The Ranger pulled back on the string of her bow and held it in place as she waited patiently for a weakness to expose itself. Her prey had already been engaged by her trusted companions, though as of yet it had yet to show its known flaw.

As the beast leaped over her wolf and spun about in the air so that it could deliver a critically potent bite to the animal companion of the Ranger, it inadvertently exposed the one gap in its armor and the Ranger took full advantage of this. She loosed her arrow, and the shaft of wood stronger than any pre-Apocalypse metal flew fast and true, striking its intended target and digging deep into the exposed underbelly of the young drake.

The beast screamed and lost control over its movements as pain that it had only rarely felt wormed its way inside of its mind. The young drake crashed to the ground and tumbled before it regained its control and began to hunt not for the insignificant beasts that assailed it right now but for the archer hidden close by.

But it could hunt all it liked, for the Ranger was not nearby. She hung upside down more than a mile away, already knocking another arrow and drawing back her bowstring, ignoring the whistling of the wind and the pouring rain as she lined up another potential shot.

She whispered another incantation and the wind around her seemed to distort as a ripple manifested itself around her bow and her arrow. She waited, then, for another opening, and let time seem to slow to a snail’s pace.

As her companion beasts did nothing to the hide of the young drake, she alone could hope to defeat her prey, though its death was not her aim. She had heard from a higher servant of another deity than the one she currently served that she could gain new power and stronger companion beasts if she went down this tough and dangerous road.

Any normal follower of her Patron Deity would have balked at this offer and spat in the face of the messenger before killing them, but she was different. She had a score to settle with a certain snake-person for her numerous encounters with the vile bitch this was a choice she made willingly and with the fullest intent to see herself stronger and rise on top in the next encounter.

She loosed the second arrow as the opportunity to strike revealed itself, and she could not help but smile when the arrow hit the same spot as before. The pendant she had gained from delving into that accursed Dungeon began to vibrate and warm her body, and she took this as evidence that her time to grow in strength had arrived.

She released the ledge she held to with her legs and spun before hitting the next surface, rebounding off of it with cat-like grace and moving across the destroyed and ruined skyscrapers like a generic comic book vigilante with too much money and a penchant for refusing to go to therapy, instead opting to take their emotional and psychological issues out on the local population.

She, too, suffered like them, and she as well refused to go to therapy. Though to be fair, there were no more therapists around after the Apocalypse, and most new jobs in this remade world tended to benefit from their practitioners being emotionally and psychologically unsound.

As she neared her target, she put her bow away and withdrew two semi-curved single-edged swords that were not katanas or anything of the like. They were more inspired by the typical fantasy ‘elvish blade’ that one sees in, well, fantasy, but much shorter and yet thicker, complete with a decently sized bulk of metal running up the edgeless side of the weapon, though all of that was neither here nor there.

She drew her blades close to decrease drag as she made one last leap, flying through the air and landing on the back of the young drake before swinging herself around and underneath the creature to shove her swords into the young lesser dragonoid’s stomach. She drove them as deep as she could and opened her mouth as blood poured out and into it.

This was the point where her Patron Deity began to yell at her to stop, to turn back, to reject the call that she was currently feeling. Yet she ignored her Patron, and this was the tipping point that saw her companion beasts cut their ties with her and try and kill her.

Before they could reach her, though, she blacked out, and when she awoke, nothing but shredded meat and bone lay nearby. She looked around and saw something in the shattered glass that remained in one of the ruined skyscrapers, and she walked towards the figure that she saw.

The thing that was there bore her face, yet it had deep red eyes and skin of a reddish tint. Likewise, the body was both lithe and yet brutally beastly, with long talons and teeth like steak knives that retracted somehow into the mouth that bore them, all while the skull deformed as the teeth emerged and retracted.

She brought up her hand to touch the horrid picture of the creature, but to her horror, she realized that the hand of the beast she was looking at was her own. She screamed and tore at her body as the realization hit her as to what she had done, but it was too late, and instead of accepting her new self her mind shattered like glass and all that was left was a vengeful engine of pure undiluted rage, hatred, and bloodlust.

A group of Rangers attacked her from behind, and as their arrows drew her blood and embedded themselves into her body, she screamed louder and more manic than ever and turned to slaughter those who formerly were of her brotherhood. She saw only red now, and the person she was before had vanished.

As she tore the servants of the God she once served apart, she felt her gaze ever so subtly being drawn somewhere in the distance, and she devoured the bodies that she had butchered with nothing but her own hands, she felt the instinctual urge to finally defeat and devour the one that her addled mind thought was solely responsible for her current condition.

She rose from her feat and howled into the storm one name. The name she hated, the name she desired to end.

“LYRHEA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”