As Miaro settled in amongst the crowd and took his seat, his sister’s instructions clear within his mind, he prepared himself for a very long, very boring evening.

He could have been feasting on some cute girl’s blood right now, or smoking a nice pipe of Maniac on top of some vent along the walls, watching the humans fight for his amusement below.

But no, he had to sit here and run another meaningless errand. Because Ironheart was hunting for a dog and dear old Mother wanted to grab it out from underneath his hands.

He couldn’t give less of a shit as to why, truth be told, beyond a passing curiosity. He’d only agreed to doing it unconditionally because he wanted to see the veins in Ironheart’s forehead bulge when someone told him they’d lost his newfound dog obsession for the twentieth time.

Not that he was likely to actually witness that, as the bastard would probably assign him to scout duty for the umpteenth time, but the thought that it would happen comforted him.

“Just act like yourself and they’ll never suspect you” my ass.

He sighed, sinking lower in his seat out of boredom, his eyes and thoughts wandering across glittering chandeliers and the faded painting on the ceiling of this little theater imitation.

He couldn’t get close to anything important. Even in the Dungeon trip he’d been dragged to, he’d been stationed near the entrance. He didn’t even fucking know how Ironheart managed to lose all his men and his limbs. It was just a giant waste of time.

But if he complained about it to his brothers and sisters or god forbid, Mother, he’d just be inundated with a bunch of condescending bullshit about how he was a fledgling or how he needed to gather experience with something lower risk.

Like experience mattered when he could become invulnerable with a single thought. He wanted to fucking fight. Not split himself into a hundred pieces and just watch everything like some kind of low-maintenance mirror system.

Being a glorified errand boy for both sides he was working for sucked.

He’d probably get another “review” from Mother’s handler telling him off for being so shit at blending in, or something like that, but he would rather peel his skin off than wear the mess of cloth and machinery that was the fashion standard for everyone else in the room.

In the background of his meaningless internal complaining, the bids kept climbing higher as animal after animal was dragged onto the massive theater-like stage and then dragged back behind the scenes, until the numbers got so high he couldn’t quite contain his curiosity. The magic-blocking bracelets around his wrists tingled as he straightened up a bit from his slouched posture to peek at the “merchandise”.

Considering the heights that the bids were reaching, he’d been expecting a goddamned dragon to be preening on the stage.

Instead it was a cat.

These people were paying the yearly combined income of a thousand average people to buy a useless pile of fur that had been driven near extinction because it couldn’t even kill rodents to save its species.

He slunk low into his seat once more as he idly tuned out all the bullshit, only keeping an ear out for any variation of the word dog.

It took two and a half hours, but eventually, he did hear it, and he’d damn near pulled several muscles as his head snapped straight up, eyes flicking to the moderately sized cage sitting right beside the… owner? He looked like the owner, because who the fuck else would have two giant golden clocks embedded into his suit and be this goddamn fat?

Unfortunately he was in the beginning of a long and annoying as hell spiel about how dogs were both a man’s best friend but could also be forged into something more, blah blah blah, some bullshit about potential, and then finally, finally, he dramatically grabbed onto the blanket covering the cage, and with a practiced flourish, tore it off.

…

It looked much nicer than any other dog he’d seen before, and its fur was a black so dark it looked almost artificial, as if a Biomancer had done it. The yellow glowing eyes looked pretty badass as well, he would admit.

But beyond that, it was pretty underwhelming.

It just looked like a relatively purebred dog on what he assumed were lethal amounts of enhancement drugs, mostly due to the muscles visibly bulging out from underneath its fur and its slightly larger than normal frame.

The crowd’s gasps didn’t seem to agree with his assessment.

And when the starting bid was announced at two hundred gold crowns, he knew that it would likely cost Mother a lot of money to win this auction.

Unfortunately for Arach, she couldn’t interfere with him in this place, warded so heavily against magic. Unfortunately for Mother, she gave him a ‘tab’ letter to their house, so he could burn as much money as he liked, at least in this one auction.

Making his family lose a considerably larger amount of money than they had to out of pure spite was rather childish, yes…

But it was also funny.

A smile played on his lips.

It knew what was waiting for it just beyond the curtains, even if most of the context it had garnered was done while it was finishing up the key.

Still, it was such an immensely weird feeling to be placed at the absolute center of attention, and have what felt like at least a hundred and fifty or so humans all just… staring at it.

Its eyes briefly flicked to the fat man, drawn to his gesticulating hands, and the strong man from before crouched in front of its cage, unlocking it and swiftly dragging it out once more by the straps of leather around its neck and head.

It stayed resolutely stiff, ignoring the way its heart seemed to be trying to crack its ribs with every beat. Even as the human moved it around like a sack of meat, showcasing it to the humans, the most resistance it provided was trying to hide the more unique aspects of its body, like deflating the slime veins as much as possible to not draw attention to the odd squishy pockets along its legs and back, and making the antennae, fang and key within the tip of its tail all hide within the thick fur.

It couldn’t believe how terrible its luck was.

The key was literally minutes away from hardening enough to not break when the wolf would twist it into the lock, being the thin, fragile piece of bone that it was. Had it worked a little faster, it would have been out of here by now.

Thankfully, from what it had felt, the cages of all the other animals that were dragged onto this strange wooden stage were quickly returned back into the room they came from, so it was sure the same would happen to it.

The problem was the fact that said room was now utterly flooded with people. Whether they were part of the fat man’s people or the people in the crowd with their strange coverings and gaits, it didn’t particularly matter.

Its prospects of a peaceful escape were quite gone by now. It would have to do something more drastic, and soon.

Its best chance was to get back into that room, cause as much chaos as possible, and use the distraction to grab whatever it wanted and run.

The strange tempo of the humans on stage speaking into a boxy device, followed by various humans in the crowd raising their hands, continued.

On… and on…

By what felt like the passing of half an hour, both its heart and mind had calmed down, even if the ever-present anxiety remained.

Because while having so many eyes on itself made some instinctive part of itself squirm and whisper ‘danger’, all the while [Witness of Divinity] kept whispering in its head about lies, there wasn’t anything particularly exciting in sitting chest-down on a stage within a cage and doing absolutely nothing but waiting to pass the time so it could go back into the room.

Eventually, the humans raising their hands reduced themselves to two, then only one, a strange-feeling human clad in pure black coverings.

His flesh felt more like… solid air. Like a structure made of tightly packed dust, in a way. But the weight still felt right. It was just bizarre. It wondered what it could gain by eating him.

Then it was dragged back through the curtains on the side, the strong human delivering it backstage before he let two other humans pick up its cage as he turned and went to pick up the last cage, a small lizard with wings curled up within.

They passed other humans, walked through the back of the closed area behind the stage and went through another set of doors. It watched with boredom as they turned to the cage room, and walked inside, unable to use its tail’s vibration sense but already knowing the building’s layout inside out by now.

Besides, [Tremor Sense] worked without the antennae. It could still feel about fifty feet in all directions if it could touch the floor and not have everything filtered through the two squishy humans carrying its cage.

After talking to some other of their kin next to the room’s entrance and slapping a piece of paper on its cage door, the two humans carrying its cage continued, weaving through the dozen or so people in the cramped, absurdly loud room, and sliding it back onto the same spot it had occupied for the past couple hours, before hurriedly speeding away to continue their tasks.

Finally.

Its key was ready, and had been for a while, having finished hardening half-way through its odd stage session.

It just had to figure out the way to cause the maximum amount of chaos to cover its quick snatch and escape…

Which wasn’t all that difficult. It was in a room full of irate, varying, and relatively dangerous-feeling animals.

Its tail uncurled from around its hind legs and the wolf brought it before its eyes, the tip unwinding to reveal a protruding bone next to the black chitinous venom fang. Shaped like a perfect key.

Its tail squished between the top of the cage and its back before it began trying to align the key to the tiny groove between its wrists. It had gotten completely used to the prickling of bad blood circulation by now, but as it shifted a little to allow its tail to twist more, it realized that its cage felt remarkably smaller compared to when it had first woken up inside it. And so did its cuffs.

It might have to cut back on the growth hormone boost. Now that it had noticed how much it had grown and how quickly, it was worried about under or overestimating its reach and stride. Thankfully, it didn’t feel much heavier.

It had so many things to work through in [Devourer] that it was honestly kind of dreading the notion of going through them even after it got to a safe place where it could relax. Auxiliary micro-brains, bone-pocket skin armor, braided muscles, specialized impact absorbing scar tissue, its bones, and if it could nab the strange furry thing and the reptile’s tail, those things as well.

Its trail of idle thought about how much stuff it would have to go through once it got out of here was interrupted by the key’s tip sliding into place, finally, and it stiffened, very, very carefully pressing in.

To its immense relief, the key slid forward without issue, before hilting with a little click as the venom fang lightly hit the steel just beside it.

Then, it awkwardly twisted its tail, the tendons and braided muscles all straining with the odd cork-like movement.

And without any dramatics and a simple click and the grind of its curled-in fang’s joint scraping at steel, the cuffs abruptly snapped open and off its hands.

Getting its arms out from being trapped along its sides and the cage was very annoying, and it was fairly sure it had pulled a muscle or two by the time it managed to squeeze its right forearm past its pectoral muscles and the floor, before raking through the muzzle’s straps with just the tip of its claws. A bit of thrashing and twisting, and the muzzle was shoved into the corner of its cage.

Another couple minutes of squeezing and shuffling, and it managed to finally bring both its arms in front of itself.

For a moment, as it stared through the back of its cage, it stopped, mentally planning a route, trying to pick the most troublesome and irate ‘allies’ it could have in its quest to make everything devolve into chaos.

The six-legged horn thing was its best bet. Its body language was perpetually pissed, and judging by how thick its metal box was, and how it had hooves instead of paws, it was likely dangerous but not fast enough to be a threat to the wolf. It had also been considerably more angry after it got dragged on stage and the humans did some strange mana things to its box.

Thankfully the lock holding the door closed wasn’t buried all that deep within the metal.

With a deep breath of preparation, it tilted its wrists and hooked its nails along the top and bottom of the bars, left and right.

Smoky, inky nothingness wreathed its paws.

As it mentally sharpened its nails, it jerked its arms through the metal, the rods collapsing into a mess of bite-sized cylinders, and without wasting a single second, it hooked its nails into the wooden floor outside and kicked its cage’s door with its hind legs, launching itself out of its cage, and sending the cage itself to crash into the next row of cages beyond.

With a mental command for its nails to not cut through its own flesh, it brought its right hind foot forward and effortlessly cut through the metal sphere entrapping it, then hurriedly did the second, its tail caressing along the floor with its antennae, keeping an eye out.

Somehow, the sound of a bunch of metal bits hitting the floorboards wasn’t nearly enough to alert anyone, drowned out by the cacophony of complaining animals dumped into one room.

Human hearing. For once, it was helpful.

It was currently squeezed between two walls of cages with just enough room for a human to walk through, in one of the many rows of cages that occupied this massive yet somehow cramped room. Chains went through the handles of each cage, connected to some spinning gear machine on the top of the room, amidst the criss-crossing bars of metal, and it assumed they were there for stability.

Which meant that without those chains, there would be less stability?

The cages themselves were all filled with strange and sometimes utterly illogical creatures, furry things of all types, some bland beyond belief and some so strange it couldn’t puzzle out how they were even alive. It was one thing to feel them and smell them, but to see how they looked just added another level of bizarrity.

Most of the creatures nearby however, it just noticed from a cursory glance, seemed to be actively cowering back into their cages, squeezing themselves into the corners and keeping oddly quiet. Away from the wolf.

That was… odd. The wolf didn’t look that intimidating, in its own opinion. The human sized lizard canine looked a lot more terrifying.

It kicked its legs at the air for a moment to get the blood flowing back into the numb appendages, before punching the floor a few times for the same purpose, alternating hands as it kept an eye on any humans who might be passing by this particular alley made of cages with its antennae.

Its head swiveled to stare at the cowering masses of animals to either side. One had even pissed itself.

It was beset by both intense curiosity and urgency. Why were they so scared of it?

For once however, urgency won.

Besides, something that was fearful was much less likely to attack unless attacked or approached. So it wasn’t particularly hesitant about freeing all of them.

It quickly moved all the way back, to the metal wall, then hooked its claws at lock-height, onto the far left chain holding the stack stable.

How convenient that humans made all their things uniform.

It quickly ran forward with three legs- or two paws and one arm, rather, its claws soundlessly phasing through metal links, then lock after lock, the only evidence of its actions being the faint creak of cage doors swinging open and the dull thuds of padlocks impacting the floorboards. The rattling chains slamming into the floor however, were much too loud and alarming it would seem, judging by how it felt at least three humans pause and turn in its direction.

The first human to dash into a sprint and come into the mouth of the haphazardly made alleyway froze on sight, right as the wolf got to the last cage.

Its left arm that was busy clawing through padlocks hurriedly jerked forward to cut through the rightmost support chain and down into the floorboards, hooking into the planks, and without an ounce of hesitation, it kicked forwards and to the right, allowing its lower body to swing as its hands remained buried in the floor.

Its lengthened tail, one and a half times the length of its body, crashed into the cages' bars before just barely having the length to whip into the human's neck, fang and key both.

The human’s startled shout, was unfortunately something it couldn’t do anything about, and neither could it do anything about how the human hurriedly jerked back, collapsing on the floor with choked gurgles and backpedaling for the short few moments where his limbs still worked.

As its eyes adjusted back into a world that was more than a blur of metal and wood, it saw the makeshift alley of cages, still bereft of any escaping animals.

It needed them to run out and cause chaos.

With a snarl of frustration and urgency, it quickly fixed its footing and dashed forwards, back towards the cages.

It didn’t have time to wait, considering how the dozen plus humans in the room were all staring in confusion and concern or rushing to the fumbling human’s side, straight in line of sight of the wolf.

It slid across the floorboards after the short second it took to run through thirty feet of cages, its shoulder slamming into the metal wall, and without caution nor fear, it reached into the backmost cage, blunting its claws just enough to hook into the flesh of the furry creature cowering in the corner.

Its striped form began frantically writhing, but the wolf didn’t care, dragging it out of the cage before twisting its wrist to cup the thing’s form and launch it towards the humans.

The creature didn’t wait to gain its bearings after hitting the floor, rolling to its feet in a frantic jerk that was blindingly fast, then running straight out of the alley, dodging the human hands grasping for it in a panic.

A couple animals on the far end of the cages followed it, all peeking outside before dashing, waddling, or slinking away to freedom, and the wolf dashed to the next cage, grabbing the odd, big-eared creature within and throwing it straight at the humans much like it had done before.

It was sure that the motivation of having shallow injuries was enough to keep the animals it was pulling out frazzled enough to do their work.

That big-eared one was fast.

The room had devolved into chaos already, but things were happening fast. Another dozen humans were rushing to the room, drawn by the sudden yells for assistance. It needed more chaos.

If these things were all so scared of it, then it knew exactly how to make them run for it.

It took a deep breath, poured just a bit of mana into the air traveling out of its lungs, and snarled with its thickened vocal cords and some help from [Logotexnia], the resulting sound being sharp and violent like a chainsaw.

The cages immediately emptied, an entire procession of panicking creatures bursting out of their cages and rushing out, furry, scaled and armored, and the entire stacks to either side from top to bottom started cowering, some frantically trying to escape their locked cages. Something from above started spewing flaming liquid everywhere, trying to melt through its cage bars, and the sight of flame further increased the chaos, the stacks wavering from the sudden burst of movement and struggle.

The liquid fire hit the floorboards, and it saw something along the ceiling flash with light before a blaring alarm drowned out all other sounds.

Fine bits of water suddenly began spraying the whole room, further agitating the animals and adding to the confusion. The entire room was in complete panic, humans trying to help the man on the floor, running around and throwing nets to catch the fleeing animals, water sprayed in aggressive torrents from pipes in the ceiling, while some cornered animals began fighting back with more than just tooth and claw.

Through the scent of wet animals and the feeling of its fur being weighed down by liquid, drops of water clinging to its brows, it felt oddly accomplished, taking a short second to observe and appreciate the results of its brilliant plan.

It was fairly sure it saw a three-headed bird manage to claw out someone’s eye before it was tackled to the ground.

The wolf saw no reason not to make everything worse.

It took a running start, before turning as much as it could in the tight confines of the alley, and slamming its left shoulder into one the bottom cages to its left. The stack wavered, and the wolf dug its claws in and briefly leaned back, before slamming forward. Again, and again, and on the third time, the twelve foot stack of cages tipped and slammed into the stack to its right. Unfortunately, instead of crumbling from the top down, it was the middle of the stack that first seemed to slide out of position.

Upon realizing how much it had underestimated the falling speed of a stack of metal boxes, it activated [Bloodrush] and squeezed a bit of adrenaline into its bloodstream, its claws raking at the wooden floorboards as its legs furiously pumped forward.

It barely slid out of the cage-made alleyway just as everything collapsed behind it with a burst of rattling metal and screaming trills, ignoring the faint tingle of caution that came from [Danger Sense], and without hesitating, it used its claws to sharply turn right and dash past the tilted wall of cages, barely being held in place by chains, to another cluster of cages in the corner, only just managing to dodge some of the rolling enclosures that crashed into the floor just next to it with an awkward side jump.

The constant... pinging in its head about dangers it already knew about and was in the process of dodging, was genuinely grating on its nerves.

Its annoyance at the Skill faded when it felt through its antennae the motion of a human lunging forward, extending some kind of crescent-tipped rod at its path.

It simply flattened its shoulders to the floor as it suddenly halted with a tiny slide, turning its neck towards the human, its nails grinding through wet wood, and felt the air currents above its head move with the rod as it overshot and missed by mere inches, another delayed warning from [Danger Sense] brushing against its mind.

It snapped its head to the right, clamping down on the rod, and before the human could fix his balance from his overextended position, it jerked its head even further back and pushed away with its legs for added force.

The lightweight human, regardless of his strength, practically flew a foot forward, chest and arms down on the floor, and before he could raise his arms and be a nuisance like that female, it wrenched its head to the left, letting go of the rod, and dashed forward to clamp onto the back of his neck, from an awkward, tilted position.

It was neither clean nor quick, but in the chaos, nobody could distinguish his screams before they suddenly cut off with the sound of ripping flesh and a frustrated growl. His clawing hands, now limp, slid off the wolf’s head, and its eyes opened once more.

It quickly spit out the meat and bone in its mouth, then clamped down on the gaping depression of meat missing from the back of the human’s neck, and using one paw to cut through the front of the neck, and the other to brace against his back and shove him away, began pulling and pushing, working its teeth through then blunting them, jerking its head side to side, as its eyes frantically searched the surroundings for anyone looking at it.

Besides one frozen, horrified female gaping at it, nobody seemed to notice. It was relatively out of the way to the rest of the chaos.

And finally, the head detached with a sudden jerk.

It didn’t have time to eat it, so it simply extended a single thick slime vein out of the slit in its back, opening the pocket of mucus and membranes that ran from its nape down to its lower back, and jerked its head back to toss it at the appendage, which grew a few dozen smaller veins to entrap the head as the turned back to the corner of the room, where two dozen cages were haphazardly discarded.

The head was quickly drawn back and secured within the sack-like space on its back, seeming and feeling like a strange bump that was an intrusion on its body, but it simply dug the head in deeper, wishing to keep its brain safe enough to eat. The rest didn’t matter.

As sorely tempting as it was to run around and glance at what that deafening crackling sound behind it was, and the no doubt worrying sight of almost two and a half dozen humans scrambling after escaped animals and tripping over each other, it had three objectives.

Lizard tail, small-fur thing, escape.

A giant, black version of the little furry thing it had chosen to take was the first to have its cage clawed open, and much to the wolf’s satisfaction, the moment it passed the cage to go grab its furry snack, it felt the odd creature dash out of its cage.

The biology between it and what it wanted to eat seemed to be near identical, but it was too big. The wolf didn’t have time.

It saw out of the corner of its eye as some of the humans took out some strange rods like the human who had tried to stop it, and tried to use it on the speedy black thing, only managing to stumble over each other, their allies, and a furry rodent-like thing it had freed.

It was curious that not a single human was using anything lethal, but it didn’t have time to question anything. Its chance was here and it was taking it. Where else would it ever find a chance to add these two animals to its own biology?

It found its prey’s small cage sitting isolated upon a wooden table, and without hesitation, it wrapped its tail around the base and threw the table away towards the chaos behind, hearing a strange yowl come from within as the metal enclosure tumbled to the floor.

It lightly jumped off the ground with its arms, then made its knuckles touch each other, wrists turning outwards, then slammed its nails onto the thin metal sheet of the enclosure, denting it inwards, its nails piercing cleanly though.

With a hurried growl of excitement, the metal peeled and bent to the side, and it saw the arched, orange-furred thing in the corner, hissing quite pitifully, covered in water and stray hay and little bits of oddly nice-smelling food.

Its left arm remained on the mangled metal sheet as its right flashed forward and slammed into the little creature, and before it could do much more than wildly buck and let out a choked yowl, it turned its claws and swiped through its internal organs, before hooking under its jaw and blunting its nails, carrying it out of its cage by the inside of its skull.

This thing was so small it would only need three bites, and so it didn’t waste any time, tossing its twitching body on the floor before hurriedly biting off half of its torso, its tail swiping along the floor through the water to feel for any incoming danger.

There was a lot of potential danger, yet none of it extended too far into the wolf’s direction.

But the humans were slowly bringing the situation under control, much to its worry. There were three of them, wrestling the black-furred thing into the ground, two were dragging out the human it had killed through its paralyzing toxin, while two others were frantically barking at the gaping human from before, gesturing at the corpse of the one it had beheaded, just out of sight.

There were at least a dozen of them either gathering the smaller animals or still trying to chase them down throughout the maze of cages, and even more humans were coming into the overcrowded room with every passing second, jogging or sprinting through the distant hallways.

Thirty five or so people utterly flooded the clear space by now.

It didn’t even chew anything, almost choking on its food as it scarfed it down with three gluttonous chomps, barely tasting the wonderful copper coating its mouth.

As its prey’s tail slid down its throat, feeling like a sack of furry rocks struggling to go down, it idly remembered that it had to expand its throat a bit for situations like this, then turned around, nailing its eyes on the iron box within which the horned thing was held.

Unfortunately, a human chose that very moment to glance away from the net he was securing around the black-fur, their eyes locking for a brief instance of a second before he yelled something.

It felt at least three or four heads snap towards its general direction, pausing in whatever they were doing.

It dashed forward with as much speed as it could muster.

The giant horned thing was bashing into its cage door like a rabid titan with deep, reverberating thuds, and the wolf was certain that freeing that thing would give it enough time to grab the lizard’s tail and get out, with some to spare.

However, it was at the top right end of the room, close to the corner, almost a hundred and fifty feet away, and close to the giant cluster of humans.

With how most of them were still focused on other things and profoundly confused by the alarm and general chaos, it believed it had a chance.

The faint whistle of rent air to its left, getting closer in the blink of an eye, made its eyes briefly twitch in said direction.

A shapeless blur exploded into a spider web of ropes, too close and too big to dodge, so the wolf did the only thing it knew would work.

It stopped its charge immediately, claws grinding through wood at its sides, then whipped its lower body to the right, tail dragging through water and upwards with as much force as its appendage could muster. It slammed into the weighted mass from below, gathering up the ropes into a rough bunch but without the strength to stop nor redirect them.

Air gathered in its lungs as its claws hooked, the mass of ropes a mere foot or two away, and it turned its anger at [Danger Sense]'s incessant, delayed needling into mana, pouring it into its next Skill just enough to be strong but safe, then released, jerking its head away as air and sound decompressed into a short, explosive screech, its body rocking backwards and held in place by its claws.

From its right eye, it watched as all the water on the ground and in the air was violently shoved away, almost forming a dome, obscuring the black forms behind it, before the dome was shattered by the mass of tangled rope that slammed through it, and straight into a human, sending him tumbling to the floor.

Then [Bloodrush] ended, and a bitter realization was accepted in the blink of an eye as it turned back around, abandoning its plan, and ran straight back to where it had eaten the furred four-legger, at the closest metal wall, water resuming the endless pelting of its hide.

It had drawn too much attention, and had too little time.

And it knew that it should always value caution over greed.

Even through the ringing in its ears, it could hear the humans shouting behind it, could feel their forms scramble towards it, and it didn’t hesitate when it reached the wall, jumping up and kicking at the metal with its legs and hands, claws at just enough cutting capacity to give it leverage.

It had tons of experience with climbing at this point, and thus, climbing up the mere thirty foot wall was nothing.

Within seconds, leaving a trail of claw marks into the metal below, it had reached the top, where the wall turned into a criss-crossing network of thick metal beams supporting the curved roof above.

Its hands weren’t quite as great at climbing as its more humanoid ones were, but with the tail being able to help, it wasn’t all that difficult for the wolf to lunge upwards and grasp onto an ‘H’ shaped metal beam with its hands, its tail wrapping around the other end.

The lack of thumbs made this very difficult to hold onto, so with a quick practiced motion, slime veins crept over its ‘fingers’ and grabbed onto the metal, providing it with a stable grip.

It swung its body to the right, using its hanging legs, then as it swung to the left, pulled with both tail and arms, managing to swing one leg up on the beam.

Slime and veins once more crept down its paw and clung to metal, and with another awkward half-swing and a throaty growl of exertion, it was on top, chest to iron and snout pointed at a vertical column that connected to the ceiling.

Just in time, as out of the corner of its eye, another ball of rope whistled through the air at it.

Within the grid of metal it was now in, it simply jumped back a little, careful with its footing, and allowed the tangle of ropes to slam into the cross section of iron, briefly tangling, before sliding off.

Then it bound forwards, jumping from beam to beam with as much caution as it could manage.

Nothing felt quite right, now that its movements were so crucial and it had room to focus on them. Its weight felt off, its arms and legs were longer than it remembered, making it difficult to judge whether it could fit into the next gap between the beams, columns, and the ceiling. With every other leap, it messed up a little, having to use its tail and slime veins to grasp onto something lest it overshoot and slip off back into captivity.

Twice it had slipped off and ended up on the underside of the beams, and had to hurriedly swing back up before the humans threw another net at it.

Thankfully, the distance was short, so on the ninth leap, it was on the double wall the human peeker had come through, and it wasted no time in grasping the top of the wall, claws into steel, and swinging its lower body down, before realizing a problem.

The head in its back. Combined with how much it had grown, its body barely fit in the tight gap between the inner and outer wall, and that was without the bulbous bump on its back.

It shifted the human’s head to its left shoulder, an awkward motion that required a lot of focus, then threw its right hand at the outer wall, its left remaining on the inner, twisting its waist a little.

With its body in a strange diagonal, it was a bit of a tight fit, but it was a fit regardless.

Hanging between the two walls, it allowed its claws to cut through, starting a fast but comfortable descent as friction slowed the fall.

Then its paws hit the ground and it lowered its right hand to the ground as its left remained extended far above it, awkwardly shuffling across the tight gap until it reached another ‘H’ shaped support rod, this time vertical and filled with smaller metal sticks within the free space.

Convenient handles, really.

Climbing while half its body hung off at a strange angle was frustrating and slow, but judging by the vibrations it could feel, the humans were grabbing ladders to go after it, which was a nice motivation to ignore its own comfort and just speed up the walls as best as it could.

Then it was finally at head-height for the loose panel, and it leaned back a little, sneezing out the dust that had gotten into its nose before giving the panel an appraising look.

There was absolutely no way it was going to fit through with the head in its back, and it needed some space for proper leverage, so it removed the head from within the sack on its back, simply floating it to the side with a single thick vein.

Then it grasped onto the metal, awkwardly turned its body around, shoulders braced against metal, and punched forward with its right hand.

The rusty nails holding the panel in place simply snapped, the panel flipping through the air before crashing to the ground fifteen feet below. Without wasting a second, it quickly guided the slime vein and its dripping cargo through the hole first, then put its right arm and head through, using its tail and legs to push its body through the small gap.

The outer wall was a mere four inches thick, so once more than half of its body was outside, hanging there with its left forearm stuck next to its waist, it simply had to wriggle, claw at the metal under itself, and push with its legs and tail to fit through the small gap, until finally, both its hands were free.

With its hips being the only thing keeping it from falling head first, it took a short moment to observe its surroundings, tail brushing against metal as its head swiveled and the slime vein crept back into its sheathe, human head included.

It was just another dark empty alley, wide and smooth, and… strangely clean. That was unusual.

Though it could tell from the smell that blood had been spilled here a couple days ago. Blood was one of those smells that simply didn’t wash off things the way humans probably thought it did.

Realizing it was distracting itself, it focused back on the alley, and potential routes it could take to go back down the human nest, where it had grown used to.

The alley was cut in half by a very thin gap between two buildings, too tight to be called an alley and too high to be called a corridor, just across from the wolf.

The gap curved to the right and went under the buildings it separated, then based on vibrations, it opened to a metallic overhang that seemed to loop under the streets around itself before rising back up to another street about two hundred feet away. Some kind of shortcut.

A perfect escape, as far as it was concerned.

It also noticed a lot of people, however.

Way too many people. The room below was under control, and beyond the people within the building itself, it could feel more than a dozen people prowling around the building, including two of them on the roof just above it, four on the roof across, and a few suspiciously still humans stood around in places that seemed oddly purposeful.

It felt paranoid, all of a sudden.

There were so many people around outside, in the buildings themselves, around this building’s flanks, on the roof and patrolling the alleys, and it had no idea who would be trying to grab it and take it back into the cage, and who was an unknown, unrelated passerby.

[Danger Sense] sent a stab of an urgent warning into its mind from somewhere behind it, and without thinking, it kicked at the inner metal wall with its legs and tail with a deep, deafening thud, launching its lower body through the gap and tumbling through the air.

It was both luck and skill that made it come out of the fifteen foot drop relatively unharmed, managing to bend its torso inwards at just the right time to land with its right shoulder and transition it into a clumsy roll rather than face planting and breaking its collarbones and jaw.

Unfortunately, [Danger Sense] only got more insistent by the time it had rolled to its feet, and unwilling to waste even a moment as it felt the humans on the roof dash to the edge, alerted by the sound, it ignored the pulsing pain covering half its backside and the feeling of the shattered skull embedded in said backside, in favor of clawing at the stone, dashing forth into the claustrophobic gap across the alley.

As its shoulders crested the entrance, it heard the humans on the roof angrily shout something, and turned its head to the side, just enough to peek at what its Skill was so insistent about, and saw the humans jump off the roof.

Then its eyes flicked down to look into a cloud of…

Violently twirling black smoke, speeding through the panel it had punched out and rushing straight at it with speed it knew it couldn’t outrun, not for more than a minute or two.

But it would try, because its instincts and [Danger Sense] both screamed that whatever the smoke was, it was something unnatural and dangerous.

It turned around in order to make sure it wouldn’t trip, deftly dodging something that was in the middle of the thin corridor, barely squeezing past it, and pumped its legs as hard as it could, fifty feet passing by in a blur of exertion, its tongue hanging out of its mouth as it carefully injected more adrenaline into its bloodstream.

Then with the distant sound of a pop and a hiss of decompressing gas, the sensation of danger utterly vanished in the blink of an eye, [Danger Sense] turning off entirely just before it arrived at the curving, down-leaning stairs, and it quickly turned its head to see what happened, slowing its pace to a hurried jog as it let its body cool down.

Instead of smoke, it was a single pitch black humanoid figure that occupied the corridor, hanging in the air, back against the stone, grasping at something close to its neck and kicking at the air, while the two humans from before were lying limp on the ground according to its vibrational senses, obscured from sight by something.

It had no idea what was happening, and it didn’t care. It could feel humans bursting into motion all around it.

It turned around, and hurriedly dashed down the steps.

Clawing at his skin did less than nothing. He felt like a human toddler futilely trying to shave off bits of steel from a statue with his nails.

He hated the feeling. He was Miaro fucking Batheril, and he was not lesser than a mere fucking ghoul.

He curled his fist back, and snapped it forward at a speed that would have rendered any mortal’s head into an explosion of gore.

Instead, a sharp series of simultaneous cracks preceded the searing agony of his now mutilated fist slamming into the bastard’s faceplate with nary a twitch on his end, and his stomach heaved as he fought to keep down the groan of pain.

Ghoul’s fingers tightened, crushing his windpipe, and he choked on air as he tried to speak, ask him what the fuck was going on and what his problem was, fear quickly replacing anger and pride as the reality of the situation settled in.

“You should ask Elizabeth why I’m doing this. I’m sure she’ll answer truthfully to her favorite, beaten puppy.” Ghoul said, voice inflectionless and with only the slightest hint of mockery within his words.

Then his free left hand snapped forward, digging into his flesh, his fingers burrowing into his shoulder joint and pushing through as he thrashed in agony, trying to scream but unable to, kicking and pushing and punching at an immovable enemy that completely ignored him.

The sensation of clammy, ice-cold fingers pushing and cutting through his flesh was branded into his mind, until finally, with the sound of wet paper being ripped in twain, his right arm was torn off, and his wide, shock-white eyes filled with horror as Ghoul’s mouth opened, and opened, and opened, almost like his very neck was splitting open.

Then it closed, his head tilting.

“Interesting biology.” He commented, staring at the now deathly pale arm in his grasp, bleeding dark red, then opened his mouth once more, shoving the mangled fist deep into his throat before biting off everything up to the forearm, swallowing like a snake.

Then two mere seconds later, he did the same to his upper arm, pushing it down his gullet with two fingers and a snake-like tongue that his wide eyes involuntarily followed.

“Three more, a little blood sample, and then we’re done. Don’t squirm too much.” Ghoul dryly ordered after gulping.

He couldn’t cry. He didn’t have the capability to.

But were his windpipe not a single inch away from being crushed into pulp, he would have wailed, screamed, begged.

-

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