The shortcut was mercifully empty of humans, and was far, far more wide and open than it had any need to.

Thankfully, that just meant the wolf could dash forwards without worrying about tripping and tumbling off to its own death.

A hundred feet passed in a blur of near pitch-black cobbles and metal support rods speeding past, out of its line of sight, and it bound up the stairs with enough speed and precision to surprise even itself, barely cutting its momentum enough to not slam into the curving wall.

As its focus turned to the vibrations, it mentally hesitated for a moment. There were too many humans. Everywhere.

It could easily tell which human was after it and which one wasn’t, thankfully. Their frantic movements, their positions, it wasn’t difficult at all to distinguish between the two groups, to figure out where they were and what they were doing.

Escaping their notice was the hard part. The moment its shoulders cleared the topmost step on the stairs, it heard one of the humans above, bounding across walkways and metal-sheet rooftops, shout something out, pointing in its direction.

The way it felt almost two dozen humans all simultaneously halt and spin around to begin dashing towards it was mildly terrifying.

No, not mildly. It was genuinely scared, angry, and above all, confused because something about the whole situation refused to click. Why where there humans sitting outside to hunt it? Did they know it would escape? Why didn't they stop it before it could?

It pushed those questions aside and focused on trying to find some kind of path it could take to escape.

The problem was simply that its mind couldn’t map out the paths and choose one in the chaotic sprint as it rushed forwards without any real direction but away. It couldn’t puzzle out which of those paths led to a human, which didn’t, which were dead ends and which led to safety. Not enough time to process the three-dimensional, maze-like surroundings.

It did have enough time to process that it had to change its path, immediately. Humans weren’t supposed to be so freakishly fast, but one of them was.

It bent its body to the right as its claws briefly raked through cobblestones, and before it could bleed off more momentum than it could afford, charged straight towards an empty floor-nest at an angle that was far from ideal.

The fit was also tight, but it didn’t have much choice, so it leapt up the moment it was close enough, tilted its shoulders as much as it could mid-air, and braced itself for impact, moving one arm in front of its head to take the blow.

The sound of shattering glass was deafening, yet nothing but a whisper in comparison to the bang that echoed through the streets, ruffling its fur with a rush of air as something slammed into the door, just a few inches below where its feet were. Its downwards tilted head watched one of the hinges snap and fly off in a moment of adrenaline-induced clarity, the metal door denting inwards.

It did its best to keep its momentum the same, but the landing was awkward, the angle was terrible, and the space was far too tight. It landed on its left paw, and underbalanced with its other, unable to get it under its chest in time, sending it forward and to the side, involuntarily ramming into a pile of furniture pushed up against the wall.

Its shoulders and hips met a dozen different protruding chairs, tables and stools, which quickly tilted and fell all around it with a cacophony of metal and broken glass, its fur utterly packed to the brim with sharp bits of the stuff, which it ignored as it fixed its footing and pushed through with all haste, shrugging off the pile of iron rods clinging to its back.

The exit was far more graceful, a single clean jump through another thick pane of glass that couldn’t withstand its weight, sending glittering bits of glass flying everywhere and filling the alleyway.

Behind, it felt the human’s feather-light steps reach the first door and jump through, before the human promptly landed on the mess it left behind, sprawling over the furniture with an audible bark of frustration, his feet tangling in the mess of furniture and tripping him up.

It wouldn’t buy it any more than a couple seconds, and it didn’t have time to think.

It turned to its right, at a tiny staircase wedged between two blocky human nests, and clawed through the stone as it built up its momentum.

Taking the short, short moment of mindlessly bounding up the metal staircase to process where it had to go, it realized that it had no real idea. It just couldn't process the dense mess of sensations that it felt through it antennae.

It just had to go for whatever it felt was right. Pure instinct and hope.

Two humans were jumping across rooftops above and to its right, very fast. Three splitting up and rushing into every little alley below and behind it, too far and slow to be a real issue.

In the distance however, it felt one of the human-filled boxes dock into a metal platform, at the very edge of its perception, almost five hundred feet away, and had a short moment of realization, like a mental ‘click’ of something sliding into place.

If it could jump on top of one of those, they wouldn't have any way of following it.

It just wasn't sure how it was going to get there.

It reached the end of the staircase, coming out into a tiny, thin corridor lined with rumbling, clicking pipes, and it mindlessly charged forward, trying to split its attention between its movements and mapping out some way of getting to the platforms.

The fast human was quickly approaching, so it took a quick swipe at the pipes to its left as it bound through the curving, S-shaped alley, a frustrating mess of construction that kept making it bleed off momentum lest it slam into a mess of flaking pipes.

It snarled at the sensation of the flesh around its claws burning in agony as pressurized, foul liquids burnt through its flesh, but it endured for a couple more swipes, before changing hands and repeating, covering its tracks with the sound and sight of pipes screaming in protest as they spewed pressurized, off-colored chemicals against the grimy pipes on the opposite wall.

Just as it left the alley behind, it felt the human charge into the alley, only to lose his balance by the torrents of gas and liquid beating down on his sides, slamming into a curved wall with his right shoulder before sprawling on the floor, struggling to get up and reorient himself.

Its focus pivoted to weaving through the confused bystanders filling the open street it charged into, an arduous task that slowed it down far more than it had the patience for, each shove cutting its momentum, despite the yelping humans trying to make a path for it.

Then, an idea struck.

Its tail whipped at one of the human’s sharp iron rods, hanging off his back and wound around the handle, binding fur and steel together with sticky slime, guided by nothing but vibrations. As it rushed through the sparse crowd, at just the right time, right as its tail stretched to its full length, it yanked.

The human behind it was thrown to the floor with a startled shout as the leather straps yanked him back for a short moment before snapping, a clear rod of sharp iron clutched in the tip of its tail, trailing behind it.

It wasted no time in trying to use it, curling its tail into a spiral shape up to its tailbone, before finding a target in the form of an old human standing right in the middle of its path, looking at the crowd of humans it left behind, his eyes too high to see the wolf.

From the base of its tail, it focused the tendons and the tension into a current, trailing down each joint and bone, amplifying, multiplying, unwinding. The iron rod whistled through the air, right to left, for the blink of an eye before slamming into the old man’s neck, and cleanly through.

It leapt up his momentarily rigid body, mid-fall, and in one clean movement, raked its claws through his coverings to use him as a springboard, leaping over his falling body, while the longest of the veins in its back broke through the hardened mucus sealing the sheath shut to swipe at the head, barely managing to secure it by the forehead, struggling for a couple seconds to control it but eventually managing to store the second head in the sheath next to the first.

The blood pooling in its back was rather uncomfortable, and as it mixed with the slime, made it far more difficult to rouse than it should be, but it was a sacrifice the wolf was willing to make at the moment.

The humans around it turned from yelping and a general murmur of noise to loud screams of panic. Panic which made clearing its path a lot easier.

And a lot more noticeable to its pursuers, but it wasn’t going to be able to conceal itself for long. It was quite surrounded.

It swerved its head to the walkways above, using vibrations to make sure it didn’t crash into anything. Above a ventilation pipe, far above, fifty feet to its left, it caught the flutter of a cloak fearlessly vaulting over the side of a walkway, crashing onto equal ground, out of sight.

Vibrations confirmed what it already assumed, and it turned its attention to the right.

Seven figures, split between the only two streets that led to the moving platforms. A clear road ahead, but it would be flanked on either side.

Its thinking was too… flat. There was nothing stopping it from using the three dimensional nature of the human nests.

It lowered its eyes, following along the blurry stretch of decorated walls it was speeding past, and paused when it saw a box-like structure of fine machinery nailed to the side of a building, wedged in a tiny ‘Π’ shaped groove within two buildings.

But it was tight enough for the wolf’s purposes.

It swung its bottom legs to the left, grinding claws through stone to halt its momentum, then dashed into the little alcove, jumping just before it hit the wall, and redirecting its momentum upwards, scrambling up the wall two, four feet, before it set its hind legs ontop of the machine, and kicked up, further speeding up its frantic scramble.

It had neither the time nor the slime left to climb safely. It was just pure, frantic clawing, instinctual shifts of its weight, and occasionally blunting its claws completely to catapult itself up.

Exhaustion was its only real obstacle. Adrenaline was slowly but surely squeezed out of its internal sac, trying to offset the lactic acid that was quickly weakening its limbs as it scrambled up a hundred feet of flat iron.

The humans below, its pursuers, quickly approached, and it could only hope they wouldn’t notice.

Unfortunately, the crowd of human passersby all staring at it and pointing dashed that hope in less than a second, and it briefly swung its head around in the middle of another rake of its claws, staring at the group of four humans and the things they were pointing at it for a brief fragment of a second before a tiny blur sped towards it with a resounding wooden thunk.

Instinct helped it far more than the next useless ping it got from its danger sensing Skill, and it raised its left leg to kick at the wall as its swung its upper body outwards and to the right, arm extended out into the open air.

The metal-tipped wooden stick flew past its fingers close enough to feel the wind ruffle its fur, then hit the iron wall a few inches from its chest, where its left shoulder used to be.

Before it had time to question what that explosion of mana that it felt for a brief moment was, the answer came in the form of golden light bursting out of the back of the stick, winding into distinct forms, then snapping down at the iron wall like the jaws of a vine-eater from the burning rivers.

One of the glowing ropes headed for the side of its chest, and in the tiny, almost instantaneous instance it had to prepare for agony, it was even more surprised to feel the rope swerve around its flesh to hit the wall.

Without the metal bit sticking into the iron wall however, and with the odd mana net having caught nothing but air and sparks, the light feebly pushed against the iron for a moment before the stick bounced off, and it simply stared in mute shock for a blink of an eye as the light-net disappeared into thin air.

Then right behind the falling, spinning stick, it saw two others take aim with their wooden devices, while the fourth man began screaming into a human communication plate thing.

It kicked at the wall behind itself, and with the crimped, quivering fingers that upheld its entire body, it pulled itself up while throwing its left arm up, covering a couple feet of distance, before resuming its tempo of frantic clawing.

It engaged its legs far more, its arms and fingers starting to feel numb, weak, and shaky, its tail curling and uncurling in agitation.

A light but firm squeeze of adrenaline flooded its body with a little more energy, and then it heard another snappy thunk.

It was a decision born from a sense of panic more than rationality, a sense that it had to rush up to the top of this building as soon as possible or it would only be delayed more and more, become slower until it would fall to its death or captivity.

It did not turn around to see the stick, nor try to intercept it. It ears twitched in the direction of that faint whistling sound, of something sharp ripping the air apart, heard it get closer in less than a heartbeat, and with nothing but a faint understanding of its trajectory, it dodged to the right once more, flattening its chest to the wall on the side.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The muted shock that traveled through its limbs as an iron tip burrowed into its arm bone alerted it to the simple fact that it had dodged into the metal-tipped stick, and in the next instance, a living spiderweb of golden ropes burst out of the back end, weaving around and slithering through every nook and cranny of its torso, head and arms like a living thing.

Then they snapped shut, and tightened.

Its right arm, already positioned close to its torso, snapped to the side of its waist, claws effortly ripped through steel, and it felt something in its neck strain as its head was violently jerked down, jaw pressed into its sternum and ears crushed flat. Its ribs creaked in protest as the ropes tightened.

Its legs kicked in instinct, startled, and it only realized its mistake when it felt all of its remaining weight be moved onto its left hand, awkwardly half extended, battling both gravity and a single rope trying to pull its elbow into the side of its head.

It was going to fall.

With its line of sight being a slightly dizzying height and a crowd of humans below, it wasn’t hard for its eyes to snap to the fourth human in the group, who extended both arms towards the wolf, and launched two metal rods connected to wires, both landing to either side of the little nook the wolf was hanging within, burrowing into the metal with surprising ease.

Then the bulky mechanisms strapped to the human’s arms whirred to life as the wolf tried to figure out how to escape, and it saw the human be launched up, the wires reeling him up straight towards the wolf like a launched projectile, the harness around the human’s hips sending him feet first towards the wolf, in an almost upside-down diagonal position.

There was no moment between realization, action, and reaction. It was a seamless moment where it saw an opportunity and moved without the middle ground of thought entering the process.

Its left hand uncurled, and it allowed the rope to wrench its arm to its head, twisting its elbow to place its claws at its right shoulder, bicep pressed against the side of its head as it abruptly began falling. Then with a quick rake of its claws, it cut through a golden rope, which somehow made all the others snap out of existence, and now free, its arms awkwardly snapped to the sides, the ‘Π’ shaped nook more than tight enough for the wolf to quickly scramble for a clawed grip on the iron and halt its fall before it truly began.

The flying human jerked strangely, throwing his arms in a frantic whirl-like motion, the wires going slack as he tried to stop his momentum, to no avail.

It pushed its hind legs off the walls to its sides, set them to the flat iron behind it, and with the assistance of its wound tail, launched itself straight at the human’s form, a screech of rent metal accompanying the fireball of sparks it left behind.

The human detached the wire on the right, as the left snapped into rigidity, and the wolf watched as the contraption on his arm tugged, beginning to swing him out of the wolf’s path.

It could not reach his torso, not like it had intended, but it didn’t panic, as the human was too slow, and far too late.

Its left hand reached to the left as far as it could go, aiming for the human’s chest.

Gleaming white claws burrowed into the human’s stomach as he tried to fly past, the wolf’s jaws snapping shut around his left knee, teeth effortlessly cutting through bone and joint, and the rest of its body, momentum and weight, soon tugged the wolf into a rough swing that had the wolf inadvertently end up with a detached leg in its mouth, panicking for a grip as the human’s scream filled its ears.

The human’s soft abdomen didn’t provide one, its claws cutting the coverings and flesh into ribbons, peppering its forearm and face with a wild spray of blood.

It swung its right arm with their momentum, spitting the leg out of its maw, the world a blur around them, and stabbed its ‘fingers’ between the human’s ribs from the back, grabbing onto a rib and feeling it snap as its weight settled on it.

It ducked its head under the human’s wild swing, seeing a flash of gleaming silver at the edge of its sight, coming out of the human’s glove, and swung its tail with its lower body, discarding the sharp rod in the general direction of the humans wildly shooting mana-filled sticks at them, and completely missing, before snapping the tail up as far as it could reach, managing to grab a hold of the human’s neck.

It tried to blunt its left-hand claws, but rather than giving it a grip, that attempt simply made its claws slip out of the human, slick with blood, so it quickly jabbed forward once more, miraculously digging its hand into the human’s hip at the perfect angle to grab a hold of his hipbone with the tip of its claws.

It curled its claws, blunting them before burrowing a bit deeper, and simultaneously tightened its tail, the human’s panicked scream turning into a gurgle, leaving the wolf awkwardly hanging off him as they struggled for leverage.

Its eyes flicked to the building they were heading straight into from a sharp sideways angle, a mess of sharp protrusions and pipes, and another warning from [Danger Sense] notified it to something it had been too distracted to see, its eyes snapping back up to the struggling human in its grip.

Its left eye saw nothing but a thin sliver of immaculate iron, spearing straight towards the wolf. Its right eye saw a complex mess of gears snap and whirl to life, pushing the rod out of the human’s arm with speed it had no hope of matching.

Its attempt to dodge was not a mere lean. It pulled at the human’s rib, snapped its whole upper body as far away as it could, the muscles of its waist straining, and used a tiny burst of [Sonic Blast] to propel its head away from the point of the rod.

Its efforts rewarded it with the feeling of cold steel slamming into the side of its neck, and pushing through fur and skin, before impacting the thin sheets of armor it had wrapped around its neck, and…

Spearing through them for an inch, before completely stopping, the thick part of the rod unable to move through the tough string-like fibers of its under-skin armor, the impact of the human’s strike dissipating throughout its neck and choking its next breath, a snarl of pain mixing with a rough cough as it swung its head to the left, the ends of its snout snapping shut over the human’s wrist.

Top and bottom canines ground together, their tips touching as flesh and crushed gearwork machinery worked together to stop its jaws from fully closing.

It twisted, digging its claws deeper, ignoring the human’s desperate struggle to pull his hand and rod away, merely clamping down harder.

It really wanted to rip the human’s hand off and get the rod’s tip out of its neck, but it was far too useful as a grip.

A tail around the human’s neck, a flimsy, broken rib in its right hand fingers, its claws nestled into the human’s lung, and the bare tips of its left-hand claws burrowed into the human’s hip bones. It was only just enough grip for it to feel a hint of assurance that it wasn’t going to fall a solid fifty feet and get caught when they crashed.

It twisted its head as best as it could, hoping to prepare itself for impact, and felt its confidence plummet. A sharp diagonal angle, speeding towards a mess of railings, iron rods protecting the windows behind them, and the occasional pipe.

It used what little leverage and time it had to distance its body from the human’s, before lurching to the right, trying to swing the human around so he would take all the impact.

Unfortunately, when hanging off a single wire, it hadn’t accounted for how easy it was to make them spin. The world began to blur as it vastly overestimated how much force it needed, and less than a second later, it slammed shoulder-first into the wall, before the diagonal angle forced its already dizzying spin to turn even faster, and it felt the human’s rib break off and stay in its fingers as they were ripped out of his chest cavity, its right arm smashing into something, its left losing its grip from the sudden jostling, and then for a single moment, it felt itself begin to fall, disoriented and unaware of where its limbs even were.

Except its tail.

It clenched with all the strength the limb had, and felt its spine jolt and crack oddly as it suddenly straightened, supporting its swinging body for a brief instance as it tried to re-orientate.

Swinging. So it was upside down…? Oh, right. It was staring at the ground below, of course it was.

It heard four thunks, almost simultaneously, and let go of the human, swung down, bringing both ‘hands’ in front of its chest and to the left, pressing its claws into the iron, blunting them and allowing its lower body to swing from its own weight.

Its fingers buckled for a short instance, too abused and exhausted to support its sudden transition of weight, but the way they were wedged into the iron only made them ache from the weight rather than slide out, allowing it to see with relative clarity as four metal-tipped sticks slammed into the iron and bounced off, ribbons of golden light fading as they caught nothing once more.

One of the humans angrily roared something, rushing straight at the wolf, his heels spewing fire with every step, and for a brief moment, it remembered its previous realization, that humans might have access to the symbols as well, and instead of dismissing the human as illogical, it used his confident sprint as a warning that fueled its burning limbs and numbing fingers, kicking at the iron wall.

It wrenched its hands down simultaneously, effectively launching itself up three straight feet, before resuming its frantic clawing.

[Bloodrush] finally returned, a light, mental ping in the back of its mind, and it activated it instantly, energy and power filling every fiber of its body, the panicked mess in its head slightly easier to parse through.

It didn’t have to go up the entire building. It could just go through.

It clawed up to the underside of a window sill, grabbing the edge with its left hand, then with a quick back and forth swipe of its right-hand claws, sent the rods protecting the window rattling around and over it in a shower of metal pieces.

It punched through the glass, grabbing onto the inner wall, and with a final kick of its hind legs, it curled them to its stomach, over the sill, and used them to kick the wall, rocketing its body forwards into the grimy hallway and continue running.

It heard the roar of flame approach from the window it had broken through, and felt a human’s foot coverings hit the floor, immediately breaking into a sprint right behind it, and so, it stomped that hint of hesitation it felt into dust, speeding up even more as it focused on vibrations, mapping out the world outside, confirming distance.

A mental preparation, to help its muscles do the motion its mind envisioned, and it felt a little more confident.

It could make it. Easily. It closed the distance, reaching the opposite end of the hallway.

It leapt up once more, breaking through the glass window for the umpteenth time with its elbows, and barely managed to awkwardly swipe its claws through the iron bars in the middle of its jump, clipping its right foot on one of the sharp remnants clinging to the window, then proceeded to tumble through the air in a wild spray of glass, iron chunks and blood.

A short erected barrier of thin sheet metal passed by from under it, and it snapped its neck around to see its landing spot, swerving its head and neck around as its body spun, trying to keep its gaze steady.

It quickly realized it had slightly overshot.

Right as its flailing body was about to crash into the triangular top of the gravel pile and bounce off to take a hit that would likely fray its ribs, a solid thirty feet that led straight to iron, it threw its right arm out, the back of it slamming it through the top of the pile and cutting its momentum just enough for the wolf to roll down the pile in a chaotic tide of dust and gravel, the pile losing cohesion as the entire thing shifted and flattened, swallowing the wolf’s body.

It backhanded through the thin layer of gravel covering it with a snarl, bucking once to loosen the pebbles and frantically shaking its head to get the dust out of its eyes, then used its claws’ grip on the floor to dash out of the remaining debris and towards the gate of the… work site?

It didn’t care what it was.

The humans here seemed much more aware of its presence, and all but leapt out of its path as it sped towards their flimsy gate, catching a glimpse of stark green light in the distance through the thin metal wiring of the gate.

The color washing over the people made the whole area pop out from its surroundings, and the faint motion of a gigantic box moving on wires, just barely visible through the smog in the background made it realize exactly what it was looking at.

The moving lifts humans used to move around. And its sole viable plan of escape.

A seemingly endless railing crept into sight just past the grated gate, coming from the left, coming forwards in a straight line then gently curving leftwards into some kind of open area flooded with humans on benches or conversing with each other, and the wolf pumped its limbs even faster as it ran past all the rumbling machinery and to the gate, swiping through the mechanism holding it shut and shouldering through in a burst of cut up chain links, sending a small crowd of curious passersby quickly hopping back with sounds of surprise, staring at it warily, tensely.

It didn’t waste time nor attention on them, turning to the right and resuming its frantic sprint, being swallowed up by the parting crowd as it ran.