◈ Chapter 83:

Rain was eight years old and pushing open the door to his Father’s bedroom. His Father was there, sitting at his mother’s dresser. The dresser was awash with blood, he slugged from a bottle of amber and then his Father raised his hand once more and stabbed the dagger straight through his arm, gasping through gritted teeth, his eyes alight with something akin to fervour.

"It's my fault. It's my fault. It's my fault. Remember. Remember. Remember."

Eight year old Rain looked on, petrified at what his Father was doing, too afraid to speak up, only able to watch as the blade came down, over and over, his Father repeating that mantra, like he had spoken and thought it millions of times before. He was torturing himself for getting Rain’s mother killed, blaming himself for what he did, a self destructive guilt, why else do it at Mother’s dresser?

But then, after what Bane had said, he knew those words promising to remember weren't referring to his mother, no, they were referring to Rain, and that wasn't the self harm of guilt or depression, but a man desperately trying to will his shredded soul to hold together as it was slowly taken apart piece by piece. He had succeeded, but the cost…

Another flash of light and Rain was in an alley, older. His Father was there slumped in the shit and mud, delirious, mumbling nonsense, clearly drunk out of his mind.

He had pushed him up against the wall. He found his Father’s eyes rolling unseeing, but then they had managed to focus on Rain, and then he had spoken those words that had hurt him the most, words that he would hear many many times in the years following that point:

“...Who are you?”

He had lost his memory of him, the memories of Rain having fallen through the gaps in his soul. Rain had thought it the madness of drink, some illness caused by his grief, he had heard that could happen. Now he knew better, his Father had lost the battle in keeping his memory so he had let it go, in exchange he held on like nothing else, his will power was like cold forged steel, nigh unbreakable, despite everything he had remained, clinging to existence with his fingernails. He wasn't a human being anymore, he was a shell with a fraction of a soul with a threaded instruction of pure determination which was: eat, sleep, walk to the Ranker, lose more soul, return, eat, sleep, repeat.

He’d kept himself going by keeping only what he needed to hold together, all for Rain.

Rain’s claws dug into his face, to the bone, and then dragged down, gouging ragged bloody furrows through his flesh, it didn't matter, the pain was nothing to his grief, his emotional agony.

His… hate.

His growing, boiling, hate.

Rain had felt hate before, but this, this was different. His insides burned with poisonous, searing, hatred. He felt like he was going to physically explode as his veins pumped more and more poison throughout him, into his brain, the pressure building, intolerable.

His claws dropped from his face and then he threw back his head and let loose a primal roar, all his burning emotion venting into it, it exploded from him in a wave of power.

Above the belltower was ripped apart as though hit by an invisible force, falling into the street across, the great bronze bell breaking free sent careening down the road, gonging as it bounced and crashed. The buildings around the square tore apart next as the shockwave hit. The Ranker leaned into it, holding his arm up his hair billowing around his head.

Rain’s jaws juderred wider, spittle flecking, as it built louder, deeper, as that gate to the dark hungry place in him at last swung fully wide.

The ground shook, not just rippling, but full on shook, an earthquake, slight at first then growing.

Above the rain clouds quickly darkened and swelled, becoming vast towering cumulonimbus that red lightning crackled between, the rain sheeting down.

His arms spread at his sides as it felt like everything poured out of him.

Around him the town began to disintegrate, the buildings falling apart, collapsing under the earthquake as the ground tried to tear itself apart. Out from the town square, more and more buildings folding under the trembling and shaking, streets and streets collapsing all the way to the outer walls, splits appeared in the ground, canyons forming in the earth as the earth broke, the outer walls falling, then the forest, tens of thousands of trees falling en masse.

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Bane looked around in alarm as his town fell, blood red lighting falling from the sky over and over, crashing down in searing flashed like an arrhythmic drum.

Then Rain’s fur started lengthening around his neck, forming a dark mane that billowed and flowed. His fur darkened along with it, no, not darkened, became shadowed, the silhouette of his body fringed with chromatic aberration caused by the light itself veering away from him, trying to avoid touching him, the ground around him crawled, the very stones seemingly trying to get away from him.

Rain had been a creature of fear before, but now he radiated raw terror in physical pulsing waves.

Darkness was misting from his body, venting into the air. His eyes had changed too, becoming a corner to corner filling glowing yellow. As the roar came to an end and his head shifted back down his eyes came to rest on the Ranker. His body moved and all of him was pure hungry predator.

The Hellhound had been backing away but the moment Rain’s eyes crossed it the dog put its tail between its legs and fled, yelping and crying, disappearing as it quickly blinked away, an animal before its hunter.

Bane stared at this new monster in shock.

Then he looked down at his hand. His hand was trembling, shaking.

“Fear? Me? An aura of… Terror?”

He dug his nails hard into his palm, forcing the shaking to stop. Then he snorted a breath. Then he tipped his head back and a laugh slipped from his lips, then full-on laughter, rain falling on his face, pouring down his lank hair.

“I understand now, at last, it all makes sense. I know why this is happening, why you are here, why you turned into this monstrous thing.” He let out a breath, the confidence of madness in his eye. “It’s my Class you see, it all comes back to my Class. Years ago I found my Class was one of those few that had a level cap, I had reached my leveling limit, and no matter many monsters I killed those lovely little numbers never ticked up again. I killed so many, I massacred entire dungeons. I took the monsters and I bred them in farms, and then I killed them all, until all the miles of dungeon corridor were oozing rivers of gore up to my knees.”

He curled his hand into a tightly clenched fist.

“I killed thousands, I killed millions, they called me the butcher, even the strongest levelers reviled what I did.”

“In the end, none of it mattered, It was all for nothing. Instead I found myself turning to finding a workaround. If the system would not give me what I desired, then I would find other means and simply bypass it. Power comes in many forms, and I found mine in the occult... in hell.”

“But now, now you have appeared before me. A monster I have not seen before, a very different kind of monster. I know exactly what this is. The gods sent you to me, to break my level cap, to smash through my ceiling.”

“you are what will at long last change my N U M B E R S.”

Rain listened silently, unreacting. Instead, he lifted a paw. Misty chromatic fringed darkness danced across his claws, or more accurately, pure terror in physical form. He narrowed his eyes and instinctively willed it to move, to act upon his feral urges. The misty darkness rose up from the top side of his paw, forming a shape, solidifying. The darkness acted on his predatory instinct and formed a larger paw above his own, much much larger, and instead of regular short claws, this thing had claws like long lethal scythes, feet in length.

He rolled his claws and the dark paw mirrored his movement, the scythes making the exact same motion but on a far larger scale. Interesting.

He lifted his other paw and willed into existence the same, he now had two dark paws, each floating above his own.

“You’ve given me a genuine reason to expend everything it seems, I cannot miss this opportunity,” said the Ranker.

Rain lifted his head and his eyes came to rest on Bane. Then, he spoke.

“The howling dark. Can you hear it Bane? It's screaming your sins."

Bane’s eyes opened fractionally but it was already too late, Rain set his feet and Exploded forward, the ground cratering behind him as he shot forward like a bolt, dark paws raised, sets of lethal scythes swinging.

The Ranker darted backwards, his fingers whipping out complex seals as he moved. Imps poured out of the rubble behind him and shot toward Rain even as more formed in the air around. The scythes came down and cut through, a half dozen Imps sliced in twain or narrowly nicked by the blades.

Of course, cutting wasn’t really the point.

The flesh around where the blades touched immediately began to rip itself apart as everything up from bones and muscles down to the cellular level became awash with a terror that caused one single overriding reaction: FLEE.

The Imps boiled, their muscles tearing through their skin and wiggling away, their organs evacuating out their assholes as their bones ripped themselves from sockets and their skin sloughed off. One unlucky Imp with a slight cut on its face found its eyeballs slithering free as its brains pushed out of its nostrils. It dropped dead out of the air almost immediately.

Bane waggled his fingers and the Imps came on with a fury as yet more appeared in balls of green fire around him. Rain snarled and swiped, each pass of his claws taking out a good half dozen, but there was always more, and then more, nearing a hundred, and then they were throwing themselves at him.

He curled his half lip in annoyance and flicked his claws at the air. Darkness shed from his mane and poured into the air forming into floating balls of his own. The balls of darkness formed inward, condensing, becoming angular shapes, then teeth, sets of wolf teeth floating in the air, a good dozen of them. He willed them forward and the teeth snapped at the air like a pack of hungry wolves and then they dove on the swarm of Imps.

The Imps didn't stand a chance. The sets of teeth cut through them like a scalding blade through butter leaving a swathe of disintegrating bodies in their path, the Imps’ frantic screams were a thing to behold as they could do nothing, they were naked and had no weapons or armour so even attacking the teeth only resulted in the fist they struck with disintegrating as their muscles and bones splayed and then fled from their skin.

It didn't take long. Less than a minute. And then the swarm of Imps was nothing but a layer of shifting squirming Imp pieces on the ground sticking out a lake of blood. The pack of wolf teeth rejoined his mane.

Bane glanced up at Rain from what he was doing, and he had been doing something, Rain was fully aware of that and had been making his way forward even as he clawed the Imps apart around him. Unfortunately the Imps had bought the time the Ranker needed and his furious seal making finished, a wash of green fire spilling over his body, condensing, hardening, becoming a lustrous green metal plate armour that covered his body from neck to toe, the craftsmanship beautiful, ornate, swirls and curlicues moulded into ever rim and edge, the faces of demonic lions cleverly worked into each joint. The reflections in the metal were slightly less beautiful however, for there were horrible shapes visible in those reflections, cruel shapes not of this world.