Strange as it was for Kola that the hands she currently had were suddenly different from the hands with which she had lived her life, they were reassuring. Going by the way she had already cut herself with them, and the ease with which she had done so (simply by clenching her hands), it was likely that they would improve her established method of fighting from 'viable against anything she could get her hands around' to 'viable against anything she could get her hands through'.

Though it was rather concerning that her body was changing against her will, and even more so that the best thing she had ever found was almost certainly the cause of it.

"Argh! And now I am getting a headache. Great!"

Just when her breathing had stopped hurting too.

Any further rumination on her condition was abruptly halted by a wet thump, as a sostroki fell from the sky. It lightly cratered the slope, sending gravel fragments flying like a particularly unimpressive and antiquated fragmentation grenade.

Diving down after it was a four-limbed orange balloon. It shot towards the ground, and Kola predicted a second impact in the near future. That prediction failed to come to pass as the creature halted immediately above the tiny crater, hovering in the air and showing no sign of the sudden loss of momentum having caused any harm. From there it inserted its speartips into the corpse, and hummed as said corpse slowly liquified and was absorbed into the speartips.

Not only was Kola sure that the balloon was the same one that had stolen her new friend (and happened to be now eating said friend), its humming aggravated her headache. Together, these factors led to Kola's decision to kill it… and maybe eat it. Just maybe! A really really good meal wasn't worth becoming a monster.

Trying to sneak up on a creature without eyes, ears, or any other kind of visible sensory organs was an interesting challenge. It was made even more interesting by the discovery that Kola's feet had also changed. Her toes had sharpened in a manner similar to her fingers, except they were pale pink instead of green and had gained an extra half of their length instead of replacing a section of flesh. Additionally, the gravel embedded in her feet had… fused to her skin, muscle, and (confirmed by giving the ground a few experimental stomps) bone. She wondered if the fragments embedded in other places had done the same, but decided a proper examination of herself could wait after until killing the balloon.

The gravel blades embedded in her feet actually made it easier for Kola to walk. She found that by angling her feet so only the blades or her claws touched the ground, she could run without worrying about tearing her feet open on the gravel. Moving that fast still caused small cuts from the air, unfortunately. That was how she learned that she bled black. This piece of new information was pushed aside for now.

- - - - - - -

The ketrokoa imp watched through its barbs (which functioned as eyes, weapons, mouths, noses, and tongues all in one) as its prey approached. The fact that it would be able to eat more than expected so quickly sent a feeling of dim satisfaction throughout its body, though it would have preferred this to happen just after it had finished eating.

The only outward response it showed was to raise one tentacle, causing several small cuts to be opened along the length of the limb, to allow a better view of the advancing prey. Its prey moved with an unwieldy jump-skipping run down from the higher slope. The cuts slowly, but visibly, began to regenerate.

The imp paid little attention to either its prey or regenerating skin other than tracking the progress of both, and continued eating. While it enjoyed the act of chewing, completely uninterested in the taste, it luxuriated in the feeling of strength as the part of its body it didn't really understand grew denser.

The barb not occupied with eating took on the duty of observing any changes along with watching the prey. Satisfaction emanated once again as fibres sprouted from its skin, marking the beginning of a pelt that would protect it once fully grown. That would certainly help against the painful air.

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With its prey finally reaching it, the ketrokoa stopped eating and raised its tentacles at a creature it now realised was twice the size of its main body. Its barbs struck at the prey's torso. Utilising a hunting technique it had literally been spawned knowing, the imp withdrew its barbs before stabbing at its prey, again and again. Once it had been sufficiently weakened, the ketrokoa would take it into the sky and splatter it against the ground.

Irritation bloomed as only the first few strikes hit, after which the prey grasped one tentacle and used it as a shield to block the rest. While it did so, its claws wriggled their way inside the tentacle's flesh.

The ketrokoa allowed the sacs just underneath its skin to completely fill with liquid and, just as completely, felt the invisible weights that pulled it down fall from it. Now unburdened from gravity, it shot behind its prey and began stabbing it in the back. Its prey spun around, trying to shield itself once more with the captive limb. Yet it was too slow, and thus for the imp outmanoeuvring the soon to be meal was easily done.

Satisfaction warred with irritation as, while victory was guaranteed, moving in this land randomly caused injuries, its new fur not enough to protect it. It always forgot about this, not being a problem where it spawned. These thoughts brought with them blurred memories of a vast orange sky.

It focused all its mental faculties on remembering the route home, temporarily forgetting about the tasty prey.

- - - - - - -

For a moment, the ketrokoa stopped moving. Kola took advantage of this and pulled it towards her. Releasing one hand's grip on the tentacle, she thrust it into the main body.

Her hand pierced through the short pink fur it had suddenly grown, past some kind of liquid-filled organ, and into muscle denser than that of the sostroki. From the inside she clawed at its flesh, scrabbling to do as much damage as she could.

This had to end as quickly as possible, her wounds were too severe, and she was becoming tired unusually fast. As if to prove it didn't care about her needs, the ketrokoa went back to stabbing her with its three free tentacles. The fourth came dangerously close to escaping her grasp with only one hand to hold it.

Breathing quickly in short bursts, Kola raised one leg up to the captured tentacle, impaling it with the blades on her foot. Ignoring how easy it was for the balloon to stab her in this awkward position, she used her foot to hold it while tearing at the tentacle. Soon it was severed, and abandoned to fall to the ground.

Blinking away the black spots, she turned all her attention to the main body. Kola tore and ripped at its flesh with her claws. In desperation, she even began biting it as her headache grew worse. Mind filled with throbbing pain and unable to think, she turned to the acclaimed technique of the sostroki: aimless flailing.

- - - - - - -

There they fought. One eternally certain of victory, literally unable to imagine defeat, the other dying more of oxygen deprivation than the holes that now riddled her body. The changes to Kola's form were incomplete. Her black blood no longer carried oxygen, intended for creatures that didn't need it. Only the changes kept her alive, having reduced that need, even as they killed her.

The black blood she lost didn't matter, meant to taint and poison. Neither did the heart pierced by the ketrokoa's barb, a mere relic from her old body without oxygen in her veins. The stomach, almost torn apart? Her food no longer even reached it. Only her brain, still the centre of her consciousness, mattered. A human brain that needed something the rest of her body couldn't circulate.

So who was winning? Both and neither. The once-human and the ketrokoa were both dying. One because of an incomplete change, the other because it was running out of body.

Kola had taken wounds that would be the end of any human. Her spine was severed and every organ in her torso had been punctured. But what she was becoming didn't need bone to move. Orders that sluggishly trundled through muscle and tendon, halting at a catastrophic break in her musculoskeletal system, shot through the other part of her body. A part that was not new to her, but had never truly been a part of her physical form. Well it was now, and if it hadn't been for that one organ she still had to placate…

The ketrokoa knew some of this, in a way. Its instinctual method of fighting was designed around it, but it required flight. Continuously stabbing any other denizen of this plane would only work if the stabber was significantly more powerful than the stabbed. So why didn't it fly Kola up and drop her, like it had done to the sostroki? It couldn't. Not only was it barely strong enough to lift her, the organ that allowed its particular brand of flight was damaged.

While the imp repeatedly stabbed Kola, she was ripping the flesh from its body. Once more then half of its flesh was on the ground, not attached? Its limbs went limp and it hovered there. Dead, with the hypoxic woman soon to follow.