Chapter 53: LIII. The Staff
The boar that Dag had just killed, slowly resumed the appearance of a human being, whose body remained lifeless on the ground.
The other wild boar, slightly larger than the first, charged Dag.
He dodged the blow.
The boar turned again towards him, trying to hit him a second time.
With the sword, Dag deflected the beast's tusks, which moved its head down.
Snapping at the sides of the boar, Dag tried to hit it with "Slam", the last skill he learned and never tried in combat, whose rune was already engraved on his skin.
With a shoulder bump, Dag hit the beast, which was pushed to the side, tipping over as if it had been hit by a very heavy body.
As the boar tried to get up, Dag faked a sword lunge and jumped on the animal's head to push himself upwards.
With an athletic gesture, after resting his foot, he jumped again: in mid-air, when he had a clear view of the shaman, he violently threw the tomahawk towards him.
As Dag's movement had been really fast, Myr wasn't able to predict the blow and the tomahawk, after spinning in the air for several meters, hit him, sticking in his leg.
Myr uttered a scream of pain and fell to the ground after the blow. When he lowered his hand to detach the weapon lodged in his thigh, the boar lost its strength and also sank to the ground, returning to its original form as a human being.
"You son of a bitch!" said Myr in pain.
As soon as he pulled the tomahawk out of his thigh, he screamed and his leg began to bleed profusely: the wound was very deep.
Dag walked slowly toward him.
"What do the Xis want from me?! Speak!" he shouted at Myr.
The shaman began to giggle maniacally.
"Just don't you understand your inferiority, boy? We're not allowed to know anything. We wretched human beings cannot comprehend the great plans of our Gods. We just have to obey, without objection" Myr replied.
Dag stopped in front of him, who was still on the ground and touched the wound on his leg.
He wielded the short sword in his right hand.
"I won't tell you again. Tell me why the Xis ordered to catch me!" yelled Dag.
"Because of your power, fool! There's something about you... something different from every other warrior on this planet. I didn't have enough time to study the chemical properties of the blood sample I took from your arm... how can I know anything else?!" Myr answered aloud.
As the shaman spoke, Dag noticed that as he clutched the wound with his right hand, the fingers of his left hand moved strangely, as if he was writing something invisible.
"But where is his staff?" thought Dag, realizing that the shaman did not have his rod with him.
Just then, something hit Dag in the back of the head, causing him to fall to the ground.
Although the blow was strong, Dag managed to turn around and look behind him. It was Myr's wooden staff that hit him!
The rod was firm in the air, right in front of him.
With that hand gesture, Myr was controlling it.
When the staff tried again to hit Dag, he blocked it with his hand.
Myr's strength that controlled the object was weakened due to the injury, and Dag with a stroke of the knee, broke the staff in two, and then threw it at Myr's feet.
Dag grabbed the shaman by the neck and lifted him off the ground.
"I'm sick of your games, old man!" he said, pointing his sword at his throat.
Myr opened his eyes wide and with a twinkle of voice said: "I hear them! They're coming! Your end is near, you can't do anything to prevent it!"
At those words, Dag dropped the old man to the ground.
"What the hell are you talking about?!"
"Hahaha"
Myr began to laugh, coughing.
Dag grabbed him by the head and with a decisive blow pierced his throat with his sword.
Myr squinted, continuing to laugh until Dag drew his sword and he fell to the ground lifeless.
Immediately after killing his enemy, Dag felt a thrill running down his back.
He began to be afraid and to look around.
The shaman got up, sitting on the ground. His throat was completely slit, but he seemed to have come back to life.
"Wh..at?"!" exclaimed Dag as he receded.
Myr stood up, looking down with his back straight: his hump seemed to be gone.
Other noises began to come from Dag's back.
He turned behind him.
The two men Myr sacrificed just before to summon the wild boars were back on their feet.
The two halves of Myr's staff began to crawl toward those two men as if they were snakes.
Dag was terrified.
The two men who had just returned to life moved like the undead Dag faced before arriving at the farm. Their eyes were white, lifeless.
It was as if their bodies at that moment were just containers.
The first half of the bracket came towards one of the two guards and climbed on him crawling on his leg.
It continued to climb on his body until it reached his shoulder and slipped into it, piercing the flesh of the undead.
The man's chest began to writhe: the wooden staff began to grow inside him, expanding his roots throughout the upper part of his body and his neck bones broke down, as did his ribs.
The skull began to implode, crumpling on itself as if it were made of paper until it disappeared between the shoulders that kept growing.
Soon, the undead turned into a kind of headless golem, with two large wooden arms that looked like two tree trunks and the whole top more similar to a plant than a human.
A few meters away, the other undead was undergoing the same metamorphosis.
Dag turned to Myr.