My mind was still fuzzy and confused, even as I walked with the injured woman, my timely savior, through the woods. We were heading downhill, and I tripped down most of it despite my best efforts. The woman tried talking to me in her strange language, seemingly hoping I would just magically understand her, but all it sounded like to me was gibberish. She seemed in a rush, but her various injuries made her slow and weak, almost as slow and weak as I was. We were quite the pair of stumbling fools.
Wandering through the trees, I followed the pointy-eared woman to whatever goal she had for me. I thought about leaving, I didn’t know why I was following her in the first place. She had saved me, but even as I walked beside her and focused on the nature around me; her blood-stained leathers and dried wounds taunted me. I tried to focus elsewhere. I was determined now, I don’t know what about the idea repulsed me but I fought sternly against my feral temptations.
Despite our slow pace and my distracted thoughts, we eventually began to slow. The woman tried to creep low to the ground, but her injuries only reopened and slowed her down as she tried to sneak. I tried to follow her lead, but between my crackling bones and stumbling into things I wasn’t any more stealthy than her. Eventually our bumbling brought us to a small clearing. One that had a short hill as its centerpiece.
There seemed to be old discarded weapons laying on or sticking in the ground around the clearing. My senses heightened, something within me said there was the scent of blood in the air. My instincts fought to go into a frenzy, to seek out the bloody source, but I stuffed the feeling down as far as I could force it. My injured companion seemed keenly interested in the field, watching the area carefully and quietly for several minutes. It was torture.
I sat in the thicket of the treeline with my bloody rescuer, but saw nothing of interest in the open clearing. Then I heard something, a snicker and a short whine. Looking back and forth for the source of the sound, the wilderness seemed to almost go completely silent in fear of the sound. Then it appeared, a short, tar-colored, and scaly thing. It seemed to walk on two legs, but it crawled as it dragged something heavy behind it. Emerging fully out of the treeline, the scaly creature pulled the body of a man similarly dressed as the woman who saved me. Pointy ears, pale skin, light golden brown hair, and covered in wounds.
As the strange creature dragged its apparent victim closer to the short bulged hill, the body stirred. A groan was let out and the man shifted their weight slightly. The scaled monster reacted angrily, jumping up raising both arms in the air in a yell, only to bring its fists down towards the man’s face and chest to beat him into unconsciousness again. When the man was quiet and unmoving once again, the creature resumed its task to pull the body towards the hill.
I could tell that the woman was furious. She seethed anger and frustration while staring daggers towards the creature, but she didn’t charge forward in rage. She sat and waited. I think I was beginning to put together the puzzle of what she needed from me. Whatever these creatures were, they were clearly her enemy and she probably wanted as much help defeating them as she could muster. But how she knew where I was, or that I wasn’t some random corpse, still confounded me.
The scaly creature eventually fully dragged the unconscious and beaten man to the hill, only to suddenly disappear downwards. I was surprised, I couldn’t see some entrance to a cave or anything from where I stood on the treeline, but my wounded companion seemed unsurprised. After a few moments of the creature being gone, the woman turned to me and thought for a moment. Finally speaking again, slowly as she put together her words, she said, “Help!... No you, help…” She pointed towards the hill, “Kill.” was all she said to me after a tense moment.
“I’m sorry… I don’t know if I can help you… Killing would be…” I paused as I gathered my thoughts, remembering how I nearly lost control just at the sight of fresh blood or my incredible rage against Nefelair, “I don’t think I can help you.”
The woman stared at the hill, like her glare alone would kill her enemies, “Help… Come. Come, help no you!”
I thought we had begun almost understanding each other, but the confused and frustrated words exchanged between us was quickly proving we truly had no idea what the other was really saying. Or at least I had no idea what the woman’s intentions were. My savior, the pointy-eared and gem-like purple eyed woman, stood up and began creeping towards the hill. She waved a hand like that would make me follow her. I had no reason to, there was no benefit. She had already saved me from my moss-covered prison, I could just leave and let her attack the strange creatures on her own. Yet for some reason I didn’t.
Following behind the woman, we approached the hill carefully. There were various weapons scattered around the ground along the way, both old and a few new. The woman picked up a shortsword and continued forward. I looked around, figuring that if worse comes to worst I might want to defend myself, but nothing called out to me that would be useful. The swords were too heavy and I was still too weak and exhausted, so I left them be and followed forward.
When we approached near to where the monster and its victim disappeared, we were met with a simple grassy hill. I wasn’t sure how or where the creature vanished, but the woman beside me seemed to have some clue. She searched the area carefully, poking and prodding at the dirt and grass in front of her. Then her sword pierced something, and seemed to push the ground inward like it was made of loose fabric. In fact, it looks like it actually was fabric.
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A portion of the hill, where a curve suddenly appeared making a sort of small basin, turned out to be a facade. A layer of fabric covered in loose dirt and sewn in grass was covering a secret tunnel entrance. The woman’s long pointed ears perked up, she moved to pull away the grassy carpet that hid the entrance into the underground. I wish I had a way to communicate with her, something about the covering seemed ominous to me. I wanted to tell her to be careful, maybe poke at the covering more with her sword before reaching to grab it. But my thoughts processed too slow, and my words would have only confused her I assumed. But then it sprang on us.
Just as the woman’s hand touched the grassy carpet, and began to pull it back to reveal more of the hidden entrance, a foul creature erupted from the ground to pounce on her. Blood-red scales, pitch black orbs for eyes, and radiating foulness even I could perceive. The thing tackled the woman easily enough, she was surprised and ambushed, and it screamed a blood curdling call only a few inches from her face, spreading spittel and old pieces of chewed gore on her fair skin.
The two began to wrestle, rolling back and forth in the dirt to fight each other for superiority. The scaly creature didn’t seem to notice or care about me in the slightest, and I admit that I panicked, not sure exactly what I should do. I could barely control myself seeing the woman’s dried blood when we walked together. I had stayed several paces away just for her safety, but if I joined this fray would I become consumed by a desire to maim just as I developed a hunger when I saw blood? I hesitated, I didn’t even have a weapon and just standing was difficult in my exhaustion.
Suddenly, the creature opened its maw wide; a den full of razor sharp teeth. It clamped down on the woman’s shoulder in an instant, evaporating any strength she had left in her. Despite its smaller stature, it seemed powerfully built, and now with its teeth holding tight to her left shoulder, it seemed like a predator that finally caught its prey. The creature almost grinned through its bite, its black beady eyes seeming to revel in the pain it inflicted. Tearing its teeth free, in a way to drag them across her skin to cause additional harm, the creature elicited a pained yelp from the woman who now looked so small and defenseless under the monster.
Something sparked in me when I heard the cry of pain, and even more when I saw the woman laying limp and pathetic on the ground soaking in her own blood. It was too much for my willpower and reasoning to handle. My mind was swirling with anger, hunger, lust even, and blood. I saw nothing but the blood. I was reminded suddenly of Nefelair. The red-scaled creature stood over the wounded woman and stared down at her with a look disturbingly similar to when I saw Nefelair playing with the bodies of the two he had tormented amidst the blaze. This creature was reveling in every moment, it licked its chops clean of the messy blood, and quietly bellowed a deep call of satisfaction.
This thing didn’t notice me the entire time it had been fighting the pointy-eared woman. It probably didn’t even care at the moment even if it had. All I could do was channel my rage and bloodlust to a productive means, there was no way to curtail it or prevent it. So I focused my senses on crawling behind the monstrous lizard-thing, feeling the ground carefully as I went. My hand crossed the smooth surface of something small, a hard rock just light enough for my weak body to heft but as large as a balled fist to be used as a weapon. The blunt idea of using a rock as a weapon didn’t phase me, I had no reason to use proper weaponry like the pointy-eared woman did, and I had a primal desire to attack and kill.
Hefting the rock up with both hands, approaching the distracted creature from behind, I tried to remain as quiet and unnoticed in the grass as possible. The creature’s satisfied bellows did a proper enough job to conceal my approach. The red-scaled thing was almost taunting the woman, hissing gruesome-sounding sounds as it was moving to attack the injured woman again, but before it fell on the woman I finalized my own position.
Rock held high, rage building and barely held in check, I swung down with the not-so-mighty weapon of my choosing. The bludgeoning object fell onto the creature’s head easily enough, the monster’s smaller size made its head an easy reach for my wobbling frame. The rock impacted hard, hitting slightly off target and slamming against the side of its head instead of dead-on like I had aimed. The creature whirled in confusion and daze sideways from the impact. My attempt wasn’t enough to kill it, my strength was too weak and my aim too poor, but that was almost to my benefit.
The monstrous red-scaled creature turned and twisted until it inevitably fell down, its tongue lolling out of its mouth as it collapsed in a heap on the ground. Some part of me begged me to finish it off, but the lack of a satisfying first strike almost allowed me to hold a semblance of my sanity. Then I saw my odd savior, the wounded woman who had been assaulted by the creature and had freed me from my mossy rubble-covered prison only a little while ago. She lay on the grassy hill, a puddle of her own blood spilling out of the vicious bite wound in her shoulder. I couldn’t tell how deep the teeth had sunk through the thick leather, but the dreadfully familiar sense of bloodthirst was coming over me as I saw the dark leathers tint even darker as blood soaked into the material.
A dripping sound clicked against something flat. A wet splash every few seconds. My senses heightened again, what little sanity I had was fleeing as bloodthirst and angry haze tried to fight for control again. The moments between the wet landing of bloody drops felt like hours of intense tension. I could almost envision each drop hitting the backside of her breastplate, then sliding down the bottom end onto the muddy ground to water the ground further. The sensation was irresistible. Even more so than before in the ruins, I felt my body moving on its own.
I knelt down by the wounded woman, she was barely conscious and her eyes fluttered as her mind came in and out of focus. She seemed to notice me, comprehend me, and reached up a hand towards me as I came closer to her. It was no embrace she might’ve hoped for, and I was a captive in my own mind, a mere observer to my body’s actions. I came close to her, carefully removing the breastplate; A glorified metal sheet of scrappy bronze, held together by simple leather and loose nails. The woman’s hand touched my bare skull, she looked at me with a strange tenderness, but my vision was entirely focused on her shoulder, the blood-soaked metal, and wet leathers.
My mind and conscience fought for control over my body, in rivalry to my baser instincts. I wanted, no I needed, to consume blood. It called to me, and the freshest source was her torn wound. I couldn’t stop the consumption, but I could vie for some control and refocus my efforts on something else. I barely managed to keep my jagged teeth from creating new punctures in her body, but I slid the backplate of her armor away from her body, unceremoniously slumping her on her side as her mind finally drifted into unconsciousness.
Blood. Vital essence. Sustenance. It pooled like water in a bowl in the backside of the stiff bronze plate. So great it was gathered it was like a washbasin prepared specifically for my use. In grotesque fashion I pulled the bronze armor above me, and consumed. I poured the blood into my mouth, like that would somehow make me ingest it. Yet I felt it. As if I had a mouth and throat. I could feel something coursing within me as I followed my instinct’s profane ritual. I felt stronger, rejuvenated, and powerful. Power enough, that memories returned to me. Words flooded into my mind, ones that contained power and meaning beyond just their own phrase. I felt magic return to me, its definition finally unveiled as the mysterious boon that had slain Nefelair. I coursed with power, power that could bend reality to my whim at the utterance of a single sound. Mana flowed through my skeletal body like vital fluids would any other creature. My hunger was finally sated.