"THE KING AND THE SERPENT"
The serpent's descent tore the air apart. Fire and smoke spiraled like torn fabric as its coils plowed through the clouds, molten scales shattering in the wind. Patrick tracked the motion through his scope — one breath, one chance.
"Now!" he barked, squeezing the trigger. The rifle cracked. The glowing ropes snapped taut, their attached cars swinging like burning pendulums. Sparks cascaded where steel scraped against scale.
The first car tore free, plunging into the fog below. The second followed, slamming into the serpent's flank. Explosions rippled through the storm — orange fire lighting the air, turning its shadowed body into a flickering mountain of muscle and metal. The serpent reeled, its head whipping in agony.
"Move!" Holland shouted.
Charmevolé was already running. He vaulted over a ridge of scale, boots striking sparks, gun in hand. Each shot cracked like punctuation against the serpent's howl. Holland followed up the curve of its back, the rope glowing cherry-red as he climbed.
He met Jarvis halfway — the lantern-bearer, face streaked with soot, clutching his creation tight. Inside the glass, mechanized beetles shimmered like living cogs, wings trembling with stored energy.
"How many have you made?" Holland shouted over the roar.
"Only nineteen," Jarvis said, eyes never leaving the serpent's crown. "Enough to end this bastard."
They sprinted across the spine, ducking as the serpent's tail lashed. Patrick's fire from below drew its head away, each bullet guiding its fury elsewhere. The coordination was perfect chaos — four men moving in rhythm with a dying god.
Charmevolé reached the upper coils first. "Warn me next time, you bastard!" he yelled, dodging a falling shard of scale. His pistol spat flame, forcing the serpent's eye to flinch shut.
Jarvis climbed beside him, lantern swinging, light cutting through smoke like a signal flare.
Holland's voice came through the comms: "Anchor's hot — the next dive will pull it right into the plains. Cut it on my mark!"
The serpent thrashed, its body a continent in motion. The glowing ropes hissed under tension. Jarvis etched glyphs along one with frantic precision, each mark flaring white. Sparks burned his gloves, but he didn't stop.
"Three…" Holland's voice cracked with static. "Two… now!"
The ropes released with a metallic shriek. The serpent dropped, weightless for a heartbeat, then gravity hit like a hammer. The world inverted — sky, earth, flame — all spinning together.
Charmevolé slammed onto the burning scales, rolling to absorb the impact. Jarvis landed beside him, clutching the lantern to his chest. Patrick's voice broke through the noise: "Contact! Topside — movement!"
A blur streaked up the serpent's length — a figure leaping from scale to scale as if the air itself obeyed him.
"The King!" Charmevolé shouted.
The King's form cut through smoke, molten light flickering beneath his skin. Each step bent gravity, each leap cracking the air. Bullets chased him, but none found flesh. He landed near the serpent's crown, a predator haloed by fire.
"Keep him busy!" Holland roared. "Jarvis — do it!"
Jarvis hurled the lantern.
It shattered against the King's chest.
Hundreds of mechanized beetles spilled out, clawing, buzzing, their wings fanning sparks. Smoke hissed as they swarmed, each one a living fuse. The King staggered, molten eyes flaring, as the beetles began to detonate — small, surgical bursts of fire tracing across his body.
Charmevolé surged forward. His brass-knuckled fist crashed into a scale. He fired point-blank — gunfire and melee as one seamless motion. Each strike sent shockwaves through the air, brass meeting godflesh, sparks painting the sky.
Patrick's car streaked along the serpent's lower coils, his bullets cutting through wind and blood. "Keep him pinned!" he called. "Every second counts!"
Holland braced against the glowing cable, the heat biting through his gloves. "We've got him in descent — hold the line!"
But the King adapted.
With one brutal motion, he ripped a chunk of molten scale from the serpent's back and stepped onto it. The air buckled. The scale turned into a surfboard of living metal, grinding against the serpent's spine in a shriek of sparks. He rode the storm downward, eyes locked on Charmevolé.
Charmevolé didn't yield. He sprinted along the serpent's back, boots leaving trails of ember light. The serpent's body convulsed beneath him, massive coils crashing into the ground like falling towers. Fire burst from every wound.
Jarvis — bloodied, half-deaf from the blast — sprinted along the tether, drawing a final glyph mid-stride. He hurled his last lantern. The beetles within erupted, smoke and chittering light enveloping the King again.
This time, the detonation drove him off balance — a stumble, almost human.
Charmevolé struck. Gunfire. Brass. Sparks.
The serpent roared, body plunging into the plains below, a mountain collapsing into itself.
When the smoke cleared, only two figures stood on the burning ruin — the King and Charmevolé.
The King's molten skin cooled to a dull red.
Charmevolé's fists glowed faintly from heat and blood.
Sparks drifted like ash-born snow.
Predator and predator.
Fire, metal, and molten flesh.
The real fight had only just begun.
And then—silence.
Patrick steadied his breath, rifle half-raised. All around him, the battlefield still burned — wreckage, glass, and bone fused into a single ruin. He turned toward the altar that jutted from the serpent's head— a crucifix of fused bone and steel.
Upon it hung a corpse. Charred. Bound. Forgotten.
Patrick blinked through the smoke.
And the corpse blinked back.
It moved — slow, deliberate — tearing free from the rib-cage frame with a wet, cracking sound. One arm fell loose, then another. Its chest hissed open as though exhaling centuries of ash.
Without a word, it reached down toward the serpent's severed hand — the one still clutching a sword of scale and steel.
It grasped the weapon. Drew it free. Turned.
Patrick took one step back.
The corpse tilted its head, staring through him, through the fire.
Then it raised the sword — arm coiling like a machine ready to launch.
The last thing Patrick saw before the world blurred again
was the corpse preparing to hurl the blade —
not at them,
but toward its King.
– – –
The train plunged deeper into black. Sparks spit from torn wiring, casting everything in short, ugly frames of light. Metal screamed; the smell of burning insulation and blood tasted like iron in the air.
Daemon had killed the man beside him—dagger through throat, silence clean but he had started bleeding uncontrollably from his nose. He'd barely straightened when a patrol guard rounded the doorway ,
"Strangely, there were too many armed men in that section, like something had drawn them there.I swore I saw a beast with fangs, but that was just my imagination."
The man's boot crunched glass; his eyes fell on the corpse beside me.
"Fuck what are you an animal? Couldn't even hide the body," the guard said, a flat professional contempt in his voice.
Daemon smiled without humor. He vanished and reappeared behind the guard, fingers finding the neck with a practiced twist. Bone snapped. The guard dropped like everyone else: quiet, efficient.
Boots answered—orders barked down the corridor. Half the squad pivoted toward the noise, leaving the forward section thinned out. Daemon braced his shoulders against a seat frame, listening to the rhythm of retreating feet—one, two, three—and then the air changed. He felt it before the other sense confirmed it: a different signature, a bigger will pressing against his own .
The bastards left that creature alone to face me.
Katerina Vohlkova — that creature of a woman— moved like winter given flesh; fur draped over ruin, eyes cold enough to quiet a room.
Beneath the train's dying lights, she looked carved, not born — a statue that decided to breathe again.
Daemon and Katerina moved in tandem without speaking. Every step calculated; every motion lethal.
FIRST SECOND:
A new squad of armed men rounded the corner, rifles up. Daemon flicked his knife at the nearest guard's wrist; metal screamed as it struck bone. The man dropped his rifle with a curse.
SECOND:
Katerina rolled forward, elbows snapping, feet chopping, pipe swinging. Two more guards hit the floor before they realized what struck them. She didn't pause—sliding into the next man, twisting his arm, bending the pistol from his grip, snapping his collarbone.
THIRD:
The last guard fired. A shot cracked the wall, sparks spraying. Daemon's form blurred with corruption residue—he vanished for an instant, reappearing behind the shooter, knife to the back of his neck.
---
Coordinated Precision
Daemon's cold logic dictated movement. Katerina's brutal precision filled the gaps. Neither wasted motion.
Daemon scanned, identifying weak points, timing exits, pushing bodies as cover.
Katerina adapted instantly, using short bursts of fire from her pistol and the pipe, redirecting threats, closing angles before any man could raise his weapon again.
They moved like two predators in a narrow cage—walls scraping boots, hands clutching bone and steel, the air heavy with sweat and gunpowder.
---
Aftermath and Pause
Thirty seconds in, the tunnel's hum returned to a dull, rolling vibration. Smoke hung low, acrid. Four bodies littered the corridor; Daemon and Katerina were unharmed.
Daemon's knife lowered, but eyes never left her.
She wiped blood from her palm, eyes cold.
"You're slow when you're careful," she muttered.
Daemon allowed a single shrug. "You're fast when you're lucky."
The fairy's glow flickered overhead. The corridor ahead remained blocked—but less so than a heartbeat ago.
A sudden, blinding flare of white light erupted between them—the fairy, unable to tolerate the competing magical signatures, had flared its protective light.
As the light hit the walls, the illusion broke. The walls dissolved, and the ribs, the corpse-filled flood, the horrifying brown-and-red texture of the abattoir from the first carriage reappeared in a horrifying flash of shared sight. It was the residual trauma of the first car, leaking through the magical containment.
Just as quickly, the vision snapped back to the mundane, blood-splattered carriage. The main train light flickered back on, jostled by the outside movement of the train finally entering a long tunnel.