Chapter 220

◈ Chapter 220:

Myra drew in a steadying breath, the shock of very nearly dying visibly washing through her with a shudder. She looked down, checking herself over for injuries, hands brushing over her bare arms and sides, as if afraid of what she would find.

To her very apparent relief she was untouched, the fire form she had taken preventing her death by a hair's breadth.

She glanced over at the bed, registering the flames steadily crawling over the fabric and wood. If she cared that her bed was burning down she didn't show it. Her intense gaze rose to the more important matter at hand, the ten foot tall wolf monster across the room from her, one giant foot paw coming down on the ground with a heavy thud as he stepped back through the flattened wall.

Recognition. Her expression twisted, before suddenly, she let out a nervous giggle. “You... you almost… killed me! How?! You didn't… you were going to kill me, right? Rain? Just like that, in my sleep?"

Rain remained silent.

Myra giggled again, leaning forward, crossing her arms and pushing up her bare chest. She pouted.

"Why are you doing this to me Rain? Why are you trying to hurt me? I'm not a bad person, I— I can prove it!"

Rain couldn't help but let out a derisive snort hearing that. He had known her his entire life, more or less, one of those wealthy families that visited Lynthia during the summer months to get away from the city. Before Bane had ended his childhood they had been familiar, but even then she had treated him poorly, a child from a low level family hadn't much social standing. She had been happy to rub that in, and gleeful when he was left with nothing.

As she had grown older she had gotten worse, callousness becoming second nature to her. Flicking sparks at beggars for fun was the least of it, not even to mention her part in his death. She had enjoyed burning him, sticking him with a knife, seeing him beg for his life.

Desperation had left him dependent on her good will, hoping beyond hope that he would finally be able to level up from a stagnant level one. He had believed in them, truly, for all that Myra was cruel, she had been restrained by the others, and he would never have believed she'd go so far. He hadn't believed it of any of them. He simply hadn't believed that they could be so bloodthirsty. He had faith that they would help someone they had grown up with at the end of the day, because that's what he would have done.

Less so Myra, but he had played with the others as a child, pretending to be powerful levelers as another took turns playing the part of the monster, chasing each other around giggling as the sun beat down overhead, they had been genuinely fond memories before they had grown apart with age.

They had changed far more with age than he had realised.

His shock when they had taken him down to the dungeon to tease and abuse before being disposed of at Bane's whim was still with him, like a thorn piercing his mind, a hateful venomous thorn.

"I don't care what you have to say. You know why I'm here."

"But I am a good person! I helped everyone. All those poor people on the streets. The homeless! I give them food and clothes, and money! I help people! I helped you! We wanted to level you up, it was Brax who changed everything and made it all wrong! He made us do it!"

She took a few nervous steps back, a perfect picture of an innocent elven girl afraid of the large monster coming her way.

"Even if that were true, which it isn't, I don't care." murmured Rain.

More than vengeance, or justice, or karma, at that moment Rain was more worried than anything, worried that he didn't have long left.

He couldn't allow himself to waste what time he had on Myra's lies, she would do or say anything to save her own skin, her only desire was to kill him or escape.

"But you don't understand!" she exclaimed, voice shrill, eyes wide with fear.

Rain ignored her, and as his foot came down he suddenly lunged.

"Raaain!"

She screamed as the beast was upon her, bounding across the burning bed, arm outstretched as a huge paw engulfed her entire torso, the shadowy talons that had coalesced mid leap spearing through her body...

…and out the other side.

Rain's paw smashed into the wall behind and flattened it, stone and plaster cratering around the impact point before blasting into the next bedroom, a maid letting out a shrill scream and fleeing for her life as the wall collapsed, putting him into view.

He turned with a snarl to find Myra looking at him with a sweet smile as her torso shifted from sculpted flame back to real flesh.

The others weren't in sight, just a moment before Quistis had been watching him, but now she was gone, and with her Lyra and Opal. Had the lamia taken the opportunity and fled? He could see Vash still, but what use he would be in a fight he didn't know, little if he had to guess.

His attention returned to Myra.

"That's not how this works Rain, not anymore, not since I drank all of Eliza's share she was squirrelling away. You forgot something very important when you became a monster."

The flames of the bed rose in a bonfire, the room swelling with red heat as Myra's eyes began to glow like two burning hot coals, her hair shifting to a dark reddish hue and drifting as if it was underwater. Red sparks darted across her bare skin, her breath a cloud of steam that billowed around her head.

"Monsters like you exist to be hunted by levelers like me."

She grinned broadly, eyes burning with a light far brighter than any torch or candle.

"And I am going to hunt you as a monster, as things should be, how they are supposed to be, no more hiding like a mouse, I will burn you until there is nothing left but ash and dust, there will be nothing for you to come back from Rain, you will be gone forever and I will be that much more powerful for it."

With a yell of girlish glee she flung herself forward, full body launching herself at him, her hands engulfed in violet fire balls.

Rain roared, lashing out with his paw as a feint, his paw tearing through a head that was momentarily nothing but flames, then in the same instant sweeping her legs out from under her with his leg, sending her crashing to the floor, snarling as he brought his foot down onto her back intent on breaking her spine like a twig.

She rolled free a fraction of a second before, springing back to her feet as her head reformed to flesh even as the ground buckled beneath Rain's foot with a Crack! The entire bedroom floor dropping down half a foot, sloped toward the impact point.

The flames wreathed around her nakedness doubled in intensity as she stared up at him, an unspoken challenge in her gaze, albeit a little unsteady on her feet from having her head reformed.

The feint had been a simple trick, but the knowledge gained had been what Rain was looking for. She hadn't seen the leg sweep coming and so hadn't been able to transfigure her legs to flame and prevent it. She needed to know of an attack to use the Skill. An unseen deathblow would end her life.

Nevertheless, despite the loss of advantage, she was grinning, confident, her eyes burning, her skin now slick with sweat as she stood poised and ready as flames licked over her, spiralling up her long legs and around her torso like living clothing.

"Good luck little Rain, I hope you're not too scared of what I have become because I'm going to make you regret ever coming after me."

Scared of what she had become? Did she not see the giant wolf monster before her??

A fist submerged in a violet fireball suddenly flew towards him, but this time he caught it with his paw, clenching down around it, extinguishing the flame and squeezing, ignoring the burning sensation and ruthlessly suppressing his instinctive revulsion of magic fire.

But instead of the hoped for screams as he crushed her bones flames spurted from between he paw pads, burning away his fur as her hand reformed above his fist.

Her eyes caught on her hand becoming flesh once more, as if afraid it would fail. Her expression lifted with relief as her hand returned unharmed, only a moment later to twist into a spasm of white hot anger.

"Will you stop doing that! Do you have any idea how it feels to have your body disintegrated!? You're so— Rude!"

Flames exploded in every direction as the temperature of the room rocketed upward, the air shimmering with heat haze, her hair deepened its red colouration. She came on, eager to bathe him in flame.

Rain roared, striking out with a paw wreathed in a chaotic mess of predation. The force of his blow knocked her off balance even as she partly became an elven torch negating most of the impact, and he lunged, other paw snapping around a forearm and yanking her up into the air before she could respond, then his first paw grabbing for her other arm even as the second slipped from his grip as it also became flame.

She thrashed as he fought to keep hold of her, flailing limbs that continually flickered from flame to flesh, even as he brought his maw in, seeking an opportunity to rip her throat out. She jerked upward, and in a moment of desperation threw her head forward. She bit down on his muzzle with impressive force, disgorging heat from her throat that flash burned his flesh and fur away in a moment.

He released her more from surprise than anything, letting her fall to the floor, a writhing mass of flames. She scrambled to her feet and spat blood from her mouth in an almost animalistic way, her intense gaze meeting his own. A snarl crossed her features, hatred and rage twisting her visage as the heat grew, the room shaking with the building pressure as the walls merrily burned around them, a low crackling roar filling the air.

"You don't get it do you?" She said between panting breaths. "You were the least you could possibly have been, barely even a leveler. But this, this isn't an improvement Rain. You went from being garbage to shit on the heel of my shoe, being a little bigger might make you think you are worth something now, but you are still a monster, a corpse in waiting to make me stronger."

Considering the leveler who was speaking had just literally bitten him, Rain had to wonder about that. That was not normal.

He wiped blood from his nose.

"Believe me when I say I prefer being like this, especially when I look at you as a leveler." he spoke, voice calm.

She made a wordless cry of outrage, flinging her hands forward, the flames of the bed arcing around her.

But Rain was already moving, lunging teeth first for her head.

He made it most of the way when she darted aside. A violet fireball in the shape of a gauntleted fist and the size of a boulder erupted from the bonfire that was now the bed and smashed into his chest, sending him sprawling across the floor in the bedroom the maid had fled.

He rolled and came up in a crouch, his jaws snapping shut on empty air.

Strong. That thing had hit with impressive force. The violet fire was different from the regular flames, it had an incredible physicality behind it.

Fire was already spilling into this room too, rolling from her bedroom in a wave which was now wall to wall orange flames. A tide of fire that spread across the walls and ground in a flood.

Her bare foot came down on the burning floor as she stepped through after him, fingers crooked as she gestured.

Fingers of violet flame shot across the floor like whips, lashing around his shins and spiralling upwards like those flames that spiralled up Myra's bare body. Just like the fists there was an impressive amount of force behind the violet flame as it constricted around him, leaving burning furrows in his fur.

Magic fire. He hated magic fire, especially touching it like this, inescapable, the smell of his own burning flesh filling his nose. He could no longer push the reaction down and a wave of darkness rose up in his mind.

He roared, struggling against the burning tendrils, scrabbling at the flames, trying to pull himself away from them, but for each he brushed off another would latch on, able to do little as the tendrils reached for his face.

The heat of it singed his flesh. His teeth clenched tightly as the flames crawled across his back, up his neck, probing at his mouth and nose. Every breath he took was a blaze of agony, the heat pressing on his lungs, his mouth filling with smoke. He coughed, his vision blurring, then shaking his head he boiled predation from every part of him he could, a desperate attempt to smother the flame even as the flame misted away the predation in turn.

His face burned. The pain was intense, but he instinctively forced himself to take another breath and keep moving forwards, keeping a mindless single focus on the thing ahead of him.

The flames were raging now, the ceiling smouldering. The elf was standing in a wall of fire, difficult to see.

A violet fist rose from an unseen direction and knocked him aside. He stumbled against the wall causing it to collapse. The heat was insane. The entire room filled with orange light and heat, the stone below fracturing and shattering from the sheer temperature gradient, until with a crack the floor broke apart beneath Rain's feet. He fell end over end to land flat on his back in a crater of debris. With a mocking laugh Myra leapt from the second floor, her hands wreathed in violet fire, a storm of fiery gauntleted fists meteoring down with her.

At the last possible moment Rain slammed his paw down and thrust himself to the side, just as Myra and the cloud of fireballs came crashing down once after the other, pounding the rubble in an ear shattering roar.

Before he could roll to his feet however, Myra swept her hands to the side and the dozen violet gauntlets that had yet to strike the ground took a ninety degree turn and rammed into him bodily. He was taken off his feet and driven through the wall, each fist felt like a horse drawn carriage going at full tilt down hill had collided with him, and as he crashed through one wall the next fireball took him, sending him through the next wall, one after the other, a relentless drumbeat of impacts.

The last fireball hit and he crashed through yet another wall and obliterated a dining table that lay in his path, rolling to a stop and letting out a groan. Why was she so strong?! What was this?! It wasn't supposed to be this way! He was stronger now!

With a struggle he managed to lift his head to find that he wasn't alone in the room.

There  was a man at the table, or what was left of it. He was tall and wore… a pink robe of all things, his long greasy black hair spilling around his shoulders, below the ridiculous pink robe he was bare legged, feet clad in a pair of sandals.

The table had been destroyed leaving him sitting incongruously in a dining chair alone in the middle of the large room.

That is, aside from the servants surrounding him, one of whom had collected the plate before the table was destroyed and was holding it in front of the man, and another who was holding a cup of tea on its saucer.

The man lifted his fork from the held out plate and put the piece of bacon speared upon it in his mouth.

He chewed thoughtfully.

"You know, when I'm set on someone, I don't expect them to deliver themselves to me as I am eating breakfast. You are a very convenient monster."