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Apocalypse Magus
Chapter Twelve: The Beast And Revelations

Chapter Twelve: The Beast And Revelations

For Michael, the revelation was like the air had been sucked out of the room. If he was right, then Lucy was hinting at the idea that they'd killed the man for being a danger. And they were also telling him this because he, as far as they were concerned, could also be a danger.

But then he also found it to be something that made him feel for them, and gave him some confidence in the fact that the girls could look after themselves, if they were to work together.

And so the three of them, Lucy, Sarah and Katie had rescued a man, but that he'd done something to make them distrust him and it had led to them having to deal with it.

"Tell me," said Michael.

"He was..." started the redhead.

"A predator," the brunette said, with finality.

"Are you not going to tell me more?" Michael asked. He needed more. They couldn't just leave it there.

"It doesn't really matter, Michael," Lucy said. She gave him a very hard stare.

Michael didn't believe her, but she looked like she wanted to drop the subject, which he couldn't really argue with, but it didn't really do anything to make him trust them, or they, him.

"So, let's talk about the reason that I'm here. You've obviously had to deal with something, and you don't want to tell me. Fine. But why keep me here if you think I'm a danger?"

Michael didn't really trust the women at all, not yet, and they clearly didn't trust him.

"Well, that depends." Katie replied, seeming to ignore Michael's question and continuing. "You know things that we don't know, and you're saying that the... death goddess that visited you gave you a quest to go find something called 'The Tower.' I want you to tell us more about it."

Michael noticed that this wasn't the first time the brunette had taken an interest in the Tower aspect of his story, and as she shot the redhead a look, it confirmed to him that there was definitely something else to that place. But they didn't seem like they would say anything about it, not yet at least.

"You can ask whatever you want. I'm an open book."

"Well," Katie continued, "Tell us more about what you heard, about your powers, the... Tower. All of that stuff."

"OK, so to start with," he replied, looking from Lucy to Katie, and then at the door where the blonde had left the room, "I don't know how my magic works. You girls seem to know more about that than me."

"What is your magic exactly, though?"

"It seems to be a dark hand of shadowy substance that manifests through no control of my own. Whether there's any more to it than that, I don't know." he replied.

Michael said, "Look, it sounds crazy but, well... there it is. Now tell me about your powers. Fair's fair."

The girls both sat quietly, not looking at each other.

"It's fine," he said. "We can sit in silence if you don't trust me."

Lucy shrugged.

Katie took over. "You've seen Sarah's powers already. She can mix into shadows, is incredibly stealthy, and generally, can move very quickly and stuff like that." She shrugged.

Lucy interjected, "It's kind of creepy, really. I know you're coming at this from a place where all of it is still weird and unbelievable. But she is one sneaky person. She managed to follow you around town all day without you seeing."

"OK...Wait, how long was she following me for?" Michael said.

The girls giggled. It seemed like there was some memory they were both having fun with. But their giggling subsided when Michael gave them an exasperated look.

"OK, so Sarah's some platinum-blonde Lara Croft type, right?" Michael said. "What about you two?"

Lucy smiled, and then nodded at Katie.

Katie smiled at Michael.

"OK." Katie started, her face blushing a deep red. She turned away from Lucy and towards Michael, her big, innocent, brown eyes looking right at his, making his stomach drop and heart beat faster.

"So I had visions too," Katie started, then blushed even deeper, her skin taking on an almost crimson colour, the brunette seemed really uncomfortable with sharing this story, as though Michael would think she was crazy.

"The crazy horse has bolted already," he thought.

The beautiful, shy girl then began, "It wasn't a woman like yours, Michael. I was walking, during the catastrophe when the skies opened, through a park. It was like the trees and animals and Earth were talking to me. And, I don't know, it felt like they wanted something from me."

"What did you see in your vision, Katie?" Michael asked.

"The trees, Michael," the girl replied, her face going an even deeper crimson. "I heard their thoughts. It's weird but... It was like the trees spoke to me, like the forest and the whole planet itself."

Katie continued. "So I can speak with the Earth, but also the wind and the water and fire, as if I am all of those things, somehow, and it makes no sense, I know..."

Michael could see that there was something in this that maybe Katie herself hadn't fully processed yet. And Michael, to be frank, couldn't really understand any of it. He had been so lost in the story that when she finished speaking, it took him a moment to realize he'd missed the last bit of her description.

"Right..." Michael replied.

"Yeah. I know it sounds ridiculous." she said, and her expression saddened, and she turned to Lucy. The two of them looked like they had more to say but seemed unsure how to proceed. Katie turned her back to him, whispering something to the redhead.

Then she said, "Well, that was my vision. And my power, basically, is I can kind of control the elements..."

Michael raised an eyebrow as the brunette continued.

"... and when the other guy, the predator, well... afterwards. I somehow put my hands on Sarah and, I can heal people, basically."

The room filled with an awkward silence as they both waited for him to reply. He knew he needed to be careful, and the thought of this cute brunette's powers was hard to fathom, and even harder for Michael to really care. It seemed that with everything that had happened, it had kind of desensitised him to the concept of superpowers, as crazy as it sounded, so he didn't have the shocked or terrified reaction he thought the girls wanted him to.

"So, what can you do then, Lucy?"

Michael turned his eyes on her, waiting to see what the redhead would say.

The red haired girl shifted uncomfortably in her chair, giving Katie a look. Michael felt that Lucy didn't really trust him, but Katie's face said she wanted him to be trusted and accepted as one of them. The brunette's smile made his stomach drop, even if he knew he was still basically a prisoner to these girls. But she wanted him here.

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Michael was a little taken aback at that, and he couldn't understand it.

"My powers are very different to Katie and Sarah. But I know that Sarah has, you know, shadow magic, Katie is connected to the Earth. I'm more of a ...monster."

"A what?" said Michael, confused and more than a little bit disturbed by that.

She shrugged and stood, walking to the end of the library, giving herself some distance from him and Katie. "I'll tell you how it happened in a moment. But I think it's probably best I show you."

Michael's perplexed frown turned into an open-mouthed gape of shock, then into an almost instinctual revulsion when Lucy began to grow, then sprouted black, leathery wings, which unfurled to maybe two metres in diameter. She fell on all fours as her face contorted, her open mouth displaying teeth which elongated, growing sharper. Her hands sprouted huge claws and some of her skin changed from a creamy pale colour into something littered with scales. What were baggy black clothes now stretched tight, threatening to rip open. It took her only a moment, and as Lucy looked at MIchael, he saw her pupils were now vertical, like a reptile. She'd grown almost three foot and had turned from an athletic redhead girl to something almost resembling a black, humanoid, winged, dragon-like beast. It looked to Michael as if she was half-finished. As though the power could go much further than what it had so far. There were also horns on the side of her head.

The beast's wings twitched as Michael stood back from the chair he was sat on, knocking it to the ground and backing up against a wall, a few metres away.

Michael stared, dumbstruck.

And she had grown in stature too; he saw a muscular figure underneath her straining clothes and could only imagine what her physique looked like without the now ill-fitting attire.

Michael took in a breath, his chest tightening, and then exhaled. This was... insane. His mind raced. And he could not, for the life of him, keep his gaze off Lucy's new, transformed, self. Her wingspan looked massive, and she seemed like some kind of winged monster out of a horror novel or fantasy game.

"Fuck..." he muttered, staring in shock. Lucy the monster's expression looked, in a way, the same as it had before. He knew the expression in those reptilian eyes, even though her skin had changed to look scaled and rough, her wings, black, and her clothes had all been changed to the point where they looked like they would rip apart. The transformation looked terrifying and also... in some strange, perverted way, sexy.

Lucy gave him an almost bashful look and the dragon beast in the girl's skin turned its head away and closed its eyes for a few seconds. And as she did, her skin rippled, as if the blackness of the monster that was within her was being drawn into a single spot on her body. Then she shrunk and stood back on her legs, as her skin became creamy and soft and the monster disappeared entirely, leaving only the pretty redheaded woman again, in baggy clothes. Her hair looked even more ruffled now and it looked like her transformation was more intense, as it took her a while longer to compose herself, and even longer than that for her hair to return to its previous combed look, rather than the frazzled, crazy.

"Uh, that was...something." Michael said, still gobsmacked. "Does that, you know... hurt?"

He didn't know if it was a stupid question, but it caused Lucy to start giggling uncontrollably.

"It doesn't really hurt at all." she said. Her eyes flicked up and down at him, gauging his response.

"You look like some kind of sexy succubus," Michael replied, almost immediately realising the stupid thing that he'd said out loud. Katie gave him an exasperated, wide eyed stare that said "I cannot believe you said that," as her eyes bulged, before her gaze shifted to the other woman. Michael noticed a small smirk on Lucy's face. Her cheeks flushed.

He saw the red-haired girl flick her eyes over at Katie, who gave her a thumbs-up an awkward smile.

"So I'm guessing when you said you had super-strength, you meant when you’re, um, in your other form" he asked, trying to change the subject.

She shook her head.

"I can do some stuff in my human form. It's only that, in the dragon one, I have, like, crazy abilities." She looked at Katie again and he felt that the two of them were keeping a secret from him. There was clearly a story there and Michael decided that for his own safety, he needed to probe them to find the truth.

"Can I take a few guesses, girls?" He asked. The two girls nodded, though they seemed to do so begrudgingly, almost in tandem.

Michael smiled, as if this was all completely natural to him, even if it felt far from natural. But if they wanted to play at secrets, then he would call them out.

"I'm kind-of working on the idea that, according to what I know about Katie in the park, and my own power, that mental trauma causes the onset of these powers and transformations. And Sarah, well, not to be a dick, but she's clearly got some issues. I'm guessing that you also had some traumatic event that turned you into the Vampire Queen or whatever you call your alter-ego."

They said nothing and waited. Michael realised they wanted to know what else he had worked out. This wasn't just them having fun with him, but they seemed genuinely curious about what he thought of their abilities, and of the world now. Michael didn't want to admit that he didn't really have a clue what he was talking about, so he continued. "I'm guessing it's to do with the guy you guys found before. I think you shapeshifted and terminated the problem, shall we say."

The pause lasted for what felt to Michael like an eternity, but then Katie smiled at Lucy.

"It seems we've been sussed out," Katie said.

"You guys were really worried that you were gonna have to kick my ass if I was anything like this other guy. So, am I right, or am I right?"

"Uh," said Katie. "Lucy... she..."

"Why don't you start from the beginning?" asked Michael.

"Lucy had this, um," Katie began. "When we were in our dorm and it all went crazy, we saw all this chaos, right. But, she had, like, some sort of experience that seemed to affect her mind and body. We couldn't talk her out of it, it seemed to really change something in her, fundamentally. It's hard to explain, but, yeah..."

"It was something more like what happened to you, I think." said the redhead. She was giving him an intense stare that he found quite difficult to ignore.

"You saw visions or something?"

"That's right." she said. She didn't seem like she was going to continue, so Michael prompted her to go on, which seemed to help.

"Something had me. It wasn't really there, it wasn't a person, it was more of an... idea. Something abstract. I saw it, though, in a weird, metaphysical sense. But, yeah, I was taken over by this, like... force of nature. It seemed to come out of me. But, when I came out of it, it felt like it wasn't me that did those things, but someone else, using me, if you know what I mean."

"I do," he said. He didn't really, but he wanted to encourage her.

"Go on," said Michael. Lucy nodded. "Ok. Well, Katie was looking for Sarah. We didn't know that Sarah had shadow powers or anything at that point and she disappeared from our room, right. And Katie left the dorm room to go look for her and I was by myself, just, uh, you know. And I felt like this, this, like... strange feeling. Then I started seeing things... flashes of crazy things that didn't make any sense."

"Things like what?" Michael asked.

"I don't want to talk about it."

Michael frowned, then realised that pushing her wouldn't do any good. "OK, so let's fast-forward. You came here after you went to Sarah's Mom's house, and you found this guy. You don't have to go into any detail..."

The two girls stonewalled him, not saying anything.

"But I'm going to guess that he attacked one of you, didn't he?"

Katie looked away. Lucy looked like she didn't want to talk about this, either, but Michael didn't really care at that point, because he was tired of being held hostage by these women, even if he was slightly more curious than before.

He sighed.

"OK," he said. "I'm not really asking, and this isn't really me prying, I'm genuinely asking if I'm going to have to watch my back with the three of you."

"It's OK," said the redhead, seeming a little upset that he had made her think about what had happened before.

"No, I mean, it's fine, honestly." Michael said. "But, you know... look, you can talk to me about whatever, if it'll make you feel better. And if not, I understand. It's just... there's obviously more to it. I'm going to make one more assumption and you can tell me if I'm right or not and after that, we'll stop the conversation." Michael took a breath and tried not to seem nervous.

"This is my assumption: You three were hiding out here, you found a guy who seemed OK or you were just happy to see another survivor. It turned out he was a bad guy who tried-" Michael chose his words carefully, letting the implication do the talking here, "- to harm one of you - and I'll guess Sarah here seeing as she's the one who's quick with the bat. And I'm guessing he had a power too but he wasn't betting on all three of you having powers and especially not on you, Lucy," he looked at her sternly, "Being able to turn into a beast-girl who ripped his head off, or whatever you did. I'm not judging."

There was an uncomfortable pause and Michael felt as though the whole room had just died a bit.

"Yeah..." said the redhead. Katie, by her side, nodded and put her hand on Lucy's, smiling to the other girl. "I'm sorry," he said.

"No, it's fine. We weren't planning on killing him but he didn't really give us a choice." Lucy replied, trying not to show her discomfort too much. "So that's the story."

"Thanks for telling me. I'm sure it wasn't easy admitting that." Michael said. After another short pause, Michael asked a final question. "There's one more thing I've guessed based on what you girls have said."

They looked at him with raised eyebrows. He thought that he'd probably already hit the mark too close to home for the girls, and this was his final shot before they were either done with him, or trusted him enough to not throw him to the curb or, more likely, rip him limb from limb, with Sarah leading the charge with her bat and Demon-Lucy finishing him off in whatever way she wanted to.

"You all seem to take interest in one thing I've said out of all the crazy shit that I've told you about. So please, will one of you tell me which one of you knows something about The Tower I'm supposed to find?"