Chapter 343: Mini-Boss [2]

The ape hit the ground hard enough to throw leaf litter in a wide ring and lunged for Thora before its back legs had fully settled.

Thora was already moving.

The compact axe rose in a vicious arc, catching the animal across the reaching forearm and opening a dark line through fur and muscle.

Black-tinged blood flicked across the roots.

The ape screamed, high, wrong, the same register as the gate wave, and swung the injured arm anyway, trying to club her off her feet with pure mass.

"Don’t take the arm!" Kane shouted, closing from the side.

"It doesn’t care about the wound—go for joints!"

"I noticed!"

Thora slid inside the swing, let the bulk pass over her shoulder, and drove the axe into the back of the ape’s near knee.

The blade bit shallower than she wanted.

Thickened tissue and corruption plating turned what should have been a crippling cut into a deep annoyance.

The animal pivoted on the other leg and backhanded her hard enough to send her into a root cluster.

Thora hit, rolled, and came up with her shoulder stained and her grip still firm on the axe.

"I am going to skin this thing for a coat," she snarled.

The ape climbed a low trunk in two pulls and dropped again, this time at Kane.

Mjoldr met the charge in a hard cross-check.

The impact traveled up Kane’s arms and into his cleared ribs; the system flagged load without protest.

He turned the bulk aside, spiked toward the shoulder joint, and felt the point skid on something denser than bone before finding a seam.

The ape shrieked and raked claws across his forearm guard hard enough to score the metal.

"Yellow eyes, same pattern as the gate!" Kane called.

"It will not break from pain. We break structure!"

"On three!"

Thora came back in from the ape’s blind side.

She feinted high, drew the animal’s head toward her, and cut low across the Achilles line of the uninjured leg.

Slash.

This time the blade found deeper purchase.

The ape’s stance shuddered.

It caught her trailing shoulder with a reaching hand and flung her into Kane’s path hard enough that they both had to adjust or go down in a heap.

Kane caught Thora’s weight with his free arm, shoved her back to her feet, and used the ape’s recovery to drive Mjoldr’s edge into the already-spiked shoulder seam.

Black fluid ran.

The animal’s yellow eyes never dimmed.

It opened its mouth and screamed directly into his face, breath hot and sour with corrupted meat.

"Thora—left root! Draw it!"

She understood without further detail.

Thora sprinted along the raised root line, boots finding purchase on bark that ordinary animals would have avoided, and made herself the louder target: axe striking wood, voice sharp, a deliberate invitation.

The ape took it.

Corruption had not erased the simple hunger for the thing that hurt it.

It bounded after her, injured knee hitching, shoulder trailing dark blood, and slammed both fists down where she had been a fraction of a second earlier.

BAM!

The root cracked.

Dirt sprayed.

Thora spun on the far side of the impact and put the compact axe into the animal’s exposed flank twice in quick succession.

"Come on, then! Is this the best the belt has left after spending a whole people on a gate?"

The ape answered by grabbing a fallen limb thicker than her leg and swinging it like a club.

Thora ducked the first arc.

The second caught the axe head and nearly tore the weapon out of her hands.

She held on, teeth bared, and rode the force into a roll that put her under the animal’s chest.

Kane was already there.

He drove Mjoldr up from a low angle into the junction where throat plating met collarbone, using the ape’s own forward weight against it.

The spike sank deep.

The scream that came out of the animal this time had less rage and more surprise.

Black arterial spray painted the roots.

Kane ripped the axe free and stepped out before a flailing arm could take his head off.

"It’s thinning!" he shouted.

"Keep it turning—don’t let it set!"

"I am not its dance partner!" Thora snapped, but she was already moving, forcing the ape to pivot on the bad knee, cutting whenever the yellow eyes lost her for half a breath.

The compact axe was built for this kind of ugly, close work.

She used it without romance, opening lines that did not need to be fatal to be useful.

Blood loss. Joint damage.

The slow arithmetic of a body that refused to feel pain but still needed structure to stand on.

The ape decided to change the arithmetic.

It stopped chasing Thora and went vertical, up the mini-boss tree in a scramble of black fur and pure power, then launched itself outward in a diving tackle aimed at both of them at once.

"The fuck?"

Kane shoved Thora hard to the right and took the left path himself.

The animal hit the ground between them hard enough to shake the clearing.

Claws found Kane’s boot and nearly hauled him under. 𝚏𝗋ℯⅇ

He put the butt of Mjoldr into the side of its skull with everything the cleared body would give him.

The impact rang.

Thora came over the ape’s back like a woman climbing a moving wall and buried the compact axe at the base of the skull where the yellow film could not protect the cord.

The blade stuck.

Thora held on for one violent second longer, then lost her footing as the bulk rolled.

"Thora—!"

The ape’s arm caught her in the midsection with a sound like a hammer hitting meat.

"Agh—!"

Thora folded around the blow and flew.

She hit a root cluster hard, bounced, and landed in a heap of leaf litter and dark blood: some of it the ape’s, some of it possibly hers.

The compact axe remained lodged at the base of the animal’s skull for a moment, then tore free as the body thrashed and clattered across the roots out of her reach.