Solflare: The Painter's Secret-Chapter 102: Step. Breathe. Kill.

Step. Breathe. Strike.

Three lunging creatures met a single, sweeping blow from Leon’s left arm. A guttural WHOOOSHH of air preceded by a sickening PAM!

The impact folded their bodies inward. A bat among them had its sonic blast crushed within its throat-sac after a muffled detonation ignited with a wet hiss.

The bat’s torso bloated before collapsing, cooking from the inside out.

Every crushing fist, every shattered form, all fed the cold fire inside Leon.

Lieutenant Prince completely stopped fighting, his breathing shallow, mouth slightly agape as if he’d forgotten how to close it, as he watched with an unreadable expression.

A gust of wind, thick with ichor and wet stone stench, howled through the jagged rocks. It whipped the churned dust into stinging veils that scraped against Leon’s skin.

Then, a deep quake that had nothing to do with the bodies falling erupted around him.

As if sensing a greater threat, the remaining creatures that had somehow survived Leon’s relentless punches flinched back in unison. Their snarls, which were chaotic before, now echoed with a deeper menace.

Leon, who stood lost in the rhythm of his own destruction, neglected the shaking earth. He threw another punch, his arm swinging on the last reserves of air in his burning lungs.

"LEON!"

Prince’s scream cut through the haze like a physical blade and tore through Leon’s mindless focus.

Leon’s head snapped toward the sound, his arms trembling as they lowered to his sides.

SSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHKKKK – THWAMP!

A strand of glistening silk, thicker than Leon’s wrist, shot across the thirty-foot distance, shimmering with oily rainbows.

The sticky web wrapped around Leon, engulfing him in an instant, pinning his arms to his torso, and binding his legs.

The cold energy fueling Leon snuffed out as he tried to move. The silk constricted with a terrifying pressure, refusing his frantic movements.

From a newly opened fissure in the canyon wall, a spider emerged.

’Is that the Tier 2 B-ranked death spider?’ Leon’s eyes widened as his mind tried to flash back to the images from the history books.

The spider’s carapaces were mottled grey, mimicking the stones, and eight eyes, each being the same size as a dinner plate, glowed with a cold malice.

One massive, spear-like front leg shot out with a deceptive grace and hooked under the silk bundle of Leon’s body and lifted him into the air.

"NO! NO! NO!" Screams erupted from Leon as his body, wrapped in the silk, twitched uncontrollably.

Then, as part of the silk tore open, the spider slammed him down into the unyielding stone.

SMASHHHHH!

The world dissolved into an explosion of white and red rays behind Leon’s eyes. The impact drove the last gasp of air from his lungs in an agonizing scream that never escaped his throat.

A hot, coppery glob of blood formed in his throat, then gushed out from his nose, his mouth, and even trickled from the corners of his eye sockets.

Leon lay there, broken, with the feeling that part of him had been torn away. Under the creature, Leon was anchored in a rapidly spreading pool of his own blood, its metallic stench thick on his tongue.

The spider’s other front leg descended at high speed and pierced through the skin and grated bones at Leon’s right shoulder.

A second leg pierced his left. Two more hooked into his waist. And with a dreadful, scraping sound, the creature began to drag him back.

Leon’s body screeched against the jagged rock, every bump and scrape sending fresh lightning bolts through his shattered nervous system.

Yet, through the blinding pain, Leon’s jaw remained clenched. With a desperate surge of will, he focused on his free right arm and drove his fist upward.

Though the shoulder had fractured beyond repair, his fist slammed into the joint of the leg, pinning his left shoulder.

CRUNCH.

The chitin, which seemed harder than steel, buckled and shattered. A sharp scream, like glass shattering, erupted from the creature as it staggered.

It recoiled, the wounded leg retracting.

A bloody smile tore across Leon’s face. His white teeth no longer glittered like the sun, but like a red moon.

His vision blurred, and through the swimming vision, he saw Lieutenant Prince finally rushing forward with an explosive power Leon hadn’t seen him use.

More blood and torn tissue spilled from Leon’s mouth as his chest hitched in a wet gag. His clenched jaw slowly slackened.

Little by little, the sounds of the world muffled; the spider’s shriek, Prince’s roar, and the constant wind all receded into a profound, still silence.

Leon’s body went utterly limp, stripped of all emotion and sensation, not even twitching when a huge rock surged through the air and slammed into his back.

SMASSSSH!

Then, from within the absolute blackness, a tiny, piercing white light appeared. It spread with an annihilating clarity and swallowed Leon’s consciousness whole.

He stood in a vast, endless plain of blinding white plane. No sky, no ground, just a featureless illumination. But he wasn’t alone.

Countless versions of beings having the same brown eyes and messy jet-black hair surrounded him. Some were older, floating, their faces lined with years he hadn’t lived.

Some were younger, sitting, eyes wide with an innocence he’d lost long ago. Some were twisted, having monstrous reflections, and others glowed with a terrifying power that seemed to engulf the plane.

A chorus of words echoed from all around him in a language he had never heard, and twisted the very air.

Leon spun, his soul reeling, his stomach churning with the desperate urge to live.

He stumbled several feet back the moment he stopped whirling, when a part of the stark white ground peeled sideways.

At his feet lay a corpse – his very own.

The body was broken beyond reviving, one leg torn at a horrific angle, the black suit tattered and soaked in a pool of dark blood that seemed to dry up and coat the ground.

As he stared, the countless other versions of him began to shiver, then dissolve. They fractured into motes of glittering dust that got swallowed by the white light, leaving him almost utterly alone. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

One figure remained, standing about ten feet away. It had Leon’s own posture, but its surface was a smooth, featureless face, like a statue carved from a starless night.

The white ground quaked with every single step it took toward him. Leon’s form, which was his spirit, stumbled back.

A gold aura emanated from behind the being and crashed into Leon with a weight that no description, no memory, and no holy book had ever captured.

"Why are you here?" it asked, its voice sounding like a storm of tsunamis and lightning crackle.