The Path of Ruin

Kael gripped the poisonous knife in his left hand as hard as he could as he stared at the creature.

'I can't escape from this, there's no way.'

The moment he turned around, the creature would catch him. There was no chance of evading it. He was just a normal fifteen-year-old boy.

So... he had only one option.

'No, I can do it. I may have lost my bag, but my knife is still poisoned. It may have lost some of its potency, but a poison that strong will still work. I just... I just need one move.'

But he didn't have time to think anymore. Thinking of nothing else but killing whoever it saw, the creature suddenly lunged at him, its claws seeming to want to tear Kael to pieces.

Kael... did nothing. The creature was fast, too fast for him really. He knew very well that he could not completely avoid that claw.

But... he didn't need to avoid it completely.

'Gamble.'

He almost laughed at the thought that momentarily crossed his mind.

Today, no... how much was he gambling tonight? He wished it wasn't all about his life, though...

Kael held his breath. He threw himself as fast as he could to the left. He saw the creature's claws pass in front of his eyes, felt them scratch his cheek. But it didn't stop there. He felt the claws on his cheek and then on his shoulder.

His right shoulder burned with a terrible pain, but he gritted his teeth and tried to ignore it. He wasn't very good at it, so he screamed at the top of his lungs... he did his best to keep standing. He held the knife tightly in his left hand and swung it at the creature's face.

The creature... dodged the knife quite easily. It did it like child's play, without any difficulty at all. The only wound it received was a single scratch. Nothing compared to the claws digging into Kael's shoulder.

The creature tried to use the claw on Kael's right shoulder to knock him backwards. And... it did it like child's play once again. Kael's small body was thrown back almost three meters and dragged along the ground for about a meter. His scream became a wheezing cry, it was hard not to think of the pain as his whole body was literally on fire.

The creature suddenly appeared in front of Kael. Kael swung his knife wildly at the creature's legs.

A scratch, two scratches, a third scratch...

But the creature did not even move.

It realized that the boy in front of it was no threat to it. His weapon and his body were so weak that the best he could do was simply... scratch.

The creature raised its foot, about to crush Kael's skull... but as soon as Kael realized that, he crawled backwards.

Just a few seconds.

If he had only delayed that long, his skull would have become one with the ground. But at the last moment, he managed to avoid the creature's foot.

He kept crawling back, without stopping... no matter how much it hurt. And the creature walked towards him. It didn't run, it just appeared in front of him. It just... walked. As if it didn't want to waste energy against its 'prey', which was no threat.

Kael kept crawling. It was difficult because of the sharp pain in his shoulder, but he crawled. His brown eyes were full of fear and terror. The creature's eyes, meanwhile, were just... blank. Red eyes, devoid of emotion.

Even with its slow steps, the creature was faster than Kael as it crawled. It kept approaching him. Closer, closer, and closer...

He tried to stomp Kael with its foot again. Kael was completely locked on the foot which might cause his death as he crawled backwards. He didn't close his eyes, he didn't accept death. He was waiting, still trying to escape with everything he had.

The creature brought its foot down as hard, as fast as it could. Maybe not the skull, but at least enough force to bring the knee to the ground. But then... something happened.

The creature's foot did not crush Kael's knee. Instead, it landed right next to it, creating tiny cracks in the floor.

The creature looked at Kael as if it couldn't understand what had happened.

Kael had been waiting for this moment the entire time, for the poison that had entered the creature's body through the scratches to start working! Even the reason he had been crawling backwards instead of running away until now was to conserve his energy for this moment!

Kael shouted again. His cry echoed throughout the corridor as he leaped at the creature in front of him. The creature swung its claw at a strange angle as if it couldn't quite make him out. It was such a strange angle that it was impossible for it to even reach Kael.

Kael stopped thinking. He just jumped, landing on top of the creature. The creature was already struggling to keep its balance because of its sloppy attack, but with Kael on top of it, it lost it even more. When it landed on its back, Kael was on top of it. He had his poisoned knife in both hands, he was completely mad.

The creature was going to try to attack the boy on top of it with its claws... but then, it paused. It was having trouble moving its limbs. He wasn't even sure if Kael was there, even though he was right above him.

Still, it was a being that didn't know what it meant to give up. Its only goal was to kill the person it had set as its target. So, even though he couldn't make out Kael's image, he opened his mouth wide... and tried to bite the boy on top of him.

But when his teeth met each other, there was nothing between them. It had caught nothing. The next thing the creature saw... was the sharp point of the knife in front of its left eye.

*******

Kael removed his knife from the creature's left eye, then swung it again.

He didn't stop. He drew the knife out again, this time stabbing it into the creature's right eye. But again, he did not stop. Again, and again... and again.

It had been almost a minute since the creature had stopped moving.

He forced himself to his feet. His legs were shaking, his shoulder, pierced by the creature, was burning like crazy. His eyes sometimes blacked out... Still, he got to his feet. His knife slipped from his left hand and fell to the floor, making a sound that echoed down the corridor. But Kael didn't even bother to pick it up. His eyes were on the stairs leading to the fifth floor.

'I can, I can, I can...'

He had lost his mind. He no longer thought about what he was going to do once he got to the fifth floor. He was just... going up. As far up as he could go, that's all. If he was going to die, he was going to die by going as far as he could.

That's how he got up the first step. For a moment, he felt like he was going to fall, but he managed to stand up, supported by the stair railing, and kept going up.

He paused for a moment when he seemed to see a white glow on the edge of one of the steps.

'Hah... Are you here again?'

There was that white flower in front of him again. A beautiful and delicate flower that could bring everything to an end.

'But... it's too late now. Do you think I'm capable of caring about you anymore?'

Actually... he was. There was an unbearable feeling inside him. Just like in that room, he was drawn to it. He wanted to get close to the flower.

But... he took his eyes off it. He didn't even look at it. He was so dazzled, so distracted, that he didn't even care about the flower. He put aside all the sweet things he felt inside, the disturbing peace, the pain... everything.

'I will move forward.'

And... he did.

*******

The fifth floor was quite different from the others. When he went up the stairs, what he found was not an extremely wide corridor. On the contrary... it was a huge hall, just like the entrance hall.

The grand staircase to the sixth floor was right in front of him. But he ignored it. Instead... he first examined this hall, which was even more gigantic than the entrance hall on the first floor.

It was really huge. There were corridors to the left and right, but he was sure they didn't go very far. The upper part of the palace was quite small compared to the lower floors, after all. So they were completely insignificant except for a few rooms.

The rooms and their occupants were not unimportant, of course. But in this moment, they meant nothing to him.

Apart from that... he couldn't really analyze the design of the hall. Because it was covered in blood and dust. The cracks were also everywhere. On top of that... there was not a single living person in front of him.

After seeing the fourth floor, he thought it would be much worse here. He thought he would see a hellish scene where everyone was scrambling for their lives... But that was not the case.

Human corpses were everywhere. From knights to nobles, from servants to slaves, there was blood and corpses everywhere he could step. But... there were also plenty of creature corpses. Whatever had happened here was certainly not pleasant, but it was already over.

'Don't any knights from downstairs come here?'

Though... did the knights even have time to come here? Most of them were probably dead, and the ones that weren't were trying to keep themselves alive in the first place.

The palace... had already fallen. So... he was probably alone here.

His eyes drifted to the stairs leading to the sixth floor. He just looked there for a while. Then... his lips curled upwards slightly.

'My body is a mess. I can faint at any moment. And if I faint... I'll die. I'm bleeding a lot, I'm hungry, and I can't resist a flower while I'm sleeping.'

So... there was only one thing he could do.

Keep moving forward. Just like he had done so far, he would go on. He would probably die. But... at least he would see a king and his chamber.

A death like that... wasn't actually so bad.