Its breaths came in pants, and its limbs were burning, growing heavier with every pump of its muscles. The crutch of [Bloodrush] would end, eventually. It had to be quick.

The distant roar of flame suddenly getting louder made its head turn, a stray breeze bringing forth a vaguely familiar scent.

It only caught a glimpse of a human vaulting through the window, fire spewing out of his feet to slow his fall, coverings billowing around him from the sudden fall, but the acrid breeze of the human nest carried forth his scent, straight into the wolf’s nostrils, and almost made it stumble.

It was like a sudden spark of recognition.

It knew this human. A vague memory of dodging a ball of sparks, back when it had just gotten access to the symbols, was brought forth, a surprised face staring at it as it frantically ran away.

The realization made it almost stumble and turn around just to shred him to pieces, but the familiar, light tapping steps of the fast human from before, winding around the building to its left, and the pounding of heavy foot coverings rushing towards its path with the aim of cutting it off, were just enough for it to contain its fury.

It had to run. Not fight.

As its head swung forwards to focus on its path, it saw a vaguely brown-green tinted blur streak through the air to its left, flying over the railing and the mess below, struggling to keep up with the wolf.

And it was the wolf that it was following, because even from a single glance, it could see the way its beady eyes were completely glued to its form.

That was a problem. Did the humans control that thing somehow?

It hated flying things. It couldn’t feel them.

Shoving aside its frustrations, it focused on taking the straightest path possible, gigantic heat radiators towering over human and wolf alike, softly glowing orange along the grid-like buildings to its right, flashing by as it rushed around and through the groups of people that hung around them.

Having actual shoulders made it so much easier to take impact from the sides, or push aside human legs, but they still slowed the wolf down, uncomfortably so.

The crowds thinned, for a short few feet, and its eyes flicked up to the right, as far up as they could go without it moving its entire head, feeling a human dash through a small crowd somewhere around there.

A thin, but incredibly tall alley, full of half-lit windows from within. Faint smog rolled in from above, just barely turning the walkways going above and through the buildings into blurry shapes.

Then the smog seemed to whirl into a vortex and split the second the human came into sight.

It saw the blur a second too late to react to the seemingly un-aimed shot, only managing to have a mental flash of realization before something slammed into its right forearm.

Its stride broke, a pained yelp escaping its snout as its arm jerked, and by pure instinct, curled into its chest mid-bound, sending it tumbling, right shoulder first into the floor, half a dozen humans jumping away or backing off, yelling things.

It rolled to its feet as gracefully as it could manage, using its tail to compensate for its flailing legs, and came face to face with a long line of liquid fire, spewing out of the flying lizard thing’s mouth as it hovered above the crowd, going from left to right, carving a line into the metal.

It was little more than an annoyance, mere eight or nine inches of fire, but surprise, proximity and instinct made it jerk back, briefly.

It flopped awkwardly onto its right side, its right arm nowhere to be found, not following its commands. It stumbled upright to swing its head to where its arm should be.

To its relief, it was still there. But a familiar numbness had crawled up from its forearm, and was racing up its bicep, a glass vial bobbing out of where its thick metal head had punched into its forearm.

It couldn’t so much as twitch a finger.

It wasn’t alarm that it felt, but pure panic. It knew how poisons worked. It was too late to get it out of its bloodstream.

Its claws dug into the stone, a single slime-vein jerking out of its backside to grab onto the elbow and pull it back to sit along its chest, and it squeezed its adrenaline sac absolutely dry, its tail clamping around the top of its right shoulder and squeezing around its elbow with all its might, trying to slow the poison.

The chill of power was intoxicating. Aches vanished, limbs turned from lead to feathers, panic turned to a jittery, scared sort of excitement.

With a sharp bark that scared the goggling crowd into scrambling away, it dashed forward through the flames, three limbs barely slowing it down as it shouldered through legs, purposefully ramming into people’s legs to make them fall and hopefully be an obstacle to its pursuers.

Still, it was just not enough.

The fast human seemed to vanish for a moment from its senses, before it felt him running on top of the railing, screaming something. Behind and to its right, it felt the shooter speed forward and vault from walkway to walkway, twenty foot drop after twenty foot drop, getting closer by the second. The fire-human was somehow keeping up as well, its vibration senses unsure of what or how he was doing it.

And the flying thing.

It was flying right above it, just too far to be in reach but just close enough to make the wolf wary.

A burst of orange light from above made it tense, and for the second time, [Danger Sense] saved it from a nasty wound or worse, a light needle prod that seemed to follow the path of the liquid fire.

Unfortunately, that path was in front of it, so it could do nothing but momentarily dig its claws out of the metal and allow itself to half-slide, slowing, just long enough for the flame to hit the metal.

It tried to keep its momentum the same, charging through the liquid fire the moment it was sure that the flying lizard was done firing, but it just couldn’t get enough speed to outrun its pursuers.

A crystal-light pole quickly neared, the distance between it and the wolf closing as quickly as the distance between itself and its pursuers was, and a hasty plan of attack formed in its mind as it firmed its resolve, steeling its nerves as best as it could.

A deafening thunk came from behind, from the human that had fired the poison into its arm, and through sheer speculation, from the position of his arms and his device, it guessed where the projectile was going, and kicked off the ground with its hind legs, curling them up to its stomach.

It felt the air whip around its stomach and ruffle its underside fur as the strange projectile rushed through where its legs were, and it caught a glimpse of a rope and three metal balls from the corner of its eyes, impacting the metal beneath.

Then bouncing up with equal velocity to slam into its left arm, the force of it ripping its limb off the ground completely.

It tried to jerk it back down, but it was too late to fix its stride. So it leaned into it.

It curled its right side as much as it could, its left shoulder slamming into the metal, and it rolled with its momentum, then unwound its tail from its right arm to wrap around the base of the metal pole, and pulled, its bottom half in the air as its chest scraped at rusty metal, pulling itself away.

Faced with its pursuers, it realized in just how dire a situation it was, let it sink in, in that single second.

If it fought, it would likely die. It had been about to launch itself straight into its own death, or captivity.

It punched the metal floor with its left arm, down and at an angle, using the motion to clumsily throw the metal balls at its pursuers in the same movement by flicking its forearm up, and curled its back muscles to assist, managing to launch its upper body off the floor and use its tail and momentum to swing its upper body back around, away from its pursuers, letting go of the pole and restarting its sprint with an awkward midair twist and a desperate kick of its legs that sent sparks flying everywhere.

“Holy fuck!” A human yelled, louder than anything said before, and it braced for a projectile that didn’t come.

Still, the distance kept closing. Between itself and its pursuers, between itself and its escape.

Wrapping its tail back around its arm, now at the bicep, it turned its head around to stare at the humans pursuing it, using its vibration senses to navigate, glaring back at them, eyeing the heaps of rope and wooden sticks they had strapped to themselves.

Within mere seconds, the fast human running on the railing lifted his arm, another pair of metallic balls balanced atop the triangular device on his arm.

Just sixty feet behind it, the human spewing fire out of his feet with every step gestured something, a strange whistling sound coming out of his mouth, and the flying lizard locked eyes with the wolf.

Then a small spurt of liquid fire was launched into its path, and it had to swerve awkwardly to the side, a harsh, sluggish movement, considering its single arm, almost doubling over, its pace interrupted.

Then, above where it was dodging, another spurt of liquid fire.

It couldn’t move out of the way. The only way to dodge was to stop.

It grit its jaws, and pushed forwards, moving its head back around to stare at the humans. It felt the liquid land on its back, feeling it slowly begin to burn through its fur, smelling it with every harsh pant.

That was fine. It had enough fur to not feel anything yet.

The vibrations fed it information, feeling the clicks and twists of the machinery on the humans’ forms.

It couldn’t dodge well with one arm.

Air gathered in its lungs, and it felt its world shrink, struggling to charge up a [Sonic Blast] and provide its body with oxygen. Its lungs felt like they were being crushed beneath a thousand tons of steel. It slowed, seeing black dots starting to pepper its vision.

It hurt so much worse than feeling fire lick at its skin.

The humans standing around had caught onto the chaos. There were none in range it could grab and use as a shield, all clearing the path for them. If it continued dodging, they’d just catch up sooner.

It had no other option.

“Now!” The fast human barked from atop the railing, and three thunks sounded, so simultaneously they combined into a single sharp crack.

It turned its wrist, hooking its claws the opposite direction of where it was trying to run to, and curled its waist as it swung its lower body around.

Something in its wrist popped painfully as its full weight was halted, and it jerked its head low, almost against its chest.

Blurs of whirling metal and rope filled its vision.

It pushed the air, the sound, out, more forcefully than it ever had before, charged with enough mana to tear its throat apart.

A translucent, blood-speckled ball of air came out of its throat, a visible distortion in the space around it, traveling for just a mere foot.

Then the ball hit the metal and exploded, and the world turned into a spinning blur of colors and the shrieking of its protesting ear drums.

Its sight and body jerked violently as a dull-feeling impact cut its momentum, then the world spun even faster, in another direction.

Then it hit the ground, a hundred little impacts peppering its bruised ribs, its flailing elbow, its shoulder and hind legs as it rolled across cold steel.

Momentum bled off quick, and it landed snout first into the ground, sliding on its numb arm for a foot or two.

It lay there for a length of time that felt negligible but still far too long, trying to remember where it was and what it was doing, why its entire body felt like it had been shoved between moving gears, the world swaying under its snout, just ever so slightly. Pain didn’t register, adrenaline too thick in its blood to even feel a pinprick, nothing more than mild discomfort where some things had taken an impact they shouldn’t have.

A furious cry cut through the shrieking in its ears, and its vision sharpened, its head snapping to the left as the thrums of adrenaline picked up again.

It didn’t see anything but a wall of rapidly approaching fire.

Its left hand gripped onto the floor, and with a buck of its right shoulder and a frantic kick of its legs, it threw itself aside, quickly glancing at the open area it had found itself in, at the dozens of humans staring at it or running away.

The searing heat that rushed past its body almost made it feel like it was being boiled alive by mere proximity, then it just suddenly vanished with a weak puff, the blinding light coming out from somewhere behind it dying out like a momentary spark.

Seven blurry, wispy forms dropped down from above, surrounding it in a thirty foot wide loose formation, while three similar ones seemed to slink through the distant and retreating crowd.

It awkwardly hopped with its working arm, blinking dust and tears out of its eyes as it reoriented itself, staring at the floor, the way the world kept swaying back and forth making it feel like it was about to puke.

The lifts were… directly behind it, their pulleys and spinning gears groaning in effort. One of them was stationary, full of humans curiously peeking through the windows at the chaos outside.

Before, it was running along a railing, on the edge of one of the human platforms…

Its vibrations crawled through steel, and felt a familiar section, utterly destroyed. A wall heater lay crumpled inwards as if punched by a giant’s fist, the railing torn clean off the iron deck and hanging over the smoggy abyss below in a twisted, bent mess. Two unmoving humans lay on the ground, one missing half his head and the other cradled within a bent metal bench, his spine snapped in two.

Wasn’t it there just a moment ago?

Had it launched itself almost eighty feet?

It closed its mouth to swallow a giant glob of blood leaking out of its throat, finding it futile as more came to replace it, and thus focused on its body.

Its ribs were frayed beyond belief, and it could feel its wrist joint being completely loose and disconnected. Which made it quickly realize why its movements were so awkward, why its wrist refused to listen.

It focused back on itself, the humans at the edge of its vision still not moving.

Then it noticed that none of them had any vibrations. Nothing. No weight, no mass, no body.

Except for one person…?

It lifted its eyes from the floor, moving them up along the shady figures at the edge of its eyesight, and glared at one of them in confusion.

The moment its eyes focused, it felt its title activate, Witness of Divinity like a switch being flipped inside its head.

It was looking at an illusion. It wasn’t sure how it knew, but it could just tell. It was in the way it moved, stood, the air it didn’t breathe, the very space it occupied, the way its form was just not right but not in a way it could possibly explain or understand.

The human crumpled like a statue made of dust, vanishing into nothing in the blink of an eye, and the other illusions paused in their circular prowls.

It hopped around, towards the only human with vibrations, then let its chest hit the floor, and shoved its hand in its own mouth, clamping down on it with blunted teeth.

With a forceful jerk, push, and a meaty pop that reverberated through its bones, it shoved its wrist back into position, the abused joint holding. For now.

The human locked eyes with it, the furry ears atop his head peeled back in aggression, the slits of his pupils locked onto its form. The hazy blur that covered him puffed out of existence, turning his form… sharper, more defined, more detailed, a mess of belts and machines and latches covered by a flapping covering. His left arm was nothing but metal and wires from the shoulder and down.

It was unnerving. It just felt wrong.

His green eyes glared into the wolf’s from behind a black scarf that hid everything up to his nose, and he raised his right hand to the left side of his waist, his left hand grasping onto his fluttering back-covering from his right shoulder.

The illusions all disappeared, and then in a motion almost too fast for its eyes to follow, the human’s form burst into action, throwing his covering at the wolf, then lunging forward, drawing his weapon, a ridiculously thin and sharp piece of steel. He swung upwards in a diagonal arc, the sharp tip almost touching his left foot, then moving in a diagonal, upwards angle to his right.

Exactly where the inside of its elbow would be, it imagined.

Despite feeling the attack, it simply did not have the speed nor the limbs to properly dodge and keep its balance. Its arm jerked back as it tilted its torso sideways, drawing the arm behind its waist.

The human’s covering split in two, the green-gleaming edge of his weapon flashing through it and through where its arm was a millisecond ago, his body angled to rocket through the tight gap between the wolf’s chest and the floor.

Its right eye only caught the blur of his left fist, crackling with lightning and gleaming with steel, before it slammed into its face.

Pain punched through its dulled nerves as electricity made its body spasm, a blurry flash of an open space and an endless expanse of walkways passing by in its vision before turning to black as its back and shoulder hit the metal floor, followed by its skull.

It curled its hind legs and abdomen as its momentum continued, managing to roll backwards to its feet, ass over head. Its left arm settled against iron again, tense, curled, its right shoulder sagging to the ground as it swayed in place, momentarily blind.

It couldn’t dodge. It just didn’t have the limbs for it. The venom was almost past its bicep, worming through its veins no matter how hard it squeezed. Instead of five limbs it had three.

It felt the human stabilize, lean low to the ground, winding both his arms behind him. Another charge.

Vision returned to its left eye, the darkness filling with colors. Its sight was blurry and wavering, distorted. It saw a blur of black speed towards it, the glint of his weapon in the sickening green light helping the wolf distinguish it from the mess of blurry shapes filling up its field of view.

It couldn’t figure out the trajectory, nor distance. The world rocked below its feet, and its mind felt like it was a giant ball of cotton.

The weapon rushed towards its head, and the wolf feinted a dodge, throwing itself backwards and tossing its head to the left. The mucus veins burst out of its back with practiced ease and the force of encroaching panic, dripping with blood.

The rod adjusted, and the human’s foot smashed into the floor. The wolf felt the human’s wrist twist, his weapon rushing straight towards the right side of its exposed neck in a straight jab.

Its tail unwound from its arm, and the wolf yanked the limp limb up, its shoulder managing to bring its right arm up, covering its neck and head.

The sharp tip barely managed to pierce through its flesh with enough force to strike its arm bone, embedding itself within the malleable fibers.

Slime veins slapped onto the sharp rod, coiling awkwardly around it, what little remnants of slime it had left quickly firming up, and the wolf twisted its waist and torso to the right, slashing its claws at the human’s right-hand wrist in a wild, awkward, upwards swing.

Its tail simultaneously whipped to the human’s left arm as he punched forward, and wrenched it to the side, just enough to make it narrowly miss its ribs instead of smashing into them, the electricity making its hairs stand on end.

The human tried to pull his right arm back, only to be caught off guard when the blade refused to budge, not quick enough to let go.

Its claws cut through the outside of his wrist in the upward swing, going half-way through it, cutting apart joint and tendons.

Slime veins burst out of its tail’s sheath, and clamped onto metallic fingers, its tail tightening, and the human’s middle and lower body twisted and bucked in a downright impossible way, managing to halt his momentum, set his feet below the wolf’s falling torso, and kick himself backwards, violently jerking to a halt when his arm refused to budge from the wolf's tail.

Its chest hit the ground, and it pulled with its tail, intending to reel the human in and bite his head off. Instead of the human being thrown towards it however, the metal arm clicked and spun with a burst of steam where it connected to the human’s shoulder, plates shifting, then it simply popped off.

The human wasted no time in dashing back and away, having stalled long enough for a small, scattered group of his packmates to come.

It all felt so purposeful. It felt like it was playing into their hands. Run, fight, run, until it couldn’t even move, and they’d grab it. Was that their plan?

It was a good one.

It turned, feeling [Bloodrush] fade, its body feeling like a mangled pile of rocks, yet it pushed itself up, hopping on one arm to reorientate its body, panting, spit and blood crusting into its fur, dripping out of its mouth, running down its snout and neck and splattering to the iron below. The human’s metal arm dropped to the ground with a metallic clang as its eye struggled to focus on the humans.

The scent of burnt everything filled its nostrils as it judged distance with its antennae, a mere fifty feet between itself and freedom. It was so close, but felt so far.

The humans barked something at each other, spreading out in a loose circle to better surround it, and it tried to move its right shoulder, only to realize that it had already stopped responding, the blood carrying the venom through its veins with every frantic heartbeat.

It needed its tail to fight, to run properly. And it needed to buy time it simply did not have.

It felt wrong to do, but it had no other option. It only had a few seconds before it would be too late, the poison in its arm moving into its chest.

It wrenched its head to the right, as far as it could stretch, and clamped its jaws around its upper arm, as close to its armpit as it could get, pressing down until its jaw muscles began burning in exertion. It tensed its neck, its one eye examining the sprinting humans rushing into the open area from every which direction. All its slime veins retreated into their sheaths.

It hesitated, its resolve cracking, doubts creeping through the gaps.

Would it really be so bad, to just let the humans capture it?

They hadn’t done anything to it beyond prodding it about when it was in the cage. They’d even tried to feed it. That was… for the most part, what it had been after, until now. Simple self-preservation. It would be safe, it would be fed. In a cage. For how long, it didn’t know. Maybe the humans would keep it in a cage until it died, or maybe they’d force it to walk beside them like it had seen its distant kin do many times, a leash and collar around its neck so they could pull it around.

What felt like ages ago but was most likely a mere month or two, it would have fought to the death just to get those things. To satisfy its base needs. What more could it want, back then?

It wanted a lot more now.

It wanted “Emhree-eel” back. It wanted to be strong enough to not ever have to run away again, it wanted to hang off the tallest towers of the human nest and watch everything below be reduced to insignificance. It wanted to fight things strong enough to be a challenge, to get its ears roaring with adrenaline, to make that soul-deep savagery that nestled within its chains deep in its soul break free and indulge.

It wanted to have a place where it could feel safe, some nest of its own within this hostile place that seemed to exist just to kill it, capture it. Carve its own place out of the human's nest by force if it had to.

It wanted to be too strong for any of the humans to challenge it.

The idea of walking beside a human with a collar around its neck turned from a begrudging option to an infuriating image that made its fur spike even straighter across its back. Something in its very being protested against the idea, even without its own opinions interjecting. Like an instinct, but deeper.

It refused to obey prey.

The cracks sealed, a chill of determination racing down its spine.

The machinery to its left began groaning, the metal boxes resuming their endless back and forth journeys, inching away from the platform, sailing away with all its hopes of escape on their back.

Another needle was launched at its side, and it twisted its head, the limp arm catching the needle at the elbow.

Its teeth sharpened, its tail curled.

Tracer watched with narrowed eyes as the beast bit down on its own arm, using its head to move the limb and block the hunter’s needle.

It was too precise, too accurate, too calculating.

The control it had over its own movements, the combat instinct he had witnessed as Dyce tried and somehow failed to subdue it, dodges that shouldn’t have been possible for a seasoned adventurer, nevermind a mindless beast...

They were sublime.

A shudder of excitement threatened to contort his spine, but he kept it ramrod straight, arm raised, ready to call the shot.

Then the beast jerked its head, teeth cutting through its own flesh, and he went rigid with surprise.

It snapped its jaws back onto its bleeding arm, biting out an entire chunk of its own bicep, before closing them again at where stray gore kept its arm hanging off its side, a frenzied blur of teeth and blood.

And with a final yank, its arm detached with a spray of blood and was immediately tossed aside, its prehensile tail curling around its upper arm and squeezing with enough force that he saw the muscles be visibly compressed, the steady stream of blood slowing to a trickle.

The remaining length of its tail clumsily pressed against the ground like a tentacled replacement of the limb it had just bitten off, and the beast crouched low to the ground, white teeth glinting in the green light as a yellow eye glared at him, at his raised arm, his confident posture.

It knew how poison traveled through veins. It knew it had to staunch its own bleeding.

It was a show of intelligence that made a grin try to tear through his stoic expression, his teeth clattering in that nervous, giddy feeling of discovery. Of weakness.

Its golden eye bore into his skull like a drill.

That hateful glare.

Did it have his scent? Would it know him? Would it remember?

Would it hunt him?

He had left the jungles years ago, but they had never left him. He heard the buzzing insects burrowing into his ears every night he fell asleep. He heard the sound of snapping traps in an endless beat, until all that was left was himself in a jungle that fell silent wherever he treaded.

And now here he was, despite his warnings to Dyce.

Scared.

Staring at something he’d never seen before.

Grateful that such monsters still existed in the world, to make him feel like prey again.

His arm snapped down, his veins thrumming with barely restrained ecstasy.

His voice came out as smoothly as it ever did.

“Fire.”

It didn’t know if its throat could handle it.

It knew that it had to.

[Sonic Blast] thundered through, a flash of white hot agony that almost paralyzed it for a moment as it hurriedly threw itself between the dozen nets covering every inch of available space it could dodge into, and the lifts behind itself.

This time, it was prepared for the power its own Skill could exert. It didn’t try to brace against it.

It simply leaned away, allowed it to throw its body back like a rocket, slamming through a human’s legs with a sickening crack as his knees snapped backwards, and bounced off the ground, its guts clenching in discomfort from the impact.

Its right shoulder slammed into the booth that sat beside the machines moving the lifts, now vacated, denting the metal inwards, and its left hand reached above, claws hooking into the open counter. It twisted its body, kicking off the ground, and threw itself through the glass into the booth right as another volley of nets, weighted rocks and ropes slammed into the structure, the cheap metal shed crumpling like a tin can all around it, sending a flurry of drawn paper and ink to fly over its head as it struggled to catch itself.

It cut through the door’s lock with a swipe of its claws, shouldering through, and dashed forwards, straight to the elongated box that had just detached from the platform, packed to the brim with humans, seeing them squirm through the windows.

It just had to jump on it and it would be free.

It could make it.

It could make it.

Then a line of liquid fire dashed a swift trail across the gap, a short feeble thing, the damned lizard flapping above as it tried to cut off its path. It charged forward, intending to go through it, when it felt a roar of mana surge into the flame, another spike of caution from [Danger Sense] making it hastily grind to a halt, sparks flying from where its claws cut through metal.

The little line of flame roared to life, turning into a blazing wall, six feet tall, the sheer heat making it snap its eye shut instinctively, flinching.

“Fire!”

It jumped to the right, leaping over one of the benches humans used to sit, and dove shoulder-first into the thin gap between itself and another, two amongst a long row, using the wide backs and seats as cover.

A deafening clatter of snapping metal rods and breaking screws filled its ears while it ducked as low as it could, feeling at least a dozen projectiles miss or break against metal, the flimsy benches folding like paper under the barrage, before a tide of nets was tossed on top of its hiding spot, the weights on the ends clinking against steel.

It swiped through the double layer of rope above it, cutting through, and then lifted its arm and tail to grab onto the backside of the crumpled benches to either side, kicking its feet against the ground to launch itself forward.

Straight through the flames.

It was over in a split second of suffocating heat, and its eye snapped open to the sight of an open sheer drop, split apart by a million cables forming hazy lines through the smog.

The box it was chasing after was idly cruising away, its chances of freedom going with it, riding on a lightly swaying pair of steel wires.

It turned its head to look to the right, where two other boxes were slowly inching towards the wolf’s platform, and then swiftly turned left when its ears picked up on a struggling growl.

The fire human from before, one of his arms swaying limply by his side now, wrenched his fist towards himself, the fire wall collapsing behind the wolf.

And exposing it to its pursuers.

Stuck between its captors and certain death, it did the only thing that came to mind.

It turned around, ducking behind a few trash cans and a crystal pole to buy a second more, spun on its single, clawed hand, and charged.

The edge rushed forwards to meet it, the world spreading wide with every stride, a million lights and lines and outlines filling its eye.

One mistake and it was dead.

But it was getting used to that mental pressure by now.

The final stride came much too soon, but hesitation didn’t rear its head. In a moment too fast to be registered, it felt something in its mind click into place, a tiny fragment of a moment where its thoughts were absolute, its body and mind a perfect union. Thought and action turned into a single concept.

Its tail curled over the lip of the platform from around its shoulder, its left-hand claws doing the same. It pulled, curled its legs to its stomach, and slammed them down on the very edge, the moment its chest crested the floor, then extended both arm and tail into the air in an instinctual pouncing motion.

For a moment, it was flying. Its mind sharpened, concussions or dizziness or adrenaline or fear all forgotten, adrenaline and wonder squeezing the world in a death grip.

Unbound by neither humans, nor its own weakness, nor gravity itself, it felt, for a single, long second, what true freedom was like.

Its eye flicked down to the winding abyss of wires and towers, of distant mega-factories turned to little dots of sparking lightning, of a canvas with a million different lights peppered through its depths, and the image seared itself into its mind.

Then the moment was broken as the box full of humans it was aiming for rushed forward, the haze lifting, panic and mind-choking adrenaline carving through before it could even blink.

The sideways rectangle did not provide much space for landing, but it didn’t have a choice. Its decision was made already.

Its tail let go of its arm, managing to slam its middle point around the anchor that supported the entire metal box from the two taut metal cables that carried it, and its left arm desperately extended to the side.

It’s ribs, already frayed, did not handle the impact well. A short, violent wheeze left its lungs as it hit the box, like a punctured balloon getting punched, and its tail and fingers both instinctively went rigid.

Its tail strained and cracked oddly as its momentum tried to carry its lower body forward, only stopped by its desperate grip, and its upper body fared no better, bouncing off the box’s roof for a brief moment before sliding. Its claws carved jagged lines into the smooth roof of the box, until it noticed and blunted them, just in time for its body to be half-hanging off the side, elbow wrapped around the box’s roof and legs scraping for a grip right above one of the box’s windows.

It panted, wheezing through a bleeding throat, feeling its pulse scream and pound through every tiny vein of its body, from its fingers to its tail, and with an effort that felt a thousand times more intense than any other activity it had been up to today, it pulled, an empty wheeze coming through its throat, bereft of vocal cords to form the growl it wanted to make.

It bit onto the box, hooking a single canine into the metal and blunting the rest of its teeth, and used its severely over-strengthened neck to assist, managing to drag its chest to the flat top, then kick at the metal as it pulled with its tail, scrambling sideways onto the flat roof.

Then it slumped, its blood-soaked tongue hanging out of its mouth and meeting delightfully cool metal as it fought for breath, seeing spots dancing in its vision. Its tail lethargically let go of the box’s anchor to press back down on its arm, the crimson not yet having scabbed enough to staunch the bleeding.

It caught a flicker of fire out of the corner of its vision, and tilted its head just a bit, watching a steady flame licking away at its fur, sporadic and sputtering as the oils, blood, and water in its fur fought the heat and slowly won.

How long had that been there?

It didn’t care enough to smother the fire. It would go away on its own.

It was more concerned with its body. Its lungs felt destroyed. Like they’d been thrown between two moving gears, crushed to a pulp, then strung back together and shoved into its chest.

And with the momentary hope of freedom and calmness, the pain of everything slowly began to register.

Its glare moved from its fire-licked shoulder to settle on the platform, a solid sixty feet away and half that distance above, seeing humanoid shapes flutter about the edge and snap at each other.

Then a human climbed onto the hook-shaped mechanism that loomed above the green lights, wrapped a bunch of fabric around the wire of the wolf’s lift, wrapped his forearms around said fabric, and jumped off the spinning machinery.

It wasn’t sure what it was expecting, but the human’s idea seemed to work flawlessly, the fabric steadily speeding him towards itself. Another few seemed to consider the idea, glancing back and forth, but none followed their singular brave kin.

To its right, another blur of battering wings descended, and it resisted the urge to screech in frustration as it tried to rouse some energy out of its abused body, knuckles grinding into the slightly swaying box beneath its chest and pushing down, lifting itself up on limbs burning with exertion.

It did not think about the unfathomable drop below. It didn’t even dare look down. It didn’t need to look down to feel the entire box and the worried humans squirming about inside.

It raised itself up, still using the end of its tail as a curled, tentacled replacement for its arm, a motion that had gotten a lot more comfortable to use since the first moments it did so, and watched.

The human’s cloth started smoking, halfway to its ride, and the wolf had no idea what his plan was. Had he not seen it use [Sonic Blast] less than a minute ago? How was he going to stay on the box once he arrived?

The flying reptile then screeched, wrenching itself to the side and diving straight towards the wolf, and it braced itself for a free snack, lowering itself and half-turning.

Only for the blasted thing to immediately halt and flap its body backwards the moment the wolf glared at it, then started flying in a wide circle to the right, forcing the wolf to turn with its movement to keep the thing in its sight.

It hated this thing. So much.

Another spew of fire was launched out of its mouth, cutting the thirty foot long metal box in two, and the wolf idly wondered how much the infuriating ball of scales could hold in its little body as it glared at it.

Then it realized what the reptile was trying to do.

Cut the area it could dodge to into a smaller piece.

And distract it.

It probably thought the wolf couldn’t feel the human rapidly approaching behind it.

Just to prove the thing wrong, it ignored its screeching, keeping it in the corner of its vision while it turned to face the human, and in a bout of unexpected frustration, the lizard dashed forward to draw its attention.

A lot closer than before, a lot closer than it should have.

Its tail unwound from its arm as its legs curled close to its stomach, and its tail pushed onto the box’s roof like a spring as it kicked its lower body upwards, sticky veins flaring out of the tip of its tail as it snapped through the air, only its claws burrowed into metal preventing it from detaching completely from the container.

The thing tried to flap backwards and halt its momentum, but that only made its wings extend far more forwards then before, even if they succeeded in halting its body.

Slime-covered veins slapped onto the tip of a flimsy wing, and a single hurried surge of nerves turned the slime to an unbreakable bond that jerked the flying lizard aside with a shrill squawk. Its tail continued the swing, slamming the reptile onto the roof with a dull, light thud.

It swung its tail to the right, slamming the lizard into the rooftop with well-deserved vitriol, and just for good measure, it leapt a short distance forwards, jumped up a little, and slammed its knuckles into the thing’s chest with all its weight behind it, feeling tiny bones and organs crunch and squish beneath its fur.

Just like that, the infuriating nuisance was dead.

Its tail curled the veins back into their place, and the majority of its length settled around its stump again.

The human was coming close startlingly fast, his speed continuing to ramp despite the now-flaming piece of cloth keeping him away from a deadly drop.

It still had time to quickly bite off the twitching reptile’s head, then its middle and wings, then its lower portion, finishing its meal in three hurried, choking gulps, barely using its teeth to tenderize anything, wincing and grimacing through the burning agony of its torn throat to hurry its prey along.

The fiery human’s roar of rage and mourning was the most satisfying sound it had ever heard. Was the lizard his companion?

Good.

He deserved to feel what the wolf had felt, a thousand times over, purely out of frustrated spite.

The moment that weight settled into its stomach and swiftly disappeared, it focused back on the human sliding down the cables.

He had slowed down, significantly.

And then he seemed to bring himself to a stop, gaze nailed to the platform, legs wrapped around one of the cables, ignoring the wolf completely.

Its eye flicked to a sudden flare of fire from where his gaze was directed, its attention stolen much like the human's.

The fiery human was… attacking his kin for some reason, before he spun, clumsily, a blinding mote of light clutched in his broken arm’s hand, like a crushed, compressed mass of light crystals, roiling with fire.

Their gazes locked, hateful and blooded both, and the human’s shaking arm jerked up, aimed straight at the wolf.

It felt its instincts squirm and squeal in alarm.

And then the little mass of light flashed forward, soundlessly, like the release of a spring.

Another moment of clarity, of urgency. The certainty of incoming death snapped around its body and mind like a thousand miles of chain, crushing them into a singular entity, bereft of worldly concerns, a mass of decision and action and reaction, emotionless and perfect.

[Devourer]’s roaring hunger and rage felt like the snapping of a chain link, the scream and grind of bending, tearing metal as it fought against the wolf’s very being to rush out and consume without end, to tear and bite and gnash until the end of time.

This was the opposite. It was controlled, and it was perfectly…

Biological.

It felt like the flip of a switch in its mind, the crackle of a spark, but there was no disconnection it could feel. No presence or externality to it.

For all but a tiny fragment of a second, it felt like a machine geared towards survival. The basest of instinct.

The [Sonic Blast] that left its throat was pitifully weak. There was no build-up, no time to sluggishly command mana to flood its bruised, abused lungs. It was little more than a pop of a bark, but within every flaying string of wind and sound, etched into the absolute forefront of its mind, was an iron command.

Hold.

And it did.

A barely visible ball of roiling air left its snout, flashing forward in the blink of an eye, and met the ball of flame.

Before it could process the shock of seeing [Sonic Blast] not explode in its face, its vision flashed orange, the ball of light unveiling into a flood of pure flame and pressure.

The box underneath it bucked, a split moment before the invisible aftershock of the explosion rammed into its body like a wall of iron, and an empty sharp wheeze left its throat in place of the yelp it tried to let out.

Its body tried to fly backwards, only saved from certain death by its nails being awkwardly embedded into the metal.

Its forearm spiked with pain as its muscles clenched with the strength that could only be born from deathly desperation, and the devastating shock of its weight being halted by nothing but its claws traveled down its arm, fraying bones stretching and muscle fibers snapping like strings.

The groan of creaking metal was followed by the snap of a steel bolt, and the pop of its shoulder dislocating for the umpteenth time came a moment before its body fell lax, and begun to slide across the harshly swaying roof, the stump of its right arm uselessly flailing for a grip from sheer habit.

Out of the corner of its eye, right between its legs, it saw the screaming form of the human that was clinging to the cable, falling, flailing as the blurry smog swallowed him.

The box tilted forty five degrees, slowing its momentum for a moment, allowing its legs to scrape at metal, nails giving it some much needed sense of safety.

Then the container violently swayed to the opposite side, the screaming of panicked humans below just barely penetrating the low whine in its ears as it twisted, two canines digging into metal, only barely managing to stop its body from flipping legs over head by the harsh motion.

A steady but choking flare of mana came from within the box, and suddenly, the swaying lessened, slowed.

Bubbling, bloody froth fell from its mouth and slid down the roof’s box as it panted, eye wide and all limbs taut with tension, its tail firmly wrapped around the creaking anchor of the box, now only attached to a single cable.

It heard more than saw the fire rapidly approaching, and for a moment, it just wanted to give up.

The box was moving at a snail's pace. It was hanging over an endless chasm. Its limbs were mangled or broken, only two exhausted legs working right. It was bleeding from so many places it couldn’t even start to pay attention to each cut and stab. Its lungs didn’t contract as much as they desperately jerked and convulsed for breath, something just not clicking right. Its nose and mouth were flooded with the scent of gamey iron.

Everything hurt.

Its left eye flicked to the strafing form of the fiery human, flying on two heels spewing fire with a deafening, constant thrum, tinged more blue than orange.

A half-crescent turn, at the box’s height.

Then the human used his unbroken arm to correct his course, leaning forward, charging at the wolf’s limp form.

Dark spots danced in its vision.

Still, it took a moment of exhausted trepidation to note that fire was still so, so beautiful, when it could see more than two and a half shades of it.

The human’s upper body leaned back, a furious snarl on his face as his fist wound back, wreathed in orange-blue flame, a mere dozen feet from the wolf. His heels sputtered, momentum carrying him forward.

[Maddened Frenzy] grabbed a hold of every notion of defeat, exhaustion, passivity, acceptance of its fate, and tore them to shreds the instant it activated.

Savage glee filled him, the beast so close, so defeated. Every last ounce of mana he had fed into [Combustion Punch], a Skill that Atrius had rarely used before.

He never had to.

His team was there. His raptyrid, Mellow was there.

Now they were nothing but corpses.

Fuck the job.

Fuck his own life.

He wanted blood.

Despair roiled with frenzied fury, shredding his mind like a tornado made of glass shards, scraping his thoughts away, leaving nothing but raw emotion and impulse behind.

He turned off his flight, poured what scraps of his mana were left into his fist, and prepared himself for impact, preparing to carry his momentum forward and turn the beast into smoking chunks of meat, himself likely with it.

A single yellow eye tiredly glared at him, the beast still panting as it lay on its chest, and his feet slammed into the lift’s roof, his knees buckling and launching him forward as his quads protested.

The eye flashed a searing, blinding red, pupil and sclera melding into an orb of light.

A black blur of motion and sparks filled his blurry vision, his fist slamming forward and down-

The limb tumbled, flew away from him, spewing blood from a mangled stump. His chest smashed into something, his ribs snapping like dry twigs as his momentum was brought to a sudden halt, and his head jerked down from the sudden motion, a slave to momentum, catching a glimpse of a mass of fur and blood burrowed into his chest.

An impact made him spin, something in his neck straining and breaking, the world a blur for a single long moment.

Then his vision was filled with the blurry sight of a snout that led to a baleful red star, glaring at him with pure madness, the sharp gleam of perfect teeth curling like sabers in his sight, spreading open, open, open, too wide to be physically possible, like the gleaming rib bones of a corpse spreading open to snap down on his soul, like a flycatcher.

They snapped shut, a moment of darkness.

He felt his jawbone be crushed flat, his eyes squeezed and pulped out of their sockets, his skull crack like an egg-

“What the fuck is happening!?” Someone screeched, right into his ear, and he growled wordlessly, feeling various pairs of hands struggle to keep him upright, the tight confines of the repurposed train segment making them all tumble into and onto each other.

Blood ran down his nose, his mana drained dry to absolution, and he felt something crack inside him, a metaphysical thing more than a biological one.

He choked on air, yet, a smile of relief spread on his face.

The swaying was slowing down.

Their lift hadn’t dropped into the abyss, and due to malfunction or luck, its speed had slowed to a crawl. They might live yet.

“Open the hatch! Call for help or something!” A woman yelled, and he grimaced in frustration he had no energy to act upon, stumbling into the arms of some random stranger who mumbled random shit at him as he tried to remember how to use his legs.

“Help!? They’re shooting fucking fireballs at us!”

He’d never used his entire mana pool and beyond in the span of mere seconds before. The Skill’s low level likely didn’t help. He should have trained harder.

“So tell them to stop!”

“I don’t wanna die…”

He tried to raise his voice, tell them to shut the fuck up for a moment, certain he’d felt something on the roof that was likely what the bastards above were mindlessly shooting at.

He was a fucking Silver ranked Adventurer. If his hands would fucking move, he just had to flash the symbol and everyone would likely listen, if only for a moment.

But his hands didn’t move, twitching and swaying, barely listening to his commands and seemingly doing whatever they wished, and his voice-

All that came out was a wet cough, blood dribbling down his chin, something phantom-like in his chest squeezing.

“Something’s on the roof! They’re trying to kill us with it! Give me a fucking sword!”

His vision slowly stabilized, and the muted thuds from before turned into deafening bangs, the roof denting inwards. The muted scrape of something scratching at the roof from before turned into the sporadic screech of metal. Something in the roof’s wiring sparked, and the lights began flickering.

The scared crowd panicked even harder than before, and the constant swaying of the half-broken lift didn’t help.

Some old woman screamed and leapt away from her spot, pointing a shaking hand at the window she left behind, the flickering lights only making it harder for him to focus on what he was looking at.

It was blood.

A steady stream of crimson, dripping down the window.

Screams turned to roars, someone pushed someone, it all melded together. He could only struggle to breathe and focus on his eyes as some dude used him as a hug toy, panicking, likely not even realizing what he was doing.

In between the flickers of light washing his thoughts away, he saw a gleaming sword be pulled.

Someone grabbed it, barking orders.

In the corner, a man was helped up by someone to open a hatch.

His body raised, his arms went through.

He wanted to tell him to sit the fuck down and wait for help. He couldn’t.

The light flicked off.

It hadn’t even been a second before the man’s body violently jerked, his scream half-cut short as his legs spasmed. The person holding his legs shouted, let go, stumbling back and over someone curled on the floor.

The lights flicked on.

The man didn’t fall, only being pulled up a foot higher by something out of sight, a choked wet gurgle predating the tide of blood that rushed down the visible half of his stomach, splattering on the floor, his shoes, the window.

Everyone jumped back, squeezing themselves into corners, screams of terror making his ears ring.

This… wasn’t how he wanted to die. To some fucking thing he didn’t even get to see. But his limbs barely listened to him. He had no mana left. And not a single other person in this lift knew how to do anything. They were all workers, civilians, factory bookkeepers.

He supposed that there were worse ways to die. Probably.

The kicking, the noises, they abruptly cut off, the man going limp, and with a wet squelch, his headless corpse limply dropped into the lift, crumpling to the floor.

A black blur shot through the open latch like a bullet, like a hole torn into reality, pitch black beyond comprehension, and the faint impression of a canine shape was the last thing he saw before the lights flicked off, the horrified screams of the dying and the splatter of blood being the last he ever heard as he swallowed down the heart-stopping terror clutching at his heart, and….

Closed his eyes.

A second passed like a year, two, ten, thirty.

A sharp agony cut into his collarbone without warning, up his neck, and then he felt something in his spine snap before darkness claimed him.

[Maddened Frenzy] didn’t last long enough.

Not nearly long enough.

When the mindless desire for pure violence suddenly faded along with its strength and energy, it was all it could do to not collapse on the floor right then and there, the sudden retreat of the heart-searing anger almost giving it mental whiplash.

Its jaw slackened, some unidentifiable mass of flesh hitting the wet floor.

It tried to take a step, just to dislodge its fist from where it was buried into a human’s chest, but the moment it tried to move, its limbs all crumpled like paper.

So it simply sat there, panting, wheezing, rasping breaths through its abused throat, its entire body weak beyond comprehension and numb to the bone.

With every gentle sway of the lift, a tide of blood washed around the mounds of corpses filling its sight, bits of gore being swept by the tide.

The scent was glorious.

If not for the scent of death, loose bowels and slight ammonia, it would be… pure perfection.

If only it could enjoy it by taking deep breaths, which was nigh impossible with its destroyed ribs and lungs. It just hurt too much.

But it still wasn’t out of trouble. It knew that. It had to focus.

It could still feel three skulls in its back, crushed but still coherent enough to be forming bumps on its backside.

It would probably be a good idea to get up and just collect more, or just scarf them down as fast as possible. There were at least thirty corpses in the silent lift. There was no chance it couldn’t unlock the secrets of the human and even inhuman brain anatomy from eating all of them.

But it just didn’t have the energy to do so.

It still had to… get out of the mess that would no doubt expect it when it got to the lift’s destination. And when it tried to move its limbs, it felt like it was made of lead, nailed to the floor, and suffering ten times the gravity it usually did.

Not so much as a twitch.

The lift was… dreadfully slow.

But so peaceful.

Silent.

The screams had been so unfathomably loud and constant it could almost still hear them if its attention began to wane further than it already had, and after everything that had happened the past half hour, this was relaxing.

The gentle swaying, the splashing sounds of the blood moving from side to side.

It blinked once, staring at the silent metal box, the blood splatters covering the walls.

Thirty humans.

It killed thirty humans. It just… it couldn’t understand it. It couldn’t even believe that it had happened. Were these ones just so weak? Was the strength difference this vast between random groups of humans?

It didn’t have the energy to think about it. It just accepted it.

A languid blink. Another.

Then it was in [Devourer], half-passed out.

It considered squeezing its adrenaline sack just to get up again, but there was nothing to squeeze. It was drained dry.

It focused on manual change, superficial but fast fixes. It healed whatever it could. It drained the blood pooling in its lungs and repaired as many of the burst blood vessels as it could, it replaced torn muscles with new strands, and closed whatever wounds it had remaining with quick, but thin films of skin.

Then it forced as much essence as it could into [Devourer] making blood and putting it in its body, just to replace the frankly terrifying amounts it had lost, and rested, focusing on vibrations as much as it could.

It might have been half an hour, or ten minutes, but the faint whisperings of solid ground came through the groaning roof.

And more, and more.

It forced itself to awake, on trembling, barely functioning limbs.

The platform clicked into place with an unsteady jerk that made the wolf drop to the floor again. It grit its teeth and forced itself up again, antennae brushing the metal ground through the quickly thickening crimson slime covering it.

Its exhausted mind considered its chances of success against thirty armed humans, all waiting for it, bolts and sticks and needles trained at the metal box. And likely far tougher than the ones it had “fought” inside the lift.

There was a sewer entrance right in front of the platform. Just twenty feet.

But it couldn’t even run.

It wracked its brain, and the only thing that came to mind was… Mana. It had plenty of mana left. And its course of action…

Intimidation, and deception.

It had nothing else left.

The doors groaned, creaked, then finally slid open, half-way, lopsided. A small tide of blood came rushing out, the lights flicking off.

Darkness was scary, wasn’t it? To humans, at least.

[Echoes of Oblivion] activated. Its slime veins, trembling and squirming and barely responding, gripped onto the crushed, deformed skulls in its backside, and brought them out into the open air, three floating messes of flesh with the vague shape of a human face.

Its tail curled around its arm.

And with a desperately steady gait and confidence it didn’t have, it started walking.

The creaking lift slowly approached, and the sound of groaning screws was the only sound to grace the tense silence they held.

Closer and closer.

The lights within flickered, and as it got closer, the dark red blood coating every window in wild splashes and dragging handprints became all too easy to notice.

He felt like he was in some kind of fairy tale, doomed to watch the reaper’s boat cross the river of death as it neared.

Marleen began shaking next to him, little twitches of her shoulder. He wanted to grab her, turn and run, job be damned.

They were fucking gangsters. They weren’t monster catchers.

Still, they had a job to do, even if it was only barked to them through a coms tablet thirty goddamn minutes ago without any notice or warning.

The lift creaked, and croaked, slowly getting closer.

There was no movement in the windows he could see. Just red. Dripping down the windows, from inside and outside.

The roof was gouged out like it had been turned into the scratching post of a dragon, and he could see the rough, jagged lines of metal crisscrossing all over it even from fifty feet away.

It felt like years before with a bang of metal meeting metal, it docked into the silent station ,and the doors creaked open.

Blood poured out of the doors, like someone had poured buckets of it inside, a rush of crimson slime, revealing a formless mass of shredded clothes and flesh and gore strewn about on a dark iron floor when enough was drained out of the lift.

Nothing moved for a shocked, horrified second.

“What the fuck?” Marleen gagged out, her breath coming out in harsh pants, a hint of hysteria in her voice. “What the fuck?” She repeated, her voice growing garbled, her hands shaking on her crossbow.

He wanted to tell her to calm down. He had to. He was the leader of this rushed hackjob.

But he felt the same.

The icy chill of terror brushed against his spine, and his hands shook as he ground the butt of the crossbow into his shoulder with bruising force.

A limb, an arm or leg, he couldn’t tell, suddenly, languidly, stretched over what used to be a man, crumpled at the doors.

His breath caught in his throat.

It wasn’t black.

It was pure nothingness, an absolute void.

Slowly, as if taking its time, as if taking a stroll, a canine shape made of pure black prowled out of the lift.

On its back, three swaying tentacles, holding mangled, decapitated heads. Mockingly swaying back and forth like bells, like soundless chimes, barely recognizable as more than clumps of flesh. Its left arm moved low to the ground, its right a formless tentacle that curled and uncurled with each easy step.

“Demon…” Someone whispered, and he realized his hands were shaking so bad that he couldn’t even find where the trigger was to shoot, to lead by example as he always did. He couldn’t even shoot. He couldn’t breathe.

Marleen let out some strange choked sob, and he heard the clatter of her crossbow hitting the ground before her footsteps broke out into a sprint, fading away.

Followed by another, and another.

“S-S-Shoot.” He choked out, a croak of terror, eyes wide as the beast, the demon, the monster, got closer.

Nobody did. He wasn’t even sure if anyone was next to him anymore. He couldn’t see anything but the horrific abomination, the bloodied lift looming behind it, and three skulls, mockingly swaying back and forth, taunting him of his fate should he do as he himself, commanded.

The beast lazily hooked its claws around a sewer cap, just thirty feet away, and the void receded, just a little bit, to reveal a gleaming golden eye, glaring at him.

He was going to die he was going to die-

The crossbow fell from his hands, and he turned around, stumbling over his own feet, scrambling away, and ran with all his might without looking back, fearing that if he did, all that he would see would be an empty void that would consume him.

-

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