A Wolf at the Door

With purple and black dots still dancing in my vision, I turned to watch again. At first, I thought she’d won already. The centipede thing had been cut in half by that flashy strike, the rear end flailing about wildly. The head piece snapped at the woman, and retreated until it could touch its severed half…and then they just reattached. One segment shorter, but whole again. Damn. That thing had to be a hundred chunks long, if it was one. Taking it apart one piece at a time was going to take forever.

It didn’t matter how hard you practiced, how good you were with a sword, long fights took a toll. I knew how tired her arms would get, wielding that long blade. She’d get slower, even just by a split second. She’d hesitate a hair too long, or duck a smidgen too short. Then it would have her. It was just a matter of time.

“We gotta go up there and help her.”

“No.” He lowered the glasses long enough to give me an amused smile. “Svetlana is never to be losing, Jesse Dawson. She will be fine.”

Svetlana seemed intent on proving him right. Twice more, her sword flashed brilliantly in the darkness—I learned to avert my eyes at the last second—and the centipede would flop aimlessly for a few heartbeats before reassembling itself again. Was it just me, or were the flashes getting dimmer?

It wasn’t just me. Somewhere around the fifth or sixth clash, there was a sickly flicker and the clang of metal on carapace carried all the way to where I was standing. Whatever she’d had on her sword, it had worn off.

Then the fight began in earnest. Whatever the bug was made of, it was no simple cockroach to be squished. The sword rang like a bell in the snowy night as she parried and struck, retreated and feinted. She wasn’t even pretending to save her strength. Every move was done explosively, with fury. She leaped from stump to stump, throwing in some impressive acrobatics as she avoided her opponent. I’d cut my own leg off if I tried that with a blade in my hand. I caught myself breathing hard, like I was battling right alongside her, and forced myself to stop. God, it was like watching someone try to run a marathon at a dead sprint.

For the demon’s part, it seemed a bit frustrated. It seemed no matter where it bit or clawed, the sword was there. And while the bug wasn’t hurt, it still couldn’t get to her. It wasn’t, however, out of tricks yet.

It reared up again, striking like a cobra, only about a foot before it would have made contact, it just…vanished. Well, half of it did. The demon poured itself through some invisible rip in thin air, disappearing segment by segment. Svetlana dropped into a defensive position without hesitation, proving that this was something she’d anticipated.

The night vision lenses caught a faint shimmer in the air behind her, and only sheer astonishment kept me from calling out in warning. She didn’t need it, though. As the front half of the centipede burst out of whatever realm it had retreated to, the woman’s sword was there, meeting the gnashing mandibles with a clang of steel. The back half of the worm writhed through its little portal, spitting the entire length out at its new location, and they kept on.

Christ…how do you fight something that can disappear and reappear at will? That had always been my greatest fear during the two fights that I’d had. Fighting something that just wouldn’t stand still and get thumped. I’d negotiated magic out of my fights. Since I wasn’t using any myself, it was a small loss to swear it off. But this woman…she was facing the demon’s full arsenal.

The next time it tried to pull the portal trick, the return opened up right under Svetlana’s booted feet. In a spectacular display of acrobatics, she left the ground as the thing came up beneath her, snapping and clacking. She twisted in midair, her landing bringing her sword down full force on the back end of the creature, pinning it to the ground, caught between the two portals. The front half whipped about, the back half struggling to get free, and in the middle, there was just nothing. Dead space. It thrashed there, apparently not having the brainpower to figure out how to find reverse.

A faint buzzing sound reached my ears, and I adjusted the binoculars, trying to get a better look. The night vision made clear details hard to see, but there was a ripple that passed up the back of the centipede, travelling from segment to segment toward the head. The demon-bug’s head suddenly focused on her and spat something thick and steaming through the frigid night air.

She rolled out of the way, taking her sword with her, but the tree stump that took the shot for her started to smoke forlornly, parts of it dissolving as I watched. “Holy shit…” Freed, the centipede finished its travel through the portal, coming out whole on the other side again. The portal had become its downfall, though, and it didn’t try that trick again.