Chapter 99: Iron Skin

Kutur did not slow.

The flames clung to its hide, licking at its wings and horns, and it simply kept coming, trailing smoke like a comet that had never been told it was supposed to burn out.

’Fire does nothing. Noted.’

"Theodore!" I shouted. "Do something!"

"I am thinking!"

"Think faster!"

"I do not have time to think!"

He didn’t. He had already pulled a thick, plain ring from his pocket and shoved it onto his finger.

The air around him seemed to thicken. His shoulders dropped half an inch, his stance widened, and a dull pressure rolled outward from his body like heat from a forge.

A ring that improved his physical strength 200%, known as Weight.

The negative affect of it was while it sat on his hand, Theodore acted first and understood later.

Right now, I was glad for it.

His hands curled into fists, and blood seeped from his knuckles, dark and bright at once. It hardened as it flowed, crystallizing into jagged, glistening spikes that crowned each fist like a row of tiny crimson teeth.

Then... The ground cracked under his feet.

He jumped seventeen feet straight up, like a human cannonball, rising until he was level with the Kutur’s skull. The beast’s eyes snapped toward him, startled, and its wings flared.

However, it was too late.

Bang!

His fist came down on the crown of its head like a falling anvil. The sound rang through the courtyard, it was like a flat, cracking thunder.

Kutur’s whole body folded, and it dropped from the sky at an alarming speed, hitting the flagstones so hard the stone spiderwebbed outward in a wide circle. Dust and smoke geysered upward.

Theodore landed a few paces away in a crouch, grinning like a lunatic.

I did not waste the opening.

I held out my right hand, and a cold weight gathered in my palm, silent and hungry. I had summoned Hunger of The Creepy Dagger

’Short, and clean. Do not enjoy it.’

I ran.

The smoke parted as Kutur heaved itself upright, shaking its horns, acid blood dripping from the tips. Its head swung toward me, nostrils flaring. Its muscles tensed. I saw it gather itself to charge.

And then it stopped.

Its gaze wandered. Its jaw sagged slightly. It stood there, blinking, with the vacant look of a man who has walked into a room and forgotten why.

I had already taken that thought from it. The intention to charge, plucked out cleanly, like a pebble from a stream.

’Thank you for your cooperation.’

I jumped, bringing the dagger down with both hands, aiming straight for its skull.

Clang!

The blade struck and bit into the skin, but only barely. A shallow dent, a thin line of blood, and a jarring shudder that ran up my arms to my teeth. It was like stabbing a block of iron wrapped in leather.

’Damn it. It is hard. Like iron.’

Kutur’s thought returned. Its eyes sharpened. It roared, and with a violent snap of its neck it whipped its head upward, trying to hurl me off by the horns.

My feet slid on the greasy stone, and by pure accident my weight shifted. The horn that should have hooked me under the ribs went past with a rasp. I tumbled backward, landed hard, rolled twice, and came up on one knee, gasping.

’That was luck.’

I touched the locket under my shirt.

’Serpent of Luck. I owe you.’

I scrambled back toward Theodore. He was breathing hard, and when I glanced at his face, I saw the sweat standing out on his brow, and the dark tension in his jaw. His knuckles were still crusted with those red spikes, but a few had cracked. Without Weight, I realized, he would have had his hand crushed to pulp.

’So the head is not the weakness. It is the strongest part.’

My mind began to turn, fast and cold, the way it does when fear finally burns off the panic.

’Think. Fire failed. A blade failed. Theodore’s strike worked, but only because of his strength, and it did not break the skin. Why? Because its skin is iron, but its body is heavy. It fell fast, so it is not weightless. It is not immune to force, only to cutting and burning. So the ability is physical. Hardened skin, muscles like a crane, strength enough to lift a man by its head. That is a physical enhancement. Probably the same ability, working across its whole body.’

I stared at it.

’And if I steal it, we win.’

But stealing needed focus. It needed the creature occupied, its attention on something other than me. Something to keep it distracted, so I could lock onto the ability.

I bit the inside of my cheek.

’If only I had Puppeteer.’

He would have ended this in a heartbeat. No skin to pierce, no muscle to break. He would have walked straight into its sea of consciousness, climbed its mountain of memories, and torn the whole thing down from within. But he was not here, so I would have to use what I had.

Kutur had finished shaking off the dust. It lowered its horns, and a rumble rolled from its chest, deep and ugly. Its eyes locked on us.

It charged.

’Now.’

I looked at Theodore and tilted my head sharply toward the sky. He didn’t need words. His grin returned, savage and crooked.

"Finally," he muttered.

He sprang, and the stone beneath him cracked again as he shot into the air, rising high above the beast’s skull. Kutur’s head tracked him, snarling, thrown off its rhythm for a heartbeat.

’There it is. That is the distraction.’

I drew back my arm and hurled the dagger.

It spun end over end through the smoke, glinting like a shard of moon. Theodore snatched it from the air, his armored fingers closing around the strange, skin-wrapped grip. For an instant, his eyes widened. I knew that feeling. The faint, whispering hunger of the blade, brushing against his mind.

’Do not listen to it, Theodore.’

He did not seem to. He came down like a meteor, both hands on the hilt, with the strength of the ring behind every ounce of his weight.

The dagger plunged into the Kutur’s skull.

It did not bounce. It did not skid. It sank, past the dent I had made, past the dark skin, deep into the bone, with a wet, grinding crack that I felt in my own teeth.

The Kutur screamed.

It was a shriek so high and shattering that it split the air itself. The wings spasmed, the horns flailed, and its whole body convulsed as the dagger fed on whatever lay inside. Spirit, not flesh. No iron skin could shield that.

And in that exact heartbeat, with its focus ripped away from me, I reached out with everything I had.

A pulse of power slammed into my chest, cold and heavy, flooding down my arms and into my legs. My vision sharpened. My heartbeat dropped into a slow, powerful rhythm.

I frowned.

The ability of it was not what I had thought it was.