The enemy was faster, but the wolf was closer.

It kicked and clawed at the water with its palms cupped in, like small shovels, and within just a few hurried pumps of its arms, it reached the human, who desperately extended a hand towards it.

It grasped her hand and yanked her up, using its strength to almost launch her over its head, as close to the surface as it could get her.

There was no way to know with any true accuracy where the enemy was, neither in direction nor distance. All it knew was that it was getting closer.

And thus, it was unprepared for the battering ram that slammed past the human, throwing her upwards and away, a split second before it hit the wolf.

It curled its arms around its head as it activated [Bloodrush], and felt a steel vice made of teeth crush its torso, its organs pulling at its insides as its momentum went from zero to a hundred in an instant.

[Bloodrush] and its natural defenses prevented the massive teeth from puncturing more than one or two inches along its shoulders and waist, but the wolf couldn’t focus on that when the pressure on its ribs was trying to force its breath out between grit teeth, its collarbones fraying and bending dangerously as its shoulders tried to crush together from the overwhelming power.

It could barely move its arms, its forearms locked around its head by barbed teeth, but it did so anyway, ripping through and tearing its flesh open to reach for whatever it could, raking claws through its captor’s maw and teeth with cramped movements, feeling the pressure of the waters increase with every passing second as it was dragged to the depths.

And then it was released with a wild jerk of its captor, a short moment before something thin slammed into its chest in a diagonal, cracking the fibers of its ribcage into a frayed mess and forcing out a burst of air bubbles out of its snout.

Its back hit the floor, something solid, a squishy mess of trash and congealed filth.

It forced through the pain and confusion, the crushing pressure, twisting its body to set its limbs against the floor and kick up, trying to rise to the surface in a wild scramble, unable to fight back against its enemy whatsoever when in its own element.

It barely made it three feet before something whipped through the water, and it was only due to knowing how that motion felt in vibrational senses that it managed to duck its head, the creature’s appendage slamming into its left shoulder with a familiar pop that reverberated through its entire body, a short moment before its snout and right shoulder smashed into the floor again, the cracking of its bone fibers almost audible.

It didn’t take a human’s intelligence for it to realize what its adversary was doing. It knew that the wolf needed air, and it knew the wolf could rake through its mouth if it tried biting onto it, so it decided to simply keep the wolf down until it choked to death.

Instincts never failed the wolf thus far, so it listened to them once more. It punched its shoulder back into place and twisted around,hooking its claws into the floor.

Squishy trash and congealed slime parted for its fingers, and they hooked into stone. It curled its abdomen, doing the same with its back paws.

And with its chest brushing against the bottom, it began to run-swim across the floor, hooking its claws with a precise, instinctual tempo of blunting them for grip and traction, and sharpening them for release, almost zig-zagging across the floor.

It felt the vibrations of its enemy circling just above, waiting for it to start trying to rise for air, and it used this time to continue moving across the floor, dodging piles of trash and keeping to flat ground. It felt the human breach the surface of the water, swimming away from both the wolf and the creature with clumsy, one-armed paddling.

The wolf finally reached the support pillar it was looking for, a thick rod made of rock, and stopped paying attention to the human, reassured that she’d be fine as long as the wolf figured out a way to kill this thing.

It wasted no time, pushing off the floor and scrambling up the pillar.

The vibrations of its enemy grew frantic and stronger, likely realizing what it was doing.

But they also let the wolf know the rough direction of the creature, so it twisted around the pillar, waited for the vibrations to change direction a little, and continued changing its positioning, always keeping the pillar between itself and the aquatic predator, spinning around in frantic circles as it tried to breach the surface.

And then the vibrations grew too close, too wide, and it was only that faint prickle of danger in the back of its mind that made it instinctively flatten its body to the pillar and wrench its upper body to the side, feeling the water churn and flatten its fur as the creature’s jaws snapped shut an inch from its fur with an audible snap.

The chase resumed, the creature circling in random patterns to try and grab onto the wolf, and when that didn’t work after its third attempt, which came even closer than the other two, it seemed to give up, instead going in a wide circle and slamming its tail into the pillar itself.

The impact was so strong the wolf almost lost its grip from surprise, the entire pillar seemingly jumping by the force, the sound audible even through the water and the cartilage blocking its ear’s hearing to some extent.

And as it resumed its mad scramble for air, it felt the cracks in the stone as it climbed past them.

Thankfully, it didn’t do that again, the creature instead resuming its incessant, looping chase around the pillar, almost coiling around it as it blindly followed the wolf.

Those brushes against the pillar gave the wolf a very vague image of what it was even fighting, and it didn’t give it much confidence in winning, by sheer dint of size alone.

Some kind of triangular head with a sharp bony point at the end, two almost human-like, short arms, and a long, long, tapering body with a massive, vertically flat tail.

It was almost thirty feet long from snout to tail, and the wolf had no idea how to kill it besides latching onto its head and scraping its brains out. Assuming it had a brain.

It finally broke out of the muck and gasped for air as it continued to scramble up the pillar, the vibrations in the water growing even more muted, and so it opened its eyes, despite the water entering them absolutely burning the outer protective layer.

And they did open, to a chorus of red lights flashing in and out of existence along the ceiling of the room, turning the green room yellow and back to green, a distant blaring horn filling the wolf with immense relief.

It had seen this before, and been swept away by it as well.

All it had to do was last long enough for the waters to drain into the canals and sweep away the creature.

Which was easier said than done, because the moment that realization and plan formed in its mind, the sound of bursting water and a prickle on the back of its mind made it once again throw its body to the side, trying to dodge whatever attack its adversary had thrown at it, simultaneously twisting its neck to try and get a visual on the creature.

What it saw instead was a black-green pointed snout as large as a human’s entire body snap down on its tail.

In an instant, it threw a hand down to try and cut its tail off at the base.

It was just a fraction of a second too slow. The creature violently jerked in a wide arc, assisted by its weight, and the wolf felt its fingers stretch and the joints snap as its nails were torn out of the stone, the vertebrae in its tail snapping apart from the wolf’s weight as it swung in a wide arc.

And then it flew through the air with speed it had never felt before, feeling its side and shoulder smack into the water, making its body bounce off and violently spin for a brief moment before it hit the water again and tumbled through into the muck.

For a few seconds it just kicked and writhed in the water, disoriented beyond belief, unable to tell up from down as its brain bounced around in its skull, and by the time it broke the water’s surface to cough out the burning water in its throat and gasp in a breath, it saw the creature’s dark form racing towards it through the glowing waters, closing the distance at a frantic pace.

At the corner of its sight, it saw the walls of the room curve towards it, and it quickly turned around, coming face to face with the massive metal doors behind it.

It practically threw itself towards them, pawing at the water with all its strength, and it set its hands onto the metal, hooking its claws and catapulting itself out of the water.

As its claws raked through and it scrambled up, a small shower of sparks hit its chest, something it was going to ignore as it twisted around to catch a glimpse of its pursuer, but a strange fwoom sound accompanied a sudden flash of orange light, and it jerked its head down, watching in surprise as flame suddenly raced out from its chest, covering its limbs in the span of a single shocked second.

A frenzied sense of panic clutched its heart in a vice as the fire flashed up to its snout in an instant, and it yowled as agony burnt through its snout, hurriedly closing its eyes before twisting on the metal and diving down to the waters once more.

It felt the air crack past its mangled tail as its assailant’s own tail smashed into the metal with a thundering clang, a strike it avoided by pure luck, and it dove headfirst into the waters, the fire petering out of its fur in an instant.

Without any time to waste, it tried to grab onto the metal and continue the chase, continue to buy time, but its position was too awkward, its body and its surroundings too chaotic, its mind too panicked.

It only managed to clumsily hook two claws into the metal before it felt the creature’s pointed snout rushing towards it.

With a jerky, uncontrolled movement, it threw its body deeper down with so much force it felt the muscles in its arms tear, twisting its chest to the side. The sharp point of its adversary’s snout scraped against its ribs and cut a shallow rend through its side, before it slammed into the metal behind it.

And it finally saw an opportunity.

Its arms grabbed onto the thing’s snout, claws hooking into leather-like skin and steel-like bone, and it hung on as the odd, snake-like creature started throwing its body in random directions, spasming and twisting in its attempts to buck it off.

It squeezed as much of its adrenaline sack as it dared to, feeling strength and vigor flood back into its body.

The water and trash tugged at the wolf like hooks sinking into its body and yanking it away with every sudden movement, its back paws struggling to find their way back to the beast’s snout and carve through anything as its bottom half was simply swung around like a ragdoll.

It had no idea where it was or what was happening, it simply held on, held its breath, and did its best to rake its back claws through its enemy’s snout without losing its grip, clenching its snout as tight as it could to keep its breath in.

And then the beast’s course suddenly grew straight and rigid, speeding through the waters, straight down.

The pressure on its body grew to a familiar, all-encompassing, crushing strength, and the wolf let go of its grip on the underside of the beast’s jaw, and hooked its left hand’s claws into the top of the thing’s snout, allowing the pull of the water to drag its body down the length of its enemy’s head, until it was at the base of what it would consider to be its head.

Then it blunted its claws, and hooked its right hand’s claws at where its neck should be, roughly.

Unfortunately, its skin was so thick around the brain case and neck that the wolf could barely reach actual flesh with its claws, or at least that’s what it felt from its few remaining antennae that hadn’t snapped off yet.

The snake-like creature twisted away from its straight down trajectory, doing so with an extremely tight turn that gave the wolf another heavy dose of motion sickness, and then it sped upwards.

The wolf didn’t waste the opportunity, using its hand to desperately cut through the odd skin around its neck, shredding it with fast, frenzied rakes of its claws, hanging on with its left arm. [Bloodrush] faded, strength and toughness leaving its body.

And then the water’s pressure vanished, and its eyes snapped open to a room full of burning water, the green glow seemingly gone entirely, replaced by a lake of fire, extending out below them.

Its adversary leaned forward, giving the wolf a very panic-inducing look of the flame flashing up the thing’s tail and straight towards it, and in that moment of distraction, unsure of what its opponent was even doing, it had no time nor any way to react when it snapped its entire body back like a whip.

Its weight and speed slammed the wolf into stone, and it let out a short wheezy puff as its breath was forced out of its lungs, feeling the bone fibers in its ribcage snap and tear open like frayed rope. Its heart skipped a beat, then two, and as they began their descent back into the waters, it was wreathed in flames.

It breathed in as best as it could through the mind-searing agony as its heart resumed beating, [Pain Resistance] being the only thing that kept it from succumbing to shock.

Its mind’s last observation before it activated [Maddened Frenzy] was that the doors of the canals were finally opening.

And then it felt power, pure ecstasy.

Fur turned to strings of marble, muscles turned to steel cables, the world slowed down as if in a hazy dream, its senses exploded, feeling every inch of the waters and the tunnels beyond for hundreds of feet, the meatbag squirming under the water in the distance, the prey beneath its paws.

In the corner of its mind, it felt a million chains snap like strings, and it was finally free.

Free of inhibition, caution, sanity, and thought.

[Devourer] roared for blood and carnage, and the wolf roared with it, a snarling bark turned to rumbling thunder.

Its jaws stretched open as far as they could go and further, almost flattening on its prey’s head, its jowls and muscles tearing, the jawbone dislocating, and as they fell, the wolf bit down between the eyes of its food, its canines hooking into its skull, a perfect grip, the scorching of the flames against its eyes and lips little more than a pleasant tingle.

With four limbs free, it didn’t hesitate a millisecond.

Its claws dug into the thing’s eyes, its tail wrapped around its throat, and it began clawing its outer armor to ribbons, barely noticing the change when they crashed back into the water.

It continued snarling out its air, jerking its head from side to side, opening the wound further, every frenzied rake of its claws criss-crossing with the next, and in the bloody whirlwind they caused as its prey bucked and twisted underwater, the doors opened, the current sweeping them away.

It didn’t stop, the world spinning, flickering from wild rushes of liquid to mists of liquid flame, feeling concrete slam into its back as its prey and itself tumbled down the flaming tunnel, carving off the creature’s armor one little piece at a time, its feeble struggles simply making it more excited.

The grip it had on its skull fractured and broke between its teeth, the sharp points gouging out the flesh on the inside of its snout.

That unexpected snap almost managed to separate them, but the wolf hurriedly shoved two fingers into its prey’s vacant right eye socket, making them tumble around each other for only a short few moments before it forced itself back onto its head, resuming its relentless mauling as they crashed in and out of the flaming wave.

It shoved the top part of its snout through its prey’s left eye socket, biting through the thick bones and skin for a grip, and continued shredding its neck to ribbons with its left hand, forcing its right hand through the eye socket, looking for its brain with uncaring, rapid thrusts, its back paws scraping through the skin on the thing’s backside.

Its food tried to twist in every which way and direction, desperate to put the wolf in its jaws, even grasp a single limb, to no avail. The wolf was too fast, too strong, too small.

Its right knuckles broke, the fingers flattening against its palm as it jammed its hand as deep as it could go into the spasming, roaring pile of meat’s head, the socket just a bit too small to fit its wrist.

Its shoulder slammed into the bottom of the down-tilting tunnel, its elbows were crushed beneath the weight of its food, its body was torched and quenched repeatedly as they struggled for purchase, for domination, within a flaming tide of chemicals. It lasted an instant to the wolf, and an entire minute of near free-fall to the world.

It finally cut through the armor on the thing’s neck, feeling the soft flesh beneath, and it flattened its fingers, thrusting them into the soft flesh and arteries below.

It couldn’t taste nor smell the blood, but it could feel the furious pump of its veins as they parted around its hand.

Its prey curled into a rough ball, its clawed, webbed feet trying to reach up to its neck to dig out the wolf’s hand, its rumbling roars being replaced with choked gurgles as the wolf breached into its neck, wiggling its claws and grasping onto the base of the thing’s tongue, shredding it to a squishy mass of mutilated muscle.

Savage glee raked through its body with a pleasant shiver, its charred fur spiking on its back, whatever wasn’t melted together.

The tunnel tightened, the space for the fire to bloom lessened as the wolf continued to try and saw through the thing’s neck, and then without warning, they were falling, spinning in the air.

It didn’t care where they were or where they would land.

It kept biting, scratching, bucking and twisting on its prey’s neck, trying to shove its clawed fingers into its brain, into its throat, tearing its flesh open one rake at a time. Seconds passed in what felt like minutes as a waterfall of liquid fire dumped them into the gargantuan canal below.

The frothing waters embraced their flaming forms once more, and they slammed through them to the bottom. Its prey landed chest first, several dozen bones snapping beneath the wolf’s paws, and the wolf used the sudden impact to saw another inch through the thing’s neck before the waters swept them out into the open air again, into the flames.

Their twirling mess of a fight continued, tumbling down the canal in a desperate brawl that grew more lethargic by the second as its prey slowly bled out from the giant hole in its neck.

The wolf’s body was smashed into rock and lead more times than it could count, each impact sending jolts through its abused organs as the world spun and fractured around them, but the wolf felt nothing, wanted nothing but to kill its prey.

Something solid slammed into its prey’s body, the impact sending them into an even more chaotic tumble that turned the wolf’s lower body off its prey’s back and onto its snout, and as its prey saw an opportunity, it snapped its head to the side, its serrated teeth and steely jaws snapping onto its stomach, life entering the exhausted beast at the prospect of a chance to fight back.

The canal bent, a gentle curve, but with their momentum, they crashed onto the titled sides like tumbling boulders, and without a single instance of rest, its prey bit down with every ounce of its strength, its teeth only barely managing to dig an inch into the wolf’s stone-like body as its shattered arms clawed at the stone, their bodies once more wreathed in flames as they met open air.

The prey tilted its head up as far as it could go, its tail pushing on the ground to lift its entrapped body ten feet into the air, and the wolf used its hold on the prey’s flesh to readjust its claws to hold onto its skull, moving its jaws to bite around its food’s eye socket with a rumbling, furious snarl.

A crack of thunder roiled out of its throat, and exploded straight inside its prey’s skull.

Through a single, half-functioning eye, it watched in mindless fury as a spray of gore and brain matter sprayed out into the open air from its other eye socket, the explosion back-blasting into its own throat and rupturing a lung in the process as the air slammed through into its body, despite its attempt to twist its head around, an instinctual movement it didn’t care to know the origins of.

The roof of its food’s mouth burst, the explosion of air impacting the wolf’s stomach and ripping its body out from the clutches of its teeth in a spray of blood, and the wolf tilted its body to the best of its ability, landing on its paws and rolling on the floor to dissipate the impact, its smoking form still flickering with errant bits of fire.

And then it was left without an enemy, but it had to cut, to rip and tear and kill and devour and dominate something, anything.

It charged at its prey’s twitching corpse before it even hit the ground, and began clawing out pieces, shoveling them into its mouth or flinging them around the canal as it bit off chunks, barely pausing to breathe through the frothing blood in its throat as it sank into a feeding frenzy.

Even so, every one of its senses scanned for something alive to kill and hunt and break beneath its paws.

In the desolate silence of the human nest's fourth floor however, there was nothing to kill, so the wolf continued its eating binge until [Maddened Frenzy] faded, and it collapsed in an instant as the boost faded, its mutilated, charred snout nestled deep into its prey’s throat, the towering machinery all around them poised like gravestones spearing into smog.

As its mind faded into unconsciousness, it idly noted that despite feeling like so much had changed about itself, the familiar sight of the open canals and the meaningless machinery of the abandoned floor remained the same, a grim welcome back to where its life began, the empty quiet of the fourth floor a familiar background to its rest.

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