It was strange. Even though Etienne had definitely been speaking in French I had been able to understand him perfectly. The words had come to me along the link, and the meaning behind the French words had been clear as crystal. It was an interesting effect, one that made me idly wonder if this was something that would apply to other languages.
This Etienne . . . I found him both pitiable and horrifying. He was like a dark mirror, an example of everything that could go wrong with being a demigod. I knew that there were gods out there that were monstrous, but I hadn’t really considered how it might be for the children of such gods to come into their power. Seeing him emotionally collapse right in front of me . . . it had been disturbing. Fascinating in some grim way, like seeing a car crash happening right in front of you, but also repellent. That despair, that bleak misery when he’d said he wanted it to end.
People weren’t meant to experience that!
Maybe it was childish, naïve, or plain ignorant of the realities of the world, but I felt that people should be able to live their lives well. There wasn’t any need for some great extravagance, no need for mansions, sports cars, or ridiculous wealth. A place to call home, decent food and water, safety and your loved ones near you, a content life. It was modest, it was simple, and it would have been something I would have been happy with, and it was what everyone in the world should have a right to.
Etienne had lost that. Turning into this monster had left him without a home, without companionship, it had left him without hope. All he could do was live out here and try to keep his hunger away from others. In a way it was selfless, but it was clear that it was eating at him, just like his transformation.
It just felt wrong. This kind of suffering, this kind of isolation, it wasn’t something someone should have to endure.
The cheep of a bird was what brought me out of my increasingly dark thoughts, mainly because it startled me to hear it at all. Up until now, the only animals I’d heard in the area had been the twisted ones that attacked me, so as soon as heard the noise I immediately raised my shield in preparation for another attack. I hung there, ready for anything, for a few moments, until I realized that the small sound had actually come from below me.
It took me a few moments to locate the source of the cheeps, but I finally spotted a small bird that was pecking at the length of the tentacle that had been smashed off by my earlier collision. I felt a smile touch my face at the sight, despite everything boiling around in my head. All those monsters had been driving off the natural wildlife, so after they all died trying to get at me it made sense that the more ordinary animals would return. Maybe this was a good sign, a sign that I was doing something ri-
A loud squawk interrupted my thoughts, a sound that combined surprise and fear into a volume that such a small bird should not have been able to produce. It was odd enough to draw my attention back to the small form. What I saw there made my eyes widen in shock.
The bird was on its side, the flesh beneath its feathers visibly shifting around even as those feathers seemed to shift in colour in violent ripples, brown and grey being replaced with red and black which then faded, only to return an instant later. The small claws on its feet lengthened and thickened, becoming something closer to black talons. And even from as far up in the sky as I was I could hear the faint snaps and pops of its skeleton shifting around under its flesh. Every now and then it would let out another squawk or shriek, indicators that whatever transformation it was undergoing was far from painless.
And through it all, it kept pecking at the tentacle, ripping out beakfuls of meat, swallowing them, then going back for more. The only times it paused in its feasting was when it had to let out its cries of pain.
Reaching out with my arcana telekinesis I gripped the small creature and pulled it up towards me. The sounds it made as I pulled it away from the meat might have been heartrending under other circumstances, but with the dark blood dripping from its beak, and its whole form writhing as it changed, most of the effect was lost. Instead, I tried to push my attention into the bird, trying to see if I could understand what was happening.
As with the twisted animals before there was no resistance to my magic. My arcana slipped into it without issue, and I could feel my magic wrapping around bones and organs with ease. Had I been less busy I might have been a bit disturbed by the sheer control I had over the creature’s life. I might have felt unsettled by just how easily I could have snuffed it out if I wanted. Instead, I found my attention squarely focused on the changes being wrought within the bird.
It was dying, of that there was no doubt. I could feel its brain practically cooking inside its skull, the internal temperature and the overfiring neurons all going crazy. The same was true of its organs, which seemed to be melting and reforming like some mad science experiment. This wasn’t a metamorphosis, not an improvement or transition. Rather, everything was being torn apart and broken down then being used as building material for something new.
Even as I ‘watched’ the small bird, a creature that normally wouldn’t feed on anything bigger than a spider or worm, was being recreated into a predatory parody of itself. Sharpened claws and beak, feathers that were harder and more pointed, some sort of venom being leaked from its skin like sweat to coat those feathers, all of it was just . . . wrong.
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A surge of disgust took me as I looked at the struggling beast. It was now more a violent caricature of a bird than anything else, its form gaunt and stretched in an almost grotesque manner. It occurred to me that by pulling it away from the meat it had been eating I might have denied it the resources it needed to fuel its change. That might explain the skeletal appearance if it had to cannibalize itself to feed the alterations.
There was a wet crunch as I closed my telekinetic grip, the stick-thin animal being reduced to an unrecognizable lump of blood and feathers. After a moment’s thought, I channelled mana and set the lump on fire, watching it burn out of the corner of my eye as I turned my attention back to the forest below.
This . . . this was bad. I’d come here looking for the source of the warping of the local animals, and I was getting a sinking feeling that I now knew what that source was. It wasn’t sure of course, for all I knew these monsters could be made by any animal eating the corpse or remains of an already twisted creature.
That was a logical notion, the problem was that I didn’t really believe it. Etienne had said he was a demigod, and I was sure he’d been telling the truth. The link that had let us talk had gone deep, and I could feel the sincerity in everything he’d told me. There had been bitterness, anguish, and so much anger at seemingly everything, but I hadn’t felt any sort of attempt to conceal anything, or any reluctance to share.
More than that, it was too much of a coincidence. How likely was it for a demigod whose powers were clearly out of control to somehow end up in the same place where the local animals were being mutated into monstrous versions of themselves? And on top of that, how likely was it that the same demigod would end up getting the same mutating effect and then passing it on? If Etienne said that he’d started to change after getting here then I might have credited it, but he’d clearly said that the changes started before he had to flee here.
Damnit, this was not looking good.
Reaching into myself I pushed magic into the link, not as much as before, but enough to make it surge into clarity to my awareness. Like before I could tell where the connection led, it was as clear as an arrow flashing in the direction of the monstrous demigod. Finding him wasn’t going to be a problem, the question was what I wanted to do once I did.
I didn’t want to kill him, not if I didn’t have to. Etienne didn’t strike me as a bad guy, not someone who took pleasure in murder or cruelty. There had been guilt in him, loads of it, along with despair and self-disgust. He knew what was right and wrong, but he was being dragged along by his powers against his will. He wasn’t a monster, not really, rather he was a guy that had drawn the worst of the short straws with his divine blood.
But . . . what could I do? It was looking more and more like I might not have much of a choice. Regardless of whether or not he was happy with his state, it didn’t change the fact that he was powerful. That meant that trying to subdue him might be impractical, at least with my level of power. Either Hadriel or Joan would have been able to manage it, but even they might have some trouble pulling it off. So far Etienne had taken everything I could throw at him and barely slowed down. Hell, the most grievous injury I’d been able to inflict had been by accident, and even then it had been healed so fast that it hadn’t made much of a difference.
That said, I could still think of a few things I could do, things that took me some time to set up, but which were more powerful than the attacks I could pull off at a moment’s notice. If I pushed them as hard as I could I was sure that even the monster Etienne was becoming wouldn’t be able to just shrug them off.
But that still left the question of what I wanted to do, or what I was even able to do. I wanted to save Etienne, but I wasn’t sure I had the means. For a moment I considered trying to find the SOS artefact, since any effort would be greatly aided by either, or even both, of my protectors and teachers being with me, but a glance at the area where I thought I’d lost it put paid to that idea. The area was a mess, torn down bushes, fallen trees, and scattered corpses. Both the brief fight and the monster’s frustrated tantrum had covered the space in a mass of debris. Even using telekinesis finding it was going to take ages especially if it had been pressed into the soil or mud. I could spend hours and not find it at all.
I could have just given up, abandoned the whole mission and just returned to the farmstead. I had the link after all, and assuming that it didn’t fade with time or distance it would make it easy for me to find Etienne again after I brought Joan and Hadriel with me.
But I didn’t want to!
I didn’t want to disappoint them. I didn’t want to let myself down! I had no idea what I was going to be facing in the future, but I knew that it was going to be much worse than this. Was I going to give up at the first hurdle? Was I going to fly back to my protectors as soon as the going got tough? If I did it this time, then would it be okay to do it the next time? If I ran away now, then when was I going to stop? When was I going to make a stand?
On top of that was the desire not to kill another person. Cursed and warped he might be, but my fellow demigod wasn’t some mindless monster like those twisted animals. No, he was a person, a hurt and broken person, but a person all the same. Simply killing him as if he were a rabid beast felt so wrong.
And there were the less noble reasons as well. Fear on one hand, pride on the other. There was even a bit of anger at the monster that had batted me around like an overgrown beachball.
Both good and bad emotions came together into a strange mix that somehow hardened into a firm resolve. I was going to do this, I was going to fight Etienne, and I was going to do my best to save him.
Checking the connection again I saw that he was still moving, prompting me to slowly start to follow. As I did so I extended my hands to the side, the fingers spread, and began to focus on drawing on my mana. Above me, my halo seemed to give a soundless chime in response, and even my wings seemed to shiver briefly. This was the most mana I’d ever tried to draw upon in one go. During practice, I’d been more careful to take my time when gathering power, been careful not to push myself. Even though I wasn’t as powerful as I could be, not even when compared to ‘proper’ demigods, I still could do a lot of damage if I was careless. The amount of power I could currently draw was greater than the amount I knew how to control, even with the aid of the halo, and that meant danger.
Of course, I was going into a fight I knew I had to win, so if ever there was a time to push my limits then this was it.