Chapter 82: 12: Claws

It was on the second floor down that we encountered our first enemies. The ruins had been so incredibly samey until we got down a level that I was almost hopelessly lost. Things began to open up once we found some stairs though, wider spaces and higher ceilings, everything was just bigger.

The second floor was built out of grey-veined marble, with polished black tiles accenting it in places. The marble wasn’t just flat and featureless though, much of it was carved into meaningless swirls and patterns, or vague depictions of humanoid in various poses. It was kinda pretty, although also incredibly eerie. Also strange, was that despite all the stone, the temperature was still bearable, if just slightly below what was comfortable.

Bassi then began to show me all the little hidden tunnels and shortcuts, proving that there was much more to this place than the large open hallways and grand rooms suggested. Certain tiles on the wall would betray the presence of a hidden passage nearby, and finding the correct one near it to press would open the hidden door. There was much more than that though, some decorations all over the walls that when pointed in a certain direction or what have you would reveal other secrets. It was like a perception check happy dungeon master’s wet dream.

We found the first group of enemies inside a large circular chamber with a bright yellow orb hanging from the center of the ceiling. The orb appeared to be there to allow a whole bunch of plants to grow in neat little stone planters. It had me questioning if maybe this place had once been inhabited after all, and the floor upstairs was just some sort of strange maze defence mechanism.

The monsters themselves were about half as tall as me, spindly things that were humanoid in shape. They appeared to be a little top heavy, their legs thin and short, while their arms long, buff, and sporting very sharp claws, with their head being somewhat small again. Mottled white skin was all they wore, revealing that yes, apparently these things did sexually reproduce.

They didn’t appear to be all that intelligent either, scrabbling around and sniffing things, fighting each other and just generally displaying not a whole lot of anything that would have me feeling pity for them. Well, that plus the dead people around the place, in various states of decay.

“If things get too bad for people up top, and they lose hope… this is where they come,” Bassi whispered in my ear as we crouched in the shadows. “Everything down here will attack on sight, so stay out of it until the last moment. Go in and see what you can do, I’ll jump in if it looks like you’re in trouble.”

“Alright,” I nodded, turning to look at her. It took a lot of willpower to stifle the squeak that almost escaped when our noses gently brushed together, faces so close I could feel her breath tickling my lips.

Neither of us moved away, our eyes each searching the other’s for… something, I’m not sure. Her eyes were so dark in this light, their glassy surfaces reflecting the dim makeshift sun in the chamber ahead. Tension sizzled like lightning between us for several long seconds as we held that position, noses just gently touching. It wouldn’t take much for this to turn into a kiss, just a tilt of the head from either of us, and that thought robbed me of breath.

“You really are beautiful,” she murmured, her voice somehow soft, sweet and demanding, all at once.

A smile tugged the corners of my lips up, but she couldn’t see that for the mask, so I spoke instead, “Thanks, you’re pretty good looking yourself. Scary too, but in a very delicious way.”

“Delicious, hmmm?” she asked, wetting her lips and raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” I grinned, then pulled at the shadows, wrapping them around myself and rushing off into the chamber, leaving a surprised Bassi still crouched on the ground. It was either start killing things, or make out with her, and I didn’t have the guts to initiate the latter, so the former it was. Assuming she even wanted to make out, and I mean… I’d never kissed someone so… yeah. Killing monsters was something I’d done every night in my free time, this time was just going to be a little more visceral.

I only had about five seconds before my shadows wore off, so I made them count. A few running strides took me within arm’s reach of an unsuspecting… lanky goblin thing? Anyway, it had no idea, and with a flourish that I had never practiced, I sank both knives into its neck, blades biting deep down into its body.

Death was all but instant, and I stepped backwards in surprise. Holy shit, now there was blood everywhere and a monster thing was dead. Well, blood everywhere except on me, because apparently it just passed through my shadows, but my blades were very solid.

Despite my hesitation over my first kill, my enemies were slow to react, confused by the sudden and instant death of their friend at the hands of a black smudge. I moved quickly, flicking my arm out, knife flashing with silver and a deep red as it eviscerated another helpless enemy, leaving it squealing in pain. A distraction. I think I’d call them goblins until told otherwise.

I went into a slide, utilising a puddle to get down low and fast, slashing the ankles out from under another now enraged monster. By now the rest of them were coming at me looking pretty upset, but hey… I couldn’t really blame them.

I rushed a group of three, an underhanded flick, one of my daggers spinning through the air to take the closest goblin in its nasal cavity then on and into its brain. A tingling sensation in my shoulders told me that my shadow power was back, right on time, and with a twisting dodge sideways, I activated it.

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Moving past the still collapsing dead monster, I reached back, spine arching almost delicately as I pulled my dagger free from its skull, the corpse spinning in the process. The flailing spin caught the central goblin in the legs, tripping him right into my waiting left blade, which I viciously tore backwards, rending his throat and throwing yet more blood everywhere.

I was being pretty brutal, but this was the most powerful I had ever felt in my life, a deadly dancer in her element. I loved it, I loved it a whole lot. If there was something that my life had lacked until this point, it was the power to decide my own fate like this. Back on Earth, it would have been money or power, influence over people through the rules of society, but here? Here it was at the spinning, shining tip of a blade.

Claws parted air in front of my face as I dodged again, my shadows receding for the moment, a delighted smile hiding behind my mask. It was like I knew instinctively where the blows would go, my mind hyper aware of every movement around me, but not in any sort of overwhelming sense. I held the information with the serenity of wordless thought, raw understanding vibrating through me like the chords of an invisible song.

I was showing off now, drop kicking the one that had just swiped at me into his friend behind him, both my daggers flicking out to impale them through the eyes. Now daggerless against a remaining four goblins, I danced through them, untouchable to what were essentially just frenzied animals ruled by hate.

If they had claws, well shit, I’d have them too. Past them now, both hands came up, circling around the necks of two unlucky goblins. Black inky claws whispered out of the tips of my fingers the moment before I used them to tear their throats out in another spray of gore. The two remaining turned at the sound and sight of their comrades.

It was too late for them though, my shadows embracing me once more, claws growing another inch as my shadow form added to their length. Almost casually, I ripped their innards out, stepping back to watch them die on the floor. I watched for a while as they squirmed, until the blood red mist of battle calmed somewhat and I retrieved my daggers, using them to quickly silence the poor, evil little things.

I had sweat running rivulets down my body, following the curves of my waist and the contours between the muscles of my thighs. I felt good, something within me fading slightly, a dark and sad part of me. The part that had raged at how helpless I had felt in a world that had seemed to be tearing itself apart, one human rights law at a time.

“Uh, Mist?” Bassi’s voice pierced through my ruminations, and I turned my head to her, cocking it to the side in question. I didn’t really have the power of speech at that moment.

“You’re… still in there, right?” she asked, stepping over the corpse of one of my victims.

I nodded, attempting words anyway and having them come out with a rasp. “Yeah. I’m here.”

“That was… orders of magnitude more intense than what you’ve displayed in the training room,” she told me, marrying her gaze to mine as she sought to understand what was going through my head.

I pulled my mask down to make it easier for her, then shrugged. “I have led a… a life where I have not held too much power before. One of the masses, a nobody… but I’m not a nobody anymore. I’m Mist, and I can tear through these monsters like… I don’t know. Paper or something, analogies are hard right now.”

She hummed for a moment, another one of her little lonely chords. “It feels like just yesterday when I… when I felt the same. Be careful that you do not go too far down the road of killing, do not cross to the side where you treat other humans the same way you treat these servants of evil.”

I nodded, and then a thought chilled me, and I had to take a deep breath to quell it. “They are… they are evil, right?”

“They are,” she growled, with far more venom than I’d been expecting. She kicked one for good measure. “Vile, hateful creatures… I would not hesitate a moment to slay every last one of them. Purge them from this doomed world. I have seen what they can do when it is they who are the ones with the power. It is…” she broke off, her teeth snapping shut like the jaws of a bear trap. “Nevermind. I want to see you use those shiny new claws to kill more of the bastards.”

“I can do that,” I smiled, putting as much gentle care as I could into my tone. That had been the outburst of someone who’d seen real pain. I touched her arm, just trailing my fingers down it for a moment, and she twitched, looking up from the dead creature and into my eyes.

A nod, and then she was moving. “Follow.”

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