Chapter Fourteen: The Axoatl

I ducked, but it was too late. My foot came crashing down on my head, sending a ripple of pain that blurred me. Stumbling through the darkness, I jumped—no, hopped blindly through the forest.

My heart pounding against my head.

Then, without warning, the ground beneath me shifted. A muffled thud echoed as my foot plunged into something soft, something unnatural. Panic surged through me, a cold wave that drowned reason. The ground, it wasn't ground at all. I was sinking, sinking into an abyss that clutched at my leg with the greed of a thousand hands.

It was like quicksand, but worse – every attempt to pull away seemed to draw me deeper into its embrace. It was as if this goo was alive, wrapping around my legs, slithering up my thighs. The more I struggled, the tighter its grip became, suffocating, relentless, as if it sought to consume me.

A primal fear Ignited within me, a terror so raw and overwhelming that it coursed through my veins like wildfire. What fresh hell was this?

The moon suddenly peeked out, casting a ghoulish light over my predicament. My heart froze. I was ensnared, ensnared in a massive, black, lake of oil.

"What…", The moon retreated behind a cloud, and the forest plunged back into a darkness so profound, it seemed to devour the very air. My heart hammered against my chest.

I took a deep breath. I needed to thinking, to do something. Fuck, how do do I get out here? Ea Doa, that's was it. My hands moved. Rat. Horse. Boar. Rat. And pressed my palm against the air, feeling the… nothing. I felt nothing. How….

No. I shook my head. No. I repeated the gestures, more forcefully this time, but again, nothing. No. "Come on," I urged myself. Rat. Horse. Boar. Rat.

Shit.

Rat. Horse. Boar. Rat. I moved my hands forward, but "Fuck". Why wasn't it going?

"Your ninjutsu won't save you, human", Ittetsu voice boomed in the darkness, echoing through the trees.

I looked around frantically, trying to see something, anything.

"Nothing will.", Then I felt something, a wave. Was there something else in oil with me?

With a swift motion, I reached for the kunai tucked in my back pocket, gripping it tightly. If magic would not be my salvation tonight, then perhaps steel would.

The oil around me rippled. Fuck. I strained my senses, trying to detect the presence of, what? Ittetsu? I didn't know. Every nerve in my body was on edge, every sense heightened.

"I'm curious. Was that, Shinjutsu?", he asked from somewhere.

Without thought, my hand flew, hurling the kunai towards the sound. A thud echoed, followed by the heavy, unmistakable sound of a body crumpling to the ground.

A smirk began to creep across my face. There. I thought to myself. Not so powerless after all.

Then, "Hahahaha", laughter. Cold, mocking laughter. "Hahahaha," it echoed around me, bouncing off the walls of my mind. "You should have seen your face."

In that instant, my fleeting joy crumbled like a house of cards.

"But seriously, how did you do that, human?" Ittetsu's voice boomed. "I've never seen one of your kind fall apart quite like that."

I squinted, trying to locate him, but it was like chasing shadows in the dark.

Then, it appeared. A glimmer at first, just a flicker like a distant star. But it grew, expanded, an aura of unnatural light that seemed to pulse with a life of its own.

My breath caught in my throat.

Out of the murky shadows, a monstrous shape emerged, large and looming. Its surface shimmered with a thousand glints of blue light. At first, I thought it a trick of my mind, a figment born of fear and confusion. But no, it was real, horribly real.

This creature, this behemoth, had grown, had changed to something that was… like nothing I'd ever seen. A axoatl, fat, grotesquely oversized, with a skin, no, a shell that glowed with an unholy light. It seemed to absorb the darkness around it, a beacon of eerie luminescence.

Its eyes, large and unblinking, fixed on me with a gaze that was both curious and malevolent.

"I was once like you, you know", it said. "Just another salamander in the mud. They taught me to listen to my heart, act true to what's within. It's like they were trying to kill me. You see, instincts, they dull our senses, leading us astray, chasing after every shimmering, fleeting thing."

"So you act, and act, and act, driven by every whim, every fleeting desire, never pausing to ask questions. Were are you? Why are you being dragged? Why I took your backpack, but left you swords? Why I positioned you so close to my face?"

And then, it smiled, showing me it's countless shark-like teeth.

"I kinda thought you'd use those swords at your hip, you know, the items at your disposal, to slice off my tail or something," it said. "Guess that never crossed your mind, huh?"

I took breath.

"What do you want?", I asked.

"I'm just gloating, genin, I already have everything I want".

The moon revealed itself once more, casting its cold, indifferent light on the scene. Then I saw it: I wasn't alone in this horror. The moonlight revealed others caught like me—a black bear, fighting for freedom, it's body heaving with exhaustion; rabbits, a Raccoon, even a wolf, all snared in this nightmarish trap.

The wolf's despairing howl ripped through the night, unanswered and haunting, stirring a deep, primal fear inside me. I'd heard such howls on freezing nights before, but nothing like this, nothing so filled with hopelessness and dread.

My mind raced, thoughts tumbling over one another in a desperate search for a way out. But there was no escape, no hero to save me from this hell.