He was just about to rush the two beasts when something slammed into him from behind. Teeth penetrated through him as a massive maw grabbed ahold of him and began to thrash around. The shock of the sudden attack from behind lasted for only a moment, as Reed splintered the bones in his body and allowed his flesh to tear. He was sent flying away from the canine beast that continued thrashing its head about, its mouth filled with his discarded remains.

As he soared through the air, the viciously torn flesh of his mangled body rapidly warped and twisted. By the time he had hit the ground and rolled to a stop, his body was completely repaired. Reed sprung to his feet and spared a glance at his unknown assailant, which just turned out to be another of the canine creatures. It was at this point that his attacker realized it no longer held him within its maw. It flung his remains to the street and joined its brethren in cautiously stalking towards him. Only, of the two beasts he had originally engaged with, only one remained.

Taking his eyes off of the two approaching predators, Reed frantically scanned his surroundings. The absent beast had made it on top of the buildings to his right and was bounding along the roofs, leaping between buildings with unbelievable speed and power while somehow also managing to find purchase atop the complex architecture. As Reed’s attention was occupied with the roof-running beast, he heard the sound of rapid movement behind him. Having just seen the speed these creatures were capable of, he wasted no time in sprouting an array of bone spikes from his spine.

The beast that had gotten the drop on him before collided into the mess of ivory spears that had burst into existence. The majority of the spikes made contact with the bone fragments that adorned its skin and broke with the force of the collision, but a few slipped past the beast’s exterior and pierced through its flesh. That was all the opportunity Reed needed, as the few lucky spikes continued to extend into the creature with haste while roots of bone grew and spread throughout its body.

This all occurred in scant few seconds during which the beast hung impaled behind him. Blades instantly grew upon the edges of the bone construct permeating the creature’s body, and with an immensely powerful lunge forward, the twisting mass of bone extending from his back ripped free. The beast erupted in an explosion of blood and viscera as it was torn to ribbons.

The red-stained construct of bone detached from Reed’s body, slamming into the ground with its considerable mass. Immediately afterward he shifted his attention back to the two original beasts to see them both hurtling towards him at insane speeds. One ran at him straight down the street while the other had lept from a building to his right. Both would be upon him in seconds.

Reed raised both of his arms in the direction of either beast and tendrils of flesh shot out in a torrent. The beast targeting him from the ground darted to the side of the attack with lightning-fast reflexes before continuing its charge. With a powerful swipe of his arm, the long mass of flesh whipped to the side, slamming against the beast with such force that it was thrown into the building along the roadside. It crashed through the stone architecture and disappeared from sight.

The airborne beast had no way to avoid the onslaught of flesh and was subsumed into it as the two forces collided. Reed’s flesh grew faster than his bone, and before he could pierce into the creature, the bone fragments adorning its body seemed to protrude even further out of its skin. The sharp white tips could be seen sticking out of the mass of flesh that enveloped it, and before Reed could do anything the fragments began to swivel as the beast twisted its body. The confining mass of flesh was torn to pieces in an instant and the beast fell to the ground disoriented.

Taking cues from what had worked on the monster that had already been eliminated, what remained of the long mass of flesh darted towards the collapsed figure of the beast before it could regain its capacity to fight. The appendage shot towards its underbelly, where the bone fragments were most sparse, like a snake lunging for its prey. As it did so, jagged shards of bone rapidly sprouted from the front before it crashed into the creature’s stomach.

The bone pierced through and began to spread throughout the beast as Reed had done before, only this time the beast struggled against the growing mass of ivory roots. The creature twisted and writhed on the ground, snapping off many of the bones protruding from his unrecognizable mass of an arm and hindering his ability to spread throughout its body. New shards of bone sprouted from the appendage and followed suit in piercing the beast’s underside, but they too were quickly snapped off.

Changing his tactics before he ran out of openings in the beast’s armor, the roots of bone stopped spreading outward and in as many directions as possible. Instead, Reed directed his bone to extend straight towards where the beast’s head was located. Several ivory spears made a beeline through the creature's innards, and it only took a moment to reach the neck where its eyes protruded from.

The massive canine let loose another high-pitched shriek, but that quickly dimmed into a pained whine as the spears cut through whatever was located in its neck and entered its head. From there, the beast’s noises gradually petered out as its frantic writhing slowed to a halt. Reed severed the monstrosity of a limb he had created, after which the flesh and bone of his shoulder rapidly twisted and expanded, joining his other arm in regaining its original appearance.

He turned to look at the destroyed wall of the building the remaining beast had been thrown through. It took several dozen seconds, but eventually, the sound of shifting rubble echoed out from the ruined building. The large canine lumbered out through the opening in the wall it had created. Its gait was one of a wounded animal and one of the beast’s eye-tendrils hung limply against its neck, missing the eyeball itself.

The creature’s two remaining eyes shifted between its two dead companions before landing upon Reed. For a moment the two stood still, staring at one another. Reed anxiously awaited for the beast to pounce at him in fury from his killing of the other two, but to his surprise, the creature spun around and launched into the air with a strength that belied its wounded state. The beast’s claws protruded even further from its paws as they gouged into the stone of the sharply inclined architecture. It bounded across the city’s roofs with such agility and grace that one might be tempted to call such a sight majestic, if not for the monster’s unsightly appearance. Reed was able to keep track of the beast as it leaped from building to building for only a few short moments before losing sight.

He remained vigilant for a time following, keeping his eyes on the rooftops above to make sure that beast did not return. Eventually, however, he was satisfied that it truly had fled and dropped his guard. No longer concerned with fighting for his life, Reed felt a strange sensation on his skin and glanced down to ascertain the cause. His clothes had been torn practically in half when the beast had gotten a good piece of him at the start of the fight.

The image of the two denizens fighting atop the mountain came to his mind. Every time their bodies reformed, so too had their gray and white robes, as if a part of them. He looked down once more at the scraps of cloth adorning his body.

“Fuck it.” He mumbled, tearing off the remnants of his outfit.

Reed held his hand up and attempted to change its color, as he wasn’t keen on the idea of wearing clothes identical to his flesh. The skin of his hand turned smooth and gray without a hitch and, surprised at the ease with which he was able to do so, promptly tried growing himself some new attire.

The process of creating a robe similar to those he had seen worn by the denizens was more complicated than he had thought. The alteration of color and texture was of no issue to him, but growing his flesh into such a complex form required a great deal more thought and control than having his arms explode forward in a mass of tendrils or recover back to his original state. Nevertheless, he soon had robes of gray flesh flowing down his body as well as boots of the same color that extended up his legs, bearing more resemblance to thick socks than the black dress boots he typically wore.

Reed felt the exterior of his new garments with his hand and cringed. Despite altering the texture of his flesh, touching the robe still filled him with revulsion. But, it did its job in providing some form of covering, and in this world, he would take whatever opportunities that presented themselves. Reed took one last look at the bodies of the two felled beasts before setting off again, making his way deeper into the heart of the stone city.