507 CHPT 507: Slash and Weave
Everything inside. Everything.
Vampires. Kobolds. Goblins. Arachnoids. Lizardfolk. Bloodthirsty sharks hiding out in the thunderous clouds beneath the vortexing oceans. Students and soldiers fighting to survive.
A young Red Queen.
An ice cold Arctodus Lupine.
And a potential. THE potential, for death. A loss of friends— mental security. Ideals.
Claude kept that firm in his mind as he bolted through it all in a blur.
It was clear as the chaos, the goal of the Tangent wasn't to fight. It was to save your team, and extract. There was a distinct pathway he could see once he blinded himself to the visual cluttered nature of their Tangent-like world. A space in the green.
Once he found everyone he'd take them there.
"No…. Take them to me." Claude thought to himself as his green world gave way to the skeletal bare bones remains of an Old World city. The Skyscraping arachnoid and Lizardfolk nests.
"[Well, if there was ever a time to test the limits of your new abilities. Quickly, may I a—]"
FWSHH!
Claude's body shifted in a breath of Wild Magic laced air.
His scales cracked and ripped— Beast Taming abilites failing to keep up with godly Jotun power as his muscles expanded and glowed beneath his shifting skin— giving his scales a dragonoid two tone glow. The sensations felt new as he activated Partial Embrace and his legs transformed, giving him an extra few inches of height and explosive speed.
When he flexed the muscles in his feet to grip the beginning of the tar road beneath him the ground crumbled to dust.
"Follow."
BWOOOSH
He lunged and exploded down the road in an explosive blur as chunks of the road and roots beneath were blasted outwards in his wake.
The speeds were so intense he almost couldn't visibly track his direction, shown as he skittered down the streets and bumped into one of the old four wheeled steel carriages, busting off the doors from the impact.
With the feline agility of Loba he flipped over the odd carriage and recovered.
His nose started to pick up the scents of fear and human blood.
There were students in the skyscrapers.
"GET BACK!!"
Students were beginning to fight as well. That wasn't the goal. They'd tire out. They'd get swallowed up in one of the fifty other skirmishes.
"Focus."
"Claude? Where are you?" Ursula's voice entered his mind. Frosty whined at her voice.
"Listen for me." Claude spoke through the pack bond and continued leaping and bounding down the street in explosive jumps.
"Are…. Are you ok? Claude… this looks like your nigh—"
"I'm good. Yea…..— Let's find everyone." Claude replied.
As they delved deeper into the Old World City some of the warring Monsters took notice. They gave chase, but couldn't make it past Loba who seemed to gain a sort of enjoyment from using Claude's flashy form as bait to invisibly rip through the spider and lizard men.
A trail of bodies grew in their wake until he reached his destination.
The tallest building. A skyscraper with hundreds of blood smeared windows covered in bumpy web nests and shedded skins. Topped by a stiff spire of rods interconnected and welded together.
Claude never stopped running as he closed in on the building. Even as the territorial Nest Mothers gave him fair warning and bleeding ears.
He whistled and patted Diamondbacks head before pointing at the base of the building.
"Stay….. food comes from above." Sometimes the young primal needed more direct wording.
"Loba. You stay too."
The two beasts fell back and began circling the building. Running its perimeters, waiting for whatever would fall out of the building full of holes and scars. Like sharks in an ocean, swimming below a Tangent on the verge of breaking.
Sure, this metaphorical Tangent wouldn't break, but he and Frosty would try….
The VanaWarg snarled and divebombed through the first floor window into the building facing them. As he smashed into the window, he grew, making himself a furbound wrecking ball of terror to unleash on the first floor wave of Monsters.
Claude jumped, pushing his new and old abilities to their synchronized limits. He moved so fast the air writhed and roiled in his ears like a tornado. Floor after floor he rose until he was over a hundred feet high.
The whole way upward, the roots he'd grown from the holes made in the streets caught him and continued onward, spiraling up the outside of the building like his own personal wooden road. He had to slow his speed to stay grounded. Even so, he was fast.
He unsheathed his shortspears and ran the blade ends through the nests stuck to the windows.
SHLCK!
SHRIP!
Small Arachnoids with no lips and mouthes full of black razor sharp teeth hissed in a rage at him.
He continued onward, ripping more nests, climbing higher. As he moved, Gil's head burst from his back and spit green fireballs at them, knocking the growing horde of young spider monsters off the root path and down to ….. the metaphorical sharks circling the perimeter.
[+80 EXP]
[+65 EXP]
[+70 EXP]
[+40 EXP]
[+40 EXP]
The ones Gil missed were cleaned up by Ashe and the others spewing from Claude's skin like liquid shadows until he was a tornado of green violence spiraling up the skyscraper in a symphony of roars and flesh tearing.
[+50 EXP]
[+60 EXP]
Once he was seventy percent up the building, a number of things began attracting him inside.
He jumped off the root railway he'd crafted and shoulder bashed himself through a window, landing with a roll into a battlefield. Arachnoids of many forms and variations fought armored Lizardmen in an old bloodied office space. Papers flew like bugs, catching the blood mist saturating the air until they lost their old white color. So much blood. Focus altering.
Claude began ripping his way through. His spears found a home no matter where he swung. But it was taking too long.
He jumped, accidentally bursting through the ceiling and landing on the next floor up.
In less than seconds he recognized what he stood between.
A lizardman over eight feet tall with gils, heavy armor and a barbed tail that swayed through the room like a separate entity. His dark blue and white scales reminded Claude of an Orca.
On the other side of him an Arachnoid faced off. Overly human in appearance— never a good sign. His carapace skin was dark purple and spiky along his skinny frame. The smells of poison wafting from them both made his nose hairs melt.
Two bosses. Facing off as their underlings battled a floor below.
"HSS—"
Claude threw his spears into its eyes and front kicked the armored Lizardman straight out of the back window.
The Arachnoid Boss recognized a mismatch and leapt straight upwards on spring loaded legs. Claude's Prey Drive pulled him after the creature. Thank the gods for Gold Rank's Responsive Aura's because his health would've taken a serious hit as they ripped through three floors before Claude caught the Arachnoid by the legs.
With their increased weight they fell fast. Claude flipped, building momentum to slam the spider monster even harder into the ground back on the floor they met on.
BOOM!
The windows on the floor shattered and the Arachnoid fell through the floor where it broke. Claude's grip locked like a Wolfs jaws. He pulled the creature back up and it reached upward, slamming its barbed fist into his face.
CRACK!
[95% HP Remaining]
The Arachnoid had escaped his grip.
Claude responded, reaching out to grab its mouthless face full of venomous teeth. In a burst of transformative steam and glowing muscle his forearms and fingers exploded with mass.
He squeezed and crushed its armored jaw.
CRSH!
The Boss stumbled backward, grabbing at the black ichor gushing from its face. Heading straight for the window he'd tossed the other boss out of. It's long wiry hair blew in the wind like overgrown tarantula fur.
Before it could fall backward, a flaming green chain wrapped around its thin jagged ribbed midsection.
Claude yanked the creature back to him as he stepped into the pull and served an uppercut to its mouthless face hard enough to break its spine. He followed through with the punch, hammering his fist full of seeds further into its face until his arm was raised towards the ceiling.
With his Natural Vision, lessened do to the lack of nature, he was fighting with his other senses. Focusing on them more. He could hear the hundreds of others on the upper floors. He could feel the impacts of their blows on his eardrums. The tangy undertone in the smells of their blood. Made his skin tingle. Magic. Stronger as the floors went higher. He didn't have time. But he had nature.
Gil's head emerged from his chest and spit a fireball of natural flame into his fist from beneath the dead Boss.
The green light was like a star inside the dark building.
A star that heralded the emergence of a flash forest.
The bosses head exploded.
FWWWSSHH!
[+400 EXP]
Like a bomb, windows shattered and walls crumbled as wooden spikes, flowers, bushes and trees ripped through the floors in a twisting tumultuous outburst of life. Beads of sweat dripped from between the cracks of his glowing two tone scales as he manipulated the forestry to snake through the whole building, giving him a full picture. Providing light to his unwelcome darkness.
After a few seconds, the forestry slowed to a stop. Sprouting from the rooftops like a crown of blood wood.
Claude dropped his hands. The arachnoids headless body hung from the roots spiraling through its corpse like a hideous tree ornament.
It was significantly quieter save for the death rasps of the other monsters above being ground to paste. They were in the way.
He needed to keep moving.
He turned from the boss, and bolted up the stairs at the end of the room. Hopping the first row to land on the wall and jump up the next flight behind him.
Frosty trotted up the stairs after him, blood covered his fur like water. A whole Lizardman head hung from one of his tusked fangs.
His tail wagged as they faced a door at the end of the room. Behind all the forestry and dead monsters.
Claude climbed through until he faced the door.
Familiar smells. Blood, dying. Poison. Intense fear. Overwhelming. A specific brand of fear unlike anyone else. One who held true terror within them. Familiar inside. The reason he stayed focused. As if fate was rewarding him.
He pulled open the door, accidentally ripping it off its hinges.
Warren sat on one knee in the darkness, one eye closed the other focused and beaming like a Hawk. His bow raised and a bloody dagger held between his teeth.
Small dead arachnoids surrounded him and the bleeding woman behind him. She was covered in bite marks and tears. Sleeping….. dying.
Somehow…. Warren was awake.
Reason slipped into his intense glare that almost made him unrecognizable.
"Dude….. fuck spiders."
