Chapter 23: Frame of Reference

  Nightmares came upon them. As with the monster he had faced when coming out of the rift, Cole could barely describe them. Despite that, Cole’s brain forced a frame of reference on him. Probably out of a need not to go insane.

  His authority stat warned him first.

  That familiar pressure that made him slow, made his grip tighten on his staff.

  The street was the same ruined stretch they’d been walking for blocks. Glass glittered in the cracks. Old paper skittered and caught on broken curbs. A car door hung open, squeaking on its hinge each time the wind nudged it. That sound had been annoying a minute ago.

  Now it was a metronome.

  Cole slowed without thinking. The men behind him slowed too. No one asked why. They just tightened their grips and looked where Cole looked,

  Since they slithered, it was snakes that Cole’s mind decided was the reference. Long, with thick patterned skin, red as fresh blood, they had multiple eyes, if you could even call them that. Their mouths seemed fused together, but when they opened, there were rows of gleaming fangs inside them.

  Snakes.

  It was a simple word, and his mind clung to it because simple words kept you from breaking.

  The first one slid from beneath a burned-out sedan, its body dragging over old grit with a wet, patient sound. The second rose out of a shadow near the curb, and for a heartbeat Cole couldn’t even tell what it had been hiding under. The third was already in front of them, half coiled near a storefront window, its red skin catching dull daylight.

  They weren’t fast. They didn’t need to be.

  Their bodies moved the way snakes moved, in slow curves and deliberate ripples. Thick patterned skin flexed with each push, ridges and loops that made Cole’s eyes slide if he tried to focus on them too long. The red wasn’t bright. It was deep and wet, the color of blood that hadn’t dried yet.

  The eyes were wrong. Too many. Set in clusters along the length of their bodies, some tiny beads, some larger glossy ones. They blinked out of rhythm without a pattern. When the creatures turned, their eyes tracked different things. Some stared at the men. Some stared at Cole. Some stared into empty air.

  A wet ripping sound cut through the quiet, and the inside of the mouth glinted with fangs. Rows of them. Fangs behind fangs.

  A spear haft creaked behind Cole as someone tightened their grip. Another man sucked in a breath and held it.

  Cole didn’t let himself stare long enough for the frame of reference to fail. He’d learned what happened when you stared at something the mind couldn’t accept.

  You lost time.

  And time out here was the one thing you never got back.

  “Choir of Verdict,” Cole delivered calmly.

  The three snake-nightmares suddenly crashed to the ground as subtle wings of shadow flowed from Cole’s back, and a black halo appeared over his head.

  The verdict landed hard.

  All three slammed into the pavement at once. Dust jumped. One of the coils bucked, then flattened again as if something invisible had pressed its spine down. The creatures shuddered, bodies spasming in short jerks. Their eyes blinked faster. Their seam-mouths flexed, tearing wider in ugly little bursts.

  Cole felt his authority settle, The halo above his head didn’t glow or sparkle. It was simply there, thin and black, perfect as a ring cut out of night. The shadow wings that flowed from his back were subtle.

  The men behind him didn’t gasp loudly. They didn’t cheer. They just went quiet in that way people did when they saw something they didn’t know how to fit into their world.

  Cole didn’t give them time to fit it.

  “Kill them, before they start moving again,” Cole gestured to the four men.

  They shifted their grips on the weapons they held, but did as he bade, descending on the creatures, stabbing them.

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  They moved fast because standing still felt like dying.

  Spear points punched down into thick red hide and met resistance. The first thrusts didn’t sink as deep as the men wanted. The skin was tough, almost rubbery, and the muscle beneath it was dense. One man grunted and shoved harder, bracing with his boot. The spear sank in, and the creature’s body convulsed under the Choir’s weight.

  Brent stepped in and stabbed hard, then yanked his spear free and stabbed again. His face was tight, jaw clenched so hard the muscles jumped. He didn’t say a word, just breathed through his nose and kept the rhythm, ugly and practical.

  Stephan jabbed too. His first strike looked hesitant, then the nightmare shuddered and his fear turned sharp, and the second strike was harder. The third was harder still. His shoulders set. His hands stopped shaking.

  There were liquid bursts from their bodies as the men jabbed with spears.

  It sprayed in thin pulses, darker than blood and too glossy. Droplets splattered the pavement and steamed faintly, leaving little smoking dots on the asphalt. The smell hit a heartbeat later, sharp and metallic, with a chemical bite underneath that stung the nose.

  One of the men hissed as a splash struck his sleeve. He jerked his arm away, cursed under his breath, and stabbed again anyway. Nobody backed off. Nobody wanted to give the creatures space.

  One snake managed to move again, lashing out with its mouth, a ripping, snarling sound emanating from it.

  Its head snapped up. The seam-mouth tore wider with a wet sound, and rows of fangs flashed. It struck toward the nearest leg, fast enough that Stephan stumbled back, boot scraping pavement. Brent’s spear wavered for a fraction of a second. One of the other men flinched so hard he nearly lost his grip.

  Cole didn’t hesitate.

  Cole’s Black Halo Lance ended its life.

  The lance shot out in a straight line, dark and clean. It struck the nightmare’s head and there was no dramatic explosion, no thrashing final performance.

  The creature failed.

  Ash crawled across it from the point of impact, and then it collapsed into a drifting smear of gray that scattered across the street.

  100 EXPERIENCE GAINED

  He wiped away the notification.

  It vanished. Cole didn’t let himself dwell on it. Two snake-nightmares still twitched under the Choir, and the men were still close enough to be bitten if anything went wrong.

  The others stood back, looking grim, but a satisfied light gleamed in their eyes.

  Relief. That was all it was. Relief that the snap had missed. Relief that Cole had ended it before teeth found flesh.

  “I leveled,” Brent said. The others nodded to indicate they had as well.

  Brent sounded surprised by it. One of the men stared off for a second, eyes moving as he read something invisible. Another let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh if it didn’t sound so strained.

  Stephan cocked his head.

  “I have another notification. I’m being offered Monster Chef as a profession,” he looked at Cole.

  “Should I take it?”

  Cole didn’t overexplain. Professions mattered. They were leverage, and they were a way to turn death into supplies instead of waste.

  “Yes. Professions are useful. It’s one I’ve heard is possible to get and it will make your life easier, trust me.”

  Stephan shrugged, his eyes focused, then he nodded.

  “I have it now. It gave me the monster cooking, analyze and the monster butchery skills. Should I try to butcher those things?” He pointed at the snakelike creatures.

  There were only two as Cole’s lance had turned one to ash.

  Cole glanced down at the bodies. Their eyes were still open, glossy and wrong, reflecting the gray sky. His mind still insisted on the frame of reference. Snakes. Because snakes meant you could understand it. Snakes meant it fit.

  Nightmares didn’t fit.

  He worked his mouth as he thought. Finally, he sighed, nodding.

  “We are out here to get supplies. Take your knife, see what you can do. Everyone else, keep watch.”

  Stephan produced his knife, stepping toward the monsters. Cole watched him take a shaky breath, then he stabbed the knife into the snakes flesh, removing the skin.

  The first cut snagged. Stephan muttered something, adjusted his grip, and tried again. The second cut slid cleaner. His movements became steadier in small increments, purposeful.

  Cole didn’t have that profession, and he had very little clue how to skin and butcher a regular animal, much less a monster. Even so, the skills must have been giving him some kind of knowledge and he thought Stephan had done a good job.

  The hide peeled back in thick strips, patterned and tough. It made a wet sound that turned Cole’s stomach, but he kept his face neutral. The smell up close was sharper, metallic with that chemical edge.

  Stephan worked carefully around the seam-mouth. When the knife scraped against a fang, he pried it loose with a twist. It clicked against the pavement. Then another. Then another. He stacked them neatly without thinking about it, The skill was sorting his hands as much as his thoughts.

  He separated skin into one pile, then cut the meat free in rough slabs. The meat didn’t look appetizing. Darker than normal meat, dense, with faint lines running through it that made Cole not want to look too long. But it wasn’t rotten. It wasn’t oozing.

  Stephan moved quicker on the second corpse. The shake in his hands eased as he worked. When he finished, he leaned back on his heels and swallowed hard, eyes unfocused for a second.

  He had a neat pile of the fangs on the side, next to it was the skin, and next to it was meat. The meat itself didn’t look all that appetizing, but whatever Stephan had done, it didn’t look gross either.

  Stephan pointed at the fangs.

  “Those are good for alchemy, or so the skill tells me. I can’t really use them. I can do things with the skin, cooking wise, but what is most useful to me is the meat. Someone might be able to do something with the bones, if we had a smith.”

  Cole nodded, then pointed his staff at the piles, putting them in the staffs storage.

  The fangs vanished first, then the skin, then the meat, each pile disappearing without fanfare. Cole felt the faint tug as the storage accepted weight that wasn’t there anymore, then it was gone.

  “I will keep the fangs, since I am an alchemist. The rest we will store at Hawthorne.”

  With that done, the group kept going.

  Soon, they came across a pharmacy.

  “Let’s be careful when we go inside. We need to make sure we are ready for trouble,” Cole told the others.

  “Oh, it’s too late. Trouble’s found ya,” a chuckling voice replied.