Chapter 189

◈ Chapter 189:

After the mermaid a number of auctions were fielded and won by the various levelers. Drakes and humans and lapine and more each won their bids, dropping down into the arena to take their kill, darting around the corpse of the golden mermaid as they did battle, sometimes even using her body to their advantage.

Most won, although a number overestimated their ability and power, or were disadvantaged by Rain's manipulation, and they had to be rescued by Quistis, often with loud protests on their part and demands to have their money back, not that they ever got it.

Rain watched it all, sometimes helping a monster out here and there with subtle tricks, ensuring injury to multiple levelers, broken arms and broken legs and broken ribs, dislocated limbs and concussions, all things that he hoped would be difficult, if even possible, to heal quickly or properly, things that would reduce the threat he faced in escaping, if only slightly.

It was as they had reached the halfway point that there seemed to be some trouble, both Quistis and Triskian turning to look behind, frowning. The next monster to arrive seemed to be taking its time and Rain too turned his head to see a huge cage being slowly prodded across the sand.

The great snake was treating this cage a little differently from the others, that is, it seemed afraid to go near it. The snake had taken up a long piece of timber in its mouth and was awkwardly prodding the end at the bottom of the cage, pushing the cage from a distance, not willing to get any closer.

It wasn't hard to see why.

An enormous Panthara sat in the cage, a panthara with grey speckled fur and chipped scales. Scars criss crossed its body creating twists and clumps of badly regrown hair, a number of its talons were missing and a great scar crossed its face. Its floating scaled barbells were unusually long and writhed in the air.

It looked like it had lived a long time, a rare thing for any monster.

Perhaps it was an evolved too, it felt somehow different than other panthara.

Its eyes were closed, but as the great cage passed by Rain its head lifted and they opened. It had no iris, just a glowing blue from eyelid to eyelid, and both eyes were looking directly at Rain.

It lifted its lips in a smile, lifting and showing its many many fangs, no molars, only teeth designed for ripping and tearing into prey.

As always being under the gaze of a Panthara was an incredibly unsettling feeling, as if it knew something Rain didn't... Maybe it did.

The cage reached the edge and tipped, sliding into the pit. The panthara didn't even get up, somehow managing to remain composed as the cage rotated around it, coming down with a metal rattling boom on the sands, barely shifting its body to remain balanced.

The panthara blinked, then rose gracefully to its feet. It was very large, and it had to bend down as the cage wasn't tall enough to contain it.

It approached the bars and reached out a taloned hand caressing a steel bar. With a casual motion it brushed the back of its hand along the bars and they fell away one by one, clearly having been precut somehow, falling like felled trees onto the sand until the Panthara had nothing stopping it from leaving.

Its taloned hand curled around the last bar and plucked it free, holding it in palm as it stepped out onto the sands, straightening up to its full height.

The thing strode out proudly. It reached the center of the arena and looked around, a tongue licking across its teeth as it scanned the crowd, analysing, thinking, planning, which was a concerning thing to see any panthara doing.

There was an uncomfortable mutter that ran around the boxes, wealthy and experienced levelers shifting uncomfortably in their seats, well aware that had they seen such a creature in the dungeon they would be terrified to face it. Even here where safety was guaranteed there was a sense of nervous energy filling the air, hairs rising on the backs of necks and arms as fight or flight response did battle with reason.

Here was a creature with an infamous reputation.

"We- We will be bidding for this, ah, unusual Panthara, a powerful member of its kind, worthy of many a level. Starting the bidding at fifteen thousand."

The arena remained silent, an awkward quiet falling over the place.

The drake looked between the audience and panthara.

"N-No one?"

Rain half wondered if the Panthara's plan was to appear so confident and in control that no one would dare to fight the thing for fear of some kind of trap or trick.

Eventually however, after a bit of uncomfortable shuffling, the bidding started. Half hearted at first, but then growing rapidly as the opportunity to kill such a monster couldn't be missed.

The panthara lazily twirled the bar in its claws as its eyes followed the crowd, watching nearly a hundred wealthy levelers bid each other higher for the opportunity to fight it in safety.

It soon became apparent there was one who was willing to pay more than others, a steady deep voice that immediately countered each placed bid.

The centaur lifted his paddle once more and looked down at the panthara who looked back at him in turn, gaze steady.

Rain half expected Opal to leap in and put in a spoiler bid, but she never did. With the way she was looking at the panthara he didn't have to guess why. She was happy to see the centaur fight such a monster, living in a dungeon with such monsters crawling about the place, hunting and killing goblins, often just for fun, gave her perhaps a greater reason to be wary of the thing than most.

The bell tolled.

"And we have our winner! The overgrown centaur with the incense! The p-panthara is h-his.."

The panthara turned as it had with each voice, glowing blue eyes falling on Triskian as he stood at the edge of the pit, eyes focusing on him hard.

The drake quailed under its intense gaze, voice faltering.

The centaur didn't speak again but turned and gathered up a set of spears bundled together around the middle in leather and buckled it to his horse barrel. Each spear was bladed, more like a short sword on the end of each wooden haft. He stepped toward the railing. One massive hoof came down on the edge cracking the stone and then he was leaping over, coming down on the sands with a heavy thump, the bundle of spears on his side rattling.

The very moment his hooves hit the sand the Panthara twisted near instantly, its upper body torquing around in a whipcrack moment of physical motion, front legs then, hips, then torso and shoulders, then upper arm and forearm and finally wrist turned, each motion pilling on the last and accelerating its hand to incredible speed, the steel bar leaving its claws as through it had been fired from a wall mounted ballista.

It had only a taken a fraction of a moment between hooves hitting sand and steel bar being launched through the air at frightening speed, and in that moment of motion the panthara had also brushed its talons over the end of the bar, blunt tipped metal flaking away along pre-cut lines revealing a foot long spike with a needle point.

All of this Rain caught from his position in the audience, watched it play out yet still not believing how caught off guard he was, the Panthara was fast!

The steel spear rocketed toward the centaur, perfectly on target to skewer him straight through the throat.

Quistis jerked, body twitching violently as she wrenched magic from herself in a desperate motion. The centaur's shirt exploded into smoke along with the incense and religious symbols hanging from chains, slap-wrapping around his throat and forming a roughshod iron collar, the metal uneven and rushed.

In that same moment the back half of the steel bar made spear thrown by the panthara disintegrated, becoming a mass of smoke… but not all of the spear. She had missed.

The front half collided with the iron collar with a metallic crack and screech of metal, a violent impact that shattered the rough iron. Yet it did what it needed to do, the spear stopped, wasting its energy on the collar. Bits of steel and iron fell around the centaur's shoulders and down his chest in a metal shower.

The centaur was left with his upper body exposed, his jaw hanging slack as he looked down at his now bare chest.

The panthara had almost killed him within seconds of touching the sand.

It was no wonder so many had hesitated to fight the damn thing.

Quistis cleared her throat.

"Ah it seems that we already have our loser, we will be starting bidding again in just a moment."

"What?!" bellowed the centaur.

She pursed her lips and looked down at him.

"You almost died Thademus. I had to step in because you failed to pay attention to your monster. Had this been in the dungeon you would be dead right now. That's just how it is."

"Fuck. That. I paid for this monster and we haven't even closed the distance! The damned loud drake hasn't even called the start like he did with all the rest!"

"The agreement was—

She paused as discontented murmuring spread through the crowd.

Rain couldn't exactly blame them, thanks to his hidden manoeuvring with little traps and tricks he'd caused an unusual number of levelers to fall to monsters, forcing Quistis to step in and save them, returning them to their private boxes. Not that Quistis seemed to mind, in fact she seemed quite pleased as it just meant more and more money for the Abattoir.

Still, it seemed the audience had finally had enough and jeers filled the arena.

"Quis, You're kinda pushing it on this one," muttered Triskian by her side, his voice low.

Quistis made a sour expression.

"...Very well, it is true Triskian did not… do his little announcement thing. You may have one more chance."

Just to be sure she glanced at the Panthara's cage and the thing wisped into smoke that rose out of sight. The Panthara wouldn't be using the same trick twice.

A moment of pause.

"Uh, and… fight?" said Triskian, realising he was meant to speak.

The centaur, Thademus, had been glaring at Quistis, but as the drake spoke he suddenly lunged, snatching a spear from the bundle on his back and holding it out in thick heavy set hands.

A quadruped unlike a biped could but on some incredible acceleration, and the centaur launched himself into a galloping sprint, spear raised like a lance, charging down the panthara.

The panthara roared and spread his arms, welcoming the attack, and then they were on each other, spear stabbing forward at remarkable speed, aimed to skewer the Panthara through the waist.

He couldn't aim higher, not because he didn't want to, but because the panthara was simply far larger.

The panthara twisted and flowed aside from the spear's path as it struck, moving in a quick controlled dodge, its feline grace showing through, hand full of massive razor blade talons sweeping across and through the wooden haft in the same flowing motion.

The centaur's other hand was already moving before the haft was cut, snatching another spear from his back and bringing it up, the cutting edge of the spear slashing in an upward motion, aiming to part the Panthara's belly and spill the thing's insides.

The panthara's quick senses caught the motion even as the sliced apart wooden haft was falling through the air and its massive back legs powered forward, driving itself into the centaur's path and within the new spears range so that it could not be properly wielded.

The haft slapped into the panthara's lower sternum instead of steel, blade not quite reaching flesh. In the same moment the two massive creatures brutally collided, mountains of muscle and quadrupedal power crashing together like continents, the impact seeming to shiver the air as flesh hit flesh, the centaurs shoulder driving into the panthara's abdomen with a Skill empowered impact.

A breath of air was driven from the panthara's lungs, back feet being driven meters back across the sand before it let loose a ferocious lion-like roar and brought its taloned hand down. Talons slashed into the centaur's exposed shoulder, bare skin meeting incredible sharpness. Flesh parted to the bone in bright lines of red as the hand swept through, deltoid muscle and bicep muscle exposed to the air and split apart as the centaur bellowed and in response drove a fist up into the panathara's gut.

Of course it was more than just a simple punch, more than just a body blow, the Skill empowered fist wrapped in magics drove home, the panthara's flesh rippling outward around the impact point, its stomach going concave as the unstoppable force went up and up until it crashed into its lower rib snapping the thing, and then the next.

The only reason the furrow wasn't driven up the panthara's entire rib cage was that the momentum of its massive body finally caught up with the power of the blow and it was flung backwards, front half lifting from the ground before coming back down, feet skidding across bloodied sand as it came to a stop.

The panthara eyed the centaur with a new wariness that hadn't been there before. One arm held limp down by its side at an angle unseen, the other hand clutching at it, clearly injured.

The centaur sneered, the top of his lip lifting on one side.

He lifted the hand he had punched the thing with, the skin was red and blistered, the flesh peeled away, bones fractured.

He could still move his fingers however and he reached into one of the pockets of the binding leather that wrapped the spears and brought out a glass vial. He lifted it and smashed the thing over his sliced open shoulder, pressing his damaged hand into the wash of fluid that rolled down over his upper arm.

Soon the cut apart arm was closing and his hand was healed. He rolled his fingers.

"I saw what you did, monster. That's no injury keeping your arm like that."

The Panthara's expression changed instantly, going from angered and frustrated and wild, a monster that looked like it would act on instinct, to a calm and collected thing, exactly as it had been before the fight had begun.

The arm held back came around and revealed the panthara was holding one of Thademus's spears out of view, plucked from the centaur's pack by one long arm in a moment when he was looking elsewhere.

It twirled the spear. It had its steel bar once more. Rain wondered what the centaur would do, the panthara seemed to be able to throw the things as if they had been launched from a ballista.

Beside him he heard the Drake whispering to Quistis.

"Aren't You going to get rid of that? This thing, it isn't like the other panthara…"

"I've already tried. All his spears are enchanted. I can't touch them."

Another clue to Quistis's weaknesses that Rain filed away in his mind along with an upper limit to accuracy and ruin stone.

Down in the arena the centaur snorted contemptuously and stamped a hoof.

"Try it if you like. You won't find me so unprepared again."

The panthara twirled the spear, the thing undersized in its claws. It made no move to throw it however, and watched the centaur with amusement. Its broken ribs didn't seem to bother it in the slightest.

Thademus grumbled and steadied himself, one arm streaked with red. He took his spear and held it in both hands.

The Panthara watched and then mirrored the pose.

"You think you can fight me by copying!? Damned arrogant monster!"

The centaur suddenly lunged forward, the usual quadruped acceleration launching it, plumes of sand flying behind his hooves as it twisted the spear down aiming to swing it up in another upward slicing attack.

This time however the panthara had no need to close the distance and it swung its spear down smacking Thademus's spear away from its legs. The centaur didn't pause, redirecting the motion around into a whip fast slash.

The panthara caught this too, the hafts clacking together, wood bending under powerful muscle putting incredible force behind them, before leaping apart as the centaur's spear twisted, crack, smack, they bounced apart, the panthara seemingly rapidly adapting to the centaur's motions, a look of increasing glee on its face.

Rain realised in a moment of dismay that the Panthara was learning the centaur's fighting techniques as they fought, using its great height and strength combined together with what it learned to slowly overwhelm the centaur. What was this creature? Within mere moments the panthara was fighting on an equal footing to Thademus, the snap clack of wood on wood ringing through the arena as the two crashed together over and over, Thademus desperately seeking a weakness in the pathara's increasingly insurmountable defences, soon he was entirely on the defensive, unable to find time to attack, backing away as the grinning panthara pressed it advantage, somehow defeating an experienced spear wielder despite moments before appearing new to wielding such a thing.

And then the centaur's hoof found a hole in the sand and he stumbled.

Rain hadn't even realised the centaur had been near one of his traps, he was so engrossed in the fight, and he watched in surprise as the haft of the panthara's spear struck the centaur around the head in a brutal brain rattling impact, flesh tearing under the blunt force.

Thademus recovered well as could be expected, stepping back quickly, defensive posture, one hand brushing over his forehead, wiping away the blood about to run into his eye.

The panthara snarled and pressed the advantage, trying to step into the centaur's range, to take advantage of its close quarter talons.

The centaur retreated further, and then stumbled once more as his rear hoof found a hole, sinking into the sand and twisting, forcing him to momentarily stand and fight.

Crack, smack, wood on wood, and then the panthara was overcoming him, faster, now more able with a spear, the centaur's years of practice copied and improved, a look of dismay crossing Thademus's eyes as the butt of the spear drove past his defence and crashed into his face, breaking his nose. Blood exploded down over his mouth and chin, and he stumbled back further, another trap catching around his hoof, a whipcord taut meters long snake strung just beneath the sands and held in place with Rain's trapping Skill. He partially fell to the ground as he tripped, sand piling behind hoof, having to catch himself with the spear as he stumbled back floundering.

Twice was a coincidence, three times so quickly? The panthara knew. It knew Rain had prepared traps and it knew exactly where every single one of those traps were and it was guiding the centaur into them. Rain's gaze moved to the unusually long scaled barbells that floated behind the panthara's head and he narrowed his eyes. He recalled what the humans who had been installing heart pins in the chimaera had said. Panthara knew where Quistis dug through the earth, they sensed the vibration. Could this one even sense the vibrations of his predation shifting beneath the sand? He paused. Did it know that he had killed and eaten many of the monsters in the Abbatoir? It would explain that look it had given him as it passed by his cage…

Thademus, now drenched with sweat and breathing hard had regained his footing, although only momentarily. The panthara stabbed out in a feint, and he grunted as he wrenched himself to the side, too cautious to risk the feint being a fake. Of course, that was what the panthara had wanted, and the guided centaur's hoof once more sank into the sand causing him to stumble.

With a cry of eager delight the panthara's spear flipped around and stabbed anew over top of the half raised spear of the centaur, lancing past the centaur's defences and driving into his chest, stabbing through his lungs and punching out the centaur's back.

There was a cry of shock from the audience as this had been the first truly lethal injury of the night… and Quistis hadn't done a thing to stop it.

Thademus cried out in agony and wrenched the blade of his spear down, looking to cut the haft before the panthara could do more damage. The panthara saw what he was about to do and one taloned hand left its spear, reaching for the haft of his, aiming to slice the metal from wood just under the blade, only in a blur of light the spear tip was no longer headed toward the haft, the butt was, reversed without moving, and the spear was twisting, the blade cutting up in a flicker of Skill empowered motion, the blade practically glowing.

Technique the panthara could learn and copy and counter, but unexpected leveler Skills?

With the sound of cleaved meat the blade scythed up through the panthara's arm near the shoulder.

Blood fountained in the air as the panthara reared back in shock, taloned hand leaving the haft as the centaur jerked away. They fell back from each other.

The panthera clutched at its stump as it glared pure hatred at the centaur, its massive arm lay on the sand discarded, a truly enormous thing that oozed blood on the already very bloody sand.

Despite having a spear sticking out of his chest the centaur seemed to be breathing normally to Rain's surprise, his inhalations entirely unimpeded as if he did not have a punctured lung.

The reason why dawned on him after a moment, or at least a theory as to why. The centaur had a second set of lungs in its horse body, a backup pair… or at least that was how it appeared to be. He had no way of knowing for certain, centaur anatomy wasn't exactly something he knew, well, anything about.

There was someone here who apparently did though. Quistis. She had saved Thademus from the thrown steel bar because she knew it would have been lethal had it impaled his neck, and had left him alone to take a spear through the chest because she knew he would survive it perfectly fine.

Rain had to give her a little credit for knowing her business.

The centaur below grunted as his large hand wrapped around the haft of the spear in his chest, and then began slowly pushing it through, his other hand grabbing hold of the other side pulled in tandem. It took a minute and the panthera seemed to become momentarily distracted, glancing down at its stump and frowning.

The spear popped free and in a sudden motion Thademus flung his arm forward, a flickered blur off motion along the spear as he used the same trick once more, the blade disappearing from one end of the spear and appearing at the other, reversing it, putting it in the perfect position as the centaur brought it over his shoulder and hurled the spear at the panthara's neck.

The panthara at the last possible moment gracefully swayed to the side and the spear shot past, and to Rain's horror went straight into Lyra's private audience box. His breath caught in his throat as he quickly checked the box over.

Thankfully it seemed the spear had missed both Opal and Lyra, but not by much. The spear was sticking out of the back wall, a wide eyed Lyra sitting in her chair about to bite into a cream pastry as she looked at it in frozen horror.

Opal looked back at the spear and then scowled down at the centaur from where she stood at the railing.

Thademus was already reaching for his leather bundle on his back and pulling free a pair of bottles.

"H-Hey!" came Lyra's voice as she finally gathered herself enough to protest.

"Apologies." said the centaur, although he didn't sound even remotely sincere.

He uncapped one of the potions and drank it down. Then he uncapped the second and drank that down too.

He then reached one more time for his bundle and pulled free a third vial. He held it out in front of himself showing the panthara, and then he dropped it to the sand.

His hoof came down and crushed it, grinding it down until there was nothing left.

"I see you've noticed, and since you now know, that means I can't have you trying to steal the antidote from me like you stole the spear."

The panthara frowned, staring down at the smear in the sand that was all that remained of the antidote.

White foam bubbled and dripped from the stump of its arm.

Poisoned. The centaur had poisoned the panthara, the tip of the spear, or perhaps a Skill that caused the tips of the spear to become poisonous.

The panthara was already dead.

It seemed to realise this itself, and Rain half expected it to go charging after the centaur, eager to kill him in a last ditch revenge.

Instead it stood and stared defiantly at the centaur, at the audience.

After a moment the Panthara raised its one remaining arm, hand going up to its throat and extending its index talon.

It was ending its own life? But no there was no violent slash, no spray of blood, instead the razor point of the talon pressed against the flesh of its throat.

And then it began to sink in.

The talon point pushed through the monster's flesh, reaching deep, a needle hook in its neck.

The panthara opened its mouth as its hand moved, pushing and shifting the talon, moving it up and down inside itself.

A terrible hissing gurgle emerged from its mouth, deep like caverns yet slithering like a snake.

No Panthara had ever spoken.

The Panthara spoke.

" —Shhhahhahah—"

The panthara lacked the physiology to move its vocal chords in a way to make speech like other species.

So it had gone in and was moving them manually. Manipulating its own voice box with a talon. Cutting apart its own body to have its final words heard.

" — youUu… arRe all going to Dieee… down hEeeere—"

Came the disturbing unnatural voice of the panthara as it wiggled its claw in its throat, an audience of levelers frozen in pure shock, even Thademus was staring wide-eyed, his arms hanging at his sides.

"Th- That's preposterous!" cried Ravoure, the first to gather himself from the unprecedented voice.

The dying panthara looked at him, its contempt clear.

Someone threw a half eaten drumstick onto the sand.

"J-Just die already!" came a shaky voice, one of the other guests, a human.

The gaze shifted to them and they fell back with a cry of fright, scrambling away from the edge of the box.

"H-he's right," said Ravoure, hands gripping the railing with white knuckles to hold himself steady. "You're alone, completely alone, so just die! Your kind can't reach us here!"

The panthara turned back to him and narrowed its eyes. By this point bubbling foam was forming around its lips, and blood had started to weep from its eyes and ears and nose.

The Panthara paused a moment before it shifted the talon once more.

" —....Nottt… Ussssss…—"

It turned and to Rain's dismay the panthrara looked directly at him, a broad cruel smile appearing on its face as blood ran from every orifice, its breath becoming shallow, clearly very near dead, its talon easing from its throat as its heart started to fail.

A moment later and the blade of a spear cut into its neck, the centaur bringing it down with a cry, unable to stand having the thing live a moment more.

The panthara's decapitated head thudded to the sand as its body slowly slumped down behind it.

The blue of its eyes dimmed and became flat and lifeless.

But the smile on its face never went away, in fact Rain almost thought it became wider, cheek to cheek, a sadistic wicked grin filled with bloodied teeth.

It seemed about right for the damned things that it was trying to screw him in its dying moments… or maybe it really did think he was that dangerous, in which case the thing just wanted to gloat and be gleeful, a disturbing thought on its own.

Rain decided he fucking hated Panthara.