Chapter 188

◈ Chapter 188:

Rain eased back, a long slow steady breath leaving his lips as he settled his jangling nerves.

He had been sure he was going to do something rash at so many points after Lyra had dropped down into the sandy arena to fight the chimaera, but somehow not only had she managed to make it out alive, but she along with Opal had managed to kill the chimaera. Not bad for two pregnant girls, one of which had a non-offensive Class, the other a goblin.

He'd nodded shakily at Lyra now safely ensconced back in her private box, peeking below her big floppy hat. She looked like she needed a day of rest and recuperation and pampering, but she was okay, and that was what mattered.

Worst case scenario avoided. Now he just needed to avoid any problems himself.

Speaking of which. He glanced to the side to find the sandy scaled drake was looking at him with narrowed eyes.

Triskian stared, and then his gaze flicked over to the box Lyra was in. His brow furrowed. There was puzzlement there, trying to put two unrelated things together, unsure how they were connected. Rain belatedly recalled that Triskian had no idea that it was Lyra who had sold him to the Abattoir. From the drake's point of view Rain had out of nowhere started behaving unusually as Lyra stepped down into the arena, unable to take his eyes off her and the goblin, highly agitated in a way he hadn't been before.

The drake tapped a claw on his hip, clearly thinking things through. Why were there claw marks gouged into the steel bottom in Rain's cage? Why were a number of the bars a little bent? Why did the monster look so so… well it was hard to tell beneath the gore and blood it was plastered in. It looked either eager to kill the sheep girl for some unknown reason, barely able to hold itself back… or something else.

The drake seemed on the verge of asking Quistis a querying question when a cry of pain made him look up, Rain too, turning to see a great cage, one of the largest, being pushed and shoved across the sands.

An arm was reaching through the bars.

A massive arm.

Rain stared at what for all the world appeared to be a giant mermaid. Her cage passed just by his, and he found himself looking up at a frightened and very human face, albeit on a larger scale.

Her upper body was that of a human, chest done up in a neat wrap, while her lower body was like the tail of a gold scaled fish, an enormously broad and heavy tail giving her wide hips. Her arms from the mid bicep down were sheathed in golden scales that glittered in the crystal light, fingers ending in small golden claws. Long wavy blonde hair waterfalled around her head and spilled over back and shoulders. She was a, sort of, mermaid in appearance, a mermaid, but not truly, just a half breed monster that appeared similar.

It was quite hard to judge her size as she couldn't stand with just a tail, but Rain estimated that if she had legs she would be nearing more than twice his height. Easily one of the largest monsters he had seen in the abattoir.

The golden arm darted forward, a hand clutching at the bars of his cage and forcing her own cage to a stop.

"Please!" she whispered, voice low, amber eyes flecked with gold looking into his yellow.

Rain sat still, unsure what was happening.

"Please help me! I'm— I'm not a monster! A-And you aren't either, I can tell! I'm a human, and so are you!"

Rain's shock only increased. What was this monster saying?! What was he supposed to do?!

He looked between her reaching hand and her head in confusion.

"Stop pretending!"

And then the long arm reached through his cage and slapped down on his gore coated arm. He looked down in even more shock at the human hand clutching at him.

He blinked.

The human hand resting on his human arm.

For a moment, an eternity, he was sat in a cage, just a normal human, a girl reaching through the bars, grasping his wrist, looking into his eyes, fear and trepidation filling hers, begging to be saved.

And then he blinked again and they were no longer human. Brief and bright and then gone, a hallucination, fleeting humanity. In reality a giant golden scaled and clawed hand grasped his furred arm. Two massive monsters, himself covered in gore and blood, she beautiful but monstrous, tears in the corner of her eyes.

"Get your fuckin hands off the merchandise!" yelled the drake as he dived between the cages and kicked at the golden arm, once, twice, the mermaid cried out and was forced to snatch her arm back or have it broken.

She glared unhappily at the drake as the cage once more began to move, the snake pushing it forward until it was tipping over the edge of the pit at an angle, the mermaid resting awkwardly against the bars.

She turned eyes on Quistis, peering from between the angled steel, "D-Don't do this, I don't want to go down there!"

Quistis snorted a breath and snapped her fingers. The front bars of the cage dissolved into smoke and the great mermaid fell with a cry, crashing to the sands below with a heavy thump, her great weight sending a scattering of sand into the air from the impact.

She struggled against the sand, rolling over and then managing to sit up using her hands, her broad tail laying out behind her.

She looked around in dismay at the arena's tall walls and the boxes above, levelers looking down at her with curiosity or plain greed.

"I… I'm not a monster!"  she cried aloud. She scrambled forward toward the centre of the arena, crawling, then rising back to rest on her tail, arms lifting to plead. "I'm a human, my mother was human!" said the giant golden mermaid.

Ravoure scoffed, leaning over the railing of his private box.

He had been healed from his fight, his pale skin now a bright sun burnt pink all over his front side giving him a fairly absurd appearance. He seemed leery of wearing clothes, likely due to the sensitivity of his just healed skin, and was only wearing a pair of silver embroidered silk shorts.

"Hardly, and I would know, I am a human. But more importantly than that, you aren't a leveller. If you are, then please feel free to demonstrate a Skill of some kind and I will happily petition for you to be freed."

The mermaid stared up at the man, her mouth working, trying to form words. She lifted her shaking gold scaled hands, looking between them as if trying to make something happen, desperately willing anything to happen.

Nothing happened.

Quistis sniffed. "We check fully and completely in less obvious mixed breed cases like this. The monster is monster enough that she has no leveling system whatsoever and killing her will cause a leveler to level."

"It's a mistake!" cried the mermaid.

"No." snapped Ravoure, his gut resting on the barrier, "Your mother may indeed have been human but-"

"She was!"

He tilted his head, considering. "And you were taken from the dungeon… why then?"

"We— We were chased out of our estate because they tried to kill us both! There wasn't a choice! So she… fled down into the dungeon...with me…"

"And where is she now? Could she not at least have kept you as a collared slave?"

"...She died. The swamp we lived in hurt her even as it kept monsters away from us, it was… poisonous, and then I was alone…"

"A sad story I'm sure. But really it's your own mother's fault. She should have killed you at birth, or at least left you out to die of exposure. I pity the family that had to deal with such a scandal." He leaned closer, a comforting smile curling his lip. "If your story is really true though, and you come from an 'estate', then you would perhaps care to whisper me that family name of yours before you die here? I'm not above a little blackmail, a little money for me, and a little revenge for you?"

The mermaid looked at him blankly. "I don't remember" she murmured softly, sounding almost confused that she did not.

"Oh this is such nonsense!" scoffed the elf.

"Oh, I find it perfectly believable," purred Bastial, holding out her glass as a servant refilled it.

"Of course you would!" snapped the elf glaring at her, "You belong down in the pit with it!"

Bastial lifted a hand and a glowing blue coin rolled across her scaled knuckles. "I think not. I have the god's gift, thus I am a leveler, whether you like it or not."

The mermaid's head turned as they spoke, and when her eyes fell upon Bastial she didn't look away, eyes widening as she looked her monstrous form over.

"P-Please!" cried the mermaid, suddenly scrambling forward until she was by Bastial's box. She was so large that she could look into the box, her eyes level with it.

"Ten thousand. Think long on me killing it Bastial," said the elf from behind.

The mermaid's head turned in dismay as bidding began, the elf was only the first, soon bids were coming from across the arena.

"Fifteen"

"Twenty!"

"Twenty one!"

And then from in front of her, "Twenty four!"

Her head snapped around to stare at Bastial lazing on her chaise.

"Y-you, you understand? You're going to save me?" she breathed, hardly believing it.

Bastial said nothing but with each following bid she out bid it by a significant amount, crushing any will to confront her generous purse until at last she had won.

The mermaid brushed at her weepy eyes, sheer gratitude causing her to tremble.

Bastial sipped her drink.

"No one else?"

The boxes remained silent and then Triskian's voice boomed out.

"And we have our purchase at twenty nine thousand gold! Bastial the mix!"

Quistis struck the bell.

The elf spat. "Oh, perfect. They belong together of course, monster filth and monster dirt."

The iced drink came down on the side table and Bastial sat up, smoothing her cream dress with her blue scaled claws and then arranging her spine filled hair.

She didn't even glance in the elf's direction as she replied.

"Coming from an elf who is frantically trying to hide his troll stench that is a bit rich. Perhaps you could learn from this monster Aolis. She does a better job of being more visually appealing than you do, even as a monster. You look like a half rotted sewer slime in comparison."

"Get my name out of your mouth! You spawn of a monster fucking family of freaks!" shrieked the elf, leaning dangerously over his railing and jabbing out an armoured finger

"But you are part troll Aolis, your mother found a love for troll cock and you are the result, an elf who smells utterly vile, so surely you speak of yourself?"

"I am not part troll!" squawked Aolis, "I- I come from a pure line of elves, the strongest elf seeking out the strongest elf to make a family and then produce the strongest children, our family has risen generation after generation! We are not like other elves!"

"So your blood line forms families, not out of love, but ambition to breed the strongest child? The goal is to create the best leveler no matter what?"

"Y-yes!"

"That makes sense then, because I had heard that your mother sought out and laid with the strongest levelers she could find when she was pregnant, hoping something of them would rub off on you."

There was a pause as the elf parsed this, and just what Bastial was implying. His face bloomed red with anger in the seconds it took him to think it through.

He wasn't the only one and a bellow of outrage came from behind as the elf's parents rose from their chairs finally having had enough, a sword snatched up by the livid looking father and a mace by the mother.

Before they could get much further however a wall of smoke plumed up in front of the elf and in a moment the box was blocked off from the world by a wall of thick marble, the elven family entirely cut off from the arena, their muffled angry yelling all that could be heard of them.

"I think it's best that I step in here. We have other guests waiting their turns and as amusing as it would be to watch a freshly created feud play out that is not what we are here for. Bastial?"

The mermaid turned back from the sealed off elf family's box, a look of sparkling hope in her eyes.

Bastial stood, revealing a pair of blue scale clad legs and feet, capped with large almost harpy-like black talons, each foot bound in leather strips to allow the talons on her toes to emerge through.

She put one foot on the railing and then casually stepped over it, gracefully landing in the arena, the sand barely disturbed.

"Y-you're going to rescue me, right?" said the mermaid, her voice quavering.

Bastial flicked her wrists and a pair of longswords appeared in her hands, slipping  from within her palms as though they had been hiding there the whole time. She lunged forward without a word and the mermaid cried out, scrambling backwards.

"N-No! I don't want to fight! Please don't do it!"

A sword flowed by the golden scales of the mermaid, the tip leaving a foot long scratch across the metallic looking surface. It was a tough material, but the blade cut through. The mermaid looked down in dismay.

"I wouldn't help some wretch of a leveler on the street, what makes you think I would help you?" spoke Bastial as she advanced.

She suddenly dashed forward, going on a swift and violent offensive, looking to kill the panicking mermaid. A blade lashed out whip-like, slashing across the mermaid's scales as she scrambled back, blood sprayed across the sands as the mermaid made sounds of agony, helpless to do anything but beg and flee.

Rain watched the mermaid as she was chased. She wasn't slow, despite her size, although maybe that wasn't surprising. A longer stride did make for more speed, or in this case the mermaid's enormous tail lashing at the sand was able to drag her large distances, fast, but not quite fast enough to escape the licking blades that flicked out at her body.

A trail of blood was left in her wake.

He felt… strange, watching them fight, and he found himself mentally stuck on the moment the mermaid had touched him, unable to get the sight of a human arm from his mind.

Was it some kind of evolved monster magic he had been subjected to? A trick? He wasn't sure, and he found himself unsure if he even wanted the mermaid to win.

Bastial was a leveller, and he hoped to have monsters kill or at least badly injure levelers so that he would have an easier time making his escape later, but then that mermaid… he felt almost threatened by her.

He was a monster, not a human… Even if he did have a small human side. And that was as true for the mermaid as it was for him, she appeared less monstrous than the leveller who hunted her, yet she had no levels, she could not use skills.

And that thought of course reminded him that he had never had levels or skills in his past life.

Maybe that was why he had adapted so easily to being a monster. Better than this mermaid who grew up with levelers clearly, a childhood thinking she was a leveler. Hell, she thought she was human!

…Assuming that wasn't all an act to somehow trick everyone.

A scream made him refocus and he watched as a brutal hack cut deep into the mermaid's side, a waterfall of blood pouring down her scales. The arena's sands had become bloody with the chimaera and now the mermaid, and it didn't look like it would take long before the mermaid would fall.

No, whatever hesitation and mistrust he was feeling there was still the fact that weakening the levelers worked in his favour. He needed the mermaid to win. He needed the mermaid to have success in this fight that she clearly did not want.

He reached out with his mind, reaching out and calling on the predation burrowed and scattered throughout the sands. A snake spiralled in the sands near Bastial's foot. With a twitch of a claw and the activation of his trap making Skill the spot the snake was spiralling around started to shift, the sand compressing and drawing back on itself, creating a delicate void a few inches beneath the sand, a cylinder a bit larger than a bucket.

Bastial's foot came down and crashed through it as it was half finished. Half finished but more than enough to trip her as she ran at the mermaid. Her clawed foot caught in the sand and she was sent sprawling and tumbling head over heels, one of her swords falling from her grip and sliding across the sand, sliding until it stopped in front of the mermaid.

The mermaid paused, seeing the fallen mix breed, and the sword before her. She snatched up the sword and held it out in front of her, the weapon appearing small in her hand. Her breathing came in shuddering gasps, chest rising and falling, eyes wide and wild with pain. But still, she held it ready.

"Y-You have to give up now! I'm armed!" she implored.

Bastial slowly clambered to her feet and eyed the mermaid holding out the sword in front of her. She glanced at the sand and frowned. But if there had been any sign of Rain's trap it was no longer there. The sand had decompressed with the traps triggering and returned to its original mass, completely filling in the hole and appearing as it was, churned up and bloodied like the rest of the arena.

"Hahahaha!" came the elf's distant laughter, muffled behind the marble wall. This seemed to irritate Bastial.

"Prolonging this is your fault alone. Discard the sword. Make it easy on yourself, monster."

She pressed the blue scales of her other hand against the blade and ran them along the steel. Behind where they touched the blade glowed a soft blue.

With an almost casual flick of her wrist she whipped out the blade. Shards of blue light flickered from the surface, taking the swords momentum as they hurtled toward the mermaid.

The mermaid held her arms up over her face and cried out as small shards of glass stabbed into her, leaving a scattered line of red that trailed up from her scales, piercing her untouched pale skin above and dotting upwards, a dozen of the things sticking from her flesh, her arms, her chest, blood already running down her front in rivulets.

Bastial took the opportunity she had made and launched herself forward, intent on ending things then and there.

The mermaid, not knowing what was coming, lowered her arms just in time to see Bastial flying through the air at her, sword raised to be stabbed through her chest and into her heart.

"NO!" the words tore from her lips, ragged, and she swung her arm up, sword clenched in fist, the wild motion of someone who had never held a sword before.

By some chance luck the blades connected and blade crashed into blade, the full leveraged strength of the mermaid hitting home without constraint.

Bastial flipped end over end through the air as her sword was knocked violently up, the sword nearly jarred from her claws by the impact. She crashed side on into the giant mermaid's midriff.

They flailed in a moment of shared panic, Bastial's taloned feet digging through the mermaid's stomach creating terrible gouges deep into her pale flesh as the mermaid screamed and screamed, beating at Bastial, trying to dash her off. Her massive fist came down and struck like a fallen anvil, crushing impact coming down on Bastial's arm. A grisly crunch followed as Bastial's arm dislocated and bone broke. Her other arm, still clinging to the sword lashed back instinctually, chopping into the fist like a butcher's cleaver. The mermaid screamed, snatching her hand back, three golden fingers as thick as arms cut away and spinning through the air.

The three fingers fell tumbling through the air trailing strings of blood before thudding to the sand one after the other.

"Get off of me!!" the mermaid shrieked.

The mermaid thrashed over trying to crush her beneath her tail, and Bastial, seeing what was about to happen, flung herself free, coming down rolling before springing to her feet, clutching at her dislocated and broken arm, sword still grasped. She licked her lip, breathing hard, and turned to see the mermaid looking at her in fear, sand flung into the air from her violent thrashing motions forming a dust cloud, gallons of blood sheeting down her enormous body, stomach in a bad way from the slicing talons, flaps of skin hanging down.

Bastial spat blood to her side from where she'd bitten her cheek with the landing.

She took a step forward.

"I wanted to limit your suffering for what little is human in you. But not now, now—

Her foot came down in the looped centipede a half inch below the surface of the sand. The centipede's body drew tight, a loop around her wrapped foot, and its long body hidden in the sand hauled, the trap Skill multiplying the dragging force the centipede could normally apply.

Bastial's foot yanked forward, jerking out from under her and she lost any hope of staying upright. Her back hit the sand with a thud even as the centipede slipped away, wiggling into the sands out of sight.

The mermaid's eyes went wide. A sudden unexpected gift of opportunity. She lunged forward with a desperate cry, the cry of a cornered animal who had seen its predator make a mistake and would risk everything to end it, to kill them.

Both hands gripping the longsword she raised it over head and with a cry drove it down like an almighty dagger, a plunging stab to spear Bastial through the heart, killing her instantly.

The blade came down like a meteor, all the power and strength that her massive size lent, about to—

Smoke exploded around Bastial, and for a fraction of a second she disappeared behind grey.

The sword struck through and then came to a jarring halt, so sudden and abrupt that the mermaid's hands were ripped from the grip, falling around it, slapping down on something hard.

The smoke cleared revealing that Bastial had been entombed in a thick marble sarcophagus, the tip of the blade embedded in its surface.

"N-no!" cried the mermaid. She clawed at the marble and then hammered at it with her fists. The stone remained unbroken. "No no no!!"

She beat at and slapped at it, movements becoming increasingly weak and feeble until she was hunched over it, weeping.

The great snake poured down into the arena from above the stands and approached, a rattling warning hiss coming from its mouth.

The mermaid did nothing but watch blankly as the snake collected the sarcophagus and placed it in Bastial's private box.

The marble disintegrated into smoke once carefully placed and Bastial fell free, lying limp on the stone floor as servants rushed over to tend to her.

"It seems we have a loss. Bastial has forfeited her payment to the Abattoir in failing and the monster shall now go back up for auction.

Conversation broke out across the audience, musing voices and titters at Bastial's failure, or comments on the mermaid who rested injured in the arena.

The mermaid was not in a good state. Bastial's talons had shredded open her stomach and her intestine was visibly peeking through her flesh, only kept inside as she held one mangled hand over it, the other hand on the sand needed to support herself and keep upright. Her body was covered in blood and sticky with bloody sand, her once bright scales dulled. Her face smeared with yet more blood and sand, tracks running down her cheeks where her tears had swept them clean.

Her breath came heavy and she looked around the audience like a mouse caught in a trap, surrounded by cats who were discussing which of them would get to eat her.

"Seven thousand five hundred is an appropriate price for scraps."

"Nine! I'll take those scraps."

The bidding started, and the voices made the mermaid visibly shudder.

In the end though, there was one who was keener than all the others to take the kill, one who had a little time to calm himself while being walled off from the arena. Time to temper his rage.

The elf known as Aolis raised his paddle, a paddle marked with a wolf surrounded by rose petals.

"It seems it is I who must clean up others incompetence as per usual, although in Bastial's case that is to be fully expected."

He stepped onto the railing and dropped down on the sands, once more marching toward a wounded monster, engraved sword at his side.

"P-please…" whispered the mermaid, unmoving. The fight had clearly gone out of her.

The elf ignored her and strode forward, an executioner stepping up to his victim's neck.

Except he didn't go for the neck, and a smile curled his lip as he brutally kicked the mermaid's elbow. There was a grizzly crunch and her arm bent sideways. With a cry she fell to the sand, splashing down in the lake of her own blood that surrounded her.

"You should have taken Bastial's offer monster. Dying easy was her pathetic gift, the monster part of her taking pity on you. But that is done now, and since she offered that gift to you, I feel I shall gift the opposite."

His foot connected with her side and she rolled onto her back, blood seeping from her lips. The elf put one steel booted foot on her tail and climbed up on top of her, standing on her. He placed his blade against her scales and then eased his weight down on it.

"Ahhh!!" she gasped as the blade sank into her body. She lifted her mostly fingerless hand away from her open guts and pawed weakly at the elven knight as he raised his blade and stabbed down once more.

He laughed and knocked her hand aside.

"Are you watching this Bastial? Look at what I am doing to your kind! Can you imagine that it is you who could be in this monster's place?"

He stabbed again, and again, plunging his sword deep through her body, creating a stippled line that slowly made its way up her golden scales then skin, she convulsed with each stab into her belly, tears streaming down her cheeks as she tried to feebly stop the small figure standing on her and cutting her to pieces.

It was going to be a long slow death.

Rain claws dug into the bottom of his cage, claws shredding steel in lines as he stared down at what was being done.

She was a monster, and perhaps he wouldn't have cared if she hadn't touched him, but that small part of him that was still human was losing its goddamned mind, crawling up his insides, bothering his monsterness, driving him to distraction, agitated beyond all reason.

Rain decided he couldn't watch any more.

A centipede crawled through the sand and came up beneath the mermaid's head, its pincers emerging from the sand out of sight.

With one singular snip he had the centipede cut through the back of the mermaid's neck, killing her instantly.

The golden mermaid stilled in that unique stillness of death, a last gentle breath leaving her lips, bloody golden hair draped gracefully around her head as her arms eased down limp at her sides.

The elf looked up from where he had been gleefully sawing up through her abdomen and blinked.

"Hmm. Weaker than I assumed, must be the human influence. Unusually pathetic despite the size."

Rain grimaced. He knew that the elf wasn't saying that because she had died, he was saying that because Rain had helped kill the monster, taking a portion of the levelling, although not enough for Rain to level. It was fortunate that the elf assumed the monster wasn't worth much instead of it being Rain and Bastial taking their share.

Rain found he wasn't happy as the elf returned to his private box, leaving the limp corpse of the mermaid behind.

The small human part of him was filled with terrible anger.

He looked across to see Opal in Lyra's private box. She was looking down at the corpse of the mermaid, a dismayed and troubled look on her face.

Well that settled it.

If Aolis won the right to fight him then he vowed the elf would not leave the sands alive.

Quistis's guarantee would not save him.