Three minutes. That’s all he bought himself. The Blacktooth Gang recovered faster than he’d hoped.
Too professional. Too experienced.
A shrill screech split the fog overhead.
Skitter-Drakes.
The biomechanical predators vaulted from branch to branch, hooked limbs biting into bark as they triangulated his position through vibration and sound.
Val cut left, then right, dumping residual resonance, but the jungle carried everything.
The jungle forked ahead.
Not a clean split, an intersection of warped Iron-Oak roots and collapsed silt channels.
Chigurh burst from the smoke of his ruined camp seconds later, landing in the clearing. His organic Ortho armor hissed, cracked but functional. One eye burned with static rage.
“Suture,” he snapped. “Cut him off.”
Suture didn’t answer with words.
He grinned.
The chain-hook unspooled from his arm with a metallic whisper, links humming as Verse-energy crawled along its length.
Val ran.
Branches clawed at his coat. Silvergrass sliced at his ankles. The jungle didn’t resist him; it redirected him, guiding his momentum toward the deep end.
Bad terrain.
His Halo flickered warnings he didn’t have time to read.
Left. No, vibration spike.
Right...too open.
Behind him, something laughed.
The chain came first.
It burst from the fog like a striking serpent.
[VERSE: FLESH HOOK]
Val twisted on instinct. The hook tore through inches away from his ribs.
The chain snapped taut.
Val didn’t stop running.
The hook ripped free, shredding bark and the second cast was smarter. It caught his ankle.
Pain detonated up his leg as the barbed curve locked in place, Verse-energy blooming like frostbite under his skin.
Val hit the ground hard.
“Got you,” Suture sang, emerging from the fog at a jog. “Always the ankle. Humans forget that part.”
Val clawed at the soil, trying to roll, but the chain tightened.
Every movement triggering resistance.
Suture reeled him in hand-over-hand, savoring it.
“You know,” he said conversationally, “Chigurh wanted you alive. I told him you’d look better in pieces.”
Val reached for his belt. Empty. The canister was gone. The orb spent. His arm burned, obsidian veins flaring in useless protest.
‘Think, Val. Think!’
His mind raced through his internal HUD, searching for a variable. Anything that could subdue the chain around his ankle.
His gaze was snapped to the new flickering notification in the corner of his vision.
[INSIGNIA: GIANTSLAYER] — UPGRADEABLE
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
CLASSIFICATION: NEUTRAL
STACK: 1/10
PRIMARY EFFECT: GAIN +1 NODE ALLOCATION PER KILL (TARGET MUST BE OF HIGHER STRATUM)
GRAFT: "It is not the size of the mace that determines the outcome of a war, but the sharpness of the intent."
Useless! The logic was sound for long-term growth, but it wouldn't stop a hook. He needed immediate solution.
He remembered the invisible wall that had shoved the Abyssal Hound back days ago. His mind is racing through his internal Halo.
Val flailed his right hand toward Suture's face, focusing every ounce of his intent on a single command.
‘Get back!’
[INSIGNIA: ABYSSAL REPEL — ACTIVATING...] [ERROR: TARGET MISMATCHED]
[SUBJECT: SUTURE - VASSAL III] [TYPE: ORTHO-HUMANOID]
[REASON: REPEL IS RESTRICTED TO ABYSSAL ENTITIES]
Suture paused, a mocking grin splitting his face. "Heh. Is that how an earthling pleads for his life? Waving your hands like a drowning child?"
Suture didn't just reel him in; he stepped on Val's chest, pinning him to the silt.
He unhooked a secondary, smaller barb from his belt.
One stained with the oxidized brown of old blood.
“You said earlier that you need fresh ocular tissue, eh?” Suture leaned in, his own glass eye whirling as it focused on Val's left pupil. "Well, here it is."
He pressed the cold, jagged tip against the sensitive skin of Val's lower eyelid.
“Fresh from your eyeball,” Suture hissed, his voice dropping to a jagged whisper.
The chain lifted.
“This one's for Cane...”
A low-frequency growl rolled through the underbrush, not behind Val. Beside Suture.
His grin faltered.
“What…?”
The fog parted. Yellow eyes ignited in the dark.
The Hound appeared from the shadows. Its jaws closed around Suture’s shoulder with a sound like metal folding.
Suture screamed, once. The surprise strike had shattered his ribs.
He swung the chain wildly, Flesh Hook tearing through one Hound’s flank, but the second hit his leg, the third his spine.
Val watched as the Abyssal Hound clamped down and bit clean through Suture’s neck, severing it in a spray of blackened blood and Halo fragments.
The body collapsed. The head hit the silt and rolled.
Eyes still blinking in confusion.
[THREAT ELIMINATED: SUTURE]
[CALIBRATION GAIN: +30 CP]
[REWARD: (PENDING)]
[RELIC ACQUIRED: (BROKEN) DRAKENCLAW HOOK]
TYPE: WEAPON / GRAPPLE
EMBEDDED VERSE: FLESH HOOK (C-TIER)
REQUIREMENT: FEROCITY: 20 | INTEGRITY: 15
GRAFT: “The hook doesn't just catch the flesh; it anchors the soul to the earth.”
“…What?” Val breathed. Shock prevented him from moving.
For half a second, his brain refused to assign meaning to what he was seeing.
Suture’s body twitched without a head.
The Elite Abyssal Hound looked at Val. Ready for another bite.
Then, a twig snapped behind him.
Dan stepped out of the brush, hands raised, posture relaxed.
The Abyssal Hounds padded at his side, massive head lowered, yellow eyes still glowing faintly. Its hide was slick with black blood that wasn’t entirely its own.
Dan crouched and scratched behind the beast’s ear.
“That’s a good boy,” he said warmly.
The Hound leaned into the touch, rumbling like distant thunder.
Dan glanced up at Val, grinning.
“Apparently little Rusty right here appreciates hyper-etheric absinthe as much as I do,” he patted the Hound’s flank. “Isn’t that right, boy?”
The Hound huffed, vapor curling from its nostrils.
Val stared.
Not at Dan.
At the implication.
“You… fed it,” Val said slowly.
“Relax,” Dan replied. “More like shared. Abyssals have taste. Who knew?”
Val swallowed and looked back down at Suture’s corpse.
His gaze fell on the liquor bottle dangling from Dan's hand.
'14 golden rubals in exchange for my salvation... Money well spent,' Val exhaled deeply. He realized he had just escaped Death's grip. 'Well, not today. Not today.'
Suture's body was already cooling, Halo flickering weakly around the severed neck. The chain-hook lay slack beside it, Verse energy bleeding out in faint sparks.
Val crouched, ignoring the ache in his ankle, and searched all over Suture’s belonging.
Pouches. Belt. Inner sheath.
“What are you looking for doc? Cracker or something?”
Val found it.
His fingers closed around a cylindrical flare tucked beneath Suture’s armor plating, its casing etched with Blacktooth signal glyphs. Still charged. Still viable.
Dan tilted his head. “You thinking what I think you’re thinking?”
Val didn’t answer. His gaze lifted.
Not toward the fog, but upward, where the jungle canopy thinned just enough for signal light to punch through.
He exhaled once.
“Help me move him,” Val said.
Dan blinked. “Move… the corpse?”
“Yes.”
“Any particular reason, or are we role-playing something deeply unsettling?”
Val finally looked at him.
That was an expression of a man on a mission.
“Because,” Val said quietly, fingers pointed to Suture, “I need someone to believe this hulking freak succeeded.”
“Ah, that one...” Dan’s grin faded a notch. He gave Val's stomach a playful nudge.
“Playing dangerous games aren’t you now.”
Together, they dragged the body, far enough that the blood trail blurred, far enough that the jungle began to erase the violence.
Val prepared it carefully, deliberately. Then he thumbed the flare’s activator.
The signal ignited with a sharp hiss.
Violet light screaming upward through the fog, piercing the Primeval Sector's skyline.
Val watched the spark climb, waiting for the answering flicker of the inevitable...Chigurh.
