Chapter 5: A Man Becomes A Monster

For a moment longer, Erik allowed himself to dwell on the fight. The battle had been different from what he’d expected. The creature had been far more unskilled than he’d thought it would be—but then Derek’s cruelty in itself had always been unrefined, lacking the edge needed to turn it into true evil, so Erik supposed he shouldn’t have expected the thing portraying itself as a caricature of his nemesis to be skilled in violence any more than Derek himself had been outside his natural propensity for it—and he’d seen no indication of a health bar or anything remotely resembling damage indicators.

The System might have adopted a lot of mechanics from RPGs and games like them, but this is still very real. Hmmm…though perhaps the reason there weren’t any health bars is because I didn’t think to use Inspect on the creature in the heat of the moment, Erik reflected, making an effort to keep his breathing even and controlled after his exertion. He quickly dismissed these idle thoughts, once more sinking back into the predatory focus and instincts of Savage Grace. It wasn’t until he felt the razor-sharp clarity return to his mind and senses that he realized he’d allowed the ability to fade into the background. Reactivating it only took a thought and felt as natural as moving a limb and he felt grateful for the focus it seemed to give him.

Focusing on the pervading darkness at the edge of the eerily-lit room, Erik scanned the shadows for any sign of movement. He made sure to pay more attention to his peripheral vision and his instincts however because he was relatively sure their first strike would not be a direct one. “I’ve already laid to rest one of my fears. Why don’t the rest of you miserable bastards stop hiding so I can beat the shit out of the rest of you,” Erik called out tauntingly.

Erik didn’t see any movement in the darkness, but he felt a wave of fear emanate from it, trying to smother his will and force him back into the unthinking terror from before. Baring his teeth, he repelled it with an effort of will, but the sudden distraction left him open and the things still hiding in the shadows took the opportunity to strike. Sensing movement at the edge of his vision Erik reacted on instinct, dodging to the side, but he still felt the edge of the creature’s blade draw a searing line of pain across the side of his torso, in a spot where there was only leather to stop a blade.

The pain was oddly muted—it was no sharper than he’d have imagined getting cut would feel, but somehow it seemed as if the sensation was being dulled to a manageable level. It faded after a moment, leaving him very aware that he had been injured but not incapacitated by the pain. The wound throbbed like it was echoing its creation, shallow but still significant, as Erik held his hands up, and settled into a defensive stance. It appeared his Stoneskin was already proving its worth, protecting him from taking deeper wounds, and there was likely some System mechanic in place to dull the pain of his wounds until they were ever-present but still manageable.

“If you really want to die so badly you cock-sucking tub of lard,” the darkling shadow of Viktor Lagunov said as it stepped from the shadows, clutching a crude wooden shield in one hand and a long sword in the other. Its broad-shouldered form was of a comparable size to Erik’s own stature, though like the real Viktor, this one appeared to be an inch taller than him and more than a hundred pounds lighter.

It had been some time since he’d thought to compare himself to anyone, physically or otherwise, and it was only as he was staring down this thing that so resembled his chief tormentor’s personal thug and bully that Erik truly realized how far he’d come. Before, Erik had been morbidly obese. He’d not carried any of his four hundred and fifty-three pounds gracefully, and through all the humiliation he’d suffered, his anger had always been stifled by the literal weight of his own impotency in the face of that knowledge. Viktor came from a Russian family and he had always been a large, brutish person. When he’d gotten into high school, he’d been snapped up by the football team as a Linebacker, and they’d further honed his bulk and aggression.

Once, Erik had found him intimidating. But now, he realized the breadth of his own shoulders dwarfed Viktor’s and it made the newly awoken Beast beneath his skin writhe in satisfaction at their physical superiority. Keeping part of his attention on this new threat, Erik patiently awaited the appearance of the rest of his old tormentors, knowing with the confirmation provided by the appearance of Viktor the rest of them wouldn’t be far behind.

“Then we’d be happy to oblige you,” the shade of Selena Carlisle continued as it emerged from the darkness on Erik’s right, holding a pitted dagger in each hand, one of which was stained red by Erik’s blood. Half its face was torn away, turning Selena’s usual stunning beauty into a sharp contrast between clean, unbroken skin and bloody, glistening bone. Her once-voluptuous body was desiccated, the flesh mottled with grievous rents and patches of shadow, a poisonous beauty turned to a venomous horror.

There was a time when Erik had believed physical beauty to mean perfection and kindness, as so many naively percieved it to be. Selena had been the first to disabuse him of that notion and taught Erik that beauty was all too often an insidious poison—drink in too much, and it would choke the kindness from those who possessed it just as it choked the sense from those who beheld it.

“After all, what kind of monsters would we be if we left our old friend alone in the dark,” the final creature said as it stepped from the shadows. It wore the face of James Bannister and wielded a crude wooden staff. Unlike its companions, this creature wore a black robe with the hood down and its face appeared to be the most intact of the three. It smirked at him from where it stood at the edge of the light, positioned between and slightly behind its fellows. The positioning starkly reminded Erik of the real James, who had stood behind the likes of Selena and Viktor as they had tormented him, providing them with the details necessary to make their cruelties truly hurt Erik.

Erik had believed James and himself to be good friends. Truth be told, James had been his only friend, or so Erik had naively thought. Desperate to connect with someone, he’d revealed things of himself that he’d never told anyone, not even his father. After that grave mistake, James had shown his true colors and shared Erik’s most closely-kept secrets with his tormentors, giving them new ammunition to assault him with.

The stark reminders of the people these creatures were pretending to be was enough to make Erik’s blood boil and he felt some of the predatory calm of Savage Grace fall away, replaced in part by a savage and seething rage. Erik had always been terrified of losing control of himself, of letting his hunger or his anger get the best of him, but he was sorely tempted to give in to the Beast and let its rage rule his actions. The only thing holding him back was the knowledge that a single mistake against these creatures could cost him his life. The idea of dying at the hands of anything wearing the faces of Selena, Viktor, or James revolted him enough that he shoved the anger away, once more taking up the full murderous calm of his ability and the Beast.

“I spent most of my life being tormented by the people whose faces you wear,” Erik said, gesturing at them and the corpse of their comrade. “Derek took perverse pleasure in tormenting others. It was his cruelty that started it all, of course, but you fell in line like dogs at his beck and call. None of you are innocent.”

Erik’s eyes moved to the bloody and gruesome but unmistakably voluptuous figure mirroring Selena’s form. “You tormented me endlessly about my appearance and weight. You may not have acted on your cruelty in the same way Derek did, but you used your words to prod and provoke both him and his minions. The insults and vile rumors you circulated about me ensured that anyone who might have been willing to look past my appearance avoided me like the plague for fear of you deciding to make their lives hell too.”

Erik gestured to Viktor’s broad figure next, once more recounting its crimes against him. “You were Derek’s right hand, his personal thug, constantly belittling or humiliating me, shoving or tripping me, stealing my things. When Derek wasn’t there to torment me himself, you made sure to give me a beating to remind me that no matter what I did, I would always be a weak, fat target for your animosity,” Erik seethed, clenching his fists.

Erik turned to the figure hiding behind all the rest, the one wearing the face of James. “And you…you pretended to be my friend and then stabbed me in the back, selling me out to Derek and Selena. After you told them about me, my life became a living hell. I’m going to enjoy killing you most of all, though I suppose I should thank you,” Erik said bitterly. “It was the anger and humiliation brought on by your betrayal that gave me the will I needed to change myself. Without you, I’d still be that useless tub of lard, cowering in fear from his own shadow.”

Showing the creatures his teeth, Erik leaned forward. “Funny enough, but I haven’t actually lost a single pound. Turns out my eating disorder is just as effective for helping me maintain all the muscle I managed to put on when I took up powerlifting to get in shape. Now I get to put it to good use taking you assholes apart. Piece. By. Bloody. Piece,” Erik grit out between his clenched teeth, practically snarling the words.

Without further warning, Erik recalled the same feeling from before when he’d fought Derek and propelled himself forward in a burst of unnatural speed, triggering his skill. Using the full force of his charge, Erik twisted his torso and shoulder-checked the creature wearing Viktor Lagunov’s face. It managed to take the brunt of the blow on its shield, but the impact made it stumble back, off-balance. Capitalizing on this, Erik stepped forward and hammered his fist into its face, pouring every ounce of his animosity for Viktor into the blow. The creature reeled from the solid blow, its face now even more of a bloody mess thanks to its broken nose, but Erik was unable to pursue it and continue his assault—the creature that looked like Selena was faster than the others and had already closed the distance between them.

Erik knew he couldn’t allow them to flank him and it was unlikely that he’d be able to finish off the one he’d struck before the other bled him out. As it tried to recover and reposition its shield, the creature he’d attacked made a wild retaliatory swing which he back-stepped, yielding ground instead of pressing his attack. Flicking his eyes to the one wielding the staff that he suspected was a mage of some sort, Erik’s eyes widened as he saw a blue arc of electricity arc across its fingers, which were pointed in his direction.

Acting without conscious thought and solely based on the shadows of knowledge imprinted into his mind by his Proficiency, Erik raised his arms in a cross-guard in front of him. As if he’d done it a thousand times before, Erik cast his will from him like a physical force, projecting it through his body and into the air barely an inch away from his crossed forearms. In the same unconscious way, Erik reached out to what his Proficiency’s teachings called his ‘Mantle’. Like a metaphysical cloak, this Mantle—short for Mantle of Power—was an aura of mana his subconscious mind held in his proximity and it was the sum of all the mana available to him to use magic.

His intelligence not only determined his level of control in drawing mana from his Mantle, it also increased his mind’s ability to hold mana in it, thereby increasing the capacity of his Mana pool. Acting purely on wrote knowledge, Erik reached out to his Mantle and tried to feed its power into the shape of his will. Despite his mind’s clumsy grasp, his instinctive reaction seemed strong enough to force the Mana into the shape he’d carved from memory into the air before him, giving it palpable form and substance. The air in front of his arms seemed to shimmer, churning and twisting as it thickened into a barrier, the edges lit by the almost-transparent light of Erik’s Mana.

A moment later, there was a small flash of light as a bolt of electricity arced off the mage’s outstretched hand and struck the barrier in front of Erik. Most of the bolt dissipated on the barrier but the rest of it phased through, and Erik grit his teeth in pain as the electricity arced through him in a single searing jolt. Retreating another few steps, Erik took the time to glance at his health bar in the periphery of his vision, quickly gauging how much damage he’d taken in relation to the loss of vitality he felt. He didn’t know how much damage the slash had done or how much he’d taken from the spell, but his health had been depleted by slightly less than a fifth of its total, reading 197/236.

As he watched, it ticked lower by one point, likely a result of the mild bleeding from the wound in his side. His Stamina, however, had taken a much greater hit. He’d already known using Executioner’s Mercy would cost him a chunk of Stamina, but he had to have been using another ability of some sort because his Stamina had declined by 97 points, leaving him at 203. Blocking the mage’s spell had cost him a fourth of his mana pool as well, so he would only be able to block another three times before its spells were hitting him full-force.

Assessing his level of physical exhaustion and the rate of his breathing, Erik judged that he should be more than capable of finishing off his opponents, but he would need to attack carefully to prevent them from taking advantage of any openings. This was real and if he died, he wouldn’t be coming back, so he couldn’t allow himself to give in to his darker urges and prolong this fight. He needed to kill them, and quickly.

Turning his full attention back to the fight, Erik was just in time to see the creature wielding the daggers come at him in a blur, swinging its knives at his mid-section in a wide, scything horizontal cut. Erik threw his arms up and to the side, trying to deflect the blades, but he was too slow. The creature twisted, its joints like quick-silver, and pulled its blades in close to its body for a moment before lunging at him with both blades extended like a spider’s fangs. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to block, with cold clarity Erik considered his next actions.

He was confident in his ability to handle the mage and the creature armed with sword and shield but this one was considerably faster than him, even with his reactions being boosted by Savage Grace. As he’d just seen, she could easily duck and weave past his defense and he had no real way to counter her speed, so his only choice was to get in close and grapple with her, using his superior weight and strength to take her out of the fight before she could become a serious problem.

With the Beast riding in the fore of his mind and guiding his actions, Erik felt a visceral wave of violent hunger shiver through him as he realized the creature had already made the mistake of closing the distance between them. He would need to let it stab him with no resistance or attempt to dodge in order to do it, but the creature already presented the perfect opportunity for him to finish it. Not allowing himself to dwell on the fierce and wild joy that the thought of killing the creature evoked in him, Erik braced to receive the blow, grunting in pain as it plunged both daggers into his abdomen. He felt the daggers penetrate his skin just above his navel, but fortunately the creature wasn’t able to drive more than three-quarters of the blades’ lengths into his body. The creature struggled for a moment, trying to push its weapons deeper into Erik’s body, but its strength was insufficient to overcome the resistance granted to his flesh by his Stoneskin ability.

Baring his teeth at the pain, Erik seized the opportunity and locked his hands on the creature’s slim shoulders, digging his fingers into its ravaged flesh. Selena’s face twisted from its snarling rictus, rapidly slipping into shock as Erik suddenly dropped straight back, using his grip on the creature and the momentum of his own fall to drag it with him. Ignoring the spike of pain as the daggers still embedded in his flesh shifted, Erik planted the heel of his right foot in the center of the creature’s lower mid-section. As his back met the ground, the entirety of the creature’s weight was held up in the air by his bent leg, and he continued with the motion of his fall, arching his lower half off the floor and converting his fall into a backwards roll.

As his legs arched up over his body, he thrust his right leg out in a full extension, throwing the body of the creature up and over his own head. As its body impacted the floor a scant distance away from him, Erik finished his roll, stopping with his body perfectly perched atop the creature’s torso. Using his knees to pin the creature’s arms to the ground, Erik then hammered his fists into its face multiple times in rapid succession, smoothly transitioning from left to right handed strikes and placing the full force of his weight behind each blow. After the fourth blow, Erik felt the bone of the creature’s face give slightly beneath his fist and he realized both his hands were dripping blood, but he didn’t stop, unleashing his fury on the creature until his presence of mind forced his attention back to the creature’s fellows, realizing either of them could be closing the distance to finish him while he was distracted.

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Looking down at the creature he’d brutalized one last time, Erik saw that nothing remained of Selena Carlisle’s visage. He had shattered the creature’s dark rendition of her poisonous beauty, leaving nothing remaining of its face except bloodied shards of bone and glistening, bloody meat. His breath heaved in his chest and he could hear his heart pounding in his chest as he rose from her corpse, his gaze fixed on the two creatures remaining. They both stood stock still, staring at him, their eyes glowing sinisterly back at him. Neither of them had taken the opportunity to prepare to attack him and for a moment Erik wondered why.

But then something clicked in his mind, and he saw it. The tension of their bodies, the flickering glances they exchanged, the way they stared at him…Erik realized they were afraid of him, and though part of him felt horrified at the realization of his own darkest fears, another part of him felt a deep exultation. This is what he’d been terrified of his entire life and yet it felt so right, like a grand dream finally realized.

He’d spent years being tormented by the people whose faces these creatures wore and finally having the power to fight back, to show them the depths of the rage and misery they’d driven him into, it was exhilarating. Finally, he was in a position to make them reap the consequences of what they’d sown, just as he’d imagined doing through all the years of abject cruelty, pointed barbs, vile ‘pranks’, and horrendous rumors. Pushing down the part of himself that cried out that what he was doing was wrong, that what he felt made him no different than the people who’d tormented him, Erik stepped away from the creature’s corpse.

“Tell me, are you scared?” Erik mocked, his expression cold.

The creatures’ forms seemed to shiver at his words and Erik heard sinister words whispered in the darkness but never saw their lips move to form those words.

Killer, Derek’s corpse seemed to whisper. Erik’s gaze flickered to his corpse, reaffirming in the still blankness of the creature’s features that it was truly dead.

Erik felt their tendrils of fear try to anchor themselves in his mind a final time, trying to capitalize on the realization of his true fear, but with the Beast flooding his mind with its savage desires, brushing those tendrils away took no effort.

Erik advanced on the creatures, his motions sinuous and his eyes alight with predatory hostility. “No. You can’t make me afraid anymore.”

Butcher, Selene’s voice echoed from the other creature’s ravaged corpse. Its face seemed to call out to the guilt still residing in the depths of his mind, trying to sink its claws into him.

“I am what you have made me, and I refuse to keep hiding from that. I’ve run from it for so long, but I’ve learned that the only way to control it is to embrace it.” Erik growled, ignoring the cackling of the voices. The guilt and misgivings he had about surrendering to the desires of his id tried to pull his focus away, to overpower the merciless wrath and unforgiving hunger which composed the Beast, but he refused to allow it. He’d spent a lifetime allowing those fears to rule him and it had brought him nothing but misery. He was done running from the darkness hiding beneath his skin. Now, its fangs and claws would become his own, and his enemies would learn that there was only death awaiting them in the cold darkness of his wrath.

You murdered us, Erik, Viktor’s disembodied voice joined in, his thuggish-face staring back at him silently from one of the remaining creatures.

“Murdered you? No, I gave you what you deserved,” Erik snarled, his steps not faltering, his gaze focusing once more on his next victims.

You’re just like us now…a monster, James’ Bannister’s voice hissed from the darkness.

Erik laughed, his elongated canines catching the light as he threw back his head. “You think that frightens me? I spent years being tortured by you pricks because I was too weak to fight back but now…now I have the power and strength necessary to make sure people like you can never hurt anyone again. If that costs me my humanity, then so be it. It’s a price I’m more than willing to pay.”

Gripping the handles of the daggers still lodged in his flesh, Erik’s face twisted into a snarl from the burning pain as he pulled them out. Blood spurted from the wounds as he did, and Erik felt an accompanying tick of his Health disappear. After a moment, the gut-twisting spikes of agony seemed to dim just like his other wound, sinking to the level of background noise. Panting, he held the two pitted blades up to the light for a moment, his blood on the blades glistening a red-black in the eerie blue light of the torches illuminating the room.

Finally fighting past its fear, the creature with the staff pointed it at Erik and began muttering a spell, a ripple of energy surrounding its staff. Erik knew he could simply block the spell, but he had another solution, one literally at hand. Hefting one of the knives, he inexpertly threw it at the mage, not expecting it to do any real harm but hoping it would be enough to distract it from the spell it was attempting to cast. The knife spun end-over-end and hit the creature hilt-first in the chest. Though it didn’t penetrate, Erik was mildly surprised that he’d managed to hit his target at all and he was even more thankful as the mage seemed to stumble over one of the words of its spell, causing the spell to fail. There was a crackle and a small flash as the energy around the mage’s staff as the spell rebounded, causing the caster to clutch its head in pain.

With the caster temporarily distracted and out of the way, Erik focused his attention on the other creature. Knowing he would need to get around its shield in order to kill it, Erik charged at the creature. Probably assuming he was going to shoulder-check it with his greater mass like last time, it hunkered down behind its shield and set its feet to brace itself. At the last moment before impact, Erik triggered his unknown skill and accelerated forward in a blur. However, rather than charging directly at the creature, he twisted and juked past its side. The creature’s surprise slowed its reaction and it began to turn but it was already too late.

Erik planted his foot, turning and then thrusting the dagger still clutched in his hand directly into the creature’s thigh while it was still attempting to turn its shield to face him. Erik jerked away, back-stepping to dodge the retaliatory horizontal slash of its sword. The creature followed him, shuffling forward and delivering an over-head slash. Taking a half-step forward into the swing of the blade, Erik raised his hands up and caught the blade on his gauntlets. The clumsy, unskilled way the creature held its shield proved to be a liability as when it swung its sword the second time, its guard move and left its body undefended, so Erik took advantage of the opening and delivered a front-kick to the creature’s torso at the same time he blocked its sword.

The creature stumbled back, managing to keep its feet and recover but when it attempted to take a step towards Erik, the leg he’d managed to land the dagger in gave out, causing the creature to fall to its knees. Like a predator smelling blood, Erik rushed in and drilled a punch into the creature’s face. When its head rocked back from the blow, Erik grabbed the creature’s shield in both hands and tore it out of the creature’s grip. Tossing it away, Erik was forced to step aside as the creature wildly swung its blade at him, all coordination gone in the wake of its injury. When he moved to dodge the second swing, Erik twisted his body to the side, out of the path of the blade, and stepped in closer.

As the creature’s sword arced past harmlessly, Erik grabbed the wrist of the arm holding the sword and pulled the creature’s arm out to full extension. With his other hand, he delivered a powerful palm-strike to the creature’s elbow joint. Timing it almost perfectly, the moment his palm impacted the creature’s elbow, Erik applied as much pressure as he could against the elbow joint by violently pulling the creature’s arm toward him with the hand gripping its wrist. With the force exerted on the arm bringing its elbow joint to the point of over-extension, Erik’s blow forced the fulcrum of the creature’s elbow to bend in the opposite direction. With a sickening snap, the creature’s elbow broke, and it screamed in pain.

Until now, Erik had been given little to no verification that these creatures truly felt pain. The creature’s scream of agony was like a balm applied directly to his brain, soothing the vicious hunger and merciless wrath crashing through his mind. “Like music to my fucking ears,” Erik grinned. Not allowing himself the satisfaction of savoring the sound, Erik stepped in close and grabbed the creature’s head with one hand. Before it could overcome the shock of its pain, he arched its head back to expose its throat and then delivered a punishing blow to its trachea, the pointed ridge of his gauntlets collapsing its airway. Clawing at its own throat in panic with its one good arm, the creature slowly asphyxiated, unable to draw so much as a single breath into its starving lungs.

The light in the creature’s eyes eventually went out, its face going slack as it slumped to the floor, dead at last. Erik pictured the moment in his head, but he had already turned his attention away, focusing on the final target of his life-long ire. As he turned, he raised his arms and once more thrust his will forth from his mind to form a shield to block the spell. His will responded readily enough, but his Mana, the energy turning his will from a mere construct into a reality, was not nearly as responsive. When he’d blocked the first spell, it had been an act of instinct, an awakening of ingrained memory separate from his conscious mind. Now that he was attempting to do the same thing, but with conscious effort, his lack of control became more evident, his mind’s grasp on his Mana clumsy and slow.

However, Erik knew he needed to overcome that lack if he was going to succeed here. With a surge of desperation and will driven by the predatory clarity of Savage Grace, Erik dragged out a draught of power from his Mantle, forcing it to fill the shape of his will. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to finish conjuring the barrier into existence before the mage launched its spell at him.

A fireball burst from the tip of the mage’s staff, streaking through the short distance between them with unerring accuracy and then exploding in a blazing bloom of red-orange flame against his partially-formed shield. A sharp pain spiked through Erik’s brain as the power of the explosion shattered his shoddy shield, forcing him to stumble back. Despite the shield breaking and not having been fully formed, it still blocked a significant amount of damage from the spell and Erik had still suffered only a fraction of the damage he might otherwise, leaving him with moderate burns over a good portion of his arms and legs but still alive.

Like the sharp line of pain drawn across the side of his torso, the aching spikes impressed into his abdomen, and the lingering discomfort and tension from the electrical discharge, the charred and seared flesh left behind a throbbing echo. However, now his wounds had begun to pile-up and Erik knew he couldn’t afford to take another hit like that. Rather giving in to the distraction of checking his numbers, Erik gauged his remaining health and guessed he was probably somewhere in the range of 100 to 110 Health left.

The wound to his abdomen, the bleeding it caused, and the damage of the fireball he’d only partially blocked had definitely done a number on his health. His Stamina, likewise, felt more diminished than his last check—he’d used his as-yet unnamed ability once more, and finishing the other two had cost him a good bit of Stamina. His breathing was harsher, and he could feel his heart beating faster from the exertion, the edges of exhaustion beginning to set in. By feel, he had a little over a third of his total Stamina left. As for his Mana…the backlash of having his not-fully-formed shield broken had cost him in addition to the initial cost of using it in the first place. He now had enough left to block one more spell but likely not enough to block a second.

Despite his condition, Erik felt confident he would be walking out of this room alive. The cold, predatory certainty coursing through his mind knew that the last creature was easy prey, and it urged him to finish the creature, to bring his vengeance full-circle. Erik felt a profound satisfaction at the thought and he met the creature’s luminescent orbs with his own. Erik knew what the creature probably saw when it looked in his eyes—hatred, rage, a dark and bloodthirsty hunger, all coalescing into a terrible and ivory-fanged Beast that looked out through Erik’s eyes—and in turn, he saw the fear in the creature’s eyes deepen as it realized the extent of what drove him. For a moment, Erik thought it might give up and let him simply kill it. But that was not a part of the creature’s nature. Its motions were sharp and touched by its terror, but it began making the necessary gestures and incanting the words to cast a spell.

Feeling a surge of exhaustion as more of his Stamina was drained out of him to power his skill, Erik once more charged forth with a burst of predatory speed, closing the scant distance between them in seconds. Eyes widening in panic at how quickly Erik crossed the intervening space, the creature made a sharp motion, arcs of lightning flickering across its hand before leaping at Erik. Having expected this, Erik reached out to his Mantle with a mental hand, feeling its phantom fingers struggle to grip the twisting, intangible power that composed his magical aura.

Keeping his Mana from slipping from his control with an effort of will, Erik grasped as much of his remaining Mana as he could and shoved the mass of energy from his body, holding it with the iron fist of his focus and simultaneously molding it into the shape of a barrier. He felt a moment of resistance as the power tried to escape his grasp, but Erik pressed back against the resistance with all the ferocity of the Beast in his mind, driving it into the shape he desired like a man pounding stubborn nails into wood. It was do or die here, and he refused to allow something as trivial as a lack of control of his Mana be what did him in.

The barrier snapped into place, faster than it had been even the first time he’d done it, and Erik once more felt the majority of the shock dissipate on his shield before the rest of its diminished energy passed through and impacted him. Having successfully mitigated the damage from the spell and gotten in close enough that the mage couldn’t get off another one without being disrupted, it clumsily swung its staff at him, its motions awkward and stilted by panic. Erik simply leaned out of the way of the clumsy swing and then caught the staff with one hand, halting its movement. In its desperation, the mage refused to let go of the weapon and began pulling on it, trying to pry it from Erik’s grip. It wasn’t nearly strong enough to overpower Erik’s grasp on it, however, and he easily held on to its staff with one hand.

With a sharp tug, Erik jerked the staff forwards. Caught in its own fear, the creature didn’t have the presence of mind to simply let go of its staff and was pulled sharply forward by the motion directly into the kick Erik planted in its mid-section. It lost its grip on the staff as it fell backwards, off balance and unable to recover before its back impacted the ground. Looking down at the vulnerable mage, Erik felt a sadistic smile spread across his lips, his elongated canines catching the low light of the room as he bent the wood of the staff back and forth, testing its strength.

Keeping his eyes locked on the mage, Erik slowly began applying pressure to the ends of the staff. The muscles in his forearms, biceps, and shoulders bulged as he exerted his strength on the wood but none of the strain reached his face. With an almost contemptuous ease and a sharp, dry crack, Erik snapped the staff in half and then examined the fractured ends. The break had not been clean, leaving both ends splintered into jagged, spear-like points. Nodding in satisfaction, Erik turned back to the creature. Eyes widening in terrified realization, the creature began trying to scramble away.

“You don’t—don’t have to do-do this, Erik. You-you don’t really w-want to become this, this k-killer, do you?” The creature stammered, scrambling away from him as he approached.

In a flash of rage, Erik lunged forward, driving one of the jagged ends of the broken staff into the creature’s gut. The creature screamed as the make-shift spear pierced its flesh and Erik applied all his weight to it, meeting the creature’s agonized gaze as he drove the splintered weapon deeper into its body until he felt the point begin to press into the stone beneath the creature’s body. “I used to think it was you and the others that made me like this, but that’s just an excuse I told myself,” Erik said. “There was always a monster lurking in me. I spent my entire life hiding from it, hoping I didn’t wind up becoming just like you, Derek, Selena, and Viktor. I was terrified that I would become the kind of disgusting victimizers that preyed on other people like you four did to me. But I know better, now. I’m not becoming like you, James. I’ll never be as much of a traitorous worm as you or as much of a sadistic fuck as the rest of them were. No, I’m a different kind of monster entirely,” Erik finished with a sharp flash of teeth.

He leaned in closer to the creature that so resembled the bastard who’d betrayed his trust, his voice a harsh and rasping whisper. “I’m the monster that comes to kill the other monsters, James. And I’ve been waiting a long time to take my pound of flesh from you.” With a quick rotation of his hand, Erik twisted the splintered staff in the creature’s guts, eliciting another tormented scream from it. The creature began to writhe, trying to squirm away from him in its mortal terror. Erik knelt down and used the weight of his body to pin the creature to the floor, halting its pitiful attempt at escape.

Releasing his grip on the shaft of wood piercing the creature, Erik gripped the other splintered end in both hands, raising it above his head. The creature began screaming in earnest, pleading for its life, begging for mercy, but its pleas fell on deaf ears and its begging only enraged the Beast in Erik’s mind even further. “Scream a little louder, James. No one is coming to save you!” Erik roared, his eyes alight with a terrible fervor. Driving the final piece of the splintered staff downward with all the force he could muster, Erik slammed the point into the creature’s chest in the area over its heart and twisted, eviscerating the vital organ.

Black blood seeped from the wound, distinctly different from the crimson fluid coating the rest of the creature’s ravaged flesh, and after a long moment, its screams ceased, and its body took on the unnatural stillness of death. Looking at its face, Erik saw that, like all the other creatures, the lambent light in its eyes had fled with its death, leaving the orbs glassy and dull in their lifelessness.