Ichor Cell-Chapter 24: Rescue II

The gazebo had been reduced to ruins.
Chairs lay belly-up. A silk pavilion pole leaned drunkenly against a shattered hedge. The lanterns had burned down to smears of orange, painting everything in low, weary light. The nobles were gone—carried off, herded out, or run screaming.
Only guards remained at the fringes, though even their ranks were largely incomplete—only the bravest having stayed behind. The rest of the square was a ruin of cut stone, torn turf, and the scattered remains of a single stubborn intruder.
Alex wasn’t sure if he was still alive.
Bits of him were everywhere; smears on a column, chunks clinging to a splintered banister, a mouthful of teeth gleaming in trampled grass.
He had lost count of how many times he’d been opened and stitched shut by whatever engine now lived under his ribs. It was slowing. The heat that used to blossom bright at the first bite of pain came grudgingly now, like a forge whose bellows had blown out.
He staggered aside, and a line of light ate the air where his chest had been. The cut ran on and on, skirting a toppled table and sawing a perfect groove into the garden wall. The house beyond wore a new scar.
Once, earlier in the night, that kind of strike would have sent him diving headlong across the ground, scrambling on hands and knees just to stay alive. Now, after endless exchanges, his body had learned. A tilt of the shoulder, a twist of the waist, and the killing beam passed within inches instead of yards. The longer the fight dragged on, the less space he needed to survive.
But it came at a price.
His hunger, a mere afterthought at the start of the fight, had now turned into a devouring void, just a bit shy of the level it had reached that very first night. Already, he could feel his mind starting to fog, his consciousness fading in and out of awareness.
Don’t think. Don’t plan. Dodge. Breathe. Heal.
He had no space left for wondering whether Grenil was safe, whether Elara had found the seam in the cage’s defences, whether his companions were safe. All of that existed somewhere outside the chorus of pain and noise that had become his world.
Lucia’s next shape wasn’t a spear or a disc. It was a handful of short, ugly darts that immediately turned the air around them into a kiln. They moved slow enough to watch. Designed for a trapped thing. She flicked them toward his knees.
He ran. Not away—across. The darts hissed through the space his legs had just vacated and struck stone, which bubbled as if someone had poured acid over it. She’d adjusted for maximum damage instead of killing blows to waste his energy. Clever. He hated that.
The captain came next, silently. Shouting was for crowds and warnings. Each blow aimed to disable him, to claim a limb, to fold a torso. Alex dodged with legs that didn’t want to lift and slipped under a hook that would have taken his head clean off, the miss stirring his hair like wind from a passing train.
Finally, he made a mistake. Adamantios feinted low and came over the top. Knuckles like a battering ram kissed Alex’s cheekbone. Something broke. His vision doubled, then snapped back into one as his body demanded a repair it didn’t have the budget for.
“Yield.” the captain said again, for what must have been the fiftieth time that night.
Alex wheezed in response.
He drove his teeth into the inside of his cheek and tasted copper. It helped, but not much. The engine flickered and coughed and spat out another thread of strength. He spent it immediately, ducking under a cut from Lucia that turned a stone bench into ribbons.
She too had stopped speaking long ago, her eyes flickering in fear at her target’s impossible vitality.
The next exchange was an ugly blur. A shoulder from the captain that made his right arm go dead to the fingertips. Lucia’s spell, too perfect to dodge, which he caught on an overturned table and then on his own bones when the table lost the argument. He tasted dirt. He tasted rain. He tasted his own tongue.
Up. Up. Up.
He pressed his palm against the ground to push, and his hand didn’t quite work. The fingers bent wrong. He stood anyway. The world swam.
Alex’s legs trembled. The hunger had his spine in its grip now, whispering to him in a voice that sounded like his own. Stop running. Stop thinking. Eat. His awareness flickered like a candle in a storm, threatening to go out.
He finally let it.
The first thing that happened was his heartbeat changed. Well, to be precise, he gained one. Slow, powerful thuds that shook his ribs emanated from his chest, and they brought changes.
His skin went cold all at once, as if the heat of the fight had been pulled out through his pores by invisible hands.
Claws unsheathed from his fingers, black and curved, obsidian hooked to drag and hold. His teeth pressed against his lips, sharp edges testing their fit. The whites of his eyes bled into gray, and the irises thinned to ringlets of red. The cuts that were still healing all over him smoothed until his skin looked like polished stone.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, the violation.
He dropped down to all fours, his spine emitting a horrifying cracking sound as it curved and twisted, leaving a series of raised ridges on his back. Pieces of metal and shards of bone squeezed their way out from within his frame, each one bringing with it overwhelming relief.
He growled in annoyance. Though glad to finally be free again, He didn’t understand why he kept Him locked deep inside, when He was obviously the superior lifeform.
‘Submit now.’
He turned his attention to the two prey in front of him, but they ignored him.
Adamantios’ eyes widened before his runes flared brightly, his guard going up. “So, it really was a monster. I must apologise, family head, I had not realised that you truly were keeping the peace.”
“It is no matter.” Lucia replied, her face still calm, as if expecting this. “As long as you are aware now.”
Furious at the afront they presented by not immediately grovelling at his feet, He launched himself at the nearest one faster than the eye could track, raking his claws against armoured arms.
Adamantios braced against a flurry of claw strikes, the force of them driving his boots backwards. Sparks leapt from his armour as the talons gouged rune-etched plates, damaging them for the first time that night.
Lucia swept a blade of light across the field—He slid under it and was already on her shield. His claws raked across the barrier, and cracks webbed through the radiant surface before she reinforced it with another gesture.
For the first time that night, He pressed them back.
Adamantios charged, rune-lit fists swinging like hammers, but He danced around him, faster than the man could track. A shallow cut appeared on the captain’s cheek, dark blood welling. The massive man snarled, redoubling his efforts.
Lucia’s eyes narrowed. She had been content to let Adamantios batter the creature while she harried it with magic. But the situation had changed. The thing had grown sharper, faster, stronger. And worse—it was starting to gain ground.
“Enough.” She hissed.
Runes blossomed all at once around her, dozens, then hundreds, snaking across the ground, through the ceiling, unfolding into the full breadth of the formation she had laid throughout the gazebo. The very air lit with crawling script, the shattered square transformed into an enchanter’s web.
The temperature spiked. Air thickened. Each thread of light that left her hands now struck with the force of a siege weapon.
The next blast of power smashed him off his feet, flinging him into a column that now refused to shatter under the impact. He felt the impact rattle through his body as something cracked. He staggered up—just in time for Adamantios’ fist to crash into his ribs, snapping them like twigs.
Lucia’s second volley came immediately after, smaller darts this time, many times faster than before. He twisted aside, fast enough to avoid most, but not fast enough to escape unscathed. One punctured his shoulder; another scorched a trail through his thigh.
His healing was patching the hole before the spell even hit the ground behind him.
He hissed, eyes wild, claws twitching at his sides. His grin was gone. For all his hunger, all his frenzy, his instincts screamed louder:
Run.
So He did.
He spun on his heel and bolted, faster than any human eye could follow. A barrier of force erupted around the gazebo, the runes covering the structure flaring with power as they worked to keep him contained. The family head had obviously planned this whole confrontation out, so of course she wouldn't let him escape.
Unfortunately, plans never survive first contact with the enemy.
Snarling in anger at the obstruction, He flooded his arm with the remains of his magic and unleashed dozens of blisteringly fast slashes in mere seconds, his claws somehow...
tearing
at the weave that made up the barrier.
"What are you..." Lucia's eyes widened when she realised what was happening. “No!”
The guards standing outside raised their weapons, terrified but determined. Spears came down, shields lifted.
It made no difference.
He hit them like a storm. His claws tore through iron and bone alike, spraying blood in wide arcs. One man He ripped in half. Another He seized by the throat and crushed until blood fountained—and then, impossibly, the stream bent midair, curling toward his waiting jaws. He drank it down without breaking stride.
The survivors broke immediately. A few tried to run, but He was faster. He caught one from behind, claws punching through his chest, then flung the twitching body aside like refuse. Another guard tripped, crying out, and He fell on him in a blur of teeth and claws.
Power surged in him, hot and sharp, the fresh feast pushing his body into overdrive once more.
“Stop right there!” A roar came from behind, the thunderous footfalls of the captain echoing out as he gave chase.
He did not stop to look back, did not hesitate. With the strength of a dozen men roaring in his veins, He vaulted the shattered garden wall and vanished into the night, leaving ruin and corpses in his wake.
Elara stood frozen on a distant rooftop, her breath fogging the air. Far away, the garden was unrecognizable—an open wound carved into the magnificent estate.
She’d watched it all.
She’d seen the two Disaster tiers fight, their blows shaking the air. She’d seen the explosion, her heart leaping up into her throat when his form had reappeared in midair, burnt, broken.
She’d watched as he put himself back together, only to get ripped apart again in the next instant. Even as she had drawn closer, freed Grenil and escaped, she had watched him do everything to keep their attention on him.
And she had watched him turn into a monster.
The claws. The pale, vein ridden skin. The screams of the dying. The way the blood hadn’t even had time to hit the ground before twisting through the air and vanishing into him.
Alex.
Her mind refused to connect the two images—the boy who’d grinned at her awkwardly that first night in the shack, and the creature she’d just seen devour and tear men apart with its bare hands.
He had saved Grenil, yes. He had distracted the nobles long enough for her and Duran to drag him free, for them to slip away unnoticed. But as the memory of his horrifying visage surfaced—the savage joy that flickered behind those blood red eyes—she felt her stomach twist.
Beside her, Duran set Grenil down carefully. The old man’s breathing was shallow, but steady.
Elara couldn’t look away. The silence after the slaughter felt heavier than the fight itself.
Duran followed her gaze. “He’ll be fine.”
She turned, startled by how calm his voice sounded. “Fine? Did you
see
what he just did?” Her voice came out sharper than she meant, brittle with panic. “He ripped them apart. He—it
ate
them!”
Duran’s expression didn’t change. “And because of that, we’re alive.”
“That’s not—” Elara stopped, words failing her. Her throat was tight, her chest aching. “That’s not him. It can’t be.”
Duran’s eyes flicked toward her, faintly glowing in the lantern light. “Maybe you don’t want to believe it. But it’s what he is.”
The room went quiet again.
Elara sank into a chair, pressing her palms over her eyes. Images replayed behind her lids—Alex’s claws sinking into flesh, the way he kept getting up again and again and again, despite all the damage he took. There had been nothing human in that. Nothing at all.
Her voice was barely a whisper. “If that’s what he is… then what does that make us, helping him?”
Duran didn’t answer.
Elara shivered. She wanted to tell herself that they had won. That Alex had escaped. That everything that had happened tonight was worth it.
But deep down, she wasn’t so sure anymore.