Those knife-fingers wove themselves around the blade, wrapping around it in fits and starts, extending, then reaching further. The light ate away at it, but for every step back it took, it gained two steps of ground. The light touching it just wasn’t that strong, and I had no way to drag it back to where the proper ‘diagram’ was marked on the floor.
The guard of the sword was largely gone at this point, the wolf’s skull emblem damaged and partially scraped away by the efforts of the Drains or the fall. The claws inched closer, doing their best to seize the blade and reach for my hand.
The light didn’t eat the hand, but it did chew through the thicker arm, further back. Severed from Ur, the hand lost its strength, I stumbled back, landing on my back, and I scooted back until I was safe in the center.
Notches had been taken out of the sword.
The Hyena twitched.
Was it still alive?
Couldn’t be.
No, it wasn’t the sword. It was something reflected in the sword.
I had to use my free hand to tear the metal out of my left hand. I cast it aside. The metal smoked where the light touched it.
Fucking stupid of me. Ur could leap across reflective surfaces.
Ur didn’t seem particularly inclined to push past the light again. My so-called-diagram wasn’t a wall, not absolute protection, only a preventative measure. The light was mottled here and there, where it failed to get through the windows, or where windows were cracked or covered in dust. Ur could push through if and when it wanted to.
I swallowed, utterly still, still on my back. The Hyena had stopped smoking, so I flipped it over, letting the light hit the other side. It took seconds before it was burned clean.
Somewhere outside, a cloud moved over the sun.
My diagram began to come apart, and Ur gained ground.
One reaching extremity, a deformed, tumorous lump- so large I had to turn my head to avoid looking straight at it as it loomed.
I couldn’t hope to fend it off, so, still lying on the ground, I brought my feet up, bracing against it, arms stretched out to my side for more traction. It pushed me, striving to push me out of the diagram, into waiting oblivion.
Spindly arachnid legs unfurled from the thing. The ones that didn’t crumble away in the light poised, their needle points aimed at me.
Another mass of darkness moved directly above me, perched on the ceiling.
I rolled, releasing my resistance to the thrusting limb, pulling my legs back from the stabbing legs that followed after me, piercing the ground.
The darkness on the ceiling shifted, then dropped.
A column of darkness, right in the middle of the diagram. Meat and gnashing teeth, spilling out like water.
Kneeling, I grabbed the Hyena, because it was the only weapon available, and I struck out.
This time, Ur recoiled. The column thinned out at one section, the lumps of flesh that were reaching for my feet and knees losing their connection to the source. There was less of Ur’s being feeding into them to give them more mass to extend my way.
I didn’t know how or why the cut had worked this time when it hadn’t before. Warming in the sun? No. It didn’t make sense, it was still cold to the touch. The factory was cold.
But I cut again, repeating the same action, over and over, until I’d gutted the column. The ‘foot’ of the column that had touched down in the middle of the diagram broke apart, large hunks of black meat and ichor that became piles of black squirming maggots that shriveled up into nothingness in the sunlight.
I heard something behind me and turned, slashing out again-
This time to no avail.
Tendrils caught at my neck and chest, tearing. They thinned out by the second as the dimmed light touched them, but they still took strips of skin with them, not consuming, but still wounding me, inch by inch, morsel by morsel, working to drag me out of the meager light. One tendril caught me around the knee.
I cut, backhanded this time, and managed to sever the worst of the tendrils. The light did the rest. I stumbled closer to the middle of the mesh of light near the center of the factory floor.
The pillar of Ur still hung overhead, and I turned, cutting at it, blind.
Again, it recoiled.
Two more cuts. Ur retreated, pulling the broken pillar of flesh up and away, up to the ceiling and out of sight.
A moment later, the sword began to move of its own accord, twitching. In the corner of my eye, the weapon was dark, and the cracks got darker, widening-
I tossed it down into the nearest, brightest spot on the ground. It spun in place, smoking. I saw a piece of Ur slip free and try to find its way to darkness, only to disintegrate before it did.
Ur retreated as the cloud moved out of position, the light growing stronger.
Something was off. The timing of Ur’s responses, the inconsistency of it- Ur hadn’t flinched when I’d made contact. Sometimes before, sometimes after, and sometimes not at all.
I knelt in the light, and I reached for the Hyena, picking it up for the third time in the last five or ten minutes. I turned it over in the light, letting the sun clean it. I saw how, when I turned it at certain angles, the darkness leaped into it, spreading into it.
Reflections were a means for Ur to travel. Reflections were also a means for light to travel.
This weapon cut both ways.
My heart thrummed in my chest, but my body was still. I recognized the pain of holding the Hyena, the spikes piercing flesh, but it felt distant.
Ur would win this in the long run. I had a weapon, but it did far too little. I might as well have been using a bucket to empty a lake.
I used the sleeve of my sweatshirt to scrub the remaining length of blade. I pressed it against my thigh, so only a bit of the metal was exposed. I angled it so the light would catch it, reflecting off to one side.
Ur recoiled, responding to the faint shaft of light.
Not a wound, but still, a tool.
I could feel my tattoos creeping in to replace the flesh that had been torn away.
I’d have loved to hurt it. I moved the light, and in the corner of my eye, I could see Ur shift in response. Moving the light back and forth, I saw Ur react, sliding back out of the way. Rather than deal with the moving light, Ur simply avoided the areas the light roved.
I aimed for the thickest patch of darkness.
The light didn’t penetrate. It was as though there was no surface there to catch the light.
That darkness was supposed to give way to light was a truism, a law of reality.
That Ur was apparently breaking that law…
Damn it.
I focused the light on the parts of Ur I could make out, driving him back, scanning my surroundings. The demon crowded at the light, smoking where it accidentally got too close, trying to find a way closer to me – a crack it might use to sneak into the diagram, a shadow that ran along a bump in the floor.
There wasn’t anything, but this was a struggle that Ur would eventually win. As time passed, more clouds could pass over the sun. The shafts of light would move.
My eye traced the path, memory informed me about general directions involved.
As the sun rose, I’d lose ground. It wouldn’t be soon, but given time, the lights would no longer intersect.
The diagram would come apart.
My heart was going crazy as I moved the blade, turning it to pass the light steadily over the surroundings.
Ur was smart enough to anticipate the movement of the light, to predict where I would move it and move out of the way before the light touched it.
Here and there, Ur had covered up windows, or covered up parts of windows. Where Ur scraped against the edges of windows and sections of wall, falling debris clouded the light.