Chapter 14 #2
Each time I swung from the ceiling I was able to cut more ropes, despite the rotten fingers getting faster at trying to sever my vines. And each time I did it, the stronger and more confident I became. The old saying 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger,’ clearly had some truth to it.
After six swings there was only one rope left, and Minthe's face was a mask of fear. Her shoulders and shins were covered in wounds.
“You'd better not fuck this up,” she called to me as I prepared to swing again.
“Have you always been a bitch?” I yelled back.
“Yes. But I don't deserve to die like this.” Her voice was bitter and I couldn't help the surge of emotion I felt for her.
She was a fighter, that much was clear, and she had been rendered helpless. I knew how awful it felt to have your fate in the hands of another.
“Perhaps you could be less of a bitch to me if I save your life?” She didn't answer, but her eyes locked on mine and I could see the very real fear under the attitude. “Alright, I'm coming,” I breathed, and launched my vine up.
Weirdly though, as I pulled myself to the ceiling, no finger appeared in the rock, snaking towards my vine. Suspicion filled me as I swiped Faesforos at the last rope, which was wrapped around Minthe's middle.
But it never made contact. Instead, Eurynomos appeared between us, my dagger tearing across his emaciated arm. He shrieked, a hair-raising noise that induced almost as much terror in me as one of Hades' rages.
“Pain!” the demon screeched, and I kicked at the air under me, trying to swing myself away from him. I looked desperately for a pillar beneath me to land on. “Pain was what I needed! For a surge in power big enough to break free!”
“What?” I snapped my eyes to his warped, glee-filled ones.
“Free,” he hissed, and then he was on me.
Agony like I had never experienced, worse than being electrocuted by the man with the phoenix, engulfed me. I could feel my skin being torn from my bones as he bent his head to my shoulder, and I felt my vine disintegrate as I screamed.
I began to fall, and the demon fell with me, my neck and my jaw searing with white hot pain as his teeth sank into my flesh.
As darkness began to consume me, I heard Minthe.
“Fucking fight him!”
My back hit something hard, and I was vaguely aware of the clatter of bones and the squelch of rotting flesh. You are a goddess.
Another wave of agony drew new screams from me, and I was drowning under Eurynomos' weight as he tore more skin and muscle from my neck. You are a goddess. Fucking fight him. I reached inside for everything I had and blasted my black vines at him.
They hit the demon so hard they went through him. I surged all the power I had through my palms, the black vines drawing on his foul magic and channeling it as my own strength.
Eurynomos bellowed as huge thorned barbs appeared on the vines, and through the connection my vines had to him, I felt them pierce the inside of his chest. As the vines grew they dragged him up, and I swung my arms, slamming him into the side of the cavern.
The swarm of undead around me froze in place, only moving their heads to watch their master as I threw him into the opposite wall with as much force as I could muster. I drew my knees up, a dark rage fueled by the demon's power beginning to consume me.
Eurynomos would die.
He and all the others who sought to use me as a toy, torture me for entertainment, rip the fucking flesh from my bones. I was too entrenched in rage to notice that my skin was already knitting back together.
“Get me out of here!” Minthe's shrieks filtered through the toxic rage, and I stood slowly, my eyes still fixed on Eurynomos as I flung him between the cavern walls, his languid body bending unnaturally every time he hit the rock.
“One minute,” I hissed. “I have something to take care of first.”
With my arms raised high above my head, the black vines glistening with the demon’s blood, I held Eurynomos still above me. “Tell me again how you are going to feast on my flesh?” I yelled at him. My voice didn't sound like my own, but I didn't care.
I didn't care about anything other than making an example of this evil creature. He moaned but didn't reply. Couldn't reply. I was drawing too much of his power from him.
With a final effort of will I tugged on the darkest part of him, drawing the magic into myself, and then with a roar I swelled my vines with it. Eurynomos screamed as giant thorns erupted from the vines, through his chest, skewering him from the inside out.
As the creature's life left him, so did the dark power flowing into me, and I stumbled backwards as my vines weakened. Eurynomos' body crashed towards the floor and the undead parted as he landed hard in front of me, staring down at his pierced and bloody body.
He began to glow a deep blue, then vanished.
My black vines disintegrated and an epic wave of nausea took me. Before I could do anything else I was heaving, throwing up onto the rock floor, my body shaking uncontrollably.
“Get me out, please.” Minthe's pleading cut through my retching.
The acrid bile and the pain in my throat and neck made my eyes water as I tried to take deep breaths.
I had to get us out of here.
I shot a green vine towards the ceiling and my exhausted, shaken body didn't even register the height as I pulled myself up, grabbing Faesforos from my thigh as I went. I felt dazed, numb.
Avoiding meeting Minthe's eyes, I cut the last rope binding her, and the cavern flashed white.