Chapter 225

◈ Chapter 225:

Wolf teeth bit down on the almost solid magical mass of the now spread open digits revealing them for what they were, not an elf's hands, nor any levelers, but a monster's, a monster's claws.

Harpy talons.

Why was she using a harpy's foot as part of her Class?

Even through the adrenaline and pain he could tell something was amiss. Like a loose thread hanging from a shirt he couldn't help but pick at it.

This… wasn't the first similarity he realised: The way Myra spoke, her casual sadism, both were something he recognised from Harpies, not to mention the angelic wings she had formed from her fire, it gave a certain impression.

He darted to the side as she launched a fireball in his direction and sent predation-formed teeth racing around the burning bodies littering the street, trying to find an angle of counter attack.

Any leveller of experience knew what a harpy was and what harpies were like. Myra knew, yet she chose to mimic them?

Why?

The thought was an annoyance really, a distraction, one he tried to clamp down on as he backed down the street, trying to avoid her attacks and tripping over the dead and dying as she hurled fire at him and the fleeing crowd behind.

Better that she was attacking instead of fleeing. Better…

They emerged from out of the street into a square. More crowds. Far more crowds. They had come out in a market, a nexus where the many streets tangled together.

He darted to the side, just avoiding a blazing fireball that shot by his head, then grunted as a sword bounced off his thigh. He glanced down to find a man in flamboyant emerald clothing bringing his arm back to swing his blade again.

Rain snarled with frustration and smacked him away with the back of his paw sending the man flying a dozen meters. He had been so concerned about whether or not Myra would run he hadn't realised that she had been leading him into another set up. These endless masses of levelers, once they grasped what was happening, were far more of a threat than Myra was alone.

He had scant time to come to that realisation however as bruised and broken levelers were tossed aside by the four harpy claws made of flame that had been scuttling amongst them, taking advantage of his distraction.

They collided and he was ripped off his feet once more as they clamped down on his limbs and dragged him across the square. Countless levelers were knocked to the ground as he was launched at great speed into the grand moss encrusted statue of some ancient city lord that dominated the market. The statue shattered on contact, bits of shaped stone raining down around Rain who continued his soaring arc through the air.

Rain was far beyond the scale of any smaller monster at that point, and was arguably no longer even a medium sized monster having reached a little over ten foot tall.

That was to say, he weighed a hell of a lot. With every inch of height he had put on it had made him that much heavier, a solid wall of muscle and monster.

Thus, the building he was falling toward didn't stand a chance.

The wall broke around him as he punched through, tumbling until he slammed down his paws, claws shredding the stone floor of the room within as he slowed his momentum until his feet came up against the far wall arresting his slide.

He blew air from his nose with a grunt of irritation.

Really, he hadn't gone to so much trouble devouring so many to be tossed around by this waif of an elf, magically empowered or not, it hardly felt fair.

He rose to his feet, pads scattering grit from the torn up floor.

It was time to try an alternative approach.

In the distance, through the hole he had left, he could see that the crowds were no longer fleeing Myra's flames and had started to form groups, clustering and pointing at him. The word 'monster' passed across their lips.

If he didn't need Myra he simply would have left. This was going far beyond what he felt comfortable with. There was no limit to what could be brought against him here. Killing a dozen levelers would be worthless when a thousand more replaced them.

He caught sight of the elf, a sneer wrinkling her expression as she stalked across the square. Those around shied away from the flames and heat that writhed over her body and across the ground around her, her outspread wings of violet igniting the market stalls they brushed by.

Flames or not it wouldn't be long before the crowd came for his blood.

She had put him in an untenable position.

So, in the few moments of breathing space left, he focused and began to pull something from the dark.

Fresh predation oozed from his raised paw, a gloopy mass that shifted and roiled with teeth and claw, falling as he poured sculpted form out before him, creating a rough bipedal shape, then sinking parts inwards as though carving at a block of marble.

The form solidified.

As she had always been, the Harpy Queen was a beautiful and shapely creature.

The arcing curves of her body showed through even in this dark shadowy form as if she were some erotic sculpture cut from the night. Her hair spilled over her shoulders and back and over large breasts proudly thrust out and held in pose by broad powerful thighs and legs. As all harpies did she lacked arms, instead possessing a pair of wings that she held at rest, the corners perched on her hips.

She seemed puzzled for a moment, but then quickly oriented as her expression soured. She turned to find Rain, displaying the constellation of malignant red stars twinkling within her eyes.

The disdain with which she looked at him was practically a material thing that hung in the air.

"Tell me wolf, why should I not cut you into fine bloody ribbons that I might wear you?"

She raised one wing, splaying the feathers as if wielding a fan of blades.

Rain frowned. Clearly she knew her Predation made form was anathema to flesh, so it seemed she had kept her memory of what had happened at the orc encampment, even if she was yet to learn that Predation had no effect on Rain himself.

Which perhaps suggested that this was more than just a ridiculously accurate reconstruction of the Harpy Queen he had devoured. Something of her survived within him.

"There is someone I want you to meet. They… remind me of you." said Rain keeping his voice low.

The Harpy Queen tilted her head in question.

"I feel as if I wake from a dream, and each time you ask something strange. Do you think you can toy with me wolf? As much joy it gave me to slaughter the greenskins it is clear there is a bewitchery you have cast upon me. I awake, and I am somewhere else, with no knowledge of how I came to be here, and this form—"

She glanced over her night black wings.

"—It feels… delightfully powerful… but it is not anything of mine."

"Then consider it a gift in return for doing as I ask."

The Harpy Queen bristled, her feathers splaying.

"YOU DARE—"

A small gasp from behind cut across her words. With a frown the Harpy glanced behind.

Wings curled inward to fit, Myra was framed by the light spilling into the room from outside, standing atop the small pile of rubble she had been climbing.

For a moment the two were frozen, locked in pose, but then Myra's entire demeanour changed.

"S-Sionia? I— I'm sorry Sister!" bawled Myra as she rushed forward, all flame on her body extinguishing.

The harpy queen spread her wings in welcome as the elf ran into her embrace.

Not quite the result Rain had expected, albeit promising. That said, the perfectly insane Harpy Queen turning his prey into meat soup with her touch was far from the ideal outcome, and Rain was about to mist the queen to nothing when a shriek came from within the dome of feathers.

With a savage sweep of her sickle like talons the Harpy Queen dismembered both of Myra's legs.

The elf fell from her embrace, landing on her back on the rubble with a thump. Both leg stumps openly poured blood from where they had been cut above the knee.

The Queen slowly opened her wings and gazed down upon her with utter disdain.

"You are not one of us. For a moment, in the light, I thought you were a Sister… but you are no harpy," she spoke slow, her voice a hiss.

Myra stared up at her with tear filled eyes.

"I— I am! Inside! Can't you see it!?"

In answer the Queen raised one taloned foot and stamped down on Myra's exposed stomach.

The elf didn't flicker to flame, or even try to escape, instead remaining as she was. She screamed as predation caused her skin to split even as the talons dug into her guts, her body physically rebelling at the touch.

"A trick, another bewitching trick, you wingless freak. You Are No Harpy!"

"P-Please listen! I—"

With a snarl she gripped down with her talons, sinking them deep into Myra's abdomen and then ripped to the side, nearly splitting her in half as writhing intestines and gore splashed across the room, her organs slipping out onto the floor one by one.

"I do not know what manner of filthy magics are being put upon me, but perhaps ending your life and then the wolf's will put a stop to it." She paused in thought. "Of course I can't possibly make it swift, for what if you are the one behind this? There would be no satisfaction in a light death."

With a small smile she lifted her black talons and placed her foot against Myra's chest. Then she began to put weight behind it and Myra's flesh came undone. Already the dark foot sinking into a bubbling mass of liquifying flesh.

It was a death that Myra had arguably earned, but Rain could not let the harpy queen have her way. There simply wouldn't be anything left of the elf for him to eat after the harpy was done with her.

He reluctantly waved a paw and the harpy queen's form began to mist and become formless.

She looked down at her disintegrating wings in frustration.

"This was never a dream, you have me caged like some pet bird!" she turned on Rain, "Release me! I demand you release—"

And then she was gone, and a legless Myra was left near motionless on the cold stone floor, her chest rising and falling as she bled out.

Rain stepped over her, and her eyes found his.

"She knew… for a moment, she knew," she whispered faintly.

Rain remained silent as he put her dismembered leg in his mouth and chewed.

"I've always dreamed the dreams of a harpy, flying with my sisters through the caverns and treetops, disembowelling prey and playing in their blood, decorating our nests with our foe's insides."

Rain glanced at the hole in the wall. The levelers had yet to approach, still wary of the fires that now engulfed most of the market. He swallowed and began eating the other leg.

"I never understood the dreams as a child, but then our family happened to take on a nursemaid, a harpy slave. From her I learned what was missing from my life, I learned, and she became my sister. I was happy. We were happy. Together we took the servants apart and painted my bedroom red with them. But my family never understood, they held my Harpy Sister down and killed her in front of me as punishment. I thought, for a moment, in the dark, Sionia had…"

Rain frowned.

Clearly the damage to her mind from so frequently turning to flame was significantly worse than it had appeared to create such confusion.

Myra a monster?

"You are no monster."

Myra gently shook her head.

"I learned the truth…. Some distant ancestor of mine was part Harpy, and their blood resurfaced in me." Her breathing became shallower, struggling to suck in air, but she managed a crooked smile. "I… have the instinct and the nature of a harpy, despite not appearing as one. If I could have become a harpy I would have, without hesitation, which is why… I am jealous of you. You became the monster you always wanted to be Rain… in undeath, reborn, or otherwise, it matters not."

He had never wanted to become a monster, and the claim of jealousy? Ridiculous.

But her bravado and taunting back on the estate… She had been outraged when he had told her he preferred being a monster. At the time he had thought it just a levelers hate, but thinking back, had that been envy in her eyes?

Uncomfortably, he discovered that he understood something of her as he would be lying if he said his own monstrous instincts were not a powerful force that he struggled with. Myra had all of that monstrous instinct bottled up inside an elven body if what she claimed was true.

Shouts came from outside as the market burned itself out and the mob edged closer.

He was running out of time.

"What of Brax?"

The crooked smile slipped from her face.

"What of him?"

"He wasn't there to protect you, you must resent him for that. So, where is he? Where did he go?"

It was a feeble attempt to fish for information, but there was little time left. Faces could be seen peering through the hole in the wall. They backed off as dark wolf teeth lunged at them from the shadows, but they would not be denied for long.

Myra gurgled a bloody laugh. "He scampered away from you, Rain. He ran to find safety and protection in the all encompassing embrace of the priesthood."

"And you didn't go with him? Why?"

"Where do you think they put me after my family saw what I did with the servants? I spent years in their schools as they attempted to beat the 'monster' out of me. I could never have gone with him, so I drowned my sorrows… and woke to find you."

A shadowy tiger prowling by the hole was obliterated in a gout of shimmering white magic.

The levelers edged closer.

"At the very least," Myra smiled, teeth glossy red with blood, "I can still have my envy sated as I watch you get torn to pieces. Tens of thousands will have heard you are here by now Rain, and they are all coming, all crowding in from every street and every alley, coming to see the cornered monster. Coming to get a piece of you! You're dead dead dead! Come! Come! He's in here! Co—"

Rain bit her head off in one motion, crunched down then swallowed. Without the slightest pause he ripped into the rest of her, lifting and devouring her torso and limbs, swallowing down her body in seconds.

The effect was immediate and dramatic. He staggered back with a drawn in gasp of air as the dark room was abruptly flooded with light.

No, it wasn't brighter, it was him, his sight which had for so long become a muted narrow focal point of comprehension exploded outward in sharpness, the ever present mental fog transforming into crystal clarity, bright colour and understanding drilling into his mind as true sapience returned like a bomb had gone of in his head.

It was done, he had saved Lyra and Opal from himself, no longer would he look upon them as snacks… in that way anyway.

He had saved himself from a mindless animalistic doom, but as the roar of the crowd of thousands deepened he realised, with dismay, that he might not survive to enjoy it.