ALL NOVEL Ch. 45 The Cauldron
Santi burst into action. His legs uncoiled in explosive motion as the bat whooshed through the air. The hag he was aiming at heard and started to turn. The distance was too short and his motion too fast. The bat connected in the middle of its face with bone shattering force. Its head whipped back as blood, snot, and teeth went flying. It hung there for a moment, head and shoulders leaning back as its body couldn’t decide if it was going to fall or come back up.
The kill notification dinged in his head, right as the body thudded into the ground. Santi was already attacking the next one, pushing the element of surprise to the maximum. He brought the bat down like he was splitting wood, the tip connecting to a bent knee and causing a shriek of pain as the hag folded over to fall to the ground.
Santi spun and began to dash away, using Gust to try to tip over their cauldron. Whatever potion they were cooking he wanted no part of it. The heavy cauldron tipped and the sound of liquid sloshing around was heard. It didn’t fall and after a moment it sat normally.
Four hags began the chase immediately, leaving the injured one and three healthy ones to tend to the cauldron. It was good and bad news. Good that it meant he had better chances of surviving a fight against four hags instead of eight. Bad since it was likely they were almost done with their potion and whatever it was wasn’t going to be a pleasant experience for him.
Santi poured on more speed, sliding around the corner and diving into a broken office. The more clumsy hags came flying by, failing to turn fast enough. Walls shattered as they ran through walls and fell to the ground and rose in a cloud of plaster. Santi gave them no time to react or recover. He fell on them in a blur of blows, the bat bouncing off of their thick hides even as their bones broke.
They powered to their feet, limping and with broken bones, but they rose above him. Stretching their hunched backs until they stood to their full height, the hags stood above him. Santi raced backward avoiding the swiping claws as the four hags tried to follow him. He ducked through a small hole in the wall and watched as the monsters just rammed through it.
While they weren’t physical monsters, they were still monsters and stronger and more durable than most humans. They blew through the plaster like there was nothing to stop them and it became a race as Santi ran for all he was worth. He needed to split them up if he was going to be able to beat them with a bat.
He dodged through another office, out through a wall, over the nurses desk and ducked down to break line of sight. The hallways were a twisting labyrinth and he used every twist and turn to spread them out, working further and further from the cauldron.
Santi froze and leaned against a wall and strained his hearing. More walls were broken and shattered, the creatures hissing and snarling as they searched. He could hear the patter of their feet and smiled as the sounds of their feet spread out. Santi moved, sliding along the walls crouched down and looking back and forth as he heard the closest of the hags close by.
An ugly foot came down, long gnarled toes with thick yellow nails landed in front of his face. Santi rose, the bat coming up in a powerful swing as the hag's face rounded the corner. The aluminum caught the hags chin and snapped its head back as it staggered and fell to the ground in a loud thud. Santi moved and stood over the stunned hag and began to wail away. Blood splattered across the walls as he caved the head in. The kill notification was the only thing that stopped him, his breaths coming in heaving pants as he looked around and listened to see if any of the other hags were coming.
Silence.
Santi moved away from the corpse, eyes sweeping back and forth as he moved down toward the next sound of footsteps. The bat was in bad condition, dented and smeared in blood. It wasn’t going to finish the fight with how fast the damage was accumulating.
The wall next to him exploded outward and wide arms encircled him. Crushing pain as the hag screeched into his face and squeezed Santi into its body. Rough clothes contrasted with its soft body as it squeezed. Bones groaning in protest, Santi was forced to let the bat drop out of his fingers. It clanged on the tile floor as Santi twisted his hand to grab at one of the knives on his belt.
The hag looked at him from inches away, beady eyes filling his view as it snarled. Yellow teeth gnashed inches from his jugular as the hag gave a raspy laugh as it continued to squeeze. Without his reinforced stats, Santi would be nothing more than a puddle of liquid in a skin case.
He flexed his arms, muscles squeezing as he tried to open up any type of semblance of space. His fingers twisted over the handle of a knife and he managed to grab it out of its sheath. His arm strained as the blade twisted, but he felt the contact as the tip of the knife against the sternum of the hag. Santi locked eyes with it and smiled wide, pushing the blade through flesh and past bone.
Black blood welled out of its mouth and dripped down to cover Santi’s chest. Its rapsing laugh turned to a warbling cry as its knees buckled. Santi’s feet touched ground and with his feet firmly on the ground he leveraged himself against the weakening hold. The hag slid to the ground, arms going slack and falling limp to the ground. Santi stood above it and shrugged his shoulders as he tried to get blood flow back. The entire attack had taken less than thirty seconds.
The thundering sound of slapping feet came down the hall, the last two of the hags flying as they came toward the sounds of the fight. Santi scooped up his bat and took up a good batters stance, waiting for the hag to come around the bend. Both of them came from the same direction, swinging wide around as they reached down to use their long claws to help them redirect themselves.
The change in direction hardly slowed them and they raced forward with hatred on their face. Their coven members blood decorated his shirt and he had marched his way over the bodies of their nest mates. Santi smacked the first one with the full power of his body, the bat bending around the hag’s head as it went limp and fell to the ground. He didn’t get the kill notification, but he didn’t think it was going to be getting up any time soon.
Santi ducked and rolled forward over the top of the hag’s body. The second one slashed where he had been as it flew by him. It spun using its arm to pivot around while Santi drew his second knife. He charged and triggered Gust and aimed at its face. The powerful wind blew its greasy hair back and caused the black eyes to close. Santi closed the distance and stabbed the hag in the gut. The hag staggered back, failing to fall as Santi had hoped it would.
He ripped upward, dragging sharp iron up and through soft flesh to spill intestines out in a wave of viscera. The hag screamed in rage and pain as it slowly fell. Santi pulled the blade free of the dying hag and moments later the kill notification dinged. He turned back to the unconscious hag and slit its throat.
“Fucking finally.” Santi was feeling the exhaustion setting in. There were three more fully healthy hags and one cripple waiting for him to deal with. The bat was useless, a twisted ruin that he wasn’t going to be able to do anything with. His knives were growing dull and needed a good sharpening.
The quiet was complete. The pleas of the survivors were no longer audible. That was enough to raise goosebumps on his arms. Santi started to head down the hallway, jogging lightly with soft footfalls. It took only moments to reach the end of the hall and to see the cauldron.
The prisoners were dead. Their bodies lay in heaps of limp flesh. Crimson blood stained the rim of the cauldron and dripped down the black iron sides. Three hags lay over the top of the cauldron with their heads in the cauldron. The fourth hag was nowhere to be seen.
The huge cauldron’s flame sputtered out and the heavy bottom cauldron fell to the ground with a crashing boom. The dead hags slid off of the cauldron and landed on the ground. An ashy gray hand grabbed the top of the edge of the cauldron and a shape started to rise up.