an absurd monster chaotically pieced together with human bodies as if it were made out of some kinda grisly dough and kneaded by some mad genius’ whims. Disgust overwhelms my fear of looking at it. Revolting, disgusting, appalling, grotesque—none of these words can even begin to describe this monstrosity.
“Princess, climb onto my back.”
“Okay!”
Princess climbs up Dragon’s wing and scrambles onto his back.
“Good!” I nod.
Hands down, that’s the safest place here.
The monster chomps the empty air with vengeance. Jagged teeth crash together as it snaps its jaws again and again. Its teeth are packed next to each other, growing in rows after countless rows, without any gaps between them. Its slithering tailfin is freakishly long. Haphazard and crudely formed are the only words I can think of to describe how the fins are affixed to its body. There’s no way it’s taken on this form to survive as a creature of this world. Foam is constantly spewing from the surface of its body, while innumerable pustules have swollen, bursting from its flesh. The shark’s body is blue—a distinctly deep sapphire blue. The vibrancy of its impossible color stands out unnaturally from the rest of the scene. From its bursting boils, it spews the same sapphire-blue liquid. Beautiful yet repulsing in the hue of color. The most disturbing part is that for how fresh and raw it is, it gives off no smell at all.
“UWAAAH! WAH! AAH! MONSTEEEEEER!”
“SAVE MEEE!”
“BUGYAAAH!”
“DOOON’T LOOK AT MEEEEE!”
Private soldiers in their white surcoats scream, their eyes bulging out of their sockets…yeah, I understand how they feel. Now that their employer is gone, there’s no work to be done or money to earn. They crawl away from the monster on their hands and knees, or topple forward as they scatter in confusion like mice. Every man for himself, they flee for the exit while madly flailing their arms. I definitely understand how they feel.
“KIIYAAAAAAAAAAH!” The monstrosity unlocks its enormous jaw and unleashes a high-pitched shriek. Oddly enough, it sounds like the innocent voice of a little child. A part of my mind twists strangely as the noise ransacks my thoughts, the shriek piercing my heart and tearing at it.
The monster tramples the floor with its hind legs—no, that’s not quite right. They’re attached like hind legs and are the size of legs, but these are arms. It’s a huge pair of human arms, growing backwards. Wait, did it just now grow from that spurting body? Somehow, this abomination is changing its very shape before my eyes. All the while shrieking and flailing about.
BAM! The floor shakes.
“Whoa!”
Its tremendous flailing shakes the ground! My feet are thrown from the ground. I did my best to brace myself for the impact, but I couldn’t hold out against its force. Just as I’m dangerously close to falling over, something supports me from behind.
“Are you all right?” My friend’s red scale-covered foreleg caught me.
“…Thanks for that.”
The blue monster drops the upper half of its body on the floor and slithers. Beneath its skin, the body parts making up its muscles are twitching and wriggling in a weird rhythm.
Oh yeah, isn’t there a hairy caterpillar that moves like this?
It’s fast. Despite its massive size, it’s fast.
The white surcoat bunch are tossed like beans into a piping-hot frying pan. They pop into the air, flip over, and crash, writhing and struggling. They’re fodder for expanding the blue monster’s ugly form.
Before they have the time to scream, they’re crushed to bits, dragged around, and scattered as pieces of meat. Mouths open across the monster’s body and swallow every gory piece. The soldiers’ numbers are decreasing in a flash and the rumbling tremors shaking the room won’t stop. Is this literally what they mean by taking out enemies in a clean sweep?
This abomination is damned fast!
As I watch, ten arms, then hundreds of arms spurt from the monster’s neck and belly, following a line to its chest. It runs by moving the arms like the legs of a centipede.
“Yuck, that’s disgusting.”
“…But corpses are fine?”
He’s talking in my head to protect Princess now? How much of a gentleman does this dragon gotta be, actin’ considerate in a ridiculously chaotic situation like this?!
“Seeing the living meshed into that monstrosity brings things to a totally different level of madness!”
“KISHA! KIISHAAA!”
The blue monster pounds every last member of the white surcoats into mincemeat as it wails. Bits of flesh splatter as it devours them. Then, while eating, it begins to tremble in short bursts. Tremors spread through its body, foam covers its surface, and cracks develop. It’s growing at a much larger scale than before.
“That thing’s replenishing its ‘materials!’”
The shark’s head inflates immensely. Its flesh bulges, body fluids splatter, and it grows as it twists on itself. Before my eyes, bones assemble and flesh twines around it like string. Just as I’m wonderin’ what kinda disgusting component’s going to burst outta this monstrosity next—
“What the hell is that?”
A beautiful girl pops out of the slime. Her body sprouts from the monster’s head from the waist up. Her skin is slick and smooth with the texture of glass—and noticeably blue. The blue of her skin is far more vivid than the monster’s main body and is partially transparent, revealing a faint light emitting within her. Foam restlessly bubbles from her scalp, and thin tendrils of light sprout. The lights fade, leaving long, perfectly straight golden hair.