Bullet holes riddled the electronic game units, arcs of current sparking out. Bloodied corpses lay cold on the floor, their bodies shredded apart. Some died from bullets, some from a blade. Their blood and organs painted the floor red; their guts had spilled over. Ewan crouched and threaded. The pool of gore reflected his aghast face and the gulp down his throat as the blood smeared the hem of his cargo pants with each step. There was a thick smell of metal in the air once again. He should’ve been numb to it by now, but he wasn’t, even his excited bestial instincts couldn’t suppress the dread of death that plunged into him with each heave.
So many died, what were the chances of him surviving… Now that the adrenaline wore off, he faced the reality. The only difference was that they were Kyrons, and he wasn’t.
Right, he wasn’t a Kyron anymore, he was stronger than them, he repeated. Drops of sweat rolled down his temples, he rubbed the itch with his shoulders and took deep breaths.
Orange scouted the path ahead while Frost covered his back. Ewan wished the enemies would come and distract him already. But the floor was haunted quiet besides the frigid bodies who stared at him with their gaping eyes, and they invited him to join them.
…..
Fuck!
Ewan froze in his tracks, resisting a shiver.
Halfway down the stairs to the next floor, a longsword pinned a child to the wall through his bloodied teddy bear, a child who’d barely learned to run… He and his plush toy dangled from the blade, lifeless. The blunt strikes on the pommel had cracked and flattened it; they must’ve hammered the sword through the child’s chest. His eyeballs almost popped out and tears from the ripped socket dried on his cheeks; his mouth lay open, and his tongue hung loose. Thick blood oozed down his shoes on the face of the woman lying below, her throat slit and swollen, and tears and snot smudging her makeup. It must be his mother; she carried a dirt-and-blood smeared cotton candy that used to be white…
If these masked men were trying to scare people, they sure had some effective means. Ewan took deep breaths again and continued down the stairs, avoiding the gaze of the bloodied yet smiling teddy.
The floor below was the inflatable playground for children with bouncy castles. And finally, some enemies to kill. The playgrounds sprawled airless, the bullets and the blades had torn them apart. Three masked men stood with their backs to the stairs. One hacked a corpse with an axe, while the other stood around him, rifles hanging from their shoulders.
“Let’s go already,” one of the three said.
“Wait a bit,” another said as he chopped down the axe again, breathless and panting, each lungful of air grinding in his throat. Blood from the dead body sprayed on his already drenched red mask. The other two stepped back and shook their heads.
Orange and Frost could kill two, but the third was the problem. They were too far and in the open for Ewan to move in close without alerting them. He had no choice, he had to use his spell.
Blood Rein!
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It took him several tries, but he succeeded before the three finished their butchery. The obsidian dagger slit his wrist and the spell circuit took the blood away. The crimson blob floated before him, connected to his soul. The dizziness assaulted him again, his vision blurred too, but he was familiar with it now, he could handle the side effects. Iris came out of the vortex and dove into his hair while he aimed at the masked men’s back from the stairs end. She healed his cut and he focused. This spell too didn’t have the targeting mechanism, but it gave him full control.
The blob of blood wriggled. Ewan held his breath and shot three thin sharp vines from it. They slithered close to the floor; the blood vines ran against the blood pools on the ground, it was hard to notice them. The three vines zipped away and lanced the three men through their backs and out their chests. The two groaned and clutched the vines with trembling hands. The axe clanked on the floor, and the third reached for his chest.
Ewan pulled the vines back out, and blood gushed out from their gaping and pulsating wounds. The men collapsed on their knees, gasping for air, hacking, puking blood. The vines slid around them, and as Ewan gestured, skewered their jaws and exited their skulls. They fell over, their chests stopped moving. Blood pooled under them, and they joined the plethora of corpses strewn across the floor.
Ewan exhaled the long-held breath through his mouth. This was easy, far too easy. He stared at the red blob that regained its initial size when the vines came back and merged in. These Kyrons weren’t his match when he could use his spells, even with their contrabands. As they said, he really was a monster for them.
…..
Frost broke through the barrier once he ingested the three new souls; he was now Level-2. While he savored the growth, Orange glared at him from Ewan’s head, pulling and chewing his hair, screeching at times. After Ewan calmed him down with flowery promises for the future, he searched the place inside out, though there were little places on this open floor that could hide anyone. And indeed, corpses and more gory and grisly corpses were all he found. He didn’t avoid them but instead walked closer and met their lifeless eyes. A meaningless act yet he persisted to become numb to these deaths. The dead were powerless, his mind knew it, he wanted his body to know it too.
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Status: Injured | Hypovolemia
Step-0 [2nd Awakening]
Name: Ewan Ayres
Species: Human
Vitality: 1.3
Spirit: 4.0
Anima: [Fire – 4.0 | Ice – 4.0 | Blood – 0.0]
Astylinds: 4 [Potential: 0]
Rolling Cat [Toast]: Step-0 [2nd Awakening]
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Fire Monkey [Orange]: Step-0 [Level-1] [Grade-D]
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Imp [Frost]: Step-0 [Level-2] [Grade-D]
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Blood Lotus [Iris]: Step-0 [Level-1] [Grade-C]
Equipment: Common Clothes.
Storage: Journal; Elementalist—The Path of Anima [Subtype-Book]; Spellbook; Bloodlust [Spell]; Transmute [Spell]; Anima-Crystals; Obsidian Dagger; Hub-Connector; Ingredients.
Novas: 70
Sol: 25