Ayu's Short Stories

Antidote

“Looking for this?”

Grinning and cooing, the hideous fiend wagged the purple liquid vial between two long pincer-like fingers, threatening to crush it. I cursed as I looked back at my party. Raikou remained lying on his back, mouth foaming and eyes pained. Himawari kneeled before him, digging through her pouch; herb and powder, spell after spell, yet nothing seemed to work. There was but one antidote for the Spider Queen’s poison – and she was holding it, juggling it between fingers and taunting in amusement. With Raikou fallen, drowning in the demon’s venom, I was left on my own to defeat her. His life depends on me.

I jumped through tree branch and foliage to get to her, avoiding her near-invisible web and her swift stingers. With the desperate need for the antidote swelling in my mind, it soon blinded me and the only thing I could see was its fragile flask. Though, it was as if my other senses were helping my eyes remained fixed on this objective. Smelling the reeking fangs that prodded at me from behind, I dodged her strikes; hearing her eerie offspring haunting me as hundreds of red eyes shone from within the surrounding darkness, I clawed to keep them away; sensing the sticky web and thousand strings of invisible silk and feeling the solid yet slippery trunks on the soles of my feet, I sprung from tree to tree, using my tail to keep my balance. Failing to perceive any one of these would result in imminent death, but my senses worked together, allowing my sight to focus on the sole task of locating the antidote flask that was being juggled between the demon’s eight limbs. I finally got to her, clawing at an arm with a fiery graze. Landing on a branch beneath, I celebrated as the limb ripped off in a gory spectacle and the vial dropped. I set out to chase it, but the triumph had taken me off guard. I felt a piercing sting on my back like the stabbing of a sharp dagger, though the pain wasn’t limited to the perforated flesh. It spread in a stinging and burning spasm, swelling throughout spine, climbing my neck, crawling across my arms in a tingling cramp that immobilized my fingers – my claws, my weapon. But the antidote… I looked behind at the distressed humans – I need to get to the antidote!

I dashed forward and, in midair, it hit me: it’s either me or him. The thought alone seemed to make the pain unbearable. My target remained the same, the antidote. But the thought did cross my mind: I could take it and free myself from these annoying humans and go my own way. But... it annoyed me that the thought of saving Raikou haunted my mind like a plague. When did I turn so soft? Maybe... just maybe I can save him and still live through it. I’m tougher than any of them.

I struck blow after blow, ripping limbs and watching them grow back. The demon shrieked in a laughing fit, hurling webs at me and threatening thrusts. I avoided them but felt no victory as I could not strike her myself. At last, I felt the poison slither down my legs, sipping away all my remaining strength. I knew instantly that I myself needed that antidote in order to live, but I looked back once again to my companions. I never really cared for those filthy humans anyhow. But… A sudden surge of rage swelled within me and it took control of my limbs as if lifting them with transparent strings of a marionette. They moved on their own, but they knew exactly what to do.

No one can kill them but me.

I plunged into a higher branch, springing myself onto another trunk and diving straight at the Spider Queen’s chest – her bare skin, unguarded by her thick black armor. My arms and fangs used their final strength to deal the finishing blow and tear the white flesh she had desperately guarded with her many limbs. From a long gash beginning at her neck and ending at her naval, dark blood splattered and painted the trees as a final cry escaped the fiend’s lips. Her offspring shrieked in a horrifying cry of terror, but they knew best than to avenge their mother. Instead, they crawled over her gigantic torso, feeding on whatever could be saved before fleeing in a rapid splendor of a thousand scurrying legs. After all, us demons don’t have the same notion of ‘mother’ as humans do – it realy only makes them weak.

Within reach, the purple flask shone from under one of the motionless black limbs. Painfully, I dragged myself towards it, wincing at each and every move – right leg dragging, left leg catching up, right arm towing my limp torso as far as it could, left arm reaching, almost there. Stretching my fingers as far they could reach, I finally touched the cold surface of the vial. I itched it closer until, finally, it was in my palm.

“Hh…” My voice struggled to escape my chest. “Himawari…!” I half whispered in a painful choke. But it proved effective, as I instantly heard the scurrying of delicate feet on the dry leaves and the familiar ruffling of her frilly vests.

“Arashi!” she froze in shock and her eyes communicated the distress she could not utter. I opened my hand, unable to move anything else and revealed the antidote to her. She glanced at it and back at me, then back at it again, paralyzed in a confounded stupor. “You…!” Himawari rapidly snatched the item from my deadened fingers and struggled to open it with trembling hands. Her thin brows met, and she cried in a squealing strain – she seemed to have forgotten about her childhood friend. I exhaled a weak attempt of a chuckle. What a simple human being.

“No… Give it to him.”

Her eyes widened, shining with their usual glistening tearfulness. “But…”

“Do as I say!” I attempted to growl, but my lack of air impeded me from sounding as threatening as usual. She didn’t budge, petrified at the dilemma confronting her. “Go!” I managed to painfully yell. At this, the wimpy being jumped, grabbing the flask with both hands as if holding a wounded chick, and speeding towards our convulsing mate. I chuckled with my final strengths. Who would have thought… Me, dying before that fragile crybaby and sacrificing my only cure to a human…? I felt the corner of my lips curl in the suggestion of a smile as my vision blurred before me. Upon a final effort to fill my lungs with air, the tunnel darkened and soon dimmed every last trace of color and shape, and the air ceased to exist.