31 – Ghost StoryThe fiend was fast—faster than Hector’s new skin could properly react. He started to get his arms up, ready to knock aside the rending, hook-ended claws, but all he managed to do was keep the second hook from tearing his head off while the first one caught his shoulder and threw him like a discarded toy into the wall. As luck would have it, the apartment’s construction was typically flimsy, and he punched right through the layers of fiberboard composite paneling and into the next apartment.He hit the tile flooring in a shower of insulating foam dust, sliding two meters on his back to crack his head against a kitchen counter. At some point during his passage through the wall, his breather had been yanked down around his neck; he knew this because a woman’s voice, rising in pitch with alarm, cried, “Paul?”Hector turned to the voice and saw a woman whose resemblance to his new body was clear; she was standing near the door, a look of panic and disbelief on her face as she reached for a semi-automatic shotgun leaning against the jamb. Hector shook his head. “Run,” he wheezed, tuning out the pain in his body and springing to his feet.Just then, the wall exploded some more—bits of fibrous composite filling the air in an insulation dust storm, and then the shadowy form of the aura fiend came into view. Hector angled toward the exterior wall, his back to the window, hoping to draw its attention away from the woman near the door, still gawping in his direction. The fiend screamed and dove at him, claws high.Hector summoned his Aura Blade, squatting and spinning into a backhanded slash, aiming to take off the fiend’s right leg as it came into range. The blade flickered with crimson light, trailing wispy aura smoke, but the damn creature was just too fast. It saw what he was doing and yanked its leg back, landing instead on one clawed foot and then driving its spear-like tail forward.Hector (...)