"What does the Desecrated Angel want? Why's it doing this? Why's it so obsessed with me?"
> I believe it wants to end the Survival Challenge.
Jenny shuddered like when she was a kid, crawling out of bed in the middle of the night, anxiety making her want to throw up, and the floor would creak. And she'd be terrified she'd wake her mom who was exhausted from work.
Students crowded around her like a tidal wave of sobbing bodies. They scraped her chest, fingernails snapping off on the red scales of her exoskeleton. They grabbed her arms and legs, but couldn't budge her at all. All they could do was moan and wail and scream in her face, breaths reeking of rot, as though begging her to just do what that angel wanted. So they could rest.
End? End the Survival Challenge? She switched back to thinking the thoughts, too afraid to voice what that could mean. What does that have to do with me? How can an angel end this?
She wrenched her arm away from a boy who'd wrapped himself around it, groaning and grunting and sliding on the floor as he tried to pull her away. But she wasn't the severed dying person she'd been before. She wasn’t weak and falling apart. When she wrenched her arm away, he went spinning, tumbling through several bodies. His head bounced off a chunk of rubble with an ugly crack. But he didn't seem to care as blood rushed down his face. He blinked his glowing blue eyes then crawled toward her as others rushed to fill his space.
> Your blood flows through the Desecrated Angel. I believe it sensed your potential and your spirit. With enough of your blood, with enough living human blood, it can complete its metamorphosis and become a true contender for the Survival Challenge. Your blood is more potent.
Its what? Metamorphosis? Like a butterfly? So, if it does that... if it finishes that... it can kill us all and win? Jenny flashed back to the cocoon. The blue light surging within it. The way the striped angel kept bringing it more and more blood to drink, all the bodies piled around.
We witnessed this behavior only once before. The very last Challenge, two thousand years in the past. That was how He first entered your world.
A vision struck Jenny like a nail hammered into wood. She glimpsed a man in long white robes. He was bearded, and his beard and hair were dark and long and flowing as he levitated off the ground, arms extended. His skin was gray and metallic and shifting in that gelatinous way her exoskeleton had when it first formed. Two enormous wings unfurled from his back, white and porcelain-like in appearance.
She knew his name. Billions of people knew his name and worshipped him. A pillar of light engulfed him, connecting from the earth beneath his floating feet to the heavens above, and the desert around him erupted.
With that, the vision ended, leaving Jenny shocked even as two notifications surfaced, one after another.
Two Wretched Angels shoved their way through the crowd, launching the undead students over their shoulders or crushing their skulls without a second thought. They didn't even pause to bite or anything; they seemed to be barreling through without care. Both were covered in dust. One was large and female, with brown hair bouncing on top of yellow-green covering.
> Wretched Angel (Level 21)
The other was male and much smaller, but this one was covered in white with blue stripes and bulging with muscle. Its head ended in a large spike instead of hair; it almost looked like a shark fin cutting through a sea of dead.
> Wretched Angel (Level 25)
Several Tarnished Angels ducked in and out of the throb of wailing students. They seemed utterly confused, and Jenny licked the blood off her lips, stepping back, pushing through the moaning crowd, toppling whoever was behind her.
Her tendrils snapped, slapping people across the face and shoving them back. Eyeing the approaching angels, she kept thinking about the vision. About Him. She had even more questions for Eve now, but her goal remained the same. She had to stop that Desecrated Angel; if it got her blood, it would kill everyone else and win. It would get to her world.
But even if she dove into the basement to face the Desecrated Angel right now, all the undead students and the angels would just follow her down. And the thought of suffocating under a pile of her undead classmates, sweaty limbs and desperate and wailing, while also trying to fight that powerful creature that wanted her blood...
She inhaled deeply, allowing her chest to expand. Fire swirling in the back of her throat. First thing's first. Kill the Wretched Angels. They’d be the most trouble.
But just as she readied to launch herself at them, she realized they hadn't come after her. They moved further inside the ruined physics lab, toward the crater. And she lowered her hatchet arm, dumbstruck as the creatures jumped into the basement.
“Christ,” whispered Jenny. Then she bit her lips. Could she even swear by His name anymore? Fear struck her. Fear like the sensation she'd felt when the blue light flashed and the dead came back to life. The church. Everything her mother had pushed onto her. The world's largest religions... Everything she'd learned and researched in history... it was all crashing down. What did it all mean
Okay, she thought. New plan. Clear the hallway. End all their suffering and put them to rest and make sure they can’t keep coming after her. Then kill that piece of shit angel. With that decided, Jenny dove into the throng of screaming students, hatchet swinging, tendrils swishing through the air.
Jenny recognized faces. Each one made her stomach twist, but she refused to look at them longer than it took to slash them. She refused to remember their names; she made their deaths swift and easy, her hatchet flashing gold with each strike, removing limbs and slitting throats.
She could use Ignite and end this quickly. But Eve had advised against that. Her hatchet attacks generated Energy, while killing these undead creatures gave her nothing. She'd need all the Energy she could collect. Begrudgingly, she'd agreed.
Undead humans gave +4 Energy. The angels, either dead or undead, gave +2 regardless. She tried not to think about how she was harvesting pain.
When she came upon Tarnished Angels who were still alive, she didn’t hold back. She slashed them repeatedly, chopping limbs off one at a time before kicking them away to die slowly in the rubble. She wanted them to suffer. To scream in agony, limbless and bleeding out, if only to fill the hallway with something other than the wailing of her fellow students.
She got notifications of their death and received Energy and experience. But she didn't care. It was the tear-stricken eyes radiating blue light that bothered her. She worked systematically through the crowd as more and more bodies and angels jumped down from above or spilled in from the lobby. She noticed several more Wretched Angels diving below, and her curiosity and dread grew and grew, even as the numbers racked up in her head.
> +4 Energy
>
> +4 Energy
>
> +2 Energy
>
> +4 Energy
It felt like the entire school population was wriggling through the ruined hall. Even though she knew that couldn't be true. Many of them were already eaten. Many of them were ripped apart, their bodies spread all over the building.
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It was a flurry of clothes, colorful and covered in blood. She couldn't meet their eyes. Their sneakers were easier to look at. And she tried not to think about how they were all really just kids. They'd all been killed already, torn and chewed to death by angels, and here she was, killing them again.
Worse still, she kept thinking about biting into them. Their soft, tender flesh, though dead for a while, would still be delicious. Their blood would fill her body so nicely, would satiate her growing thirst, and with horror, she felt a slurp through one of her tendrils, and recoiled.
The tendril had burst through a boy's navel, through his hoodie and into his bellybutton, and it had slurped just as the striped angel in the lab room above had with its lips latched onto her ruined nose.
A rippling shiver went through her exoskeleton, as though it was absorbing the blood. Making the blood a part of itself, of her, and growing. A vibration began between her legs that climbed inwardly through her, and it felt good. She tasted the metallic sweetness of blood with her entire body. As though every single one of her cells were drinking it in.
Her knees almost went weak; she couldn't stop herself. She kept sucking more and more. The blood coursing through her tendril as the boy dropped to his knees, eyes wide with fright, mouth agape as his face thinned out. He couldn't move at all, and she stood in front of him, her tendril fastened to his navel, sucking. Sucking. Sucking.
Another tendril reached for someone else, and she cried out, grabbing the first and wrenching it free from the boy. The blue light in his eyes shuddered, and Jenny slashed his neck. Golden light shimmered, blood squirted all over, and she struggled with the urge to latch onto more. She could latch onto four people at a time and drink her fill and her exoskeleton would only grow stronger. Shouldn’t she do that? Shouldn’t she make herself as strong as possible before facing the Desecrated Angel?
Before she could react, she caught sight of Mr. Wilkins, her guidance counselor. He was a large, round man who wore colorful, Hawaiian print shirts. His glasses were missing, but even with his eyes glowing blue, even with his nose hanging by loose skin, there was a kindness to him that quelled her rising nausea.
She'd only spoken to him a few times, but she missed sitting in his office while he explained her college opportunities and what she could do. When he'd interviewed her, trying to learn more about her so he could write a proper recommendation letter. He was always smiling, always prepared to figure things out, and now his chest was torn open.
Flesh was missing from his neck and sides. Her tendrils latched onto the wounds even as he stomped closer, moaning and reaching for her. His blood would taste so good... and he was an adult. Surely that was less guilt-inducing? Her tendrils buried into his flesh, all four of them, holding him in place as his arms swung madly for her.
She inhaled noisily through her nose, forced herself to regain control of her tendrils, and tore them off Mrs. Wilkins. She ducked as he burst forward, dodging his arms, and swung upward, catching him on the chin with her hatchet and slicing through his face with a burst of golden light.
> +4 Energy
The front of his head split in half as he collapsed. Several students tripped over his large body, and Jenny dashed away from them with a burst of Instant Acceleration to steady herself. To keep her tendrils away from the others.
She was disgusted with herself. Disgusted by how good it felt. Disgusted how she didn't even feel sick. It was more like she'd just had a delicious meal after a long day at school. And she clenched her fists, her tendrils compressing.
She'd rushed deeper into the collapsed lab room. Rubble crushed into dust beneath her red feet. The undead humans moaned and wailed, clambering and tripping over Mr. Wilkins, trying to get to her. No, she told herself. No! She couldn't have their blood. She wouldn't. Not them. Maybe an angel... maybe if she came across another angel...
The hunger and thirst twisted into an ugly feeling. She thought she’d rather have another metal rod or two rammed through her stomach. She had the creepy sensation that her exoskeleton was growing on its own. Did it have its own needs? This thirst didn’t exist when her tendrils first formed. Was this new? Was she still changing or had she just not noticed while Susan was here?
I really am turning into a monster...
The hole in the floor gaped nearby, but the presence she'd sensed down there, that deeply rooted feeling of death, had dissipated slightly. The Desecrated Angel must be on the move, and Jenny still didn't have a plan.
And there were still so many people left on this floor. The moaning and crying were relentless. She just wanted it to stop.
Someone in a blue uniform stumbled toward her. One of the few adults that stuck out from the crowd. She had a blue hat on. Her face was clawed up, and blood gushed down her legs from the ugly gash across her hip. Jenny didn't know the woman by name. She didn't know any of the security guards by name, but she knew their faces.
She knew their smiles as they welcomed everyone every morning and checked for ID. They kept the lines for the buses orderly and neat. And if there was any trouble, they were swift to respond. She'd always heard bad things about uncaring school staff, but she'd never gotten that feeling from anyone here.
Bitter, ugly rage surged through her, and she stomped forward. Her exoskeleton-covered foot cracked the floor, and several chunks around the hole collapsed into the basement, but she didn’t care. Jenny launched her hatchet. Her tendrils snapped backward, generating more force for her throw.
Her hatchet rocketed away from her fingers, and she shut her eyes. She heard the first gruesome crack. Then she heard several more. Blood splattered everywhere. Dropps landing on her face and scales, and she wiped them away with her tendrils without opening her eyes. Her tendrils sucked in the blood, and she shuddered, but without being able to see, she realized something.
She could still sense. She could still feel the movements in the air and track the locations of the undead hobbling toward her. Sound wasn't just sound that reached her ears. It was vibrations that quivered through her tendrils and into her spine. Taste and smell blended into one sense, and with all that information, a strange image of the hallway formed in her thoughts. The rubble and metal rods and tables, the holes in the ceiling and floor. Even the sweat and drying blood on all the bodies around her.
Jenny threw herself forward, drawing her hatchet back to her hand. Then she swung. And swung and swung and swung. Without vision to distract her, she flexed her consciousness through her tendrils and kept them from latching onto anyone again. No more drinking the blood of innocents.
Breaths and spittle flicked against her face and exoskeleton. Blood splashed her scales, and her exoskeleton absorbed every drop. She worked faster than before. Each step quicker than the last. Each attack flowing into the next. Her tendrils flashed, grabbing arms and pushing students out of balance so she could strike them down with ease.
On and on it went, a cruel and bloody dance. Her lips pressed tight. She hardly dared to even inhale, trusting her every movement to her expanded senses as one by one, the screaming died down.
> +4 Energy
>
> +4 Energy
>
> +4 Energy
And she didn't stop until she was sure not a single pair of eyes were left glowing blue. A stifling silence hung over the hallway, and Jenny finally exhaled properly and looked around her. She breathed in through her nose, a sob threatening to break free, but she shoved the emotions down. If she ever got out of this, she knew she'd spend the rest of her life going through the yearbook over and over, counting every student, every teacher and staff member, she'd just cut down.
It was one thing to fight off angels that resembled humans. But to slaughter an entire hoard of dead children forced back to life? Her classmates? People she'd had lunch with and walked to school with from the train station? What if one of them had been Susan or Oliver? What would she have done if they were the ones with glowing blue eyes?
She spat blood, her head throbbing. Her hatchet struck the floor, and she walked away, feeling dizzy, trying not to step on a severed body part. Golden light filled her hand, and a bottle of water took shape. She remembered Susan's thing, Hydrate.
That brought her some comfort until she drank too deeply and remembered how it felt when blood gushed up her tendril and into her body. She coughed up water, choking, blinking away tears.
She spotted a girl's head lying near her, and accidentally made eye contact. The girl had red hair. Tears were still fresh on her cheek, and she was staring unseeingly into the distance. Her brown skin was marred with blood, and she was probably a junior or sophomore, but Jenny couldn't even tell which of the bodies were hers.
But at least it was finally quiet. No more demented crying. They could finally rest.
But Jenny couldn’t. Now she had to get downstairs. She had to find that horrible creature responsible for resurrecting the dead and put a hatchet through its face.
It wanted her blood, didn’t it? But what if she drank it’s blood? Even as she downed more water, her thirst didn’t quench. Her tendrils jerked this way and that, and she knew she wouldn’t be properly satisfied from just water.
“Eve,” she whispered... thinking again about the vision she'd seen. Jesus Christ. The way Eve mentioned Him. What could that mean? How was this all connected?
Before she could figure out what to ask, blue light flashed again. Lightly this time. As though from a distance source. But the same dread sank through her chest like ice. She backed away from the crater, glancing all around her, searching with her eyes and her tendrils for any sign of trouble. But surely everyone was too cut up to be dangerous? Surely the angel couldn’t bring them back to life again?
As if in response, all the bleeding body parts wiggled. Warbled screams started up like a chorus, and Jenny’s face fell. Her heart snapped into pieces.
That red-haired girl's head turned. Her eyes were glowing blue, and she bared her teeth. She spat in Jenny's direction. Severed arms and legs twitched. Several people dragged what was left of their bodies over each other, over rubble, toward her, and it was more than she could take. Heat blossomed in Jenny’s mouth. Her tendrils whipped through the air as she roared. Ignite!