Chapter 13: Pools & Paths

Chapter 13: Pools & Paths

Eli entered the second chamber with a club in each hand and third tied to his braided sinew bandolier. Cutting the clister apart with the edges of broken rocks had taken forever, and the sinew he'd extracted was actually more flesh than sinew. Still, he'd rather drape himself in strips of lizardskin than face one of these things unarmed.

And raw lizard hadn't tasted too bad, either.

The second chamber didn't have a ledge The second chamber was barely a chamber.

Eli stepped over a low stone fence, clearly meant to confine the clisters to their own area, and found himself in a wide, smooth-walled tunnel. No places to hide. No stone pillars. Not much of anything, except for four pools of water, each about three yards in diameter, in nearly-regular intervals along the floor.

"Huh," he said.

He sent the spark plunging into the first one. He'd never tried that before, but the spark entered the water without a ripple and showed him murky depths. He scanned carefully with his eyes at the same time, in case the clister appeared above-ground. The double-vision didn't disorient him much anymore.

The spark couldn't pick out many details underwater, but he didn't sense anything dangerous. He moved to the next pool--and that time, spotted a shape in the water. A big shape. Clister-sized.

With a jolt of fear, he withdrew the spark, backpedaled and braced for the creature to erupt at him ...

Nothing happened.

The spark plunged inside again, and that time he made out the details. The decaying skin, the bones: a clister corpse, rotting in the water.

"My favorite kind of clister," he said, his voice dull in the tunnel.

He started for the third pool and with a gout of water, a clister burst from the depths. Bigger than the first one, and Eli didn't have anywhere to hide.

But he wasn't the same, either. He'd already beaten one of these things. He was armed now, and he knew how they fought.

Sure enough, this one went for his legs, to take him down and feast. So when that horrible vertical mouth spread wide, he thrust one of his clubs inside and slammed the beast's face with the other.

That didn't stop it from crashing into him. Three hundred pounds of lizard knocked him backward but he was ready for that, too.

He moved with the impact while the needle teeth chewed at the club. He struck again, barely missing the eye, and the clister's tail flicked out of nowhere, swiping toward his head.

Too fast for his eyes to track ... but the spark noticed.

The spark warned him and he spun and hunched and took the blow on the shoulder.

A bone snapped so he pulled his third club free with his left hand as he staggered, his eyes wet with the pain. His injured arm dangled while the clister shook its head, dislodging the club in its throat then driving Eli backward until the spark told him he needed to move.

He darted to the side and the clister lunged past him. Its front legs splashed into the pool. It thrashed in surprise, its rear claws scrambling for a grip in the stone floor.

Eli had expected it to plunge fully into the water. He'd planned to flee while it was splashing around. Heal up and start again. But instead, the clister remained half-in and half-out of the pool, struggling for purchase, making the perfect target.

Eli slammed it twice with all his anger and pain and fear. He heard a spinal crunch a moment before the creature finally slid into the pool.

Then he ran to the stone fence, his arm flopping uselessly at his side. He leaped over desperately--and the clister hadn't even followed. Huh. That was a surprise. A good one, though. His shoulder was as badly broken as when Fleck had crushed him.

Except this time, it only took half as long to heal.

"Troll blood getting stronger," he said, just to hear the sound of his voice.

He prowled back into the tunnel ... and found the clister slumped between the second and third pools. Alive but sluggish from that final blow to its back.

"What the halo?" he muttered.

The clister heard him and roared so loudly that dust fell from the ceiling.

"What're you, too damn big to hiss?"

He rested on top of the wall for a few minutes, thinking things through. Then he reached down on the clister's side--for an eyeblink, before teeth snapped shut an inch from his wrist.

Whoa. That thing could move.

After shuffling sideways on the top of the wall, he did the same thing again. The clister lunged even higher, so high that Eli felt its cool breath on his fingers.

He spent twenty minutes baiting the creature, which grew increasingly enraged. Then he braced himself. He lowered his left hand into the danger zone as bait--and when the clister attacked, he smashed the stone club in his right hand into its snout.

The clister topped backward and Eli vaulted beside it and struck two more times before it recovered. He knew how they moved now. More than that, he know how he moved.

Though he also knew that those three hits would've stunned either of the first two clisters, while this one simply fought back.

Eli dodged a claw, then barely blocked a bite with his club.

The clister ripped the club from his grip and lashed with its tail.

Time to run. Eli spun, avoiding the blow, and feinted. The lizard's teeth snapped shut a handspan from his right ear. He kicked at the clister, feeling the cool scales beneath his bare foot, then used the foothold to launch himself backward onto the stone wall.

He scrambled upward ... not quite fast enough.

The clister's tail broke his ankle, but only a little--he was back in the fight two hours later.

And ten minutes after that, with his eyes adjusting better and better to the dark.

And six hours later, after his mangled forearm healed. Yet this time, he wasn't the only one who healed. The big clister healed too. Not as fast as he did, but close.

Which meant he couldn't afford to take his time. He baited the creature again and again and again, wearing the clister down until it stopped snapping at him on the wall.

Instead, it scraped loudly across the chamber, making a show of retreating into its den ... then slunk behind the central pillar to ambush him.

Ha. Clever beast.

Except Eli could see around corners now. And he was tiring of jabbing-and-retreating at this thing.

So he dropped into the clister's chamber, watched the big lizard prepare to ambush him, then doubled around and struck first.

And that time, he stood his ground. That time, he screamed and dared the creature to fight, he vowed he'd never retreat. He traded blows with the wounded lizard until they were both slick with blood and gasping with agony--then he retreated.

So much for his vow.

He healed, he fought. He healed and fought. The battles ground together like granite into dust. His body recalled dimly-remembered combat forms and stances, then forgot them as the clister and the spark taught him new lessons.

As his club broke the clister's teeth and the clister's claw sliced his abdomen, his doubled-vision snapped together better than ever. Unified. Merged. His mind understood both perspectives as a whole. Seamlessly. And as he lay gasping on the wall, stuffing his intestines into his stomach, he almost laughed. His senses felt like stepping from a smoky, overheated room into the crisp cold nighttime air.

He didn't break a single bone the next two times he fought the clister--then he killed it.