Demon Interrupted

Panic.

Of the few emotions I have a strong grasp on, panic has to be my least favorite. Oh sure, it can definitely be a useful thing to see in enemies, but I have always rather hated feeling it for myself even before this damned Crow heightened my emotions. That feeling of frozen snake's coiling in your gut, of shivers wracking your body even though you know it's not cold, and the racing, often nonsensical thoughts taking up space in your head when what you really need is to collect yourself and think clearly, none of it really agrees with me.

Unfortunately, neither the nomadic apes nor scurrying rodents my ancestors descended from were particularly level headed creatures. Adrenaline, for all its wonders, was built for immediate action, not rational planning. So, with a wall to my back and slowly reddening flame tentacles rapidly approaching and a wall to my back, I did the only thing I could; I teleported backwards into the space inside the wall, using Paranoia to ensure there was actually space for me to hide inside.

I'd have preferred to have teleported fully outside, but something about this Dungeon made the space outside its walls feel strange, almost warped as if it were somehow farther away than it should have been; I didn’t know if that was a general trait or dungeons or unique to this one, but ultimately it didn’t matter.

I didn’t have a second to relax when I reappeared, crammed into the boards and surrounded by dust and suspicious stains; Zildan’s burning fists carried on through where I’d been standing towards the wall I was now hiding in without pausing a moment. I skittered sideways and up, digging my claws into boards to increase my grip as I climbed like a particularly tiny monkey amidst the tattered insulation and walls. Below me, the wall exploded inwards, mouldering wood crumbling into burning splinters around far too solid red fists. The heat was unearthly intense, the raw heat alone not only spreading mortal flame at a terrifying pace but causing my oil protected fur to curl slightly even from a yard away. I could feel the flies within me panicking at the fire, moving erratically to try and submerge themselves in my oil and escape the wall of heat pressing down on me.

It was a familiar feeling, one I remembered from the inferno I'd found myself in not long after I first breached the surface. That familiarity only made my heart pound faster, confirming this crimson flame was the same soul destroying hellfire from earlier; not that I really thought it was anything else, but it wouldn't surprise me if this world had more than one magical red fire to menace me with. I didn't let my confirmed fears distract me, scrabbling through the cramped and dusty but surprisingly spiderweb free hollow wall (something that stirred a few questions in the back of my mind, as I didn't think pre-industrial people used the modern hollow wall designs very often, but I didn't have time to think over much about it) to get up and away from the spreading demonic conflagration.

A vision of a burning spear lancing through the wall to spear my chest barely registered before I threw myself downwards, hearing and feeling the wall explode inward where I’d been an instant before. Well, that confirmed he had some means of tracking me without being able to physically see me; certainly not great news, but neither surprising nor unmanageable.

It would make escape or any sort of sneak attack difficult, but based on what he said earlier, he's detecting the presence of the Blight rather than me in particular; presuming he doesn't have any redundant tracking Skills (not a safe assumption whatsoever, but also my only hope), I could probably distract him long enough to get out of range (and I have to assume he has one or else I doubt it would have taken him this long to track me down) or assassinate him while he's off guard by causing another Blighted outbreak in a crowded area.

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Of course, all those lovely plans relied on me surviving the next few minutes and getting out of this fucking Dungeon in one piece. Infecting my fellow Burnpikes probably wouldn't really help either; it would hopefully confuse or pollute his disease sensing power, yes, but from what little I'd seen the average trained killer was more dangerous than the rabid beasts the Blighted became (barring the whole, infectious soul destruction factor anyway). They weren't doing too hot with their minds intact, in all likelihood whatever thin smokescreen infecting them could generate would last only the scant seconds it took the Crow to cut them all down, and then he’d get right back to murdering me sans distractions.

I'd have loved to be able to infect some rats or bugs, send lots of little Blight ridden signals scattering all about, but unfortunately this damnable Dungeon seemed to be wholly lacking in the sort of vermin you'd expect to infest such a visibly rundown shithole. For a place so coated in garbage in the general decay that came from long term disuse, there was not one living thing inside aside from the monsters it sent after us. If I hadn't known coming in that this place was a Dungeon, that lack of vermin alone would have tipped me off that something was wrong with this place.

As something of a silver lining, the lack of infectable spiders also meant a lack of flammable spider webs. Of course, the very wood making up the walls was still flammable, but noticeably less so than my memories told me it should have been; I could only speculate that the Dungeon, not wanting to burn down, had taken steps to make itself less incendiary. While that would be somewhat annoying if I ever wanted to destroy a Dungeon for whatever reason, right now I couldn’t help but be thankful that this pit of evil’s self preservation lined up with my own interests. Desperation makes for strange bedfellows, I suppose; though, I’d never make the mistake of thinking this predatory well of congealed malice and death was actually on my side.

I grimaced as I slid down the rough boards, another vision of gruesome death forming in my mind before I even hit the ground. With a snarl that didn't quite escape my throat, I attempted to vanish completely out of the Dungeon. Immediately, I knew something was wrong; I felt space warp and buckle as I tried to teleport out of the living location, before something snapped and I found myself hurled in the opposite direction. Reappearing tumbling wildly through the air with a feeling like I'd just had every single molecule of my being put through a rock tumbler for a week, even I was surprise I managed to flail about enough to flop on top of the murderous plague doctor's spear haft rather than just get skewered by it.

The killer doctor didn't hesitate, batting me aside with the haft of his spear and chasing after me even before I smacked into the wall with a dull thud. He lunged at me, his face a rictus of righteous hatred as his burning blade descended on my prone and agony wracked body. I could only watch helplessly as the flame-wrapped spear closed on me, time seeming to flow in slow motion as I desperately tried to get my randomly flaring nerves to function properly but only received random muscle spasms for my trouble. Even if I couldn't still see via my Paranoia, I refused to close my eyes; I would spend every last one of my final moments living, not cowering away from death and pain.

A long, pale finger redirected his spear, an effortless tap shifting the full bodied thrust to pierce the wall several feet to my side, detonating harmlessly as the supernatural fire seemed to be snuffed by a pulse of sickly air. Twitching, mismatched eyes met sulphurous yellow orbs set above a wrought iron smile. Everything about the creature was wrong in ways both subtle and obvious, inhuman and unnatural on every level, but the most pressing was how my Paranoia told me there was nothing there at all.

The unnaturally pale not-man standing above me let out a sound like a snake's dying gurgle echoing up a rusty drainpipe, only the rhythmic pulsing giving away the ungodly thing was chuckling. It moved in alien, unnatural ways, bending without joints and seeming to snap to its final position without traveling quite all the way there. A sound like claws of static raking across burning eyeballs assaulted my eardrums in a vaguely rhythmic pattern as the creature wagged its other index finger back and forth like an adult chastising a child, the unearthly sound akin to a condescending “tsk tsk tsk” in cadence alone.

Despite this… abomination saving me, I couldn’t help but think things had just become much, much worse.