Chapter 2: Chapter 2: Fleshy Tummies

The five of them waded past her and into her home, shutting the door behind them.

They looked bewildered, and each one brought up a floating, transparent menu box, though only they could read what was on it. They flicked through their own separate screens, clicking around and mumbling to themselves.

Nikola hadn't invited them in, but they weren't vampires. They had entered even without her permission. She wondered briefly if the menus they were fiddling with were anything like the one that had appeared for her prior to their arrival, but the question was quickly swept away in favour of more pressing matters.

Like figuring out how to murder five people at the same time. They had made things slightly easier for her, entering the wolf's den all on their own, but five was a big number. Much bigger than two - more than double.

Five people could definitely overpower her, even if she took the first one or two by surprise.

Perhaps if she examined them more, she'd be able to form some kind of plan. Maybe one of them was a ranged fighter, using only a bow and arrow, and they would suffer from being in an enclosed space.
The first thing that she noted, upon further inspection, was all of them had their weapons sheathed; a silly decision considering what they knew. Did they just not consider her a threat? Were they really so powerful?

She started to run her eyes along the blue-haired male's body first, top to bottom. He used some kind of bladed weapon with a peculiarly thick blade. It was also sizable, almost a club as much as it was a sword.

His outfit didn't point to any specific profession; tan shorts hugged his hips, and a white tank top with a rigid, popped turtleneck collar clothed his top half. A red cape hung down from his neck, wrapped around his shirt and covering his shoulders, falling down to just above the backs of his knees. His boots looked new - in fact, everything on him did, as if he'd never left his house before.

As she moved her gaze over the others, all of their clothing sparkled, not a single stain marring any of it. Had none of them ever gone outside?

"Usually I have some kind of quest marker by now," the blue-haired one complained loudly, huffing.

"Yeah! But when I go to my map, there's nothing. Did we miss something?"

Nikola slipped away and padded softly into her kitchen, where her father kept all the knives. He had an impressive collection, considering he was a chef - and a baker, but that was irrelevant at the moment. A cleaver and a set of chef's knives in varying sizes were all within arm's length, each one in pristine condition and ready to rend flesh.

She remembered how simple it was for him to move the medium-sized one through fish; with just a few swift flicks of his wrist, he could have the fillets pulled away from the skeleton in seconds. It slid under the scales like they simply weren't there.

She grabbed that same knife, placing one finger along its tang like she'd seen her dad do.

But as she slipped back into the room, her cloak fluttering from the motion, she found it wasn't her that was hunting them.

"What's worked for me before has been resetting the NPC that's bugging out. Normally I'd submit some kind of bug report, but the mods have been swamped and the NPC resetting thing was actually their suggestion in the meantime as a thing to try first. What do you guys think?" The one speaking reached beneath their clothes, hovering a hand over the bandaged hilt of their dagger.

"It's worth a try, I guess. Sucks that we have to take an Affection hit."

They all began to take their weapons out, and Nikola hesitated, her throat draining of its saliva. Something in her chest thrummed faintly against her breast bone. She had felt fear before; this was one emotion that wasn't unfamiliar to her, but the presence of the thumping was.

"Sooo... we just start hitting her? Is there anything else to it?"

"Nope. You literally just start whacking her."

Then came the pain, but to her surprise, it was manageable. In fact, as they continued to cut, stab and club at her, she realized how inexperienced they were. The one using a club was just hitting anywhere they could reach instead of focusing on her joints, and the ones with the slicing weapons weren't goring her fleshy tummy.

So she gored their fleshy tummies instead.

Blood burst from the opening she made in the dagger-wielder's center mass; they were the one standing closest to her, and as they crumpled to the floor, wailing, the others gasped and screamed in varying levels of horror.

"Uhhh, is she supposed to be fighting back?" The one holding a bow was beginning to quiver, pun intended. The string wiggled as they held the wood it was attached to, but it wiggled its last wiggle as Nikola reached past it and got them as well, sending them to the ground with a slice across their exposed chest.

"Dude, she can one-hit K.O an adventurer? Ren, you get to work on sending a bug report while I handle her."

She didn't know what a bug report was, but it certainly seemed more threatening than the club barely serving to make her back sore as it connected with her shoulders and spine.

She jolted over to the one tapping on their floaty menu screen frantically, her body mimicking lightning as she arced in their direction. They shrieked and Nikola parted their throat with her knife, making the sound wet with their life juices, which were now drenching their front.

The first one who had fallen began to dissolve feet first, drawing her attention. The body was... disposing of itself? Her blue eyes focused on them as they began to unravel, bursting like the fireworks her father brought her to see on the new year. Except this time, the fireworks brought her no fizzy joy.

When she looked back up, the last two were on the move. One was shimmying towards her back door while hurriedly typing on their menu - like their comrade had been doing before she had ended them - and the other one was rattling at the ring attached to the exit.

"It's locked," Nikola offered flatly.

She closed the distance between herself and the one using their hovering box, bringing her blade down against the muscle in their shoulder. They melted under her, slipping down to her floorboards with a gooey crunch.

The blue-haired one was the last one left, his exposed knees knocking against one another as he presumably realized the futility in his task.

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He turned around to face her, inch by terrifying inch, and by the time he made his rotation she was almost upon him. But, to his surprise, she stopped. Her icy eyes found his, her cloak weighed down by all the moisture it had soaked up, laying limply across her front.

"Did you see me?"

His voice bubbled out in a whiny pop. "See you-- what?"

"Did you see me killing them?"

"N-no."

"Then how did you know?"

"B-because it's part of your quest. You kill people. I-I've been a fan for a while now and wanted to play through your quest with my friends and-- can I leave? Can you just let me leave? Please, I don't even care anymore, just let me go." The ends of his hair were shaking.

"I'm sorry," Nikola hissed, her voice soaked with remorse almost as much as her clothes were in blood. And then she lunged at him.

Nikola had no idea why she hadn't killed the home invader right then and there.

Instead, she knocked him out, tied his hands, stuffed his mouth with some discarded cloth and proceeded to vomit and weep for like an hour. It was the kind of sobbing that led to full-body heaves, rattling her rib cage, which folded into total rebirth and mild euphoria. When she came down from her big cry, she felt a mixture of vibrating numbness and something like hope.

She hadn't killed all of them. For some reason, that made her feel... good? The way they had died, scattering into the wind as they had, made her feel a twisting, intrinsic wrongness in her gut. Something in her mind was screaming that that wasn't how people were supposed to die. She was familiar with death, with gore, with people passing on, but something about a body just exploding into technicolour squares messed with her head. It wasn't natural. Not seeing the crimson strands rise from the slab to carry her worries away was unnatural. The ritual hadn't been performed. They hadn't been sent away to serve a greater purpose - for all she knew, they were simply gone.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the smell of her own upchuck reaching her nostrils. Y u c k. She was going to have to clean this up, or else she was going to be making more of it very soon.

It was dark out by the time she was done ridding her house of the various bodily fluids that were dotting its walls and floors. Between the sparkling river not far away from her home and all of the buckets of water they kept around, everything was smooth and shimmering again in no time. Her house was back to normal.

Well, except for the fact that she had somebody tied up in her basement. Usually, they would be long dead by now! Plus, she couldn't have her dad finding out about the habit she had picked up from him. Anyway, knowing what this one knew, there was no question that on any other day, she would have him in pieces on her dad's metal slab. She found comfort in the fact she hadn't done so yet.

The one with the chunky sword seemed to know things about her, so maybe leaving him breathing would one day bear fruit, if she hadn't forever terrified the words out of him by slaughtering his friends in front of him. No, actually, not even in front of him - behind his red cape and chattering knees.

She poked her head in to check on him, and he was still fully unconscious, his body limp, bound and in the same position she had left him in.

Good. After all this carnage and cleaning, her clothes were stiff with drying gunk. It was getting more difficult by the moment to be mobile and fluid, something she desired to be always. She couldn't stand to stay so dirty for much longer.

She checked the hefty door to her basement to make sure it was locked from the outside. She slid its three barrel bolts into their shafts, a flash of the blacksmith's face popping up in her brain before simmering away like water in a pan. She wondered if her father had gotten these from him; since they were made of metal, it wasn't out of the question.

Nikola's nose scrunched at her own weakness. It had been a long time since remorse had gripped her so strongly - why was she back at square one, all of a sudden? Why was she barfing over bodies she hadn't even had to break down? It was undoubtedly the grossest part, seeing the shards fly and hearing the squishy cracks as the cleaver went through bone. If she wasn't careful, she might turn into the same simpering, shaking mess that the blue-haired boy was, clawing at the door he supposed was the exit while his friends were dying behind him.

She knew, at this time of night, there would be nobody out at the river. None of the villagers ever waded out in that direction unless the sun was shining, and they rarely broke from their routines. So, she made her way up her basement stairs, grabbing some cloth, clothes, soap and a small vial of cooking oil. Then, she ducked outside.

As suspected, the streets were quiet. Faint candlelight from within the homes dotting her path warmed her way as she walked briskly toward the sound of water. She fought the urge to skulk around, or to duck and skitter along - with how well the people in town knew her, surely they would think something was up if they saw her hunched over, avoiding their gaze.

Eventually, her feet hit grass, and then twigs and moss. Then, she was at the river. It was crystalline and clear; just perfect for a bath.

Nikola peeled her clothes off; at this point, they were hardened like leather in some places, a fact that made her even happier to be removing them. She let them fall to the ground and worked her way down her body, until eventually, she was completely bare. She could feel the breeze against every bit of her surface area.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror-like surface of the water. Her hair was stiff with blood, and it hung down to just below her protruding collarbones in pieces. Her stomach was defined such that it showed her tummy muscles, but it also had a concave such that her hipbones jutted outward and that dip accentuated them. She looked slight, a little bit toned, and kind of starved. Her father had chattered on to her about how he wanted her to eat more bread, and at this angle, she could see why. It was her theory that putting more meat on her bones was part of why he had become a cook and baker.

She had a smattering of freckles along her arms, chest and face, as if someone had splattered paint on her from above. Not a single freckle existed below her waist. Her lashes were long and darker than her hair, which was a slightly lighter raven from where the sun's rays had lightened it.
Her skin tended towards the cooler side of the spectrum, with blue undertones and pinkish lips.

Her feet were rather large for her otherwise lithe frame, and she used them to dip into the water, which made her shiver. Goosebumps appeared along her arms as she forced the rest of herself into the delightful wetness that was already streaking with red. It started to carry the gore away, and she grabbed the soap from her basket and used it to help the water with its job.

She didn't know how long she stood there, letting the current sweep her deeds away, but it felt like quite a while. She went over every crevice on her body twice, including her hair, and then she grabbed each piece of clothing and gave it the same treatment. She dunked them under the surface, lathered them up, rinsed them, and repeated the process several times. She was panting by the time she was done, but surely things like this would stave away some of her scrawniness eventually.

To finish her bath off, she rose from the water, patted herself dry with some scraps of cotton, and trickled a bit of oil into her hands. It was perfumed with thyme, and she rubbed it along her freshly washed flesh. Then, she put the remnants into her hair, massaging it into the ends, combing through it with her fingertips while it was still damp.

Fresh and smelling of nothing but infused oils, she slipped on some light clothes she didn't really care for and headed back home. She felt much better as she returned; finally, she was as clean as her floors and walls she had toiled over. As she strung up her wet clothes on the line outside, she caught herself thinking it felt like a drop of normalcy was reentering her life.

Well, until she heard the screams.

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