1 A Slayer Is Born (Prologue)

The voice boomed me awake. The words were deep and heavy and despite sounding so simple, they also sounded complex and hard to comprehend. Like some sort of mysticism that was being sprouted.

[They are rage. Brutal. Without mercy. But you...you will be something worse. Rip and tear until it is done, Slayer.]

My eyes snapped open and I saw the sun crashing down upon me, it's rays of light and heat feeling worse than I remembered. So worse that I saw smoke rising off of my body.

I was burning.

Or more specifically, my clothes were. I hurried threw the clothes that were quickly catching on fire off of myself before scrambling toward the nearest bit of shade I could find. When I was under what looked like a tree made of flesh and bone, I realized that the surroundings were covered in blood and gore. Floors made of hardened and mummified flesh and skin. Rocks made of teeth and bones with veins of solidified blood running across the edge of them.

But I felt nothing. The words repeated themselves.

[Rip and tear until it is done, Slayer.]

I felt the words do something to my head. Changing it. Morphing and twisting it.

I slammed a fist to the ground as my heart beat picked up and adrenaline started to rush through my system. I sucked in all the hot, humid air I could before I fell backward as the words repeated themselves.

[Rip and tear until it is done, Slayer.]

They were getting louder and so was my heart beat. My muscles spasmed and my bones felt like they had ants crawling across them. More and more words were sprouted into my head and I felt like molten metal and horrible acid were being dumped into my bloodstream. I convulsed left and right as I heard a distinctive crack that drowned out even the voice screaming 'Rip and tear' inside my head.

A cacophony of snaps echoed from my bones and I screamed out in pain as something that appeared to be a red mist was floating up from my body and then diving back into it, carving...something into my body.

It continued. This cycle of pain and body horror. The screaming inside my head. The words that only seemed to make whatever I was experiencing ever more invasive. It just kept up.

More and more and more and more.

Until I couldn't think. Until I couldn't feel anything other than pain and rage and hatred.

The pain didn't stop. Nor did the changes. But something inside of me did. Like something deep, deep inside of me just clicked and snapped into place. I shot up in a remarkable feat of gymnastic ability, throwing myself up and onto my feet.

I saw the intense changes in my musculature. In my skin. My bones. But none of that matter when I looked up and saw it.

An Imp. It appeared to be about the same size and overall body shape and have similar movements as an adult human, although it was crouched to an unnatural degree - like an ape - and it kept it's head low and tucked toward it's chest like it was used to having to avoid attacks or damage, which made it appear shorter than it actually was.

It's skin was mainly a reddish orange but there was also parts of purple skin and flesh. Mainly toward the ends of it's limbs and it's abdomen.

The orange parts of it's body seemed to be armor and the purple was it's flesh's actual color.

But such deductions were cleared from my mind when I saw the Imp. Rage overflowed even more than it already was and I gave a roar of primeval origination and charged at the thing before I'd even realized it was throwing a fireball at me.

Oddly enough, the red sun in the sky no longer burnt my skin. In fact, it felt like it was feeding me with energy.

The fireball hit me center mass and I felt the air getting knocked from me as the fireball exploded and roared across me, blocking my vision for a second. Yet that didn't stop me and I burst through the explosion, my mind too focused on trying to kill the Imp in front of me to realize that I'd just survives something no other human should have.

Just as I saw the Imp and was about to bash it's head in with my now bigger fists, it disappeared leaving behind a puff of smoke and the smell of brimstone.

And just as I was calming down by the fact it wasn't here, it reappeared to the side of me.

It swung it's clawed hand at my side and with instincts and technique I didn't know I had, I sidestepped the swipe and sent a crushing right straight right at the Imp's temple effectively knocking it off balance and causing it to take a few steps to steady itself.

The Imp seemed confused. But then it was overridden by the same rage I was feeling and screeched at me before throwing another fireball at me.

Despite the anger and bloodlust blinding me, I decided against having my vision taken away from me and with yet another display of reflexes I was sure I didn't have before, I tilted my torso backward just enough to let the burning hot ball of fire fly past me. Not letting the wonder at my reflexes stop me, I charged at the Imp, issuing another roar of anger as I clobbered my enclosed hand down on it's head in a crude display of brute force.

It's knees buckled slightly under the fist hit, an odd screech coming from it's mouth - a pained one - and the Imp's legs gave out under the second caveman hit.

Following the Imp to the ground, I straddled it's torso and brought back a fist.

*Thud*

And I did it again.

*Slam!*

And once again. But this time I swung down even harder, pushing my muscles to whatever their new limits were.

*Crack!*

If the Imp had had a nose, it would've currently been broken and pushed into the creatures face. But it did had bone, as I felt it cracking and giving way under my hits.

As I continued to slam away, I found that my hits were getting heavier, faster and sharper. Hitting with so much momentum that the Imp had already stopped screeching and reacting to the pain my fists' caused. It was dead. But I didn't stop. Fist after fist, each one harder and quicker than the last, until the Imp's head cracked open like an egg and made a horrid mixture of blood, bone, skin and brain.

Yet I felt no disgust. Just like when I saw the hellish landscape earlier. But instead of just anger, this time I felt elation. A sense of a duty completed.

I heard a puff a smoke from the side of me and I rolled out of the way, grabbing the now dead Imp's arm as I moved.

Looking to where I heard the sound, I saw another Imp.

Unbeknownst to me, I smiled a wide and savage smile as I charged at the image, one of it's dead and headless brethren dragging behind me by it's arm. Lifting the dead Imp up, I swung it down like some sort of club, hitting the Imp in front of me before it could get it's fireball off and slamming it into the ground under the corpse's weight and momentum, and my own striking power.

Throwing the broken and ragged corpse to the side, I lifted my foot up into the air and slammed down on the still-alive Imp's head.

A satisfying crunch and squishing sound echoed from underneath my foot.

But all I did was take a step forward, feeling my bones cracking and my muscles moving as I moved forward. The elation was euphoric and I could only reason that it came after I killed an Imp because that was my duty.

To kill not just Imps...but also Demons. I can feel them. They must be killed.

...Rip and tear until it's done.