Ain't Talkin'
Chapter 54 - y heel

If the thing had any emotions, it was certainly for a moment surprised. Two small holes appeared in the vague lizard-fish shape. It occurred only fleetingly to the hunter as he sprinted towards the construct that this was a different not-thing than had chased them from the crater where he’d found Markus.

It made a noise with a gaping mouth that opened in it’s throat. It cried out a sound in the endless white that sounded like creaking boards. The construct flitted beneath the plane that Roche stood on and burst upward screaming like wood. The holes in the construct stayed open, weeping something like milk.

So it bleeds, the hunter noticed. He fired his weapons again at the breeching many-legged-lizard-fish the color of morning fog.

More holes in the thing opened. So the hunter kept shooting, his feet moving under him and he drew down upon the construct.

Shrieking, the construct flipped to it’s side and lashed out with one of it’s clawed legs. The walker was a master of the ether, of his surroundings. Ages within the celestial nether had taught him well. Roche leapt up over the swiping claw and holstered one revolver and drew his boot knife with two quick flips of his wrist. He sailed down onto the body of the construct with the blade edged downward. The razor-edge of the knife opened against the constructs body. More milky blood bubbled from the wound and flowed out into the ether like dust in a breeze. Roche rolled over his shoulder, somewhere to the construct’s left, if it had a left.

He got to his feet and held the knife back handed before his eyes like a slum-fighter. He worked a glance at the blade while keeping his eyes on the construct. There was nothing on the edge of the blade. No residual blood or secretions. The construct seemed to be bleeding bits of itself, misting them away into the ether. None of the bits of the thing had stayed behind on the knife.

It’s form became more recognizable. The lizard-fish-thing scaled over with bits of mirror-like flesh the color of old boards. This was a thing that could not decide if it was real itself, or whether it was made of flesh or ether or something as mundane as barnwood. It bled all the same.

Roche slid his knife into his boot and pulled the sawed-off from his thigh.

The construct murmured a guttural noise and slumped. It could not seem to decide, either, if it was wounded or not. It’s half-existing body continued to bleed dusty bits of itself while it slapped itself against the floor-plane that Roche walked up to it on.

A misshapen mouth twisted across it’s wooden-scaled throat. It screamed a barely audible sound and opened wide. Roche stuffed the sawed-off downward into it’s maw and pulled both barrels. Scatter-shot burst through the back of the construct’s head and neck where the hundreds of bits of lead dispersed into the ether, where it fizzled into nothing as the void.

The construct went silent and the absence of sound clouded into the ether again.

Roche heaved breath, standing over the body of the construct. His chest rocked, though in the void he was not breathing anything at all.

Beneath and beside his boots, the construct seemed to flow downwards, it’s body as much melting as going limp. It’s mouth hung wide open, tearing down it’s neck further and further past it’s many legs and to it’s groin. The construct tore in half through a wound that refused to stop tearing.

Roche watched as the thing faded, it’s colors and textures dying away into the white of the ether.

It rotted before his eyes into pure nonexistence.

He’d watched someone disappear in the same way a long, long time ago.

She was gone now.

And so was the construct. Nothing left of the thing but a vague feeling that something had been at his feet just a moment ago.

Another moment passed and Roche had almost forgotten that it had been there at all.

The walker turned and felt with his senses out across the white.

Markus was far away. Lucky had stopped running. Roche felt him in the distance on his horse. The walker started walking.

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