Cold and hot. Hot and cold. Cold, hot, and cold. HA, am I losing my mind?
The beast's loathing hit Damien like a wall—suffocating and wrong in a way he couldn't articulate. Neither his mind nor his body could bear the weight of it, and so they simply... stopped.
Paralyzed, he could only listen to the children screaming somewhere behind him. And the Island's wails scraping against his skull like fingernails on bone.
He could do nothing as his warm Particles thrashed within him, colliding with the cold evil pressing in from outside — two forces tearing him apart.
It brought him to his wits' end.
Then without warning, his chest flooded with darkness and a familiar coldness spread through him, intertwining with the warmth, taking control…
And after a moment, it was as if it had belonged to him from the beginning.
His veins crackled with energy.
Thunder cawed in his chest.
Damien rose.
The Beast horde had carved further into the capital, leaving scattered bits of flesh and human bone everywhere they went. Besides the few that were picking at the dead, and the survivors still fleeing down streets and alleyways, the square was a bloody ghost town.
And by the looks of it, there weren't many survivors left.
What about Luk—
"Gahhh."
"God damn it. You mother fucker. You fucking shit excuse for a Raider."
Damien looked down. Sprawled across a shattered counter, Luka was groaning and rubbing his head. Beside him, a fat man lay on his back cursing to himself, clutching his side where a shard of broken counter had impaled him. Though it didn't look too deep.
"Damien?" Luka opened one eye and immediately brightened. He'd been worried his friend had actually kicked the bucket after the beast's Particles assaulted him. But he looked fine — better, even.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah…"
Damien wasn't lying. The storm had settled within him, the wailing had quieted, and the beast's Particles no longer felt so dark and terrifying like a storm of corruption.
They felt like his own.
His gaze tracked a floating trail of black Particles from a beast's corpse to where he'd been lying unconscious. Is this what happens when you absorb a beast's Particles? He already knew the answer was no.
How did I absorb them in the first place? I couldn't even move.
"Did you kill that?" He nodded toward the corpse.
"I did…" Luka dusted himself off and stood, then kicked the fat man's shin. "No thanks to this fat bastard."
The man groaned and swiped at him, but Luka was already out of reach.
"Should we get out of here before they notice?" Damien's voice pulled both their attention. He was looking out at the square where five beasts stood beak-deep in their own piles of corpses, unbothered by anything else.
"I don't know, but isn't this strange?" Luka scanned the square and then the sky. "I can barely hear the thunder anymore, and by the looks of it, most of the Beasts aren't interested in eating... just killing."
"Yeah…" Damien had felt like something was wrong, too, but couldn't place it. With all of the bloody corpses around, shouldn't the Beasts stop to enjoy the fresh meal?
So why are they trampling deeper into the Capital?
Unless this isn't hunting, Damien suddenly got a bad premonition. He remembered the intense bloodlust they'd had before, and pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place.
"Daddy! No. Daddy!"
Luka and Damien whipped their heads around.
Sitting in a dark alleyway on the opposite side of the square, a little girl with pigtails was crying and holding her father's corpse. She cried. And screamed. And begged for him to be okay until two of the Beasts noticed and stalked in her direction.
Crack!
Thunder erupted from their beaks as they opened their jaws impossibly wide, charging at the girl.
She turned, her face a ghostly white. "Go away! Please, I'm scared! Daddy, get up, we have to run." She said, tugging at her father before closing her eyes and lifting her arms over her face.
Then, loud footsteps thudded closer, and thunder deafened her…
Shlkkk.
Shlkkk.
Something wet and cold splashed all over her, making her shake even more and cry even louder.
However a few seconds passed.
Her hearing returned.
A pair of labored breaths came from her side, and she opened her eyes… immediately, she screamed in fright.
Two gigantic birds with pitch-black feathers and sharp teeth were lying motionless on the pavement, black blood spilling from a hole in one's head, coming from a rock that was now lodged into the wall, and a yellow sword stabbing through the other's chest.
She backed further into the alley, pulling her father's feet to try to move him away from the monsters. Then two human shadows loomed until they were replaced by the men who cast them.
Shreek!
Suddenly, the monster with the hole in its head lurched for the girl — a desperate last gamble.
A blue light flashed.
THUD!
Before the girl knew what had happened, a man with jet black hair and black blood splattered across his face had his fist caved through the monster's skull. Blue light trickled down his arm with a soft crackling that, oddly, calmed her down.
After a moment, the stern man looked up at her.
"Are you okay?" His face softened.
Terrified, sad, sick, scared — all of it seemed to quiet a little under his gaze.
She nodded. "Yeah…" Then pointed at her father and said through sobs, "Can you help daddy?"
The man looked at the father. Then back at her.
"Yeah… he just needs some rest. Why don't you take my hand?"
She reached out and took it, and he led her deeper into the alley behind a dumpster.
"Stay here for a while." He patted her head and smiled, hollow.
Then Damien left and rejoined Luka.
"So — we kill the rest?" His friend laughed, ripping his sword from the beast's chest.
Damien's face turned solemn. "Yeah."
As he looked out at the 3 remaining beasts in the town square, who were watching him now, lightning trickled beneath his skin, into his limbs, amplifying his strength and speed. The air around his fists hummed and crackled. Whatever the beast had used to split the sky — it was his now.
I don't know how. But thank you for helping me save her.
He thanked the beast's Particles within him and knelt to the beast's side that he'd slain, placing his hand on its chest. This time, as he absorbed the black Particles, they did not replace his existing Particles but added to them.
He noticed Luka had done the same, his Particle count higher than before.
Crack!
The remaining Beasts charged, the thunder theirs.
Damien and Luka didn't speak, but trails of lightning and golden light flashed across the town square as the duo collided with the Beasts.
Damien knew that with no formal training or combat experience, a three-on-two head-on fight was risky, and the thing he valued most might come to an end.
But, he didn't care.
I'll kill them, so they can't kill her. He thought of the girl he'd saved.
***
In the capital's heart, two figures draped in black cloaks stood atop a building, watching the black swarm of D-rank beasts — Lightning Ravens — draw closer.
The shorter one removed his hood, revealing rusty red hair and a devious smirk.
"So, now that we've got the stragglers, Cap — how do you want to do the rest?"
His captain was silent. Then, as the thunder briefly quieted, he said softly, "We need those particles, so don't burn them. Create a wall and push them back to the shore. I'll handle them there."
He took two steps forward and dropped off the building without another word.
"Do that, do this…" The rusty-haired man clicked his tongue. "Does he have any idea how many Particles a wall of fire strong enough to push them to the shore is going to take?
"Geeze. I guess when you're the strongest, you forget what it's like to be a lowly B rank."
His eyes ignited with something between focus and madness. Arms stretched wide, fire erupted from both palms into the night sky, twisting and expanding, forming a cage with only one opening.
Toward the shore.
Toward the town square.